Sunday, August 23, 2020

Love Song for Denise A. Gums, 66

 

Love Song for Denise A. Gums, 66


A wonder spirit departed for higher ground

She moved softly tenaciously

America Africa she wandered

Wondering the truth of life
She touched all with loving kindness especially her beloved Oaktown peoples
East side West side no matter
Downtown Lower Bottom
Denise appeared always and forever there
Lending hands dropping words of love and healing
African Queen blessing her land
Spirit Woman of God
We know where see went
Only the Upper Room can contain her mighty soul!
Love you, appreciate you
Denise A. Gums
--MARVIN X

https://gf.me/u/ymbf88

IN LOVING MEMORY OF MS. DENISE GUMS

We are family and friends of Ms. DENISE GUMS, raising funds for her Celebration of Life and Burial ceremony.  We would like you to support funeral expenses for Ms. DENISE GUMS, by making a donation and spreading the word.

An Angel gone too soon...Ms. DENISE GUMS - brought joy, laughter, stood by her family and friends and everyone who came in contact with her. She stood for positive changes around the globe and had a passion for SOCIAL JUSTICE, A DEVOTED CATHOLIC, she sure made a difference - while here on Earth!

The funds will be needed in 10 days as the family plans to lay her to rest the weekend of August 15th, 2020. The family is in-charge of final expenses.

YOU WILL TRULY BE MISSED BY ALL...

Rest-in-perfect-peace, AMEN!

Organizer and beneficiary

Osagie Enabulele 
Organizer
Oakland, CA
Deborah Gums 
Beneficiary

Friday, August 21, 2020

Marvin X interviews Black Panther Party Co-Founder Bobby Seale, cerca 2001, videographer Ken Johnson



Marvin X interviews Black Panther co-founder Bobby Seale
3767380490_fda3c6f2e5_z.jpg
 Bobby Seale, Marvin X and Charlie Walker, Godfather  of San Francisco's Hunters Point

A classic interview with Bobby, with whom Marvin X attended Oakland's Merritt College, along with BPP co-founder Huey P. Newton, 1962-64. Bobby tells Marvin, "At Merritt College on Grove Street, we were the neo-Black intellectuals." Recently, Bobby said, "When Marvin X performed his play Flowers for the Trashman at Merritt for the Soul Students Advisory Council, aka, BSU or Black Students Union, it kicked off the student movement at Merritt that led to the formation of the Black Panther Party. " In this interview, Bobby gives a history of how the West Coast radical students came into consciousness that evolved into the West Coast Black Liberation Movement and the Black Arts Movement.


Amiri Baraka, Bobby Seale, Dr. Ayodele Nzinga, Ahi Baraka, Marvin X at his ACADEMY OF DA CORNER, 14th and Broadway, Oakland Bambd 

Friday, August 14, 2020

Marvin X interviews Dr. Cornel West 8/3/20


COMMENTS ON MARVIN X’S INTERVIEW WITH DR. CORNEL WEST

 

Marvin, 

 

Thank you for this wonderful conversation with two of my favorite people, two of my heroes. Two courageous people who know what's important and care about us: who care about the world: who have solutions for the world: consciousness, historical perspective and critical thinking.  

 

Dr. Fritz Pointer, Emeritus Professor, Contra Costa College

 

Dear Marvin X,

I just watched the brilliant conversation of you and Cornel West. Would you mind if I showed it to my students when the Fall semester starts by remote?

Dr. Dorothy Tsuruta, Professor of Black Studies, San Francisco State University


Hello Marvin, 

I did listen to the conversation and found it to be most informative and nuanced. I think when there are time restraints a great deal can be accomplished and it was. I have sent it to many colleagues who might be further illuminated by pivotal philosophical positions within the liberation struggle in its formative stages.

The California connection was important for me to hear hashed out and given clarity.

 

Best to you,

Foad Satterfield, Emeritus Professor of Art, Dominican College

 

Hey Marvin,

You and Cornel make a great team! I just thoroughly enjoyed listening to you guys! I sure hope our young brothers & sisters are hearing your message! I’m an old man now but hearing your message brings back many memories of my family of seven boys and three sisters sneaking out of Ozan Arkansas in the middle of night heading to Imperial, Calif. for a few years before reaching Fresno. Although we were very poor and worked in the fields until I graduated Edison High, our mom & dad taught us a lot about how to survive all the racism we encountered. Hey Marvin, I am very proud of you and appreciate all that you have contributed to all of us! Keep on keeping on young man! We definitely need  you and Cornel!        

Odell Johnson, Emeritus President, Laney College, Oakland CA

 

Marvin X,

Your interview with Dr. Cornel West brought tears to my eyes. You guys are too much, too too much! It was overwhelming to me. And he knows all about you and your family. It was great!

Elliott Savoy Bey,

Philadelphia PA

 

Peaceful Greetings, Brother Marvin:

Thank you for sharing this wonderful video of your 08/03/2020 interview with

Dr. Cornel West. The content was very interesting and you looked "mellow & super-cool" in

your role as the interviewer. I hope that you get to do more interviews like this, with other people, in the future.

Sincerely,

Leona McElvene

Detroit, MI

p.s.  It was interesting that your grandmother had a copy of "Up from

Slavery - The Autobiography of Booker T. Washington" as the only book in her

house.


Tuesday, August 4, 2020

WolfHawkJaguar ft. Zion Trinity "CLEANSE"


I enjoyed this short film by Wolfhawk Jaguar as part of Oakland's BAMBD FEST BLACK AUGUST 2020. Yes, in this era of Covid19 we need a purification ritual and his adaptation of the Yoruba myth-rituals is a breath of fresh air in this toxic jungle. As a dramatist, I love the Yoruba dramatization of their mythology and rituals that go back thousands of years. Of course being in Harlem, 1968, one could not avoid the flamboyant Yoruba high priest Baba Serjiman Olatunji and his acolytes and sycophants who paraded through the streets of Harlem in their multi-colored African outfits. Alas, Baba Olatunji is credited with introducing the Dashiki to North American Africans. For a time, Amiri Baraka was influenced by the Yoruba religion. It was Baba Olatunji who officiated his marriage to Amina Baraka. Baraka's classic play A Black Mass is a syncretism of Yoruba and Islamic mythology, and is an original attempt at merging Islam and Yoruba religion for North American Africans. Wolfhawk Jaguar's short film is another attempt to put the Yoruba religion in the context of North American African myth-ritual. As beautiful and refreshing as it is, it falls short in the critical area of drumming. Perhaps to attract the Hip Hop audience, we do not hear the powerful bata drums and other drumming of the Yoruba and other African rituals. We hear what I suppose is Afro-beat sounds but not the awesome beats that do indeed cleanse and heal the heart, the Black hearts, as Amiri Baraka might say. I enjoyed the choreography that so often represents Yoruba storying telling. 

After Baba Olatunji's Harlem days, he moved his Yoruba community to Sheldon, South Carolina, and I have made several visits to this African Village, before the transition of Olatunji and after his son inherited the kingship. I have been overwhelmed with the beautiful Yoruba storytelling through choreography and ritual, so this short film is a teaser for those interested in the Yoruba religion. Thank you Mr. Wolfhawk Jaguar and your acolytes and sycophants.  
--Marvin X

Thursday, July 16, 2020

Where shall I go, what shall I say: this is the end of the world



Where shall I go, what shall I say

When you bomb away
the poorest country in the world
a habit you have
Somalia
Haiti
Afghanistan
poverty stricken lands
you bomb
how can they withstand
global military bombs
money fucking bombs
UK bombs
USA bombs
you fake democrats and republicans
march for black lives matter
no bank accounts transfer
gentrification happens
no bank accounts
liberals are holier than KKK
MKK Jr wrote about this
Letter from Birmingham Jail
"I rather be with KKK
than phony white liberals!"
Black Lives Matter signs on house
gentrified from ghetto blacks
moved to tent cities
you revitalized ghettoes
cleaned rats roaches
most especially
got rid of niggas
put them in tends
freeway dwellers but your Black Lives Matter sign
all over the hood
you fucking care
like you care for your mama in nursing home
died early of covid19
didn't visit her
no funeral
no love from you
heartless beast bitch man/woman
wear mask for virus inside yr soul
will not save your punk ass
bitch man/woman
black nigga virus go catch yo ass
liberal slime
right wing melot wine
down down you go
take your virus
take your vaccine
take your white supremacy mars one way ticket dream
go there to fuck up mars and the moon
you cannot change
constitutionally unable
the Big Book says.
--Marvin X

A MAN'S WORLD

Thursday, July 9, 2020

Black Queens stand tall



Look at the black queen confront the pigs
no fear black woman no fear
love my children with no fear of devils
no fear of death is beginning of life
no fear
fuck death
laugh at death
death backs down to life everlasting
no fear
look at the queen no fear
pigs nothing when black power matters
black life don't matter worth a fuck
black power matters
black power gives life to blackness
no black power we necros
dead negroes c=k=g negroes
grimes law
black life is matterness dust trash ash mash
black power matters
energy force matters
no power no life
static neutral life don't matter
black power matters in all things
economic
political
cultural
sexual
mental
physical
power matters
life is nothing without power
so make the transactions
transfer bank accounts
send yr trillions to the millions
to empower
leave your keys
your land
houses you stole
transfer your deeds titles
give life estates to the poor
leave your keys to your condos
flee to the moon one way ticket
who give a fuck
we already know
yo go soon fk up the moon too
you got the can't help its
destroy destroy destroy
want to dominate dominate dominate
control
no share no equity no fare trade
free trade bullshit
even Trump ain't going for that bullshit
he want fare trade no free trade
you sell to me but you no buy from me
free trade
not fare trade
we want fair trade in the hood
oh shit
yeah
Arabs we want fare trade
yeah Arab buy from a nigga like niggas buy from you
otherwise
fuck you A-RAB
fuck you Asian
fuck you Latinx
fuck you Jamaican
fuck you African
fare trade no trade
fuck you.
--Marvin X





When I'll Wave The Flag

I'll wave the flag
When the trillions in reparations are paid to the
African American Nation
For 400 years of being terrorized in America
When the bill of the Middle Passage is paid
When the bill from the cotton fields is paid

I'll wave the flag
When the damages due the descendants of mass murder
is paid
Mass kidnapping
Mass rape

I'll wave the flag
When the police stop terrorizing us for breathing
while black
Walking while black
Loving while black

I'll wave the flag
When the 2 million men and women in prison are
released
for petty crimes
And those guilty of stealing elections take their
place
in the cells

I'll wave the flag
When those guilty of stealing labor, stealing
energy,
stealing souls of the poor are jailed


I'll wave the flag
When those guilty of the miseducation of our
children are
jailed for crimes against humanity

I'll wave the flag
When those who terrorize the earth, pollute the
earth,
poison the food, the water, the air
Inject animals with hormones
Genetically alter vegetables and fruits
When these people are taken before the world court
for
terrorizing the world
I'll wave the flag

Until then
Kiss my motherfuckin' ass.

2001 Marvin X

Don't mess wit the Goddess


Look at the black queen confront the pigs
no fear black woman no fear
love my children with no fear of devils
no fear of death is beginning of life
no fear
fuck death
laugh at death
death backs down to life everlasting
no fear
look at the queen no fear
pigs nothing when black power matters
black life don't matter worth a fuck
black power matters
black power gives life to blackness
no black power we necros
dead negroes c=k=g negroes
grimes law
black life is matterness dust trash ash mash
black power matters
energy force matters
no power no life
static neutral life don't matter
black power matters in all things
economic
political
cultural
sexual
mental
physical
power matters
life is nothing without power
so make the transactions
transfer bank accounts
send yr trillions to the millions
to empower
leave your keys
your land
houses you stole
transfer your deeds titles
give life estates to the poor
leave your keys to your condos
flee to the moon one way ticket
who give a fuck
we already know
yo go soon fk up the moon too
you got the can't help its
destroy destroy destroy
want to dominate dominate dominate
control
no share no equity no fare trade
free trade bullshit
even Trump ain't going for that bullshit
he want fare trade no free trade
you sell to me but you no buy from me
free trade
not fare trade
we want fair trade in the hood
oh shit
yeah
Arabs we want fare trade
yeah Arab buy from a nigga like niggas buy from you
otherwise
fuck you A-RAB
fuck you Asian
fuck you Latinx
fuck you Jamaican
fuck you African
fare trade no trade
fuck you.
--Marvin X

JIMMY SMITH - THE SERMON! Full Album



When I play Jimmy Smith in my car while riding and other cars come beside me at the stop light and the driver asks me who is that? I say it's God. They say what, who is that? I say God! They look bewildered so I bring them down to earth. It's Jimmy Smith, then they smile and relax, happy to it was indeed God playing in the persona of Jimmy Smith. I wish somebody would hep me tonight. This music goes so deep down into the morrow of the bones of my childhood in West Oakland, there is no other sound that was pervasive in the clubs, cafes, poolhalls, restaurants, night clubs. This was the music I heard as I sold Jet and Ebony magazines on 7th Street and the backstreets, sidestreets, socalled lower bottom, i.e. pine street was the last street in west Oakland, i.e., the ho' stroll, but in my childhood and teenage years I hustled Jet, Ebony and other black newspapers, including the Chicago Defender, Pittsburg Courier, Detroit Black Dispatch, et al. But the Hammond B3 guided my way through the streets of my turf that I walked without fear.
--Marvin X

Marvin X The Poet / Playwright, intro for Amiri Baraka and Roscoe Mitchell at Yoshi's San Francisco

Monday, July 6, 2020

Did you catch Marvin X in Black Panther: Vanguard of the Revolution?



Left to Right: Marvin X, grandson Jahmiel, director Stanley Nelson, MX's daughter Attorney Amira Jackmon and her daughter Naeemah Joy at Shattuck Cinema, Berkeley showing of Black Panthers, Vanguard of the Revolution. Marvin appears in the film. He and Stanley Nelson participated in the Q and A. Marvin's grandson said, "It was too much shooting!"


Director Stanley Nelson, Marvin X and Fred Hampton, Jr. at the San Francisco Film Festival screening of Black Panther, Vanguard of the Revolution
photo Aries X


Dr. Huey P. Newton on Marvin X

"Marvin X was my teacher. Many of our comrades came through his Black Arts Theatre: Eldridge Cleaver, Bobby Seale, Emory Douglas and Samuel Napier."--Dr. Huey P. Newton, co-founder of the Black Panther Party




Marvin X on Huey P. Newton


l love Huey P. Newton and the Black Panther Party because they came from the grass roots of
Oakland to international standing. Look at Huey embracing world revolutionaries, Chinese Premier
Cho En Li, PLO leader Yassar Arafat, et al. a journey from the streets of  Oakland to world
recognition! Wow!

Huey represented North American Africans in China. What punk bitch nigguhs have the nerve to
represent North American Africans in China today? Can they represent us in Palestine,
Vietnam, North Korea, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and elsewhere? They claim they Pan African but do
they represent North American Africans in the global community really? They talk and teach all that
Diaspora shit (approved by white supremacy academia--but let them attempt to teach revolutionary black
nationalism and their asses will be out the door! Dr. Nathan Hare says they are permitted to teach any
other worldism that will not free us down here on the ground in the belly of the beast. And here comes
Black Lives Matter financed by the global devils when we know no matter how many millions march in
the name of BLM, the only thing that matters is Black Power, economic, political, military, cultural, 100%
Black Power Matters, not diluted,polluted, homogenized and pasteurized with gender issues.
Either we all free or none are free. This ain't no gender issue. We were all on those slave ships together,
shittin, pissin and menustratin: blood, piss, shit together and we shall rise again in the same mixture of funk
as Dr. Cornel West likes to say. If and when we get out of here it will be a funky affair, nothing nice, clean,
sweet but funky, James Brown funk Ain't It Funky Now!



BPP co-founder Huey P. Newton embracing Yasir Arafat, leader of Palestine. Marvin X said, "We
support Yasir Arafat and the Palestinian call for nationhood. We North American Africans desire
the same!"


North American Africans need our own million man army. Ever since the Civil War ended and 200,000 North American Africans were disarmed, we have languished in servitude and wage slavery, devoid of national sovereignty thus true freedom and total liberation from the Babylon beast.

North American Africans have no problem with North Korea. The BPP was in N. Korea when Black
Panther Minister of Information, Eldridge Cleaver ,and his wife Kathleen celebrated the first birthday
of their son, Maceo, at a party hosted by Madam Kim Il Sung. Their daughter Joju was born in
North Korea and named by Madam Kim Il Sung. "Your enemy ain't my enemy and my friend ain't your
friend!"
--Marvin X





Marvin X in Stanley Nelson's documentary film on the Black Panther Party

Note: Marvin X received a phone call from producer, Laurens Grant, letting him know he survived the cutting and is indeed part of the people interviewed by director Stanley Nelson. There will be a private showing in the Bay soon, followed by a public screening. The film was recently screened at the Sundance Film Festival. Next weekend it will be in Los Angeles at the Pan African Film Festival.


"Marvin X was my teacher. Many of our comrades came through his Black Arts Theatre: Eldridge Cleaver, Bobby Seale, Emory Douglas and Samuel Napier."--Dr. Huey P. Newton, co-founder of the Black Panther Party

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




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

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

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

Marvin X and his mentor and associate, Master Sun Ra, outside Marvin's Black Educational Theatre on O'farrel Street, between Fillmore and Webster, 1972. Sun Ra and Marvin X were both teaching Black Studies at UC Berkeley. They produced a five hour concert without intermission and a cast of fifty at San Francisco's Harding theatre on Divisadero St. Sun Ra is the Father of Afro-futurism, Octavia Butler the Mother. The esthetics in the movie Black Panther is a tribute to Afro-futurism.

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

 Huey P. Newton in wicker chair, rug, shield, spear; these items came from Eldridge Cleaver's room at Beverly Axelrod's house. Marvin X and Alonzo Batin (BAM guru) forcibly  moved Eldridge from Axelrod's  White House to the Black House on Broderick St., San Francisco, yes, as Miss Ann cried crocodile tears because her Jungle Fever was being kidnapped. Beverly won a royalty suit against Eldridge when he was in exile and unable to come to court. She won by default and for the rest of his life he was deprived of royalties from his world-wide best seller Soul on Ice. But in the end, Beverley got her due when just before the Oakland memorial for Eldridge Cleaver, her Pacifica house slid down the hill in a mudslide. 

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

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

 Eldridge Cleaver and Marvin X outside the house where the Panthers had a shoot out with the OPD. Little Bobby Hutton was murdered by OPD, Cleaver wounded and later fled to exile. When he returned as a Born Again Christian, Marvin X organized his ministry. photo Muhammad Al Kareem
See My Friend the Devil, a memoir of Eldridge Cleaver by Marvin X, Black Bird Press, Berkeley, 2009. Also, Somethin' Proper, the autobiography of a North American African Poet, Marvin X, Black Bird Press, 1998. Somethin' Proper came off the press the day Eldridge Cleaver made his transition to the ancestors, May 1, 1998. Marvin X performed the memorial rites in Oakland. Kathleen and daughter Joju attended the memorial. Kathleen said, "Marvin, the memorial was great, but there were just too many Muslims!" Alas, their son is Ahmed Maceo Eldridge Cleaver, a Sunni Muslim!