Tuesday, June 28, 2016

Kujichagulia on Gentrification

Gentrification and “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!”

by Kujichagulia

Kujichagulia

In 1963, former governor of Alabama, George Wallace, delivered his infamous inauguration speech declaring, “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!” Fast forward more than half a century later. America boasts of being a post-racial society, yet segregation remains an American epidemic. From colonization to plantations, reservations, ghettos, border patrols, and gated communities of insecurity forever whistling Dixie and protecting the Confederacy, America is determined to go down singing, “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!”

Although the Civil Rights Bill of 1964 prohibited segregation, mere legislation cannot regulate bigotry, ignorance, hatred, fear, or inhumanity. Instead of achieving desegregation, thus began half a century of “White flight” from major cities across the country to newly established suburbs where housing, education, liberty and justice were denied to all Melanites (non-Whites). The Kerner Commission Report of 1968 addressed the practice and politics of White flight stating “America’s social norm of segregation and exclusion leads to one obvious conclusion – “Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white - separate and unequal.”

In spite of an exodus from the cities in search of nuevo-segregation elsewhere, myopic dreams of perpetual privilege gave way to the stark realization that white-flight did not improve the quality of white life. Although white-flighters were able to avoid being neighbors to any Melanites, they couldn’t avoid the two- to five-hour segregated commutes that dominated their morning and evening routines from white-washed suburbia to the chocolate/brown cities they abandoned in favor of sustaining segregation and tolerating racism from the sidelines. Once antebellum dreams of racially-sanitized suburbs morphed into daily nightmares of refilling gas tanks for bumper-to-bumper commutes with intoxicating vehicle exhaust, crowded carpools, expensive toll booths, and random acts of road rage, white-flight shifted into reverse.

The solution – gentrification! Based on the rules of segregation, gentrification displaces Melanite (non-White) families from their homes, communities, and cities so that the gentry (wealthy White class) can relocate back into the cities. As a result, foreclosures, redlining, escalating prices, and exorbitant rents force many Black and Hispanic people/families out of Oakland, as well as many metropolitan cities nationally. Rising property taxes are pricing long-established families out of their homes. Caucasians are consistently awarded with homes and home loans, while Blacks and Hispanics are routinely denied homes and home loans. Likewise, Blacks and Hispanics are generally denied home improvement loans. Moreover, Blacks and Hispanics are often charged exorbitant interest rates on the home loans eventually attained. The result … more segregation.

In February of 2016, the document, ECONOMIC EQUITY: LOCKED OUT OF THE MARKET / POOR ACCESS TO HOME LOANS FOR CALIFORNIANS OF COLOR, revealed an unwavering commitment to segregation and racism in the 21st century. According to journalist, Rob Wile, “The study, co-produced by the Greenlining Institute and Urban Strategies Council, found that in 2013, the top-twelve lenders helped African American borrowers purchase a mere four homes in Oakland, while Hispanic borrowers received just seven home purchase loans.” The Rob Wile article, Another mortgage lender just settled charges that it discriminated against blacks and Hispanics for years (http://fusion.net/story/141197/another-mortgage-lender-just-settled-charges-that-it-discriminated-against-blacks-and-hispanics-for-years/), documented, “San Bruno, Calif.-based Provident Funding Associates is accused of charging 14,000 minority borrowers interest rates and broker fees that were on average hundreds of dollars, and at times thousands, higher than what white borrowers paid. The practice started as early as 2006 and lasted through at least 2011, according to the Justice Department’s complaint.” Yet it is what it is; it's business as usual; life goes on, et cetera. While gentrification guarantees increased segregation under the guise of urban improvement; it's merely business as usual. It's the same ole progressive racism that patriotically fulfills America's prophecy of “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!”

(Reprinted from the SF Examiner Online http://www.examiner.com/ethnic-community-in-oakland/kujichaguliaphavia-kujichagulia)

Black Bird Press News & Review: Marvin X at the San Francisco's Juneteeth 2016 in Fillmore

Black Bird Press News & Review: Marvin X at the San Francisco's Juneteeth 2016 in Fillmore

See Herb Boyd's article on the G word in Harlem. Marvin X's brief remarks at SF Juneteenth give a sense of gentrification out West. The West Oakland cultural district on 7th Street is no more. The Fillmore is no more and Harlem is fading rapidly as the Cultural Capital of Black America. Brother Muhammad at the Schomburg Library feels the essential monuments in Harlem will remain. Nothing of West Oakland remains nor does anything in the Fillmore.

Herb Boyd on the G word in Harlem

How 'the G Word' is Translated in Harlem

[Opinion] Speaking to people who live in the storied New York community, gentrification means good things to some and bad things to others. It just depends on who you ask and how long they've been there

by Herb Boyd, June 22, 2016

How 'the G Word' is Translated in Harlem

St. Nicholas Ave at 116th Street, Harlem, New York. Photo: Jim Henderson via Wikimedia Commons

Once upon a time in the nation's socioeconomic matrix, Black activists once took to the ramparts challenging the advance of urban renewal, or as they called it “Negro removal.” Nowadays the issue is gentrification and with summer officially here we can expect a series of rallies in Harlem from groups hotly contesting the changes occurring in the residential and commercial sectors.

Say gentrification, or the “G word,” to some Harlem residents and they are ready to march with a sign saying that “Harlem is not for sale.” Ask others, as I have done for years in the community, and the responses are mixed. So much depends on who you ask, how old they are, and how long they have lived in Harlem.

On the block where I live in Sugar Hill there used to be nine eyesores or dilapidated brownstones when we moved in the early 1990s. Today, only two remain. Most of the homeowners on the block welcomed the arrival of new people who could fix up the buildings, paying little regard to race. The only thing that mattered for them was that the decaying buildings would be occupied and renovated.
To speak to them of displacement, a word often associated with gentrification, had no meaning whatsoever to my neighbors. The buildings had been vacant and abandoned for years. For the most part, the renewal had very little to do with the displacement of a family.

Many of our new neighbors are disproportionately White, which has not alarmed most of the residents. In fact, they appreciate the role the newcomers have played in commanding attention from downtown. While there is no scientific proof that complaints from White residents mean more, it seems that they do. While many longtime residents have complained about the potholed streets, a need for speed bumps, stop signs, garbage pickup, efficient mail delivery, and faster service in the post office, apparently the cry from White Harlemites, particularly those on the community boards, is being heard by the city’s leaders.

This is not to negate the influx and influence of new young Black residents, and certainly their concerns paired with their White counterparts bring additional clout.

More good news comes from elders who are pleased to have the major retail giants move into the vicinity. Whole Foods, Fairway, Duane Reade, Rite Aid and other chain stores make it easier for senior citizens to get quality food and prescriptions without having to venture to midtown. The elders often mourn the disappearance of the Black-owned mom and pop stores, but many of those spots were replaced by bodegas owned by people in various other ethnic groups and not by the giant retail stores.

So, is gentrification a myth?

No way, says Nellie Bailey, who, as the leader of the Harlem Tenants Council, has been tireless in her fight against the invasion of gentrification. “Across the country, you can see U.S. capitalists’ aim with gentrification is to follow the European model. The inner cities were once for the poor and working class, for communities of color. But now they will be only for the wealthy.”

Her views were echoed recently in a New York Times op-ed piece by Michael Henry Adams, another devout advocate for saving Harlem from the menace of gentrification. He disparages people who “treat the neighborhood like a blank slate,” proclaiming they “don’t see color” as an important vector in the shifting demographics of Harlem. “They have no idea how insulting they are being, denying us our heritage and our stake in Harlem’s future,” Adams asserted.

Beyond the passionate rhetoric about preserving Harlem’s heritage and legacy are actual projects to this end, such as While We Are Still Here, led by Karen Taylor. “Our purpose in preserving Harlem’s history begins with exploring the history of two landmark buildings—555 and 409 Edgecombe Avenue,” she said. “A veritable who’s who in Black America lived in these two locations, including W.E.B. Du Bois, Paul and Eslanda Robeson, Elizabeth Catlett, to mention but a few. After we document their stays and others in the buildings we will extend our research into the larger tableau of the community’s history.”

In several respects Harlem is beginning to resemble its past when the majority of the population was White. Not until the Black real estate speculators such as Philip Payton and "Pig Foot Mary" (Lillian Harris Dean) began to slice and dice the community was there rental space available for African Americans, albeit at an exorbitant price.

That exorbitant price is becoming more and more a reality in the housing industry with only a dollop of affordable housing. And, we ask, affordable for whom?

Mr. Adams raises another point about the erasure of Harlem’s heritage. If Khalil Gibran Muhammad, the soon-to-be-former director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture is right, we have nothing to fear about that possibility. In a recent interview he said that as long as politically and socially conscious Black Americans control the essential institutions in Harlem—the Schomburg, the Studio Museum, the National Black Theater, the Apollo Theater, the Dance Theater of Harlem, the Amsterdam News, and the Greater Harlem Chamber of Commerce--“our heritage and culture is secure and in good hands.”

Whither goes Harlem, the poet Langston Hughes observed many years ago, so goes Black America. Well, like the verdict on charter schools across the country, the jury is still out on the G word.

Herb Boyd is an author, journalist, and activist who teaches at the City College of New York. His forthcoming book is Black Detroit--A People's Struggle for Self-Determination (Amistad, 2017). Follow him on Twitter @Simbabinski1.

An Evening with Poets Honoring the Lives of Poets Jayne Cortez & Amiri B...

Marvin X thinking out loud on the OPD, Slavery, Global wars and the beauty of life in spite of ugliness

Marvin X and Nuyorican poet Nancy Mercado at the reception for him in Harlem, NY at the home of author Rashidah Ismaili.

Brothers ask Marvin X, "Marvin, how come every time I see you, you with a fine lady? How you do dat?" Answer: You have to be nice, just be nice. You have to be a friend to have a friend, I heard. My three daughters have humbled me to the extreme as per my need to recover from the addiction to the patriarchal mythology and its Macho culture that treats women as things. People have noticed how my aura changes when talking with my daughters. In my patriarchal mentality, I thought my sons would fulfill my dreams but alas, my daughters have taken the baton and continue every aspect of our family tradition as conscious people.

In my healing pamphlet Mythology of Pussy and Dick, the leit motif is a quote from poet Kujichagulia, "If you think I'm just a physical thing, wait til you see the spiritual power I bring."

It has taken me a lifetime to learn how to be nice, especially to the women who love me and I claim to love. You know my favorite song is Nature Boy, i.e., "The greatest thing you will ever learn is to love and be loved in return...."

As per the Oakland Police Department, sad truth is that their sexual improprieties and those of other law enforcement agencies in the Bay Area and coast to coast cannot be separated from the addiction to patriarchal mythology in the general society. The police only commit such violations under the color of law, which is a crime. Yes, it is necessary to hold them to a higher standard even though they suffer the muck and mire of the general society. We therefore cannot clean up the police department's sexual improprieties until we are willing to clean up the mess in the general society but said society is unwilling to give up male privilege and when it does so, it then becomes victim of the next gender group, shall we call it the matriarchal mythology group? Or the gay/lesbian/trans mythology group. My young brother was fired from his HR job because he refused to hire a gay/lesbian person at the request of the gay/lesbians in charge of a certain city where they rule.

So what is the endgame? The more things change, the more they stay the same! Alas, we thought slavery ended but there is more slavery now than in 1863. There are 3 million slaves in America under the US constitution or the New Jim Crow.

We thought the holocaust ended with Sir John Hawkins, King James, Hitler or was it Stalin, King Leopold or Pol Pot or Rwanda or Syria or America! How many did the US kill in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan in its permanent wars?

Will our children ever know peace? I was born into war, 1944, and have known nothing but war ever since, atomic bomb on Japan, Palestine, Korea, Vietnam and now Africa and the Middle East. Who benefits from these wars, who suffers? And will it end with a bang or whimper as the poet asked?
--Marvin X
6/28/16

Catch Marvin X Sunday, July 3, 1:30PM at the San Francisco Main Library, Civic Center. He will be part of the discussion on Black Hollywood unChained, edited by Ishmael Reed, Third World Press, Chicago.

Don't miss the discussion by Black Hollywood unChained contributors at the SF Main Library, July3, 1:30PM

Some of you know that last year, Third World Press published Black Hollywood Unchained. Edited by Ishmael Reed, the book contains a collection of critical essays by various authors around the country in reaction to Quentin Tarentino’s movie Django Unchained.

On Sunday, July 3, 1:30-3:30 pm, several of the authors will participate in a panel discussion at the San Francisco Public Library Main Branch to discuss the impact of Django Unchained as well as other Hollywood movie depictions of African-American life. Included with author presentations will be a time for questions and answers.

Along with Ishmael Reed, other participants include Halifu Osumare, Cecil Brown, Marvin X, Justin Desmangles, and myself.

If you’re in the Bay Area that weekend, hope you can make it.

Jesse Allen-Taylor

Monday, June 27, 2016

Toronto Star: Acclaimed Toronto author Austin Clarke dead at 81

Acclaimed Toronto author Austin Clarke dead at 81

Winner of the Giller Prize for The Polished Hoe, the Barbados-born writer became a member of the Order of Canada in 1998.

Austin Clarke in 2012. (STEVE RUSSELL / TORONTO STAR) |

By Murray WhyteVisual arts

Sun., June 26, 2016

Austin Clarke, the acclaimed Toronto-based novelist of books such as the 2002 Giller Prize-winning The Polished Hoe, died early Sunday morning after a long illness. He was 81.

Clarke’s passing was confirmed by Patrick Crean, his long-time friend and former publisher. He is survived by four daughters, a son and his former wife, Betty.

Clarke, who was born in Barbados, moved to Toronto in 1955 to study at the University of Toronto. A handful of brief digressions aside, he never left, evolving here into a frank and forthright literary voice and a champion of black rights.

But he was leery of taking Canadian citizenship, acquiring it only in 1981, explaining later that “I was not keen on becoming a citizen of a society that regarded me as less than a human being.”

Indeed, Clarke’s observations of the splintering of Canadian society in the ’50s and ’60s gave voice to a new version of a country in its earliest stages of becoming.

“Austin wrote our multicultural moment before we even had a language to describe it,” said Rinaldo Walcott, a professor at the University of Toronto and a longtime friend. “He was an astute observer of those social dynamics, and he was a critic of it as well.”

Clarke was bluntly critical of the endemic racism he encountered both here and at home, in Barbados, a colonial British outpost where he attended Anglican schools before coming to Canada. ‘Membering, his lyrical memoir published last year, recalls with vivid detail his daily struggles with discrimination in an uptight city of not-so-long ago.

In it, he writes of living “in the atmosphere of great physical fear, of the expectation that a policeman might shoot me — bang-bang, you’re dead, dead — of being refused the renting of a basement room, or an apartment in a public building, that I would find myself standing noticeably longer than other customers at a counter in Eaton’s store, at the corner of Yonge and College Sts., that I might be thrown out, sometimes physically, from a restaurant, or a nightclub, as Oscar Peterson was, and face the embarrassment of being told by a barber that he does not cut niggers’ hair. This is my Toronto.”

Yet in private, friends speak of a generous, passionate spirit filled with an affection for simple pleasures in life: A love of cooking, of conversation, and of music. But he was also a complicated man, whose fiery passions around issues of inequity seemed at times to chafe with his conservative Anglican beliefs.

“If you were going to have a real relationship with Austin, you had to be prepared to move nimbly,” said the author Barry Callaghan, a decades-long friend and literary colleague who in 1996 published The Austin Clarke Reader through his imprint, Exile Editions. “He was a worldly fellow, a man of elegance, a man of conservative principles, but at the same time, he could be engaged with people that most conservatives wouldn’t let into their house.”

Clarke, famously, made a failed run as a Progressive Conservative candidate for the Ontario legislature in 1977, though his literary and intellectual fascinations seemed a clear ideological contradiction. He had built his reputation as a novelist as a keen observer of the nuanced plight of immigrants in Toronto, and specifically women. Meanwhile, his advocacy for a racially tolerant society had led him to places far outside standard conservative boundaries.

In 1963, while working as a journalist at the CBC, Clarke found himself in Harlem, N.Y., seeking an interview with the great African American writer James Baldwin, but instead came back with an hour of tape from a chance encounter with Malcolm X. Quickly building a reputation as a voice of black empowerment in Canada, Clarke wrote at a furious pace, though his passion would drive him away, at least for a time.

In 1968, Maclean’s magazine published a piece Clarke had written about his encounters with racism here under the headline “Canada’s Angriest Black Man.” Disillusioned at the simplification of what he had written as a complex issue, Clarke moved on to Yale University, where he became one of a group of professors to establish the school’s Black Studies program, one of the first in the United States.

Clarke’s enthusiasms were diffuse, straddling culture and politics. From Yale, they would lead him to Washington, D.C., where he served as a cultural attaché for the Barbadian embassy in 1973, and back home to Barbados, where from 1975 to 1977, he ran the Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation.

He eventually circled back home to Toronto, and Walcott believes his return helped seed the rich literary fabric that the city, and the country, enjoys today. “His great passions were for food, for drink, but much more than that, for young writers across race and class and gender, whom he would have to his home and mentor selflessly, reading manuscripts and offering his feedback,” Walcott said.

Though his passion for social justice never wavered — he served on the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada from 1988 to 1993 — his commitment to his writing could be a powerful, monastic counterbalance.

In the late ’90s, Walcott lived downstairs from Clarke while he wrote The Polished Hoe, in a central Toronto duplex. “I wouldn’t hear a sound for three days,” Walcott recalls, “so I’d call and see if he was all right. He would tell me he was writing — he hadn’t eaten, or slept. It would possess him like a spirit.”

Clarke’s literary accomplishments, coupled with his strong social conscience, won him the Order of Canada in 1998, a poignant honour given the critical voice he had so often taken regarding his adopted homeland.

All the accolades aside, what Callaghan recalls most is a complicated friend who changed all around him for the better.

“When I think of special dinners here, it was also Austin that said grace,” he said. “There was no one like him, because there could be no one like him. There were just too many cross-references in his personality. He was singular.”

A funeral will be held at St. James Cathedral on July 9.

The saga continues: Oakland Police Department and the Mythology of Pussy and Dick

Poet/philosopher Marvin X at his Academy of da Corner, 14th and Broadway, downtown Oakland

Don't say Marvin X didn't try to help the OPD with his 18-page pamphlet The Mythology of Pussy and Dick. When the OPD ran down on him at his Academy of da Corner, 14th and Broadway (Ishmael Reed says he's Plato teaching on the streets of Oakland) three cars deep, they claimed someone reported he was passing out pornography. When he asked the officer did he want to read it, the officer said no and they departed.

Mythology of Pussy and Dick, toward Healthy Psychosocial Sexuality by Marvin X, 18 pages, $5.00 donation. Order from jmarvinx@yahoo.com. Call 510-200-4164

For sure, thousands and thousands of Oakland youth and adults have read it and people come back two and three times for another copy because their friends steal the pamphlet or simply refuse to return it. According to poet Paradise Jah Love, "They fight over that pamphlet as if it's Black gold!" A 16 year old told Marvin X, "Yes, I read it with my mother. We agreed with part of what you said, other parts we didn't agree, but I wish I'd read it when I was 8 years old!" A senior citizen told Marvin, "Boy, I hate to admit it, but I learned something!"

Marvin X giving copy of Mythology to former San Francisco Sherriff Ross Mirkarimi

As per the OPD and prostitutes, Marvin has a passage in which he discusses his love for a prostitute. (The full story of his love is described in his essay The Maid, the Ho, the Cook, from his collection of essays In the Crazy House Called America, Black Bird Press, 2002.) The prostitute told Marvin he was the most macho man she'd ever met, but his pamphlet shows his attempt to recover from the Macho culture as his friend, Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf, described OPD culture.

Marvin X and Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf

In the Mythology of Pussy and Dick, his overall theme is that the patriarchal culture must go into the dustbin of history. We highly recommend the Mythology of Pussy and Dick for every law officer suffering from the addiction to patriarchal mythology as well as every person in America and the world.

Don't say Marvin X didn't try to help you in your male/female relations. Don't say he

didn't try to stop you from beating each other to death because you think you own

each other as you have been programmed to think. Don't say he didn't tell you to stop

the physical, verbal and emotional abuse. Don't say he didn't tell you to love each other
unconditionally, ignoring foibles and defects of character, ideological backwardness and
other shortcomings that make you not want to love the one you're with. For the most
part, it's cheaper to keep her/him, for most of the time when we go to another person,
they are the same as the one we departed from, the only difference is their name.
--Marvin X
6/27/16

Sex, Suicide and Failure to Report at the OPD

By Sara Sidner, CNN

Sat June 25, 2016

Oakland, California (CNN)Four police chiefs in 10 days. 28 police officers with allegations involving a prostitute. Five police departments ensnared in controversy. Two suicides. And one teenage girl.

This is the volatile mix that has led to a sexual misconduct scandal of epic proportions in and around Oakland, California.

If that weren't enough, it all happened while the Oakland Police Department was already under the watch of a federal monitor and compliance director.

And the scandal all began to unravel because of the words of a dead man.

An officer's suicide, a secret revealed

Brendan O'Brien was an officer with the Oakland Police Department.

Oakland police officers showed up at the home of one of their own on September 25, 2015. Officer Brendan O'Brien's mother called them. She came to check on her son at his Oakland apartment and arrived to a gruesome scene.

Her son was stretched out on the couch, his mouth open, his body too still to be alive, according to the coroner's report. Investigators found him with gun still "on his right hand", and a bullet through his mouth. The inside of his right arm emblazoned with a tattoo saying "Live Together Die Alone," according to the coroner's report.

There were several signs of suicide. According to a source with knowledge of the investigation, the most telling: a suicide note. In it, O'Brien spilled details of a life he thought wasn't worth living, and an affair with a teenager.

"A couple days after he was found, I got questioned by homicide," an 18-year-old who calls herself Celeste Guap told CNN.

Guap says she is the teenager O'Brien had been "dating." And she think she knows why he finally took his life.

"He was really depressed and our relationship wasn't a secret anymore and he would've lost his job," Guap said.

And and our relationship wasn't a secret anymore and he would've lost his job," Guap said. .

Oakland mayor to OPD: This is 'not a frat house'

How she met Officer Brendan O'Brien in the first place is disturbing in and of it itself. Guap says she was working the streets as a prostitute. She says she was underage at the time, which would legally make her a victim of child sex trafficking. A pimp was chasing her down a street one day in Oakland when she saw O'Brien.

"He saved me when I was 17," Guap tells CNN in a phone conversation. "Instead of taking me to jail, we just kind of started something there, you know."

Guap says she, underage at the time, and the officer began a sexual relationship.

The accusations are serious, scandalous, and if proven true, also criminal. Guap says she lied to investigators at first because she "didn't want any drama," but then they found proof in her phone.

Instead of taking me to jail, we just kind of started something there.

Investigators learned she not only had a sexual relationship with O'Brien, but other officers too. Guap says some of the officers even paid her for sex. And some paid her with information, tipping her off about prostitution stings so she could avoid them.

Guap tells CNN there were 28 officers total: Fourteen Oakland police officers, five Richmond police officers, several Alameda County Sherriff's deputies, a Livermore police officer and a Contra Costa County Sheriff's deputy.

Guap says she never met, but also texted sexually explicit messages to a former Oakland officer who became an inspector in the Alameda County District Attorney's office. That is the very office that will decide whether anyone should be prosecuted related to these allegations. Guap says the officers trusted her in part because her mother and stepfather are both police dispatchers.

No one has been charged with any crime at this point. All of the cases are under investigation.

CNN attempted multiple times to obtain comment from the Oakland Police Department, but they did not make anyone available for an interview.

Another death alerts the feds to the case

Oakland police responded to O'Brien's home after he called 911 about his wife.

Long before Officer O'Brien took his life, he was battling rumors about another woman in his life, his wife.
Oakland police responded to O'Brien's home after he called 911 about his wife.

A year and three months before O'Brien's suicide, Oakland police were at his apartment investigating another death. It was June 16, 2014.

Officer Brendan O'Brien had called 911. Detectives arrived to find his wife Irma Huerta Lopez dead from a gunshot wound to the right side of her head, according to the coroner's report.

A government official showed CNN pictures of the crime scene. It appeared Lopez had been sitting on the edge of the bed when she shot herself. Both of her feet were planted on the carpeted floor. A gun was lying near her foot on the carpet, along with a shell casing. A second casing was also found on the floor.

O'Brien told investigators he was arguing with his wife that night, according to the coroner's report. He left to go pick up cigarettes at a nearby store. Fifteen minutes later he told them he returned to find his wife unresponsive. It was a few minutes before 10 p.m.

Irma Huerta Lopez was pronounced dead at 10:12 p.m. The autopsy report says the gun used belonged to her husband. It was O'Brien's "off-duty firearm a Glock 45 caliber." The death was initially deemed suspicious. The coroner's investigative report said, "a press hold will be placed on the case because of the potential criminal investigation."

Our whole family does not believe she took her own life.

Then the rumors started. The whispers turned into accusations by Lopez's family that Oakland Officer O'Brien had killed his wife. To this day Lopez's family members still believe so.

"Our whole family does not believe she took her own life," a family member told CNN. But Oakland police and the Alameda County Sheriff's Office Coroner's bureau both concluded otherwise. The coroner declared Lopez's official cause of death a suicide. But the whispers around town persisted. Then O'Brien, who had a "history of depression and post traumatic stress disorder," according to the coroner's investigative report, committed suicide.

A source familiar with both death investigations says when that happened, an indivdual pushed the federal monitor and compliance director to examine O'Brien's wife's death to ensure there was no cover up.

Compliance director Robert Warshaw began examining the death. It remained classified a suicide, but the investigation revealed something else, a source told CNN.

Warshaw did not return CNN calls for comment on this case. Court documents show the monitor did take action.

Warshaw alerted U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson to "irregularities and potential violations" of an old "Negotiation Settlement Agreement" Oakland police were supposed to be following due to a separate case involving the department.

That agreement required the department to alert the monitor in a matter of days if there was an internal investigation going on.

But nobody notified the monitor about the sexual misconduct allegations involving Guap though they were investigating the case for six months, Oakland civil rights attorney Jim Chanin says.

"They broke the agreement," Chanin says.

Judge Henderson ordered the federal monitor take over the latest internal investigation involving police officers on March 23, 2016, taking it out of the hands of Oakland Police Department's Internal Affairs.

"Almost immediately, with the monitor compliance director in charge of the investigation, officers started getting walked out of the building," Chanin says. "There were suspensions and at least two resignations."

He says no action had been taken during the six months Oakland police handled the allegations themselves.

Oakland police: No strangers to scandal

Oakland Chief of Police Sean Whent resigned.

Since 2003 a federal monitor has been in place to make sure the Oakland Police Department complied with a negotiated settlement agreement stemming from a police corruption scandal.

Officers had been accused of planting evidence and beating up suspects. No accused officers were ever convicted but one officer fled prosecution and to this day is still on the run. The city paid out more than $10 million to more than 100 plaintiffs and agreed to make reforms, eventually ending up under federal monitoring.

They were almost to the finish line after 13 long years. Attorney Chanin along with attorney John Burris agreed to work with Oakland police to make sure they were complying with the settlement agreement.

Chanin says the department had been doing so well under the leadership of then Chief Sean Whent, that those involved with the monitoring, including Chanin, were about to recommend the department could run itself without federal oversight.

They fumbled at the one yard line. They were doing so, so well.

Then the sex scandal broke. Chief Whent, who had come from the department's Internal Affairs division, suddenly resigned.

The fallout at the Oakland Police Department had just begun.

"They fumbled at the one yard line," Chanin says, expressing shock and utter disgust with the latest accusations. "They were doing so, so well. This is a great disservice to the many good officer's working hard every day in that department."

Guap says she never meant to bring the department down. She points out she never went to police. The police came to her asking questions after O'Brien's death.

"I feel guilty, but at the same time they knew they were doing something wrong too, so I can't take the full blame," Guap says.

What happens next?

Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf has slammed the Oakland police culture.

If allegations against the officers are proven true, they could lead to charges of statutory rape, solicitation of prostitution, and potentially sex trafficking, legal experts say.

CNN has reached out to the departments involved. Several Oakland police officers have been put on administrative leave and two of them have resigned in light of the sexual misconduct scandal. Contra Costa County put a deputy on administrative leave pending the investigation. Richmond police tell CNN several officers are under investigation and the investigation remains in progress. The district attorney's office has put one of their inspectors on leave pending an investigation.

Investigations are underway in other departments. The Alameda County Sheriff's department says they have cleared those named by Guap of any wrongdoing or unethical behavior through an independent investigation.

Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf has put the City Administrator in charge of the department's administration and personnel decisions. New acting Assistant Chief David Downing will oversee day-to-day operations. The federal monitor is now involved in recruitment and hiring.

Many police officers not involved in the scandals facing the department are mortified and disgusted by allegations against their coworkers.

A longtime Oakland police officer who spoke on the condition of anonymity says if the officers are found to be guilty, "they should be put underneath the jail."

CNN's Nick Valencia contributed to this report.

Sunday, June 26, 2016

Stop coal train through Oakland now, reroute through Berkeley hills!

Opinion

Stop coal train through Oakland now

Sunday, June 26, 2016

Critics protest the export of coal at the public hearing at Oakland City Hall on September 21. Photo by Lucas Waldron.

What happened: State Sen. Loni Hancock’s two bills against the coal-train scheme cleared the Senate. SB1279 would prohibit the State Transportation Committee from funding projects for the handling, storage or transport of coal at a facility at or near low-income neighborhoods. SB1277 would require an additional level of environmental review for the project at the Oakland coal terminal.

What’s next: Close votes are expected Monday on SB1279 (Assembly Transportation Committee) and SB1277 (Assembly Natural Resources Committee). On Monday night, the Oakland City Council may vote on whether to ban coal exports from the new terminal.

What you can do: Express your support for SB1277 and SB1279 via Hancock’s online form at http://sd09.senate.ca.gov/contact. Demand that Gov. Jerry Brown, silent on the issue, get off the sidelines and oppose the coal project — for the sake of neighborhoods in his former city and to back up his words about climate change: “It doesn’t make sense to be shutting down coal plants and then export it for somebody else to burn in a more dirty way.” Send him your views via the contact form on his website: www.gov.ca.gov.

Novelist Austin C. Clarke, Canada's angriest "Negro" joins Ancestors, June 26, 1934-June 26, 2016

Canadian Novelist Austin C. Clarke

We received a call tonight from "Our Man in Toronto" Norman Richmond, Toronto DJ and journalist that our brother Canadian novelist Austin C. Clarke joined the ancestors a few hours ago. Norman Richmond and I met Austin Clarke after arriving in Toronto in 1967 as resisters to the war in Vietnam. I probably met Austin before Norman arrived. Austin and another great Pan African writer, Jan Carew, were our big brothers who mentored us during our exile. Of course Austin was not as political as Jan Carew and when we met for converssation the two of them had heavy political arguments. Austin was from Barbados and Carew from Guyana, South America. Austin's novels told of the Caribbean experience in Canada. We recall one of his characters describing the trip from the Caribbean to Canada as the Middle Passage. While in Toronto, I did an interview with Austin that I will share with readers as soon as I can find it in my archives.
--Marvin X
6.26.16

Biography

Born in St. James, Barbados, Clarke had his early education there and taught at a rural school for three years. In 1955 he moved to Canada to attend the University of Toronto but after two years turned his hand to journalism and broadcasting. He was a reporter in the Ontario communities of Timmins and Kirkland Lake, before joining the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation as a freelance journalist. He subsequently taught at several American universities, including Yale University (Hoyt fellow, 1968–70), Duke University (1971–72), and the University of Texas (visiting professor, 1973).^[1]^[2]

In 1973 he was designated cultural attaché at the Barbadian embassy in Washington, DC. He was later General Manager of the Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation in Barbados (1975-1977).^[3] Returning to Canada, in 1977 he ran as a Progressive Conservative candidate in the Ontario election. He was writer in residence at Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec (1977), and at University of Western Ontario (1978).^[1] From 1988 to 1993 he served on the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada.^[4]

In September 2012, at the International Festival of Authors (IFOA), Clarke was announced as the winner of the $10,000 Harbourfront Festival Prize "on the merits of his published work and efforts in fostering literary talent in new and aspiring writers".^[5]^[6] Previous recipients of the award (established in 1984) include Dionne Brand, Wayson Choy, Christopher Dewdney, Helen Humphreys, Paul Quarrington, Peter Robinson, Seth, Jane Urquhart and Guy Vanderhaeghe. Clarke was reported as saying: "I rejoiced when I saw that Authors at Harbourfront Centre had named me this year's winner of the Harbourfront Festival Prize. I did not come to this city on September 29, 1959, as a writer. I came as a student. However, my career as a writer buried any contention of being a scholar and I thank Authors at Harbourfront Centre for saving me from the more painful life of the 'gradual student.' It is an honour to be part of such a prestigious list of authors."^[7]
Clarke died on June 26, 2016 at the age of 81 in Toronto.^[8]

Selected awards and honours

1980, Casa de las Américas Prize, Cuba
1992, Toronto Arts Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature
1997, Lifetime Achievement Award from Frontier College in Toronto
1998, Member of the Order of Canada.
1999, Martin Luther King Junior Award for Excellence in Writing.
1999, W. O. Mitchell Literary Prize
2002, Giller Prize, for The Polished Hoe
2003, Commonwealth Writers' Prize
2009, Toronto Book Award, for More.
2012, Harbourfront Festival Prize

Bibliography

Novels

The Survivors of the Crossing (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1964)
Amongst Thistles and Thorns (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1965)
The Meeting Point (Toronto: Macmillan, 1967; Boston: Little, Brown, 1972)
Storm of Fortune (Boston: Little, Brown, 1973)
The Bigger Light (Boston: Little, Brown, 1975)
The Prime Minister (Don Mills, Ont.: General Publishing, 1977)
Proud Empires (London: Gollancz, 1986; Penguin-Viking, 1988)
The Origin of Waves (McClelland & Stewart, 1997; winner of the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize)
The Question (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1999; nominated for a Governor General's Award)
The Polished Hoe (Toronto: Thomas Allen, 2002; winner of the Giller Prize and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize)
More (2008, winner of the City of Toronto Book Award)

Short story collections

When He Was Free and Young and He Used to Wear Silks (Toronto: Anansi, 1971; revised edition Little, Brown, 1973)
When Women Rule (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1985)
Nine Men Who Laughed (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1986)
In This City (Toronto: Exile Editions, 1992)
There Are No Elders (Toronto: Exile Editions, 1993)
The Austin Clarke Reader, ed. Barry Callaghan (Toronto: Exile Editions, 1996)
Choosing His Coffin: The Best Stories of Austin Clarke (Toronto: Thomas Allen, 2003)
They Never Told Me: and Other Stories (Holstein, ON: Exile Editions, 2013)

Poetry

Where the Sun Shines Best (Toronto: Guernica Editions, 2013)
In Your Crib (Toronto: Guernica Editions, 2015)

Memoirs

Growing Up Stupid Under the Union Jack: a Memoir (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1980)
Public Enemies: Police Violence and Black Youth (Toronto: HarperCollins, 1992)
A Passage Back Home: A Personal Reminiscence of Samuel Selvon (Toronto: Exile Editions, 1994)
Pigtails 'n Breadfruit: A Culinary Memoir (New Press, 1999); as Pigtails 'n' Breadfruit: The Rituals of Slave Food, A Barbadian Memoir (Toronto: Random House, 1999; University of Toronto Press, 2001)
"A Stranger In A Strange Land", The Globe and Mail, Toronto, 15 August 1990, p. 30.
′Membering (Toronto: Dundurn Press, 2015)^[9]

References

"Austin C. Clarke", Gale Contemporary Black Biography.

The Canadian Encyclopedia.

Alliaougana Festival website, 2010.

Austin Clarke biography at Bim Literary festival and Book Fair, 2012.

Paul Irish, "Austin Clarke wins Harbourfront Festival Prize", TheStar.com, September 28, 2012.

Mark Medley, "Austin Clarke wins Harbourfront Festival Prize", National Post, September 27, 2012.

Austin Clarke named recipient of the Harbourfront Festival Prize", Open Book Toronto, September 28, 2012.

Tom Clarke passes, Nationnews, Barbados, West Indies, June 26, 2016

"′Membering" page at Dundurn.

External links

Austin Clarke interview by Linda Richards, January magazine, November 2002.
Famous Canadian Immigrant Authors
Austin Clarke's entry in The Canadian Encyclopedia
Order of Canada citation
"Austin Clarke", English-Canadian Writers, Athabasca University.
Carol Brennan, "Austin C. Clarke", Gale Contemporary Black Biography.