Common - The Corner ft. The Last Poets

Meet me at Academy of da Corner, 14th and Broadway, downtown Oakland.

Toward A Pan African Mental Health Peer Group

Toward A Pan African Mental Health Peer Group


A few years ago, I called upon Dr. Nathan Hare, our esteemed sociologist and clinical psychologist, and author of the classic The Black Anglo-Saxons, to establish a mental health group we decided to call Black Reconstruction. Along with Dr. Hare, the group was facilitated by social worker, Suzzette Celeste, MSW, MPA. The group took place at my Recovery Theatre in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district. Before the group sessions were disbanded for several reasons, including logistics and promotion, we discovered a few things. One, the group should have been divided into the severely mentally ill and the functionally mentally ill, although the dual diagnosed (those with mental and drug problems) could attend either session, for many times the drug addict and mentally ill are indivisible personalities.

Two, Dr. Hare concluded such mental health peer group sessions should be established in every community nationwide. And I add worldwide. A mental health worker need not be present, but following the 12-step model of AA, let the peers facilitate the session, since there are simply not enough mental health workers to serve the population of mentally disabled persons. The US Surgeon General estimated 20% of Americans are mentally ill. Three, although the Pan African community suffers the brunt of mental disorders caused by oppression, “situational disorders” as Dr. Franz Fanon called them, when whites attended, we saw they too suffer and could participate since much of oppression does not discriminate --and more importantly, the colonizer is as mentally ill, if not more so, than the colonized.

The victimizer with his boot on the neck of the oppressed is sick with the idea of domination. So, yes, racism has affected more blacks than whites, but middle and lower class whites are an exploited economic class as well. Capitalism and imperialism do not discriminate--all workers are exploited and they are programmed into the virus of consumerism wherein their paltry wages acquire the cheap goods of a materialistic society.

Half the goods they acquire are not needed, but the workers and their children are programmed by persistent advertising, often of a subliminal nature. And there is only a matter of degree between the exploited white worker and the black worker. For sure, blacks and women lack wage parity. Yes, a white worker with a prison record can get a job quicker than a black worker with no police record, but once on the job, the white worker is exploited none the less and suffers mental trauma as well. His white skin does not save him from wage slavery and the resultant psycho-social diseases, including drug abuse, partner violence and child abuse, emotional if not physical.

Nevertheless, our main focus is healing the Pan African community, those descendants of slavery and colonialism throughout Africa, Europe and the Americas. This book should also have relevance to the Muslim world, Arabs in particular, who suffer as well the ravages of colonialism and neo-colonialism. Yes, Muslims and Arabs suffer from the trauma of white supremacy as the West devours their oil fields and other resources, and permits reactionary regimes to flourish in spite of their anti-democratic behavior.

The ravages of slavery, colonialism and neo-colonialism (including domestic colonialism) necessitate the formation of Pan African mental health peer groups throughout Pan Africa, whether on the continent, Europe, Caribbean and the Americas, especially North America. Let us all come together in small groups for peer healing sessions.

Radical Pan African mental health peer groups can be a powerful antidote to help heal the lingering, traumatic effects of slavery, colonialism and neo-colonialism. We can see throughout Pan Africa that even when we advance politically and economically, the scourge of cultural imperialism causes mental retardation of a kind that produces stunted men and women who might otherwise continue the radical freedom agenda, but yet (and often in the name of revolution) continue reactionary behavior and practices no different from their former masters. We label such behavior white supremacy, even if it is now black face white supremacy. In the Caribbean they call it, “Black men with white hearts.” Indeed, such behavior is a disease of the heart, of the spirit, and thus no amount of political/economic liberation will suffice--we cannot live on bread alone, but our wretched mental condition stifles real progress toward that divine state of mind wherein we are free of tribal, ethnic, religious and cultural hatred, strife, desires of domination, exploitation, greed and lust for power, i.e., white supremacy.

The advantages and positives of Western civilization do not outweigh the sordid and vile behavior we have inculcated and practice with each other, and thus the time has come to make radical changes as we advance into the new millennium, personal changes in our spiritual consciousness that will transform our political, economic and social behavior. Yes, we are in the era of high technology, but our behavior is often of a bestial nature, for we have lost the civility and serenity of the natural order, even the animals display personalities more at peace than we so-called evolved human beings. As we became urbanized, we are no longer cognizant of natural love for each other and the planet we share with animals and plants. Many city children have never touched an animal, a cow, horse or chicken, a duck, a bird. We may teach gender equality, but we see in the animal kingdom there is leadership based on gender, sometimes the male but often the female. So as we evolve we might need to refer to the animals for wisdom and knowledge of how configure society that decreases psycho-social destabilization that has brought us to the present need for this discussion of how to remedy the most pressing political, economic, social, and spiritual issue of our time: white supremacy.

NOTE:

Until further notice, persons seeking to attend the Pan African Mental Health Peer Group can meet Dr. M at Academy of da Corner, 14th and Broadway, downtown Oakland.
Email me to find out day and time or make an appointment. jmarvinx@yahoo.com.

Thousands Protest US in Africa at Harlem Rally

RALLY IN HARLEM TO PROTEST ATTACKS AFRICA AND BLACK COMMUNITIES IN THE U.S.

HARLEM: Thousands Protest Attacks on African People on the Continent and in the U.S.


By People's Media Center NYC

Thousands rallied at Malcolm X Boulevard in Harlem Saturday, August 13 to protest the attack on African people on the Continent and in the United States. The heinous bombing of Libya by the US and NATO, illegal sanctions against Zimbabwe by the West, and the Bloomberg administration’s destruction of housing, jobs, education, health care and police abuse, are all a systematic assault on African communities.

Special guest speakers included: Minister Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam; Father Miguel d'Escoto, former President of the UN General Assembly and former Foreign Minister of Nicaragua; Dr. Molefi Asante of Afrocentricity International; Viola Plummer of the December 12th Movement; NOI Minister Akbar Muhammad, and many others.

The rally garnered international attention with the participation of Father Miguel d'Escoto Brockman. Father d'Escoto spoke against the “war of aggression on Libya.” Further stating “There is no people in the whole planet who know less about what the United States does abroad than Americans. They are systematically deceived. This is the very foundation of what they call democracy in this country.” Father d'Escoto went on to outline the need for reform in the United Nations, emphasizing the domination of the voting members of the UN Security Council over all other countries.

“We never underestimate our people's ability to analyze a situation. The vast majority of folk are clear about the attack on African people and want to do something to fight back. Mainstream media propaganda about strong African leaders like Colonel Muammar Gaddafi and President Robert Mugabe is just like what they say about Black people here who do not bow down to the status quo,” said Gregory Perry of Queens.

Bronx Coordinator Kamau Brown stated, “Colonel Gaddafi and the people of Libya have built their country from the poorest to the richest country in Africa. He is the key person in the organizing effort to build a United States of Africa. President Mugabe has dared to take back the land stolen by European settlers and give it back to the people of Zimbabwe.”

“The attack on us here is insidious. Police brutality and harassment, gentrification of our communities, housing foreclosures, destruction of public education, closing hospitals, the prison industry, the list goes on and on. They all destroy lives. The NATO bombs in Libya and the illegal sanctions in Zimbabwe kill people. Black people understand that it's time for Pan African Unity.” Brown concluded.

Rally Saturday: Africa for Africans

Greetings Sister and Brother Leaders:

Hope to find you and your families well. A friendly reminder. Hope you'll join us this Saturday, 8/13, 11 am, at U.N. Plaza in San Francisco (@ Civic Center BART station) for our STAND-UP FOR AFRICANS! STOP THE BOMBING OF LIBYA! REPARATIONS NOW Rally. Many thanks for your consideration.

Baba Jahahara Amen-RA Alkebulan-Ma'at

"Take your righteous steps... and, let our Divine do the rest. Walk in Faith... on each and every day!"


July 6251 KMT/2011

Greetings to our African-Descendant Organizations and Justice-seeking Allies in the Oakland/San Francisco Bay Area:

In solidarity with the masses of people in Libya, the entire African continent, Haiti—and the millions upon millions facing increased imperialist military, police and corporate violence; as well as worsening conditions of life in communities, workplaces and prisons around the U.S., African Diaspora and internationally—We appeal to you and your organization’s members to join our STAND-UP FOR AFRICANS! Rally for Justice and Healing Gathering, on Saturday, 13 August 2011, at 11 am. We will assemble in the 1945 birthplace of the United Nations, downtown San Francisco, California. Our location is the United Nations’ Plaza, located on Market Street b/w Seventh & Eighth. (Take BART or MUNI trains to the United Nations’ Plaza/Civic Center stations). We are also expressing our unity with the Millions March being organized by the December 12th International Secretariat and others in Harlem, New York (please visit www.millionsmarchharlem.com for more information)

Sixty years ago, in 1951, our courageous Ancestors (such as WILLIAM and LOUISE PATTERSON, LOUIS BURNHAM, JOHN PITTMAN, JAMES MALLOY, HARRY HAYWOOD, ESLANDA and PAUL ROBESON, RUSSELL MEEK, W.E.B. DUBOIS, JAMES FORD, BENJAMIN DAVIS, and many other outstanding activists) organized the WE CHARGE GENOCIDE campaign to the United Nations’ General Assembly. They exposed to the world “The Crime of Government Against the Negro (African-descendants in the U.S.) People”; and sought to secure international support and immediate relief. It is in that great tradition—and the spirit of our collective Victory ten years ago at the U.N.’s “Third World Conference Against Racism” in Durban, South Africa—that WE STILL CHARGE GENOCIDE for the continuing crimes against humanity and nature; and proclaim that AFRICAN NATIONS AND ASCENDANTS DESERVE AND DEMAND REPARATIONS NOW!

We condemn the imperialists’ attempts to murder the Gadhafi family; to disrupt, dismantle, divide and destroy that independent nation’s infrastructure, economy, and self-defense capabilities; and, to accelerate their robbery of oil and militarization of the African continent. We also acknowledge the threat by some in the African Union to withdraw from the U.N. based on the “security council’s” (along with NATO’s and President Barack Obama’s) unjust and bombastic actions, in Libya. We are launching our “Dismantle the United Nations’ ‘Security Council’ Monopoly! Support Equality and Democracy Through One Nation/One Vote: Petition to the People of the World.” Finally, We are reactivating our “Establish a Permanent Forum for African Descendants at the U.N.” effort, from 2009. Your participation, leadership and contributions are most welcome to help popularize these campaigns for truth, justice, peace and Reparations.

In Unity! For those on the west coast who are unable to travel to New York, We look forward to seeing you on Saturday, 13 August, 11 am, at the United Nations Plaza, in Frisco!

Initiated by FONAMI (Foundations for Our New Alkebulan/Afrikan Millennium), Members of N’COBRA in Oakland/San Francisco Bay Area, the ANSWER Coalition and other activists

Reach us at:

support@africansdeservereparations.com

510.759.4311 [Call: 510.759.4311] [Call: 510.759.4311] [Call: 510.759.4311] [Call: 510.759.4311] [Call: 510.759.4311] [Call: 510.759.4311]

Special invitations to participate in this 13 August mobilization extended to a number of spiritual, cultural, political and justice organizations, including: African People’s Socialist Party; All African People’s Revolutionary Party; All of Us or None; Bay View Newspaper; Committee for Defense of Human Rights and SF-8; Committee to Free Cuban Five; Haiti Action Committee; International Longshore Workers Union; It’s About Time/Black Panther Alumni; KPFA/Pacifica Radio; KPOO; Congresswoman Barbara Lee; Malcolm X Grassroots Movement; Nation of Islam; Party for Socialism and Liberation; Prisoners of Conscience Committee; Wo’se Community Church of the Sacred Way; and other groups.

************************************************************************

STAND-UP FOR AFRICANS!

Rally for Justice and Healing Gathering

Saturday, 13 August 2011

11 am

United Nations’ Plaza, downtown San Francisco

Market Street b/w Seventh & Eighth (at UN Plaza/Civic Center BART and MUNI stations)



WE STILL CHARGE GENOCIDE!!!

End the U.S. and European Terrorist Wars, Torture, Murder, Robbery and (Re-) Colonization of Africans!

Life Over Capitalist Debt and Death! Human Needs, Not Corporate Greed!

Arrests, Trials and Convictions for the Criminal Political, Military and Financial Gangsters and Banksters!

Stop the Bush-Obama Imperialist “AFRICOM” (aka, U.S. African Command) Militarization of Africa!

Dismantle the so-called “security council” of the United Nations! Support One Member Nation, One Vote!

REPARATIONS NOW…

FOR LIBYA, ZIMBABWE, HAITI AND ALL AFRCAN NATIONS AND DESCENDANTS, PALESTINE, IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN!!!

This action initiated by the FONAMI (Foundations for Our New Alkebulan/Afrikan Millennium), Members of N’COBRA in Oakland/San Francisco Bay Area, the ANSWER Coalition and other groups.

c/o FONAMI P.O. Box 10963 Oakland, CA 94610

support@africansdeservereparations.com 510.759.4311 [Call: 510.759.4311] [Call: 510.759.4311] [Call: 510.759.4311] [Call: 510.759.4311] [Call: 510.759.4311]

We are in unity with the Millions March taking place in Harlem, New York ( www.millionsmarchharlem.com for info)



Baba Jahahara Amen-RA Alkebulan-Ma'at

Part TWO: 30 Years of Teaching and Writing

Part Two: 30 Years of Teaching and Writing: The Public Career of Marvin X by James G. Spady, Philadelphia New Observer,1997

copyright (c) 1997 by James G. Spady

...The poetry of Marvin X is deeply rooted in the cosmological convictions of his ancestors and his community. His individual identity is inextricably linked to his communal identity. That is why it functions as a source of power and inspiration. Because he is open to the magico-realist perception or reality and has the authentic experiences of the streets, Marvin's works strike a chord. Nowhere is this better exemplified than in a recent collection, Love and War, 1995.

"Read Love and War for Ramadan!"--Dr. Mohja Kahf, University of Arkansas, Department of English and Islamic Literature



cover art by Emory Douglas, Black Panther Minister of Culture



He introduces the work with these words, "Love and War is my poetic story of rediscovering self love and the internal war (Jihad) to reconquer my soul from the devil who whispers into the hearts of men, Al Qur'an. But I am also mindful of socio political conditions of my people. And this reality fills me with compassion and love, forcing me once again (now that I am clean and sober) to put on the armor of God and return to the battlefield. This collection is a signal of my return to the struggle of African American liberation after an absence of nearly a decade, caused by disillusionment and drug abuse. I return with the spirit of my friend, Huey P. Newton, rip, shaking my bones. He and I were often in the same drug territory and but for the grace of God, I chould have easily suffered a fate similar to his. I came close many times. Praise be to Allah."



"Marvin X was my teacher, many of our comrades came through his black theatre: Bobby Seale, Eldridge Cleaver, Emory Douglas, George Murray and Sam Napier."
--Dr. Huey P. Newton,co-founder of the Black Panther Party



...Craft is essential to Marvin X's poetry and drama. He knows the possibilities and constraints of the form. And he also knows how to expand. He credits Sun Ra with having helped him to realize the full possibilities of theatre. Marvin read his poetry in San Ra's grand musical energy field and he closely observed Sonny's skillful exploration of our Omniverse and all of its real possibilities. Was int not Sun Ra who told Marvin X that he would be teaching at U.C. Berkeley before it happened?




Marvin X and Sun Ra, both Gemini





...Nearly 30 years ago, Marvin sought to teach the relationship of Islam and Black Art. In his published conversation with Amiri Baraka, he attempted to reconcile and provide voices and faces for the different expressions of Islam in the West.

As a skilled interviewer, he allows Askia Toure and Baraka's divergent views of Islam to be placed into the record. In the afterword he states, "I believe the Honorable Elijah Muhammad is at least ten years ahead of any Black group working for freedom, justice and equality in the hells of North America. The Islamic ideology, discipline and organizational structure permits the masses of our people to fully develop their self-identity, self defense and self-government."

Again, X is out front. He recognized the tremendous influence Islam had on the Black Arts Movement. He is a case study in that type of influence....


Elijah and Malcolm, major influences on Marvin X. He honors both men.



....Marvin X is credited with convincing Eldridge Cleaver to use his advance against royalties from the popular book Soul on Ice, to help set up Black House. The building became "the mecca of political, cultural activity in The Bay Area. Among artists featured were: Sonia Sanchez,Vonetta McGee, Amiri and Amina Baraka, Chicago Art Ensemble,
Avoctja, Emory Douglas, Sarah Webster Fabio, et al. Playwright Ed Bullins joined Marvin and Eldrdige at the Black House, along with Marvin's partner, Ethna X (Hurriyah Asar), and singer Willie Dale, Cleaver's buddy from San Quentin.

Eldridge Cleaver, see Marvin X's memoir, Eldridge Cleaver, My friend the Devil, 2009 Upon his release from Soledad prison, Marvin X was the first person he hooked up with. Later Marvin introduced him to Huey Newton and Bobby Seale.


....Marvin X is a teacher of primeval knowledge, a knower of both street poetry and book poetry. In fact, he combines the two in a powerful way. Each verse is a teach act, each stanza--a class. His use of alliteration, rhymes, assonance, dissonance and free rhymes indicates he has absorbed the teachings of the academy. Yet, the street consciousness lying in the cut of its content links him directly to the poets of the new idiom called Rap.



Black Panther co-founder Bobby Seale who attended Oakland's Merritt College along with Huey Newton and Marvin X. Bobby performed in Marvin's second play Come Next Summer before founding the Black
Panther Party.

His experimental verses are wholistic, historical and yet dialogical. The dynamic complexities of the situation creates in the reader an urgent need to know more. Can we expect anything elswe from a good teacher?

30 Years of Teaching and Writing: The Public Career of Marvin X

30 Years of Teaching and Writing: The Public Career of Marvin X

Copyright James G. Spady, 1997

Philadelphia New Observer

Marvin X has been teaching for a long time. He has established his tenacity. As one of the founders of the Black Arts Movement (BAM), he became a teacher in an emerging field called Black Studies. Like Sonia Sanchez, Amiri Baraka, Larry Neal, Askia Toure and others, Marvin X both contributed to and later taught those pivotal courses that constituted a new discipline.

For the last thirty years, this gifted poet, journalist, dramatist, oral historian (he appears to be the only participant in the Black Arts Movement that conducted intensive and extensive oral interviews with the key participants, as well as international political, cultural and educational leaders)and teacher, has established an unusual record. Marvin X has taught at the University of California at San Diego, Mills College, San Francisco State University, Fresno State University,
Laney and Merritt Colleges in Oakland, University of Nevada,Reno, and the University of California at Berkeley.

His peers were among the first to recognize his ability. The well-known African American man of the Arts and Letters, Amiri Baraka, refers to Marvin X as "one of the outstanding African writers and teachers in America. He has always been in the forefront of Pan African writing. Indeed, he is one of the founders and innovators of the new revolutionary school of African writing."

One of the best known playwrights in America is Ed Bullins. He refers to X as "one of the founders of the modern day Black theatre movement. He is a Black artist par excellence." The editor of Black Scholar magazine, Robert Chrisman, spoke of Marvin as "an extraordinary distinguished poet who has a powerful sense of meaningful drama"....

After high school (1962), Marvin enrolled in Oakland City College, aka Merritt College. There he met Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, who went on to found the Black Panther Party. It was at OCC that Marvin began to undergo a vital change. He listened intently as speaker after speaker addressed the ever-growing members of the cognoscente at Oakland City College. They, like many area colleges, benefited from the organizing and conscious-raising activities of the Afro American Association under the leadership of a young black lawyer, Donald Warden (now Khalid Abdullah Al Mansour). Marvin's early writings appeared in the Merritt College literary magazine.

Upon receiving the A.A. degree, Marvin went on to San Francisco State University, 1964. Marvin wrote a play for one of his English classes. The professor, legendary novelist John Gardner, was sufficiently impressed to carry it over to the theatre department. In the Spring of 1965, Marvin X's one-act play "Flowers for the Trashman" was produced at San Francisco State, a novel experience for an African American. It is even more exceptional in that it was his first play. (Published initially in Black Dialogue, Winter, 1966 and later in Black Fire, edited by Larry Neal and LeRoi Jones).

Marvin X soon met Philly playwright Ed Bullins, introduced to him by Art Sheridan, founding editor of Black Dialogue magazine. Ed and Marvin founded Black Arts West Thetre in the Fillmore. Black Arts West was certainly influenced by the Black Arts Movement in the East, mainly New York and Philadelphia.

The role of Amiri Baraka in shaping national Black consciousness can not be overemphasized. However, Marvin X, Hillary X, Ethna X, Duncan X (as they would become in a few months after joining the Nation of Islam, circa 1967), along with Ed Bullins and Farouk (Carl Bossiere, rip)were part of an indigenous Black Arts Movement....

--Continued--

London Bridges Falling Down, Falling Down

In solidarity with the family and friends of our son Mark Duggan

The PASCF extends our deepest sympathy and forthright solidarity to the family and friends of our son Mark Duggan. Between 6.15pm and 6.41pm on Thursday 4th August 2011 our 29 year old son Mark was shot dead by London Metropolitan Police gunmen in Tottenham Hale North London.

Coming two weekends before our Marcus Garvey African Family Day with its theme of African Youth Thirty Years On: State Destruction or Self-Liberation, the Tottenham Uprising of 6-7th August 2011 confirms something that was never in doubt: the capacity of our African Youth (and our wider African community) militantly to resist injustice and oppression.


Contextualising the current uprising

There is a rising amount of injustice and oppression around at the moment. The racist ruling class is making working people (Africans especially) pay for the destructive structure and operation of a capitalism increasingly dominated by finance capital. This system commoditises everything (including nothing) in pursuit of super profits. When this blows up in its face with bogus AAA instruments proving to be what they always were - worthless - it is the capitalist state that 'saves' the finance sector and the economy as a whole. It has to do so by printing and borrowing money.

Ideologically right wing capitalists then attack the state for being too large and too debt-burdened. They demand 'cuts' to 'save the nation and posterity.' Poor people pay. The objective noose around the neck of capitalism tightens. The right wing demands tax cuts for the rich. The banks, for their part, as part of 'rebuilding their balance sheets' virtually refuse to lend or lend at interest rates of way above that at which they borrow. The banks pay next to nothing on savings. The finance houses (banks by another name) make super profit by attacking money (the national currencies of all nation-states are commodities that are not just traded but attacked for profits).

This completely irrational aspect of the system cannot be curbed because finance capital is king. And so the crisis deepens. The USA and the EU/Euro Zone and the UK (Sterling) are in trouble. So is Japan (its industrial production-based miracle has run its course). So too is China, the leading lender into this system and itself a social powder keg. The question there is: can a Communist/(Stalinist) party structure successfully manage a corrupt capitalist economy in which workers are exploited in myriad un/traditional ways? Those (like Ghaddafi) who dare to propose currency (absolutely not system) alternatives get targeted for murder/regime change. Well serious!

State oppression brings people’s resistance

Injustice and oppression reign on the streets of the UK (and elsewhere) as well. The Metropolitan Police is not only in bed with the corporate criminals like News International, taking bribes left right and centre. It also has its officers killing, humiliating and criminalising Africans. If they can get away with shooting our sons Derrick Bennett, Azelle Rodney and a Brazilian, Jean Charles de Menezes (shot some 7/8 or more times in the head in public) why not the killing of Smiley Culture (What were handcuff marks doing on his wrists if he stabbed himself to death using a knife with body-penetrating force?) and why not Mark Duggan on Thursday 4th August. Eye witnesses say Mark was shot dead by armed police after being 'subdued' and fully under their control. The bullet he is alleged to have fired is now being said to have come from a police issued firearm. It is now officially admitted that the media facilitated the police in the telling their usual lies that Mark had shot one of them before himself being shot dead. If Mark's unlawful killing was fuel, the open assault upon a young African sister towards the end of a peaceful demonstration was more fuel, and lighted match.

On top of that, we have a national DNA data base with African people massively over-represented on it! We have Joint Enterprise Statute, dangerous in conception being abused by the police, the state prosecution services and the courts! The Police are in Schools - taking names and information, managing the long-term criminalization of another generation of an entire community as they participate in process of rampant exclusion and false charging of African Youth!

Perhaps more than ever and disproportionately at the expense of African people, the police are dealing in drugs and facilitating gangs of many sorts! The police are abusing stop and Search powers exploiting fears about gun and knife crime in trying to justify this humiliating outrage?

Late on Saturday 6th August PASCF members witnessed a search on Railton Road, Brixton (Starting point of the Brixton Uprising of 1981 provoked by the Swamp 81 stop and search Operation!) The victim of that search was an African who appeared well into middle age. One of the police men doing the search had on surgical gloves and only barely avoided stripping the man, so invasive was he. Our member asked that policeman if, having found no evidence of a crime, he had ever had reasonable grounds for suspecting the African and as he walked off he said the African man would tell us what it was about. The poor victim had no idea what the search had been about. He had been asked for a search and had felt obliged to say 'yes'.

On 8th August the Hackney part of the ongoing Uprising followed immediately upon precisely one of these lawless fishing exhibition type searches by Metropolitan Policemen.

Youth are the spark of the revolution

Of course the struggle continues with London in flames. So far our children are rising up in Tottenham, Enfield, Islington, Waltham Forest, Walthamstow, Wood Green, Camden, Harlesden, Shepards Bush, Ealing, Queensway, Ladbroke Grove, Notting Hill, Chelsea, Hounslow, Croydon, Brixton, Loughborough Junction, Crystal Palace, Tooting, Streatham, Clapham, Merton, Camberwell, Peckham, Lewisham, Catford, Lee, Blackheath, Woolwich, Surrey Quays, Old Kent Road, Tower Bridge, Bromley, East Dulwich, Ilford, Chingford, Dalston, Hackney, Canning town, East Ham, Barking, Isle of Dogs, Oxford Circus, Bristol, Birmingham, Wolverhampton, West Bromwich, Nottingham, Liverpool, Manchester, Surrey and Suffolk. In addition to militarily defeating the British police force, they summoned Parliament, the Prime Minister, the Home secretary, the Mayor of London and other officials all of whom were on holiday.

Not only do our young people presently have the capitalist state on the run but they are demonstrating its logistical limitations for all who have eyes to see. The political pity is that Marx’s working class/proletariat - theoretically history’s appointed "grave diggers of capitalism" - is visible only as one source, along with Black Members of Parliament, of scared, inane and reactionary comments about the spreading Uprising.


Pan-Afrikan Society

Commmunity Forum

07944-204-955

www.pascf.org.uk; pascfevents@gmail.com

Statement of the PASCF on the London Uprisings

11th August 2011

GET YO MIND RIGHT, A Video by Marvin X

Get Yo Mind Right is Marvin X's version of the barber shop, shot in East Oakland, 38th and MacArthur. The videographer and editor is Pam Pam. Marvin must not only pay for his haircut but the young barbers force him to teach on a variety of subjects, politics, religion, history, manhood and other topics. We also see the neighborhood psychopath doing his thing. One barber is a young Black Panther baby; a customer from Philadelphia is a disciple of Noble Drew Ali's Moorish Science Temple. A youth explains why he wears the do rag and cap. Enjoy this video that Fahizah Alim of the Sacramento Bee called "the Real Barbershop."

Marvin X at the Philadelphia International Locks Conference

Black Males in America

August 9, 2011

Black Males in America, Setting a Path for a Better Future

“To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships.” W.E.B. DuBois

It has become somewhat cliché to refer to the harsh realities of being a Black male in America as the “Black Male Crisis.” After all, as far back as the 1980’s newspapers and magazines were running features describing the evisceration of African-American men from society. Conferences were held, research reports issued, and some states established commissions; all with the singular purpose of identifying measures to improve conditions for Black men. Despite these good intentions, three decades later, Black males are in a precarious state in America and against the backdrop of a historic recession their prospects are dim unless we move aggressively to alter their course.

Just how bad is it for Black men? A recent report issued by the College Board reached a stunning and sobering assessment of the quality of life for Black males. The report titled “The Educational Experiences of Young Men of Color,” reviewed the current research on educational pathways. The report notes that unemployment is the most likely postsecondary destination for Black males who do not end up incarcerated or meet an early death.

At the CBCF, we have aligned some of our policy initiatives to address issues around young Black men. This work continues today as we continually engage the policy process on issues such as mass incarceration, a more rational drug policy, the improvement of our public schools and job training and employment.

Corporate leadership and wealthy citizens can and must play a pivotal role in providing opportunities for young black males; through training and employment. Just last week New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that he would invest $30 million of his personal wealth behind a city initiative aimed at improving the lives of young minority males.

To find out more on the issue of Black males, read the landmark publication by senior research analyst at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation Ivory Toldson, Ph.D., “Breaking Barriers: Plotting the Path to Academic Success for School-age African-American Males.” http://cbcfinc.org/newsroom/press-room.html.

You are invited to join Dr. Toldson as he releases a follow up of the report “Breaking Barriers Two(BB2) during CBCF’s 41st Annual Legislative Conference (ALC) from September 21-24 in Washington, DC.: The 88-page research report focuses on the roles that schools and communities can play in promoting academic success among African-American males and reducing the disproportionate contact that young black males have with the juvenile justice system. Rep. Cedric Richmond (LA-02), a panel of experts and foundation executives will join Dr. Toldson to discuss national strategies to improve educational outcomes for African-American males.In addition to the release of BB2, the Conference will offer a half dozen issue forums and brain trust sessions confronting this issue and seeking viable solutions. To find out more and to register for ALC visit us @www.alc11.org.


Meanwhile, what can you do? Get involved, share your thoughts with your member of Congress and the White House and voice your opinion. When citizens are informed, engaged and active participants in moving the country in the right direction, our nation is that much stronger.

Darcus Howe BBC News Interview On Riots

The History of Black August

The History of Black August

Marvin X Speaks at Howard University

Marvin X at Howard University, Washington DC

Final Notes on Mythology of Pussy Lecture


Marvin X ended his visit at Howard University with a reading/discussion of Mythology of Pussy, specifically focusing on psychosexuality at Howard. But it wasn’t until the end of his lecture/discussion that a female student dropped a bomb on him, telling him the answer he had been seeking: how Howard women deal with the brothers to satisfy their sexual needs. A sister whispered to him, “Mr. X, we get what we want from the brothers by tossing them around. They think they’re tossing us, but we do the tossing. If we want Joe tonight, we get him, then let another sister have him the next night, but he thinks he’s getting over on us—it ain’t so. We calling the shots! If a girl wants Dante and another does as well, we tell one girl to hold up, let sister have Dante tonight, you get him tomorrow. That’s how we do it.”

And so it is. As Nisa Ra said in her comments on Mythology of Pussy, “Men think they are players when, in fact, they are getting played. He thinks it’s his pussy—but he don’t have a pussy!” Howard student President L. Davis, my homeboy from the Bay (Richmond, Ca—and thanks Prez for your assistance while I was at Howard)—said during the meeting that the girls chose “silly nigguhs” rather than real down brothers, real men!

My thought is that silly girls chose silly nigguhs, especially since it’s all about pussy and dick, nothing more, although I called upon students to get to a higher level as Phavia says in her poem Yo, Yo, Yo: “If you think I’m just a physical thing, wait til you see the spiritual power I bring….” Students appeared to understand the need to resocialize and recover from the addiction to white supremacy mythology.

For now though, it’s all about P and D as Sun Ra called it. One brother came to the meeting only to give me five dollars since he had gotten a pamphlet last week. He told me he’d read it and that I was on the right path. He said, “Don’t back up, don’t back up, keep going forward with Mythology of Pussy.”

Indeed, when I asked the audience should I say Mythology of P—they said hell no, say Mythology of Pussy!

In my final remarks on Howard, I must give an evaluation of my host professor, Dr. Greg Carr, one of the finest young scholars black America has produced. From what I heard and observed, he is well loved by students. I would say he is the hardest working man in academia—the James Brown of black scholars—I was exhausted watching him teach. As brother Ptah (another bright scholar from San Francisco State University who is my colleague) noted, “Dr. Carr is like a rapper with his high energy level.” Indeed, he paces back a forth from black board to black board, writing important names, places and dates. He is thorough and detailed, going through the text word by word, sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, page by page.

But while this is an index of his acumen, it reveals the abject failure of students coming prepared to his lecture. As he said to me, simply, “They don’t read!” And so he must essentially baby-sit them because they come to class unprepared, forcing him to go through the text they should have read beforehand. This reveals their laziness, sloth and lack of respect for the great mind before them. This is one reason I am not in academia: I would kick those slothful nigguhs out my class. I would not baby-sit them—either come prepared or get the hell out. If I’m prepared, you better be also—don’t disrespect me. I’m here to give you knowledge, you’re giving me nothing except revealing your negrocities (Baraka term).”

But perhaps Dr. Carr realizes the students are victims of American education that makes them dumb at best—compared to what? Not compared to white American students but compared to students in China and India, students whose genius and fortitude is reflected in the rapid advance of their nations in the era of globalism.

This is why the white man is outsourcing to India and China. Why should he pay an American MBA $140,000 per year when he can hire an Indian MBA for $14,000 per year who is just as, if not more qualified than his American counterpart? And so I call upon Howard students to come out of their sloth and give Dr. Carr, Dr. Tony Medina and other young scholars equal energy and effort. In the words of Marcus Garvey, up you mighty people, you can accomplish what you will! And in the words of David Walker, let us dispel our ignorance and wretchedness in consequence of education.
--Marvin X
Howard University
Washington, DC
30 September, 2009

Parable of Desirelessness

Parable of Desirelessness

During his life, he'd had everything, money, dope, women, more love than any man could handle. In short, he was spoiled rotten. Now he was bored to tears. Maybe he was just an ungrateful bastard, since his cup had run over with goodness and mercy.

While on drugs, he discovered he needed very little, although he desired much. As a dope addict he survived on nothing but dope. No woman, no sex, food, clothes, bath, place to stay. Nothing but dope. For a time he lived in a cardboard box, slept in an alley or doorway. Sometimes he had a woman in the box with him. They smoked dope, made love and prayed in the box.

But it came to a point when he did his dope alone. He hustled alone, coped his dope and went to his room and smoked. In his supreme selfishness, he cut loose his friends. He definitely wouldn't get loaded with them because they were a nuisance. So he lived in solitude except for the demons in his head who visited him nightly. They talked to him and became real people. They were outside his door, he imagined. He could hear them talking. They were going to kill him for sure. They were outside his door discussing how to slay him. He heard them talking in the wind, the rustle of the leaves on the tree. They talked to him each night. It went on for years.

Finally, he did self recovery--no program worked for him, only because he wouldn't work it, thinking he was smarter than the recovery people. They told him to just relax and let himself heal, but he wouldn't. He wanted to continue writing in recovery. They told him not to write, just still himself and heal. So he left the program. This went off and on for years until he decided to recover his way. He went to ocean beach and let the cold ocean heal him. He went to the hot tub and relaxed. People could see he was healing. They could see it in his skin--there was a glow that was obvious to all.

As he recovered, he began to ponder what things he needed to survive. Did he need a woman that was usually a vexation? Most friends were a vexation. He eliminated women and men. Then his car, another vexation. He rode the bus. Got rid of his cell phone. No TV, no video player.
The black movies he found disgusting. He listened to the radio, mainly the news, even though it was bullshit white supremacy misinformation, fiction, his doctor said. He lived in his imagination and devoted time to his greatest joy, thinking and writing.

He gave his writings away on the street. It was his way of giving something back as they teach in recovery. And he shared his wisdom with whomever sought him out, but he sought out no one.
Of course he loved his children and grandchildren and would do anything for them, if and when they needed him.

But mostly, he realized there was nothing out there, but all was inside the self. So where was there to go except inside himself, to unravel the conundrums within his wretched self. Maybe he could raise himself to higher ground, maybe reach the upper room of his father's house. Surely he had been down in the dungeon, the bottomless pit of life. Where else can one go but up. But up is not out, rather within, peeling away the one billion illusions of the monkey mind Guru Bawa taught us about.

What is there to need, what is there to desire, to want? This can be an endless search into the void, the chasm of nothingness and dread. He refused to go there. He'd seen his friends go there, the endless search for things, trinkets, like children in Toys R Us, running here, running there to consume.

And yet there was no need, only desire, and desire was infinite, never ending except in frustration and dread. Desire was an intoxicant, a drug worse than all other drugs combined. The only thing to desire was no desire, to detox and recover from all illusions. Solomon told us all is vanity and vexation of spirit.

And so he looked inside the self, not selfishly, but selflessly with desirelessness. And he found satisfaction, for the more he had nothing, the more he had everything. The more he stilled himself, the more his mind opened to infinite possibilities.

This was not poverty consciousness but the consciousness that all is illusion, transitory and ephemeral. For what do you do when you have everything, yet in an instant it is wiped out. Remember the fire storm in the Oakland/Berkeley hills? And there you stand ready to destroy the self that remains, yet the self was the only reality.

Self is beyond individual. It is communal. Self is the breathing world. When we recognize the personal, we acknowledge the communal, the connection will all that is real and everlasting. Thus the test of the self is in interaction with other selves, no matter how vexing the encounter. Silence will save the day. Listen to the thousand voices in the silence of the wind.

Rumi said it best, "If you come to the garden, it don't matter. If you don't come to the garden, it don't matter."
--Marvin X
4/15/16

Review: Eldridge Cleaver and Memoirs

Eldridge Cleaver, Marvin X and Memoirs

By Rudolph Lewis, editor Chickenbones
http://www.nathanielturner.com/





Marvin has a "memoir." Promotionally, it is about Eldridge Cleaver, my least favorite Black Panther. I am down with Huey. For Bobby there is always gagged in Chicago .

There was whiteness: everybody could see that fairly well by 1969 and we could see that it was a whiteness that did not tolerate and doesn't allow you to pretend that you have no understanding of whiteness and its operations. In this game of subjection, Eldridge's point indeed in his crazed cranium, mistakes nor ignorance aren't forgiven. All literary work is about "power"—that is mastery.

For a month or so I daily saw this writer writing a book—piece by piece (part by part). Marvin X exudes power. He just turned 65 but he removes space like Archie Moore 44 in the ring. The book is Marvin. I know it is an odd thing to say a book is an author. If that is the case this “memoir” is indeed a memoir in the most perfect sense of one thing being another. Marvin pulls his memoir through the mode of “storytelling.”

Marvin, his memoir, each identifies with the people: to paraphrase Langston, in all their beauty and ugliness too. Marvin can walk into a barroom and in seconds have everyone laughing or falling out on the floor. Marvin doesn’t feel uncomfortable like Cornel West speaking before a class of black middle-class folk, or uncomfortable like other self-corporate prophetic leaders. These are objects of his jest, ridicule, scorn. Their pretensions, their respectability. Other than a poet, playwright, director, publisher, and editor, Marvin X is a recovering addict who works daily in drug invested communities.

He knows where his allegiance lies and in whom to invest. I want to be open in this discussion as much as necessary. I encouraged this book while Marvin was writing madly and emailing part after part, revision after revision. I found it all so riveting. Watching a writer write a book himself day after day, hour after hour, and the next thing I know we are on part 32, is quite an unusual and extraordinary experience.

The writing process is indeed important. Each of us has his own way of going about it. Marvin’s last approach, similar to other Marvin escapades, intentionally and directly seeks an audience for his memoir. Actually, he was out on the road—a book tour. In Houston , Texas. On a book tour, Marvin sends what one might call a “barrage” of responses to event or current events, keeping in touch with friends, writers, publishers and more.

In ways he is always a political organizer as well as self-promoter. He makes his way as speaker, writer, event organizer, performer. He keeps people tied to one another and valuing their lives. Marvin is uniquely developed into an informed black man who is religious, spiritual, and political.

He is as representative of the Black Arts Movement (BAM), then and now, as anyone I can think. In ways Marvin is galactic to the point you think he’s standing still, still mired in the betraying clays of the 1960s and 1970s. Ones need to be half-crazed, extremely intelligent, and extraordinarily visionary for his words to reenact the BAM world, as is achieved in memoir, to see the hole we are clearly in and still remain faithful that “Blackness” will find a way.

The memoir fell silent. Marvin moved onto South Carolina . Then he was in New York , Philly. And then New Jersey . Where he hooks up with his buddy, Amiri Baraka. From what I observed for the last decade is that Marvin loves Baraka, right or wrong, and would die for Baraka. This day. This moment view love I knew when I was a soldier out on the streets of Baltimore . Brothers I would die for. That kind of enthusiasm about changing whiteness in the land and thus the world, well, that kind of “militancy” was buried with Mr. Jim Crow. The resulting vision of the NAACP.

Marvin X suspends the past present future like a diamond and makes us believe in “blackness” when it has grayed and entered a nursing home. Yet Marvin believes, he’s a soldier to the death. I did not want Marvin’s memoir to end. We were only at the beginning, though at chapter 39, chapters fairly short.

In New York Marvin was talking about Amiri’s response and willingness to help secure Marvin a book deal for his memoir. From Marvin I received some piece of a rejection notice, all too stereotypical. I do not know where the cat was. But it seems he did not think the “memoir” was worthy of work or revision. What Marvin has as his “memoir” is indeed phenomenal. In its present form one can find nothing like it or better in representing the BAM world. The larger frame of the book could withstand double its size.

The expose could be put to work toward understanding what caused BAM writers to decline, and why the BAM literary legacy is more critical, than before or since the Harlem Renaissance . Two extraordinary playwrights. August Wilson and Marvin X have maintained their reverence and significance of the BAM period. Maybe Wilson is more introspective. Maybe less or differently ideological than Marvin. But both believing there is indeed such a thing as a “black perspective,” whether you want to agree with it or not.

It is this kind of daily believing that makes Marvin X our saving grace. Many of us are too willing to give up the significance and totality of what can be called Black Life in America , of the significance of identity in the personal, social, and economic progress or “success.” One cannot have a healthy psychic if one half of your people are free and the other half wallow in ignorance and superstition. How Moses satisfied such a state of being? I don’t want to hear about COINTELPRO or slave catchers.

I want to hear more on how or why Huey died the way that he did. I want to hear more about why Cleaver’s madness was entertained by anyone sane in the black community—a rapist and murderer. I want real discussion why Baraka’s walk away from cultural nationalism of the 1970s no less an act of betrayal than Cleaver in Cuba , in Algeria , in France , and black in the United States .

The expose does not work so well if there's no thorough attempt to make any sense out of BAM failing to seize the high ground. Maybe there was an inadequacy, a sweep in BAM, that was too large, too public, and in other aspects too personal, to be sustained as a social movement for a people spread out across a nation.

I love Jimi Hendrix not one iota less to know that he died (by some reports murdered) in a drug house. My love for Huey is eternal. What I’ve heard and read so far brings nothing of import to account for Huey’s rise and fall. That’s from Marvin as well. How Huey came to the drug house? How for that matter Marvin X? Often we see it more in the light of spectacle, of shame, and guilt. Not only drug use but the entire cultural breakdown of race, sex, and gender, during that period, breaking down for new frontiers. At the time we were all under its spell. Woodstock !!! Too many of us cultural radicals have warped into cultural conservatives, sometimes a too willingness to serve the Beast, at other times a cold hard decision, like “Allah does not pay as much as Jesus.” We are all Januses. Some more fortunate than others.

At the Crack House the doors of Hell are open, how low a man, a woman will stoop, what acts she will perform for crack’s grain of joy. The deconstruction of crack must continue. That the whole scene is made unlawful shows how far the respectable stoops to crush any kind of resistance, political, social cultural or otherwise.

I’ve read two other memoirs by black male writers: one Jerry W. Ward, Jr., The Katrina Papers (2008, $18.95) and the other by E. Ethelbert Miller, The 5th Inning (2009). Miller’s memoir is more personal, though it too contains social commentary. Jerry Ward’s work is post-modern, the memoir imitates, sets itself up as the same powerful forces of post-Katrina—powerful with the fragments of people’s lives on motor boats and housetops; great sludge and dead bodies floating down the streets of your neighborhood.

Marvin self published his memoir. Each of these memoirs is special. Read them. My feeling is that most publishers are not interested in black male memoirs. But many readers including females may find a great interest in these three black male writers and how differently they situate black life in America .

--Rudolph Lewis, Editor, Chickenbones.com
www.nathanielturner.com

Eldridge Cleaver: My friend the Devil, A Memoir by Marvin X

Eldridge Cleaver: My friend the Devil, A Memoir
By Marvin X

March 21, 2009

Introduction

Marvin X‘s newest book, “Eldridge Cleaver: My Friend, The Devil” is an important Expose!, notonly of whom his good friend really was… (I confess I thought something like that, in less metaphysical terms, from the day we met, at San Francisco State, 1967) But also of whom Marvin was/is. Now, Marvin has confessed to being Yacub, whom Elijah Muhammad taught us was the “evil big head scientist” who created the devil. (Marvin’s head is very large for his age.)

What is good about this book is Marvin’s telling us something about who Eldridge became as the Black Panther years receded in the rear view mirror. I remember during this period, when I learned that Marvin was hanging around Cleaver even after he’d made his televised switch from anti-capitalist revolutionary to Christian minister, denouncing the 3rd World revolutionaries and the little Marxism he thought he knew, while openly acknowledging beating his wife as a God given male prerogative, I said to Marvin, “I thought you was a Muslim” . His retort, “Jesus pay more money than Allah, Bro”, should be a classic statement of vituperative recidivism.

But this is one of the charms of this memoir. It makes the bizarre fathomable. Especially the tales of fraternization with arguably the most racist & whitest of the Xtian born agains with Marvin as agent, road manager, co-conspirator-confessor, for the post-Panther – very shot- out Cleaver. It also partially explains some of Cleaver’s moves to get back in this country, he had onetime denounced, and what he did after the big cop out. Plus, some of the time, these goings on seem straight out hilarious. Though frequently, that mirth is laced with a sting of regret. Likewise, I want everyone to know that I am writing this against my will, as a favor to Yacub.—Amiri Baraka. Newark, 5/13/09

Chapter 1

It all began at Soledad Prison, sometime during 1966. Black Dialogue magazine was approached by attorney Beverly Axelrod about making a visit to the Soledad Prison Black Culture Club. The editors agreed to make the visit, including myself as fiction editor. The other editors included Art Sheridan, Gerald, Aubrey and Peter LaBrie, Sadaat Ahmed, Joe Goncalves, Duke Williams, et al. We made our way down the coast to Soledad. I was both excited and sad because my brother Ollie was probably an inmate at the time, though I can't remember.

Our staff was taken to the hosting officer's apartment and briefed on what to do and not to do. No contact with inmates, no passing or taking of literature. We agreed but it didn't mean a thing. Soon as we got inside the meeting room we knew what we were going to do. At first we got inside and saw the brothers seated, with the meeting in progress. Eldridge was chair and his lieutenant was Alprentice “Bunchy” Carter. Bunchy was a very handsome black man, so handsome it belied his leadership qualities as head of the Los Angeles Slauson gang.

But chairman Cleaver was a giant of a man, tell, light skinned and articulate. But more than the words said, I was immediately impressed with the organizational structure with brothers on post with military style discipline. It was probably the first time I'd seen black men so organized. We know now according to brother Kumasi that this was the beginning of the prison movement in California and the nation, this black culture club of mostly young black men confined to the dungeon as so many are today, causing havoc in black family and community life.

In this Soledad dungeon would come a prison movement on par with the black student movement, black arts, and black studies. As I listened to Chairman Eldridge speak, I said to myself this is a dangerous Negro if allowed to depart these walls. Clearly, he was well read after a total of eighteen years of confinement in the California Gulags. I would learn later he was soaked in Marxist Leninism and literature in general. And when Black Dialogue obtained his writings for publication, especially “My, Queen, I Greet You,” we suspected this was a man with the passion and writing skills of Baldwin. And of course he must have sensed this comparison and thus his need to denounce Baldwin to take a shot at the black literary crown, although he did it by a homophobic denunciation which led one to suspect his own sexual improprieties, especially after so long in prison.

But at that first meeting, we were humbled to be with the brothers, to share with them by reading our writings from Black Dialogue. At the end of the meeting we all embraced and exchanged materials in violation of the officer's request. We gave them copies of Dialogue and they gave us manuscripts of their writings which were later published in Dialogue and Journal of Black Poetry. As I said, we published “My Queen, I Greet You,” in Dialogue and Joe Goncalves published the poetry of Bunchy and others in JBP. We left Soledad and headed back up the coast to San Francisco. Thus was established a connection between the prison movement and black students, the black arts movement and eventually the Black Panther Party when I introduced Elbridge to Bobby Seale soon after his release from prison.

Chapter II

Several months passed before I met Eldridge again. Somebody called me to come over Sister Mary Anna's house. Maryanna Waddy was the daughter of painter Ruth Waddy, but more importantly, she was the student, though somewhat older at the time, who aggressively pushed for the name change from Negro Students Association to the Black Students Union. Maryanna was a strong black woman who took no jive, maybe the result of black consciousness taught by her mother. But when I entered her house, Eldridge was there trying to introduce his plans to the community.

There seemed to be some tension between him and Maryanna, a black man/black woman power battle. Maybe Maryanna knew about Eldridge's white woman lawyer, Beverley Axelrod, who had smuggled his manuscript Soul on Ice out of Soledad. We would learn that Eldridge had promised to marry her, so his blackness was suspect from the beginning—but we would handle that matter a few months down the road. Maryanna and most of those present, maybe members of the BSU, including those of us from Black Dialogue. If I recall correctly, Eldridge gave me a ride home and we agreed to meet again soon.

Things were going bad for us at Black Arts West Theatre on Fillmore Street, across the street from Tree's pool hall and around the corner from the Sun Reporter newspaper, published by the millionaire Communist Dr. Carlton Goodlett. BAW was breaking up because of egos and other psychopathic behavior in our crew which included Ed Bullins, Duncan Barber, Hillary Broadous, Carl Bossiere, and Ethna Wyatt. All of us wanted to make BAW happen but our egos got in the way, along with deeper mental problems. In spite of these problems, we did my plays and the plays of Ed Bullins. We had jazz concerts with the Bay Area's best, including Raphael Garrett, Monte Waters, Dewey Redman, Oliver Jackson, B.J., and others.
Only thing with the musicians, many had white women which we would not allow in the theatre, since we were black nationalists on the road to becoming members of the Nation of Islam. A long time criminal Muslim came to our theatre to recruit us, Alonzo Harris Batin, who became the guru and mentor of BAW. Batin was a criminal with a heart of gold. He wanted us to join the Nation even though most of the time he was not in good standing and considered a hypocrite. Soon we were indoctrinated by Batin and eventually most of us joined the Nation except Ed Bullins. Bullins was into his art and living or at least staying in the Beatnik area of North Beach.

For awhile, Ethna was the glue that held BAW together. She fed us when we were low on money to buy food. She would cook something that would be enough for the crew and she would try to stop us from killing each other as we ego-tripped. Ethna had come from Chicago, maybe during or around the time of that Summer of Love. It seemed many beautiful women fled Chicago to the West coast. Ethna's friend had come, Sandra Williams, helping out at BAW. Danny Glover acted in BAW, performing in Dorothy Ahmed's play Papa's Daughter, about incest. Actress and SFSU student Vonetta McGee performed in Bullins' play It Has No Choice and another play by Bullins that I can't remember the name.

And then one day the crew called me to the lobby of the theatre to meet a man they said spoke seven languages. After they called me several times to come to the lobby, I came from the theatre to meet a tall, jet black brother with straight hair, Ali Sharif Bey, who indeed did speak several languages, including English, Persian, Spanish, French, Arabic and Urdu. He became our on-site Islamic scholar and teacher, teaching us Arabic and his vast knowledge of Islam based on the Ahmediah sect, the great evangelists of Islam to the West. Ali Sharif Bey would surface later as the runner for the SLA when they kidnapped Patty Hearst. He is the source for my master thesis docudrama How I Met Isa.

But in spite of all this community support—none from the Black bourgeoisie until later at the Black House which Eldridge convinced me to help organize since I told him I was tired of the bs at BAW and was ready to do something different. We discussed setting up what eventually became Black House, a political/cultural center on Broderick Street off Divisadero in the Fillmore. Ed Bullins soon joined Eldridge, Ethna and myself. For a few months Black House became the cultural center of the Bay with thousands of conscious hungry black flocking there for culture. Black House participants included Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, Askia Toure, Chicago Art Ensemble, Sarah Webster Fabio, Reginald Lockett, Emory Douglas, Samuel Napier and Little Bobby Hutton. On the political side, Eldridge brought in a Communist party leader, Rosco Proctor.

Eldridge had no time for the culture, even though he couldn't help but be influenced by it since it was at the house he financed with his advance from Soul On Ice. He and Baraka had little to say to each other even though Baraka's Communication Project at San Francisco State College/now University, had its off campus base at Black House. Years later these two men would switch ideologies with Baraka turning Communist and Eldridge finding religion. Eldridge would eventually go from Communist to Christian, to Mormon to Moonie to Religious Science.

But at Black House he was strictly Communist and he pushed hard to get us to follow his path, though we resisted until Black House fell apart from ideological differences. Before it fell we had gone to Beverly Axelrod's house to literally remove Cleaver since we found it a contradiction for the chairman of Black House to be sleeping at the White House. One afternoon brother Batin and I made Eldridge move his things from the White House while Miss Ann cried. Among his belongings was that wicker chair, spear and rug made famous in that photo of Huey Newton.

Unity of Thought

Toward Unity of North American Africans
14. Unity in Thought


Our philosophical and ideological thought has been diverse and divergent, expressing a panorama of thinking since our sojourn in the wilderness of North America. As an expression of the Sisyphusian mythology, our thinking depended on how low or how high we ascended the mountain.
In our lowest moments, we wanted out of here, return to African or anywhere but here. In our more ascendant times, we strove to plant our feet on the solid ground of Americana, claiming every right due citizens in these United Snakes of America. But generally we have worn the persona of the schizoid personality, a painful balancing act between the blues songs of love and hate for our presence in Tobacco Road.

Integration, separation, migration, revolution, we have enjoyed a plethora of feelings, emotions and often the raw psychological depression derived from oppression. In our more positive times, we expressed a maniacal moment of elation before the depression set in as happened in the short lived post bellum, post emancipation period called Reconstruction.

The 19th century thinkers ranged from the militant writings of David Walker's Appeal, 1829, through the intellectuals involved in the black conferences throughout the century that included slave insurrections, back to Africa thinking, and the radical thinking of men like Henry Highland Garnett.

Some of these thinkers gave up on the American dream and tried to tell us we would never be free in Babylon. After 1827 with the publication of Freedom's Journal, the black press expressed our mood from then on. With the Civil War we envisioned a future of freedom, but virtual slavery returned after the short lived Reconstruction.

Booker T. Washington told us to cast down our buckets where we were, forget about integration and strive for economic progress, while others pleaded for full citizenship rights, among them W.E.B. DuBois, who saw race as the essential problem of America. DuBois saw a "talented tenth" leading the race to freedom.

Marcus Garvey had read the writings of Booker T. Washington in the African Times and Orient
Review, the paper edited by Duse Muhammad Ali, the man who mentored Garvey in London before he came to America to hook up with Booker T., who died before Garvey arrived.

Of course Garvey came to America indoctrinated with the Pan Africanism taught him by Duse Muhammad Ali, One God, One Aim, One Destiny, Africa for the Africans, those at home and those abroad.

Although DuBois became a champion of Pan Africanism and died in Ghana, Garvey implemented his black nationalist, Pan Africanist program, supposedly organizing six million people into the greatest organization of radical black thought preceding Elijah Muhammad's Nation of Islam.
Ironically, Negro intellectuals were Garvey's worse enemies and conspired to railroad him into prison, partly from jealousy and envy. After release from prison, he died a broken man in London, never landing on African soil.

World War I had given North American Africans a chance to see the world and again prove themselves in battle, although they returned to face race riots after fighting fascism abroad. Their thinking had expanded after the war and after they began the great migration from the Jim Crow South, aka the Cotton Curtain! In the North they encountered the thoughts of urban intellectuals, including DuBois and the NAACP civil rights thinkers. But there was also the philosophy of Noble Drew Ali, a precursor of Elijah Muhammad's brand of unorthodox Islam.
Noble Drew Ali must be listed among those mystic Negroes who originated a synthesis of thought from Islamic Sufism, Ahmedism and the new spirituality that had origins in the 19th century.

We must never forget the literature of the slave narratives, Muslim and Christian, especially the narrative of Frederick Douglas who gave us a vivid story of his path from slavery to freedom. His July 4th speech is a classic of black thought on the meaning of Independence Day to a North American African.

July 4, 1910, when Jack Johnson became the first black heavyweight champion and behaved as a free man in every sense of the word, America responded with race riots of the kind never seen before or since, simply because Johnson claimed his manhood in the promised land and refused to play the role of the docile Negro. Because of Johnson's thinking and behavior, America invented a law to indict him called the Mann Act, though we call it the Black Man Act. Supposedly Johnson had crossed state lines with white prostitutes that he loved to race through the streets with in his expensive cars. What should our response be to the white man who has taken liberties with our women from day one til now.

But we should also be aware of female thought, such as the thinking and actions of Harriet Tubman, who said she could have freed more slaves if they had known they were slaves. And Ida B. Wells, who did all she could to stop lynchings throughout the land. And Queen Mother Moore, the Mother of Reparations. Angela Davis has long given her thoughts on the liberation of captives in the prisons and jails of America. We thank her because few men have addressed the topic, although Elijah Muhammad long called for the amnesty of men and women unjustly imprisoned in America. The Black Panthers followed up on this point as well.

Of course some of our greatest thinking has come from those men either in prison or released from prison, such as George Jackson, Eldridge Cleaver, Malcolm X and our greatest living prison philosopher , Mumia Abu Jamal.

For many black men, prison is the first time they get a chance to think. We shall be astounded to discover their thinking and writings, especially with so many of them locked down as we write.

Elijah said separation. Martin Luther King, Jr. said integration and civil rights. Malcolm said human rights, the ballot or the bullet. With Obama as President, we have obviously gone for the ballot, yet by the time he leaves office, we may be forced to consider the bullet.

For sure, our thinking has been unified around the theme of freedom and liberation. Our literature is essentially a slave narrative or how I got ova, how I survived. Amiri Baraka was asked at UC Berkeley what was his greatest accomplishment? He answered, "I survived!"

We cannot conclude this brief outline of our thought without reference to the underlying philosophy contained in the music, the spirituals, the blues, jazz, poetry and rap. For here we find the thought of common people, thus the common sense philosophic thought that made it possible for us to keep the faith, to endure the daily round. The music is thus a metaphoric comment on our general condition, sometimes personalized, sometimes politicized, but always a statement on our reality as a people in the Crazy House Called America.
--Marvin X
11/13/10