Monday, April 19, 2021

New Poem by Marvin X: American Ghosts

 

Marvin X reading at the University of Chicago Sun Ra Conference on Afrofuturism, 2015

photo Burrell Sunrise



Sometime long ago

back in winds of time

after hollow declarations of freedom

liberty or death

soon come slavery reality

negating holy documents

signed by slavers in white wigs

who visited women, men, children cotton pickers in the night

seeking love from Africans  in the American slave system

exhausted from can't see to can't see

Sunrise to dust

No matter slave master rape  love

Chattel property love

I own you love

Men women children slave master love 

Yet sold New Year's Day

Chitterlings gumbo day into the now

We celebrate New Year’s

Black eye peas

Gumbo to honor New Year’s auction block day

Worst day in American slavery system

And we dance on New Year’s?

We should pray all night long

For many thousands gone


Lovers gone

Children gone

Wives husbands

Dis massa care bout love

Tina said what love go ta do wit it?

Did slaves enjoy massa's love

white kind loving hands

tender rapist touch

African men women children

even his children raped sold

nothing to him his precious seed

nothing

commodity for auction block

Massa  humans you say

ghosts to me

long gone 

yet alive today

blood soaked white minds

suffering denial

addiction of the first kind

Didn't Baldwin say

To solve a problem

first is recognition of the problem


Inheritance no problem for gentrifiers

A check from daddy grandfather

Buy a house from a nigga

Walk dog late into night in nigger hood

Don’t say nothin’ nigga

I walk my dog don’t say shit to me

Would walk my cat if he let me

Cat say fuck you bitch

Leave me lone

Check dem niggas call you miss ann

Becky karen siris

Fake white girls know everything

Ask becky karen siris

Hate crime talk crazy to siris

She say,  “Would you talk to your mother like that?

But Siris ain’t real

Ghost 24/7

Bitch know everything in the motherfuckin’ world

Ghost bitch know everything

Still

ghosts don't recognize humans

Don’t give a fuck

Will hang up on you


Ghost spirits travel absent hearts souls

devoid of minds

no there there

Amiri Baraka said it best,

"Where soul's print should be

...only cellulose pouch of disgusting habits!"

We pray kneecaps off to no avail

wail wail

ghosts say 

would you like to go to jail?

Maybe, if I can make bail!

Ghosts say, "I can shoot you in the head.

Or release you. 

Depends on your voice

Don't you know the tone test?"

Dear brothers and sisters, know the tone test:

1. kill you

2. jail you

3. release you

Depends on your tone of voice.

Please listen to me so I can save your life.

Didn't Jesus give up his coat and cloak to live another day?

Ghosts love death don't you know?

Again, Amiri Baraka said,

"The king sold the farmer to the ghost!"

Baraka said, "In the middle of the Atlantic ocean

is a railroad of human bones...."

Oh, Baraka, you told us, "Don't let them take your UM BOOM BA BOOM!"

You said, "If they take our um boom ba boom 

we in deep trouble. 

Probably take us a few centuries to get out!"

Don't listen to the ghosts

they sold the farmer

rice growers

iron workers

warriors

priests

holy mothers

children of divine

African ghosts of the kingly kind

Europeans ghosts of the Good Ship Jesus

Can you believe John Hawkins had an Amazing Grace

on the Good Ship Jesus

Can you believe

God saved a wretched wretch like him

John of Amazing Grace

Ghost ship captain

you enjoyed his journey through the door on no return

just remember you ghost lovers

AB said, "The king sold the farmer to the ghost!"

Alas, the black ghosts live as the white ghosts

they are one

what did Nkrumah say, "Neo-colonialism is colonialism playing possum!"

You give us a flag, national anthem but our banks belong to you. IMF is you.

WHO is you! You send the virus and vaccine Covid19. 

This is how ghosts dream. Their dreams do not lose do not end

and never do you win with ghost captains of the Good Ship Jesus

you suffer

you bleed

can't breathe

can't breathe

ghosts foot on neck after you dead no pulse dead

foot on neck ghost

hand in pocket ghost

no heart no soul ghost

and you swear they human!

--Marvin X

4/19/21

Marvin X reading at Laney College Theatre (his former classroom, 1981)
photo Alicia Mayo, 2005

New Poem by Marvin X: American ghosts

 


Marvin X at Laney College, Oakland CA

photo Alicia Mayo


American Ghosts



Sometime long ago

back into the winds of time

after hollow declarations of freedom

liberty or death

yet soon come slavery

negating holy documents

signed by slavers

who visited women, men, children cotton pickers by night

seeking love from Africans exhausted from can't see to can't see

No matter slave love 

they were sold New Year's Day

Tina said what love go ta do wit it?

Did slaves enjoy massa's love

white kind loving hands

tender rapist touch

African men women children

even slaver's he raped then sold

they were nothing to him his precious seed

nothing

commodity for the auction block

and these are humans you say

they are ghosts to me

long gone yet alive today

blood soaked into white minds

suffering denial

addiction of the first kind

Didn't Baldwin say

To solve a problem

first is recognition of the problem

ghosts don't recognize

spirits travel absent hearts souls

even devoid of minds

there is no there there

Amiri Baraka said it best,

"Where the soul's print should be

...only a cellulose pouch of disgusting habits!"

We pray kneecaps off to no avail

We may wail wail

the ghosts say only

would you like to go to jail

Maybe, if I can make bail!

Ghosts say, "I can shoot you in the head.

Or release you. 

Depends on your voice

Don't you know the tone test?"

Dear brothers and sisters, know the tone test:

1. kill you

2. jail you

3. release you

Depends on your tone of voice.

Please listen to me so I can save your life.

Didn't Jesus give up his coat and cloak to live another day?

Ghosts love death don't you know?

Again, Amiri Baraka said,

"The king sold the farmer to the ghost!"

Baraka said, "In the middle of the Atlantic ocean

is a railroad of human bones...."

Oh, Baraka, you told us, "Don't let them take your UM BOOM BA BOOM!"

You said, "If they take our um boom ba boom 

we in deep trouble. 

Probably take us a few centuries to get out!"

Don't listen to the ghosts

they sold the farmer

rice growers

iron workers

warriors

priests

holy mothers

children of divine

African ghosts of the kingly kind

Europeans ghosts of the Good Ship Jesus

Can you believe John Hawkins had an Amazing Grace

on the Good Ship Jesus

Can you believe

God saved a wretched wretch like him

John of Amazing Grace

Ghost ship captain

you enjoyed his journey through the door on no return

just remember you ghost lovers

AB said, "The king sold the farmer to the ghost!"

Alas, the black ghosts live as the white ghosts

they are one

what did Nkrumah say, "Neo-colonialism is colonialism playing possum!"

You give us a flag, national anthem but our banks belong to you. IMF is you.

WHO is you! You send the virus and vaccine Covid19. 

This is how ghosts dream. Their dreams do not lose do not end

and never do you win with ghost captains of the Good Ship Jesus

you suffer

you bleed

can't breathe

can't breathe

ghosts foot on neck after you dead no pulse dead

foot on neck ghost

hand in pocket ghost

no heart no soul ghost

and you swear they human!

--Marvin X

4/19/21






 


Saturday, April 10, 2021

MARVIN X reads his poem In the Name of Love, music arranged by Ahi Baraka


Love is all there is, nothing else exists except the opposite of love, hate.
Yet, hate is only an energy twisted on the road to love, like God is love so the devil
comes to challenge the love of God. Yet the devil is only a shadow that is not the 
reality of God, only a shadow that is not real. Is your shadow real, the real you? 
No. When the shadow disappears, the real you is yet standing there. So we pay 
no attention to the shadow, only to the reality that is God and God is love, the 
positive energy that propels the universe. Evil is negative energy that one can 
break the spell or negative attraction. The pimps claim if a woman looks at him, 
he's got her, so don't look at the devil, keep your eyes on the Divine, stay 
focused on the Divine and you shall be successful.
--Marvin X
4/10/21

Dr. Cornel West and Marvin X in private conversation before their public discussion on
local, national and global events at Geffrey's Inner Circle, Oakland, December 7, 2019

Notes on the Black Arts Movement Business District and Street Vendors in California, SB946


Many North American African street vendors, especially those who attempted to vend on the east side of Lake Merritt, i.e., Lakeshore Avenue, should be aware of SB946, the bill on vending in California that was passed during the regime of Gov. Jerry Brown. And it was passed because the 30, 000 Los Angeles street vendors, mostly Latinx, got organized and lobbied to change vending laws throughout California. Below is a summary of SB946 and it applies to Oakland as well and may need to be utilized in a possible legal challenge to the City of Oakland's recent termination of vending on Lakeshore Ave. Those of us who grew up in Oakland are well aware of the long history of white supremacists excluding North American Africans from utilizing Lake Merritt for any reason, part of Oakland's institutional and systemic racism, now parading under gentrification, and ironically, some of the residents of the lake area who wish the Black presence would simply disappear, are in fact Black or Negropeans. Yes, from coast to coast, there are many Negropeans who are quite satisfied with gentrification or more properly, ethnic cleansing, just as there were Negro slave owners and as per Nazism, there were Jews who assisted Hitler in the elimination of fellow Jews, supposedly one such collaborator is George Soros, chief financial backer of Black Lives Matter. How can the upper class lead and finance our freedom? How can the slave master free the slave to the benefit of the slave. How can the liberation of the slave benefit the economics of the master who must lose the source of his wealth unless the process is a shell game as Kwame Nkrumah noted, "Neo-colonialism is colonialism playing possum." Further, he said, "You give a flag, national anthem, a colonial elite class of educators and politicians," but, most importantly, you control the finance, the banks, yes, the interlocking directorates wherein the same band of thieves all critical institutions to our detriment, including the linguistics of our literature as the Kenyan writer Enguji wa Thiongo has pointed out. I said long ago language is logic. Thion'go says we must write in our Mother tongues, not the tongues of our colonial masters. Elijah Muhammad taught us we shall not speak English in the new world, it shall be banned. 

As per North American Africans vending on Lakeshore Avenue, please be informed that on January 19, 2016, the City of Oakland established the Black Arts Movement Business District along 14th Street from the Lower Bottom to Lake Merritt, thus North American Africans are presently being denied occupation of their Cultural District. FYI, Gov. Jerry Brown, aside from SB946, also established Cultural Districts throughout California and Oakland has applied to have the BAMBD as a certified cultural district. Furthermore, the BAMBD was belatedly incorporated into the City of Oakland's Downtown Plan for the next 25-50 years. As per usual, North American Africans were only included when the plan was in its final stages. We have great doubts bout our inclusion and, more importantly, our equity in said plan, especially if our present exclusion from the designated area is not rectified in the name of social and economic justice. Further, Oakland has yet to fund the BAMBD to any degree whatsoever. There are no banners or signage that the BAMBD exists along the 14th Street corridor and most certainly along Lakeshore Ave where we have staked our claim to a piece of land in our beloved Oakland, known throughout the world as the City of Resistance to white supremacy and domestic colonialism, with the Pullman Porters, the first North American African Union, and the Black Panther Party of Self Defense that challenged police violence under the color of law. But, alas, the OPD was called to subdue the North American African presence at the lake as we exercised our right to be in our own cultural district, i.e., The Black Arts Movement Business District. 

Sadly, most North American Africans, including vendors, don't even know we have a cultural and business that extends to Lake Merritt. When it was clear to the community stakeholders of the BAMBD that the City of Oakland was reticent, reluctant, moreover, recalcitrant to establish our district, we established the BAMBD, CDC, under the direction of Dr. Ayodele Nzinga, and she has almost singlehandedly won community benefit packages from developers who've caused displacement leading to the plethora of homeless encampments throughout Oakland. Of course she was opposed by politicians, especially Negropean politicians and they sycophants, including even Negropean business persons who lacked radical consciousness in their attempt to be petty bourgeoise capitalists. Alas, when we literally forced the word "movement" in the name of our district, i.e., Black Arts Movement Business District, certain of them opposed the word "movement" until they got a PE lecture, i.e., political education, from BAMBD co-founders, especially Paul Cobb, Publisher of the Oakland Post News Group, and a long-time radical who informed the petty bourgeoisie businesspersons that it is only because of our radical movement history that we are alive today, since every attempt was made to destroy Oakland's radical movement for social justice. The most recent example is the US Government's attempt to destroy the Black Panther Party as a threat to the national security of the USA, even though the BPP stood on the US Constitution to demand our human rights. 

The Oakland Police occupation of Lakeshore Avenue to prevent any semblance of economic equity for the BAMBD and its vendors, is a continuation of Oakland's Jim Crow history to mainly placate lake residents who were expressly informed in SB946 that community animus...does not constitute an objective health, safety, or welfare concern.  

It should be clear that for North American African vendors to establish our presence in our BAMBD, we will need to form the BAMBD, CDC Vendors Association to advocate for our economic and social justice, just as the 30,000 Los Angeles vendors. FYI, the BAMBD, CDC was able to win Community Benefit Agreements only because we united with the Asian Community as well as the Latinx, but especially the Asians. I point this out because Afro-Asian unity was formed at the Bandung Conference when the Third World nations declared their policy of non-alignment as per the Capitalists and Communists fighting for global hegemony.

In unity, the BAMBD, CDC and the Asian Community won Community Benefits from developers that vendors must be aware of and take advantage of, e.g., below market rate housing and commercial space in the plethora of new developments in the BAMBD and throughout Oakland. The brother who organized the Black Solidarity Market at the lake indicated his desire to have vendors in retail spaces along the 14th Street corridor of 14th Street, downtown Oakland. Again, I remind you the BAMBD is supposedly an equitable partner in the 25 to 50 Year City of Oakland Downtown Plan.

As I conclude my preface to the SB946 Vendor Summary, please understand the vendor struggle at the lake is an integral part of the struggle for North American economic and social justice in Oakland and coast to coast.

As per economics, imagine the cost of employing the OPD along the lake to prevent North American Africans from any measure of economic survival in the Covid19 era wherein corporations are thriving but socalled non-essential economic entities were shuttered and mandated to close as non-essential. Non-essential to whom? Wal-Mart, Walgreens, Amazon, et al.

But in truth, we know in the filthy socalled free market system--alas, even the low life, white nationalist President Donald Trump cried for fair trade to no avail except the Covid19 soft coup germ war fare China answered Trump with, along with China's multi-cultural sycophants, i.e., European-American corporations and other global economic entities, including the above mentioned Negropean petty bourgeoisie capitalists rappers and athletes, including LeBron James, et al., so greedy they sing Silent Night as their products arrive in America and throughout the world from Muslim, Tibetan, and North Korean concentration camps.

Thus the new world order is not white supremacist, alas, globalists are diverse, multiracial, cultural, and ethnically diverse. So we must be careful when charging the white supremacists for global evil--Europeans are not the totality of the 1% loath and despise the 85-99% wage slaves, aka, the deaf, dumb and blind, suffering domination by the blood suckers of the poor. Yes, the wage slaves work to die poor, and even their basic wealth, i.e., a home, often is lost in probate court in legal battles between siblings, wives and other women, ultimately benefiting lawyers at $400 per hour times 3 or 4 times 2 or 3 years in probate court.

No matter all the above negrocities (Amiri Baraka term he told me not to steal, but I gave my definition as an inflammation of the negroid gland at the base of the brain caused by bad habits. AB said in his mythic drama A Black Mass, his interpretation of the Muslim myth of Yakub, i.e., as per the evil created by Yakum's devil created in his bio-tech lab by separating the dominant gene from the recessive, the result was a being created "where the heart's print should be there was only a cellulose pouch of disgusting habits." Master Sun Ra arranged the music for A Black Mass and in his lectures at UC Berkeley, 1972, said of the white man, "You so evil the devil don't want you in hell."

Thus, as a Black presence at Lake Merritt, we shall only secure our presence by being organized. The City of Oakland made the lake part of our Black Arts Movement Business District. We occupied the space without knowledge we have official rights to the space. If we claim the space as part of our BAMBD and demand the City concur, we shall occupy said space. But, we must understand any space we occupy is connected to our liberation, thus any space we claim and occupy must be administered with discipline. Freedom was the critical fault in our liberation struggle as I was taught by Master Sun Ra of the Black Arts Movement. And he is now known as the Father of Afro-futurism. But as I said at the University of Chicago Symposium on Sun Ra, "He taught me discipline and his Myth-Science Arkestra was the supreme example of disciple, even though he was a free spirit as his music and philosophy and band history will attest."

Lake vendors, you can occupy Lakeshore but only with discipline. You can be your own security and employ your own to clean up after yourselves. You can take advantage of Community Benefits from developers along the 14th Street corridor to occupy retail space and warehouse space to store your goods as I proposed years ago during the administration of Oakland's first Black Mayor Lionel Wilson. 

With discipline, you can be a presence from the lower bottom to Lake Merritt's Lakeshore Avenue since you have made your footprint there as part of the BAMBD. 

As I close, I encourage you to read the thoughts of my dear Sister Cat Brooks on the lake issue, especially as per the police occupation of the vending area we declared.

--Marvin X

Co-founder of the National Black Arts Movement

Co-founder, Black Arts Movement Business District, Oakland

4/10/21

SB 946 Street Vending Bill Summary


SB 946 (Lara) Street Vending Bill Summary: This measure would prohibit a local authority from adopting rules or regulations, by ordinance or resolution, that regulate or prohibit sidewalk vendors unless it first adopts a sidewalk vending licensing program. Bill Description: Specifically, SB 946 allows a local authority to adopt a sidewalk vending licensing program that requires a sidewalk vendor to obtain a license from the local authority before he or she is authorized to sell food or merchandise. 


The local authority’s licensing system shall comply with all of the following standards:  A local authority shall not restrict the location of a licensed sidewalk vendor unless the restriction is directly related to objective health, safety, or welfare concerns.  A local authority shall not prohibit a sidewalk vendor from selling food or merchandise in a park owned or operated by the local authority, except the local authority may prohibit stationary sidewalk vendors from vending in the park only if the operator of the park has signed an agreement for concessions that exclusively permits the sale of food or merchandise by the concessionaire.  A local authority may adopt additional requirements regulating the time, place, and manner of sidewalk vending in a park owned or operated by the local authority if the requirements are any of the following: o Directly related to objective health, safety, or welfare concerns. o Necessary to ensure the public’s use and enjoyment of natural resources and recreational opportunities. o Necessary to prevent an undue concentration of commercial activity that unreasonably interferes with the scenic and natural character of the park.  


A local authority shall not require a licensed sidewalk vendor to first obtain the consent or approval of any nongovernmental entity or individual before he or she can sell food or merchandise.  


A local authority shall not restrict sidewalk vendors to operate only in a designated neighborhood or area, except when that restriction is directly related to objective health, safety, or welfare concerns.  


A local authority may prohibit stationary sidewalk vendors in areas that are zoned exclusively residential, but shall not prohibit roaming sidewalk vendors.  


A local authority may prohibit sidewalk vendors in areas located within the immediate vicinity of a permitted certified farmers’ market or a permitted swap meet during the limited operating hours of that certified farmers’ market or swap meet.  


A local authority may restrict or prohibit sidewalk vendors within the immediate vicinity of an area designated for a temporary special permit issued by the local authority, provided that any notice, business interruption mitigation, or other rights provided to affected businesses or property owners under the local authority’s temporary special permit are also provided to any sidewalk vendors specifically permitted to operate in the area, if applicable.  


A local authority shall not restrict the overall number of sidewalk vendor licenses issued unless the restriction is directly related to objective health, safety, or welfare concernsPerceived community animus or economic competition does not constitute an objective health, safety, or welfare concern.  


A local authority may, by ordinance or resolution, adopt additional requirements regulating the time, place, and manner of sidewalk vending if the requirements are directly related to objective health, safety, or welfare concerns, including, but not limited to, any of the following: o Limitations on hours of operation that are not unduly restrictive. 


In nonresidential areas, any limitations on the hours of operation for sidewalk vending shall not be more restrictive than any limitations on hours of operation imposed on other businesses or uses on the same street. o Requirements to maintain sanitary conditions. o Requirements necessary to ensure compliance with the federal Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (Public Law 101-336) and other disability access standards. o Requiring the sidewalk vendor to obtain from the local authority a permit for sidewalk vending or a valid business license. o Requiring the sidewalk vendor to possess a valid California Department of Tax and Fee Administration seller’s permit. o Requiring additional licenses from other state or local agencies to the extent required by law. o Requiring compliance with other generally applicable laws. o Requiring a sidewalk vendor to submit information on his or her operations, including, but not limited to, any of the following:  The name and current mailing address of the sidewalk vendor.  A description of the merchandise offered for sale or exchange.  certification by the vendor that to his or her knowledge and belief, the information contained on the form is true.  The California seller’s permit number (California Department of Tax and Fee Administration sales tax number), if any, of the sidewalk vendor.  If the sidewalk vendor is an agent of an individual, company, partnership, or corporation, the name and business address of the principal. 


A violation of a local authority’s sidewalk vending program that complies with Section 51038 is punishable only by the following:  


An administrative fine not exceeding one hundred dollars ($100) for a first violation.  An administrative fine not exceeding two hundred dollars ($200) for a second violation within one year of the first violation.  An administrative fine not exceeding five hundred dollars ($500) for each additional violation within one year of the first violation.  A local authority may rescind a permit issued to a sidewalk vendor for the term of that permit upon the fourth violation or subsequent violations. If a local authority requires a sidewalk vendor to obtain a sidewalk vending permit from the local authority, vending without a sidewalk vending permit may be punishable by the following:  An administrative fine not exceeding two hundred fifty dollars ($250) for a first violation.  An administrative fine not exceeding five hundred dollars ($500) for a second violation within one year of the first violation.  An administrative fine not exceeding one thousand dollars ($1,000) for each additional violation within one year of the first violation.  


Upon proof of a valid permit issued by the local authority, the administrative fines shall be reduced to the administrative fines set forth in paragraph (1). Failure to pay an administrative fine shall not be punishable as an infraction or misdemeanor. Additional fines, fees, assessments, or any other financial conditions beyond those authorized in this measure shall not be assessed. A violation of a local authority’s sidewalk vending program that complies with Section 51038, or a violation of any rules or regulations adopted prior to January 1, 2019, that regulate or prohibit sidewalk vendors in the jurisdiction of a local authority, shall not be punishable as an infraction or misdemeanor, and the person alleged to have violated any of those provisions shall not be subject to arrest except when permitted under law. This shall apply to all pending criminal prosecutions under any local ordinance or resolution regulating or prohibiting sidewalk vendors. Any of those criminal prosecutions that have not reached final judgment shall be dismissed. A local authority that has not adopted rules or regulations by ordinance or resolution that comply with Section 51037 shall not cite, fine, or prosecute a sidewalk vendor for a violation of any rule or regulation that is inconsistent with the standards described in subdivision (b) Section 51038. “Sidewalk vendor” is a person who sells food or merchandise from a pushcart, stand, display, pedal-driven cart, wagon, showcase, rack, or other non motorized conveyance upon a public sidewalk or other pedestrian path. “Roaming sidewalk vendor” means a sidewalk vendor who moves from place to place and stops only to complete a transaction. “Stationary sidewalk vendor” means a sidewalk vendor who vends from a fixed location. “Local authority” means a chartered or general law city, county, or city and county.

Friday, April 9, 2021

Poem of the mountain

 Poets made their way up the mountain to read

Happy poems
Apples flowers lemon poems
Sweet sour love poems
War poems to end war forever
Poets shouted from the.mountain
To the valley of sweet water rivers
Poems of the beautiful life
Sun dancing in the name of love
Always for love
Moments are precious
We rush up the mountain to escape hate
The wind in our faces 
Sometimes shutting mouths
The silence United us in love
We could only smile at the 
Green valley
Orchards vines for sweet wine
We toast and sing poems of love
We vow no more war
In homes lands tribes no more blood
Enough 
Let the mountain be pleased
Let the sun purify our thoughts
Let us descend singing poems of joy that we live beyond the past
Yesterdays of ruin bitterness beyond measure
Boots on necks no more
Lies no more
Share the wealth
No greed from the mountain down
Let the valley be free
Drink sweet water
No sugar
Only water sweet pure
As we descend not like Sissyphus
To stumble again again
We defy all foes with poems
Like pistols to the brain
Truth destroys evil
We stand tall above the stunted ones
Devoid of hearts
Discarded long ago in a mad dream
We are not moved by such madness
Our poems echo into the valley
We hear children singing back to us.
--MARVIN X
4/11/21 


,

Friday, April 2, 2021

Love the lake or fuck the lake


Marvin X, Co-founder of the Black Arts Movement and Oakland's Black Arts Movement Business District

When the Black Arts Movement Business District was established by the City of Oakland, January 19, 2016, the BAMBD extended from the lower bottom of 14th St to Lake Merritt, but in the City of Oakland's current attempt to remove vendors from the eastside of the lake along Lakeshore Avenue to placate residents traumatized by the Black presence of overwhelming African bodies expressing love, joy, happiness and economic growth, at a high cost of police presence and sanitation, we suggest that community persons be hired for security and other expenses for the vendors along Lakeshore. 


The latest measures to curtail the Black vendors and their customers came after a survey was taken but most of the responders were white residents and a few Negropeans. We highly suspect few vendors and North American Africans were asked to respond to the survey. 

That Lake Merritt is a declared part of the Black Arts Movement Business District has been lost on the City Council that has yet to fund the BAMBD in any meaningful way.
The City did fund a pilot project for vendors under the Black Solidarity Market that removed vendors from Lakeshore and placed them on the one block area of Embarcadero. This area is not able to contain the plethora of vendors who have come to the lake since Covid19 devastated the Black economic plight that has forced community people to become entrepreneurs to survive. And although white, Latinox and Asians had vended on the streets of the Bay Area for years, Blacks have been denied from the streets of San Francisco, Berkeley and especially Oakland. The Lake Merritt vendors are the first mass presence of North American African vendors on the streets of Oakland. Although I defied the OPD by vending at 14th and Broadway for years, selling my books, Black vending at the lake may be ephemeral unless the vendors organize themselves into a Black Vendors Association that I have called for. 

FYI, I first called for Black vendors on the streets of Oakland during the regime of our first Black Mayor Lionel Wilson. This was in the 70s. Alas, around the same time we called for a review board of the OPD. We're still working on the police review board with teeth.

The situation of vendors at the lake is fluid unless the Black Vendors Association is organized to demand economic equity in the city North American Africans have made known throughout the world as The City of Resistance with the Pullman Porters Union and the Black Panther Party. Marcus Garvey told us long ago the world is moving against all unorganized people. Mao told you the same.
So vendors get organized or suffer the consequences of economic strangulation.

In my last conversation with the brother who organized the Black Solidarity Market, we agreed that many of the vendors can take advantage of the community benefit agreements the BAMBD CDC has worked out with developers for below market rate retail spaces in developments along the 14th Street BAMBD.

But we have every right to be on the lake, unless we are yet in the Jim Crow era when I was growing up and we were


not allowed to visit Lake Merritt except on holidays like the 4th of July, imagine that. 

For more information, feel free to call me at 510-575-7148. Send me your comments: jmarvinx@yahoo.com

Monday, March 29, 2021

Miles Davis - Time After Time (Live 1985)

Miles Davis - Time After Time (Live 1985)

I saw a man named George Floyd murdered today on the morning news




I saw a man named George Floyd Murdered today

It hurt me to my heart 

not sure I will recover

beyond pain trauma toxicity reality

I can't believe evil exists in this land

yet how was it conquered with love

or blood

soaking the land from shore to shore

and we pontificate on freedom, justice, equality

what contradiction is this what pseudo democracy 

what lies, falsehoods taught to children and fools

slaves even devoured this garbage worse than slave food

fed to animals and slaves

daily diet of hog food yet me ate it and came up on filth

and you wonder why we suffer multiple morbidities 

why our central nervous system suffers toxicity

why Covid 19 loves us so much

yeah loves us in our negrocities and toxicities 

you don't want to hear me today or tomorrow.

And do you think I care? You have no heard me in centuries! 

No matter the decades you 

wallowed in denial in your sloth and mental slumber

white privilege from accumulated capital.  Did you deny

your inheritance from your ancestors? No, you enjoyed every

check to be your wretched self in all your spender. 


I saw a man named George Floyd murdered today
under the color of law
on the morning news
Lawyer Blackwell showed the video clip
he opened his remarks as prosecutor
I'd seen versions of the video before
last year when the murder happened
four days before my birthday May 29
How could I enjoy my b day
in trauma shock at another crucifixion
Strange Fruit
Remember that song
"How Long has this been going on?"
I remember Emit Till  1955
Money Mississippi
I was at Lowell Jr. High, Oakland
the brothers beat down poor white trash boy
so poor he went to school with niggas
probably so poor he didn't know he was white
but I watched the brothers beat him down
with each blow they said
This fa Emit Till peckerwood
This fa Emit Till peckerwood
Yes, I felt sorry for the poor peckerwood
so poor he didn't even know he was white
so poor he went to a school with all niggas!
Ain't this a crime against humanity?
But when a Cali nigga went to the dirty south
they taught me one thing
poor white trash is treated worse than a nigga
and a nigga aint shit
last time I checked
imagine you less than shit

But fuck all the above
I saw a man named George Floyd murdered this morning
Blackwell presented his case for the state
for the first time I saw a fuller version of the execution
under the color of law
pig hand in pocket
boot on neck
no human feelings
devil to the bone
George cried I can't breathe
Cried for his Mama
Cried for Lord
to no avail
wow!
boot on neck.
silent now 
dead now
still
boot on neck
pig beyond human
beyond pig
where was he?
Tell me
I want to know
world wants to know
where was he
Defense said George on drugs
If George on drugs
what drugs pig on, tell me
in the name of Jesus, Allah, Jah, Buddha 
On, no, not the white drug of supremacy
what made the pig nod out in his world of nothingness
hatred beyond human imagination
what drug beyond opioid fentanyl
drug addict George wasn't trying to kill
he only had a phony twenty dollar bill
He wanted a pack of cigarettes 
not to kill
except to kill the pain of his black matterless life!
Better ax somebody they say in Houston, TX
Projects of George Floyd
A human being in a world of devils
yes, I said it devils
devil pig devil America
devil day and night
devil Left and Right 
devil 
Elijah said devil!
In jr high at Lowell
used to listen on the radio to Elijah
upstairs at the Masonic Hall on 8th and Union, Oakland
Daddy gambling downstairs
In my room past room on the square at the lodge
I caught Elijah on the raggedy radio
the press asked him why he called whites devils?
He said devils do evil
If you do evil you devil!

Remember now
I'm in jr high at Lowell, Oakland
the press asked what he thought about Dr. Ralph Bunche?
Elijah said, "There are some socalled negroes we don 't need.
Ralph Bunche is a socalled negro we dont need."

I confess Elijah scared me calling the white man the devil.
But I listened and today, this morning on the news, I confess
The white man is the devil!
I watched him kill my brother, then kept his foot on my brothers neck
even after my brother had passed on from this life.
I do not understand the evil of devils.
I do not understand the evil of devils.
I do not understand the evil of devils.
--Marvin X
3/29/21

Sunday, March 28, 2021

Flowers for the Trashman

 


Flowers for the Trashman 

My dad had flower man hands
Soft gentle rough tough

"hands were tender
tied bows in my  ponytails.  
Before it was popular 
black men doing their little daughters hair
daddy did me and Ann’s every summer! Lol."
--Debbi Jackmon



Withstand thorny Rose hands
Hands talked to plants
Put flowers on the dead hands
Took me with him
To flower the dead
Wouldn't let me stay in car
Guess he wanted me to see the dead
Overcome fear of death
Made my hands touch dead
Hands cold stiff
Dad stood bleeding heart
Of roses beside casket
And we Departed
I grabbed his hand.
--MARVIN X
3/27/21

Wednesday, March 24, 2021

Marvin X Experience, part 3, 6:1/2 hours


Marvin X's Magnum Opus or Great Work, a ten part series of his life and work
in the black arts and black liberation movement. He thanks all those warriors and artists who performed with him over the half century of his ministry in the arts and liberation movement. Thank you all who sacrificed your talent and energy to the freedom of our people, to truth and beauty.
--Marvin X

MARVIN X VIDEO

Marvin X on the Black Arts Movement, i.e., Baraka, Last Poets and BAM women writers

The Outlaw, Draft #1

OUTLAW MAGAZINE
ISSUE 1, NO. 1, Spring 2021                                                                       Donation $10.00


The Mythology of Pussy and Dick

In this issue we deconstruct Black male/female and gender relations in the global village 
in the MeToo Era

Feature story: Marvin X on Ageism and the Mythology of Pussy and Dick

Contents

The Mythology of Pussy and Dick

The MeToo Movement and Harvey Weinstein

Don't Say Pussy

You Don't Know Me

What is Love

Why I gotta be a bitch cause I don't wanna give you my pussy?

Ageism or Old men and Young girls, Marvin X interviewed  by KPOO Radio's Pam Pam

Monday Love Poem

After da nut den what poem

Parables

A Real Woman

The Pit Bull

The Gangsta

Woman in the box

The Baby carriage

Dialogue: Should Prostitution be legalized?

Dialogue: Deconstruction of Bitch

Dramatic script: Polygamy in the Name of Love

Love letter to gay and lesbian youth

Review of Baby Boy

Review of Fences

Review of Black Panther as Afrofuturism




 

Tuesday, March 23, 2021

Parable of Crack History

 Parable of Crack History




No matter the life we have lived, no matter how negative or positive, the beauty of it all is that we survived to see another day. We may have seen our women transition, our children, best friends, parents, siblings, yet we are still here and too often we wonder why? Don't wonder, except the beauty of each day you are blessed to enjoy. Did not  Jesus tell you the birds and bees don't worry about tomorrow? They get up with the morning sun and get busy. Don't you hear them chirping with the rising of the sun? 

Why not be as the birds bees? Get up and get busy in the new day God has blessed you to enjoy. Recall those days when you had to hustle, yet you came up day after day, though you began each day with nothing, on zero, yet you came up when you got up and did something for yourself. Yes, you hustled and were blessed each and every day. On what day did God fail you? Not one day when you took that step and He took ten in your behalf? If I am lying, tell me I am lying but I tell you the truth I lived day after day after day as a hustler. 

The hustling life is so beautiful because it teaches you to have faith in yourself and you shall be successful. The Hustler's Wisdom teaches you to get up and get busy like the birds. Tell me, was there any day in your hustling life that you did not come up when you got up and got busy with whatever vehicle you had to work your twist? 

Remember the night you only had a toilet seat to work but you worked it to get your five dollar hit? 
When you ran out of Homeless Papers did you not sell toilet paper or any paper to come up? Better ax somebody!

What about the niggas styling and profiling at Fisherman's Wharf who passed you and refused to give you a donation because they said you had more money in your hand than they had (and you did only put twenty dollar bills in your hand to hustle with because you knew if you had only twenties in your hand, ain't no motherfucker gonna give you a dollar donation. This way you could come up in an hour or two, and your did. You made $400.00 a day hustling the homeless paper and if you ran out of it, you sold any paper you could find, including toilet paper.

Niggas passed you and said they wasn't going to give you a donation because you had on a starched shirt and jeans with a crease, and you did and didn't give a fuck if they didn't give you shit. You were a hustler with class.
Remember the night a white man got out of his limo in Union Square at the Saint Francis Hotel and you tried to hustle him? What did he tell you? "Nigger, you got on a starched shirt, nigga. If you want a donation from me you better go home and take off that starched shirt!" What you tell that white? "White ma, kiss my black motherfuckin ass!"

Yes, your arrogant bastard ass made San Francisco make laws against aggressive panhandling. It was because of the brothers begging for quarters with their stylophone cups (of which I never hustled with a cup in my hand, and furthermore, if someone gave me a quarter, I would through it at them as they passed--although, many times I would have ten or twenty dollars in quarters at the end of my hustle, although the dope man didn't want you to come to him with change and might not serve you if you came with change.  He might not serve you until you came back with dollar bills or might threaten to shot your ass if you came improper again. 

Let me close with the best time I had with a Crack ho. We hooked up in a Tenderloin hotel room but we had powder and needed to cook it into rock but my buddies were not at home in the room across from me and my girl. My buddies had the equipment to rock the Crack but since they were not home, me and my girl had no choice but to sniff the cocaine so we did, and it took us all night as opposed to a short time if we'd had the crack. So we sniffed and sucked and fucked and had the best time in my twelve years as a crack head, except for one time with the brothers.

Once this occasion I was in the room with brothers, but the difference was that we all had our own dope so nobody was tripping, so we talked for hours on brotherhood issues and it was beautiful. Brothers talking with brothers, and this didn't happen again until my last meeting with Huey P. Newton in a West Oakland Crack house that I wrote about in my play One Day in the Life, and the one act play Salaam, Huey Newton, Salaam, co-authored by Ed 
Bullins, produced in New York by Woody King at his New Federal Theatre.

My last meeting with Huey was similar to my session with the crack ho without crack, and similar to the session I had with the brothers when we all had our own dope. My session with Huey was in a crack house in Oakland's Acorn Projects but it wasn't about crack. We talked revolution that was not on the usual agenda in the crack house. But, as you will see from the script, our conversation was more important than drugs and I am happy we had the conversation that transcended drugs. You must read the script and make up your own mind.

But as per drugs, we probably would not have made revolution without drugs and alcohol (and sex). Imagine the pressure we were under, and I mean all Black people, whether Panthers, Muslims, Socialists, Communists, Cultural Nationalists,  workers, lumpen, et al. And don't leave out those in the Civil Rights Movement, from MLK, Jr. on down who needed to medicate themselves from the stress of the USA Cointelpro program and other agencies out to destroy our liberation movement. Imagine, we were mostly young people subjected to all the forces of the USA apparatus out to prevent, in the words of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, "The rise of a black messiah." And he meant no matter big or small, no matter in a city or country town. 

For example, when I was invited to teach at Fresno State College, 1969, after Governor Ronald Reagan got involved as president of the State College Board of Trustees, he ordered me removed by any means necessary, and at the same time ordered the removal of Angela Davis from teaching at UCLA, 1969. Gov. Reagan wanted Angela out because she was a black Communist and wanted me out because I was a Black Muslim who refused to fight in Vietnam.

continued

Marvin X
3/23/21


Monday, March 22, 2021

Part 1: The Wild Crazy Ride of the Marvin X Experience, includes X's interview with Dr. Cornel West and In the Crazy House in America Concert

The Bandung Conference and the Deconstruction of Afro-Asian Violence

 Toward the Deconstruction of Afro-Asian Violence






Let us begin at the Bandung Conference that Malcolm X talked bout, that conference which brought together the Afro-Asian world of colonized people to begin the stride toward decolonization. And the process necessitated non-alignment or the disassociation from the imperialist world and the communist regimes. Yes, the Afro-Asian peoples came together in unity for their interests, transcending the Left and Right agendas of the socalled cold war powers originating from World War II and colonialism. The 50th and 60s brought about the liberation of many colonized peoples throughout the world, e.g., Africa, Asia and Latin America. 

At the 1955 Bandung Conference, the colonized peoples or recently liberated peoples came to a consensus that they would not be slaves of the East or the West, but non-aligned. They came to a consensus that they shall stand independent of global ideologies no matter what persuasion, left or right, capitalist or communist.

The Bandung ideology persisted through decades of global strife, especially as the decolonized nations strived towards freedom, although, in truth, few achieved their goal of national liberation. Most became stuck in the quagmire of neo-colonialism. Kwame Nkrumah said it best in numerous books and essays, e.g., Neo-Colonialism, the last stage of imperialism. He told us how the imperialists play possum with their sham independence, including the education of a colonial elite (black studies tenured Africans and negroes), a national anthem but an European controlled economic system with the Afro and Negro Europeans programmed to worship all things white in the night and in the day. 

So let us go then into Covid 19. Let us note psychology 1A teachers us about misplaced aggression. So we must understand the truth of Covid 19, not the fake news from the right or left. If truth be told, we understand Covid 19 begin in a lab at the University of Texas, Austin, then transferred to a lab at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, then arrived at Wuhan, China. Of course we don't accept the mythology that from the Wuhan lab Covid 19 somehow arrived at a market and a bat was infected that infected the world, yes, world, world, world. 

No matter, the globalists had been hatching a germ warfare agent for decades, suddenly Covid 19 appeared and the pandemic was on. The immediate response was to blame the Chinese but those with a modicum of knowledge are fully aware the Chinese work in tandem with the Globalists, i.e., European and American Globalists, technocrats, and most especially Democratic Party leaders and sycophants, i.e., Democratic Socialists.

It matters not to the Chinese, Democratic Party, Democratic Socialists, or any other sycophants on the left, or right for that matter, how many Black people suffer death as a result of Covid 19. 

But, it matters to a certain segment of North American Africans that so many of their peoples were suffering as the result of the Covid 19 germ warfare. Oh, shit, yes, I said, germ warfare. Yet, I do not put the total blame of the Chinese since I have clear evidence this germ warfare is a conspiracy that transcends race and ethnicity.

But having said this, does one think in the minds of North American Africans, there does not exist the thought that possibly the Chinese are responsible for the death of their loved ones? 

Surely, it is possible in our communal mental trauma and unresolved grief that we would suffer misplaced aggression and attribute our woes solely to the Chinese? No matter that the origin, I repeat, morphed from American labs at the University of Texas, Austin, and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North American Africans are in such grief and suffering that they cannot distinguish China from America, and most certainly a combination thereof.

In my conclusion, I revert to the 1955 Bandung Conference of Afro-Asian Unity, and I call upon all conscious peoples in the Third World to recognize our bonds of unity in the blood of colonialism, to gather our mental equilibrium and not be swayed by pseudo-Asian racism when we know the real enemy is beyond color, class and caste, beyond gender.  

Let us know act in ways ignorant of the deep motions in the ocean of our liberation. IFI. the Chinese are not our enemy, nor other Asians. In truth, we are our own worst enemy, nobody else, not the white man, brown or yellow man. 

What are we told about the greatest Jihad, "The Greatest Jihad is to win your own soul!"
--Marvin X/El Muhajir
3/22/21