North American African Economic Unity

North American African Economic Unity

There is little joy in the hood this holiday season. Not much money appears to be circulating. In Oakland a Kwanza gift show was full of vendors only, disappointed that very few persons showed up to buy gifts. At the Berkeley Flea market vendors complained that business was pitiful. At Oakland's only large store downtown, Sears, a clerk said there were no costumers after working all day.

If America is in a recession, the hood is in a depression. The Obamian Voodoo economics, derived from the Bush I era has failed to trickle down, so the economic situation is dire, resulting in people suffering depression and severe stress in interpersonal relations. Of course the violence continues on the streets, along with terrorist threats heard from those talking on their cell phones to mates and partners. People are naturally disappointed to be without in the land of plenty. For sure, the folks shopping downtown San Francisco may be downsizing to a degree but not to the level of poverty in the hood. The shoppers in San Francisco's Union Square are shopping and ice skating, singing Christmas Carols and sipping lattes and Irish coffee.

How shall the hood come out of this economic morass? What is the plan for the immediate and long range solution to the perennial economic crisis? What are the ghetto economists saying, thinking, planning, if anything, for they appear to be singing Silent Night.

Youth and adults are bereft of a solution, though a few still search for work. A young man was smart enough to get a candy wagon and work the Broadway corridor downtown Oakland. But most youth are restricted to selling their bags of marijuana, maybe some pills and cough medicine, although pimping and whoring is the latest underground endeavor since people don't have money for dope like the old days, plus prison is the likely result, so the boys have resorted to pimping, and the girls take up the slack when the boys go to jail, yes, the girls are pimping too.

But we know this is no solution, especially in the long term. We have long recommended the micro loan bank to help youth and adults become entrepreneurs, especially those with criminal records or with recalcitrant attitudes that make them unfit for a normal job even if one existed.

We need only look at our indigenous brothers and sisters selling fruits and vegetables on the street, or fresh juice. Many brothers sell movies and come up, and clothes are always a good hustle. It simply requires a little thinking, perhaps clear thinking minus the marijuana, and we can come up. One can come up selling all the paraphernalia necessary to get high, the swishers,
cigarette paper, matches, lighters, pipes. If we think, there are infinite possibilities. If we spend time singing the blues, we shall miss the boat heading upriver to the bank.

You can sell the homeless paper and come up. I did as a Crack fiend, getting $20.00 per paper on average, making $300.00 to $400.00 per day. Of course the money went to the dope man for my Crack habit. I don't make that now selling my books. Of course I don't have the motivation I had as a dope fiend. A dope fiend is a highly determined individual who is going to get his dope by any means necessary. The recovering addict appears to be unable to think with that same motivation, although ultimately he must, if he sincerely wants to step up his game.

These dire economic times are forcing us to think out the box, to transcend our dependence on the white man's job. We must now consider cooperative economics, or how can we pool our resources to come up. We did it in the dope game, we can do it with legitimate products, especially if we can overcome mistrust and greed. We do this by working my book How to Recover from the Addiction to White Supremacy. Once we overcome fear and distrust, we can work together. We can buy wholesale, keep the price low and sell fast. Make sure we have multiple sources for the goods we need. And treat your customers with compassion. Don't insult them as I sometimes did on drugs or even sober, sometimes. You can give layaway and credit, just don't kill a brother or sister because they owe you twenty dollars. Why would you go to prison over a twenty dollar debt? It doesn't make sense are you are not thinking. Life is a thinking man's/woman's game!

A rich friend of mine loaned a man ten thousand dollars. The man refused to repay, so my friend's brother wanted to kill the man. My friend told his brother to let it go, that he didn't want to jeopardize his millions over ten thousand funky dollars!

We can get through this moment and any other time that may be a little trying and stressful. Think in unity, transcend individualism. We should buy our food collectively at the wholesale house, not the retail grocery store. Why are you shopping at Safeway and Lucky, just to feel good paying high prices, when in reality you're a trick. Half the goods at Safeway and Lucky you can purchase at the Dollar Store, so what is your problem? You just want to be a blues singer, you love the blues. Better to sing a Spiritual or listen to some Gospel rap that's talking about faith and hope. Somebody better get a healing up in here!
--Marvin X
12/14/10

Job Crisis Shall Get Worse--Robert Reich

Published on Monday, July 25, 2011 by RobertReich.org
Why Washington is About to Make the Jobs Crisis Worse
by Robert Reich

We now live in parallel universes.

One universe is the one in which most Americans live. In it, almost 15 million people are unemployed, wages are declining (adjusted for inflation), and home values are still falling. The unsurprising result is consumers aren’t buying — which is causing employers to slow down their hiring and in many cases lay off more of their workers. In this universe, we’re locked in a vicious economic cycle that’s getting worse.

The other universe is the one in which Washington politicians live. They are now engaged in a bitter partisan battle over how, and by how much, to reduce the federal budget deficit in order to buy enough votes to lift the debt ceiling.

The two universes have nothing whatever to do with one another — except for one thing. If consumers can’t and won’t buy, and employers won’t hire without customers, the spender of last resort must be government. We’ve understood this since government spending on World War II catapulted America out of the Great Depression — reversing the most vicious of vicious cycles. We’ve understood it in every economic downturn since then.

Until now.

The only way out of the vicious economic cycle is for government to adopt an expansionary fiscal policy — spending more in the short term in order to make up for the shortfall in consumer demand. This would create jobs, which will put money in peoples’ pockets, which they’d then spend, thereby persuading employers to do more hiring. The consequential job growth will also help reduce the long-term ratio of debt to GDP. It’s a win-win.

This is not rocket science. And it’s not difficult for government to do this — through a new WPA or Civilian Conservation Corps, an infrastructure bank, tax incentives for employers to hire, a two-year payroll tax holiday on the first $20K of income, and partial unemployment benefits for those who have lost part-time jobs.

Yet the parallel universe called Washington is moving in exactly the opposite direction. Republicans are proposing to cut the budget deficit this year and next, which will result in more job losses. And Democrats, from the President on down, seem unable or unwilling to present a bold jobs plan to reverse the vicious cycle of unemployment. Instead, they’re busily playing “I can cut the deficit more than you” — trying to hold their Democratic base by calling for $1 of tax increases (mostly on the wealthy) for every $3 of spending cuts.

All of this is making the vicious economic cycle worse — and creating a vicious political cycle to accompany it.

As more and more Americans lose faith that their government can do anything to bring back jobs and wages, they are becoming more susceptible to the Republican’s oft-repeated lie that the problem is government — that if we shrink government, jobs will return, wages will rise, and it will be morning in America again. And as Democrats, from the President on down, refuse to talk about jobs and wages, but instead play the deficit-reduction game, they give even more legitimacy to this lie and more momentum to this vicious political cycle.

The parallel universes are about to crash, and average Americans will be all the worse for it.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License

Robert Reich is Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. He has written twelve books, including The Work of Nations, Locked in the Cabinet, and his most recent book, Supercapitalism. His "Marketplace" commentaries can be found on publicradio.com and iTunes.

Diallo: The Maid's Tale

The Maid's Tale


She was paid to clean up after the rich and powerful. Then she walked into Dominique Strauss-Kahn's room—and a global scandal. Now she tells her story.





by Christopher Dickey and John Solomon
July 25, 2011-- newsweek.com


"Hello? Housekeeping."

The maid hovered in the suite's large living room, just inside the entrance. The 32-year-old Guinean, an employee of the Sofitel hotel, had been told by a room-service waiter that room 2806 was now free for cleaning, "Hello? Housekeeping," the maid called out again. No reply. The door to the bedroom, to her left, was open, and she could see part of the bed. She glanced around the living room for luggage, saw none. "Hello? Housekeeping." Then a naked man with white hair suddenly appeared, as if out of nowhere.

That's how Nafissatou Diallo describes the start of the explosive incident on Saturday, May 14, that would forever change her life—and that of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund and, until that moment, the man tipped to be the next president of France. Now the woman known universally as the "DSK maid" has broken her public silence for the first time, talking for more than three hours with NEWSWEEK at the office of her attorneys, Thompson Wigdor, on New York City's Fifth Avenue.

"Nafi" Diallo is not glamorous. Her light-brown skin is pitted with what look like faint acne scars, and her dark hair is hennaed, straightened, and worn flat to her head, but she has a womanly, statuesque figure. When her face is in repose, there is an opaque melancholy to it. Working at the Sofitel for the last three years, with its security and stability, was clearly the best job she'd ever hoped to have, after years braiding hair and working in a friend's store in the Bronx as a newcomer from Guinea in 2003.

Diallo cannot read or write in any language; she has few "close friends," she says, and some of the men she has spent time with, whom she does not call fiancés or boyfriends, but "just friends," appear to have taken advantage of her. One, now in a federal detention center in Arizona awaiting deportation after a drug conviction, won her confidence—and, she says, access to her bank accounts—by giving her fake designer bags: "Six or seven of them," she says. "They weren't very good." Her face goes almost blank. "He was my friend that I trust—that I used to trust," she says. Related: The Strauss-Kahn Timeline »

Some of Diallo's most upbeat moments in the interview came when she recounted the small promotions and credits available at the Sofitel for a job done well. She was supposed to clean 14 rooms a day for a wage of $25 an hour plus tips, according to her union. It's an achievement, Diallo said, to get a whole floor of your own because it saves the time wasted going up and down in the elevator to clean random individual rooms. Another maid had gone on maternity leave in April, Diallo said, and she'd gotten the 28th floor. "I keep that floor," said Diallo. "I never had a floor before." When every door has a "Do Not Disturb" notice, maids save precious minutes by going to the hall closet and quickly refilling their cleaning carts with soap, towels, and other amenities. Diallo's eyes lit up talking about the routine and about her colleagues. "We worked as a team," she said. "I loved the job. I liked the people. All different countries, American, African, and Chinese. But we were the same there."

Occasionally as Diallo talked, she wept, and there were moments when the tears seemed forced. Almost all questions about her past in West Africa were met with vague responses. She was reluctant to talk about her father, an imam who ran a Quranic school out of the family home in rural Guinea. Her husband died of "an illness," she said. So did a daughter who was 3 or 4 months old—she wasn't sure. Diallo was raped by two soldiers who arrested her for a curfew violation at night in Conakry, the Guinean capital. When they had finished with her, they released her the next morning, she said, but made her clean up the scene of the assault. At first she said she couldn't recall what year that happened, but later she said it was 2001. Diallo had managed to get her surviving daughter, now 15, out of Africa and to the United States "for a better life," she said. But precisely how that happened was not a subject she or her lawyers would explore. Again, her eyes stared downward, welling with tears.

When Diallo reached the point of her alleged assault in the Sofitel, however, her account was vivid and compelling. As she told NEWSWEEK, she had used up a lot of time waiting for guests to check out of room 2820 before she cleaned it. Then she saw the room-service waiter taking the tray out of 2806, one of the hotel's presidential suites. The waiter said it was empty. But still she decided to check. This is her account.

"Hello? Housekeeping." Diallo looked around the living room. She was standing facing the bedroom in the small entrance hall when the naked man with white hair appeared.

"Oh, my God," said Diallo. "I'm so sorry." And she turned to leave. "You don't have to be sorry," he said. But he was like "a crazy man to me." He clutched at her breasts. He slammed the door of the suite.

Diallo is about 5 feet 10, considerably taller than Strauss-Kahn, and she has a sturdy build. "You're beautiful," Strauss-Kahn told her, wrestling her toward the bedroom. "I said, 'Sir, stop this. I don't want to lose my job,'" Diallo told NEWSWEEK. "He said, 'You're not going to lose your job.'?" An ugly incident with a guest—any guest—could threaten everything Diallo had worked for. "I don't look at him. I was so afraid. I didn't expect anyone in the room."

"He pulls me hard to the bed," she said. He tried to put his penis in her mouth, she said, and as she told the story she tightened her lips and turned her face from side to side to show how she resisted. "I push him. I get up. I wanted to scare him. I said, 'Look, there is my supervisor right there.'?" But the man said there was nobody out there, and nobody was going to hear.

Diallo kept pushing him away: "I don't want to hurt him," she told us. "I don't want to lose my job." He shoved back, moving her down the hallway from the bedroom toward the bathroom. Diallo's uniform dress buttoned down the front, but Strauss-Kahn didn't bother with the buttons, she said. He pulled it up around her thighs and tore down her pantyhose, gripping her crotch so hard that it was still red at the hospital, hours later. He pushed her to her knees, her back to the wall. He forced his penis into her mouth, she said, and he gripped her head on both sides. "He held my head so hard here," she said, putting her hands to her cranium. "He was moving and making a noise. He was going like 'uhh, uhh, uhh.' He said, 'Suck my'—I don't want to say." The report from the hospital where Diallo was taken later for examination notes that "she felt something wet and sour come into her mouth and she spit it out on the carpet."

"I got up," Diallo told NEWSWEEK. "I was spitting. I run. I run out of there. I don't turn back. I run to the hallway. I was so nervous; I was so scared. I didn't want to lose my job."

Diallo says she hid around the corner in the hallway near the service lobby and tried to compose herself. "I was standing there spitting. I was so alone. I was so scared." Then she saw the man come out of 2806 and head for the elevator. "I don't know how he got dressed so fast, and with baggage," she said. "He looked at me like this." She inclin-ed her head and stared straight ahead. "He said nothing."

The entire incident had taken no more than 15 minutes, and maybe much less. According to a source familiar with the phone records, nine minutes after Diallo entered the room, Strauss-Kahn made a call to his daughter.

The maid had left her cleaning supplies in room 2820 when she went to check on Strauss-Kahn's suite. Now she retrieved them and returned to the suite in which, she says, she had just been attacked. Disoriented, she seems to have sought some kind of solace in resuming her routine. "I went to the room I have to clean," she explained. But she couldn't think how or where to start. "I was so, so, so—I don't know what to do."?Prosecutors, losing faith in Diallo's credibility, would later raise an issue about this sequence of events. They said she told the grand jury that after the attack she hid in the hallway, but subsequently changed her story to say she cleaned room 2820 and then began to clean the DSK suite. She disputes that she changed her story, and hotel room-access records support what she told NEWSWEEK.

Many aspects of Diallo's account of the alleged attack are mirrored in the hospital records, in which doctors observed five hours afterward that there was "redness" in the area of the vagina where she alleges Strauss-Kahn grabbed her. The medical records also note she complained of "pain to left shoulder." Weeks later, doctors reexamined the shoulder and found a partial ligament tear, she said.

If there is one inconsistency for defense lawyers to dwell on in the hospital records, it is a passage that says her attacker got dressed and left the room, and "said nothing to her during the incident." In her interview with police and her account to NEWSWEEK, Diallo recalled several statements Strauss-Kahn made during the alleged attack.

Defense lawyers are expected to challenge the nature of her injuries, her recollection of events, the veracity of elements of her life story, and her conduct with other men if the case proceeds.

Diallo's supervisor, making the rounds, found her in the hallway. She could see Diallo was shaken and upset and asked what was wrong. "If somebody try to rape you in this job, what do you do?" Diallo asked her. The supervisor was angry when she heard of the assault, Diallo recalled. "She said, 'The guest is a VIP guest, but I don't give a damn.'?" Another supervisor came, then two men from hotel security. One of them told Diallo, "If this was me, I would call the police." At about 1:30 p.m., an hour after the first supervisor was told of the alleged attack, the hotel dialed 911.

At that moment, Dominique Strauss-Kahn was still one of the most powerful men in the world. As head of the IMF, he was the lead player in attempts to keep the European, and indeed the global, economy from plunging into a potentially apocalyptic recession. He was also getting ready to declare his candidacy for the presidency of France in an election only a year away. If he were to defeat Nicolas Sarkozy, the hugely unpopular incumbent, DSK would then govern a country that is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council and has the world's third-biggest arsenal of nuclear weapons.

Prosecutors have identified a hotel concierge who says DSK made an unwanted advance to her the previous night. They have also identified a blonde American businesswoman observed going into the same elevator as Strauss-Kahn at 1:26 a.m. in what appears to have been a consensual relationship. (The French magazine Le Point reported implausibly in July that Strauss-Kahn had even admitted to his wife, the heiress and former television personality Anne Sinclair, that he had had sex with three women that Friday and Saturday as "a last glass before hitting the road for the [French] presidential campaign.")

What's more certain is that after checking out of the hotel at 12:28 p.m. on May 14, Strauss-Kahn went to lunch with his youngest daughter, Camille, who had been studying at Columbia University. From there, he went to JFK airport to catch Air France Flight 23 overnight to Paris. The next day he was supposed to meet with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. But as he waited to board the plane, Strauss-Kahn apparently couldn't find his IMF cell phone. On another mobile, he called the Sofitel to ask if it had been found in the suite. The police, now on the scene at the hotel, had an employee say yes (although in fact the phone was not there) and ask where they could get it to him. The Air France terminal, Gate 4, he said, and asked them to rush to get it to JFK before takeoff. Instead, the Port Authority police were notified, and just before the plane was ready to taxi away from the gate, they took Strauss-Kahn off it. "The NYPD need to speak with you about an incident in the city at a hotel," one of the cops told him.

While Strauss-Kahn languished in "the box," the interview room at the Manhattan Special Victims Squad in Harlem, Nafissatou Diallo was taken to the hospital for examination, then back to the hotel with the police to walk through what had happened to her, showing them where she stood, where she fell, where she spit. As the day wore on, she became increasingly frantic about her daughter alone at home. Finally the police took her back to the Bronx at 3 in the morning. Neither she nor the girl could sleep. "She was so scared," Diallo remembered.

But when Diallo watched the morning news, she was terrified: "I watched Channel 7 and they say this is [the] guy—I don't know—and he is going to be the next president of France. And I think they are going to kill me." The phone started to ring in her apartment as reporters found her number. Others appeared at her door. She woke her daughter and told her to pack her bag and get ready to stay with a relative. She told the girl how powerful DSK must be: "Now everybody say everything about me, all the bad things." The girl tried to reassure her mother. "She says, 'Please, Mom, don't hurt yourself. I know one day the truth will come out.' I was so happy when she said that."

That afternoon, Diallo went back to the Special Victims Squad to look at a lineup of five men. "My heart was like this," she says, patting her chest. But she knew him immediately. "No. 3," she said, and left as quickly as she could. Later she was housed in a hotel with her daughter for weeks, almost incommunicado, neither of them allowed cell phones after they were placed in protective custody by prosecutors. It would be almost two months before she was allowed to return to her apartment to pick up her possessions. "I don't know why I have to do these things," she says. "Is it because he is so powerful?"

To this day, we do not have DSK's account of what happened in suite 2806. Since his arrest, Strauss-Kahn has shielded himself with highly skilled lawyers and investigators who have kept his version of events off the public record. His lawyer, William Taylor, told NEWSWEEK, "What disgusts me is an effort to pressure the prosecutors with street theater, and that is fundamentally wrong." To charges of criminal sexual assault, attempted rape, and related offenses, Strauss-Kahn entered a plea of not guilty. Meanwhile, his supporters have attacked the maid's account, her reputation, her background, and her associations. But Strauss-Kahn's antecedents surfaced with a vengeance as well.

In 2008 DSK admitted to an affair with a subordinate at the IMF. Speaking to investigators, he called it "a personal mistake and a business mistake." In July a young French journalist and novelist, Tristane Banon, filed charges against him in Paris for what she claims was an attempted rape in a Left Bank apartment where she went to interview him in 2003. She told fellow guests during a TV appearance in 2007 that he had come after her like "a chimpanzee in rut," and her account bears some similarities to Diallo's as she describes a man who seems to lose control completely when at the height of sexual desire. Banon's mother, Anne Mansouret, is an ambitious politician in her own right who is often identified with Strauss-Kahn's rivals in the French Socialist Party. She recently claimed that she herself had had consensual but "brutal" sex with him in 2000. Among DSK's acquaintances from Paris to Washington to New York, dinner-party conversation is rife with tales of close calls and wild encounters. One French magazine calls him "Dr. Strauss and Mr. Kahn." He also has long enjoyed a reputation as being hugely charming and seductive.

DNA evidence in suite 2806—the result of all that spitting that mingled the maid's saliva and Strauss-Kahn's sperm—makes it virtually impossible to deny there was a sexual encounter between DSK and Diallo. Strauss-Kahn's lawyers raised the possibility early on that it was consensual and have left it to others to speculate about the circumstances under which that might have been the case: that Diallo expected money that she did not receive, or that the sex got rougher and more aggressive than she would accept. The New York Post published stories attributed to an anonymous source that claimed Diallo was at least a part-time prostitute. Her lawyers, Kenneth Thompson and Douglas Wigdor, are now suing the Post, saying the story is false. The newspaper stands by its story.

In her interview with NEWSWEEK, Diallo didn't disguise her anger at Strauss-Kahn. "Because of him they call me a prostitute," she said. "I want him to go to jail. I want him to know there are some places you cannot use your power, you cannot use your money." She said she hoped God punishes him. "We are poor, but we are good," she said. "I don't think about money."

Perhaps. But on the day of the incident, by Diallo's own account, she made two telephone calls. One was to her daughter. The other call was to Blake Diallo, a Senegalese who is from the same ethnic group but no relation. He manages a restaurant, the Cafe 2115 in Harlem, where West Africans gather to eat, talk, politic, and sometimes listen to concerts. Nafissatou describes Blake as "a friend," and one of the first things he did for her after the incident was to find her a personal-injury lawyer on the Internet.

More problematic were a series of phone calls that Nafissatou Diallo received from Amara Tarawally, whose uncle owned the bodega where Diallo worked when she first came to the United States. Originally from Sierra Leone, he divided his time between New York and Arizona, where he sold T shirts and fake designer handbags. But last year he was busted in a sting operation run by Arizona police when, according to cops, he paid them almost $40,000 cash for more than 100 pounds of marijuana.

On July 1, The New York Times reported the existence of a taped conversation between Diallo and Tarawally. The article said they talked the day after the incident at the Sofitel and quoted a "well-placed law enforcement official": "She says words to the effect of, 'Don't worry, this guy has a lot of money. I know what I'm doing.'?" But at the time, prosecutors did not have a full transcript of the call, which had been conducted in a dialect of Fulani, Diallo's language. The quote was a paraphrase from a translator's summary of the tape, and the actual words are somewhat different, sources told NEWSWEEK.

In July NEWSWEEK talked to Tarawally in Arizona. He insisted that the quotation must refer to a later conversation and in any case was taken out of context. Diallo said she no longer talks to Tarawally. He used her bank account to move tens of thousands of dollars around the country without informing her, she said. She denied he ever gave her money to spend. "Like I say, he was my friend," Diallo told us. "I used to trust him."

But the list of reasons for prosecutors to doubt Diallo's credibility does not begin or end with Tarawally. In a letter to DSK's defense lawyers on June 30, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. cited several lies and deceptions in her past. She had claimed deductions for two children on her taxes instead of one. She had understated her income to get cheaper housing. And, most important, she had lied on her asylum application.

Diallo, a widow, came to the United States in 2003, leaving her then–7-year-old daughter behind in Guinea with a brother. Having entered the U.S. under dubious circumstances and without working papers, she lived with family members for some time, eking out an income braiding hair and then working in a bodega in the Bronx.

In late 2003 Diallo applied for asylum. Because she had suffered genital mutilation as a child, and doctors confirmed that fact in a medical report, she probably would have qualified for asylum in any case, given current law and practices. And she insists she was raped after curfew by two soldiers. (This is not unheard of in Guinea. In 2009 soldiers conducted mass rapes and killed as many as 160 people in a Conakry sports stadium, according to human-rights organizations.) But bad as the realities were in Diallo's homeland, she admits the account that she gave the U.S. government on her asylum application was heavily embellished. Her fictionalized narrative worked to get her a green card and allow her to bring her child to America. But her past misstatements may make it impossible to win a criminal case against DSK based on her testimony.

Prosecutors are likely weeks away from making a decision on whether to proceed with the -charges. They remain confident that the forensic evidence shows a sexual encounter and impressed by the consistency of the story Diallo told to two maid supervisors, two hotel security guards, hospital personnel, and detectives during the first 24 hours. The prosecution team has "no idea what it is going to do yet," a person close to the case said. The investigators are "treating it like any other case that runs into these problems, and that means gathering all the evidence."

Given the issues of Diallo's credibility, investigators have been building a "suspect profile" of DSK, interviewing other women who claim to have been assaulted or who had consensual affairs, trying to establish a pattern of behavior and comparing it to Diallo's account. In mid-July they talked with the lawyer for Tristane Banon. Though not required to do so, New York prosecutors have begun the process of asking French authorities to let her speak to U.S. officials, providing the alleged victim some political cover in her home country, where the DSK case is a media rage.

Almost immediately after the indictment was secured and long before the public knew of the problems with Diallo's past, prosecutors began digging around in her financial records and interviewing friends, looking for any evidence of extortion or criminal activity. The review found ties to shady acquaintances and suspicious transactions, to be sure, but no evidence of a premeditated plot against Strauss-Kahn.

It's possible that Diallo is a woman who has lived for the last few years on the margins of quasi-illegal immigrant society in the Bronx, associating with petty con artists and dubious types trying to get a foothold in this country. But that does not preclude her having been the victim of a predatory and powerful man. Nor does it mean she will rule out an attempt to make some money from the situation.

Given the climate of suspicion that developed around her, Diallo's last three encounters with authorities, on June 8, 20, and 28, were difficult sessions, as prosecutors grilled her like a defendant. The mistrust between Vance and Diallo's lawyers boiled over on July 1, when Thompson held a news conference in front of the courthouse and accused the district attorney of abandoning Diallo.

Since then, both sides have tried to smooth matters over. Thompson has signaled a willingness to let his client be interviewed again if prosecutors let her see a transcript of the disputed prison call, and that is something prosecutors say they are willing to do. But the distrust and tensions could be renewed again after prosecutors learn of Diallo's decision to go public after weeks of remaining in protective custody. Diallo says she gave the interview to NEWSWEEK to correct the misleading portrayal of her in the media. Her account of what happened has remained the same all along, she says. "I tell them about what this man do to me. It never changed. I know what this man do to me," she says.

Looking to the future, Diallo says she would love to go back to working in a hotel, but maybe in the laundry. She wants never again to have to knock on a door and call out: "Hello? Housekeeper."

All Of Me

All Of Me

Marvin X at West Oakland's Defermery Park for Geronimo Ji-Jaga, July 17, 2011

Reading with Marvin X are Toya and Aries Jordan, students at Marvin X's Academy of da Corner. Coming Soon from Academy of da Corner Reader's Theatre: The Mythology of Love, a womanhood/manhood rite of passage by Marvin X.

Upcoming Events

July 29, 7pm

The Pan African Mental Health Peer Group to Recover from White Supremacy Type II,
Friday, July 29, 7pm, 1222 Dwight Way, Berkeley, off San Pablo.

August 4, 1pm Elders Council

The next meeting of the West Oakland Renaissance Committee/Elders Council is Thursday, August 4, 1pm at the Post Newspaper Office, 14th and Franklin, 12th Floor, downtown Oakland.

For more information, email: jmarvinx@yahoo.com

Parable of the Gangsta

Parable of the Gangsta
























Parable of the Gangsta

He wanted to be a gangsta since childhood. He watched his big brothers gang banging, in and out of prison, the funerals, parties with more wine than they had at the Last Supper. Females were always on hand serving the brothers, raising their babies, visiting them in jail and prison. Big cars, flashy clothes, bling bling, the little brother watched and waited his turn.

When it was time for him to join, he got ready for the initiation. On that day he was required to kill and rape. He was ready. No matter his mother was a hard working house cleaner who took the bus to work. She wanted none of her children's ill gotten gain. She was a Christian woman who tried to get him into college, rather than go the path of her other sons.

But he had other plans. He didn't want to be a square. He hated squares. They were, in his mind, suckers for the white man. He saw them with their suits and ties and brief cases, thinking they were all that and a bag of chips. He saw them in the dope house coping, along with their square girls. When the girls got sprung, they would leave the square nigguhs for the dope man.

He watched the square brothers get broke and turn tricks with the dope man in front of their women. He vowed to his dead gangsta brothers he would not be a square, but would be like them, even though they didn't want him to end up like them, in prison or a coffin early in life. Thursdays was gang initiation night in the hood.

Most people stayed off the street on Thursdays, unless people got off work late and had to walk home. Anyone could be a victim if caught on the street. He drove around looking for a victim, not far from his house. It didn't matter who it was. On a dim lighted street he saw a woman and snatched her onto the ground, tearing off her clothes. She screamed and yelled but he didn't care, especially since he was loaded on dope and out of his mind.

He didn't bother to look at the woman's face as he raped her. When he finished he turned her around and got the shock of his life. She was his mother! He ran to his car in shame and horror.When he got home he took out his gun and shot himself in the head and fell to the floor dead. He was now a gangsta.

--Marvin X



3/11/10

Based on a true story.
from the Wisdom of Plato Negro, Parables/fables, Volumes I and II, Marvin X, Black Bird Press, Berkeley, 2010, $100.00.

Hustler's Guide to the Game Called Life

Hustler’s Guide to the Game Called Life

The worse sucker in the world is a pitiful no-hustling, job-ass nigguh waiting for the white man to give him a paycheck or a woman to bring him money as in pimping. Let’s be clear on the last point—the pimp has no relation whatsoever to the hustler. The pimp is a bitch ass nigguh too trifling to do for self and make his own money. The true hustler will never wait on anybody to bring him shit—he gets his with his own wits and game. It is beneath his dignity as a man to wait around for somebody to help him when he can hustle with toilet paper and come up.

The square nigguh can’t figure out his ass from a hole in the ground, but sits around like a frog on a lily pad trying to figure out how to come up. He will pray to a mystery God to help him when the God within himself has already answered: Nigguh , get yo black ass up and do for self!

And you nigguhs with Supreme Wisdom are just as pitiful because you got it but didn’t get it—Supreme Wisdom. If you are God then wake up the town. Shake up the universe by letting your little light shine. Get yo ass out the mosque and do something for self. What does a hustler need to fellowship with some dead ass nigguhs sending all their money to Mississippi. Even the dead preacher don't send his money nowhere but his pocket.

I am a revolutionary hustler standing on the shoulders of my ancestors who made something out of nothing, who took animal food and cooked it into a gourmet meal, who were raped, lynched, tar and feathered, who couldn’t read or write but came through it all to see a better day.

You pitiful motherfuckers whining about the white man should be shot in the head as a disgrace to your ancestors, Nat Turner, Denmark Vesey, Gabriel Prosser, David Walker, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Ida B. Wells, Ella Collins, Mae Mallory, Queen Mother Moore, Fannie Lou Hamer, Clara Muhammad, Betty Shabazz, Coretta Scott King, Booker T., DuBois, Garvey, Noble Drew Ali, Master Fard Muhammad, Elijah, Malcolm and Martin.


How can you get up each morning and go to your wage slave job with the white man and call yourself African, Black, Colored or Negro. You a bitch ass nigguh and should be pimped until your drawers fall off, then given a fake gold watch after thirty years loyal service. A one week general strike will cause the fall of America! Can you sacrifice one week for your freedom? No, you must collaborate with your woman and her addiction to white supremacy conspicuous consumption. You are a co-dependent that needs to detox with her and your children.

The Hustler is a rebel, outlaw, incorrigible and recalcitrant, the type the white man had no choice but to kill or allow to go free, yes, that crazy nigguh each town had that nobody fucked with, not even the white man.


The Hustler is fearless and don’t give a fuck—his life and death are all for Allah! He fears nothing and serves nobody but Allah! His objective is not to satisfy a woman, he is content to let her satisfy herself as long as she doesn’t interrupt his flow. Most importantly, the Hustler is independent, meaning he will never move in with a woman to be under her control, at her whim and emotional disposition, to be thrown out in the middle of the night when she calls her real boyfriend, 911, otherwise known as the peckerwood, pig, devil.

It is proper for a man and woman to move into a place together or she can move in with him. The hustler cannot put himself in a weak situation that will interrupt his flow. Either you are about business or romanticism, make up your mind. Now if his woman is a hustler too, there is no limit to what they can do together, and ideally, a hustler needs a hustling woman, not one of those job loving women who look down on the hustling life, otherwise known as a square, willing to get pimped for life by the white man and make her man a ho too.

In his independence, he usually, and most often, must hustle alone because all around him is a bunch of punk ass, jealous nigguhs who are out to down him or prevent him from coming up in a big way. There are those well heeled hustlers who will only help him a little, never in a big way so he can come up and possibly surpass them in the game.


Most people fear the hustler or won’t join with him because they fear the unknown—how can they start out with nothing each day but come up at the end of the day? It is the beginning that scares them. Therefore, the real hustler must leave his friends alone when he discovers they ain’t real hustlers but punks who got to go pray during prime time hustling hours. What the hell are you praying for when God has already answered? When God gives you a product to work, work it!


In the hustler’s mentality, business is war, something he learned from the Japanese who have executed this philosophy to the max, and now China is learning the game, with India following suit. Where is Africa in the game? Somewhere down the line trying to be the world’s greatest criminal that will get them nowhere except to drown in their greed and corruption.


The hustler will sell anything and everything to come up, for he knows he can get anything and everything again. He will sell the clothes off his back because he knows he can get a new pair of shoes, it is only a matter of time. There is no shortage in the universe. Everything Job gave up he got back double for keeping the faith.

The hustler is self confident because he knows the game and how to play it. He doesn’t burn bridges because he needs contacts, networks of fellow hustlers who are for real and not running scams. He has respect for the game and all true fellow hustlers, but he scorns fake hustlers who think they are getting over but will ultimately only go under and never be heard from again in the game.

These are the motherfuckers who fuck up the game for the real hustlers with their punk ass actions and insincerity. You can look at them and smell their phoniness. They are rats of the worse kind and are thus short-lived in the game—they only fool square ass nigguhs much like themselves who don’t know shit from Shinola.

From The Wisdom of Plato Negro, Parables/fables, Volume II, by Marvin X, Black Bird Press, Berkeley, CA, 2010, $100.00.

Oakland Post Opinion on Chauncey Bailey, Rupert Murdoch Connection

Opinion
Chauncey Bailey, Rupert Murdoch, Media, Police and Politicians connected
by MarvinX

The charges against media mogul Rupert Murdoch, the UK police and politicians has implications and parallels with the Oakland political establishment, the Chauncey Bailey Project and the Oakland Police Department.

The situation in the United Kingdom reveals the collusion of politicians, the Media and the police. Shall we say they had a symbiotic relationship or was it more sinister and synergistic, for allegedly Mr. Murdoch's newspaper paid the police to help them hack into the phones of murdered persons. And it has been asserted that Murdoch’s American media organizations may have hacked into the phones of 9/11 victims. Politicians served at the behest of Mr. Murdoch's media empire, seeking his support, Murdoch acknowledged that they slipped him into the back door of the Prime Minister’s residence.

The whistle-blowing journalist who worked for Murdoch and was investigating the corruption scandal was found dead 24 hours before Murdoch’s testimony before the Parliament. The Scotland Yard police said the death would not be considered “suspicious”. In 1987, another journalist, Daniel Morgan, was murdered because he, like Chauncey, was about to expose a drug conspiracy linked to police corruption. Shortly before Chauncey was murdered, a group of mothers wanted him to meet with them at an Oakland Church to intervene between them and the police because they said the police were shaking down their sons for money, drugs and jewelry, without arresting them, letting them go free, putting their lives in danger with dope dealers.

As with the British treatment of Murdoch, Oakland politicians sought the blessings of Dr. Yusef Bey, founder of Your Black Muslim Bakery, and father of the now convicted murderer of Chauncey Bailey. Politicians who lined up at Dr. Bey’s door included Barbara Lee, Sandre Swanson, Keith Carson, Don Perata and Jerry Brown.

Derwin Longmire, the officer in charge of the investigation, was the chief mentor of the bakery boys. They were finally convicted of three murders, including Chauncey Bailey. Under his mentorship, the bakery boys imagined themselves as police, purchasing a bus and cars equipped with police lights. They were arrested for impersonating police and kidnapping, after they stopped a woman on the freeway. Most importantly, why didn’t the OPD inform Chauncey that the bakery boys were planning to kill him, since they had informants at the bakery and had them under surveillance for two years with tracking devices and tapped phones.


The Chauncey Bailey Project was formed at the request of Paul Cobb, but when he asked that they pursue the angle of police corruption, they dismissed Cobb’s suggestion, especially the Oakland Tribune which had a longtime embedded reporter at the OPD.

Even though officer Longmire was charge of the crime scene, he refused to interview an eye witness, although he later made a personal visit to the eye witness while he was in jail, with his tape recorder, and tried to convince the witness that he didn't see what he actually saw. Why did he decide to interview the witness and how did he know the man was in jail? And he recorded the interview, something he neglected to do when he put the two murder suspects in a room together, after which one made a confession? As in the London reporter’s death, Longmire, too did not think his behavior was suspicious.
--Marvin X

Marvin X is editing an anthology of writings on Chauncey Bailey.

DSCN0096 [HD]
by Bernard White (videos)

Chauncey Bailey, Rupert Murdoch, the Monkey Mind Media, Police and Politicians

Rupert Murdoch


Gov. Jerry Brown







Officer Longmire






Martin Reynolds, Oakland Tribune Editor











Chauncey Bailey, Oakland Post Editor

Chauncey Bailey, Rupert Murdoch, the Monkey Mind Media, Police and Politicians


The charges against media mogul Rupert Murdoch, the UK police and politicians has implications for the Oakland political establishment, the Monkey Mind Media, aka, Chauncey Bailey Project, and the Oakland Police Department. The situation in the United Kingdom reveals the collusion of politicians, the Media and the police. Shall we say they had a symbiotic relationship or was it more sinister and synergistic, for allegedly Mr. Murdoch's newspaper paid the police to hack into the phones of murdered persons. And politicians served at the behest of Mr. Murdoch's media empire, seeking his support before running for election.

In Oakland, we know politicians sought out the blessings of Dr. Yusef Bey, founder of Your Black Muslims Bakery, and father of the now convicted murderer of Chauncey Bailey.
But not only were politicians connected to the bakery, but Oakland Police as well. Alas, the officer in change of the investigation, Longmire, was the chief mentor of the bakery boys. There is absolutely no doubt that Longmire convinced them they could get away with murder. After all, they were finally convicted of three murders, including Chauncey Bailey.

If they had been under surveillance for two years, with tracking devices and tapped phones, how could the OPD not know an assassination was being planned? And if there is no police conspiracy, why would the OPD plan to raid the bakery the day before the assassination but delay it until the day after the assassination?

And let us not leave out the DA's involvement, since the DA asked Chauncey's boss at the Oakland Post about Chauncey's writing projects. When Publisher Paul Cobb replied Chauncey was investigating the police and City Hall, the DA walked out of Paul's office. Paul was never called to testify at the trial, to explain that his editor was not only investigating the Bakery but the police and city hall.

The Monkey Mind Media, aka Chauncey Bailey Project, also refused to focus on the police and politicians. The CBP was formed at the request of Paul Cobb, but when he suggested that they pursue the angle of police corruption, they dismissed Paul's suggestion, especially the Oakland Tribune's longtime embedded reporter at the OPD, Harry Harris.

Even though officer Longmire was the mentor of the now convicted murderers, and was ironically in charge of the crime scene but refused to interview an eye witness, although he later made a personal visit to the eye witness while he was in jail and tried to convince the witness he didn't see what he saw, the CBP claims they could find no police involvement. Oakland Tribune Editor Martin Reynolds told this writer he found Longmire to be a fine gentleman and after I revealed his remarks told to me at a lunch meeting, Martin threatened to drive by my Academy of da Corner and toss a Molotov Cocktail at me. It appears we have gangster journalists in league with gangster police and politicians.

As per politicians, former Mayor Ron Dellums asked Attorney General Jerry Brown to investigate the investigation of Chauncey's assassination, although Jerry needed to be investigated himself since he was the mayor who allegedly said, "If it's the last thing I do, I going to get that nigger from snooping around city hall and the police department." Shortly thereafter, Chauncey was fired from his job at the Oakland Tribune for frivolous reasons. Surely, this suggests an incestuous relationship between the press, police and politicians, quite similar to the sordid affair in the UK at this hour.

We have no doubt politicians are liars, that police are gangsters under the color of law and that the Monkey Mind Media perpetuates the world of make believe in their persona as sycophants of the police and politicians. The behavior of Rupert Murdoch suggests such is the order of business in the Monkey Mind Media, including much of the socalled progressive and/or radical media that is simply a Miller Lite person of the Monkey Mind Media.

Berkeley's socalled radical radio station KPFA reported the same story line as the MMM, i.e. the bakery young men killed Chauncey because he was going to report their bankruptcy proceedings, although such proceedings were public information. KPFA's socalled minister of information should be called minister of misinformation since he was involved in the murder conspiracy. The OPD have phone records of him talking with the now convicted murderers as they stalked the house of Chauncey Bailey hours before his assassination. Isn't it strange that a fellow journalist is about to be murdered while another journalist is on the phone talking with the assassins while they are stalking the soon to be victim's house?

The entire matter stinks to high heaven, quite similar to events in the United Kingdom. As per the assassination of Chauncey Bailey, it may be rare in the US but globally journalists are slaughtered annually, over one hundred the last few years. In Mexico, they are usually killed for investigating political corruption, drug dealing and other matters. For sure, Chauncey's assassination was encouraged if not aided and abetted by the police and politicians, the bakery boys were merely fall guys, mentored and inspired by the police that they were above the law and could literally get away with murder.
--Marvin X

Marvin X is editing an anthology of writings on Chauncey Bailey.

Sources for Research on the Moorish Science and York's Nuwabian Moors/Ansaru

From: professordorman@gmail.com

Does anyone know of someone who has done work, scholarly or otherwise, on contemporary manifestations of Moorish Science, after Noble Drew Ali, the white Moorish Orthodox Church, or the various permutations of Malachi Z. York? An AP reporter in North Carolina is trying to account for the growing number of people claiming Moorish nationality in the court system. I have checked dissertations and theses and various other databases and found nothing; I have also polled a number of ethnographers, and no one knows of anyone looking at Moorish Science today. Can anyone on this list help? At the very least this seems like a great research opportunity for an enterprising graduate student.


From: yusufnuruddin@yahoo.com

In addition to the bibliography on the Moorish Science Temple and on Malachi York's Nuwaubian Moors which I supplied earlier, here is a major title which I just discovered: The Nuwaubian Nation: Black Spirituality and State Control by Susan Palmer. Farnham, Surrey and Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate, 2010.

I also neglected to mention a feature story on the Nuwaubian Moors by Adam Heimlich
entitled "Black Egypt A Visit to Tama-Re" which appeared in the weekly newspaper New
York Press (November 14, 2000)and is available on the web. A shorter article on the Nuwaubians appears in the magazine Bidoun: Art and Culture from the
Middle East circa 2009/ 2010 but I would have to search for a while to find
my photocopy of the article in order to give you the exact date. There are also tons of articles of various qualities and ideological persuasions on the web.




----- Forwarded Message ----
From: Abdul Alkalimat
To: H-AFRO-AM@H-NET.MSU.EDU
Sent: Wed, July 20, 2011 3:36:31 AM
Subject: Re: Moorish Science After Drew Ali and Z. York

From: yusufnuruddin@yahoo.com

The Moorish Science Temple and the Ansaru Allah Community (early name of Malachi York’s Nuwabian Moors) each have a separate chapter in Yvonne Haddad’ and Jane Idleman Smith’s Mission to America: Five Islamic Sectarian
Communities in North America (University Press of Florida, 1993); chapter 3 of Richard Brent Turner’s Islam in the African American Experience (Indiana University Press, 1997) is devoted to the history of the Moorish Science Temple; Kathleen Malone O’Connor’s article “The Nubian Islamic Hebrews, Ansaru Allah Community: Jewsish Teachings of an African American Muslim Community” appears in Yvonne Chireau and Nathaiel Deutsch, eds., Black Zion: African American Religious Encounters with Judaism (Oxford University Press, 2000) ; a major work on the Moorish Science Temple is Jose Pimienta –Bey’s Othello’s Children in the New World: Moorish History and Ideology in the African American Experience. (1st Library Books, 2002); .my comparison and contrast of the teachings of the Nation of Gods and Earths (Five Percenters)and Malachi York’s Nuwabian Moors/Ansaru Allah Community is entitled “Ancient Black Astronauts and Extraterrestrial Jihads: Islamic Science Fiction as Urban Mythology” and appears in the special issue of the journal Socialism and Democracy entitled Socialism and Social Critique in Science
Fiction (No. 42; November, 2006) edited by Yusuf Nuruddin, Alcena Rogan and Victor Wallis, and is freely accessible on line at www.sdonline.org , back issues , #42; I am also aware of works in progress on the
Nuwabian Moors.

Members of the Moorish Science Temple have published atleast two recent books about their organization and beliefs. Rommani M.Amenu-El is the author of The Negro,
the Black, the Moor (Baltimore; Gateway Press, 2008). A massive work (667 pages ) by Sheik Elihu N. Pleasant-Bey is entitled Noble Drew Ali: The Exhuming of a Nation(distributed by African World Books in Baltimore, and published circa 2010).

----- Forwarded Message ----
From: Abdul Alkalimat
To: H-AFRO-AM@H-NET.MSU.EDU
Sent: Wed, July 20, 2011 3:35:32 AM
Subject: Re: Moorish Science After Drew Ali and Z. York

From: bcpdigital@yahoo.com

quite a few self published books have been done on the Moors over the last decade. best source i can think of is African World Books, Baltimore 410-383-2006, ask for brother Nati. he keeps a good inventory of them.

Muslim Pioneer shares Memories at Defermery Park Reunion

We are so thankful to Allah for blessing us to hear the testimony of a pioneer of Islam in the Bay Area, Sister Olivia Samaiyah Beyah, aka Sadie, one of the officials at Mosque #26 and later at Masjid Clara Muhammad on Bond Street in Oakland. When Malcolm X was sat down after the assassination of JFK, Queen Mother was at the home of Elijah Muhammad in Phoenix, Az.

Gullahland

GEECHEE GULLAH CULTURE SPOKESPERSON FROM SAPELO ISLAND, GEORGIA ANNOUNCES NON-GOVERNMENT ORGANIZATION

The Regeneration Of An Indigenous Culture

ATLANTA, Georgia – Geechee Gullah Culture Spokesperson Reginald H. Hall announced today the establishment of the Geechee Gullah Culture Non-Government Organization, Incorporated. The NGO consist of an executive accountability team, a tribunal, and a legislative body.

This NGO intends, according to Hall, to remedy the current deprivation situation impacted by the illegal land claims of the Sapelo Island Heritage Authority and The Department of Natural Resources Wildlife Management Area of the state of Georgia. The area of concern is known in the culture as the ancestral Geechee settlement of Raccoon Bluff, consisting of 1,376.78 acres.

West Africans, enslaved and brought to America, embraced the conditions of the land, and nurtured the growth and survival of their families by connecting their strength and resilience to the land itself. Additionally, the spirit of their relationship with nature framed their existence as indigenous. The land — and everything that the land produced — became an expression known as “the indigenous culture of the Geechee Gullah people”.

“We intend to hold onto as well as reclaim lands,” Hall asserts, “that have legally belonged to our families since 1871, as well as preserve and create the economic sustainability that will allow us to pass on our culture for generations to come.”

For more information contact: info@geecheegullahculture.org

Black Panthers Celebrate Geronimo Transition to Ancestors

Black Panthers Celebrate Transition of Geronimo Ji-Jaga to Ancestors



photo Gene Hazzard



On a beautiful, sunny day in the Bay, Oakland Black Panthers and community celebrated the transition of legendary Black Panther Minister of Defense, Geronimo Ji-Jaga who spent 27 years in prison on trumped up charges, fabricated by the FBI.

Marvin X performs with Land of My Daughters (Aries Jordan on right and Toya Jordan, left)
photo Gene Hazzard



Speaker after speaker gave honor and praise to G, the soldier who said he was only following the order of his elders when he joined the US Army and learned the skills to return home to defend his community nationwide.

Because of the split in the Black Panther Party, Oakland Panthers would not testify that he was in Oakland at the time he allegedly murdered a woman on a Los Angeles tennis court. FBI intelligence records could have proven he was in Oakland as well.

No matter, on Sunday, Oakland Black Panthers paid tribute to the man equal in stature to South Africa's Nelson Mandela, especially as per time spent in prison for revolutionary activity. He shall forever be remembered for his contribution to the liberation of North American Africans.

Throughout the afternoon, speakers such as Congresswoman Barbara Lee, Rev. Freeman, David Johnson and Willie Sundiata Tate of the San Quentin Six, Ayana At-Thinin, Avotcja, Stu Hanlon (G's lawyer along with the late Johnny Cochran) and a host of others, praised our dearly beloved and departed brother who joined the ancestors in the Motherland where he finally settled, Tanzania, East Africa.

The event was organized by Black Panther chief archivist Billy X Jennings, but participants included the Black Panther Commemorator Newspaper, under the guidance of Melvin Dixon, Big Man, Jabari Shaw of the BSU of at Laney College, Brother Ustadi of the Afrikan Learning Center.
There were performances by Tarika Lewis, first female member of the BPP and Phavia Kujichagulia, griot of the first order. Percussionist Tacuma King also performed along with other too numerous to mention.

Toward the end of the evening, Billy X Jennings, the chief organizer, announced he had been saving the best for last and then introduced Marvin X, poet, playwright, activist, one of the founders of the Black Arts Movement, who attended Merritt College with Black Panther co-founders Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, the man who introduced Eldridge Cleaver to the Black Panthers, along with Emory Douglas and Samuel Napier when they attended the Black House, the political/cultural center founded by Marvin X and Eldridge Cleaver in San Francisco, 1967.

Marvin took the mike along with two young lady poet/performers, Toya and Aries Jordan, sisters from the east coast who have joined his Academy of da Corner Reader's Theatre. Aries, under the mentorship of Marvin X, published her first collection of poetry. She electrified the audience at the Joyce Gordon Gallery during a Woman's History Month Celebration organized by Marvin X, who called together the most powerful African women in the Bay Area, Hunia Bradly, Rev. Mutima Imani, Ayodele Nzinga, Phavia Kujichagulia, Tureada Mikel, Jerri Lange, Talibah, who presented a poetic womanhood rites of passage. Aries performed a scene from the Vagina Monologue as well as her poetry.

Marvin X made opening remarks on Geronimo, saying he recalled two essential things about the brother. Firstly, that he was a soldier who practiced discipline, and this was necessary for the present generation of youth to acquire, that it ain't about any means necessary but the right means necessary to achieve victory. Secondly, G went into the US Army because his elders commanded him to do so, in order to learn the skills to defend his community.

Marvin X demanded youth follow their elders in the tradition of Geronimo. "As Sun Ra taught me, if you don't do the right thing, you can't go forward or backward, the Creator got things fixed so you are just stuck on stupid until you do the right thing."

Toya and Aries went to their respective mikes, Marvin X in the middle. They recited What If, a pantheistic poem about Allah as the All in All, Allah as everything, the dope fiend, the alcoholic, the tree, the river, the mama you hate, the father you hate, etc. The trio then recited a Marvin X classic For the Women, and then the women lead a recitation of a lessor known poem For the Men. Shortly after, the event ended. Power to the People!

Analysis: After being a participant/observer for the last two days at events at Defermery Park, the Muslim reunion of Saturday and the BPP celebration on Sunday, there is clearly a need for a once and month Speak Out for community. Speakers and spoken word arists are nice, but what is most important is for the people to speak out, to vent their trauma and unresolved grief. Nothing else is more important.

Muslim Elders Meet to Celebrate at West Oakland Park

Bay Area Black Muslim Honor Elders


West Oakland's historic Defermery Park, aka Bobby Hutton Park, was the site of a celebration of Black Muslims in the Bay Area, 1950-2011. It was a small gathering of mostly pioneers who were part of the Nation of Islam in the Bay from the late 50s to the early 70s. There were men and women who had been laborers and officials in the NOI.

Of course, after the transition of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad in 1975, some of these soldiers, men and women, became Sunni Muslims under Elijah Muhammad's son, Imam Warithdin Muhammad. Others joined the NOI under Minister Farrakhan. Some were associated with Dr. Yusef Bey's Black Muslim Bakery.

They all came together yesterday for a celebration of their personal and communal struggle to lift the banner of Islam in the Bay. All pioneers over 65 received a beautiful certificate of appreciation that said the following:

To each is a goal to which Allah turns him; then strive together (as in a race) towards all that is good. Wheresoever ye are, Allah will bring you together. For Allah hath power over all things. S.2.,A.148

It is with the highest respect and the greatest appreciation for your "Service to Allah" that the Unity in the Community Committee offers this certificate as an indication of your contributions to our Deen and the Mission of Allah.

The event included free food, spoken word, prayers and testimonies. Imams and ministers addressed the gathering. The most poignant remarks came from the women soldiers who talked briefly of their role in building the Islamic nation in the Bay.

Future gatherings are planned so believers will have more time to share their testimonies. Some of those present included Imam Alamin, Imam Shuaib, Minister Keith Muhammad, Norman Brown, Sister Sadie, Fahizah Alim, Khalid Wajjib (one of the organizers), Abdul Sabry, Saadat Ahmed, Mikel Muhammad, Hasan Muhammad, Muhammad Ali, Rashidah, Marvin X, et al.

Accompanied by poet/actress Aries Jordan, Marvin X read poetry that was well received by the gathering. The author of thirty books stated in his remarks that he credits the Honorable Elijah Muhammad for his writing style. He is working on A History of Black Muslims in the Bay: 1954-2011.
Poet/actress Aries Jordan


Poet Marvin X
Today, Sunday, July 17, an even larger gathering is expected at Defermery Park when members of the Black Panther Party will gather to celebrate the life of Geronimo Ji-Jaga, Minister of Defense, who made his transition in Africa recently, after serving 27 years in prison on charges trumped up by the FBI in an attempt to disrupt and destroy the black liberation movement, including Muslims, Panthers, Civil Rights workers and other radicals fighting for social justice. The celebration for Geronimo begins at 2pm, Bobby Hutton Park, 18th and Adeline, West Oakland.
--Marvin X

Marvin X and his Chief Mentor, Sun Ra, 1972

Those who have a problem understanding the complexity of Marvin X, need only understand he was a student and colleague of Sun Ra, the bandleader of the Arkestra that Marvin X performed with on the east coast and west coast. Sun Ra worked with Marvin X at his Black Educational Thearte in the Fillmore, 1972. Sun Ra did the musical version of his play Flowers for the Trashaman, retitled Take Care of Business.

Sun Ra and Marvin X did a five hour production of Take Care of Business at the Harding Theatre on Divisadero Street in San Francisco, 1972. Sun Ra also told Marvin X he would be hired to lecture in the Black Studies Department at the University of California, Berkeley. Marvin X doubted Sun Ra since Gov. Ronald Reagan had banned him from teaching at Fresno State College in 1969, the same year he banned Angela Davis from teaching at UCLA. Marvin X did indeed teach at UCB and his off campus class was at his Black Educational Theatre in the Fillmore. Sun Rn worked with him and the Harding Theatre concert was a five hour show without intermission, that consisted of a fifty member cast, including the Sun Ra Arkestra, the Ellendar Barnes dancers, along with the Raymond Saywer dancers and the Marvin X actors.

Of Pistols and Prayers by Ise Lyfe

Of Pistols and Prayers
by Ise Lyfe



Watching this young man on stage took me back to my undergraduate days at San Francisco State College, 1965, when the drama department produced my first play Flowers for the Trashman.

In Ise Lyfe, I saw myself as a young man in the theatre after the drama department production, when I dropped out of college to establish my own theatre in the Fillmore District, Black Arts West Theatre, along with playwright Ed Bullins and others.

Watching Ise do his thing on stage, producing, directing, writing and acting, along with his crew of mostly young people, was indeed a pleasure. It is a pleasure to see youth doing anything positive, but especially being creative rather than destructive, trying to spread consciousness to his generation in dire need of such.

It is for this reason that I don’t want to be too critical on the brother, although I do have a few constructive remarks that may help him in the future. Firstly, I saw no need for him to come on and exit the stage in almost rapid succession. Stay yo ass on stage and present your message, even scene changes can be done on stage: let us see you transform or change persona on stage. The very process is part of the drama. Further, we don’t need to hear your voice off stage. Say what you got to say on stage, up front and personal. In our face. And not too much video. Again, we want to see you, not a video message, no matter it is a mixed media production. We didn’t come to look at a screen but to see you. You are the reason for the season.

The music was nice and worked in harmony with Ise, sometimes in perfect harmony. It was especially nice to see my favorite musician on stage, Destiny Muhammad, harpist from the hood. The long segment with the DJ was, for me, totally unnecessary and could be deleted. The central focus is Ise, nobody else. After all, this is a one man show. We don't need to hear nothing from the DJ.

For sure, Ise has the potential to be a great actor. We see he can transform into a myriad personas. And the poetry is good conscious hip hop. We can only suggest, and this goes for hip hop spoken word in general, discover the director, other than oneself, for the director can see what the actor can’t. He can tell the actor things he never imagined, no matter how talented. The actor can often suffer a kind of blindness, perhaps caused by ego, so don’t be too arrogant not to employ a director. In my case, I would at least utilize an associate director, although they would do so reluctantly, declaring, “Marvin, you ain’t gonna let me direct, you know that!” Still, I would at least call upon them for advice.

And we say to Ise Lyfe, welcome to the world of black theatre. It’s your turn, go for it! We encourage youth and adults to catch this production of a young man trying to do the right thing, i.e., being creative and attempting to spread consciousness. To escape this morass, we may indeed need a pistol and a prayer. A white man suggested the three Gs: guns, gold and getaway plan.
--Marvin X
Marvin X is one of the founders of the Black Arts Movement.

Herman Ferguson, A Revolutionary Biography

We are happy to learn that Herman has finally had his story told. Not only do we remember him during my 1968 sojourn in Harlem, but ran into him in Guyana, South America, during the beginning of his 19 year exile. Guyana was a place of refuge for North American Africans fleeing American oppression. Ferguson was there along with Julian Mayfield, Tom Feelings, Mamadou Lumumbia and others. We are thankful Paul Coates of Black Classics Press made the publication of his biography possible. And most of all, thanks to Herman's warrior queen Iyaluua.
--Marvin X
Black Bird Press News

From Khalifa

Greetings Everyone,

This is to announce that the biography of Herman Ferguson is now available. The book was written by his wife Iyaluua, a African woman in the "tradition of Minnie Mandela." It was Sister Iyaluua Ferguson that kept the name Herman Ferguson, before us, while he was in exile is Guyana for 19 long years.

Now it is she who captures both the spirit of the undefeated, 90 years old Black Chamption, who unlike many of his station in the 1960's (Public School VPrincipal), only claimed Minister Malcolm X after he was gone: Herman Ferguson was a colleague, soldier on the front line in struggle (A True Revolutionary, who has the documentation to show, if necessary) He was a member of both organizations that Malcolm founded, but had no chance to develope.

The Title of the book is An Unlikely Warrior: The Evolution of a Revolutionary. It was printed by Paul Coate's Black Classics Press. It is available via iyaluua@aol.com for $20.00 + $5.00 shipping.

I have a review of the book in progress: but since i want to read, again, this riveting, True Story about the 1960's and it's aftermath, this announcement will allow the conscious brothers and sisters chance to get started.

............................................Khalifah

"H. Khalif Khalifah"

KPFA Special on Black Panthers Don Cox and Geronimo Ji=Jaga

Africa Special - July 11, 2011 at 7:00pm | KPFA 94.1 FM Berkeley: Listener Sponsored Free Speech Radio

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All Praises are due Walter Turner and Greg Bridges of KPFA

We give all praises to Brothers Walter Turner and Greg Bridges of KPFA Radio, Berkeley, for last nights special program on the life and times of Black Panther revolutionaries Field Marshall Don Cox and Minister of Defense Geronimo Ji-Jaga. This program should/must be heard by all North American African youth and adults seeking a knowledge of true American history. The interviews with surviving Black Panther Party members was a riveting narrative on the revolutionary personality, what one must endure, suffer, the necessary discipline and love for the people.

We were informed on the pain of exile, prison, capture, self education and family love. We heard from wives, children, and comrades, rom Minister of Culture Emory Douglas, Communications Secretary Kathleen Cleaver, Barbara Cox, widow of DC or Don Cox, BPP Field Marshall, Charlotte O'Neill, wife of BPP member Pete O'Neill, still exiled in Tanzania.

For me, perhaps the most important lesson learned was from Geronimo's unconditional love and forgiveness that he demonstrated throughout his life. Also, the essential role of elders in his life, how he and other brothers in his community honored, respected and followed their orders as per community. They did not question the wisdom of their elders, especially when it came to community defense.

Enough said. Listen to the tape and those in the Bay should be sure to find their way to Bobby Hutton Park (Defermery Park) on Sunday, July 17, 2pm. And don't forget the Unity and Reunion for all Bay Area Muslims, Saturday, July 16, 11am til 5pm, Bobby Hutton Park, 18th and Adeline, West Oakland.




We know there is no coincidence both these events are back to back. After all, many Muslims were Panthers and many Panthers were Muslims. Power to the People and As-Salaam-Alaikum!
--Marvin X

Dewey Redman and Black Arts West Theatre

We remember Dewey Redman at the Black Arts West Theatre playwright Ed Bullins and I founded at Turk and Fillmore, San Francisco, 1966, along with Ethna Wyatt, Karl Bossiere, Duncan Barber and Hillery Broadous. Into our theatre came a plethora of jazz musicians to accompany our plays, including Dewey Redman, Monte Waters, Donald Rafael Garrett, Earl Davis, BJ, Paul Smith, et al. They took authority of the music department by telling us to go ahead and do our thing, they would accompany us by coming on stage and accenting our words, or going out into the audience or even out the door to address the Fillmore Street crowds, including the bumper to bumper cars passing along Fillmore.

Dewey and bassist Donald Garrett were probably the most free in teaching us what would become known as Ritual Theatre, that smashing of the wall between stage and audience, merging them into the oneness so well known in the Christian ritual. The difference between the church ritual and the Black Arts ritual was that we came to smash tradition, not enforce it. Of course, we must know tradition before we can smash it. So Dewey, Donald and the rest taught us tradition then how to transcend it.

They forced us to abandon our concept of European theatre, dragging us, sometimes screaming and hollering, back and forward to our African dramatic tradition, freeing us once and forever.

Of course, the ultimate transformer of our dramatic consciousness was Sun Ra, the Grand Master of African theatre. Sun Ra taught the necessity of African mythology as the basis of ritual expression, and with his Arkestra demostrated the unity of music, dance, poetry and mixed media.
--Marvin X
Black Arts West Theatre, 2011

Marvin X's forthcoming drama is Mythology of Love, a womanhood/manhood poetic rites of passage, featuring Ptah Mitchell as Eternal Man and Aries Jordan as Eternal Woman.



Dewey Redman, A Biography



Dewey Redman (born Walter Dewey Redman in Fort Worth, Texas, May 17, 1931; d. Brooklyn, New York September 2, 2006) was an American jazz saxophonist, known for performing free jazz as a bandleader, and with Ornette Coleman and Keith Jarrett.

Redman played mainly tenor saxophone, though he occasionally doubled on alto saxophone, played the Chinese suona (which he called a musette) and on rare occasions played the clarinet.

His son is saxophonist Joshua Redman.

After high school, Redman briefly enrolled in the electrical engineering program at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, but became disillusioned with the program and returned home to Texas. In 1953, Redman earned a Bachelors Degree in Industrial Arts from Prairie View Agricultural and Mechanical University. While at Prairie View, he switched from clarinet to alto saxophone, then, eventually, to tenor. Following his bachelor's degree, Redman served two-years in the US Army.

Upon his discharge from the Army, Redman began working on a master’s degree in education at the University of North Texas. While working on his degree, he taught music to fifth graders in Bastrop, Texas, and worked as a freelance saxophonist on nights and weekends around Austin, Texas. In 1957, Redman earned a Masters Degree in Education with a minor in Industrial Arts from the University of North Texas. While at North Texas, he did not enroll in any music classes.

Towards the end of 1959, Redman moved to San Francisco, a musical choice resulting in an early collaboration with Donald Rafael Garrett.

Redman was best known for his collaborations with saxophonist Ornette Coleman, with whom he performed in his Fort Worth high school marching band. He later performed with Coleman from 1968 to 1972, appearing on the recording New York Is Now, among others. He also played in pianist Keith Jarrett's American Quartet (1971-1976), and was a member of the collective Old And New Dreams. The American Quartet's The Survivor's Suite was voted Jazz Album of the Year by Melody Maker in 1978.

He also performed and recorded as an accompanying musician with jazz musicians who performed in varying styles within the post-1950s jazz idiom, including bassist and fellow Coleman-alum Charlie Haden and guitarist Pat Metheny.

With a dozen recordings under his own name Redman established himself as one of the more prolific tenor players of his generation. Though generally associated with free jazz (with an unusual, distinctive technique of sometimes humming into his saxophone as he played), Redman's melodic tenor playing was often reminiscent of the blues and post-bop mainstream. Redman's live shows were as likely to feature standards and ballads as the more atonal improvisations for which he was known.

Redman was the subject of an award-winning documentary film Dewey Time (dir. Daniel Berman, 2001).

On February 19 and 21, 2004, Redman played tenor saxophone as a special guest with Jazz at Lincoln Center, in a concert entitled "The Music of Ornette Coleman."
Redman died of liver failure in Brooklyn, New York on September 2, 2006. He is survived by his wife, Lidija Pedevska-Redman, as well as sons Tarik, and Joshua Redman also a jazz saxophonist. The father and son recorded two albums together.

Marvin X and Tamika at Fillmore Jazz Festival

Marvin X and Tamika at Fillmore Jazz Festival, San Francisco

Marvin hawks 45th anniversary edition of the Black Panther Newspaper. Catch him at the Bay Area Muslim Unity and Reunion Celebration (1950-2011), Defermery Park, aka Bobby Hutton Park, Saturday, July 16, 11-5pm.

He will also be at the Celebration for Black Panther Geronimo Ji-Jaga, Sunday, July 17,Defermery Park, 2-7pm. Location is 18th and Adeline, West Oakland.

photo Gary Jamerson