Monday, February 8, 2010
by Bob Holman
Bowery Poetry Club, New York City
Where I’d like to start this 2005 Poetry Roundup is Iraq, as in, how did we get there and how do we get back? The consciousness-altering book of poems that tells the tale, in no uncertain terms and yet always via poetry, is the astonishing Land of My Daughters: Poems 1995-2005 (Black Bird Press) by Marvin X.
Marvin X is the USA’s Rumi, and his nation is not “where our fathers died” but where our daughters live. The death of patriarchal war culture is his everyday reality. X’s poems vibrate, whip, love in the most meta- and physical ways imaginable and un-. He’s got the humor of Pietri, the politics of Baraka, and the spiritual Muslim grounding that is totally new in English –- the ecstasy of Hafiz, the wisdom of Saadi. It’s not unusual for him to have a sequence of shortish lines followed by a culminating line that stretches a quarter page –- it is the dance of the dervishes, the rhythms of a Qasida.
“I am the black bird in love
I fly with love
I swoop into the ocean and pluck fish in the name of love
oceans flow with love
let the ocean wash me with love
even the cold ocean is love
the morning swim is love
the ocean chills me with love
from the deep come fish full of love”
(from the opening poem, “In the Name of Love”)
“How to Love A Thinking Woman”:
“Be revolutionary, radical, bodacious
Stay beyond the common
Have some class about yaself…
Say things she’s never heard before
Ihdina sirata al mustaquim(guide us on the straight path)
Make her laugh til she comes in her panties
serious jokes to get her mind off the world.”
There are anthems (“When I’ll Wave the Flag/Cuando Voy a Flamear la Bandera”), rants (“JESUS AND LIQUOR STORES”), love poems (“Thursday”) and poems totally uncategorizable (“Dreamtime”). Read this one cover to cover when you’ve got the time to “Marry a Tree.”
Beyond Religion, toward Spirituality
by Marvin X
Review by Bob Holman
Last year Marvin X released his magnum opus, Land of My Daughters: Poems 1995-2005 (Black Bird Press), poems that put me in mind of Mawlânâ Jalâl ad-Dîn Muhammad Rûmî. He just published Beyond Religion Towards Spirituality, Essays on Consciousness (Black Bird Press, 2006), and all I can say, folks, is this is the Bible of the Hood and is bound to stir up plenty of opposition -- and maybe even cut through the BS to move towards God. “Imagine we are the generation of Parker, Coltrane, Dolphy, Monk, Duke, Bessie, Lady Day, Ella, Sarah, what on earth can follow us but the earth shaking children of tomorrow... who will smash the atmosphere with sounds...”
“If the mate leaves, we should be happy. Why would you want to keep someone who wants to go? If she wants to be with Joe, let her go -- you don’t own her. If she wants, she has the human right to give Joe some pussy. I know you don’t like it but get over it. Don’t kill her and Joe behind the funk. The world is full of infinite possibilities. God will provide wou with the perfect mate... Let go and Let God.”
Saturday, February 6, 2010
The new Oakland Police Department Chief Bates says guns, drugs and gangs are his priority. We suggest he reconfigure his priorities to gangs, guns and drugs, for he must first consider his organization a gang since it has been known to behave as such, to wit: the Riders and "black Riders," police officers suspected and/or charged with corruption under the color of law, including shaking down drug dealers, planting false evidence and false charges and having conflict of interest in criminal investigations, including and especially the broad daylight, downtown Oakland assassination of journalist Chauncey Bailey, editor of the Oakland Post newspaper. Yes, I feel a personal connection to the murder of Chauncey since he was a friend and colleague whose last story was a review of my book How to Recover from the Addiction of White Supremacy. The day before his assassination he came to my outdoor classroom at 14th and Broadway to show me his review of my book. We know at the time of his death he was investigating corruption in the police department and City Hall, during the tenure of Jerry Brown as mayor. Mayor Jerry Brown is reported to have said, "I'm going to stop that nigger from snooping around the OPD and City Hall!" Not long after, Chauncey was fired from his longtime job as a reporter at the Oakland Tribune for frivolous reasons.
Officers suspected of involvement in the murder of Chauncey Bailey are still employed by the OPD, a supreme insult to the people of Oakland, but we understand one suspected officer was returned to duty just prior to the retirement of the chief, allegedly to keep the officer quiet about the chief's role in corruption. All gangs protect their members, and of course deny criminal activity.
Guns and drugs were the other items of concern by OPD Chief Bates. But again, Chauncey Bailey's notes suggest the OPD was/is involved in the proliferation of guns and drugs in Oakland, in conspiracy with Mexican drugs gangs and politicians. Indeed, the DEA was in town at the time of Chauncey's murder, but were investigating bigger fish in the political hierarchy of Oakland.
We know Mayor Jerry Brown deleted his Internet notes before he left town to become Attorney General. Ironically, Mayor Ron Dellums asked Jerry Brown to investigate the police investigation of Chauncey Bailey! Sounds like asking the fox to guard the hen house.
With suspected involvement by police and politicians a well known feature of Mexican culture, why is such behavior so incredulous on this side of the border, especially with prior cases of police misconduct within the OPD?
But more importantly, we wonder why the new OPD Chief Bates, along with Mayor Ron Dellums and President Obama, cannot find the political acumen to do at home that the US is doing abroad in Iraq, and preparing to do in Afghanistan and Yemen to stem violence among the mostly young insurgents or "terrorists," i.e., provide schooling, employment and housing. This is nowhere in the agenda of the President, Mayor or Chief of Police. Is this a case of myopia or simple disregard for the plight of our young men committing homicide and suicide in our cities, mainly from lack of education, employment and housing, exactly the same reasons for violence abroad that is supposedly a threat to the national security of America? You mean violence at home is not a threat to the national security of the US?
Gangs, guns, drugs? Maybe there is truth in the notes of Chauncey Bailey. We know the US is the numer one gun dealer of the world. We know there are know cites in the hood where guns can be purchased 24/7. We also know drug traffic in Afghanistan decreased during the rule of the Taliban, but increased after the American invasion. Presentinly opium is flowing like water, with the addiction of entire villages, including men, women and children, and drug addiction is crossing the border into Pakistan, thanks to the US. So we suggest the OPD Chief Bates do an in-house investigation of guns, drugs and gang activity within the OPD. He may be utterly surprised.
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Marvin X is the author of twenty books and has taught at UC Berkeley, UC San Diego, San Francisco State University, Fresno State University, Mills, Merritt and Laney. His archives are in the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. From time to time, his writings appear in the Oakland Post and San Francisco Bayview. Occasionally, he appears on Pacifica radio in Berkeley, Los Angeles, Houston and New York. Marvin X teaches at his outdoor classroom, 14th and Broadway, downtown Oakland. The class offers individual/peer group counseling, literacy and a micro-credit bank for the poor and homeless.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Plato Negro at the Crossroads of Oakland
When the rains cleared, Plato Negro returned to his outdoor classroom at 14th and Broadway, downtown Oakland. The classroom is a multi-purpose center, since in addition to a classroom, it is a free space zone for people to gather, a literacy center, micro credit bank, an on the street mental health peer group session, yes, facilitated by Marvin X, variously known as Plato Negro, Rumi, Jeremiah, Amenhotep.
For Black History Month, the poet has been giving out poster poems of his classic Black History is World History, also Haiti, Oh, Haiti. He offers youth ten dollars to answer the 14 questions on his blog concerning the poem Haiti, Oh Haiti. When they say they know black history, he offers them ten dollars if they can answer a question from his poem Black History is World History.
Of course his best seller is Mythology of Pussy, a manual for manhood and womanhood training.
Grass roots brothers call it the Bible of male/female relations. Man and women literally fight over this pamphlet that has shaken up America coast to coast. The poet did a national tour last year, going through Houston, Texas, Grambling , Louisiana, Jackson, Mississippi, Washington, DC (Howard University), Philadelphia, PA (International Locks Conference, see Youtube), Newark, New Jersey, Brooklyn, NY and Harlem. When he arrived in Harlem at the Schomburg Library, poet Eugene Redman wrote Marvin X a check for $200.00 for five copies of Mythology of Pussy. In fifty years of writing, no piece of his writing has stirred up such controversy or interest, especially with the grass roots. The grass roots are literally fighting over it, men and women. It was reported that in the whore house the girls tried to steal a copy from the madam and she had to check them not to leave with her copy. In Sacramento, California, an OG brother was told by young brothers that he could leave but they were keeping the pamphlet.
Indeed, Marvin X was on the bus headed to his classroom when a brother pulled out a copy and said he needed to read it because he'd been up all night with his woman. Another brother called Mythology of Pussy the "Bible." He said he had been having problems with his women until he read MOP, then it cleared up all his questions. He understood he had bought into a mythology that could kill him or make him kill.
A young sister came by Plato's Classroom and told him MOP empowered her. She didn't know she had such power. And when she told the young brothers she owned her pussy, they submitted.
Plato asked another young sister what she learned from MOP. She said she learned to tell the brothers to clean their fingernails. She said she gave it to her boyfriend but he has not returned it. The young brothers say it helps them up their game. And every brother wants his game upped! When girls were asked at a continuation high school in Berkeley, what they got out of his lecture on MOP, they said it upped their game as well.
Mothers have obtained copies of MOP since it was published, telling the poet they were demanding their sons and daughters read it. One mother said she put it on her daughter's bed so
she could not miss it.
A mother came through the classroom with her daughter and obtained a copy, telling her daughter, "You see that lock on the cover. Girl, do you see that lock?"
The poet was informed at Howard University that in spite of the fact that the girls outnumber the boys 14:1, the females are in control of their pussy. They determine when the boys can have some, contrary to the boys thinking they are in control of the situation because they are a priority, being outnumbered 14 to 1.
At the conclusion of his lecture at Howard, a young lady came up to the poet at the lectern and whispered in his ear, "We control the boys, they don't control us. When we want a brother and another sisters wants him , we say, sista, wait, let her have him tonight, you have him tomorrow, and I will kick it with him the third night. Yeah, that's how we do it. The boys think they playing us but we doing the playing. After all, it's our pussy!
What is clear is that the poet has written a grass roots classic that doesn't need approval of the black bourgeoisie culture police, and nor does he need approval of black intellecutals in perpetual crisis, whether tenured negro professors or femininsts who are dying from lack love from their brothers because they persist in their inordancy, blinding wandering on.
Marvin X said he was through with pseudo white liberals and black bourgeoisie when they told him (the whites) "I could help you if you were part of the family." And the Black bourgeoisie said, "I could help you but you ain't no mulatto."
Marvin X says he will go down with the grass roots. Whites and the black bourgeoisie mulattoes can kiss his black ass.
Monday, February 1, 2010
The characters in this drama include Mr. Re, Mr. Ra and Mr. Ru, Miss Re, Miss Ra and Miss Ru. This cast of characters are central to the Mystery that has been a seemingly eternal narrative of a people known throughout time by a multitude of names, positive and negative. Some names are not worth mentioning since to do so would only complicate this story, this mystery of time, place and space. Mr. Ra, Mr. Re and Mr. Ru, plus their female counterparts, seemingly have been raised high, then placed low throughout time, depending on the weather, internal conflicts such as succession to power, and invasion of their lands by foreigners from time to time.
The Ra's, Re's and Ru's are symbolic of a community of people who have struggled against all odds to achieve dignity and respect throughout the universe. It seems to be an eternal struggle up the hill then down as in the Sisyphean mythology. Their victories seem short lived since they cannot learn to practice eternal vigilance, thus from time to time they have been known to relapse into madness and animal behavior. The good times come, but disappear because Ra, Re and Ru do not stay on their posts until properly relieved. They succumb to the ten trillion, one billion illusions of the monkey mind, caught in a schizoid dance between the persona of devils and gods, between their divinity and bestiality.
Why can't the Ra's, Re's and Ru's ever land on solid ground? Why is their mental equilibrium forever shaken and smashed to the core, leaving them in a state of psychosocial chaos, scrambling to reinvent the wheel of balanced personal and communal organization?
When they look in the mirror, what do they see, is it the picture of Dorian Grey, Peter Pan, individuals who wanted to be forever young and beautiful, yet the very attempt was an exercise in ugliness, for nothing stays the same, everything must change. Who wants to be a child forever, a stunted man and woman, unable to enjoy spiritual maturation, for surely once the adult enjoys the wisdom of maturity, he never wants to be a child again, at least not until he returns there in old age. But even then he becomes a child against his own will, and sometimes he is ashamed to need the assistance due children.
It is not impossible for the Ra's, Re's and Ru's to recover from their negrocities, once they make the sincere effort, calling forth that ineluctable energy to propel them up from ignorance, up from lust, greed, mental myopia and the multiple tragic flaws that befall human beings of every sort, stripe and color.
Yes, the mystery, the conundrum of the ages can be solved by simple detoxification and recovery from all illusions of the monkey mind. No attachments but to God! There is the need to detach from desire, from want and even need, for what are the essential needs, all else is illusion, what we think we want, think we desire, think we need, when we know there are very few things really important.
The best we achieve is a momentary joy, when we give all to the beloved, the agape or unconditional love, not Eros or filial love. "We feed you for Allah's pleasure only, we desire from you neither reward nor thanks."
It is only when the beloved sings the song of lost love that the lover answers with a return to the reed bed, for the yearning was ever there of lost, when the reed was cut from the bed. As Rumi taught, the sound is in the reed flute. The yearning, the mourning, the weeping, of the heart separated from its beloved, ever wishing, waiting, and hoping for the return home, yes, and home is where the heart is. Home is not where Fitzgerald said where we cannot return, but where Frost said we cannot be turned away.
Ra, Re, Ru, seize the time, do not tarry in Jerusalem, but embark upon that dangerous Jericho road, where danger lurks behind every bush, yet with the armor of God we travel unafraid into the new order, never flinching, retreating, but ever forward into the new day of light and love.
You can go there, simply open the door and walk in unafraid of the darkness soon turning to light. And the light happens only because you turn on the switch, removing darkness forever and ever.
--Marvin X
2/1/10
Friday, January 29, 2010
Toward the Language of Love
Thursday, January 28, 2010
7. We want to secure our neighborhoods ourselves, minus racist police.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Response to State of Union Speech:Obama Drama--The End
A sister on the street at my outdoor classroom came by tonight and said, "You think this is the end, cause ain't nobody got no job. I'm working part time." Well, sister, I replied, you know when you at the end of a movie, what do you see on the screen--The End! And so it is--every nation has a term, and when it cannot fulfill its destiny, it simply falls into the dustbin of history. Another nation takes its place.
And so the time has come to think out of the box of Americana. As we speak, a power shift is taking place in the global village--it's called BRIC: Brazil, Russia, India and China. This is the coming new world order. You see America is not in the picture. She had her chance but blew it because of her arrogance, greed and selfishness. She has no intention to make fundamental changes in her economic policy of free market exploitation.
Your President said tonight that America will move aggressively to secure new markets to dump American goods. But what are American goods and where are they being manufactured in America? Does he really think America can compete with China and India--better do the math, better do the science, better do the English or Mandarin, Hindi and Portuguese. Better jump out of the box of this white supremacy English. Elijah said English shall be banned in the new world order.
It is time for us to think outside the box of America that has proscribed us into the dungeon of
economic, educational and spiritual stagnation. There are rites and rituals in other cultural traditions that we must consider, and if they are progressive, we must embrace them, whether it is marital relations, creative and artistic innovations, economic endeavors, educational curriculum or whatever.
We cannot continue inside the box of a sinking ship. Why should we go down with the Titanic just because we happened to find ourselves on board--we can jump ship and swim to another shore, even if we only do so mentally as Jesus taught, "In this world but not of this world."
Look at Latin America (Peru, Brazil, Chile, Boliva, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Venezuela, et al) determined to find an economic solution beyond free market capitalist exploitation. You mean North American Africans cannot come together in an economic think tank to configure a just economic order that provides a living wage and collective ownership of essential institutions in our community, including communal emergency facilities. The Mormons were able to send tons of food to Haiti because they control an abundant food supply for their own kind. Where is the North American African Emergency food center, medical center, transportation and housing center?
Long ago we heard the tune Wake Up, Everybody, teachers must teach a new way, preachers must preach a new way. And so we must think a new way, discarding the box of archaic, reactionary, ignorant thoughts. Booker T. told you to cast down your buckets where you are, and you can do this if you will get your own little bucket? Think globally, act locally. Jump out the box to see what others are doing in the global village, then bring your knowledge home to your own kind. North American Africans are addicted to white supremacy thinking, i.e., you want to save the world yet can't save your own black asses. You are emulating American values and stinking thinking.
Your President didn't tell you tonight the US government is giving money to employ insurgents in Iraq, Afghanistan, and soon Yemen. Yet, this same government refuses to make similar jobs available in the hood so the low intensity war can end, the homicides and suicides (probably half the homicides are suicides because brothers put themselves in a situation so someone can kill them because they were too cowardly to kill themselves).
But how can the USA pay for jobs for so called terrorists abroad, but only call upon corporate America to find jobs for the dispossessed and desperate here at home? But he let you know there will be money for police and correctional officers to secure and occupy the hood that is growing more anxious and weary from a life of nothingness and dread.
We must realize the final solution is do for self. Booker T. Washington, Marcus Garvey and Elijah Muhammad told you the day would come when you shall be forced to do for self. That day has arrived. You say you are free, no longer slaves, then get up and do for self. America cannot save you--did it save you during Katrina? Did it drop you a bottle of water, a grain of food? Not until you had gone several days, weeks, with nothing. Yet you have faith in this devil and the Negro in the White House who shall be lucky to walk away with his head.
You must think out of the box. As Baraka says, "Stop thinking like an American." Are you being treated like an American? No, dogs get better treatment than you! Look how much time Michael Vick got for mistreating dogs, yet how much time shall America get for the mistreatment of her descendants of slaves who are yet suffering poverty, ignorance and disease? Your President said nothing tonight about helping the poor, the wretched confined to the cities full of violence, desperation and hopelessness, about the young single mothers whose mates are confined to jail and prison, about the drug addicted who medicate themselves into oblivion to ease the pain of their lives.
Monday, January 25, 2010
Marvin X, Crazy Nigguh, Now Available for Speaking Engagements/Readings
About Marvin X
I thought Marvin perhaps had an exaggerated opinion of himself, but the information below removes all doubt. Can you imagine comparing himself to Malcolm X (by including such an identification from Nathan Hare) and calling himself the last revolutionary. But when others say such things about someone it is understandable that they would also think these things. Such is the human psyche. --Vulindlela Wobogo
Malcolm X ain’t got nothing on Marvin X. Still Marvin has been ignored and silenced like Malcolm would be ignored and silenced if he had lived on into the Now. Marvin’s one of the most extraordinary, exciting black intellectuals living today—writing, publishing, performing with Sun Ra’s Musicians (Live in Philly at Warm Daddies, available on DVD from BPP), reciting, filming, producing conferences (Kings and Queens of Black Consciousness, San Francisco Black Radical Book Fair); he’s ever engaging, challenging the respectable and the comfortable. He like Malcolm, dares to say things fearlessly, in the open (in earshot of the white man) that so many Negroes feel, think and speak on the corner, in the barbershops and urban streets of black America….
People who know Marvin X already know him as a peripatetic, outspoken, irreverent, poetic “crazy nigger,” whose pen is continually and forever out-of-control. As a professional psychologist, I hasten to invoke the disclaimer that that is in no way a diagnosis or clinical impression of mine. I have never actually subjected this brother to serious psychoanalytical scrutiny and have no wish to place him on the couch, if only because I know of no existing psycho-diagnostic instrumentality of pathology of normalcy that could properly evaluate Marvin completely.—Dr. Nathan Hare, Black Think Tank, San Francisco
When you listen to Tupac Shakur, E-40, Too Short, Master P or any other rappers out of the Bay Area of Cali, think of Marvin X. He laid the foundation and gave us the language to express Black male urban experience in a lyrical way. -- James G. Spady, Philadelphia New Observer
He’s Plato teaching on the streets of Oakland. If you want to learn about motivation and inspiration, don’t spend all that money going to seminars and workshops, just go stand at 14th and Broadway and observe Marvin X in his classroom. His play One Day in the Life is the most powerful drama I've seen. —Ishmael Reed, essayist, Oakland
His writing is orgasmic!—Fahizah Alim, Sacramento Bee
Consciousness-altering, astonishing -- Marvin X is the USA’s Rumi & his nation is not “where our fathers died” but where our daughters live. X’s poems vibrate, whip, love in the most meta- and physical ways imaginable and un-. He’s got the humor of Pietri, the politics of Baraka, and the spiritual Muslim grounding that is totally new in English –- the ecstasy of Hafiz, the wisdom of Saadi.--Bob Holman, Bowery Poetry Club, NYC
He’s the new Malcolm X! Nobody’s going to talk about his book, HOW TO RECOVER FROM THE ADDICTION TO WHITE SUPREMACY, out loud, but they’ll hush hush about it
—Jerri Lange, author, Jerri, A Black Woman’s Life in the Media
Declaring Muslim American literature as a field of study is valuable because by re-contexualising it will add another layer of attention to Marvin X's incredibly rich body of work. Muslim American literature begins with Marvin X. --Dr. Mohja Kahf, Department of English, Middle East and Islamic Studies, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville
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. --Julius E. Thompson, African American Review
He has always been in the forefront of Pan African writing. Indeed, he is one of the innovators and founders of the revolutionary school of African writing. --Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones)
I welcome reading the work of a “grassroots guerilla publicist” who is concerned with the psychological/intellectual freedom of his people. I think of Walter Rodney as the “guerilla intellectual” who was organically connected to the grassroots. Key book here would be The Groundings With My Brothers [and sisters]. Or Steve Biko’s I Write What I Like. I think though that Dr. M. is closely affiliated with Frances Cress Welsing’s Isis Papers: Keys to the Colors (along with Bobby Wright’s thesis). Of course we need to also consult that classic: The Black Anglo Saxons, and Frazier’s Black Bourgeoisie. What I am most impressed with is Dr. M’s Pan-Africanist perspective. We all need to “Detox” as Dr. M states, wherever we are in this world. So the Pan-African element is important. Du Bois knew this, and many of the other giants. Even though they were also, ironically, “infected” like most of us in some way today. I think this citation from Step I is important: “…We are only powerless when we deny who we are and do not recognize we exist in harmony with the universal spirit of peace, justice and mercy. White supremacy is an illusion in the minds of those who believe it and those who accept the scam”….--Mark Christian, PhD Associate Professor Sociology & Black World Studies Miami University (Ohio)
Selected writings
Books
Sudan Rajuli Samia (poems), Al Kitab Sudan Publishing, 1967.
Black Dialectics (proverbs), Al Kitab Sudan Publishing, 1967.
Fly to Allah: Poems, Al Kitab Sudan Publishing, 1969.
The Son of Man, Al Kitab Sudan Publishing, 1969.
Black Man Listen: Poems and Proverbs, Broadside Press, 1969.
Black Bird (parable), Al Kitab Sudan Publishing, 1972.
Woman-Man's Best Friend, Al Kitab Sudan Publishing, 1973.
Selected Poems, Al Kitab Sudan Publishing, 1979
Confession of a Wife Beater and Other Poems, Al Kitab Sudan Publishing, 1981.
Liberation Poems for North American Africans, Al Kitab Sudan Publishing, 1982.
Love and War: Poems, Black Bird Press, 1995.
Somethin' Proper, autobiography, BBP, 1998.
In the Crazy House Called America, essays, BBP, 2002.
Wish I Could Tell You the Truth, essays, BBP, 2005.
In the Land of My Daughters, poems, BBP,2005.
Beyond Religion, toward Spirituality, essays, 2007.
How to Recover from the Addiction to White Supremacy,BBP, 2008
Eldridge Cleaver, My friend the Devil, a memoir, BBP, 2009
Mythology of Pussy, a manhood/womanhood rites of passage, BBP, 2009
Plays
Flowers for the Trashman (one-act), first produced in San Francisco at San Francisco State College, 1965.
Come Next Summer, first produced in San Francisco at Black Arts/West Theatre, 1966.
The Trial, first produced in New York City at Afro-American Studio for Acting and Speech, 1970. Take Care of Business, (musical version of Flowers for the Trashman) first produced in Fresno, California, at Your Black Educational Theatre, 1971.
Resurrection of the Dead, first produced in San Francisco at Your Black Educational Theatre, 1972.
Woman-Man's Best Friend, (musical dance drama based on author's book of same title), first produced in Oakland, California, at Mills College, 1973.
In the Name of Love, first produced in Oakland at Laney College Theatre, 1981.
One Day in the Life, 2000, produced at Recovery Theatre, San Francisco.
Salaam, Huey Newton, Salaam, (with Ed Bullins),produced at the New Federal Theatre, New York, 2008.
Sergeant Santa, 2002
Other
One Day in the Life (videodrama and soundtrack),2002.
The Kings and Queens of Black Consciousness (video documentary), 2002.
Love and War (poetry reading published on CD), 2001.
What is clear is that our president doesn't seem to get it, especially with respect to the least of those, the poor, homeless, imprisoned and those forced into acts of violence and other criminality due to economic circumstances.
His focus has been to aid the rich and middle class, neglecting the working poor, the under and unemployed, temporary and contract workers. Yet he has allocated billions to employ poor insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan. Logically, if the poor and violent persons in the hood would aim their guns at the White House, there would be an immediate policy shift toward the home front.
Even mass protest by the poor, homeless, unemployed and mentally ill might force his administration to shift its focus. Imagine, nearly one million children go to school homeless in America! And addiction to crass materialism is the major reason 2.4 million people are imprisoned in this nation. Of course, many of the imprisoned are dual diagnosed, suffering drug addiction and mental illness. We must help the least of these, the captives, the broken hearted, the rejected and despised.
Obama's focus on saving the financial system may work in the short term, but there is no future for capitalism with its free market exploitation of poor nations and their resources. As we enter the Age of Consciousness, the free market system of cheap labor and resources, will not stand.
What is the real cost of exploiting poor nations of their wealth so the West can grow fat with conspicuous consumption, devouring 25% of the world's energy while only 4% of the population?
This is white supremacy pure and simple, and all those who enjoy the spoils of free market capitalism shall endure the wrath of those who rise up to claim their labor and natural resources.
Free market exploitation is the breeding ground of so called terrorism and revolution. Many so called terrorists are simple freedom fighters reclaiming their land from foreign occupiers and neo-colonial running dogs.
And so our President will need to get on the right path. He, his administration and the Democratic party, had a wake up call in Massachusetts with the Republication senate victory. This was clearly the result of Democratic arrogance and myopia, a tragic flaw in classic drama.
This same blindness caused him to focus on health care while millions are unemployed and homeless, victims of the sub-prime loan scam, the pyramid scheme of global finance. How will they pay for health insurance while unemployed and homeless?
How in the hell did he earn the Nobel Peace Prize in the midst of wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia? Yet violence in American cities outnumber American deaths in all those nations--we don't count the innocent thousands killed by Americans.
While he is putting out the fires of war abroad, American cities burn in a low intensity war of the dispossessed, the wretched of the earth. Unless it is a high profile case, most deaths in the hood go unmentioned, with traumatized families suffering in silence.
The ghettos of America are little Haiti's, full of ignorance, disease, poverty and drug abuse. How else can one live in hell except under medication? Unless one chooses revolution, the only therapy for the oppressed.
Youth in the Bay Area have the highest rates of STDs and HIV/AIDS in the State of California. And yet denial is the order of the day, with no national concern from the White House, after all, Washington DC is the capital of HIV/AIDS in America. The President need only look in his backyard to see the suffering that is nationwide, coast to coast. But his focus is on so called terrorists in Afghanistan. And after the war there is concluded, we shall discover a nation of people addicted to opium, and Pakistan is suffering same fate as we speak.
Is our first black president suffering the Hamlet syndrome, to be or not to be--to be for the people or for the bankers and wall street robber barons who are global and transnational, who don't give a damn about American workers, white or black, if they don't fit into the free market economy of global exploitation and domination. Have you heard the President mention the word poor or the word Black? Why is he terrified of the poor and Black?
Let's see what this Negro does in the second year of his first term, but the die is set, especially with the ever expanding wars abroad to the neglect of the home front. Why does it take thirty thousand US troops to hunt down 100-500 Al Qaeda said to be in Afghanistan? And the cost is staggering: 30,000 men/women at one million dollars each per year. Why not pay the 100-500 Al Qaeda in Afghanistan a million dollars each to leave or at least stop their violence, especially since the US did so in Iraq and is preparing to pay the Taliban to lay down their arms.
What is the need for an additional surge of 30,000 troops, unless there is an ulterior motive.
We see the US slowly edging its way into Pakistan with the use of drones and more recently with the mercenary Black Water army of professional killers. Supposedly it bombed a market in Pakistan and blamed it on the Taliban who refused to take credit as it usually does for its actions.
Blackwater, part of the US hidden hand government, no doubt seeks to destabilize Pakistan so the US can seize their nuclear weapons before Al Qaeda and the Taliban, who probably have access to such weapons since they both originated from Pakistani intelligence services and, ironically, the CIA, when Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban were aided by the US in the defeat of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.
While we hoped for peace, all we have is war and more war to come. And the political Left is as effete as the Right is hawkish, with their usual agenda of militarism is good for capitalism. But the Left is pitiful, with hardly a peep from the anti-war movement, yet thousands of people are dying at the hands of the US war machine, just as the Left, including those same sex marriage people so addicted to their sexuality that it is the their sole focus for existence--consequently their racism is so pronounced the black same gender loving people say the gay flag does not represent them--just as thousands of young black men and women are maimed and killed in the concrete jungles of American cities due to their underclass status as collateral damage of technological advance.
The economic forecast is that things are not getting worse, but not getting better--12.4% official unemployment in California. In the hood, 20-50% unemployment. Yes, while the hood is in the emergency room and the middle class in intensive care, the bankers and transnational global bandits of Wall Street are in recovery and back to business as usual, multi-million dollars bonuses included.
When Hamlet made his equivocal speech to Muslims in Cairo, Egypt (I come in the name of As-Salaam Alaikum), he proceeded to expand the US occupation of Muslim land: Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia (a proxy war using Christian Ethiopia). Hamlet talks peace, but makes war with his Crusader army.
If and when America ceases her global and domestic terrorism, only then can she have time to ponder a new economic order that is truly equitable and just to all concerned. Latin American nations have configured a free market system devoid of the naked robbery of the poor. Can America envision the same. We thought Obama had the vision with his talk of change, but maybe it was full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
With all his progressive pronouncements, President Obama yet seems mired in the world of bourgeoisie, right wing duplicity. He promised openness, yet practices secrecy. He promised to close Gitmo, yet it remains open. He has not ruled out the torture of the Bush era, and of course he has made no mention of closing the torture chambers of American jails, prisons and juvenile facilities. Why not a general amnesty--at least this was the last act of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
Nowadays, my friends chide me for my unabashed support of Obama early on, but these days they mock me for being an emotional old fool, for not understanding all politicians are liars and schemers with the next election high on their agenda.
But if he can make a radical shift in policy, he can restore my faith and trust, and perhaps the world will acknowledge him worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize.
--Marvin X
1/27/10
Marvin X