Revolution Against Fear

Revolution Against Fear

"The only thing to fear is fear itself."--President Roosevelt

No human progress is possible while people are paralyzed by fear. Fear is the great monster of the mind that prevents people from standing against oppression. Once the great monster fear is cut off, we see people can stand tall in the face of any challenge, whether from the guns of state terror, the tanks, police, jails, prisons and ultimately death. Overcoming the fear of death is the ultimate challenge of man. Once a man or woman accepts that his/her life and death are all for God, transcending the self, fear is discarded into the dustbin of history.

We see this occurring in North Africa and the Middle East at this hour. The people have cast off the illusion of fear and are standing tall against oppression from regimes long supported by American Imperialism. America has been the major arms supplier, the guns, bullets, poison gas, equipment for torture chambers and dungeons that were established to allow the most wicked and repressive regimes to flourish for the last forty years.

Let us be clear that America has a history of oppressing its own citizens, of filling their bodies and minds with fear, of reducing them from Kunta Kinte to Toby en mass. We have yet to learn the true story of resistance to the American slave system by North American Africans, who mastered fear during three centuries of chattel enslavement, not recognized as humans or citizens. And yet from within the slave system, North American African resisted by any means necessary, ultimately taking up arms in the Civil War, only to be betrayed by those who won the war and those who were defeated, especially when the 200,000 African soldiers were disarmed.

It is this disarming that allowed fear to return in the from of state terror in the guise of the KKK, the lynchings, virtual slave labor and disenfranchisement during the short lived Reconstruction.

Imagine, for a time the people who were banned from learning to read and write, upon emancipation exercised a thirst for learning so great the children had to be beaten out of the classroom and made to go home. Today we have flipped the script, the children must be beaten or taken to juvenile hall for refusing to attend school. School districts have gone broke because their daily attendance was so low they could not qualify to fund their budgets.

How did the fear of knowledge become pervasive? How did it become a hip fad to be ignut? We need only examine the lives of men who read books and not only transformed their lives but the lives of their people, e.g., Fredrick Douglass, Malcolm X, George Jackson, Eldridge Cleaver. These men cast aside their fears, stood up and made their people stand. Imagine the eternal words of Harriet Tubman, "I could have freed more slaves if they had known they were slaves."

We see here the need for the slave system, today the neo-slave system, to keep people in ignorance and fear. The slave system rules through ignorance and fear. The Civil Rights movement was on the road to success once the people in the South cast off their fears, especially the fear of death, the fear of jail, prison and retaliation.

The 2.4 million people in US jails and prisons are special examples of the fearless. Most people who commit crimes are somewhat fearless, otherwise they would not take penitentiary chances, as they say. Those addicted to fear may be those who decide to hold down a job, to never consider economic independence, until of late when it is crystal clear the job for life is a myth.

We see a college education is no guarantee of a job. Our children will thus need to cast away their fears to configure a fair market system of economic justice. Free market capitalism is exhausted, surely America and her gang of global bandits are in their last days before being rounded up and divested of their ill gotten gains.

By what right should 400 people possess the wealth equal to 150 million? There must be a redistribution of the wealth stolen from the deaf, dumb and blind, yes, those robbed and left half dead on the roadside, those who are victims of American capital accumulation since the beginning of the slave system, i.e., the founding of this nation.

And yet the greatest robbery is not what occurred yesterday, but the robbery of the present global finance bandits who have ripped off the people with their pyramid schemes and sub prime loan scams that stole trillions from people and nations, since the blood suckers of the poor care nothing about people or nations.

The jobless and homeless of today will not rise from this condition until they cast away all fears and seize the means of production and the housing they need. Every human being needs a job and a dwelling. There is no mystery about the human right to a job and a place to stay.

Every human being should have a home with a life estate. This is the true and final solution to homelessness. The home with a life estate cannot be sold or transferred, thus a person will become free of the anxiety of homelessness. And then we consider the reality that all persons need a way to earn money to survive and thrive.

A society that cannot provide its people with economic security shall have no national security, for it is a failed society, a society in chaos, such as we see in America today. There are almost three million people in prison, mostly due to economic crimes, crimes of necessity.

And yet many of these criminals are fearless, some have the very creative minds we need to address the issues of society. And yet they are locked down, many for the most trivial offences, 80% were drug addicted at the time of their arrests and perhaps 50% have severe mental health issues, so what we have in American prisons and jails are drug addicts and the mentally ill or the dual diagnosed.

Still, we have seen that some of our greatest minds came from prison, recall Malcolm, George Jackson, Eldridge, Tookie. Even today we have millions of fearless minds locked down, e.g. Ruchell McGee, and so many other men and women, not to mention our greatest mind on death row, Mumia Abu Jamal. If a man can be productive as Mumia has been on death row, what excuse do we have out here on the big yard?

As Amiri Baraka asked, "Is it difficult for you?" And so I ask, is it difficult for you out here on the big yard? I especially ask the people of the Bay Area who have the legacy of the Black Panther Party who taught one essential lesson which was to discard our fears and stand tall in the face of oppression, is it difficult for you? I say smash your fear of the police, politicians, blood sucking merchants who refuse to hire you yet you do not protest. Challenge the oil and gasoline bandits who reap quarterly profits in the billions by manipulating the markets. But no, you won't dare confront Shell, Mobil, Exxon, Chevron, but you want to kill a brother who jumps ahead of you in the line at the gas station.

It is time to be informed and fearless. Use your cell phone to be informed, Google words you don't understand rather than spend the entire day asking your mate, "Where you at?" Ask yourself where your mind is at, where is your heart and soul at? Where is the fearlessness of your ancestors at?

--Marvin X

5/5/11

Freedom Theatre in Jenin, Occupied Palestine, Director Assassinated

The recent murder of Juliano Mer-Khamisby demostrates the price artists must pay to advance the cultural revolution among the Palestinian people. What is true for you is true for me, thus artists everywhere must pay whatever price is necessary to advance the cultural revolution that will propel the liberation struggle. The artist must be on the frontline of struggle with his heart, mind, talent, body and soul. Paul Robeson told us the artist must decide to be the artistic freedom fighter or a collaborator with oppression, to be a monkey, donkey and tool of imperialism. Juliano's death is not lighter than a feather but higher than Mount Tai!

--Marvin X (aka, El Muhajir)

Murdered: Juliano Mer-Khamisby:

Director of Jenin's Freedom Theatre

date: 2011-04-07


On Tuesday 4th April 2011, our friend, teacher and leader, Juliano Mer Khamis was murdered by an unknown enemy of freedom and culture. All of us at The Freedom Theatre would like to express our deep condolences to the family of Juliano in this devastating time. Juliano was a loving father and husband, an inspirational teacher and leader, and a friend to many.

Just as The Freedom Theatre was built on the inspiration and legacy of Arna, his mother, so will its future work be built on the legacy of Juliano. It will carry on his message to promote freedom – not only for a nation but for each human being. We are mourning, but we will continue our resistance through art, continue our struggle, continue to do our better than best. As Juliano would say: The Revolution must go on!

Please support us in our continuing struggle for freedom and justice!

--The Freedom Theatre staff and students

Juliano Mer Khamis
4 Apr 04 2011

by Anthony Alessandrini

[Juliano Mer Khamis. Image by Alex Rozkovsky/AP]

Jadaliyya is tremendously saddened to report the murder of Juliano Mer Khamis earlier today. Juliano, 52, who was the Artistic Director of The Jenin Freedom Theater and the co-director of the award-winning documentary Arna’s Children, was shot by unknown assailants in Jenin as he was leaving the theater. We offer our deepest condolences to his family, his friends, and all who worked with him and loved him.

Juliano was born in Nazareth in 1958. He was the son of Saliba Khamis, a Palestinian citizen of Israel who was at one time the secretary of the Israeli Communist Party, and Arna Mer Khamis, a Jewish Israeli who spent her youth in the Palmach but became an anti-Zionist activist and a fearless fighter for peace, justice, and human rights.

In interviews, Juliano would tell a story that marked the “racial lunacy” into which he was born: his mother went into labor while taking part in a protest against the imposition of martial law on Palestinian villages in Israel. She was rushed to the hospital, "but the doctors refused to stitch her and she nearly bled to death," he said. "They knew she was married to an Arab."

Growing up, Juliano for a time adopted his Jewish maternal name and joined an elite fighting unit of the IDF. "For a whole year my father wouldn't talk to me. He simply kept silent," he told an interviewer. But in 1978, while stationed in Jenin, he refused an order to forcibly remove an elderly Palestinian man from a car and ended up in a fight with his commanding officer. He was imprisoned for a few weeks and then left the army.

Ultimately, he came to identify himself, as he put it in 2009, by stating: "I am 100 percent Palestinian and 100 percent Jewish."

He worked extensively as an actor in film, television, and stage, beginning in the 1980s; during this time, he also began to work with his mother on the original Freedom Theater project in Jenin. Funded in part by the prize money that Arna Mer Khamis was awarded when she won the Alternative Nobel Prize, the theater was part of a larger project, “Care and Learning,” set up by Arna and a number of volunteers in the Jenin Refugee Camp. She was the vision behind the project until her death in 1994.

In 2003, Juliano collaborated with Daniel Daniel to produce and direct the documentary Arna’s Children. The film lovingly documented the work of The Freedom Theater, and the lives of the children from Jenin who participated in the plays and theater workshops. The film is also a document of the horrific destruction visited upon the Jenin Refugee Camp when it was invaded by Israeli forces in April 2002, and an account of the Battle of Jenin fought against this invasion. Following the lives and deaths of the young people who participated in The Freedom Theater, as well as the destruction of the theater itself in the Israeli invasion, the film was regarded by many as a masterpiece, and was awarded the Best Documentary Feature prize at the 2004 Tribeca Film Festival.

In the words of one reviewer, the film is “a work of art, because it was made with a trembling hand, with the stammer of someone who does not know whom to mourn most: his mother, the boys from the Jenin camp or the trampled hopes of people yearning to be free."

It is also a film made with tremendous courage and honesty, two virtures that were the trademark of Juliano’s art. Elias Khoury wrote of Arna’s Children: “It was not an ordinary film. I do not know from where Juliano drew the courage and bravery to create this masterpiece, which appeared before my eyes as a testimony stronger than both life and death together.”

The reaction to Arna’s Children helped lead to the possibility of rebuilding and expanding The Freedom Theater in Jenin. In 2006, the theater opened its doors, and since then, it has offered a wide variety of workshops and other opportunities to young people in the camp, along with training in filmmaking, and the first Acting School in Palestine was opened at The Freedom Theater in 2008.

The theater has also produced a number of plays, including Men in the Sun and Animal Farm. The theater’s most recent production, Alice in Wonderland, co-directed by Juliano, opened in January to standing-room-only crowds and rave reviews.

All this constitutes a rare legacy, achieved through a tremendous collective effort, and Juliano was the visionary behind it all.

Juliano Mer Khamis was a fearless artist, and a fearless human being. Arna’s Children and The Freedom Theater are only the two most visible parts of his legacy, a legacy that bespeaks the role artistic creation can play even amidst the most horrible depths of injustice and suffering.

“The Freedom Theatre will provide the children of the camp a tranquil environment to express themselves and create,” he wrote, describing the vision of the theater in 2006. To imagine the possibility of opening up a space of tranquility, of expression, and thus of possibility, in Jenin Refugee Camp, whose name has become synonymous with the most vicious and destructive brutality of the occupation, might be seen as madness. Its very existence is a testament to the power of the artistic tradition that Juliano embodied with such beauty and power.

In Arna’s Children, Juliano documented, tenderly and fearlessly, the many ways that martyrdom comes to the young artists of Jenin camp. He showed us that every life lost in Jenin needed to be seen and understood as an unspeakable tragedy worthy of our remembrance. As Khoury wrote, so movingly, on the establishment of The Freedom Theater in Jenin: “It stands on ground laid down by the child martyrs, who found that the meaning they learned in Arna’s theatre led them in their early youth to create the epic of Jenin Refugee Camp, through its heroic resistance in 2002.

These are the children who we watched in the film Arna’s Children, dying and their blood covering their dream of becoming actors and artists. They are the true owners of The Freedom Theatre in Jenin Refugee Camp.” Juliano has joined them. The loss of his voice is an irreplaceable one.

Arna’s Children can be purchased on DVD here, with all proceeds donated to The Freedom Theater in Jenin. For other ways to support The Freedom Theater, see here.
Juliano's family has issued a very moving statement that is a testament to his life and work: it can be found here.

Obama, Osama and the War Mongers Club

OBAMA, SARKOZY, CAMERON

SHOULD STEP DOWN

IF QADDAFI STEPS DOWN

by

PROFESSOR SAM HAMOD, PH.D

LET ME BE BLUNT:

1. IF QADDAFI IS REQUIRED TO STEP DOWN, THEN THE 4 WARMONGERS WHO STARTED THIS TERRIBLE WAR, OBAMA, SARKOZY, CAMERON AND HAGUE SHOULD STEP DOWN AND ALSO GO INTO EXILE.

2. REPARATIONS MUST BE PAID BY THE USA, FRANCE AND THE UK TO THE LIBYAN ARAB REPUBLIC FOR THE DAMAGE AND THE LIVES THEY TOOK IN THEIR KILING AND ILLGAL WARFARE.

3. ALL OF THESE WARMONGERS SHOULD BE TRIED BY THE INTERNATIONAL COURT OF JUSTICE FOR WAR CRIMES AGAINST LIBYA AND OTHER COUNTRIES, BUT ESPECIALLY AGAINST LIBYA.IF THIS IS NOT DONE, THEN THERE IS NO JUSTICE IN THE WORLD, AND THE USA, UK, FRANCE, AND ITALY SHOULD ALL BE CENSURED BY THE UN AND TAKEN OFF THE "SECURITY COUNCIL" BECAUSE THE ARE WARMONGERING NATIONS, AND ALL THESE "LEADERS" ARE CRIMINALS OF THE WORST SORT; THEY ARE NOT WORTHY OF LEADERSHIP, AND THEY ARE A DETRIMENT TO THEIR OWN NATION AND THEIR OWN PEOPLE.THE WEST, LED BY THE USA, UK, FRANCE AND OTHERS SHOULD NO LONGER TALK ABOUT "JUSTICE" "PEACE" AND "DEMOCRACY," BECAUSE THEY DO NOT PRACTICE THE ABOVE IN THE WORLD OR IN THEIR OWN COUNTRY.

PROFESSOR SAM HAMOD, PH.D

5.3.11

Paul Cobb and Marvin X

Oakland Post Publisher Paul Cobb and author Marvin X at 14th and Broadway, across the street from Academy of da Corner, in front of Rite Aid.

Paul and Marvin grew up together in West Oakland. Paul knows more about Marvin's dad, Owendell Jackmon, a florist, than Marvin. Another brother, Henry Winston, says Mr. Jackmon was his mentor and he holds Marvin's dad in the highest esteem. Mr. Jackmon made his transition at 89 in 1989. He was born in 1900 and particpated in WWI. He was a Race man who was conscious of Marcus Garvey. In Oakland, he was a member of various organizations, including The Men of Tomorrow, Elks, American Legion, et al. Mr. Jackmon was a member of Downs Memorial Methodist Church. Marvin's classic play Flowers for the Trashman deals with the father/son relationship. When the Drama Department at San Franscisco State University produced the play while Marvin was an undergrad, his father attended a performance but wasn't too happy with his son's depiction.

Before moving to Oakland, the Jackmons lived in Fresno. Marvin and his mother, Marian Murrill Jackmon were born in Fowler, nine miles south of Fresno. His parents published the Fresno Voice, possibly the first black newspaper in the Central Valley. They also had a real estate business and sold many blacks their first home after WWII.

See Marvin's autobiography, Somethin' Proper, Black Bird Press, 1998.

photo Walter Riley, Esq.

Somethin' Proper: The Life and Times of a North American African Poet

book review

African American Review, Spring, 2001

by Julius E. Thompson

It tells the story of the most important Muslim poet to appear in the United States during the civil rights era....Marvin X (Marvin E. Jackmon) [El Muhajir]. Somethin' Proper: The Life and Times of a North American African Poet. Castro Valley, CA: Black Bird P, 1998. 278 pp. $29.95.

Marvin X's autobiography Somethin' Proper is one of the most significant works to come out of the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s. It tells the story of perhaps the most important African American Muslim poet to appear in the United States during the Civil Rights era. The book opens with an introduction by scholar Nathan Hare, a key figure in the Black Studies Movement of the period. Marvin X then takes center stage with an exploration of his life's story, juxtaposed with the rapidly changing events and movements of contemporary history: the Civil Rights Movement, the Black Arts Movement, the Black Power Movement, the growth of Islam in America, and especially the influence of Elijah Muhammad's Nation of Islam, and the series of challenges facing black people in recent decades.

Marvin X was born Marvin E. Jackmon in Fowler, California, on May 29, 1944, and grew up in West Fresno and West Oakland, California. His early education was completed in these cities, and he later attended Oakland City College (Merritt) and San Francisco State University, where he was awarded a B.A. and an M.A. in English.

He emerged as an important new poetic voice among California black poets in the late 1960s, and wrote for several of the key Black Arts Movement journals of the period, including the Journal of Black Poetry, Soulbook, Black Dialogue, Black Theatre magazine, Black Scholar, Black World, and Muhammad Speaks.

He was also a key playwright of the era, working with Ed Bullins in organizing the Black Arts West Theatre in San Francisco, 1966, and in founding the Black House, also in San Francisco, with Bullins, Eldridge Cleaver, and Ethna Wyatt, 1967.

He also worked with Bullins at the New Lafayette Theatre in Harlem, 1968. During the last forty years, Marvin X has taught Black Studies, literature, drama, and English at Fresno State University, the University of California, Berkeley and San Diego, the University of Nevada, Reno, San Francisco State University, Mills College, and Merritt and Laney Colleges in Oakland, California.

His very active career is also reflected in a rapid-moving life style. This fact is documented by the author in twenty chapters in Somethin' Proper, followed by an appendix, which captures the life and death of Huey Newton. Marvin X was a busy man during the 1960s and 1970s. He was a Black Muslim, an associate of the key leaders of the Black Panther Party (Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, and Eldridge Cleaver), an anti-Vietnam War protester (he went into exile in Canada, Mexico City and later in Central America, rather than be drafted into the United States Army), and an outspoken critic of American economic, social, and cultural discrimination of African Americans at home, and of Third World peoples abroad.

This theme is reflected in one of his most famous poems of the period, "Burn, Baby Burn" on the 1965 Watts Riot:

Tired, sick and tired.

Tired of being sick and tired.

Lost,

lost inthe wilderness of white America.

Are the masses asses?

Cool, said the master

To the slave, "No problem,

Don't rob and steal, I'll Be your driving wheel."

Cool.

And he wheeled us into350 years of BlackMadness--

to hog guts, Conked hair, quo vadis

Bleaching cream, Uncle Thomas,

to WattsTo the streets, to theKillllllllll ........

Boommmmm ............

2 honkeys gone.

Motherfuck the police

And Parker's sister too

Burn, baby, burn*******

Cook outta sight*******

Fineburgs,

wineburgs,

Safeway,

noway,

burn .....Baby, burn

Somethin' Proper also reveals Marvin X's family life, marriages, children, and friends, and notes the conflicts which he has experienced across the years with individuals, organizations, and governments. He writes in a style which captures the essence of black language, folklore, and culture in the United States, with an upscale urban beat!

Marvin X notes the high and low points in his own life and that of his associates. Most potent is his analysis of the drug situation in this country, and its relationship to and impact upon the black struggle. He calls for change and reform in this area, stressing the need for continued black struggle to overcome the age-old problems of discrimination, racism, and oppression in America.

Marvin X remains an active writer today. His body of work includes Fly to Allah (1969); Black Man Listen (1969), a key work in Dudley Randall's catalogue at Broadside Press; Woman, Man's Best Friend (1973); and a play, One Day in the Life, most recently produced in 1997 in Brooklyn and Newark, New Jersey.

His most recent books of poetry are Love and War (1995), Land of My Daughters, poems, 2005.He remains a very interesting voice from the Black Arts Movement, continuing to write and to challenge contemporary readers to think and to act, and to assess the past, the present, and the future.

COPYRIGHT 2001 African American Review

COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale Group

Marvin appears in the recent literary anthology Black California, Heyday Books, Berkeley, 2011. He was Guest Editor of the Journal of Pan African Studies Poetry Issue, 2011. Marvin is editing an anthology of writings dedicated to the memory of assassinated Oakland Post Editor Chauncey Bailey.

On May 14, Marvin X will receive the Inspired Artist Award at the Paramount Theatre.

Osama from the Street

Obama from the Street or the Mack God

The Meaning of Osama bin Laden from a Street Perspective

In the language of the street, Osama bin Laden checked the white man. He put traps in the White man's path, allowing us to breathe another day while the white man focused on catching Obama, just as the Black Panther Party took pressure off the Negro people by having the police focus on the Black Panthers as the main threat to the national security of the United States. Can you imagine, some little Negroes with pistols and shotguns are able to challenge the might of the trillion dollar military industrial complex called America!

This is a joke of the highest order and should receive an award at the coming Comedy Concert at Oakland's Paramount Theatre on May 14.

What we must learn from Osama is the interconnectedness of all things, especially in the Global Village. On the highest level of socalled civilization, there are only those who rule and those who are ruled. Such ideological and religious personas do not matter in the least, for they all go to the same banks to bankroll their iniquities. It doesn't matter if they are Muslim, Christian, Democrat, Republican, Socialist, Communist, Gay, Lesbian. Only their interests matter, their narrow minded ideological concerns, all else can be sacrificed, sometimes to the highest bidder.

In the street, there is little distinction from the cops and robbers, they actually work together to keep crime alive. What would the police do with a society free of crime? What would the jailers and social workers, probation, parole officers do?

Osama has, beyond his wildest imagination, helped usher in another Age of Man, ultimately helping the downtrodden of humanity get the courage to stand up in the face of oppression.

His main contribution was helping overcoming the fear of death. The suicide bombers gave us ample evidence death is no matter, that a greater life awaits us, if we only rid ourselves of the fear of death, if only we will invoke the dictum my life and my death are all for Allah.

In the Mack God philosophy, death is no matter, except as the price of justice. For whatever twisted ideological perspective he originated, whether Sunni or some weird combination thereof, Osama gave the West its greatest challenge yet.

But in the end the West shall face its greatest challenge as Baraka told us, "In the end the Negro will be the terrorist." Thus forget about Osama bin Ladan and consentrate on the most oppressed sector of American society. They shall and must be liberated by any means necessary, although we suggest by the most scientific means possible.

The American wage slaves can join them or stand on the sidelines, it doesn't matter. The time has come for the liberation of the North American Africans, and America may be destroyed in the process. Who gives a damn?

--Marvin X

4/1/11

Imperialist Running Dog Obama Catches Osama

Al Jazeera English: Live Stream - Watch Now - Al Jazeera English


On the Death of Osama bin Laden

Well, well, well, as election season begins, Obama has a feather in his cap, the body of Osama, the most wanted man in American history. Thus the Obama Drama continues for the hoodwinking of those addicted to the world of make believe. As we imagined, Osama was living not in some mountain cave, but in a mansion inside Islamabad, Pakistan, of course whereabouts long known by the Pakistani Intelligence and the CIA.

For better or worse, he was a character created by America, first to defeat the Russians in Afghanistan, then to be the bogeyman of the Global fascists in the American military, finance, corporate, univeristy complex of white supremacy institutions that shall now proceed to reinstitute chattel slavery in America in the form of wage slavery, with little or no benefits for the workers who have yet do not have the boldness to seize the means of production and institute a People's Republic Ruled by the Consent of the Governed. I refer them to the poem If We Must Die by Black Renaissance poet Claude Mckay. Hopefully this will get their nuts out of the sand and/or vaginas. A coward's death is lighter than a feather, the warrior's death is higher than Mount Tai.

No more jobs for life, no job amenities, no free health insurance, no social security. Your life is a commodity in the free market economy. It shall make money off you at every turn, no free lunches, no free rides, not even to the cemetary, better a cremation in the nomadic European tradition so accustomed by the North American Africans addicted to white supremacy world of make believe perpetuated by the Monkey Mind Media.

Osama Bin Laden was an American creation, with full support of Saudi Arabia, how else could nine of the sixteen highjackers learn to fly but not how to land and while training in America? How else could the Bin Laden fly out of America on 9/11 when no other planes could fly? Study the House of Saud and the House of Bush!

And what is Barack Obama but an extention of the Bush White Supremacy Mythology, except in black face. When he imposes a No-fly Zone over the Gaza Consentration Camp, I will support him, until then, I will ride his ass like Roy Rogers on Trigger.

Black ain't black

white ain't white

beware the day

beware the night.

--Marvin X

The Meeting, A Play about Malcolm and Martin

Hello friends, thank you for taking the time to read my invite. For the past twenty years I have been performing in Jeff Stetson’s award-winning play ‘The Meeting’—a story about an unlikely yet necessary meeting between two of America’s most important figures-- Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. Thrust into extraordinary circumstances, these men of great conviction, debate strategies as they caution America to keep the promise she made to her citizens. The Meeting is delightful, informative and hard-hitting. Please join me in a command performance as we remember the lion and the lamb, the Prince and the King, Malcolm and Martin.
UPCOMING ONE ACT STAGE PRODUCTION:
The MEETING
A King and a Prince: Malcolm X meets Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Directed by Michael Lange


In celebration of Malcolm X’s 86th birthday San Francisco’s Jazz Heritage Center- Educational & Media Theatre at 1330 Fillmore Street will host a live stage performance of Jeff Stetson’s award winning play THE MEETING on Thursday May 19th, May 20th, and May 21st at 7:30PM, respectively, and on May 22, 2011 at 3PM.

THE MEETING depicts a fictitious meeting between two of the most important leaders of the 20th Century – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X. The one act play takes place a few days before the assassination of Malcolm X at New York’s Audubon Ballroom, high up in an intimate and modestly furnished hotel suite in the heart of Harlem. In THE MEETING both men’s philosophies resonate and clash as they eloquently set forth their arguments on issues of freedom, dignity and respect not only for African Americans but for all people who have suffered at the hands of injustice. It imagines what could have happened had they actually met, joined hands and pushed in the same direction.

The meeting features veteran actors Michael Lange as Malcolm X, Abbie Rhone as Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and actors Dejuan Conner or Dorian Brockington as Rashad, Malcolm’s bodyguard. The play, first performed in 1984, received eight NAACP image awards including best play and best playwright. It has been reviewed as “a remarkable, intensely intimate meeting full of undisguised competitiveness, deep passion and potent reasoning. The Meeting is enthralling.”

Tickets are $20 and are on sale at Brown Paper Tickets.com 800-838-3006 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 800-838-3006 end_of_the_skype_highlighting. Group rates - student and special prices are available. Group coordinator receives one free ticket. For more information contact Director Michael Lange 510-485-6338 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 510-485-6338 end_of_the_skype_highlighting