Tuesday, August 20, 2019

KPFA's Cat Brooks interview with Marvin X

https://kpfa.org/player/?audio=317516

 Marvin X at KPFA Radio, Berkeley
Photo Adam Turner

"I have been listening to KPFA's 6PM
 News Hour since 1962, after graduating from high school in Fresno CA and returning to Oakland where I'd spent part of my childhood on the streets of West Oakland.

When I entered Merritt College on Grove Street, my friends were Huey Newton and Bobby Seale. We sat in classes together, front row, three deep, and challenged the instructor to get one word out of line. We did independent study so we knew our shit!"


KPFA's Cat Brooks interview with Marvin X


Monday, August 19, 2019

Black Test for White Supremacy Type II

 Marvin X at University of Chicago
photo Burrell Sunrise





1. If you believe Jesus is white but simultaneously say He is without color, you suffer white supremacy type II.

2. If you believe fake American history that the Pilgrims were not illegal migrant invaders of Indigenous people's land, you suffer white supremacy type II

3. If you believe that the Democratic party and the Republican party are not both white supremacists, you suffer white supremacy type II.

4. If you shop all day at white, Asian, Latino and Arab stores but don't spend one penny at a black store or business, you are a white supremacist type II.

5. If you desire a light skinned baby with "good hair", you suffer white supremacy type II.

6. If you protest mass murder in America but don't protest black on black killings in Chicago; don't protest the trillion dollar USA's military budget to kill around the world, you are a white supremacist type II.

7. If you protest the police killings of black people, but don't teach youth the tone test, i.e, depending on their tone of voice when stopped by the police, they can be 1, arrested, 2, killed, or 3, released, you are a white supremacist type II.

8. If you think after 400 years of free and nearly free labor, a "good job for life" is your goal, you suffer white supremacy type II.

9. If you want to unite with everyone except your own kind, you suffer white supremacy type II.

10. If you wonder why everybody hates niggas, and you hate niggas too, yet everybody pimps niggas, but you won't pimp yourself, you suffer white supremacy type II.

Marvin X

8/19/19

Sunday, August 18, 2019

BAMBD Street Vendors




The time has come for Pan African street vendors to unite for cultural and economic prosperity. Ancestor Amiri Baraka told us "to stop thinking like we Americans." If we were truly Americans there would be no need to renew the Voting Rights Act, since we've been here in involuntary and voluntary servitude since 1619, 400 years of loyalty to the English slavemasters, now known as Americans.

I say let's think in a Pan African paradigm. We want the BAMBD to be an African Marketplace on the !4th Street corridor, initially in the Center City area and especially on the eastside of Lake Merritt that was claimed by Pan African vendors and Pan African people en masse after the Bar B Q Becky incident of blatant white supremacist behavior rooted in arrogance, racial superiority and ignorance.

Pan African vendors want to vend daily as Euro and Latin Americas do in San Francisco, Berkeley and Oakland. Vending and entrepreneurship is one avenue Pan and North American Africans can overcome economic discrimination. Everybody wants to sell to us but don't want to buy from us. Too often we don't want to buy from us! You know the white man's ice is colder, or the Arab's, Chinese, Korean, Latin and/or Indigenous. But look at the plethora of Pan African vendors at Bay Area and Oakland festivals, e.g., Art and Soul, Pride, Joy, Juneteenth, Umoja, Pan African Family Day, Malcolm X Jazz/Art Festival, et al. Vendors want to vend and now have SB946 to do so legally on the streets of Oakland, California.

Some people are concerned that with the BAMBD corridor being gentrified by development of commercial buildings and market rate housing, the BAMBD idea is dead in da water.

But street vending in the BAMBD can be an immediate and long range cultural/economic project that must be included in the City of Oakland's Downtown Plan for the next 25 to 50 years. Few Pan Africans or North American Africans (my term for so-called Negroes) will be able to pay market rate rents or purchase buildings in the downtown area. We give honor and respect to Geoffery Pete, the Pan African/North American African man who occupies a piece of the rock with his venue Geoffery's Inner Circle at 14th and Franklin Streets in the heart of the BAMBD, with the Joyce Gordon Gallery downstairs.

Most of us will not be able to model Geoffery Pete and Joyce Gordon but life has infinite possibilities , though immediately we can vend on the street in the BAMBD, along the 14th Street corridor. We can build from the street to occupy skyscrapers, two, three, four....The multi-cultural Greenlining Institute owns a piece of the rock near 14th and Webster, across from the upcoming Carmel 600 unit market rate apartment complex. The BAMBD CDC, Inc., headed by Dr. Ayodele Nzinga, acquired a Community Benefits Agreement with Carmel Developers to rent office and business space in their development at below market rate. We were not able to obtain an equity agreement with Carmel especially for below market rate housing, the critical need in Oakland in general and the downtown area especially where many Pan Africans reside, mostly in subsidized apartments or SRO's (single room occupancy hotels). The City of Newark, NJ model requires developers to reserve 20% of new housing for below market rate. The survival of a community requires cultural and economic prosperity but housing is critical. Oakland's Chinatown is prospering party due to housing and economics. Chinatown or the Asian community combines cultural tradition and mores with economic activity, e.g., one can cross the street in their tradition, sell goods outside on the streets of their businesses, double park and little or no police presence. The BAMBD must emulate the Asian model.
What Pan African businesses cannot supply, street vendors should supply so that our money circulates more than once. Pan Africans must support Pan Africans, yes, we have a trade deficient with other ethnic groups! Most importantly, we have a trade deficient with each other. Don't say you love Black/African but won't buy from Black/African.

What is the purpose of the BAMBD Vendors Association? These are thoughts off the top of my head. Let us meet and come to a consensus for a BAMBD Vendors Association that is about cultural consciousness and economic prosperity.

1. A membership of arts/crafts/food and commercial merchandise vendors. We must also activate the Community Component of the Original Black Studies mission, thus we appeal to scholars to make themselves available at their individual Academy of da Corners, wherein knowledge is dispensed on the street, intellectual dialogue as well, an open mike of ideological exchange. We need community scholars to connect with people in the street to share their wealth of wisdom with common folk, some of whom have never met a black scholar in their life, not to mention a black author.

2.Membership should provide the vendor with reduced fee or free booth space in the BAMBD and other cultural events, festivals, conferences, concerts.

3.Member fees may cover permit costs, taxes, insurance, license fees, health insurance, burial insurance.

4.Member will purchase goods collectively at wholesale or below wholesale prices.

5.Members will acquire housing and transportation collectively.

6.Senior members will be cared for with respect due.

7.Member children will be trained in the Pan African entrepreneurial tradition.

8.Members will be provided security while vending in the BAMBD and elsewhere.

9.The Movement Newspaper will be the official organ of the BAMBD Vendors Association, wherein members can advertise and promote their events.

10. As per leadership, we know who traditionally runs the African marketplace. Therefore, we call upon African women to operate the BAMBD Vendors Association.

Saturday, August 17, 2019

Fredericka Newton on Huey Newton


Fredericka Newton in conversation with Zoe' Samudzi


BPP Chair Elaine Brown


Dr. Huey P Newton. Marvin X recounts his last meeting with Huey in a West Oakland Crack house, see his docudrama One Day in the Life, also the one act play Salaam, Huey, Salaam
(with Ed Bullins)

The most tragi-comic part of her narrative conversation with Zoe'S was her role as codependent when Huey fell victim to Crack addiction. She realized he became another person that she couldn't deal with.  But his addiction forced her to become an R.N. Fredericka blames stress for his addiction, the pressure of being the leader of the group labeled the biggest threat to the national security of the United States. She loved him because he and all the BPP members were willing to give their lives for the people.

On the 30th Anniversary of his death,  Fredericka Newton gave a passionate narrative on her tragi-comic marriage to Black Panther Party Co-founder Dr. Huey P. Newton. Before an overflow crowd at Oakland's African American Museum and Library, Fredericka said Huey was the love of her life. In the midst of the black liberation movement, they tried to have love and joy. Their attempt to be normal included working at a service station until his persona was unmasked by a customer. Huey was shy, quiet and funny, especially when he didn't try to be humorous, she said. But because of the USA's pressure on the BPP, including the assassination of dozens of party members, the Newton's were under great stress, still Huey did his best to be a father to her son by a previous relationship. And Huey had no problem with his Jewish mother-in-law and black musician father-in-law with a gold tooth.
He was for all oppressed people. Fredericka was not able to speak on BPP history prior to hooking up with Huey. But he kept good archives that were acquired by the Green Library at Stanford University. In the Q and A, she was asked about the role of women in the BPP. At one point, women ran the BPP, especially when Elaine Brown became Chair. It took a little adjustment for men to submit to female authority but they did, she said. In Elaine Brown's autobiography A Taste of Power, she told the BPP males, "I got all the guns and all the money, now fuck with me!"
--Marvin X
8/1719



Tuesday, August 13, 2019

Please help Marvin X reprint his books











Your donation of any amount can be tax deductible. Estimated printing
cost for one thousand copies each @
$5, 000 per is $50,000. Your generous support of this project will be greatly appreciated.
Sincerely,
Marvin X
Author/Publisher
Black Bird Press
for more information please call 510-575-7158
Email me@ mxjackmon@gmail.com

Wednesday, July 31, 2019

Poem for Nikki Giovanni

Oh I love
Beautiful black women
Intelligent
Spiritual
Sexual
Bold
Aggressive
Dirty south women especially
Big H women
Picked me up at my daughter's house
Told my daughter
"I'm taking your dad out
I'll bring him back in the morning!"
Ain't ask me shit
Bold
Take care of a nigga
Southern style
Like Carolyn
Winston Salem NC
I'm drunk
With August Wilson Amiri Baraka
Whispered in her ear
"Can I go home with you?"
"Come on!"
Stayed seven months
Wrote autobiography
Thanks Carolyn
Appreciate you
Cali girls no match
Love Call girls too
Gave me beautiful children
Never raised my voice never
Never whipped them
Mother's discipline
Despite no good father me
Abusive crazy poet
Lost in imagination
Traveling Space Ways
Sun Ra style
Beyond time
Love you
Beautiful black women
Hate you
For spoiling me rotten
Mother in law said
"Who dat nigga
Think he is
King Tut?"
Love you
Beautiful black women!
--MARVIN X


Can a black man hold a stop sign

Can a black man hold a stop sign in Oakland
A stop sign
Mexicans can
Women
White men
Can a black man hold a stop sign
stop gentrification
Speed it up
Whatever
Stop
Black lives Matter stop
Must he be PhD
to hold stop sign
Remember Post office
Only job for PhD Negro
Can a black man hold stop sign
For developments
He can't afford to live in
Wave sign up and down
Stop
He won't show up on time
After pay day?
Pants on behind
Holding stop sign?
---Marvin X







Marvin X on the rights/rites of women

If truth be told, and it must, many religious based myth-rituals must be cast into the dustbin of history. Aspects of patriarchal manhood and womanhood rites of passage are archaic and dehumanizing and female genital mutilation is chief among them. Why should women be deprived the pleasure of their clitoris? Only a man would originate such a myth-ritual. It is past time for men to stay out of the affairs of women. It is her body, not man's. What right do men have  determining what women do with their bodies, whether it is deprivation of sexual pleasure or abortion? I'm against abortion, but it is none of my business! If you are against abortion, don't put your seed into a woman who is pro-abortion!
--MARVIN X




Save the date, early bird tickets




Tuesday, July 30, 2019

Parable of the man who went to Ignutville



There was a man who traveled to Stupidville on his way to Ignutville. In Stupidville he observed people doing the most stupid shit imaginable. They talked stupid shit, did stupid shit, lived stupid lives, went to the malls to buy stupid shit, came home and made stupid love in the dark without saying a stupid word to each other. Why say shit to a stupid motherfucker?

The man departed Stupidville and traveled on to Ignutville. After observing the people in Ignutville, he went into shock and was taken to the hospital. After a few days he was released and continued his observation of the citizens of ignutville.

They didn't know the time of day, the year. Didn't know they were slaves and/or descendents of slaves. After all they drove bigger cars than the slave master. While the slave master drove Fords and Toyotas, the slaves drove Escalades and Masaraties, yes, even while they lived in the projects.

If the master knew nothing else, he knew he was white, but the slave wasn't sure if he was black African or white European in black face. He loved the white Jesus, worshipped the white woman standard of beauty. His ignut woman loved wearing a blond wig and in the deep structure of her mind, she wanted her man to be a white man. She would be satisfied if he would become a white man dipped in chocolate. She was so ignut she called 911 so the white man, her real man, would rescue her from any abuse her black man inflicted on her, whether verbal, emotional, spiritual and/or physical. 

The white man was her true husband, boyfriend, lover, protector. Such was the level of ignorance in Ignutville.

Parents were so ignut in Ignutville, they sent their children to public schools where the enemy could teach their children the proper white supremacy mis-education. They sent their children to white colleges and universities, then were shocked when their children came home hating them and everything they were about even though the ignut children didn't even know what their parents were about.

The parents didn't understand the children had been taught they were nothing ass black nigga students who were so ignut they couldn't think logically or write coherently. Some of the students suffered mental breakdowns. When the students came home, parents knew their children were not the same. They suspected their children were on drugs.
The ignut parents never imagined their children were in full blown addiction to white supremacy. 

The man fled Ignutville trying to figure out how to get to Saneville. He called upon his GPS device to guide him to Saneville.
--Marvin X
7-28-29