Photo Essay: Women and the Wild Crazy Ride of the Marvin X Experience

Even before and certainly after a man deposits his seed in the womb of a woman, he has no rights over the control of her womb and the fruit thereof. Male politicians need to stay out of all issues relating to the body of women. Yes, stick to men's business! You'll be doing great if you can handle men's issues, which is doubtful--alas, you may need the help of women on these issues.

 "Men don't know their asses from a hole in the ground. They must ask their woman, Baby, where's my asshole!" (from the monologue, One Day in the Life, a docudrama by Marvin X)

"Look, when I jump my pussy jumps, therefore my pussy belongs to me!" said Rashidah Mwongozi Sabreen in The Mythology of Pussy and Dick by Marvin X.

New Book: Paul Robeson, The Artist as Revolutionary by Gerald Horne

l


 Historian Gerald Horne

03.07.16 - 10:00am

A conversation with Gerald Horne

Letters and Politics

KPFA Radio

Facebook hosted 200 North American African Students in Bay Area

Why Facebook Hosted More than 200 African-American Students from the SF Bay Area

By Angela Wills

It was only one day after the leak of Mark Zuckerberg’s internal memo, which warned employees to stop crossing out Black Lives Matter slogans, that Facebook hosted greater than 200 African-American students from the San Francisco Bay Area.

This day long trip had been in the plans for weeks as part of Black History Month and was spearheaded by the employee resource group Black@FB and Facebook’s community engagement team.

The trip included a tour of the Menlo Park campus, a career panel, a presentation on Facebook’s recently launched TechPrep program to assist in the growth of the underrepresented people in tech, an informative session on internships, as well as other activities.

Maxine Williams, Facebook Global Director of Diversity says, “When diversity is working well, if you have a system that’s scaling well, there will never be one point of success or failure. So that is our goal. It is a wonderful thing when there is a diversity event and I have nothing to do with it. I had nothing to do with this.”

Williams did launch TechPrep but the community engagement team has since taken it over. Williams added that the program “shouldn’t be owned by the diversity team.” Instead, the program, as well as any other initiatives that are launched by the diversity team, should become deeply rooted throughout Facebook’s teams and overall culture.

A parent and community coordinator at San Francisco Unified School District’s Mission High School, Linda Jordon, accompanied a few students on the visit. Some of the students who attended have interests in graphic design and some already know how to code to Facebook.

Jordan said, “I’m hoping that the students who are present today will realize that the tech industry is not an industry that does not want them.” It is interesting to note that Facebook itself is only represented by a small 2% of black employees.

Moving forward, Jordan says she plans to have conversations with the students about internships, college applications and selecting a course of study for college.

QuinSi Dominguez, a junior from Mission High School, is one of the students who already knows how to code. She expresses interest in a graphic design and marketing career. Dominquez says that she can see herself working at Facebook one day and was extremely excited to learn more about what it would be like to work at such an influential tech company.

This day long trip had been in the plans for weeks as part of Black History Month and was spearheaded by the employee resource group Black@FB and Facebook’s community engagement team.

The trip included a tour of the Menlo Park campus, a career panel, a presentation on Facebook’s recently launched TechPrep program to assist in the growth of the underrepresented people in tech, an informative session on internships, as well as other activities.

Maxine Williams, Facebook Global Director of Diversity says, “When diversity is working well, if you have a system that’s scaling well, there will never be one point of success or failure. So that is our goal. It is a wonderful thing when there is a diversity event and I have nothing to do with it. I had nothing to do with this.”

Williams did launch TechPrep but the community engagement team has since taken it over. Williams added that the program “shouldn’t be owned by the diversity team.” Instead, the program, as well as any other initiatives that are launched by the diversity team, should become deeply rooted throughout Facebook’s teams and overall culture.

A parent and community coordinator at San Francisco Unified School District’s Mission High School, Linda Jordon, accompanied a few students on the visit. Some of the students who attended have interests in graphic design and some already know how to code to Facebook.
Jordan said, “I’m hoping that the students who are present today will realize that the tech industry is not an industry that does not want them.” It is interesting to note that Facebook itself is only represented by a small 2% of black employees.

Moving forward, Jordan says she plans to have conversations with the students about internships, college applications and selecting a course of study for college.

QuinSi Dominguez, a junior from Mission High School, is one of the students who already knows how to code. She expresses interest in a graphic design and marketing career. Dominquez says that she can see herself working at Facebook one day and was extremely excited to learn more about what it would be like to work at such an influential tech company.

THE BLACK PANTHER PARTY'S 50th YEAR w/BOBBY SEALE!

 

Black Panther Party Chairman & National Organizer Bobby Seale's speaking engagement at Oakland, California's Merritt College on February 27, 2016, included a book signing. Celebrating the 50th year founding of the Party, he talked about his life as a Black Panther, his books, and stories untold.

Harambee Radio Schedule, Runoko Rashidi speaks

TUESDAY 7:00-8:00 PM EST. Sight 'n Vision Disability and Senior Talk Magazine Hosts: Ray Raysor and his Seeing Eye Dog--Mr Ray-Tiko Location: DMV--DC,MD,VA 8:00 to 9:00 PM EST. See What I Am Saying With Lee Martin Location: Indianapolis 9:00 PM-10:00 PM EST. Black Star Lion 9 Time With President General Senghor Baye and Clyde Banks Tune into Www.harambeeradio.com Tuesday March 1st at 9pm est Special Guest  Traveling UNIA-ACL Ambassador Runoko Rashidi Your Host BaBa Senghor and Brother Clyde Tune in tell a friend.  10:00 PM-11:00 PM EST. The Urban Green Growth Collaborative Radio Show with Fred Brown & David Jones Pittsburgh,Pa. Visit The Harambee Radio & Television Network at: http://harambeeradio.ning.com/?xg_source=msg_mes_network   To control which emails you receive on The Harambee Radio & Television Network, click here

Black Bird Press News & Review: Donald Trump--the White Man's Last Hurrah!

Black Bird Press News & Review: Donald Trump--the White Man's Last Hurrah!


Oakland City Hall held  its first Black History celebration tonight with an African style event with dancers and djembe drummers bringing the Holy Ghost to City Hall chambers. President of the Oakland City Council, Lynette McElhaney, dressed as the African Queen she is, presided over the celebration  that began with her libations to the ancestors. Marvin X, heeding his advisers, called for the United Front of all ethnic groups to fight gentrification, joblessness, homelessness, globalism and other issues, especially in the Black Arts Movement Business District wherein property owners are doubling rents resulting in evictions such as the Post News Group and the Betti Ono Gallery, along with workers and common people living in the downtown area and throughout the city suffering Oakland's "hot" property market.

 Marvin X and African Queen, Oakland City Council President, Lynette McElhaney
at Oakland City Council Black History Celebration.
photo Adam Turner, BAMBD Media Team/Post News Group

Jack London's Black "Mother" Jennie Prentiss

Jack London’s 140th Birthday Reminds Oaklanders of His Roots With His Black “Mother” Jennie Prentiss and the First AME Church

From left to right: "Schultz" known as the King of the Estuary, "Jack London" George Rowan, Jr., David Scott with guitar. Photo by M Palmer.

By postnewsgroup 

Posted January 14, 2016 6:33 pm

 

Author Jack London’s Black roots were celebrated during his birthday party in Jack London Square by the performers who presented the Post newspaper front-page tribute to Jack London and Jennie Prentiss.
<p> 
Jennie was a Black woman who saved Jack London’s life at birth, breast-fed him, gave him the name Jack (which was originally John); lent Jack money when he was broke and helped him become the first American author to make a million dollars.
He never forgot his Black roots or his original Black investor who bankrolled his career. He lived in Jennie Prentiss’s house and attended the First African Methodist Episcopal Church at 15^th and Market Streets with her as his “mother.”

Jack London and Jennie Prentiss

Jack donated more than $15,000 to the First African American Methodist Church.
Some people claim Jack London was a “bigot” because of a highly publicized turn-of-the-century boxing match between Jack Johnson and Jim Jefferies in Reno, Nevada. London had been hired to write for the loser known as the “The Great White Hope.”


By growing up in a Black family household, Jack often fought racist whites and his classmates who called him a “N—-lover,” which caused him to use fisticuffs as a means of “defensive violence” early in life.


He also devised other survival strategies: taking alternate routes to Jennie’s house or just walking past her house until the bullies were out of sight, allowing him to double back home safely.


Jack dreamed of becoming an oyster pirate on the San Francisco Bay. And to fulfill this dream, he turned again to Jennie Prentiss for financial assistance.


He wrote: “So I interviewed my Mammy Jennie, my old nurse at whose black breast I had sucked. She was nursing sick people at a good weekly wage. Would she lend her ‘white child’ the money? Would she? What she had was mine.”


London was right, because Mrs. Prentiss gave Jack $300 in twenty-dollar gold pieces with which to buy a secondhand sloop called the Razzle Dazzle from an oyster pirate named French Frank. On May 11, 1903, London signed a copy of his book “The God of his Fathers and Other Stories” (1901) for Prentiss. This inscription reads:


“To Dear Mammy Prentiss
With best Love from one
Who loves you well.
Your son,
Jack”


In 1906, Jack purchased a home for Jennie Prentiss located at 490 – 27th St. in Oakland. She was 74 years of age and she became a well-known figure within the Bay Area’s African American community, both as a midwife and community leader in various organizations, such as the Federated Negro Woman’s Club, which hosted such luminaries as Booker T. Washington.


Jack London’s last will and testament, signed in 1911, memorialized his love for Jennie Prentiss by providing her with an income for life and money for her funeral expenses.


Jennie Prentiss died in Oakland on Nov. 27, 1922.


The Post plans to re-release the series involving Jack London and Jennie Prentiss in upcoming issues during the Black History and Women’s History month’s editions.


Added festivities are planned this month for Jack London by Anna Lee Allen of the Oakland Tribune, The Oakland Post and the Oakland Heritage Alliance.

BLACK ARTS MOVEMENT BUSINESS DISTRICT ADDS EVERETT AND JONES TO BAMBD MERCHANTS ASSOCIATION

In conversation with BAMBD team members Aries Jordan, Adam Turner and Marvin X, Dorothy King, owner of Everett and Jones Restaurant in Jack London Square, agreed to be listed as part of the BAMBD. BAMBD co-planner Paul Cobb suggested putting all North American African businesses in the vicinity of 14th Street corridor in the district. Everett and Jones is located at 2nd and Broadway. Ironically, Dorothy's business is in Jack London Square, a "Black District" since Jack London's mother was Black. According to Paul Cobb's Oakland Post Newspaper, "Jennie Prentiss was a Black woman who saved Jack London’s life at birth, breast-fed him, gave him the name Jack (which was originally John); lent Jack money when he was broke and helped him become the first American author to make a million dollars.


 Jack London

He never forgot his Black roots or his original Black investor who bankrolled his career. He lived in Jennie Prentiss’s house and attended the First African Methodist Episcopal Church at 15^th and Market Streets with her as his “mother.” The church is part of the BAMBD.

Everett and Jones provided some of the wonderful food served at Oakland City Hall's Black History Celebration, February 24, 2016. On a visit to Everett and Jones, Marvin X was approached by Dorothy to write her biography. Marvin introduced her to his student Aries Jordan, author and Communications Director of the BAMBD. "Dorothy, I helped Aries publish her book. I'm ready when you are."

The wild crazy ride of the Marvin X experience: a critical look at the man called Plato teaching on the streets of Oakland (Ishmael Reed); the USA's Rumi, Saadi, Hafiz.... (Bob Holman); according to Dr. Mohja Kahf, "Marvin X is the father of the genre Muslim American literature

Marvin X, also known as Marvin Jackmon and El Muhajir was born May 29, 1944 in Fowler, California, near Fresno. During his travels, he was known variously as Marvin Ellis Jackmon, Marvin X. Jackmon, Marvin X, Nazzam Al Sudan, Maalik El Muhajir, Elijah Muhammad, Otis Black, et al.

Nazzam Al Sudan was his first Arabic named given to him by his teacher, Ali Shariff Bey, Master Teacher of the Black Arts West Theatre and Black House, San Francisco, 1967. Ali was a Ahmadia Muslim who were the great evangelists of Islam to the West. The NOI is grounded in Ahmadia Islam which Sunni Muslims consider haram or sheirkh. Sunni Muslims cannot the Ahmadia version of Islam that a prophet came after Prophet Muhammad Ibn Abdullah. The Ahmadia accept their prophet as the Messiah or Messenger. Thus the NOI believe Elijah Muhammad is their Messenger. See the Maulana Muhammad Ali translation of the Holy Qur'an. See also the Yusef Ali translation of the Qur'an, especially his chapter on Egyptian Religion and its steps toward Islam.

In Africa, especially West Africa, Muslims have their indigenous prophets, messengers, saints, holy men. In Senegal the St. Bamba has a Holy City that other Sunni Muslims reject, though they have their saints, graves and holy sites.  


Marvin X is well known for his work as a poet, playwright and essayist of the BLACK ARTS MOVEMENT or BAM. He attended Merritt College along with Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale. He received his BA and MA in English from San Francisco State University.

Marvin X is most well known for his work with Ed Bullins in the founding of Black House and The Black Arts/West Theatre in San Francisco. Black House served briefly as the headquarters for the Black Panther Party and as a center for performance, theatre, poetry and music. Marvin X is a playwright in the true spirit of the BAM. His most well-known BAM play, entitled Flowers for the Trashman, deals with generational difficulties and the crisis of the Black intellectual as he deals with education in a white-controlled culture. Marvin X's other works include, The Black Bird, The Trial, Resurrection of the Dead and In the Name of Love.
He currently has the longest running African American drama in the San Francisco Bay area and Northern California, ONE DAY IN THE LIFE, a tragi-comedy of addiction and recovery. He is the founder and director of RECOVERY THEATRE.
Marvin X has continued to work as a lecturer, teacher and producer. He has taught at Fresno State University; San Francisco State University; University of California - Berkeley and San Diego; University of Nevada, Reno; Mills College, Laney and Merritt Colleges in Oakland. He has received writing fellowships from Columbia University and the National Endowment for the Arts and planning grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Read: Marvin X Unplugged An Interview by Lee Hubbard
Marvin X is available for lectures/readings/performance.  Contact him at xblackxmanx@aol.com.

The Wisdom of Plato Negro: Parables/Fables

In “Wisdom of Plato Negro,” Marvin teaches by stories, ancient devices of instruction that appeal to a non-literate as well as a semi-literate people. (Fables differ from parables only by their use of animal characters.) The oldest existing genre of storytelling used long before the parables of Jesus or the fables of Aesop, they are excellent tools, in the hands of a skilled artist like Marvin X, in that he modifies the genre for a rebellious hip hop generation who drops out or are pushed out of repressive state sponsored public schools at a 50% clip. Marvin X is a master of these short short stories. Bibliographies, extended footnotes, indexes, formal argumentation, he knows, are of no use to the audience he seeks, that 95 percent that lives from paycheck to paycheck.
These moral oral forms (parables and fables), developed before the invention of writing, taught by indirection how to think and behave respecting the integrity of others. Marvin explained to his College of Arts audience, “This form [the parable] seems perfect for people with short attention span, the video generation… The parable fits my moral or ethical prerogative, allowing my didacticism to run full range” (“Parable of a Day in the Life of Plato Negro,” 147). But we live in a more “hostile environment” than ancient people. Our non-urban ancestors were more in harmony with Nature than our global racialized, exploitive, militarized northern elite societies.
—Rudolph Lewis is the Founding Editor of Chickenbones.com, A Journal. (Click here to read the full review).

BEYOND RELIGION, TOWARD SPIRITUALITY, ESSAYS ON CONSCIOUSNESS
Click to order via Amazon
Paperback: 281 pages
Publisher: Black Bird Press (2007)
Language: English

Marvin X has done extraordinary mind and soul work in bringing our attention to the importance of spirituality, as opposed to religion, in our daily living. Someone'maybe Kierkegaard or maybe it was George Fox who'said that there was no such thing as "Christianity." There can only be Christians. It is not institutions but rather individuals who make the meaningful differences in our world. It is not Islam but Muslims. Not Buddhism but Buddhists. Marvin X has made a courageous difference. In this book he shares the wondrous vision of his spiritual explorations. His eloquent language and rhetoric are varied'sophisticated but also earthy, sometimes both at once.
Highly informed he speaks to many societal levels and to both genders'to the intellectual as well as to the man/woman on the street or the unfortunate in prison'to the mind as well as the heart. His topics range from global politics and economics to those between men and women in their household. Common sense dominates his thought. He shuns political correctness for the truth of life. He is a Master Teacher in many fields of thought'religion and psychology, sociology and anthropology, history and politics, literature and the humanities. He is a needed Counselor, for he knows himself, on the deepest of personal levels and he reveals that self to us, that we might be his beneficiaries.
All of which are represented in his Radical Spirituality'a balm for those who anguish in these troubling times of disinformation. As a shaman himself, he calls too for a Radical Mythology to override the traditional mythologies of racial supremacy that foster war and injustice. If you want to reshape (clean up, raise) your consciousness, this is a book to savor, to read again, and again'to pass onto a friend or lover.
—Rudolph Lewis, Editor, ChickenBones: A Journal

In the Crazy House Called America
Click to order via Amazon
ISBN: 0964067218
Format: Paperback, 204pp
Pub. Date: January 2003
Publisher: Black Bird Press
In the Crazy House Called America is available from Black Bird Press, 11132 Nelson Bar Road, Cherokee, CA 95965, $19.95. Contact Marvin X at: mrvnx@yahoo.com.
“Rarely is a brother secure and honest enough with himself to reveal his innermost thoughts, emotions or his most hellacious life experiences. For most men it would be a monumental feat just to share/bare his soul with his closest friends but to do so to perfect strangers would be unthinkable, unless he had gone through the fires of life and emerged free of the dross that tarnishes his soul. Marvin X, poet, playwright, author and essayist does just that in a self-published book entitled In The Crazy House Called America.
This latest piece from Marvin X offers a peek into his soul and his psyche. He lets the reader know he is hip to the rabid oppression the West heaps upon people of color especially North American Africans while at the same time revealing the knowledge gleaned from his days as a student radical, black nationalist revolutionary forger of the Black Arts Movement, husband, father lover, a dogger of women did not spare him the degradation and agony of descending into the abyss of crack addiction, abusive and toxic relationships and family tragedy.
Perhaps because of the knowledge gained as a member of the Nation of Islam, and his experiences as one of the prime movers of the cultural revolution of the '60, the insights he shares In The Crazy House Called America are all the keener. Marvin writes candidly of his pain, bewilderment and depression of losing his son to suicide. He shares in a very powerful way, his own out of body helplessness as he wallowed in the dregs of an addiction that threatened to destroy his soul and the mess his addictions made of his life and relationships with those he loved. But he is not preachy and this is not an autobiography. He has already been there and done that. In sharing his story and the wisdom he has gleaned from his life experiences and looking at the world through the eyes of an artist/healer…”
—Junious Ricardo Stanton

Love and War: Poems
Click to order via Amazon
by Marvin X. Preface by Lorenzo Thomas
Format: Paperback, 140pp.
ISBN: 0964967200
Publisher: Black Bird Press
Book of poetry by Black Arts activist, preface by Lorenzo Thomas. "When you listen to Tupac Shakur, E-40, Too Short, Master P or any other rappers out of the Bay Area of Cali, think of Marvin X. He laid the foundation and gave us the language to express Black male urban experience in a lyrical way." James G. Spady, Philadelphia New Observer.

Wish I Could Tell You the Truth, Essays (Signed Copy)
Click to order via Amazon
Paperback: 215 pages
Publisher: Black Bird Press (2005)
Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.4 x 0.7 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds



Somethin' Proper: The Life and Times of a North American African Poet
Click to order via Amazon
Paperback: 278 pages
Publisher: Black Bird Pr (June 1999)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0964967219
ISBN-13: 978-0964967212
Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.9 inches



Land of My Daughters: Poem's 1995-2005
Click to order via Amazon
Paperback: 116 pages
Publisher: BlackBird Press (2005)
Language: English
Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.1 x 0.4 inches



Pull Yo Pants Up Fada Black Prez and Yo Self!: Essays on Obama Drama
Click to order via Amazon
Paperback
Publisher: Black Bird Press (2010)

ELDRIDGE CLEAVER - MY FRIEND THE DEVIL: A Memoir
Click to order via Amazon
Paperback
Publisher: Black Bird Press (2009)

Related Links
Black Bird Press News & Review
A journal dedicated to truth, freedom of speech and radical spiritual consciousness. Our mission is the liberation of men and women from oppression, violence and abuse of any kind, interpersonal, political, religious,economic,psychosexual. We believe as Fidel Castro said, "The weapon of today is not guns but consciousness."
Read: Marvin X Unplugged An Interview by Lee Hubbard

Marvin X Articles on AALBC.com Include
Nigguh Please! by Marvin X
The black culture police are at it again, lead running dog is Rev. Jesse Jackson, perhaps the most hypocritical culture policeman on the scene--especially after leading president Clinton in prayer over Monica while himself engaged in extramarital shenanigans. I can't take Jesse Jackson with his twisted mouth ( from lying) pontificating on moral issues while he is the most immoral of men, even pimping the blood of MLK, Jr.
Movie Reviews by Marvin X on AALBC.com include:
Ali: http://www.aalbc.com/reviews/ali.htm
Baby Boy: http://www.aalbc.com/reviews/baby_boy.htm
Ray: http://www.aalbc.com/reviews/ray.htm
Traffic: http://www.aalbc.com/reviews/traffic.htm

Black Bird Press
1222 Dwight Way
Berkeley CA 94702