Thursday, December 8, 2016

Evictions in Ghost Ship's wake: Artists' worst fears coming true

Evictions in Ghost Ship’s wake: Artists’ worst fears coming true

Angela Scrivani poses for a photograph in the warehouse space were she lives in Oakland, Calif., on Tuesday, Dec. 6, 2016. Scrivani has been living in the space for the past eight years but found out on Tuesday she may have to move out. (Anda Chu/Bay Area News Group)
Angela Scrivani poses for a photograph in the warehouse space were she lives in Oakland, Calif., on Tuesday, Dec. 6, 2016. Scrivani has been living in the space for the past eight years but found out on Tuesday she may have to move out. (Anda Chu/Bay Area News Group)
PUBLISHED: | UPDATED:
OAKLAND — In the wake of Friday’s catastrophic three-alarm fire that ripped through an unpermitted live-work space and killed 36 people, artists living in similarly nonconforming spaces feared a backlash from city inspectors and rent-seeking property owners who would force them from their homes.
With some tenants already receiving eviction notices, those fears are indeed coming to fruition, and sooner than many imagined.

Painter and photographer Angela Scrivani has 27 days to vacate the West Oakland industrial warehouse space that she has lived in and used as a painting studio for the better of the past decade. And, some 13 blocks north, roughly a dozen tenants living in a converted machine shop in Oakland were served with a 30-day eviction notice Monday, according to four of the residents who spoke with the Bay Area News Group. The tenants said the building owners told them they fear for their safety.
The impact of the tragic fire at the Ghost Ship artists’ collective in the city’s Fruitvale district is reverberating far and wide. In Baltimore, the city’s fire department red-tagged a DIY artist space, according to the Baltimore City Paper. In Los Angeles, the city plans to address its own issue of unpermitted warehouse conversions, and has charged the owner of one such illegal warehouse, according to the Los Angeles Times.
In the Bay Area, inspectors in San Jose on Tuesday visited Citadel Arts Studios, which does not allow artists to live there, to make sure it was being used appropriately. And in Richmond, city officials are looking to meet with the owner of an underground performance space, called Burnt Ramen, which is located in a commercial warehouse.

Not all interactions have been entirely civil. On Wednesday, a shouting match erupted in Oakland’s Jack London Square after a well-known restaurateur called a news conference to accuse a nearby warehouse of putting her business at risk by operating an unregulated and dangerous music venue. Artists at the gathering, some who lost friends in the Ghost Ship fire, in turn called the conference a “witch hunt” that would further marginalize and displace them from scarce housing options.

But there’s a large gap between what could be considered an unsafe space — such as the tangled menagerie of Balinese wood, furniture and artwork that fueled the inferno that doomed Ghost Ship’s victims — and buildings that are zoned one way but used in another and are therefore technically “illegal,” said artist Jon Sarriugarte.

Sarriugarte has, over the past several days, been working to recruit outside fire inspectors, architects and, in light of the recent evictions, lawyers to survey spaces and provide advice without residents of unpermitted spaces fearing backlash from the city or their landlords. He’s teamed up with Michael Snook of NIMBY, a DIY maker-space in East Oakland, and Max Allstadt, a carpenter and former audio engineer who lived in West Oakland for 13 years.

Allstadt recently received a $5,000 donation for the purchase of fire extinguishers, exit signage, smoke detectors and other lifesaving equipment that becomes essential in the event of a conflagration like the Ghost Ship fire.

But even with Sarriugarte’s legal support to stall an eviction, residents of the converted machine shop in West Oakland have little hope a lawyer could help. Their space is not zoned for residential habitation, and now they are no longer welcome. There is not much a lawyer could do without rezoning the land or receiving a variance — a process that is costly and could take months or even years, they said, adding that they need the city’s help to create a less costly path toward compliance.

Ironically, a fire marshal did inspect their space in 2011 and required the then-inhabitants to make a number of changes, said Tyler, a resident who declined to give his last name for fear it might jeopardize attempts to work with the landlord to save their home. The residents installed an extra door, affixed exit signs and removed an interior dwelling space, among other things, Tyler said.

The fire marshal came back and approved of the changes, but a city representative had not been back to the place until Monday, when a fire inspector came to perform outreach in the wake of the Ghost Ship tragedy, he said. They’re willing to make further life safety improvements if the city says they need them, the housemates said.

At a news conference Wednesday, Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf did not offer specific plans to help artists currently facing evictions but said she would reconvene and expand a task force to address affordable living and working spaces for artists. She promised the arts community would be part of the discussions as the city addresses code compliance and other issues.

Council members Lynette Gibson McElhaney, Noel Gallo and Larry Reid are expected to ask staff on Thursday to look into how the city could go about legalizing such spaces, said Alex Marqusee, an aide to Gibson McElhaney.

“There’s definitely an appetite (for legalizing these spaces),” he said. “Recognizing there is a housing crisis, we need to think creatively.”

A half-dozen other artists who live in converted industrial spaces acknowledge more could be done to make their own spaces safer. Sara Huntley, a former resident of the Vulcan, a live-work warehouse in East Oakland, said she frequented a number of converted industrial spaces throughout the city.

“I’ve never felt as unsafe anywhere as I did (in the Ghost Ship),” she said, echoing many artists’ words that the space was a “worst-case scenario.”

When Huntley moved into the Vulcan, the property management company that owns the warehouse had just finished installing sprinklers. Ren Dodge, a photographer who has lived there for 10 years, said when that happened, his rent rose by 10 percent, a significant increase in part mitigated by the sheer number of people living in the more than 50 apartment units.

For smaller spaces, the cost of bringing a building up to code can be insurmountable, said Cheryl Edison, a consultant who works with cities to help them revamp older properties. Many Bay Area cities have outdated zoning restrictions that make it both time-consuming and incredibly costly to rezone properties, meaning only well-heeled developers can afford to do it, she said.

“Every effort that individuals make to ask for permission gets one very short answer — ‘No,'” Edison said. “People want to do the right thing, but the level of collaboration is not there.”

The Oakland Noodle Factory in West Oakland is an example, said Francis McIlveen of the Northern California Land Trust (NCLT). Dana Harrison purchased the former noodle factory in 1999 with the hope of converting it to a live-work space for her fellow Burning Man comrades — and then spent years mired in a morass of permits, plans and red tape. After draining her time and resources, she sought the help of the community land trust, which purchases and rehabilitates affordable housing.

NCLT secured a $4 million construction loan, gutted and rehabbed the space with solar voltaic panels, concrete floors with radiant heat, extra noise insulation for units that house drummers and more, McIlveen said.

When the housing market crashed in 2008, it took the noodle factory with it. McIlveen said the bank foreclosed on the property just as they were starting to lease it out.

Time is of the essence, Sarriugarte said. He has a list of lawyers ready to help slow down evictions, but he admits the underlying problems extend beyond his capabilities alone.

“I don’t have millions of dollars to back this up to make these changes, even if I wanted to,” he said. “I don’t have a staff here to do this. I’m so busy answering the phone right now. Who is going to help?”

For the artists facing evictions, it’s not just the homes they are losing, it’s their community. The spaces are more than buildings, they are fertile incubators for art forms credited with putting Oakland on the map as an arts hub, and, more recently, as a tourist destination.

“These places are not made by real estate developers or land owners. They don’t exist because someone is looking to make a profit; they are not profitable,” said Tanya, an architect and “flow artist” (or dancer), who lives in the former machine shop in West Oakland. “We need to be able to make them exist, and the Oakland planning (department) needs to … allow spaces like this to exist safely.”
Staff writer Aaron Davis contributed to this story.

The Black Arts Movement Business District Needs Funds for Artist Housing


$1.7 Million Real Estate Grant Aims to Keep Artists in Oakland



Arts and civic leaders announce grants for arts groups in Oakland (l-r) East Side Cultural Alliance Director Elena Serrano, Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf, Director, Arts Strategy & Ventures, for the Kenneth Rainin Foundation Shelley Trott Oakland Cultural Director Roberto Bedoya, and CAST Director Moy Eng
Arts and civic leaders announce grants for arts groups in Oakland (l-r) East Side Cultural Alliance Director Elena Serrano, Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf, Director, Arts Strategy & Ventures, for the Kenneth Rainin Foundation Shelley Trott Oakland Cultural Director Roberto Bedoya, and CAST Director Moy Eng (Photo: Cy Musiker/KQED)

City and arts leaders in Oakland are looking ahead to a more hopeful future, even as authorities work to identify victims of the fire that killed at least 36 people at an underground dance party on the night of Friday, Dec. 2.

On Tuesday, Oakland officials announced the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Kenneth Rainin Foundation are providing Oakland with a $1.7 million grant to help arts groups stay in Oakland in a viciously competitive real estate market.

At the heart of the initiative is the idea that the arts help make a city great. The most recent study, from 2010, found that Oakland arts groups generate an impact of $53 million a year.

But cultural activity doesn’t just fuel the local economy. It’s part of the very fabric of Oakland.
“We’re trying to get the cultural arts in there as a survival program just as essential as housing and health care and jobs,” says Elena Serrano, who runs Oakland’s Eastside Arts Alliance in the San Antonio neighborhood. Serrano is hoping for funds to develop a Black Arts center in Deep East Oakland.

The Community Arts Stabilization Trust (CAST), an organization which helps broker real estate deals for cultural organizations, will administer the grants. “The assumption is not that artists or arts organizations are un-businesslike, but simply the making of art is a different core business than real estate development,” CAST executive director Moy Eng says.

Eng ran an identical program in San Francisco, where she helped two groups, CounterPulse and the Luggage Store Gallery, obtain financing to buy permanent homes in 2015, despite San Francisco’s soaring commercial rents.
The announcement is bittersweet, though, coming as Oakland mourns the victims of the warehouse dance party fire. There are no grants from this program for individual artists, who often work and live in spaces that aren’t up to code. Many worry the city will crack down on safety, with upgrades making their studios too expensive.

Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf said the city has to balance public safety with the needs of artists. “The safety of the cultural community in Oakland has a more nuanced meaning,” Schaaf says. “Oakland has to keep its residents safe. But we also have to keep safe this incredible creative energy that makes this the city that we love so much.”

Oakland recently hired Roberto Bedoya as its new cultural affairs manager. Bedoya says the new grant program is a sign to artists that Oakland has their backs.
“What I find dynamic about the Oakland arts community is just how vibrant it is,” Bedoya says. “It’s got what I would characterize as a poetic will. And it’s now also working with a political will to realize how we can advance the community.”
  
Comment from the Black Arts Movement Business District on Housing Funds for Artists
 
 Marvin X, co-founder of the National Black Arts Movement and co-planner of Oakland's Black Arts Movement Business District BAMBD along the 14th Street corridor

The Post News Group asked Black Arts Movement Business District co-founder and planner, Marvin X, his thoughts on the Mayor's grants for artist housing.

Post: Marvin X, what is your comment on the recent fire in the Fruitvale?

MX: We offer our condolences to the families of those victims in the tragic fire. It revealed the dire conditions many artists and common people must endure to survive in gentrified Oakland. While development is necessary, all people should be involved in the planning process that should consider displacement a priority.

POST: Has the Mayor approached BAMBD regarding your needs for artists and the marginalized in the BAMBD or downtown area?

MX: No! While we applaud Mayor Libby Schaaf's announcement of housing grants for East Oakland artists, we demand she also secure housing and artist space for suffering artists in Oakland's Black Arts Movement Business District which was officially declared by the City Council on January 19, 2016, but no funds have been allocated for the  BAMBD and few people are aware the BAMBD exists. In the manner of Juneteenth, it appears few people will know about The BAMBD until Janteenth, 2017. The BAMBD has published its own newspaper, The Movement, to inform people of the BAMBD. We thank the Post News Group for partnering with us to make the BAMBD newspaper possible.

POST: What is the BAMBD's position on artist housing and housing in general?

MX: The first pillar of the BAMBD is housing and we need emergency funds for artists housing and work space in our district. We'd love to acquire those SRO hotels to place them under the land trust and give homeless and marginalized persons a "life estate" title to their spaces and this would end homelessness overnight.

POST: Tell us about the BAMBD Billion Dollar Trust Fund.
.
MX: We are establishing the BAMBD Billion Dollar Trust Fund to meet the needs for our district which is along the 14th corridor from the lower bottom to Lake Merritt. It appears West Oakland will not enjoy the Marijuana initiative nor the announced artist housing grant since East Oakland appears the sole representative of communities in need of equity. Where is our political representation? The BAMBD Billion Dollar Trust Fund must be an independent fund for people in the BAMBD to insure our presence as part of Oakland's Downtown Plan for the next 25 to 50 years.


BAMBD meets with developers at Joyce Gordon Gallery, Friday, December 9, 1PM

The BAMBD invites you to a meeting on discussions with a developer on a benefits package for The BAMBD. The meeting will be Friday, December 9,1PM at the Joyce Gordon Gallery, 14th and Franklin Streets, Oakland.

Monday, December 5, 2016

Marvin X on Maze's Joy & Pain and the tragic fire in Oakland in the Fruitvale District





Although my favorite song is Nature Boy, Joy and Pain is probably second because
it is the  essence of life itself. Life is never all joy or all pain. The Qur'an says after difficulty comes ease.
So I have come to not get excited in moments of joy because I know it is not the essence of life, just as pain is not forever. Another song I love is by Kirk Franklin's The Storm is Over Now.

On behalf of the Black Arts Movement and the Black Arts Movement Business District here in Oakland, we extend our condolences to the all the families of victims in the Fruitvale District tragic fire.
Sincereely,

--Marvin X, BAMBD Planner

Oakland Symphony Concert dedicated to the Black Panther Party, Paramount Theatre, Oakland, Sunday




 
Oakland Symphony Conductor Michael Morgan
 art by James Gayles

Oakland Symphony Pays Musical Tribute to Black Panthers

Photo by David Fenton/Getty Images
Photo by David Fenton/Getty Images


Maestro Michael Morgan and the Oakland Symphony and Chorus, next week will commemorate Oakland’s tradition of activism and the arts, particularly paying tribute to the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Black Panther Party (BPP).Founded in Oakland in 1966, the BPP was characterized by scholars as one of the most influential Black movement organizations of the late 1960s.

The BPP evolved into a powerful force that focused on effecting social and political change, instituting a variety of community social programs, including the Free Breakfast for Children Programs and community health clinics.

The legacy and music of the era of the Black Panther Party will celebrated in “Let Us Break Bread Together” choral and orchestral arrangements of popular, gospel, Motown and resistance music.

The Oakland Symphony and Chorus will share the stage with a host of guest artists including the award-winning Mt. Eden High School Choir, Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir, Linda Tillery and Friends, Vocal Rush from Oakland School of the Arts and perennial favorites, the ebullient Klezmer band, Kugelplex.

The event will also feature holiday music from many cultures and observances and audience sing-alongs.

The annual “Let Us Break Bread Together concert” is Sunday, Dec. 11, 4 p.m., at the Paramount Theatre, 2025 Broadway in Oakland.

Pre-concert no-host drinks and free lobby entertainment begin at 3 p.m. Tickets are $25-$80 and may be purchased at www.oaklandsymphony.org.y.org.

Saturday, December 3, 2016

The Movement's Canadian Editor, Norman Richmond on the Untold Story of Black Radical Canada



  • The Black Panthers were among the groups that influenced the development of Black radical organizations in Canada.

    The Black Panthers were among the groups that influenced the development of Black radical organizations in Canada. | Photo: CIRonline Black Panther demonstration

Norman (Otis) Richmond aka Jalali looks back on the develop of Black radical organizations in Canada.
The Afro American Progressive Association (AAPA) was one of the first Black Power organizations in Canada. It was organized by Jose Garcia, Norman (Otis) Richmond and D. T. in Toronto in 1968. Their first public event was a commemoration of the assassination of Omowale El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (Malcolm X). The meeting took place on Bathurst Street (Toronto’s Lenox Avenue) the Home Service. Guest speakers were Jan Carew, Guyanese-born scholar/activist who later would write:” Ghosts in Our Blood: With Malcolm X in Africa, England, and the Caribbean” and Ted Watkins. A year before ancestors like Austin Clarke, Howard Matthews and others started the ball rolling in 1966.
OPINION: Co-opting Caribana: The Ongoing Struggle for Community Control
Watkins (1941-1968) was an African born in America who played Canadian football. Watkins played wide-receiver for the Hamilton Tiger-Cats and Ottawa Rough Riders. He won the Grey Cup with Hamilton in 1967. He previously played college football at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California. Watkins was killed in 1968 allegedly robbing a liquor store.

This is a direct quote from a Canadian daily: “STOCKTON, Calif. (AP) -Ted Watkins, Negro professional Canadian football player, and a leading Black Power advocate' in Canada, was shot dead in an attempted liquor store holdup Sunday, police said."

The Black Youth Organization (BYO), the Black Action Defense Committee (BADC), the Biko Rodney Malcolm Coalition (BRMC) and Black Live Matters spring from the AAPA. The AAPA’s newsletter was called Harambee (Swahili) for “Let’s pull together”. Harambee preceded Contrast, Share, Pride and the Caribbean Camera.

Chris Harris has been one of the few attempting to keep the untold history of the Black Radical Tradition and the AAPA alive. Harris’ article, “Canadian Black Power, Organic Intellectuals of Position in Toronto, 1967 – 1975” was published quietly. He is quoted extensively in David Austin’s 2014 Casa de las Americas Prize winning book in Caribbean Literature in English or Creole, “Fear of a Black Nation: Race, Sex, and Security in Sixties Montreal.”

Glen Ford of Black Agenda Report talks about how a Black mis-leadership is high jacking the African liberation struggle in the United States. Ditto for Canada.

The untold story of the Radical Black Tradition in Canada is beginning to unfold. A new autobiography, “Burnley “Rocky” Jones Revolutionary” by Jones and James W. St. G. Walker gets the ball rolling in this work. Jones gives credit to the AAPA in this volume for keeping the radical Black tradition alive in the Great White North.

Jones discusses how tribalism ruled during the late sixties and early seventies in Toronto’s history. Africans born in Canada organized as Jamaicans, Trinidadians, Barbadians or Black Canadians. He talks about a rally that took place at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education on Bloor Street in Toronto.
Says Jones: “The chair was José Garcia, of the Afro American Progressive Association, a Marxist, and Black Nationalist organization in Toronto. Although that organization was Canadian, its name reflected the interaction with the States; there was continual movement back and forth across the border with Detroit and Buffalo, with Panthers and CORE and various Black Nationalist associations. Many of these people were also at the conference, in particular a group known as the Detroit Revolutionary Union movement, DRUM, extremely militant and connected to the Panthers.”

Jones was incorrect on the name of DRUM; DRUM is an acronym for the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement. The Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement was an organization of Black workers formed in May 1968 in the Chrysler Corporation‘s Dodge Main assembly plant in Detroit. While I was a co-founder of the AAPA I was also a member of DRUM which later would blossom into the League of Revolutionary Black Workers.
The term Afro-American had nothing to do with Black America. It was inspired by Malcolm X’s Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU). The group was a Pan-Africanist organization founded by (Omowale) Malik Shabazz in 1964. The group was modeled on the Organization of African Unity, which had impressed Malik during his visit to Africa in April 1964. The purpose of the OAAU was to fight for the human rights of Africans in America and in the Western Hemisphere who speak English, French, Spanish, Dutch and Papiamento. One of the co-founders of the AAPA Jose Garcia could speak Papiamento, Dutch, Spanish, French and English better than me. We were internationalist from the get-go.

While we were moved by Malik, he was influenced by a person who if imperialism has anything to do with it will be written out of history – Carlos A. Cooks.

Cooks was a Caribbean man who used the term African-American to unite Africans in the West. He was born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. His parents were from the nearby island of St. Martin. Robert Acemendeces Harris author of “Carlos Cooks and Black Nationalism” pointed out: “It was Carlos Cooks who first defined the difference between the terms Black and/or African as opposed to "Negro" and  fought to have the latter word abrogated as a racial classification." You can even ask Richard Moore a foundation member of the African Blood Brotherhood and (author of The Word Negro And Its Evil Use) about this. Or you can read the documentation of this in "BLACK NATIONALISM: A Search for Identity in America" by Prof. E. U. Essien-Udom of the University of Ibadan, Nigeria.

I was blessed to have heard Richard B. Moore speak in Montreal in 1967 and to have met and worked with Elombe Brath, a disciple of Cooks. Moore spoke at a Black community meeting that I attended during Expo 67. When I first went to Detroit and met General Gordon Baker Jr. I found a copy of Brath’s comic book “Color Them Colored” where he ridiculed everyone from Harry Belafonte to Malcolm X for not being “Black” enough. Baker explained to me how he had for a brief moment associated with Cooks African Nationalist Pioneer Movement.

There are aspects of Cooks philosophy I united 1000 percent behind. At their convention called in 1959 the ANPM called for the abrogation of the word Negro as the official racial classification of black people and replace the term with African when speaking of land origin, heritage and national identity (irrespective of birthplace ) and the proud usage of black, when dealing with color (in spite of complexion).

There are others aspects of his views that I totally disagree with. I have always united with Huey P. Newton’s statement, "Blackness is necessary, but not sufficient.” I was never down with Cooks anti-communism. When Fidel Castro visited Harlem, Cooks refused to meet him. Malik took the opposite view.

Brath is quoted in Rosemari Mealy’s book, “Fidel & Malcolm X: Memories of a Meeting.” Says Brath, “While Malcolm as an individual was developing as an anti-imperialist champion, he boldly met with Premier Fidel Castro when the Cuban leader stayed at the Hotel Theresa in Harlem, arguing a class analysis in non-Marxist terms, that is, the field Negro versus the house Negro.

Cooks however, took a completely different position. Essien-Udom, who wrote “Black Nationalism: A Search for an Identity in America” published in the early 1960s, discussed Cooks and Malik and pointed out: “Nearly all of the present-day black nationalist groups are anti-communist. Recently, Mr. Carlos Cooks (African Nationalist Pioneering Movement) in a 4th of July speech in Harlem self-righteously explained how in the thirties they (the nationalist) were having street fights with the communists and they do not welcome 'the regime of Dr. Fidel Castro’s Cuba.'”
RELATED: Dr. Walter Rodney: Revolutionary Intellectual, Socialist, Pan-Africanist and Historian
Instead, Mr. Cooks expressed some admiration for ex-President Batista. He said that under Batista Negroes had a “fair deal” in Cuba and that Premier Castro’s regime was a returning to “white supremacy.” For a brief moment in my history I did have a problem with Cuba. This was because of the anti- communism propaganda we were taught from the womb to the tomb in the USA where I was born.

For a brief moment I supported Jonas Savimbi‘s The National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA). Founded in 1966, UNITA fought alongside the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) in the Angolan War for Independence (1961 – 1975) and then against the MPLA in the ensuing civil war1975–2002). UNITA received military aid from the imperialist USA and apartheid South Africa while the MPLA received support from the Soviet Union and other members of the Socialist block at that time. We apologize to Africa for this error in judgment.

In the 21st Century Africa, Africans and the oppressed generally must be anti-imperialist, anti-racist, and anti-sexist and be for socialism-period. As Fred Hampton used to say, “If you are afraid of socialism you are afraid of yourself.”

Norman (Otis) Richmond, aka Jalali, was born in Arcadia, Louisiana, and grew up in Los Angeles. He left Los Angles after refusing to fight in Vietnam because he felt that, like the Vietnamese, Africans in the United States were colonial subjects. Richmond began his career in journalism at the African Canadian weekly Contrast. He went on to be published in the Toronto Star, the Toronto Globe & Mail, the  National Post, the Jackson Advocate, Share, the Islander, the Black American, Pan African News Wire, and Black Agenda Report. For more informantion norman.o.richmond@gmail.com

Friday, December 2, 2016

Do the Charleston

Charleston's African-American Heritage



Famous Folks & Important Facts

1525/1526

- A Spanish explorer lands on the coast of South Carolina and tries to build a colony. The attempt to build a colony fails, but before survivors leave, some of the Africans brought on the voyage may have escaped and then intermarried with the Indians in the area.

1670

- About 100 English settlers and at least one enslaved African create the first permanent Colony in South Carolina near present-day Charleston. Soon after, the governor brings a family of enslaved Africans to the Colony. In subsequent years, slaves help establish the Colony in many ways, building homes, cooking, sewing, gardening, cattle raising, and providing many forms of skilled labor and artisanship. Approximately one in three of the early settlers is African.

1685

- Seed rice arrives in Charleston as a gift from a sea captain whose boat was under repair here. Efforts by the English to grow rice fail. Slaves, who grew rice in Africa, show the English how to grow rice in wet areas. The "rice culture" creates tremendous wealth for the Colony.

1708

- The growth of indigo and cotton require more labor, which leads to the importation of more captive Africans. By 1708, the numbers of whites and blacks in South Carolina are about 4,000 each. For the next two centuries (except for a brief period between 1790 and 1820), blacks outnumber whites in the state.

1739

- Roughly 100 slaves capture firearms about 20 miles south of Charles Towne, and they attempt to rally more people to join them during what is now called the Stono Rebellion. They plan to fight their way to St. Augustine where the Spanish promise freedom. They run into a group of whites led by the lieutenant governor of the Colony, who alerts white authorities before the slaves have time to grow into an overwhelming force. The revolt is forcefully put down, and some 60 rebels are executed; many are decapitated.

1740

- In reaction to the Stono Rebellion, the Legislature passes slave codes that forbid travel without written permission, group meetings without the presence of whites, slaves raising their own food, possessing money, learning to read, and the use of drums, horns and other "loud instruments" that might be used by slaves to communicate with each other.

1822

- Denmark Vesey Plot. Led by Denmark Vesey, an African Methodist Episcopal church leader who purchased his freedom for $600. The well-planned and widespread rebellion involved about 9,000 people. However, two house slaves informed their masters before the planned date. Vesey, who refused to reveal any names, was hanged along with five others two days before local Independence Day festivities.

1862

- Robert Smalls, a Charleston harbor pilot (and future state legislator 1871-1878), along with his family and a few friends, take control of the Confederate steamer, The Planter, sailing it out of Charleston Harbor and presenting it to the U.S. Navy. The Planter is converted for use as a Union ship and serves in that capacity throughout the Civil War.

1879

- In support of the Liberia Emigration Movement (1877-1878), the Rev. Richard H. Cain, a local and national AME leader and politician, sponsors a bill to pay passage for those who desire to return to Africa. As a result, the ship Azor leaves from Charleston with 206 black emigrants en route to Liberia, West Africa.

1891

- The Rev. Daniel Joseph Jenkins establishes the first and only orphanage for blacks in Charleston. The orphanage is created to be self-supporting with departments where orphans learn trades, produce items for sale and learn music. The Jenkins Orphanage Band is created to help raise funds for the institution.

1917

- Chapters of the NAACP are organized in Charleston.

1962

- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. speaks from the pulpit of Emanuel AME Church on Calhoun Street. King is brought to Charleston to help spark local voter registration efforts.

1982

- Reuben Greenberg, an African American, is appointed city of Charleston police chief.

1999

- On July 3, a 6-foot historical marker is placed on Sullivan's Island near Fort Moultrie to honor those enslaved Africans who arrived in bondage via Charleston Harbor.

Thursday, December 1, 2016

Black Arts Movement choreographer Ruth Beckford Room naming ceremony at Geoffery's Inner Circle in the BAMBD

Grand Diva of Dance in the Bay Area, Most Honorable Ruth Beckford


 Friends and lovers of Ruth Beckford in the "Ruth Beckford Room" Gefforey's Inner Circle in the BAMBD
photo Gene Hazzard

The Grand Diva of Dance in the Bay Area, 91 year old Queen Ruth Beckford was honored  tonight (Dec 1, 2016) with a room in her name at Geoffery's Inner Circle, an anchor venue in the Black Arts Movement Business District. I am proud to say I knew and idolized Ruth Beckford when I was a child growing up in West Oakland. I was in elementary school and after school, I would go to New Century Playground next to McFeely Elementary School. There I saw the most beautiful Black women I'd ever seen, Ruth Beckford  taught dance at New Century which was a venue in the Oakland Department of Park and Recreation.
L to R: The Honorable Ruth Beckford,  MX grandson Jah Amiel, Marvin X and granddaughter Naeemah Joy. When the event planner told Marvin to show his grandchildren the archives on the wall of Geoffery's, his tour included the bar, at which his granddaughter jumped on a bar stood at the bar and rested her hands like John Wayne ready to order a shot of whiskey. When the bar tender ordered her out of the bar, Ms Naeemah Joy had an attitude but said nothing though her face expressed her displeasure at being kicked out the bar at five  years old.  Marvin ordered his grandchildren a generic Shirley Temple which they said was good, good, good. Readers may recal when his grandson, Jah Amiel, was three years old, he told Marvin X, "Grandfather, you can't save the world, but I can!" Marvin X has never been the same! As readers will note from this pic, Marvin X is partially blind from partner violence. What goes around comes around, he heard. As per Marvin X, he noted when he met Ruth Beckford he was the age (8) and size of his grandson Jah Amiel.
photo Gene Hazzerd


I would see her coming and going from New Century and my childhood brain told me she was just absolutely the most  beautiful queen my eyes had seen. I cannot say African Queen because I knew nothing about Africa at the time.except Tarzan. 

I didn't get to know Ms Beckford at New Century because I wasn't into dance but I must credit the Oakland Rec for initiating my career in drama since I performed in a children's play at Mosswood Park, at which I was called a nigger for the first time by a little white girl who told me, "Nigger, get out of the sandbox."

Throughout the years, I continued to see Ruth Beckford and marvel at her black velvet skin and short natural that she wore during the 50s. 
The Honorable Ruth Beckford, BAM artist supreme and Geoffery Pete, owner of Geoffery's Inner Circle in the BAMBD
photo Gene Hazzard

When Geoffery Pete honored her tonight, he remarked that her father was a member of Marcus Garvey's UNIA. Thus, she was a child of Black Nationalist parents. We will offer her biography in a moment, but I know she trained many in dance in the Bay Area and elsewhere. I will name Deborah Vaughan, Ellendar  Barnes and Suzzette Johnson. Although her students were absent, her many friends were present. We note also on the 50th anniversary of the Black Panther Party, it was Ruth Beckford who set up the breakfast program for the BPP and made her dance students "serve the people".

Choreographer Beckford was honored with commendations from Congresswoman Barbara Lee and a proclamation from Oakland City Council President Lynette McElhaney.

BAMBD photographer promises us ample photos tomorrow.

BIOGRAPHY OF CHOREOGRAPHER RUTH BECKFORD



Ruth Beckford (1925 - ) was born in Oakland, California on December 7, 1925. She was one of four children including one sister and twin brothers. Her parents, natives of Jamiaca and Atlanta, Georgia, and her extended family supported her training in dance including tap, acrobatics and ballet as well as music lessons. Miss Beckford performed professionally as a child in vaudeville acts, with her brother and solo, onstage in competition at movie-houses and also at social settings such as Sunday teas and other community events. Miss Beckford continued to train and perform, eventually auditioning for Katherine Dunham's touring company in San Francisco at age seventeen. Offered a contract, Miss Beckford chose to attend UC-Berkeley and perform with Miss Dunham whenever they toured locally.

Miss Beckford studied modern dance technique and ocmposition with Caryl Cuddeback at UC-Berkeley while also training at Welland Lathrop and Anna Halprin's dance studio in San Francisco. She was the first African-American performer in a Bay Area modern dance company and also to become a member of the Orchesis Modern Dance Society at UC-Berkeley.

Upon graduation, Miss Beckford created the United States' first recreational dance department at Oakland's Parks and Recreation Department. She remained project director for twenty and one and a half years, developing a coherent philosophy of teaching the whole child and established a graduated set of programs for girls ages seven through young adult. Several of her students have become significant dance artist/educators including heads of dance departments and professional companies both locally and nation-wide.

Miss Beckford simultaneously taught African-Haitian dance based on the Dunham technique at her private studios and was artistic director of the Ruth Beckford African-Haitian Dance Company. The company toured throughout the college and university circuit before disbanding in 1962.

Her writing career includes the authorized biography of Katherine Dunham, supported by several research trips to Haiti and published by Dekker (NY) in 1979. She has also written her own autobiography, two cookbooks, three original plays and an article for the California Dance Educator's journal.

Her trilogy of plays titled Tis the Morning of My Life was produced by Ron Thompson of the Oakland Ensemble Theater Company, where she has served on the Board of Directors. The play have been performed in the East Bay and in New York and was also filmed for a television pilot series. Miss Beckford has also sung and acted on stage, in feature films, television and commercials including two PBS television movies directed by Maya Angelou.

Her many honors and community acknowledgements include acting as a dance panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts (1972-74), and induction into the Black Filmmakers, Oakland Parks and Recreation and the Bay Area's Isadora Duncan Dance Community Hall of Fame.

Miss Beckford closed her private dance studios in 1975 and had several back surgeries. Based on her life-time of helping others, including co-creating a free breakfast program with the Black Panther Party, Miss Beckford developed a new career in social work-related programs. Recent work has included counseling at the City of Oakland Job Training Partnership Act office and also at the Oakland Earthquake Support Services Center after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. She also developed, with collaborator Ron Thompson, a motivational speaking business for both homeless and corporate clients. Miss Beckford was crowned Ghana Queen Mother of Dance at Harambere Dance ensemble performance in 1990.

Drummond: Ruth Beckford still fabulous after 80


Former dancer and choreographer Ruth Beckford, 88, is photographed at her home in Oakland, Calif., on Wednesday, May 8, 2013. Beckford is an Oakland Tech alumni and taught at the Katherine Dunham school in New York. Among her many accomplishments, she's a founder of the Oakland Dance Association. (Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group)
Former dancer and choreographer Ruth Beckford, 88, is photographed at her home in Oakland, Calif., on Wednesday, May 8, 2013. Beckford is an Oakland Tech alumni and taught at the Katherine Dunham school in New York. Among her many accomplishments, she’s a founder of the Oakland Dance Association. (Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group)

PUBLISHED: | UPDATED:
Oakland native Ruth Beckford is a Bay Area dance legend who used to thrill audiences with her acrobatic moves.

Beckford, was a disciple of the late Katherine Dunham, the matriarch of the modern black dance movement. Beckford taught at Dunham’s school in New York and studied voodoo dance rituals under Dunham in Haiti.
Beckford later returned to the Bay Area to open the Ruth Beckford African-Haitian Dance Company. She also started a modern dance department at the Oakland Office of Parks and Recreation, where she taught dance to countless young people over the years.

Beckford, 87, who could once make her body perform feats others could only dream of, uses a walker. Yet she refuses to let age-related ailments interfere with her zest for life.

On Saturday, Beckford and fellow octogenarians, former television journalist Belva Davis, genealogist Electra Price, educator Careth B. Reid, and youngster Dezie Woods-Jones, 72, will share their advice for living life to the fullest in one’s golden years.

I recently interviewed Beckford at her downtown Oakland home, where she has lived for 50 years, to talk to her about what it’s like to be 87.

Q: You’ve lived through a lot of historic events. What stands out the most?

A: My sweet 16 on Pearl Harbor Day. We all went to the movie. We’re sitting in the movie eating milk duds … and on the screen the movie stopped, and it said all military personnel report to your bases the United States is at war with Japan, we are getting bombed. … Folks talk about 9/11. Our best friends were Japanese kids. Then, when they got evacuated to their camps, we all cried; our friends were gone. It was terrible. And no one ever came back.

Q: What’s the most important thing to keep in mind when you turn 80?

A: You don’t have to prove yourself anymore. It’s about you. Don’t be an on-call baby sitter. You can still have a good time. Just because you are 80 doesn’t mean sit down and die. Make your bucket list different. The main thing is to be independent. I get on Paratransit and go to Lorraine Hansberry (Theatre) to see a play. I saw that show with the Chinese dancers, that was great. I take myself out to lunch, went and did my nails yesterday.

Q: What kinds of health challenges have you had?

I am the original bionic woman. Five back surgeries. Two hip replacements and one adjustment. Rotary cuff. Four trigger fingers. And I’m getting ready to have a new knee as soon as I get back from Atlanta. My innards are good. It’s all these joints.

Q: So how do you deal with declining physical health and not getting depressed?

A: I’ve had five back surgeries, but I can get up on that walker, and I like to go out. So there’s always somebody worse off. Happiness is an inside job.

Q: Have you ever smoked?

A: Never. Never made sense to me to even sneak it. When I went to Cal, everyone had cigarette holders and cases and things. I always thought that’s a waste of my money.

Q: Tell me about your diet.

A: I had an attack of gout, which makes you stand up and say thank you Lord it’s over. So I can’t eat meat or fish or shellfish. It’s a choice. I can say let’s go out and have a martini and then have an attack of gout; it ain’t worth it. I can cook chicken and turkey any way you want. I eat vegetables.

Q: Do you exercise?

A: I do my recline cycle three times a week, which I hate with a passion. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 7 o’clock.

Q: How many of your friends are still living?

A: So many of my friends are gone or have Alzheimer’s, and it’s just very, very sad. That’s why I say keep in touch with your old friends because they get fewer and fewer and fewer.

Q: What is your secret to longevity?

A: I don’t let things stress me out. Anything I cannot touch and help I’m not going to let it get on me. Stress will give you the heart attacks, the strokes and all that business.

Q: Do you use the Internet?

A: I don’t have a computer. I’m not interested in the Facebook and the backbook and the hipbook and the earbook. I don’t want to know that you walked across the street today.

Q: What advice do you have for younger people?

A: Quit smoking now. Don’t wait. Don’t worry about what folks think of you. If you want to do something, and you’re true to yourself, go do it.

The workshop is Saturday at Geoffrey’s, 410 14th St., Oakland. Registration is from 8 to 9 a.m. Admission is $25, exact change, cash only. There is a handicap elevator around the corner on Franklin Street and public parking at Webster and 14th Street.

Tammerlin Drummond is a columnist for the Bay Area News Group. Her column runs Tuesday and Sunday. Reach her at tdrummond@bayareanewsgroup.com or follow her at Twitter.com/Tammerlin.

Tuesday, November 29, 2016

SRO Hotels in the BAMBD going fast


The former Lake Merritt Lodge on Harrison Street now serves as a dormitory for graduate students at Hult Business School in San Francisco. (D. Ross Cameron/Bay Area News Group)
The former Lake Merritt Lodge on Harrison Street now serves as a dormitory for graduate students at Hult Business School in San Francisco. (D. Ross Cameron/Bay Area News Group)


PUBLISHED: | UPDATED:
OAKLAND — With some help from Sacramento, the city is trying to protect a vulnerable population from getting crushed under the wheels of progress.

Many with little income live in single-room-occupancy hotels, often gritty but relatively inexpensive structures built in the 19th or early 20th centuries. The hotels are now a prime target for redevelopment into lucrative condos, boutique hotels or pricey short-term housing.

Most SRO residents rely on Social Security and disability payments for their income, earning less than a quarter of the county’s median income of $65,450, a report by Oakland’s Housing and Community Development found.

Earlier this month, the City Council endorsed a resolution to seek the same authority that the state’s four biggest cities already have to limit the loss of SROs from Oakland’s mix of housing options.

“We do not have the tools to regulate SROs as other cities do,” Councilman Abel Guillen, co-sponsor of the resolution, told council colleagues on Oct. 4. “This loophole needs to be addressed.”

Since 2004, the number of these properties has been shrinking fast. Of the 31 SROs operating in 2004, only 18 are left, today, a report by the city’s Department of Housing and Community Development found.
Some former SROs are now market-rate apartments, such as the 10 units of the former Alendale Guest House on Jayne Avenue or the Hotel Westerner, 19 units at 1954 San Pablo Ave., which was demolished. The land it stood on is now part of the footprint of the Uptown, a three-building market-rate apartment project.

The 157 units of the former Lake Merritt Lodge at 2332 Harrison St. became student housing for Hult International Business School in 2014 after being vacant for years.

The former Moor Hotel, 2351 San Pablo Ave., has also been shuttered more than a decade.
“This is consistent with the practice of land banking, in which an owner will hold onto a property purely for its speculative value,” the report states.

Others, such as the 149-unit California Hotel, 3501 San Pablo Ave., and 160-unit Hamilton Apartments at 2101 Telegraph Ave., have been renovated to include private kitchens and bathrooms, not typically featured in traditional SROs, and are now managed as affordable housing. The conversions reduced the number of units in the two properties, from 309 total to 229.

The resolution targets the state’s Ellis Act, passed in 1985, which gave property owners broader grounds to evict tenants and prohibited cities from insisting a property remain in the rental market. The act has sometimes been seen as a driving force when rent-controlled housing is converted into market-rate condos.
In 2003, the Legislature amended the act to allow four cities – San Francisco and three with populations of more than 1 million (Los Angeles, San Diego and San Jose) – to protect the status of residential hotels.
Among SROs threatened is the 88-unit Hotel Travelers at 392 11th St., a seedy-looking place across the street from East Bay Municipal Utility District offices.

A developer has touted plans to open a much tonier place, with a rooftop lounge, raw bar and Creole restaurant.

Owners of the 106-unit Sutter Hotel on 14th Street also have told the city they are interested in converting the building to upscale apartments, the report said.

The resolution seeks the authority for Oakland to adopt ordinances, as other cities such as San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Portland, Chicago and New York have done, to preserve SROs as low-income housing.

City Council president Lynette Gibson McElhaney co-sponsored the resolution, which the council passed unanimously. The next step in the process will be to identify a sponsor in Sacramento and reach out to other cities and counties to join the effort.

However, “nothing with the Ellis Act moves that quickly at the state level,” warned Alex Marqusee, a legislative analyst in Gibson McElhaney’s office. “This is a long-term effort.”

With that in mind, the city attorney is looking into the legality of declaring a moratorium on conversions or demolitions, or imposing stricter requirements for winning city approval for conversions, he said.
The city is also checking to see if some of Oakland’s proposed $600 million bond, Measure KK, that is directed at repairing streets, sidewalks, city facilities and affordable housing, could be set aside for extremely low-income residents who make 20 to 30 percent of median income — less than $20,000 per year.
“This is an issue that is growing in significance,” Councilwoman Rebecca Kaplan said. “I hope the state will give us this leeway to protect the most vulnerable people in the community.”

Contact Mark Hedin at 510-293-2452, 408-759-2132 or mhedin@bayareanewsgroup.com.

Sunday, November 27, 2016

MARVIN X SPEAKS, THE SHAMAN'S JOURNAL FROM THE OTHER SIDE OF TIME

Maestro Marvin X, Laney College Theatre, 2016
photo Alicia Mason

Time

People living like they got forever
tomorrow is almost here
afraid to enjoy the blessings of God
afraid to love
be loved
blindly praying when God has already answered
Time
look at your children
growing learning asking wanting seeking
make a world for them
make your mark in history
time
it's hard to struggle sacrifice
our women don't like it
our children don't like it
we push on
gotta have ma freedom
gotta have ma freedom today
rewards few hours long
we wonder where the years went
children tell us
they have not learned to lie
we wonder what will they be
but what path have we cut for them
what roads did we map
there are  snakes in the jungle
lions in the  forest foxes in the  woods
what roads are safe
what are the magic words of life
what is the message of our ancestors
don't you hear them calling
saying rise up be free
rise up be free
don't give up rise up
don't give up rise up
time.
--Marvin X/El Muhajir
from Liberation Poems for North American Africans by Marvin X, Al Kitab Sudan Press/Black Bird Press, Oakland CA., 1983.


POEM FOR FIDEL 

 Fidel and Malcolm X in Harlem
Long live the revolutionary spirit of Fidel and Malcolm X!

Mandela and Fidel
Who helped South Africa's liberation, America or Fidel's Cuba? Long live Fidel, long live the Cuban revolution!

History will absolve me he said
Huey, Bobby and me read his speech at Merritt College, 1962
read Nkrumah Mandela Lumumba Mao Che Malcolm
Elijah Garvey

Last Poets Filipe said to me and audience at NYU
Memorial for Jayne Cortez and Amiri Baraka
Marvin X you a bad motherfucker
Por favor Filipe
El Fidel is the bad motherfucker of the hour and all times
defied eleven presidents of the united snakes
Fidel  is the bad motherfucker
defied devils mafia imperialist war dogs
hundred assassination attempts
Fidel bad motherfucker
no matter his negrocities (Amiri Baraka term, he told me to acknowledge his term, don't claim it, Marvin, he said, rip)
Por favor, revolution is not a pretty thing
even the Negro revolution was not bloodless as Malcolm said
Was the blood of Malcolm a pretty thing
Blood of Martin Luther King, Jr
blood of Fred Hampton
blood of Lil' Bobby Hutton
Blood of Samuel Napier
Blood of Megdar Evers
Blood of Emmitt Till
Blood of the many thousands gone
in the woods swamps forests rivers lakes
the blood of cotton pickers
cane field cutters
rise fields slaves
African builders brought to America
Fidel bad motherfucker
Like Simon Simon Simon
liberate the Americas
Ustados Unidos no es de Americas
Ustados Unidos es Ustados Unidos
nada mas
no es Mexico Central South America

Fidel said Cuba no es Ustados Unidos
Cuba es Cuba libertad
Viva Fidel
Viva Fidel
yes no revolution is holy
contradictions
Por favor America revolution had negrocities
Por favor, eslavos Africanos mucho mucho
no libertad para Africanos
hoy no libertad
Viva Fidel
He grew with African revolution
joined African revolution
no say Cubano no Africano
Fidel saluted African roots
defeated apartheid America South Africa Israel
Viva Fidel
No holy man saint
liberator of Cuba
inspired liberation like Simon Bolivar
Simon
gringos go home
come back when you appreciate  justice freedom equality
Fuck Monroe Doctrine
Fuck embargo
did it work
did Cuba crumble
did Cuba submit like pitiful slaves to the gringos?
No!
Fidel stood tall
nuts in hand
basta ya gringo
basta ya gringo
enough enough enough
sometimes it takes a devil to kill a devil
saints can'ts kill devils
no heart to kill
saints like to pray  and pray and pray
Fidel said kill kill kill your enemies opposition
classic revolution ask Stalin
Mao
ask America Ustados Unidos
don't they kill presidents in America
don't they have political prisoners
jailed since the 60s
do they live in Cuban prisons longer than prisoners in Ustados Unidos
Longer than the Angola brothers
longer than Gerinimo
Longer than Ruchell McGee
Longer than Mumia Abu Jamal
Longer than Imam Jamil Alamin
Viva Fidel
Viva revolution Cubana
Viva revolution Ustados Unidos Africano Latino
Viva revolution Gringo no es rico pero esclavo tambien
Ache Ache Ache
--Marvin X/El Muhajir
11/27/16