Black Bird Press News & Review

Sunday, January 30, 2011

Marvin X Tribute sponsored The Oakland Post, show #1

Bay Area Black Authors Poetry Fest and Book Fair

Bay Area Black Authors and Post Newspaper Group

present
The Journal of Pan African Studies Poetry Festival
Chauncey Bailey Book Fair

Saturday, February 19, Noon til 6pm

Joyce Gordon Gallery

406 14th Street @ Franklin
downtown Oakland

free admission

Sponsors: Journal of Pan African Studies, Black Bird Press, Ethnic Studies Department of San Francisco State University, It's About Time, Eastside Arts, Kakakiki Slave System, Oakland Local, Black Hour, Greg Bridges of KPFA, KPOO Radio, San Francisco Recovery Theatre, Lower Bottom Playaz, Hug a Thug Book Club, Academy of da Corner Reader's Theatre, Black Dialogue Brothers.

For more information, call 510-837-5107. Email jmarvinx@yahoo.com.
www.blackbirdpress.blogspot.com. Please make a generous donation to this project. Your donation can be tax deductible. The Post Newspaper Group will purchase books from 15 selected authors for donation to juvenile hall, jails and prisons.

Friday, January 28, 2011

Authors to Attend Poetry Fest and Chauncey Bailey Book Fair

Authors to Attend Journal of Pan African Studies Poetry Fest and Chauncey Bailey Book Fair
Saturday, February 19, Noon til 6pm

Joyce Gordon Gallery
406 14th Street @ Franklin,
downtown Oakland

Authors we may be blessed to meet at the Journal of Pan African Studies Poetry Fest and Chauncey Bailey Book Fair include:

Jerri Lange, author, Jerri, A Black Woman's Life in the Media

Phavia Kujichaugulia, Recognizing and Resolving Racism

Dr. Neal Hall, M.D., Nigger for Life

Marvin X, Pull Yo Pants Up fada Prez and Yosef, essays on Obama Drama

Ptah Allah El, Tainted Soul

For more information, please go to:
www.blackbirdpressnews.blogspot.com
scroll down to Academy of da Corner presents
authors/vendors/sponsors contact
Marvin X at jmarvinx@yahoo.com

Long Live the Egyptian Masses, Down with American Imperialism

Long Live the Egyptian Masses, Down with American Imperialism and all Reactionaries

As predicted, after Friday Prayers the Egyptian masses exploded into the streets signaling the end of Pharaoh Mubarak's thirty year regime and its collaboration with American imperialism. The US government has sustained the dictatorial Mubarak government with a two billion dollar annual bailout that mainly went to the military to oppress the masses.

It was payment for the Egyptian peace deal with the Zionists in Israel, to prevent the liberation of Palestine. The US has done the same with Arab regimes throughout the region. It has forced Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the Persian Gulf states to collaborate with Zionism, including the Palestinian Authority as revealed in the Palestine Papers released by Al Jazeera News.

Hamas was democratically elected but isolated by the US, her Uncle Abdullah Arabs and the Europeans. In Labanon Hezbollah has taken de facto power through the democratic process, yet America keeps it on the terrorist list.

America is thus on the wrong side of history and shall pay for her political blindness and backwardness fueled by capitalist greed and white supremacy notions of domination. The ultimate price shall be when the American masses stand up to the US military/corporate/university complex that has kept the American people in poverty, ignorance and disease while the top 1% own wealth equal to that of the bottom 90% of the population.

Obama, the neo-colonial Negro is nothing but an imperialist in black face and he must be discarded along with his white cohorts on the day American masses take to the streets to demand true freedom, justice and equality--liberty or death!

This is the mantra in the streets of the Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and elsewhere at this hour. The American people must wise up and rise up to their manhood and womanhood, not remain political cowards and economic slaves. We see when the people stand up, the reactionaries stand down, no matter their guns, tear gas, intelligence agencies, phony homeland security spies, snitches and agent provocateurs, no matter their jails, prisons and hidden dungeons throughout America and the world.

Fear is the great monster of the slave system. Once fear is discarded, the stunted man and woman can rise to great heights, reaching the mountain top MLK, Jr. told us about in his last speech. Long live the Arab masses. Long live the American masses!

We see the spirit of the people is greater than all the technology. The cry for freedom needs no cell phone, facebook, twitter! Not even guns can stop the people united! The only thing to fear is fear itself!!!!!
--Marvin X
1/28/11

After Friday Prayers

After Friday Prayers
After salat
salaam-alaikum
al humdulilah
we shall meet in the streets
to shout no more pharaoh
no more presidents for life
no more American aide for guns and tear gas
no more uncle abdullah
no more
no more reactionary theology
no honor killings
suppression of women's dignity
no more
after Friday prayers
in Tunisia
Cairo
Yemen
Sudan
Jordan
Saudi Arabia
Persian Gulf
no more
after Fatihah/Ikhlas
we shall meet the guns of Pharaoh Mubarak
we shall meet the tear gas
even death even
we shall meet
and go to paradise
for freedom
we have no fear of Pharaoh's guns/tear gas
no fear no more
we are mostly young and invincible
we have the model
we shall meet in the streets
to live again
to breathe
to love
to take control of our lives
to feed our families
to fly in the sun of freedom and liberty.
--Marvin X
1/27/11

Marvin X is called the USA's Rumi. He is guest editor of the Journal of Pan African Studies, Poetry Issue. Sweet Tea/Dirty Rice is his next collection of poems,2011. On Saturday, February 19, Noon til 6pm, you are invited to attend the Journal of Pan African Studies Poetry Festival and Chauncey Bailey Book Fair, Joyce Gordon Gallery, 406 14th Street @ Franklin, downtown Oakland.
.
www.blackbirdpressnews.blogspot.com
jmarvinx@yahoo.com

Thursday, January 27, 2011

After Friday Prayers

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Danny Glover and the Black House, San Francisco

DANNY GLOVER: ... But interesting enough, the first time that I saw Huey P. Newton and had any idea who the Black Panther Party was in 1966, when he came to the Black House and was reading poetry at the Black

House. Huey P. Newton—that’s some footage we should have had—reading poetry at the Black House. And at the Black House, Ed Bullins lived. Eldridge Cleaver lived at the Black House. They were two people who lived at the Black House. So, there was—you could see this, and now we’re looking—certainly looking back in retrospect, but you could see this emerging movement happening around, really, what I believe was extraordinary moments of, as I said before, redefining and reimagining democracy, organizing, using those skills. Stokely was an organizer. Those members of SNCC were organizing. So, the Black Power movement was about extending that whole sense of organizing and community organizing.

Playwright Ed Bullins

The Black House
by
Marvin X

The Black House was organized by Marvin X and Eldridge Cleaver. Around the same time Cleaver was released from Soledad Prison, late 1966, Marvin X and his partner, Hurriyah (Ethna X) were escaping chaos at Black Arts West Theatre, co-founded by Marvin, Ed Bullins, Hurriyah, Duncan Barber, Hillery Broadous and Carl Bossiere. Art Sheridan had suggested Marvin hook up with playwright Ed Bullins. Marvin's first play had been produced by the Drama Department at San Francisco State College, now University. Ed had some plays going in North Beach, so they hooked up and started Black Arts West near Turk and Fillmore, around the corner from the Sun Reporter Newspaper office, owned by Dr. Carlton Goodlett.

Black Arts West Theatre produced the plays of Bullins and Marvin X. Two of the actors were Danny Glover and Vonetta McGee (RIP). Danny performed the role of Papa in a play by Dorothy Ahmed, Papa's Daughter. Vonetta performed in How Do You Do, a play by Ed Bullins.

When Marvin left Black Arts West Theatre, he soon hooked up with Eldridge Cleaver--the first person Cleaver got with after his release. With Cleaver's advance from his best seller Soul on Ice, he and Marvin rented a Victorian on Broderick Street and established Black House, a political/cultural center. They were soon joined by playwright Ed Bullins and singer Willie Dale, who'd done time with Cleaver at San Quentin.

Black House became a kind of half-way house for persons who got black consciousness from the arts and went into the political movement, especially the Black Panther Party. Emory Douglas came through and became BPP Minister of Culture. Samuel Napier came, got juiced on culture and became the BPP Minister of Distribution of the newspaper. George Murray got his consciousness performing in Baraka's black arts communication project at SF State and black house. George became BPP Minister of Education.

Bobby Seale had gotten consciousness at Merritt College in Oakland, along with fellow students Marvin and Huey P. Newton. Bobby performed in Marvin's second play Come Next Summer before founding the BPP.

Marvin tried to get Huey in his theatre but Huey declined. Yet Huey claimed he learned from Marvin. Maybe his reading poetry at Black House can be attributed to Marvin's influence.

For sure, the politicos learned from the artists. For this reason, Marvin X says the arts was the mother rather than the sister of the political movement. Larry Neal calls the Black Arts Movement the sister of the political liberation movement.

Henry Louis Gates says the Black Arts Movement was short-lived, but time and influence are different matters. The Black Arts Movement fundamentally altered art and literature in America, far beyond the influence and impact of the earlier Harlem Renaissance.

Black House fell from differences between the artists and politicos. Even before the Black Panthers called anyone who wouldn't pick up the gun reactionary, there were ideological differences. For example, Amiri Baraka and Eldridge Cleaver were at Black House but never talked, partly due to Cleaver's Marxism and Baraka's so-called Cultural Nationalism. Ironically, Baraka became a Marxist and Cleaver a spiritualist.

The fall of the Black House was insured after Marvin rejected an order delivered by Lil Bobby Hutton from Huey Newton that the youth clubhouse in the basement must be closed due to out of control youth.

Marvin told Lil Bobby, "Fuck the Supreme Commander!" Shortly after this, the artists were evicted and Black House became the San Francisco headquarters of the BPP.

Before the artists were evicted, those who performed included Sarah Webster Fabio, Avoctja, Chicago Arts Ensemble, Sonia Sanchez, Askia Toure, Ed Bullins, Reginald Lockett, Marvin X, Willie Dale and students from Baraka's Communications Project at SFSU, including Jimmy Garrett, Benny Stewart, George Murry, Ellendar Barnes, Jo Ann Mitchell, et al.

For more on Black House, see:

Marvin X, Somethin' Proper, autobiography of Marvin X, Black Bird Press, 1998.

Marvin X, Eldridge Cleaver, My friend the Devil, Black Bird Press, 2009.

Eldridge Cleaver, Post-Prison Writings.

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Obama Drama, State of the Nation

We must admit this Harvard Negro is well skilled in the art of rhetoric, logic and lying that are so needed for all politicians since time immemorial, especially since the time of Machiavelli and his discourse on The Prince.

Tonight we heard more of the same flowery imagery and metaphors this character is known for internationally.

His ability to stay on the plane of abstraction is remarkable, but while the corporations are flowing with profits and bonuses, and the banks and financial institutions reap new trillions from their bailout after an era of global banditry and pyramid scheme speculation, we yet hear nothing substantial for the poor, the unemployed, the homeless who were tricked by the sub prime loan scam and global outsourcing.

Can we be clear, there is no job program to address the immediate needs of the millions of unemployed. And how shall the millions who are now homeless from foreclosures find remedy? What good is a health plan when one is unemployed and without means of payment?

While his rhetoric seeks to flow from Center to Right, his predilection of placating the Right Wing
Conservatives who reject him at every turn, especially from now to the 2012 elections, he leaves his progressive base in the woods, lost and turned out on the way to grandmother's house!

Iraq is a sham and the world knows it. When the last fifty thousand troops depart, there shall remain 200,000 mercenaries or private contractor killers and torturers, along with the grandest American embassy in the world to oversee the oil contracts and satisfy the reactionary regional regimes, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the Gulf States and of course the Zionist regime called Israel.

Obama and his cohorts in the Congress shall be quite unnerved if Egypt suddenly crumbles in unity with the Tunisian revolution. He failed to mention Egypt tonight, while only briefly alluding to Tunisia. And hardly nothing was said about Afghanistan that is lost. We understand all but one province is under Taliban control. Nor was there any mention of so-called terrorists in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, except in the Bush/Colin Powell tradition of promising to cut them off.

What if all these nations not only throw out their reactionary regimes but any semblance of American hegemony as well. Will Americans suddenly get a similar idea to send the White House and Congress packing

We heard of long term plans for correcting the corrupt white supremacy educational system with its 50% drop out/push out rate. His call for teachers shall ring hollow, for why should a teacher work for the same wages as a janitor? There are very few Blacks going into teaching these days.
We attended a State Education conference in California with four thousand teachers, yet we doubt if 400 were Black. There are so few Black teachers in Alabama, we understand the state is importing teachers from the Philippines.

And of course nothing was said about the high incarceration rate of young black men, and the many thousands on probation and parole that are destabilizing our community coast to coast.

He ranted about the deficit to capitulate as is his habit. Don't worry, there shall be no shrinking of the military budget as he suggested--it is a scam in the permanent war philosophy of this military/corporate complex. But he called for the return of military recruiters on college and university campuses. Does this sound like a president who is anti-war? He sounds more like Bush with every passing moment.

We must excuse the 18-35 youth who reportedly gave him a thumbs up, for they are simply naive and will gain political maturity with time. With every speech he moves closer to those neo-colonial leaders in Africa, Asia and the Americas. We know they are a most wretched lot and Obama is slowly falling in league with them. The torture chamber of Gitmo continues, including the torture of Bradly Manning for giving information to Wikileaks, blowing the whistle on American global subterfuge.

His address is designed to set the stage for the 2012 election, but 2012 may prove a conundrum of major proportion, especially with all the mythology in the Mayan calendar.

Yes, we initially hailed Obama and supported him enthusiastically, but we seem him as a spineless personality urgently in need of backbone, a man who kisses right wing asses at every turn, and we should expect more of the same going into 2012 since he will need the support of the Wall Street robber barons to finance his billion dollar election campaign.
--Marvin X
1/25/11