Tom Hayden, Antiwar Activist dead at 76

JUSTICE INITIATIVE Tom Hayden, Civil Rights and Antiwar Activist Turned Lawmaker, Dies at 76 By ROBERT D. McFADDEN OCT. 24, 2016 New York Times Tom Hayden Tom Hayden, who burst out of the 1960s counterculture as a radical leader of America's civil rights and antiwar movements, but rocked the boat more gently later in life with a progressive political agenda as an author and California state legislator, died on Sunday. He was 76.   His wife, Barbara Williams, confirmed the death to The Associated Press. Mr. Hayden had been suffering from heart problems and fell ill while attending the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia in July.   During the racial unrest and antiwar protests of the '60s and early '70s, Mr. Hayden was one of the nation's most visible radicals. He was a founder of Students for a Democratic Society, a defendant in the Chicago Seven trial after riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, and a peace activist who married Jane Fonda, went to Hanoi and escorted American prisoners of war home from Vietnam.   As a civil rights worker, he was beaten in Mississippi and jailed in Georgia. In his cell he began writing what became the Port Huron Statement, the political manifesto of S.D.S. and the New Left that envisioned an alliance of college students in a peaceful crusade to overcome what it called repressive government, corporate greed and racism. Its aim was to create a multiracial, egalitarian society.   Like his allies the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Senator Robert F. Kennedy, who were assassinated in 1968, Mr. Hayden opposed violent protests but backed militant demonstrations, like the occupation of Columbia University campus buildings by students and the burning of draft cards. He also helped plan protests that, as it happened, turned into clashes with the Chicago police outside the Democratic convention.   In 1974, with the Vietnam War in its final stages after American military involvement had all but ended, Mr. Hayden and Ms. Fonda, who were by then married, traveled across Vietnam, talking to people about their lives after years of war, and produced a documentary film, "Introduction to the Enemy." Detractors labeled it Communist propaganda, but Nora Sayre, reviewing it for The New York Times, called it a "pensive and moving film."   Later, with the war over and the idealisms of the '60s fading, Mr. Hayden settled into a new life as a family man, writer and mainstream politician. In 1976, he ran for the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate from California, declaring, "The radicalism of the 1960s is fast becoming the common sense of the 1970s." He lost to the incumbent, Senator John V. Tunney.   But focusing on state and local issues like solar energy and rent control, he won a seat in the California Legislature in Sacramento in 1982. He was an assemblyman for a decade and a state senator from 1993 to 2000, sponsoring bills on the environment, education, public safety and civil rights. He lost a Democratic primary for California governor in 1994, a race for mayor of Los Angeles in 1997 and a bid for a seat on the Los Angeles City Council in 2001.   He was often the target of protests by leftists who called him an outlaw hypocrite, and by Vietnamese refugees and American military veterans who called him a traitor. Conservative news media kept alive the memories of his radical days. In a memoir, "Reunion" (1988), he described himself as a "born-again Middle American" and expressed regret for "romanticizing the Vietnamese" and for allowing his antiwar zeal to turn into anti-Americanism. "His soul-searching and explanations make fascinating reading," The Boston Globe said, "but do not, he concedes, pacify critics on the left who accuse him of selling out to personal ambition or on the right 'who tell me to go back to Russia.' He says he doesn't care." Tom Hayden, pictured far left, longtime activist and former California state senator. He was one of the founders of Students for a Democratic Society. In 1962 he was the principal author of the Port Huron Statement - the revolutionary SDS document.   (Photo - C. Clark Kissinger)   "I get re-elected," Mr. Hayden told The Globe. "To me, that's the bottom line. The issues persons like myself are working on are modern, workplace, neighborhood issues."   Thomas Emmet Hayden was born in Royal Oak, Mich., on Dec. 11, 1939, the only child of John Hayden, an accountant, and the former Genevieve Garity, both Irish Catholics. His parents divorced, and Tom was raised by his mother, a film librarian.   He attended a parish school. The pastor was the Rev. Charles Coughlin, the anti-Semitic radio priest of the 1930s and a right-wing foe of the New Deal.   At Dondero High School in Royal Oak, Mr. Hayden was editor of the student newspaper. His final editorial before graduation in 1957 almost cost him his diploma. In his exhortation to old-fashioned patriotism, he encrypted, in the first letter of each paragraph, an acrostic for "Go to hell."   His turn to radical politics began at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, where he was inspired by student protests against the anti-Communist witch hunts of the House Un-American Activities Committee and by lunch counter sit-ins by black students in Greensboro, N.C. In the summer of 1960, he met Dr. King in California, and he soon joined sit-in protests and voter registration drives in the South.   Perceiving a need for a national student organization to coordinate civil rights projects around the country, he joined 35 like-minded activists at Ann Arbor in 1960 and formed Students for a Democratic Society. He also became editor of the campus newspaper, The Michigan Daily. He earned a bachelor's degree in sociology at Michigan in 1961 and did graduate work there in 1962 and 1963.   His 1961 marriage to Sandra Cason, a civil rights worker, ended after two years. He met Ms. Fonda at an antiwar rally. They were married in 1973 and had a son, Troy Garity. Ms. Fonda had a daughter, Vanessa, by her former marriage to the film director Roger Vadim. Mr. Hayden and Ms. Fonda divorced in 1990. He married Ms. Williams, a Canadian actress, in 1993. They adopted a son, Liam. Along with his wife, Mr. Hayden is survived by the three children.   In 1961, Mr. Hayden joined the Freedom Riders on interstate buses in the South, challenging authorities who refused to enforce the Supreme Court's rulings banning segregation on public buses. His jailhouse draft of what became the 25,000-word S.D.S. manifesto was debated, revised and formally adopted at the organization's first convention, in Port Huron, Mich., in 1962.   "We are people of this generation," it began, "bred in at least modest comfort, housed now in universities, looking uncomfortably to the world we inherit." It did not recommend specific programs but attacked the arms race, racial discrimination, bureaucracy and apathy in the face of poverty, and it called for "participatory democracy" and a society based on "fraternity," "honesty" and "brotherhood."   Mr. Hayden was elected president of S.D.S. for 1962-63. In 1965, he made the first of several trips to Vietnam, accompanying Herbert Aptheker, a Communist Party theoretician, and Staughton Lynd, a radical professor at Yale. While the visit was technically illegal, it was apparently ignored by the State Department to allow the American peace movement and Hanoi to establish informal contacts. The group went to Hanoi and toured villages and factories in North Vietnam. Mr. Hayden wrote a book, "The Other Side" (1966), about the experience.   At Hanoi's invitation, Mr. Hayden attended a 1967 conference in Bratislava, in what was then Czechoslovakia, and met North Vietnamese leaders, who agreed to release some captured American prisoners as a gesture of "solidarity" with the American peace movement. Mr. Hayden then made a second journey to Hanoi to discuss the details, and soon afterward picked up three American P.O.W.s at a rendezvous in Cambodia and escorted them home.   Mr. Hayden directed an S.D.S. antipoverty project in Newark from 1964 to 1967, and in his last year witnessed days of rioting, looting and destruction that left 26 people dead and hundreds injured. In "Rebellion in Newark" (1967), he wrote, "Americans have to turn their attention from the lawbreaking violence of the rioters to the original and greater violence of racism."   In 1968, Mr. Hayden helped plan antiwar protests in Chicago to coincide with the Democratic National Convention. Club-swinging police officers clashed with thousands of demonstrators, injuring hundreds in a televised spectacle that a national commission later called a police riot. But Mr. Hayden and others were charged by federal officials with inciting to riot and conspiracy. The Chicago Seven trial became a classic confrontation between radicals and Judge Julius Hoffman, marked by insults, angry judicial outbursts and contempt citations.   In 1970, all seven defendants were acquitted of conspiracy, but Mr. Hayden and four others - Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, David Dellinger and Rennie Davis - were convicted of inciting to riot and sentenced to five years in prison. The verdicts were overturned on appeal, as were various contempt citations, on the basis of judicial bias. Mr. Hayden's book "Trial" (1970) recounted the events.   Although Ms. Fonda was a wealthy movie star and financially supported Mr. Hayden's early political career, she and Mr. Hayden lived for years in a modest home in Santa Monica, near but not on the ocean. They did their own shopping and laundry, cooked meals in a tiny kitchen with an old stove and shared child-care duties for Troy and Vanessa.   Mr. Hayden was Gov. Jerry Brown's appointed chairman of the SolarCal Council, which encourages solar energy development, from 1978 to 1982. He lost a Democratic primary for governor in 1994 to Kathleen Brown, the governor's sister, who lost the general election to the Republican governor, Pete Wilson. In 1997, as the Democratic candidate for mayor of Los Angeles, Mr. Hayden lost to the Republican incumbent, Richard J. Riordan.   After his legislative career, he directed the Peace and Justice Resource Center in Culver City, Calif., a platform for his opposition to wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He taught at California colleges and at Harvard, and wrote articles for The Times, The Washington Post and The Nation.   Mr. Hayden, who lived in Los Angeles, wrote more than 20 books, including several memoirs, re-examinations of the civil rights and antiwar movements, and volumes on street gangs, Vietnam, his own Irish heritage, the environment and America's future. His last book, "Listen Yankee!: Why Cuba Matters," was published in 2015.   His personal papers, 120 boxes covering his life since the 1960s, were given in 2014 to the University of Michigan. Besides troves on civil rights and antiwar activities, they included 22,000 pages of F.B.I. files amassed in a 16-year surveillance of Mr. Hayden.   "One of your prime objectives," J. Edgar Hoover, the longtime F.B.I. director, said in one memo, "should be to neutralize him in the New Left movement." Related articles: The Port Huron Statement at 50      1960s Radicals Predict Rebirth of Social Activism

Mentally ill Black Woman murdered in NYC by pigs

This just in from Charles Barron!...
NYPD kills a mentally challenged 66 year old grandmother...called a 'good shooting'!...How can shooting down a 66 year old grandmother in anyway be called 'good'!...
Eleanor Bumphers all over again...
Stay in the streets yg people!...
And o yes, Saturday, Oct 22nd, the 80th birthday of Chairman Bobby Seale is the 15th Nat'l Day Against Police Brutality!
Keep the pressure on the pig!
Her name was Deborah Danner...
Say her name!...
--Baba Zayid 
Newark, NJ

Comment by Marvin X

Elijah told us we live under the shadow of death in America. I'm amazed pigs are not trained to deal with the mentally ill, perhaps, it is because they suffer mental illness themselves!
A low information person told me today America is not Iraq or Syria, and this mental state that we are not in a long protracted low intensity war with America is precisely why we are shot down like dogs. They taught us in Boy Scouts to be prepared. Yet we make our daily round in the mind fields of America totally unprepared for war. How can anyone be prepared for war with pants hanging on their behinds? How can we be prepared for war without a united front that Amiri Baraka talked about?

Fanon said the only way the oppressed can regain their mental equilibrium is by joining the revolution. We must resist the white supremacy global bandits and their slave catchers in blue uniforms.
As per the mentally ill, i.e., those suffering traumatic slave system diseases, either mild, moderate or severe, must attempt the mental health peer group. There are simply not enough mental health workers in our community, so we must heal ourselves. See my manual How to Recover from the Addiction to White Supremacy, Black Bird Press, introduction by Dr. Nathan Hare.---Marvin X

BAMBD News from our Pan Africa Editor: Black Love Ghana Tour 2017

The Movement's Pan Africa Editor, Muhammida El Muhajir, and Oakland poet Samantha Akwei in Accra. Samantha was on a family visit to Accra. Muhammida is a North American African who has resettled in Accra. She and her mother, Nisa Ra, have organized the Black Love Ghana Tour.

Professor Griff | Exposes Afrika Bambaataa & Zaza Ali, Clarifies Birdman...

Zaza Ali tells black women stop blaming everything on black men

The Majic of JuJu, an appreciation of the Black Arts Movement by Kalamu Ya Salaam

An Excerpt—A Dialogue between Kalamu ya Salaam (Deep River) and Margo Natalie Crawford (Afro-Blue)
                                  
Afro-Blue:  James Baldwin in his short story “Sonny’s Blues” (1957) depicts the blues as “deep water.” When I hear your name, Deep River, it makes me think about the deep rivers of the black aesthetic experience.
         Langston Hughes says “I’ve Known Rivers” and Baldwin says:  “He wanted Sonny to leave the shoreline and strike out for the deep water. He was Sonny’s witness that deep water and drowning were not the same thing — he had been there, and he knew. And he wanted Sonny to know. He was waiting for Sonny to do the things on the keys which would let Creole know that Sonny was in the water.”
         But let me explain my name.  I call myself “Afro-Blue” as a way of escaping other prisms like “Afro-pessimism” and, also, “Afro-centrism.” When I read The Magic of Juju, I felt the “deep water” of the Black Arts Movement. In the midst of some of the current art of drowning, I sometimes feel nostalgic for this movement that predates me. I think the children of the Black Power movement feel the presence of its absence. Do you feel nostalgic about the Black Arts Movement? Why did you write The Magic of Juju?
Deep River: Why not? Everybody has an autobiography—I mean that literally. Everybody has a story to tell: how I came to be who I am. I happened to have been born during interesting times and, under the influence of Langston Hughes, I decided early on to pursue writing. That was nearly fifty years ago. So that is one reason: self reflection, thinking about how I became who I am, why and what were the ramifications of the choices I made.
Another reason is—and this is in no particular order—I did not see any books on our work, on the Black Arts Movement. Tons of Harlem Renaissance work, bunches of books on the Black Panthers. But where were the books on the Black Arts Movement, a movement that was more far reaching that the Harlem Renaissance, which by the way I think is both mis-named and misunderstood (I’ll come back to that in a minute). Moreover, I’m sure the absence of books on the Black Arts Movement is not an accident but rather part of a systemic effort at erasing our history.
Writing The Magic of Juju is itself an act of defiance. I know—check that, I should say “I believe” because I don’t have hard evidence in hand—I believe that the academy has actively discouraged detailed investigations of the Black Arts Movement primarily because of the politics. Although most critics will not say so outright, the reality is that the Black Arts Movement is characterized as racist because, to use a shorthand, we were perceived as “hating whites.”
Now, who is in charge of the academy? For sure it’s not Blacks, nor is it—Gates and a handful of others notwithstanding—Negroes are not in charge either, not in the overall sense. Sure, a few individuals with considerable influence, and some might even argue with more than a little power, exist but considering the literally thousands of higher-ed institutions, the overwhelming majority of gate keepers are not only racially white, they have a white consciousness, which in order to remain white necessarily means excluding blacks and other people of color.
Look, to put it bluntly, you can not remain “white” and be intimate with “non-whites,” which is why race mixing, i.e. miscegenation, has a pejorative connotation. It seems to me, if one is truly democratic, then one is open to the world. We who are called African American have been open. True, our openness has not been always by choice but we have learned to live with a spectrum of color rather than some dark essential. Look, Elijah Muhammad was obviously of mixed racial heritage—if you catch my meaning.
Black consciousness is not a reflection of biological essentialism. (I know this seems a bit off the path from explaining why I wrote The Magic of Juju, but this is an essential aspect of the real answer.) For me, Black consciousness is a political concept, not a biological concept. I define Blackness as color, culture and consciousness. Moreover, color is the least important element and consciousness the most important element.
Color is raw biology. For African Americans that rawness means, to use that loaded term, “miscegenation.” Indeed, for us in the diaspora, and particularly for those of us in the good old USofA, there is no purity in blackness. We are the original melting pot. We are America at its biological best in that, whether by choice or by circumstance, we embrace all elements.
Culture is collective behavior, views and values. Certainly an individual can manifest a culture but the culture itself is developed at a collective level.
Consciousness is identity both personal and social. This is the crux of blackness precisely because biology is not a choice; you don’t choose your parents, your ancestors. Culture is collective and thus never simply the result of individual action. We are born into cultures and as we humans come to consciousness we have the opportunity to shape the cultures into which we were born or to assimilate into a different culture. Consciousness is dynamic, ever changing even as it has a specific beginning on an individual level. Of course we can go Jungian and talk about the collective consciousness of a specific group of people in a particular time and space. In any case, whether consciously, subconsciously, or unconsciously, we humans make choices.
With whom and with what do we identify? That is the ultimate determinant of our behavior at the level of choice. Of course we don’t control all elements of our lives—but concerning the myriad of matters over which we do have a choice, consciousness becomes the key to determining our behavior and to a large extent determining our destiny.
The big, two-part question is with whom do we identify and how do we actualize our identity? That was a key element of the Black Arts Movement. We identified with working class Black people, which effectively often, but not necessarily, put us at odds with many academics who are petit-bourgeoisie to the max.
I’m defining class in terms of relationship to the means of production and accumulation of wealth. Those who sell their labor to earn a living are working class. Those who manage the labor of others or who offer professional services are the petit-bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie are those who earn their living and accumulate wealth based on earning profits, collecting rent and/or interest accrued from their property, both intellectual and material. That’s a simplistic thumbnail, but it’s important to understand this distinction because most of the people who write books are petit-bourgeoisie in their orientation whether they are actually petit-bourgeoisie in their consciousness. For example, just because you are a licensed professional, a Ph.D. or an M.D. or J.D., your degree doesn’t necessarily tell us with whom you identify and in whose interest you work.
In general, however, the petit-bourgeoisie identifies with the bourgeoisie rather than the working class. One can immediately see the conflict that the Black Arts Movement had with academics. There is a similar dynamic happening with hip hop, except because of the commercial success of hip hop within the capitalist society, there is an acceptance of hip hop in academic circles far greater than the academic acceptance of the Black Arts Movement. In America, money will change you and change how you are viewed and are accepted by mainstream society.
Part of the Magic of Juju, the concept, is the reality that juju transforms. Blackness is not static, unchanging. Baraka called it the changing same. The key though is that we change both ourselves and our environment. Any study of Black culture necessarily has to be a study of change within a give society, a given space and time, whether we are looking locally, regionally, nationally or internationally. We set the parameters of our study—and even those parameters will change over time—then we proceed to study what happens/happened and why. We might even venture a guess about what will happen next.
I’m taking the time to sketch out some of these definitions because other wise we cannot have a real dialogue if we don’t share a common understanding. It’s not about agreement but rather about epistemology, how it is we know whatever it is we think we know. The first step in knowing is having a common language. In Black culture the common tongue is first music and then orature and kinetics, and only at a tertiary level, literacy. That is a big difference between Black culture and what is commonly called White culture. White culture in the USA validates literacy, business, and technology.
You want to peep where a Black person’s consciousness is? Check out the music they listen to—not the books they read or the movies they watch, check out the music they listen to—and if they don’t listen to music, there better be some major extenuating circumstances, otherwise you’re not dealing with a conscious Black person. Notice, I said “music” as a general category rather than a specific genre of music.
I’ve written extensively about music. During my days as a music critic I won two ASCAP Deems Taylor awards for excellence in writing about music. The reason I mention that is to make clear that I choose not to identify with the mainstream even though I have the ability to compete and excel in the mainstream. Black Arts Movement artists chose not to identify with the mainstream even though we were capable of doing so. Blackness consciousness is just that: a conscious choice rather than a biological default.
Moreover, our blackness includes whiteness, redness, brownness, yellowness and any other human “ness” there is. All of that is part of who we are. The expansiveness of Blackness is a major threat to those who want to be White. Our very being threatens White existence. We are tar babies. Touch us and get stuck.

—Kalamu ya Salaam

Prince / Miles Davis Full Concert 12-31-87 (Miles From The Park)

Life is Living Festival, Bobby Hutton/Deferemry Park, Oakland, pics by Standingrock 10/8/16

MILES DAVIS: TIME AFTER TIME

Miles Davis - Kind of Blue - 1959 (Complete Album)

So what
don't say shit to me
Dear White People
I love you madly
taught your children
no matter no hate teacher
not sick like that
sick with love
sick need love so bad
so what
where is love
show her to me
let me kiss her
embrass her
tongue in mouth
african love
so what
--Marvin X
10/9/16

Marvin X poem: I remember Bobby Hutton

Most honorable revolutionary youth
ona mission of his generation
Fanon said youth must fulfill or dishonor generation of elders
Little Bobby
revolution
youth defiance
aggrogance
pride hubris
no card playing
bid whist
checkers
dominoes
revolution
no girls no alcohol
serious to the bone
alone but youth would follow him
revolution
Lil' Bobby
revolution in his eyes
heart
soul
wanna be part of this
revolution
let me fight OGs
gimme that gun Big Man
let me get down Big Man
go attack the pigs
killed MLK
fuck da  pigs
off da pigs
revolution
Lil' Bobby Hutton
16 years old
bold
wanna be free
capitalism
oppression
joined Huey and Bobby
trinity
holy
revolutionary
Lil' Bobby
My sister D
worked at North Oakland Center with Bobby Seale
when Lil' Bobby came through
mother wanted him in school
Lil' Bobby wanted revolution
fuck school
Black Panther Party School was his school for real
Secretary of BPP
confronted me at Black House
message from Huey
close down youth club in basement of Black House
I reject order from Supreme Commander
fuck Huey I say
Saw death for me in Lil' Bobby's eyes
I rejected order from his leader, Huey P. Newton
"We deal with you, later, dude," Lil' Bobby said.
All that night
Panthers clicked weapons at door of my room
I didn't care
I'm crazy too.
I don't take orders  from no nigguhs nigguh!
 madness of military discipline
There must be order in revolution
give orders
take orders
simple.
Long live Lil' Bobby Hutton
Long live revolutionary youth!
--Marvin X
10/8/16

Marvin X was blessed to experience the revolutionary personality known as Little Bobby Hutton. He is eternally grateful to have known Little Bobby, a youth with revolution in his eyes, body and soul; who gave his life for the revolution. Mao said, "Some deaths are lighter than a feather, some deaths higher than Mount Tai!" Bobby Hutton's death was higher than Mount Tai!

BOBBY HUTTON -
The Day My Beloved Brother Comrade was Murdered

---

On April 6, 1968, two days after Martin Luther King had been murdered, I got dressed and prepared to go to Central Headquarters of the Black Panther Party (BPP) along with Panthers Jimmy Charley and Terry Claridy. I read a chapter of the "Red Book - Quotations by Chairman Mao" before I left. We arrived at Central Headquarters at 45th and Grove St. to get assigned to various locations to sell the Party's newspaper "The Black Panther," collect donations and pass out leaflets in the community about the barbecue for the "Free Huey Newton" defense committee to be held at then called - Defremery Park on April 7th.

Later that evening, around 4pm, other Panthers and I, in groups of two and three, were circulating in the community and going to high schools spreading the word that despite the murder of Dr. King, they should stay cool, lay low and refrain from all counterproductive and random violence, because riots would cause nothing but mass genocide. If trouble erupted, it would be open season on blacks and the BPP would be the first attacked.

Around 6pm, some Party members and I met at a Panther's apartment off San Pablo Ave. We decided that we would ride in three vehicles transporting food and supplies for the barbecue picnic and at the same time we would observe and patrol the police activities in the Black community.

Around 7:30pm, after patrolling and picking up supplies for the rally, two policemen turned their cruiser south observing and following us onto 28th street and Union street where we had stopped for a minute for Eldridge Cleaver who had to urinate. Eldridge and L'il Bobby Hutton were riding in a 1961 Ford with several other Panthers. I was riding shotgun, in the center of the back seat, armed with a banana clip 30 caliber carbine. Panther Charles Bursey was to the left of me and Donnell Lankford was to the right. The officers pulled their cruiser to a stop in the middle of the street side by side with these vehicles. (The 1961 Ford with Florida license plates had been observed all week because it was known by the Oakland Police as a Panther vehicle.) Gunfire erupted at once, two wild shots were followed instantly by a deluge of lead that riddled the squad cars and shots were fired by police into the rear window of the 1954 Ford in which I was riding.

More policemen flocked to the shooting scene. Charles Bursey was able to get out of the car and escape the scene. Donnell Lankford, who was to the right of me, attempted to open the door so we could take cover, but the door was jammed. The door finally came open, but as soon as we tried to exit the vehicle, there were about a dozen police with their guns and shotguns drawn and thrust into our faces. They were making racist, insulting remarks while we were lying face down, handcuffed behind our backs, helpless on the pavement. They made statements such as, "you niggers just lost Martin Luther King and if you make one move we will not hesitate to blow your heads off."

We were then put into the police paddy wagon. Donnell, John L. Scott and I were the first to be arrested. The over- reactionary pigs sprayed mace into our eyes after we were already handcuffed and helpless. As the police wagon drove away from the scene, I could barely see out the back, but it appeared to me that there were black people running behind the wagon saying, "Free these brothers, you racist cops." I told my comrades in the police wagon that this was a deliberate ambush, attempting to commit genocide against the BPP.

The booking officer asked me if I wanted to make a statement after being booked. I said no, I was taking the 5th amendment until I consulted with my attorney, Charles Garry. They put Lankford, Scott and me into different holding cells. I could hear racist statements like, "They should kill Eldridge Cleaver. He's like a wild animal running amok." Note: the ambush of other Party members was still going on at this time. Later that night, Harold Rodgers, Charles Garry's assistant attorney, visited me in my cell and told me that one Party member did not survive. That was the Party's first member and treasurer, Bobby James Hutton.

Long Live the Spirit of L'il Bobby Hutton.

Terry M. Cotton, former political prisoner and BPP member

Miles Davis - Kind of Blue - 1959 (Complete Album)

Dr. Nzinga on Lil' Bobby Hutton, model for revolutionary youth

The Defermery's are alive,

says the beige council woman.

They may be living but

Bobby Hutton is dead

and we have renamed the park

to keep him alive

surely you understand

life and death eternally binary

we are binary people

live or dead

black or white

in or out of favor

out of office

out of the city

on the other side

out of time

out of life

outside of life

Bobby Hutton is dead

Denzil Dowell is dead

I hope they claimed a token

for Denzil  somewhere in

Richmond I have cried on Center

St. after the sage burned out

& the egun gun danced

we claimed the corner

baptized it in the name

of Godz who favor drums

to let Huey know we remember

to remember

lay claim to him in all his parts

elevating the genius accepting

that flawed humans are the

handz of the  Godz

we remember to remember

a bowl of honey by the

cactus in the yard

we pray for the flower

& warriors who sacrificed

like graceful ocean divers

suiciding burning like fire

knowing they were never

meant to be slaves

their death marks the place

we crossed over

spirits walking waiting

to be claimed

we have renamed

Defermery and given it to

Bobby Hutton so that his spirit

has a place to grow

-- the beige

lady says we can have the trees

they are already ours we have claimed

them --

she can not give us what we

have taken

-- we don't want wampum

popcorn and beads we have taken

what we need--

a place to remember

crossing over

slaves who refuse

burning like fire

burn baby burn

we honor the fire

we honor the flames

Long live Bobby Hutton

Ayodele Nzinga, MFA, PhD | October 8, 2016 at 9:30 AM | Tags: ayodele wordslanger nzinga | Categories: belonging, Black Arts, North American African Perspective, right handed poems, warrior art | URL: http://wp.me/p14Q31-2jH

Laney College Theatre presents Color Struck by Donald Lacy; Marvin X opens with a reading from his play Salaam, Huey, Salaam

Alicia Mayo captures Marvin X reading Salaam, Huey, Salaam, at Laney College Theatre. He opeded for Donald Lacy's Colorstruck, 10/1/16

 Tureada Miken, Judy Juanita, former editor of the Black  Panther Newspaper, Marvin X. Judy reminded Marvin and told the audience, she remembers Marvin X at Merritt College as skinny as a toothpick. Eldridge Cleaver described him as a skinny Black Buddha.

 Marvin X in Laney College Theatre dressing room, getting read to go on stage.

 Master actor/commedian, playwright, author of Colorstruck, Sir. Donald Lacy

 Nurjehan, co-wrote essay in The Movement, Black Men Matter

 Nurjehan, assistant to Marvin X, businesswoman

Oakland Community Leaders Tell Uber: Work with Us to stop Displacement

 

 

Oakland Community Leaders Tell Uber: Work with Us to Stop Displacement

August 11, 2016

Oakland Community Leaders Tell Uber: Work with Us to Stop Displacement
Open Letter to Be Published in Oakland Post this Afternoon

Contact: Bruce Mirken, Greenlining Institute Media Relations Director, 415-846-7758 (cell)
OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA – Today 20 Oakland community leaders are sending an open letter to Uber CEO Travis Kalanick calling on him to work with them to ensure that Uber’s move to Oakland doesn’t worsen displacement and lack of opportunity for poor and working class residents. The open letter will be both delivered to Mr. Kalanick and published in this week’s Oakland Post, available in print this afternoon and online Friday morning.
The group is especially concerned by the rapid displacement of nonprofits and low income individuals that accelerated after Uber announced its plan to move to Oakland. Noting that two of Uber’s senior advisors — David Plouffe and Eric Holder — are former Obama administration officials who played key roles in advocating and defending diversity and equality for all, the Oakland leaders believe that UBER has the ability to work with the community to develop a path of shared prosperity and minimize displacement of individuals and community organizations.
The full text of the letter and signatories follows:

Open Letter to Uber CEO Travis Kalanick

Dear Mr. Kalanick,
When President Obama delivered his State of the Union address on Jan. 12, he said, “Today, technology doesn’t just replace jobs on the assembly line, but any job where work can be automated. As a result, workers have less leverage for a raise. Companies have less loyalty to their communities. And more and more wealth and income is concentrated at the very top.”
The president’s words must come to no surprise to you since his former senior adviser David Plouffe and his former Attorney General Eric Holder are now senior advisers to you.
Both of these gentlemen have distinguished themselves as advocates and defenders of diversity and equal opportunity for all.
In the San Francisco Bay Area, a technology-driven economy has squeezed workers and disrupted affordable living conditions, even while the overall economy is flourishing.
Here in Oakland this economic disruption has made it harder for a family to pull itself out of poverty, harder for people to remain in the middle class and tougher for workers to live close to their jobs.
The benefits of this technological surge have been very uneven and have led to the biggest wealth gap we have ever seen.  Your unwillingness to release your diversity data worries us about your commitment to Oakland’s diverse residents, especially since your advisers have a history seeking diversity through openness and transparency.
The evidence is clear that a tech-driven economy is accompanied by some serious challenges, including the displacement of the working poor.  That said, we reject the idea that we are powerless to shape the impacts of technology on diverse cities, especially given Oakland’s history of fighting back against policies and actions to disrupt and displace our neighborhoods.
We believe that there’s a great deal we can do to improve prospects for Oakland’s future and its current residents.  We propose a three-pronged effort.
First, we recommend a set of basic agreements in the areas of jobs, education, infrastructure, entrepreneurship, housing, community engagement and research. There’s a strong consensus on several areas that can bring prosperity to Oakland’s current and future residents and there is no need to completely “reinvent the wheel.”
Second, we call on Uber to work alongside us to develop new organizational models and approaches that not only enhance productivity and generate wealth for Uber, but also create broad-based opportunity for working-class residents.
The goal should be inclusive prosperity in Oakland, and not just prosperity for Uber’s full-time workers. Your statement on your website saying that “we strengthen local economies” gives us hope.
Third, we request a meeting with you and a small group of us to reach an understanding. And, given that the digital revolution can get you this letter at half the speed of light, we expect to hear from you within three working days.
As you may agree, we believe that technology is delivering an unprecedented set of tools for bolstering growth and productivity that is currently unharnessed.
Together we can create a city of shared prosperity if we learn about each other, find ways to meaningfully collaborate, and together address the challenges brought by a growing tech workforce in Oakland.
If one simple idea can lead to a $65 billion valuation and perhaps the biggest IPO the world has ever seen, then it’s possible for us to co-disrupt and co-develop a road of shared prosperity in Oakland.
Signed,
Paul Cobb, Post News Group
Orson Aguilar, The Greenlining Institute
Chris Iglesias, The Unity Council
Anne Price, Insight Center
Sondra Alexander, OCCUR
Rev. Michael McBride, Pico National Network
Rev. Dr. J. Alfred Smith, Jr., Allen Temple Baptist Church
Junious Williams
John Gamboa, California Community Builders
Joe Brooks, PolicyLink
Gay Plair Cobb, Oakland Private Industry Council
Rev. Dr. Gerald Agee, Pastor/Friendship Christian Center
Jae Maldonado, Street Level Health Project
Jane Garcia, La Clinica De La Raza
Zachary Norris, Ella Baker Center
Guillermo Mayer, Public Advocates
Joshua Simon, East Bay Asian Local Development Corporation
Marvin X, Black Arts Movement Business District
(organizations listed for identification purposes only)

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THE GREENLINING INSTITUTE
A Multi-Ethnic Public Policy, Research and Advocacy Institute
www.greenlining.org
@Greenlining

When Advocates Get Bought Off

Sep
12
2016

By Bruce Mirken

Read more from Bruce

Categorized in Blog, General

Organizations that represent communities facing discrimination or other mistreatment face a constant struggle: How do we raise enough money to have a meaningful voice without letting our agenda be hijacked by those who can write big checks?
We and other organizations (at least those with a conscience) struggle with that question all the time, and I’d never claim the choices are easy. What follows is the story of one group – one I personally wish I could support – that appears to have gotten it spectacularly wrong in the context of a current political campaign.
Here at Greenlining, we’ve long been concerned about the intersection of money and politics. As an organization that works on behalf of communities of color and low income folks who generally tend to be less able to “pay to play,” we often find ourselves opposing moneyed interests. For example, we strongly support consumer protection for telecommunications customers and guaranteed access to affordable broadband. AT&T, which tends not to like regulations that cost it money, just gave $70,000 to Congress’s deregulator-in-chief, Paul Ryan. No doubt it’s sheer coincidence that telecom deregulation is a top Ryan priority.
I could give a hundred more examples. But AT&T is a business; we expect it to support policies that enhance its profits. We don’t expect purported community advocates to advance corporate interests that might harm their constituents.
As a member of California’s LGBT community, I need Equality California, the major state-level LGBT advocacy group, to speak for me. Instead, Equality California’s political action committee has taken hundreds of thousands of dollars from the California Apartment Association, the California Association of Realtors and other business and corporate interests, and appears to be using that money in a way that has very little to do with LGBT community interests and a lot to do with the interests of landlords and developers.
The amount of money being raised and spent by the Equality California PAC this election cycle is more than double what the group has spent in any recent election. And the majority of it – including a $340,000 ad buy recently reported in the San Francisco Chronicle – is going to attack San Francisco Supervisor Jane Kim, a candidate for the state Senate in the district representing San Francisco and the northern end of San Mateo County.
I need to pause here for a couple important disclaimers: We know Jane Kim, who was a Fellow in our Leadership Academy many years ago. But Greenlining is nonpartisan, so we’re not endorsing her or anyone else in this race, and nothing I’m saying is meant to imply support for or opposition to anyone. But there’s a principle at work here that’s bigger than any individual election contest.
San Francisco and the greater Bay Area are in the throes of a massive housing affordability crisis, a crisis that directly impacts LGBT residents. Surveys have found that LGBT homeless make up 20 percent of San Francisco’s overall homeless population and half of the city’s homeless youth. Kim has pushed aggressively for stricter affordable housing requirements. Cleve Jones, founder of the AIDS Quilt and protégé of San Francisco’s first openly gay elected official, Harvey Milk, wrote recently, “At this point in our history –  for LGBT San Franciscans –  the most important issue is housing.”
Reasonable people can agree or disagree with Kim’s policy proposals on housing, but it’s beyond question that developer, landlord and real estate interests have a financial self-interest in opposing them. To take hundreds of thousands of dollars from these groups and immediately put a similarly huge amount of money into a campaign that appears to enhance those financial interests creates the appearance – at the very least – of having been bought off.
Equality California’s executive director has justified the ad campaign based on the fact that Kim’s opponent is gay, but again, the organization has never put this kind of money behind any LGBT candidate for any office, anywhere. It sure looks like the group’s stated reason doesn’t tell the whole story.
I can’t read anyone’s minds here, so I can’t say positively what’s going on. But I can say that those of us who seek to represent communities facing inequality or discrimination need to avoid even the appearance that we’re bought and paid for by commercial interests.

Marvin X performs opening monologue in Color Struck, Laney College Theatre, Friday, Sat., Sept. 30, Oct 1

Colorstruck 2016 – 2017 Conversations N’ Color Tour

Poet/playwright Marvin X will perform the opening monologue for Donald Lacy's Color Struck at Oakland's Laney College Theatre, Fri and Sat., 8pm. 

Colorstruck returns to Laney College Theater by popular demand! After a highly acclaimed performance at the 26th Annual NAACP State Convention in Manhattan Beach, and a rousing standing ovation at The Fairfield Theatre, COLORSTRUCK is coming back to rock Oakland!

Join us for an unforgettable night of entertainment and dialogue.

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Dates for performances are as follows:
OAKLAND PERFORMANCES BACK BY POPULAR DEMAND
Friday  September 30, 2016 8PM
Laney College in Oakland, California
Click here to purchase tickets for Laney College on September 30, 2016!
Saturday  October 1, 2016  8PM
Laney College in Oakland, California
Click here to purchase tickets for Laney College on October 1, 2016!

Official National Museum of African American History & Culture Construct...

See the National Museum of African American History and Culture Constructed in Under Two Minutes

The official National Museum of African American History & Culture Construction time-lapse by EarthCam

Arionne Nettles

The National Museum of African American History and Culture may have taken over four years to build, but you can watch its construction in less than two minutes.
Tech company EarthCam captured the museum’s construction progress in a time-lapse movie from May 2012 to September 2016. The National Museum of African American History and Culture is the Smithsonian Institute’s 19th museum and the HD imagery from the EarthCam construction camera highlights the beauty of the Freelon Adjaye Bond/SmithGroup vision.

Courtesy of EarthCam
National Museum of African American History an