BAM update: Artists, presenters and performers at Black Arts Movement 50th Anniversary Celebration, Laney College, Feb 7

 

 Fantastic Negrito will perform at the reception along with Earle Davis

 

We are honored to have the Honorable John Santos donate his time and talent

YGB, Youth Speaks Poets will perform

The Black Arts Movement Poet's Choir and Arkestra. Members performing at Laney College include the following: Tarika Lewis, Mechelle LaChaux, Paradise Jah Love, Dr. Ayodele Nzinga, Kalamu Chache', Lakiba Pittman, Earle Davis, Rashidah Sabreen, Zena Allen, Aries Jordan, Genny Lim, Tacuma King, Val Serrant, Destiny Muhammad, Tureada Mikel.

 Elaine Brown, former Black Panther Party Chairwoman will moderate panel on BAM and Black women writers.

 Suzzette Celeste, MPA, MSW, will co-facilitate the How to Recover from the Addiction to White Supremacy Peer Group along with Dr. Nathan Hare

 

San Francisco State University Professor Dr. Dorothy Tsuruta will participate on the panel BAM and Black women writers. 

 

Aries Jordan will participate on the panel BAM and Black women writers

 

Dr. Ayodele Nzinga will be a panelist on BAM/Black Power Babies, along with her son Stanley. Dr. Nzinga will also direct the production of Marvin X's play Flowers for the Trashman

 

Dr. Nathan Hare, PhD Sociology, PhD Clinical Psychology, will co-facilitate the How to Recover from the Addiction to White Supremacy Peer Group

 

Percussionist Tacuma King is part of the BAM Poet's Choir and Arkestra

 Judy Juanita, poet/novelist will be on the panel BAM and Black Women Writers

 BAM divas: Tureada Mikel, Mechelle LaChaux, Dr. Ayodele Nzinga and Tarika Lewis on violin

 Malik Seneferu will exhibit his visual art

 Michell Bennett will facilitate the BAM Wellness Boot Camp. Will Marvin X join the boot camp?

 Lakiba Pittman is part of the BAM Poet's Choir

 Kalamu Chache' is part of the BAM Poet's Choir

 Avotcja is an original BAM worker. She is part of the BAM Poet's Choir and Arkestra

 Poet Genny Lim is part of the BAM Poet's Choir and Arkestra

 Zena Allen, Kora player, is part of the BAM Poet's Choir and Arkestra

 Violinist Tarika Lewis, a member of the BAM Arkestra

 Earle Davis, an original member of Marvin X's Black Arts West Theatre on Fillmore St., SF, 1966

 Poet Paradise Jah Love will perform his classic "You love everything about me but me."

 San Francisco State University student activist. He was a member of the BSU and one of the 1968 strike leaders, now General Manager of KPOO Radio. He will appear with his daughter Renya on the BAM/Black Power Babies panel.

 Pianist Muzuki Roberson is a special guest with the BAM Poet's Choir and Arkestra

 Multi-talented Phavia Kujichagulia is a special guest with the BAM Poet's Choir and Arkestra

Empress Diamond, Mayor Libby Schaaf and Marvin X. Mayor Schaaf supports BAM District.

President of the Oakland City Council, Lynette McElhaney, Empress Diamond, Marvin X. President McElhaney will introduce resolution and proclamation establishing the BAM District

Empress Diamond, Councilwoman Desley Brooks, Marvin X. Councilwoman Brooks supports BAM

 

Carol Newborg of the William James Prison Art Project, Marvin X, Dr. Leslee Stradford, Professor of Art at Laney College. Art from San Quentin Prison will be exhibited at the BAM celebration, Feb 7.

Poems for KPOO

 Christian Terrorism

Ever heard of WWI, WWII, WWIII, yeah, the eternal war on terrorism good for business as usual
Ask Africans was the Good Ship Jesus a nice ride to Mississippi,
Jamaica, Brazil, Cuba
How did Mali music turn into Blues in the Mississippi Delta
Ever heard of the Cross & Lynching Tree
Billi called it Strange Fruit nothin' to eat
Native Americans just love the teachings of Jesus
the small pox syphilis alcoholism wife beating
oh how we love Jesus in the concentration camps
called reservations
Now wasn't Hitler a Christian pure Christian 100%
Wasn't the KKK Christian burning crosses in the name of Jesus
the Blue eyed blond hanging on the cross looking like a hippie
How did blue eyed blonds get to Palestine, Jerusalem
was it on the Ra boat did they come from the river Hapi
Christians sliced Africa at the Berlin Conference
just split the pie Germany took a piece, France, England
Holland, Spain, took Arabia too, Egypt, Iran
did they practice human rights
administer justice kind to women
europeans cry bout Muuuuuuuuuuslims in their midst
how long did they stay in Muuuuuuuuuuuuuslim lands
did they treat Muuuuuuuuuuuuuuslims with tender loving kindness
did they not hang them, beat them, cut off arms legs lips hands
these Christian saviors of the savages saved them from nakedness
saved them from no heart attacks no high blood pressure no AIDS no Ebola
Do they not have 800 Christian army bases around the world today
occupying lands for the rights of corporations who are people too we heard the court say
corporations are people who murder in the name of Jesus rob in the name of Jesus exploit
plunder pollute like Shell in Nigeria India Peru
steal the forests for IKEDA furniture you want
Gold  and diamond mines so Negroes can have bling bling
extract African minerals so Negroes can talk on cell phones
Where you at, where you at, where you at
Is you outside Jesus you ain't back yet
been two thousand years
where you at, where you at, where you at.
Is you ISIS they look like Jesus
Is you Taliban they look like Jesus
Is you Hamas, Hezbollah, they look more like Jesus than Jesus we know
Is Al Quida Jesus
Who is Al Quida anyway
Ain't Al Quida America
Ain't Al Quida who America helped in Afghanistan then left them naked after the Russians ran home
Ain't the Bin Laden family and the Bush family lovers and friends
Bin Laden family flew out of American when nobody else could fly, remember 9/11
Baldwin said these people ain't Christians
your condition proves it
yes, Baldwin said
your condition proves it.
Where you at Jesus with your pretty blond hair pretty blue eyes
drone in the sky
poison water air food poison men women and children
Where you at, where you at, where you at
Oh, you love Native Americans so much
Your good Christian police love Negroes so much, ok they love Africans so
Ask Diallo how much they love Africans or did they think he was a Negro
we all look alike don't we
What's the difference between a Negro and African they both Black ain't they
You made them Christian didn't you
you gave them both the Cross and Lynching Tree
Messed up their minds for the next four hundred years
Dumping bleaching cream by the tons on Africa
Bleaching still in America, look at Sammy Sousa
Remember poor Michael
My grandson said he wanna be white like Michael Jackson
So why you good loving Christians crying bout Muuuuuuuuuuslims in your midst
didn't you make them devils like you
didn't they go to your good Christian colonial schools
didn't they study the Bible while you stole the land
little bait and switch here uh
Oh, now you morn in Europe
Muuuuuuuuuuuslim terrorists Muuuuuuuuuslim terrorists
all Muuuuuuuuuuuuuuslims are terrorists
All Christians are what good guys in white hats
Onward Christian soldiers kill the infidels heathens
drive them from Europe and America like Spain did in 1492
Put them on the Good Ship Muuuuuuuhammad
America is a Christian land Europe is good Christian land
let the world be a good Christian land let Jesus return in a space ship
to save us all, save us all.
where you at, where you at, where you at
--Marvin X
1/15/15
www.blackbirdpressnews.blogspot.com

Abortion

Men need to stay out of women's pussy

unless invited

but you still can't own it boss it control it

in that sick patriarchal mentality

makes you want to beat it kill it then say you love it so much

just shut up unless invited

don't say nothing bout her bizness

you don't bleed five days a month motherfucker 

you can't bleed for five minutes sucker

control yo shit and shut up

get out the women's rest room pervert

the men's room is over there see the sign

why you put yo penis in her pussy if you know how she is

now you coming after the fact with some man shit

just shut the fuck up

all you want to do is raise the baby so he/she can be a killer in your eternal wars for white supremacy

don't kill the baby now, let it grow up so it can die in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia for the 1% Club who supply guns to both sides just to make a dollar, ain't no ideology except money, greed lust lechery

white day is done dude get over it

don't you see all your guns ain't shit

yo drones planes bombs missles

ain't won shit since Viet Nam

Korean War still goin on I hear

so drink yo beer Billy Bob

stay out of other people's bizness

unless invited.

--Marvin X

1/23/15


Public Service Announcement

Contact:
Marvin X,
Project Director
BAM 27 City Tour


In celebration of the Black Arts Movement 50th Anniversary, Laney College will present a day long event on February 7, from 10am through 8pm. The celebration includes a wellness boot camp, a mental health peer group to recover from the addiction to white supremacy, book fair, open mike, panel on Black women writers; an inter-generational discussion with participants in the Black Arts/Black Power movement and their children, There will be an exhibit of art by San Quentin Prison inmates. The program concludes with a performance by the Black Arts Movement Arkestra and the Poet's Choir with special guests. For more information, call 510-200-4164. The event is free.

We thank the Peralta Colleges for Promoting the Black Arts Movement 50th Anniversary Celebration, Feb 7, 2015

We thank the Peralta Colleges for their help in promoting the 50th Anniversary of the Black Arts Movement Celebration at Laney College; also, the Post News Group, KBLX, KPOO, KPFA, laniecejones associates, and all the artists who are contributing their time and energy to make this event a success. Also, Peralta Board of Trustee William Riley, Mayor Libby Schaaf, City Council President Lynette McElhaney and Councilwoman Desley Brooks. BAM or be damned! Be there or be square! --Marvin X, BAM 27 City Tour

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Peralta Colleges

Laney College presents a Celebration of the 50th ANNIVERSARY of the BLACK ARTS MOVEMENT (BAM) on Feb 7th, Sat from 10am - 8pm
Free Admission/Donations Welcome
More info here:
http://postnewsgroup.com/…/marvin-x-recruits-dream-team-bl…/

9th Floor Radio podcast with BAM producer Marvin X Jackmon
http://www.9thfloorradio.com/yaketyyak/
Marvin X interviewed tonight at 10pm on KPOO 89.5 FM radio
Dave 'Davey D-Oakland' CookLibby Schaaf LaNiece JonesMarcus BooksThe Oakland Post Delroy LindoDelroy LindoBoots RileyWalter Riley Desley BrooksBerkeley City CollegeBerkeleycc WallCollege of AlamedaMerritt CollegeMerrittCollege BlackstudentUnionOffice of the President, Laney CollegeLaneyBlack StudentUnionBlack Arts Movement

Stanley Nelson's documentary: The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution

'The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution'

Courtesy of Sundance International Film Festival

The Bottom Line

A fine primer that admires the movement more than its leaders.

Venue

Sundance Film Festival, Doc Premieres

Director

Stanley Nelson

Stanley Nelson chronicles the short life of an iconic organization.

A strong if only occasionally transporting biography of a movement that terrified the establishment in its day, Stanley Nelson's The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution speaks to many former members of the Black Panther Party about what its breed of revolutionary activism felt like at the time. Joining some other recent histories about black Americans fighting powers that are too rarely held accountable to them, the film continues a discussion whose present-day relevance is painfully, increasingly obvious. Straighter in its attitude than The Black Power Mixtape and covering much more ground than Free Angela & All Political Prisoners, it does so in a way that will be an easy sell on public TV, where it's likely to find most of its initial audience before a long and useful life on video.

Beginning in the group's birthplace of Oakland, California, the doc points out how the persecution of the civil rights era had a different flavor in coastal cities than in the South. Here, we're told, thuggish police "might not have called you n—r, but they treated you the same." We're introduced to the young Huey P. Newton, who realized that it was legal to carry loaded guns in public and understood that doing so in the vicinity of police interacting with Oakland's black population would draw more attention to racial justice issues than a million printed fliers. He and Bobby Seale organized the party, which began with a focus on militancy but soon launched major charitable programs, including a famous free-breakfast effort that fed children 20,000 meals a week.

Drama was never in short supply with the Panthers, and Newton's arrest early in their existence provided a rallying cry that was (like their fondness for calling police "pigs") taken up by white college students and other left-leaning groups. While he shows the power of the "Free Huey" slogan, Nelson isn't eager to investigate it; he tells us almost nothing about the incident that led to Newton's imprisonment (he was accused of killing a policeman), nor does he give us any way of guessing whether it was just or unjust.

The omission of such significant details is puzzling given that Nelson soon enough proves willing to show the group's leaders in an unfavorable light. We watch in some detail as their intellectual star, Eldridge Cleaver, goes off the deep end following an armed standoff, fleeing to Algeria and eventually fracturing the party. And near the end, we briefly hear of Newton's descent into drugs and erratic, criminal behavior. It's tempting to conclude that the film is willing to be frank about the problems party figures caused themselves and each other, but the doc wants few shades of gray when it comes to antagonism between Panthers and the police.

The film's most involving bit of storytelling comes when the villainy of law enforcement is in no doubt. After detailing J. Edgar Hoover's fervor to destroy the group with COINTELPRO and dirty tricks, it introduces the tremendously charismatic Fred Hampton, who in 1969 seemed poised to emerge as the kind of "black messiah" Hoover feared. Just as he was starting to build inspiring alliances between Panthers and activists in Latino and poor white communities, Hampton was killed in an FBI-engineered police raid that begs to be called a political assassination.

Straight history is not the whole point here, as Nelson enthusiastically conjures a sense of what it felt like to be a Panther and to be a young black person inspired by them. Alongside historians, we hear from many surviving party members, including Jamal Joseph, Kathleen Cleaver, and William Calhoun. (The absence of Seale, the most famous surviving Panther, is not explained.) Adding a bounty of excellent archival photographs and some good political soul on the soundtrack, the movie makes unnecessary one member's happy recollection that "we had a swagger."
Production company: Firelight Media
Director: Stanley Nelson
Producer: Laurens Grant
Directors of photography: Antonio Rossi, Rick Butler
Editor: Aljernon Tunsil
Music: Tom Phillips
No rating, 114 minutes

MARVIN X INTERVIEWED FOR  DOCUMENTARY ON BLACK PANTHERS AND THE BLACK ARTS MOVEMENT

Marvin X concluded his Revolution on the Rocks Book Tour 2012 with a lunch interview with producer Laurens Grant who is working on a documentary on the Black Panther Party, directed by Stanley Nelson. Marvin X has urged her to include how the Black Panther Party in particular and the liberation movement in general was influenced by the Black Arts Movement. According to Marvin X, there was cross fertilization between the Nation of Islam, Black Panthers, Black Arts Movement and the Black Student Movement that led to Black Studies.

Bobby Seale and Marvin X at the Joyce
Gordon Gallery Black History Celebration, 2012

No aspect of the Black Consciousness Movement sprang up in isolation. We cannot discuss the Black Panthers without discussing the African American Association, led by Donald Warden, aka Khalid Abdullah Tariq Al Mansour. From the AAA's influence came the Panthers and the establishment of Black Studies at Oakland's Merritt College, even before the violent strike for Black Studies at San Francisco State College, now university.

And would the students at Merritt and San Francisco State have been motivated without the West Coast Black Arts Movement, e.g., Bobby Seale performed in Marvin X's second play Come Next Summer before joining the BPP. Bobby played the role of a young black man in search of revolutionary consciousness.

At San Francisco State College, LeRoi Jones, aka Amiri Baraka's Communications Project enrolled student actors and playwrights such as Jimmy Garrett, Benny Stewart, George Murray, Jo Ann Mitchell, Elleadar Barnes, et al., who went on to participate in the Black Panther Party after BAM consciousness.

At San Francisco State College, now University, Marvin X's first play, Flowers for the Trashman, produced by the Drama Department, 1965, ushered in Black Arts West Theatre, 1966, with X and playwright Ed Bullins. Danny Glover performed in BAW. BAW came under the influence of the Nation of Islam will key players joining the NOI, i.e., Marvin X, Duncan X, Hillary X and Ethna X.




Upon his release from prison, 1967, Eldridge Cleaver hooked up with Marvin X and they established the Black House, a political/cultural center, along with Ethna X, Ed Bullins and Willie Dale. Again the Muslim influence: Marvin X an d BAW guru and former inmate with Eldridge, Alonzo Batin, forced Eldridge Cleaver out of his white woman's house (Beverly Axelrod, the attorney who took his manuscript Soul on Ice out of Soledad Prison and whom Eldridge promised to marry, who also contracted a portion of royalties from Soul on Ice and won by default while Eldridge was exiled in Algeria). Eldridge died poor while his book is still an international bestseller as we write! You Marvin X eventually introduced Eldridge Cleaver to Bobby Seale and Huey Newton, Marvin's companions from Merritt College.

But just as the Nation of Islam recruited members of the Black Arts West Theatre, Marvin X would later recruit for the NOI. His biggest fish was no doubt Nadar Ali or Bobby Jones who Elijah Muhammad put over the fish import business.

Islam had a significant role on the East Coast Black Panther Party and the genre Muslim American literature begins with Marvin X and the BAM writers, e.g., Sonia Sanchez, Amiri Baraka, Askia Muhammad Toure, et al.

Marvin X and his mentor and associate, Master Sun Ra,outside Marvin's Black Educational Theatre on O'farrel Street, between Fillmore and Webster, 1972. Sun Ra and Marvin X were both teaching Black Studies at UC Berkeley. They produced a five hour concert without intermission and a cast of fifty at San Francisco's Harding theatre on Divisadero St.

 Eldridge and Alprentice Bunchy Carter, his prison buddy and later leader of the Los Angeles Black Panther Party, murdered on the campus of UCLA, along with John Huggins by members of the US organization, headed by Ron Karenga.

 Huey P. Newton in wicker chair, rug, shield, spear; these items came from Eldridge Cleaver's room at Beverly Axelrod's house. Marvin X and Alonzo Batin (BAM guru) moved Eldridge from Axelrod's  White House to the Black House on Broderick St., San Francisco.

 Marvin X at Fresno State College/now University. He was removed as lecturer on orders of
Governor Ronald Reagan who also removed Angela Davis from UCLA the same year, 1969.

 My Friend the Devil, Marvin's memoir of Eldridge Cleaver.

 Eldridge Cleaver and Marvin X outside the house where the Panthers had a shoot out with the OPD. Little Bobby Hutton was murdered by OPD, Cleaver wounded and later fled to exile. When he returned as a Born Again Christian, Marvin X organized his ministry. photo Muhammad Al Kareem

See My Friend the Devil, a memoir of Eldridge Cleaver by Marvin X, Black Bird Press, Berkeley, 2009. Also, Somethin' Proper, the autobiography of a North American African Poet, Marvin X, Black Bird Press, 1998. Somethin' Proper came off the press the day Eldridge Cleaver made his transition to the ancestors, May 1, 1998. Marvin X performed the memorial rites in Oakland. Kathleen and daughter Joju attended the memorial. Kathleen said, "Marvin, the memorial was great, but there were just too many Muslims!" Alas, their son is Ahmed Maceo Eldridge Cleaver, a Sunni Muslim!

Terry Collins interviews Marvin X on KPOO.com, 89.5FM, Tuesday, 10pm

Terry Collins, KPOO Radio's GM. Terry has interviewed Marvin X enough to make a book. If you heard Marvin X on Laney College Radio last week, you know what to do: fasten your seat belt and prepare your airbag. Eat early so you don't upset your stomach once the Human Earthquake shakes the Bay with the low down dirty truth as Sun Ra taught him. "Marvin," Sun Ra said, "The people don't want the truth, they want the low down dirty truth."