Notes on the Black Arts Movement Business District and Street Vendors in California, SB946

Many North American African street vendors, especially those who attempted to vend on the east side of Lake Merritt, i.e., Lakeshore Avenue, should be aware of SB946, the bill on vending in California that was passed during the regime of Gov. Jerry Brown. And it was passed because the 30, 000 Los Angeles street vendors, mostly Latinx, got organized and lobbied to change vending laws throughout California. Below is a summary of SB946 and it applies to Oakland as well and may need to be utilized in a possible legal challenge to the City of Oakland's recent termination of vending on Lakeshore Ave. Those of us who grew up in Oakland are well aware of the long history of white supremacists excluding North American Africans from utilizing Lake Merritt for any reason, part of Oakland's institutional and systemic racism, now parading under gentrification, and ironically, some of the residents of the lake area who wish the Black presence would simply disappear, are in fact Black or Negropeans. Yes, from coast to coast, there are many Negropeans who are quite satisfied with gentrification or more properly, ethnic cleansing, just as there were Negro slave owners and as per Nazism, there were Jews who assisted Hitler in the elimination of fellow Jews, supposedly one such collaborator is George Soros, chief financial backer of Black Lives Matter. How can the upper class lead and finance our freedom? How can the slave master free the slave to the benefit of the slave. How can the liberation of the slave benefit the economics of the master who must lose the source of his wealth unless the process is a shell game as Kwame Nkrumah noted, "Neo-colonialism is colonialism playing possum." Further, he said, "You give a flag, national anthem, a colonial elite class of educators and politicians," but, most importantly, you control the finance, the banks, yes, the interlocking directorates wherein the same band of thieves all critical institutions to our detriment, including the linguistics of our literature as the Kenyan writer Enguji wa Thiongo has pointed out. I said long ago language is logic. Thion'go says we must write in our Mother tongues, not the tongues of our colonial masters. Elijah Muhammad taught us we shall not speak English in the new world, it shall be banned. 

As per North American Africans vending on Lakeshore Avenue, please be informed that on January 19, 2016, the City of Oakland established the Black Arts Movement Business District along 14th Street from the Lower Bottom to Lake Merritt, thus North American Africans are presently being denied occupation of their Cultural District. FYI, Gov. Jerry Brown, aside from SB946, also established Cultural Districts throughout California and Oakland has applied to have the BAMBD as a certified cultural district. Furthermore, the BAMBD was belatedly incorporated into the City of Oakland's Downtown Plan for the next 25-50 years. As per usual, North American Africans were only included when the plan was in its final stages. We have great doubts bout our inclusion and, more importantly, our equity in said plan, especially if our present exclusion from the designated area is not rectified in the name of social and economic justice. Further, Oakland has yet to fund the BAMBD to any degree whatsoever. There are no banners or signage that the BAMBD exists along the 14th Street corridor and most certainly along Lakeshore Ave where we have staked our claim to a piece of land in our beloved Oakland, known throughout the world as the City of Resistance to white supremacy and domestic colonialism, with the Pullman Porters, the first North American African Union, and the Black Panther Party of Self Defense that challenged police violence under the color of law. But, alas, the OPD was called to subdue the North American African presence at the lake as we exercised our right to be in our own cultural district, i.e., The Black Arts Movement Business District. 

Sadly, most North American Africans, including vendors, don't even know we have a cultural and business that extends to Lake Merritt. When it was clear to the community stakeholders of the BAMBD that the City of Oakland was reticent, reluctant, moreover, recalcitrant to establish our district, we established the BAMBD, CDC, under the direction of Dr. Ayodele Nzinga, and she has almost singlehandedly won community benefit packages from developers who've caused displacement leading to the plethora of homeless encampments throughout Oakland. Of course she was opposed by politicians, especially Negropean politicians and they sycophants, including even Negropean business persons who lacked radical consciousness in their attempt to be petty bourgeoise capitalists. Alas, when we literally forced the word "movement" in the name of our district, i.e., Black Arts Movement Business District, certain of them opposed the word "movement" until they got a PE lecture, i.e., political education, from BAMBD co-founders, especially Paul Cobb, Publisher of the Oakland Post News Group, and a long-time radical who informed the petty bourgeoisie businesspersons that it is only because of our radical movement history that we are alive today, since every attempt was made to destroy Oakland's radical movement for social justice. The most recent example is the US Government's attempt to destroy the Black Panther Party as a threat to the national security of the USA, even though the BPP stood on the US Constitution to demand our human rights. 

The Oakland Police occupation of Lakeshore Avenue to prevent any semblance of economic equity for the BAMBD and its vendors, is a continuation of Oakland's Jim Crow history to mainly placate lake residents who were expressly informed in SB946 that community animus...does not constitute an objective health, safety, or welfare concern.  

It should be clear that for North American African vendors to establish our presence in our BAMBD, we will need to form the BAMBD, CDC Vendors Association to advocate for our economic and social justice, just as the 30,000 Los Angeles vendors. FYI, the BAMBD, CDC was able to win Community Benefit Agreements only because we united with the Asian Community as well as the Latinx, but especially the Asians. I point this out because Afro-Asian unity was formed at the Bandung Conference when the Third World nations declared their policy of non-alignment as per the Capitalists and Communists fighting for global hegemony.

In unity, the BAMBD, CDC and the Asian Community won Community Benefits from developers that vendors must be aware of and take advantage of, e.g., below market rate housing and commercial space in the plethora of new developments in the BAMBD and throughout Oakland. The brother who organized the Black Solidarity Market at the lake indicated his desire to have vendors in retail spaces along the 14th Street corridor of 14th Street, downtown Oakland. Again, I remind you the BAMBD is supposedly an equitable partner in the 25 to 50 Year City of Oakland Downtown Plan.

As I conclude my preface to the SB946 Vendor Summary, please understand the vendor struggle at the lake is an integral part of the struggle for North American economic and social justice in Oakland and coast to coast.

As per economics, imagine the cost of employing the OPD along the lake to prevent North American Africans from any measure of economic survival in the Covid19 era wherein corporations are thriving but socalled non-essential economic entities were shuttered and mandated to close as non-essential. Non-essential to whom? Wal-Mart, Walgreens, Amazon, et al.

But in truth, we know in the filthy socalled free market system--alas, even the low life, white nationalist President Donald Trump cried for fair trade to no avail except the Covid19 soft coup germ war fare China answered Trump with, along with China's multi-cultural sycophants, i.e., European-American corporations and other global economic entities, including the above mentioned Negropean petty bourgeoisie capitalists rappers and athletes, including LeBron James, et al., so greedy they sing Silent Night as their products arrive in America and throughout the world from Muslim, Tibetan, and North Korean concentration camps.

Thus the new world order is not white supremacist, alas, globalists are diverse, multiracial, cultural, and ethnically diverse. So we must be careful when charging the white supremacists for global evil--Europeans are not the totality of the 1% loath and despise the 85-99% wage slaves, aka, the deaf, dumb and blind, suffering domination by the blood suckers of the poor. Yes, the wage slaves work to die poor, and even their basic wealth, i.e., a home, often is lost in probate court in legal battles between siblings, wives and other women, ultimately benefiting lawyers at $400 per hour times 3 or 4 times 2 or 3 years in probate court.

No matter all the above negrocities (Amiri Baraka term he told me not to steal, but I gave my definition as an inflammation of the negroid gland at the base of the brain caused by bad habits. AB said in his mythic drama A Black Mass, his interpretation of the Muslim myth of Yakub, i.e., as per the evil created by Yakum's devil created in his bio-tech lab by separating the dominant gene from the recessive, the result was a being created "where the heart's print should be there was only a cellulose pouch of disgusting habits." Master Sun Ra arranged the music for A Black Mass and in his lectures at UC Berkeley, 1972, said of the white man, "You so evil the devil don't want you in hell."

Thus, as a Black presence at Lake Merritt, we shall only secure our presence by being organized. The City of Oakland made the lake part of our Black Arts Movement Business District. We occupied the space without knowledge we have official rights to the space. If we claim the space as part of our BAMBD and demand the City concur, we shall occupy said space. But, we must understand any space we occupy is connected to our liberation, thus any space we claim and occupy must be administered with discipline. Freedom was the critical fault in our liberation struggle as I was taught by Master Sun Ra of the Black Arts Movement. And he is now known as the Father of Afro-futurism. But as I said at the University of Chicago Symposium on Sun Ra, "He taught me discipline and his Myth-Science Arkestra was the supreme example of disciple, even though he was a free spirit as his music and philosophy and band history will attest."

Lake vendors, you can occupy Lakeshore but only with discipline. You can be your own security and employ your own to clean up after yourselves. You can take advantage of Community Benefits from developers along the 14th Street corridor to occupy retail space and warehouse space to store your goods as I proposed years ago during the administration of Oakland's first Black Mayor Lionel Wilson. 

With discipline, you can be a presence from the lower bottom to Lake Merritt's Lakeshore Avenue since you have made your footprint there as part of the BAMBD. 

As I close, I encourage you to read the thoughts of my dear Sister Cat Brooks on the lake issue, especially as per the police occupation of the vending area we declared.

--Marvin X

Co-founder of the National Black Arts Movement

Co-founder, Black Arts Movement Business District, Oakland

4/10/21

SB 946 Street Vending Bill Summary

SB 946 (Lara) Street Vending Bill Summary: This measure would prohibit a local authority from adopting rules or regulations, by ordinance or resolution, that regulate or prohibit sidewalk vendors unless it first adopts a sidewalk vending licensing program. Bill Description: Specifically, SB 946 allows a local authority to adopt a sidewalk vending licensing program that requires a sidewalk vendor to obtain a license from the local authority before he or she is authorized to sell food or merchandise. 

The local authority’s licensing system shall comply with all of the following standards:  A local authority shall not restrict the location of a licensed sidewalk vendor unless the restriction is directly related to objective health, safety, or welfare concerns.  A local authority shall not prohibit a sidewalk vendor from selling food or merchandise in a park owned or operated by the local authority, except the local authority may prohibit stationary sidewalk vendors from vending in the park only if the operator of the park has signed an agreement for concessions that exclusively permits the sale of food or merchandise by the concessionaire.  A local authority may adopt additional requirements regulating the time, place, and manner of sidewalk vending in a park owned or operated by the local authority if the requirements are any of the following: o Directly related to objective health, safety, or welfare concerns. o Necessary to ensure the public’s use and enjoyment of natural resources and recreational opportunities. o Necessary to prevent an undue concentration of commercial activity that unreasonably interferes with the scenic and natural character of the park.  

A local authority shall not require a licensed sidewalk vendor to first obtain the consent or approval of any nongovernmental entity or individual before he or she can sell food or merchandise.  

A local authority shall not restrict sidewalk vendors to operate only in a designated neighborhood or area, except when that restriction is directly related to objective health, safety, or welfare concerns.  

A local authority may prohibit stationary sidewalk vendors in areas that are zoned exclusively residential, but shall not prohibit roaming sidewalk vendors.  

A local authority may prohibit sidewalk vendors in areas located within the immediate vicinity of a permitted certified farmers’ market or a permitted swap meet during the limited operating hours of that certified farmers’ market or swap meet.  

A local authority may restrict or prohibit sidewalk vendors within the immediate vicinity of an area designated for a temporary special permit issued by the local authority, provided that any notice, business interruption mitigation, or other rights provided to affected businesses or property owners under the local authority’s temporary special permit are also provided to any sidewalk vendors specifically permitted to operate in the area, if applicable.  

A local authority shall not restrict the overall number of sidewalk vendor licenses issued unless the restriction is directly related to objective health, safety, or welfare concerns.  Perceived community animus or economic competition does not constitute an objective health, safety, or welfare concern.  

A local authority may, by ordinance or resolution, adopt additional requirements regulating the time, place, and manner of sidewalk vending if the requirements are directly related to objective health, safety, or welfare concerns, including, but not limited to, any of the following: o Limitations on hours of operation that are not unduly restrictive. 

In nonresidential areas, any limitations on the hours of operation for sidewalk vending shall not be more restrictive than any limitations on hours of operation imposed on other businesses or uses on the same street. o Requirements to maintain sanitary conditions. o Requirements necessary to ensure compliance with the federal Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (Public Law 101-336) and other disability access standards. o Requiring the sidewalk vendor to obtain from the local authority a permit for sidewalk vending or a valid business license. o Requiring the sidewalk vendor to possess a valid California Department of Tax and Fee Administration seller’s permit. o Requiring additional licenses from other state or local agencies to the extent required by law. o Requiring compliance with other generally applicable laws. o Requiring a sidewalk vendor to submit information on his or her operations, including, but not limited to, any of the following:  The name and current mailing address of the sidewalk vendor.  A description of the merchandise offered for sale or exchange.  certification by the vendor that to his or her knowledge and belief, the information contained on the form is true.  The California seller’s permit number (California Department of Tax and Fee Administration sales tax number), if any, of the sidewalk vendor.  If the sidewalk vendor is an agent of an individual, company, partnership, or corporation, the name and business address of the principal. 

A violation of a local authority’s sidewalk vending program that complies with Section 51038 is punishable only by the following:  

An administrative fine not exceeding one hundred dollars ($100) for a first violation.  An administrative fine not exceeding two hundred dollars ($200) for a second violation within one year of the first violation.  An administrative fine not exceeding five hundred dollars ($500) for each additional violation within one year of the first violation.  A local authority may rescind a permit issued to a sidewalk vendor for the term of that permit upon the fourth violation or subsequent violations. If a local authority requires a sidewalk vendor to obtain a sidewalk vending permit from the local authority, vending without a sidewalk vending permit may be punishable by the following:  An administrative fine not exceeding two hundred fifty dollars ($250) for a first violation.  An administrative fine not exceeding five hundred dollars ($500) for a second violation within one year of the first violation.  An administrative fine not exceeding one thousand dollars ($1,000) for each additional violation within one year of the first violation.  

Upon proof of a valid permit issued by the local authority, the administrative fines shall be reduced to the administrative fines set forth in paragraph (1). Failure to pay an administrative fine shall not be punishable as an infraction or misdemeanor. Additional fines, fees, assessments, or any other financial conditions beyond those authorized in this measure shall not be assessed. A violation of a local authority’s sidewalk vending program that complies with Section 51038, or a violation of any rules or regulations adopted prior to January 1, 2019, that regulate or prohibit sidewalk vendors in the jurisdiction of a local authority, shall not be punishable as an infraction or misdemeanor, and the person alleged to have violated any of those provisions shall not be subject to arrest except when permitted under law. This shall apply to all pending criminal prosecutions under any local ordinance or resolution regulating or prohibiting sidewalk vendors. Any of those criminal prosecutions that have not reached final judgment shall be dismissed. A local authority that has not adopted rules or regulations by ordinance or resolution that comply with Section 51037 shall not cite, fine, or prosecute a sidewalk vendor for a violation of any rule or regulation that is inconsistent with the standards described in subdivision (b) Section 51038. “Sidewalk vendor” is a person who sells food or merchandise from a pushcart, stand, display, pedal-driven cart, wagon, showcase, rack, or other non motorized conveyance upon a public sidewalk or other pedestrian path. “Roaming sidewalk vendor” means a sidewalk vendor who moves from place to place and stops only to complete a transaction. “Stationary sidewalk vendor” means a sidewalk vendor who vends from a fixed location. “Local authority” means a chartered or general law city, county, or city and county.

Poem of the mountain

 Poets made their way up the mountain to read

Happy poems

Apples flowers lemon poems

Sweet sour love poems

War poems to end war forever

Poets shouted from the.mountain

To the valley of sweet water rivers

Poems of the beautiful life

Sun dancing in the name of love

Always for love

Moments are precious

We rush up the mountain to escape hate

The wind in our faces 

Sometimes shutting mouths

The silence United us in love

We could only smile at the 

Green valley

Orchards vines for sweet wine

We toast and sing poems of love

We vow no more war

In homes lands tribes no more blood

Enough 

Let the mountain be pleased

Let the sun purify our thoughts

Let us descend singing poems of joy that we live beyond the past

Yesterdays of ruin bitterness beyond measure

Boots on necks no more

Lies no more

Share the wealth

No greed from the mountain down

Let the valley be free

Drink sweet water

No sugar

Only water sweet pure

As we descend not like Sissyphus

To stumble again again

We defy all foes with poems

Like pistols to the brain

Truth destroys evil

We stand tall above the stunted ones

Devoid of hearts

Discarded long ago in a mad dream

We are not moved by such madness

Our poems echo into the valley

We hear children singing back to us.

--MARVIN X

4/11/21 

,

Love the lake or fuck the lake

Marvin X, Co-founder of the Black Arts Movement and Oakland's Black Arts Movement Business District

When the Black Arts Movement Business District was established by the City of Oakland, January 19, 2016, the BAMBD extended from the lower bottom of 14th St to Lake Merritt, but in the City of Oakland's current attempt to remove vendors from the eastside of the lake along Lakeshore Avenue to placate residents traumatized by the Black presence of overwhelming African bodies expressing love, joy, happiness and economic growth, at a high cost of police presence and sanitation, we suggest that community persons be hired for security and other expenses for the vendors along Lakeshore. 

The latest measures to curtail the Black vendors and their customers came after a survey was taken but most of the responders were white residents and a few Negropeans. We highly suspect few vendors and North American Africans were asked to respond to the survey. 

That Lake Merritt is a declared part of the Black Arts Movement Business District has been lost on the City Council that has yet to fund the BAMBD in any meaningful way.

The City did fund a pilot project for vendors under the Black Solidarity Market that removed vendors from Lakeshore and placed them on the one block area of Embarcadero. This area is not able to contain the plethora of vendors who have come to the lake since Covid19 devastated the Black economic plight that has forced community people to become entrepreneurs to survive. And although white, Latinox and Asians had vended on the streets of the Bay Area for years, Blacks have been denied from the streets of San Francisco, Berkeley and especially Oakland. The Lake Merritt vendors are the first mass presence of North American African vendors on the streets of Oakland. Although I defied the OPD by vending at 14th and Broadway for years, selling my books, Black vending at the lake may be ephemeral unless the vendors organize themselves into a Black Vendors Association that I have called for. 

FYI, I first called for Black vendors on the streets of Oakland during the regime of our first Black Mayor Lionel Wilson. This was in the 70s. Alas, around the same time we called for a review board of the OPD. We're still working on the police review board with teeth.

The situation of vendors at the lake is fluid unless the Black Vendors Association is organized to demand economic equity in the city North American Africans have made known throughout the world as The City of Resistance with the Pullman Porters Union and the Black Panther Party. Marcus Garvey told us long ago the world is moving against all unorganized people. Mao told you the same.

So vendors get organized or suffer the consequences of economic strangulation.

In my last conversation with the brother who organized the Black Solidarity Market, we agreed that many of the vendors can take advantage of the community benefit agreements the BAMBD CDC has worked out with developers for below market rate retail spaces in developments along the 14th Street BAMBD.

But we have every right to be on the lake, unless we are yet in the Jim Crow era when I was growing up and we were

not allowed to visit Lake Merritt except on holidays like the 4th of July, imagine that. 

For more information, feel free to call me at 510-575-7148. Send me your comments: jmarvinx@yahoo.com

2

Miles Davis - Time After Time (Live 1985)

Miles Davis - Time After Time (Live 1985)

I saw a man named George Floyd murdered today on the morning news

I saw a man named George Floyd Murdered today

It hurt me to my heart 

not sure I will recover

beyond pain trauma toxicity reality

I can't believe evil exists in this land

yet how was it conquered with love

or blood

soaking the land from shore to shore

and we pontificate on freedom, justice, equality

what contradiction is this what pseudo democracy 

what lies, falsehoods taught to children and fools

slaves even devoured this garbage worse than slave food

fed to animals and slaves

daily diet of hog food yet me ate it and came up on filth

and you wonder why we suffer multiple morbidities 

why our central nervous system suffers toxicity

why Covid 19 loves us so much

yeah loves us in our negrocities and toxicities 

you don't want to hear me today or tomorrow.

And do you think I care? You have no heard me in centuries! 

No matter the decades you 

wallowed in denial in your sloth and mental slumber

white privilege from accumulated capital.  Did you deny

your inheritance from your ancestors? No, you enjoyed every

check to be your wretched self in all your spender. 

I saw a man named George Floyd murdered today

under the color of law

on the morning news

Lawyer Blackwell showed the video clip

he opened his remarks as prosecutor

I'd seen versions of the video before

last year when the murder happened

four days before my birthday May 29

How could I enjoy my b day

in trauma shock at another crucifixion

Strange Fruit

Remember that song

"How Long has this been going on?"

I remember Emit Till  1955

Money Mississippi

I was at Lowell Jr. High, Oakland

the brothers beat down poor white trash boy

so poor he went to school with niggas

probably so poor he didn't know he was white

but I watched the brothers beat him down

with each blow they said

This fa Emit Till peckerwood

This fa Emit Till peckerwood

Yes, I felt sorry for the poor peckerwood

so poor he didn't even know he was white

so poor he went to a school with all niggas!

Ain't this a crime against humanity?

But when a Cali nigga went to the dirty south

they taught me one thing

poor white trash is treated worse than a nigga

and a nigga aint shit

last time I checked

imagine you less than shit

But fuck all the above

I saw a man named George Floyd murdered this morning

Blackwell presented his case for the state

for the first time I saw a fuller version of the execution

under the color of law

pig hand in pocket

boot on neck

no human feelings

devil to the bone

George cried I can't breathe

Cried for his Mama

Cried for Lord

to no avail

wow!

boot on neck.

silent now 

dead now

still

boot on neck

pig beyond human

beyond pig

where was he?

Tell me

I want to know

world wants to know

where was he

Defense said George on drugs

If George on drugs

what drugs pig on, tell me

in the name of Jesus, Allah, Jah, Buddha 

On, no, not the white drug of supremacy

what made the pig nod out in his world of nothingness

hatred beyond human imagination

what drug beyond opioid fentanyl

drug addict George wasn't trying to kill

he only had a phony twenty dollar bill

He wanted a pack of cigarettes 

not to kill

except to kill the pain of his black matterless life!

Better ax somebody they say in Houston, TX

Projects of George Floyd

A human being in a world of devils

yes, I said it devils

devil pig devil America

devil day and night

devil Left and Right 

devil 

Elijah said devil!

In jr high at Lowell

used to listen on the radio to Elijah

upstairs at the Masonic Hall on 8th and Union, Oakland

Daddy gambling downstairs

In my room past room on the square at the lodge

I caught Elijah on the raggedy radio

the press asked him why he called whites devils?

He said devils do evil

If you do evil you devil!

Remember now

I'm in jr high at Lowell, Oakland

the press asked what he thought about Dr. Ralph Bunche?

Elijah said, "There are some socalled negroes we don 't need.

Ralph Bunche is a socalled negro we dont need."

I confess Elijah scared me calling the white man the devil.

But I listened and today, this morning on the news, I confess

The white man is the devil!

I watched him kill my brother, then kept his foot on my brothers neck

even after my brother had passed on from this life.

I do not understand the evil of devils.

I do not understand the evil of devils.

I do not understand the evil of devils.

--Marvin X

3/29/21

Flowers for the Trashman

 

Flowers for the Trashman 

My dad had flower man hands

Soft gentle rough tough

"hands were tender

tied bows in my  ponytails.  

Before it was popular 

black men doing their little daughters hair

daddy did me and Ann’s every summer! Lol."

--Debbi Jackmon

Withstand thorny Rose hands

Hands talked to plants

Put flowers on the dead hands

Took me with him

To flower the dead

Wouldn't let me stay in car

Guess he wanted me to see the dead

Overcome fear of death

Made my hands touch dead

Hands cold stiff

Dad stood bleeding heart

Of roses beside casket

And we Departed

I grabbed his hand.

--MARVIN X

3/27/21

Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android

part 3 the marvin x experience/a personal history of the black arts and black liberation movents

Thelonious Monk: American Composer

Marvin X Experience, part 3, 6:1/2 hours

Marvin X's Magnum Opus or Great Work, a ten part series of his life and work

in the black arts and black liberation movement. He thanks all those warriors and artists who performed with him over the half century of his ministry in the arts and liberation movement. Thank you all who sacrificed your talent and energy to the freedom of our people, to truth and beauty.

--Marvin X

MARVIN X VIDEO

Marvin X on the Black Arts Movement, i.e., Baraka, Last Poets and BAM women writers

The Outlaw, Draft #1

OUTLAW MAGAZINE

ISSUE 1, NO. 1, Spring 2021                                                                       Donation $10.00

The Mythology of Pussy and Dick

In this issue we deconstruct Black male/female and gender relations in the global village 

in the MeToo Era

Feature story: Marvin X on Ageism and the Mythology of Pussy and Dick

Contents

The Mythology of Pussy and Dick

The MeToo Movement and Harvey Weinstein

Don't Say Pussy

You Don't Know Me

What is Love

Why I gotta be a bitch cause I don't wanna give you my pussy?

Ageism or Old men and Young girls, Marvin X interviewed  by KPOO Radio's Pam Pam

Monday Love Poem

After da nut den what poem

Parables

A Real Woman

The Pit Bull

The Gangsta

Woman in the box

The Baby carriage

Dialogue: Should Prostitution be legalized?

Dialogue: Deconstruction of Bitch

Dramatic script: Polygamy in the Name of Love

Love letter to gay and lesbian youth

Review of Baby Boy

Review of Fences

Review of Black Panther as Afrofuturism

 

Parable of Crack History

 Parable of Crack History

No matter the life we have lived, no matter how negative or positive, the beauty of it all is that we survived to see another day. We may have seen our women transition, our children, best friends, parents, siblings, yet we are still here and too often we wonder why? Don't wonder, except the beauty of each day you are blessed to enjoy. Did not  Jesus tell you the birds and bees don't worry about tomorrow? They get up with the morning sun and get busy. Don't you hear them chirping with the rising of the sun? 

Why not be as the birds bees? Get up and get busy in the new day God has blessed you to enjoy. Recall those days when you had to hustle, yet you came up day after day, though you began each day with nothing, on zero, yet you came up when you got up and did something for yourself. Yes, you hustled and were blessed each and every day. On what day did God fail you? Not one day when you took that step and He took ten in your behalf? If I am lying, tell me I am lying but I tell you the truth I lived day after day after day as a hustler. 

The hustling life is so beautiful because it teaches you to have faith in yourself and you shall be successful. The Hustler's Wisdom teaches you to get up and get busy like the birds. Tell me, was there any day in your hustling life that you did not come up when you got up and got busy with whatever vehicle you had to work your twist? 

Remember the night you only had a toilet seat to work but you worked it to get your five dollar hit? 

When you ran out of Homeless Papers did you not sell toilet paper or any paper to come up? Better ax somebody!

What about the niggas styling and profiling at Fisherman's Wharf who passed you and refused to give you a donation because they said you had more money in your hand than they had (and you did only put twenty dollar bills in your hand to hustle with because you knew if you had only twenties in your hand, ain't no motherfucker gonna give you a dollar donation. This way you could come up in an hour or two, and your did. You made $400.00 a day hustling the homeless paper and if you ran out of it, you sold any paper you could find, including toilet paper.

Niggas passed you and said they wasn't going to give you a donation because you had on a starched shirt and jeans with a crease, and you did and didn't give a fuck if they didn't give you shit. You were a hustler with class.

Remember the night a white man got out of his limo in Union Square at the Saint Francis Hotel and you tried to hustle him? What did he tell you? "Nigger, you got on a starched shirt, nigga. If you want a donation from me you better go home and take off that starched shirt!" What you tell that white? "White ma, kiss my black motherfuckin ass!"

Yes, your arrogant bastard ass made San Francisco make laws against aggressive panhandling. It was because of the brothers begging for quarters with their stylophone cups (of which I never hustled with a cup in my hand, and furthermore, if someone gave me a quarter, I would through it at them as they passed--although, many times I would have ten or twenty dollars in quarters at the end of my hustle, although the dope man didn't want you to come to him with change and might not serve you if you came with change.  He might not serve you until you came back with dollar bills or might threaten to shot your ass if you came improper again. 

Let me close with the best time I had with a Crack ho. We hooked up in a Tenderloin hotel room but we had powder and needed to cook it into rock but my buddies were not at home in the room across from me and my girl. My buddies had the equipment to rock the Crack but since they were not home, me and my girl had no choice but to sniff the cocaine so we did, and it took us all night as opposed to a short time if we'd had the crack. So we sniffed and sucked and fucked and had the best time in my twelve years as a crack head, except for one time with the brothers.

Once this occasion I was in the room with brothers, but the difference was that we all had our own dope so nobody was tripping, so we talked for hours on brotherhood issues and it was beautiful. Brothers talking with brothers, and this didn't happen again until my last meeting with Huey P. Newton in a West Oakland Crack house that I wrote about in my play One Day in the Life, and the one act play Salaam, Huey Newton, Salaam, co-authored by Ed 

Bullins, produced in New York by Woody King at his New Federal Theatre.

My last meeting with Huey was similar to my session with the crack ho without crack, and similar to the session I had with the brothers when we all had our own dope. My session with Huey was in a crack house in Oakland's Acorn Projects but it wasn't about crack. We talked revolution that was not on the usual agenda in the crack house. But, as you will see from the script, our conversation was more important than drugs and I am happy we had the conversation that transcended drugs. You must read the script and make up your own mind.

But as per drugs, we probably would not have made revolution without drugs and alcohol (and sex). Imagine the pressure we were under, and I mean all Black people, whether Panthers, Muslims, Socialists, Communists, Cultural Nationalists,  workers, lumpen, et al. And don't leave out those in the Civil Rights Movement, from MLK, Jr. on down who needed to medicate themselves from the stress of the USA Cointelpro program and other agencies out to destroy our liberation movement. Imagine, we were mostly young people subjected to all the forces of the USA apparatus out to prevent, in the words of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, "The rise of a black messiah." And he meant no matter big or small, no matter in a city or country town. 

For example, when I was invited to teach at Fresno State College, 1969, after Governor Ronald Reagan got involved as president of the State College Board of Trustees, he ordered me removed by any means necessary, and at the same time ordered the removal of Angela Davis from teaching at UCLA, 1969. Gov. Reagan wanted Angela out because she was a black Communist and wanted me out because I was a Black Muslim who refused to fight in Vietnam.

continued

Marvin X

3/23/21

Part 1: The Wild Crazy Ride of the Marvin X Experience, includes X's interview with Dr. Cornel West and In the Crazy House in America Concert

The Bandung Conference and the Deconstruction of Afro-Asian Violence

 Toward the Deconstruction of Afro-Asian Violence

Let us begin at the Bandung Conference that Malcolm X talked bout, that conference which brought together the Afro-Asian world of colonized people to begin the stride toward decolonization. And the process necessitated non-alignment or the disassociation from the imperialist world and the communist regimes. Yes, the Afro-Asian peoples came together in unity for their interests, transcending the Left and Right agendas of the socalled cold war powers originating from World War II and colonialism. The 50th and 60s brought about the liberation of many colonized peoples throughout the world, e.g., Africa, Asia and Latin America. 

At the 1955 Bandung Conference, the colonized peoples or recently liberated peoples came to a consensus that they would not be slaves of the East or the West, but non-aligned. They came to a consensus that they shall stand independent of global ideologies no matter what persuasion, left or right, capitalist or communist.

The Bandung ideology persisted through decades of global strife, especially as the decolonized nations strived towards freedom, although, in truth, few achieved their goal of national liberation. Most became stuck in the quagmire of neo-colonialism. Kwame Nkrumah said it best in numerous books and essays, e.g., Neo-Colonialism, the last stage of imperialism. He told us how the imperialists play possum with their sham independence, including the education of a colonial elite (black studies tenured Africans and negroes), a national anthem but an European controlled economic system with the Afro and Negro Europeans programmed to worship all things white in the night and in the day. 

So let us go then into Covid 19. Let us note psychology 1A teachers us about misplaced aggression. So we must understand the truth of Covid 19, not the fake news from the right or left. If truth be told, we understand Covid 19 begin in a lab at the University of Texas, Austin, then transferred to a lab at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, then arrived at Wuhan, China. Of course we don't accept the mythology that from the Wuhan lab Covid 19 somehow arrived at a market and a bat was infected that infected the world, yes, world, world, world. 

No matter, the globalists had been hatching a germ warfare agent for decades, suddenly Covid 19 appeared and the pandemic was on. The immediate response was to blame the Chinese but those with a modicum of knowledge are fully aware the Chinese work in tandem with the Globalists, i.e., European and American Globalists, technocrats, and most especially Democratic Party leaders and sycophants, i.e., Democratic Socialists.

It matters not to the Chinese, Democratic Party, Democratic Socialists, or any other sycophants on the left, or right for that matter, how many Black people suffer death as a result of Covid 19. 

But, it matters to a certain segment of North American Africans that so many of their peoples were suffering as the result of the Covid 19 germ warfare. Oh, shit, yes, I said, germ warfare. Yet, I do not put the total blame of the Chinese since I have clear evidence this germ warfare is a conspiracy that transcends race and ethnicity.

But having said this, does one think in the minds of North American Africans, there does not exist the thought that possibly the Chinese are responsible for the death of their loved ones? 

Surely, it is possible in our communal mental trauma and unresolved grief that we would suffer misplaced aggression and attribute our woes solely to the Chinese? No matter that the origin, I repeat, morphed from American labs at the University of Texas, Austin, and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North American Africans are in such grief and suffering that they cannot distinguish China from America, and most certainly a combination thereof.

In my conclusion, I revert to the 1955 Bandung Conference of Afro-Asian Unity, and I call upon all conscious peoples in the Third World to recognize our bonds of unity in the blood of colonialism, to gather our mental equilibrium and not be swayed by pseudo-Asian racism when we know the real enemy is beyond color, class and caste, beyond gender.  

Let us know act in ways ignorant of the deep motions in the ocean of our liberation. IFI. the Chinese are not our enemy, nor other Asians. In truth, we are our own worst enemy, nobody else, not the white man, brown or yellow man. 

What are we told about the greatest Jihad, "The Greatest Jihad is to win your own soul!"

--Marvin X/El Muhajir

3/22/21

Master Sun Ra, Marvin X and the Low Down Dirty Truth!

 Master Sun Ra, Marvin X and the Low Down Dirty Truth

Marvin X, Poet, Playwright, Producer and Master Sun Ra, Father of BAM and Afrofuturism

at Marvin X's Black Educational Theatre, San Francisco, 1972. Sun Ra and Marvin lectured in Black Studies at UC Berkeley, 1972. Black Educational Theatre was X's off campus classroom. At BET, Sun Ra and his Myth-Science Arkestra arranged music for X's Take Care of Business, performed at the Harding 

Theatre, a five hour concert without intermission, written, directed and produced by Marvin X, Music by Sun Ra, Choreographers Raymond Sawyer and Ellendar Barnes.

University of Chicago Sun Ra Conference on Astro Black Mythology and Black Resistance, 2015

Marvin X reading at University of Chicago Sun Ra Conference, 2015

photo Burrell Sunrise (Let us pray for him at this hour)

Symposium on Afrofuturism at University of Chicago, 2015

Sun Ra Arkestra at the SF Jazz Festival, under the leadership of Marshall Allen

photo Adam Turner

My beloved ancestor Master Teacher Sun Ra taught me, "The people don't want the truth, they want the low down dirty truth." He chided me, more specifically, chastised me, even better, gave me a verbal ass whuppin' when he arranged the musical version of my BAM classic Flowers for the Trashman, renamed Take Care of Business, see TDR, edited by Ed Bullins, 1968. But when Sun Ra and his Myth-Science Arkestra scored the music for Take Care of Business and I deleted a sex scene, Sun Ra gave me a verbal ass whupping. "Maavin, you so right you wrong. People don't want the truth, they want the low down dirty truth and you took it out when you removed that scene. Stop trying to be so right." And he had told me earlier in our artistic relationship from coast to coast, but especially when we came together in the Bay Area to teach Black Studies at UC Berkeley and when he performed the music for Take Care of Business at my Black Educational Theatre, San Francisco, 1972, "And stop teaching your actors that freedom, justice and equality. Don't you see they are free? Look how wild and crazy your actors behave. All them people teaching freedom, justice and equality are dead, don't you see that? Yes, they dead, all those talking about Civil Rights, all they got were Civil Rites, and we get Civil Rites at the cemetery, yes, your last rites! Don't you see what I teach my band? I teach them discipline, not freedom, discipline. So stop ruining your actors and dancers with that freedom mess. Teach discipline. How do you think I was able to keep my band together for all these years? Discipline!" I dearly love and respect my Master Teacher, but as I said at the University of Chicago Sun Ra Symposium on Afrofuturism, "Yes, Sun Ra was the master of discipline, yet he was simultaneously the freest creative spirit in the world."  Ironically, our dearly departed ancestor James Sweeney, Jr., said of myself, "Marvin X is the freest black man in non-free America." So I honor my mentor and associate Sun Ra for the wisdom he taught me as the grand master of the Black Arts Movement theatre. No one, in my mind, has come close to expressing the totality of the myth-ritual black arts movement theatre, not Amiri Baraka, August Wilson. Who encompassed music, dance, poetry, song, lights, sound, costume, ritual and myth, (Kemetic and scientifi, i.e., Afrofuturistic), than Master Sun Ra and his Myth-Science Arkestra that continues under the leadership of Marshall Allen, the 94 year old band leader?

If you caught the Arkestra's performance at the SF Jazz Center, you will admit Marshall Allen has taken the band to a higher level artistically, as per a tightened production with a higher level of costume design. Of course, the musician on the keyboards could not replace Master Sun Ra, but the overall performance indicated the Myth-Science Arkestra will indeed be around for Infinity. And for sure the band shall express the low down dirty truth of Master Sun Ra.

In truth, the Marvel film Black Panther, expressed Sun Ra's myth-science in the Hip Hop era, and let us not ignore the Afrofuturism of Octavia Butler, Mother of Afrofuturism. At the University of Chicago, the beautiful, highly intelligent women scholars educated me that Afrofuturism is the black term for the European term of science fiction. But as per my association with Sun Ra, Afrofuturism was not merely a linguistic matter but a functional matter in the deep structure of the esthetics of the North American African people.

--Marvin X

3/22/21

Great Black Writers from Fresno

 

Marvin X

Sherley Ann Williams

Toward the Independent Black Mind and Agenda

 Toward the independent black mind and agenda

Marvin X at the University of Chicago, 2015

photo Burrell Sunrise

My mentor, Ancestor Abdul Leroy James, used to say that we North American Africans have never enjoyed self determination or freedom of body, mind and soul. We have been proscribed by white supremacy thinking and actions. We don't know how to think as free human beings. I will add that until the black man and woman escape from the American plantation and enjoy being outside the big yard of the American Gulag, we are mental slaves, although our brothers and sisters suffer the same throughout the Pan African world. Imagine, when I was exiled in Mexico City and used to hustle books at the African and Caribbean embassies, the Jamaican diplomats told me they could not buy my black books because they couldn't take them home, even in their diplomatic bags. Did you hear what I said, they couldn't take black books home to a black nation if the books dealt with black consciousness. 

And my brothers at the Ghanian Embassy weren't much different. They tried to convince me they preferred dealing with the British colonizer rather than the Russians Kwame Nkrumah preferred. Thus they were happy when he was overthrown and the British returned with their neocolonial policies.

In the modern era, Ngugi wa Thian'go best deconstructs the trauma and linguistic crisis of the African and Pan African, but most especially the African who can't even think or write in his Mother tongue under the neocolonial regimes. Such regimes are so programmed that the Kenyan police sought to arrest the fictional characters in his novel because they imagined they were real and must be captured, but they did find Ngugi and his wife to imprison and torture as voices of the opposition. 

Let us have no illusion about a black or African face political leader, whether in African, the USA or the Caribbean, they are the same, white men in black face. I had to apologize to me revolutionary brothers who warned me and begged me not to get romantic about Obama running for president. They warned me to just look at Africa and the Caribbean with a plethora of white men in black face, presidents and prime ministers for life.  They told me to recall the fate of Kwame Nkrumah, Patrice Lumumba and others. They told me to study Dr. C. Eric Williams in Trinidad, author of Capitalism and Slavery who became a victim of capitalism and slavery, or Forbes Burnham, Prime Minister of Guyana, with whom I interviewed for the Black Scholar Magazine and Muhammad Speaks, who turned out to be an agent for the C.I.A., since America preferred a Black Power government in Guyana, SA, than a Cuban style Marxist regime under the opposition party led by Cheddi Jeggan. Yes, Prime Minister Forbes Burnham gave refuge to Black Americans seeking freedom from US white supremacy, even brothers wanted by the USA. He gave jobs to black Americans in his government, e.g., Julian Mayfield as Minister of Information and Tom Feelings in the Ministry of Education, but he also killed Dr. Walter Rodney, one of our greatest Pan African intellectuals, e.g., How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, and enabled Rev. Jim Jones to commit mass murder of 900 mostly black people in the jungle of Guyana. 

Was our first black president any better, who droned American citizens to death in Yemen who were never charged in court for suspected terrorist activities? So you prefer a black hangman to a white hangman? Por favor!

So we must discard our romantic illusions that a black face will save us, for it is at best (as a hip hop young man told me), "A white man dipped in chocolate!" Didn't Kwame Nkrumah tell us about Neo-Colonialism, the last stage of imperialism? You are given the flag, national anthem but the banks yet belong to Europe. Neo-colonialism, Nkrumah said, was merely colonialism playing possum! 

Por favor, look at the migrants fleeing the richest continent in the world because of neocolonial politicians selling out their people and resources for a mess of pottage, the precious minerals that enable the world to talk on their cell phones saying nothing except in the words of Dr. E. Franklin Frazier, Black Bourgeoisie, perpetuating the world of make believe and conspicuous consumption.

Where is the black mind that shall lead us to true freedom and liberation in the present era, following our own agenda, not the pseudo black lives matter agenda of the globalists spouting anti-family toxic non-sense when we know our sojourn was about the destruction of the black family, thus our reconstruction as a people must and shall be about the unification of our families, yes, in the African tradition, not some demonic European construct devoid of male/female connection and love giving birth to children of freedom and liberation, not some retards and mutants from the European agenda, devoid of true male/female love as a natural phenomena of the natural world, not some ideological mutant to satisfy European intellectual stupidity. We must not be sycophants of any agenda but our own, and no amount of money shall alter our agenda derived from ancestor dreams and sacred traditions. Black Power Matters!

--Marvin X/El Muhajir

A poor righteous teacher

Hypocrisy at the US Southern Border and related matters

 Hypocrisy at the US Southern Border and related matters

Marvin X at San Francisco's Ocean Beach, Cliff Club

photo Adam Turner

Walls! Walls! Walls! How did those so adamant about walls suddenly wall their capital with a plethora of National Guard troops after what we can only describe as a Turkey Fight on January 6? In our mind, that event at the capital was hardly an insurrection, perhaps a multi-pronged (joint Right/Left conspiracy as per usual when both sides in the D.C. political swamp come together for bilateral mutual benefit. Now Donald Trump may have reached his wit's end with the fabricated election or "selection" in the American tradition. Even the mentally retarded know Trump was the white reaction to Obama and Biden is the Left and Global reaction to Trump, the last white nationalist whom we may see again in 2024. But let's get to the wall and activities on the border. Ironically, America spends 700 billion dollars per year in defense of its national security, with military bases in hundreds of countries around the world, although she has not won a war since WWII that, in fact, the Russians were critical and lost millions of soldiers in the process toward victory. But the 700 billion dollar defense budget didn't make America secure on 9/11 and how can you secure your people with open borders allowing every unclean bird to drift across the border. We know open borders is an agenda item of the globalists, i.e., America technocrats, Chinese Communists, et al., mostly sycophants of the above, including the neo-Democratic Socialists in America. But if America listened to its poets, alas, Robert Frost said fences make good neighbors, the US might retreat from its open border agenda for future political hegemony. Clearly, with the fences around the US capital, not to mention the gated communities around the US politicos of every stripe, we see the hypocrisy of the Democratic party and its wing of Democratic Socialists.

And as per walls, since we have lived in Mexico and know the high walls that hide casas from the calles, and even when my revolutionary contact in Mexico City, artist Elizabeth Catlett Mora and husband Poncho, Communists tambien, lived behind a high wall that one could not see from the street as do most middle class people in Mexico.

I am thus horrified to hear the hypocrisy of the Left as per walls on the border, especially after the construction of the walled capital after the Turkey Fight insurrection. And was there not protests at the walled home of the Democratic leadership, ala Diane Finestein, et al., and has not our dearly President Obama constructed walls around his numerous compounds from Chicago, D.C. and Martha's Vineyard? Please fact check! 

But more importantly is that we know Biden is Obama 3.0., and one need only consider the Biden team to confirm this fact. So as we know, the more things change the more they stay the same. I pray to see the 2024 election, will the Don return to claim his crown? Please note I am neither Democrat or Republican, but I must say in truth I appreciated filling my car up for $40.00 dollars under Trump that the recent gas price rise under the Democrat Biden. More importantly, it is common sense to secure one's border. Alas, during the Crack era when people in the hood allowed the drug gangs to enter their homes, it wasn't long before the drug gangs took over the homes and ran their drugs 24/7 with shifts like Ford Motors in Detroit. As we write, we see there is a crisis on the border, but to the benefit of the drug cartels and the Democratic party long rage agenda to seize power with immigrants and others voting without identification. How did we descend to a Banana Republic overnight or was it a long planned affair. We know there are no coincidences and much of what occurs has been long planned, although those will no concept of history and staged events are dumbfounded when events occur such as germ warfare, along with chemical warfare in the form of drugs, i.e., meth, fentanyl, opioids, et al., to contaminate the US and the global village in a soft coup in the best tradition of the Art of War that negates the 700 billion dollar defense budget of the USA against the new boy on the block, China, in league with its American technocrats and corporate sycophants for the billion plus Chinese market in tandem with Chinese and Asian cheap labor, no matter Muslim and Tibetan concentration camps producing goods for NIKE, Silicon Valley, European fashion designers, Black American rappers and athletes, et al.  

Oh, hypocrisy, hypocrisy! And yet we perceive the economic motive is not the primary motive as radical economists would have us believe in their deconstruction of capitalism and its pseudo free trade mantra. We know fair trade is the just model for economics in the global village. But alas, the 1% have all the money already and the 99% have no chance of catching up with them. Imagine, it will take North American Africans 240 years to equal the wealth of white America! What chance do we have it the socalled equity dialogue. The devilists, yeah devilists, dispense 1.9 trillion and give the 99% $1,400 of their money, after all the US Treasury does belong to the consent of the governed last time I checked, although the people are made to believe they serve the government instead of the reverse. Por favor, the US treasury belongs to the people, not the politicians, yet they have programmed the people into accepting the scam that their money belongs to the politicians who dispense it at their will, beck and call, and we should be thankful for the $1,400 and be silent about the pork balance that goes to the political sycophants, i.e., corporations and teacher unions that have clearly demonstrated their agenda of mis-educating ghetto youth and the deaf, dumb and blind white youth as well.

We suppose the politicians imagine the 85 to 99% are as blind as Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles, although we know both these brothers see or could see with their third eye, thus could see better than the 85 to 99% deaf dumb and blind masses, black, white, brown and yellow. Listen to the Danger Zone by Ray Charles:

Look around and you will see what's troubling me

the danger zone is everywhere

read your papers and you will see

what's troubling me

the danger zone is everywhere....

--Ray Charles, The Danger Zone

And Stevie Wonder is so clear he has declared he is moving to Ghana to escape American white supremacy, not only for himself but his children and grandchildren. My daughter has done the same, she says, "They may not have electricity 24/7 in Ghana, but they don't have white supremacy, not 24/7. I am not followed around in expensive stores, restaurants and hotels in Ghana. I am black among my black people, and I am first class, not second class as I was in America, even after I achieved the highest level in corporate America."

My elders tell me we are in a situation worse than slavery. Yet, we have a plethora of black billionaires, but so what?

Didn't we have such wealthy Africans who benefited from the slave trade and whose families still benefit today from the accumulated capital as do European and American families?

America, stop your hypocrisy and foot dragging on the matter of reparations. As a down payment, we demand the US Treasury send a check immediately to every bonafide North American African of 1.4 Million dollars. What do they say in the hood? Money talks and bullshit walks. Whatever we do with the money is our business not yours, Whitey. Didn't you and your ancestors do what they wanted with the wealth they accumulated? So don't think about managing our reparations check. If we want to spend it on blond wigs and bleaching cream, it's our business. And who do you think programmed our minds to want blond wigs and bleaching cream, you motherfucker!

--Marvin X

3/16/21

Fantastic Negrito 3rd Grammy

Oakland's Fantastic Negrito 3rd Grammy

Fantastic Negrito wins Third Grammy

Fantastic Negrito and Poet Marvin X

Photo Adam Turner

Black Bird Press News and Review

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