Famed photographer Jim Dennis will shoot cover pic for Black Street Magazine, Marvin X's publication to promote the Black Vendors Association

 

http://www.jimdennisphotography.com/

Landscapes, Health and Wellnes, Community, Corporate, Music Legends, Nudes

    

Jim Dennis is a renowned Bay Area based photographer whose work has spanned over thirty years. As a seasoned photographer who has become famous as a result of images taken of music legends, health and wellness, landscapes, nudes, and corporate entities Dennis’ work has been exhibited at national venues including: Kodak Gallery, Museum of Science and Industry, The Oakland Museum, and other national institutions. As an international photographer Jim Dennis has shot on location in Haiti, Mexico, the Caribbean, Hawaii, France, Italy, Britain, Bahamas, Brazil, Costa Rica and the Ivory Coast.

Corporate clients have included: Pacific Gas and Electric, American Airlines, City and County of San Francisco, San Francisco Unified School District, City of Oakland, Oakland Unified School District, World Savings Bank, KTVU-Channel 2, Port of Oakland, Oum & Company, Legal Aid for Children.

Starting his professional career in the 70’s with Eastman Kodak, Dennis photographed people and places across the world: The Taj Mahal in India; life in Morocco; cultural portraits in Turkey. He has also photographed the Indy 500, Grand Prix, and the Democratic National Convention. Jim studied under Ruth Bernhard and has taught photography during workshops and for academic institutions such as The Academy of Art College in San Francisco.

Presently, Jim Dennis is developing a series of nude images to illuminate the natural beauty of the human body in many forms. Jim’s images can be seen during open studios and exhibits to support non profit entities throughout 2012. Photo books of Jim Dennis’ work will be published towards the end of 2012.

Love Song for Jazz Man Sonny Simmons in the San Francisco Fog

Without jazz, aka, black classical music, I would be a dead deaf dumb and blind negro. Jazz saved my mind body soul. When I was deep down in the black hole of Crack, stuck on stupid in those SRO rooms of San Francisco Hindu Hilton hotels, jazz saved me a thousand foggy San Francisco nights. I was tweeking in my wretched room alone after the Crack Ho was gone. Then in the deep black hole of my psychosis I heard the sound of a sax player so beautiful I ran from my room to bless the jazz man for his most wonderful sound that brought my soul alive many San Francisco foggy nights. 

It was Sonny Simmons blasting lyrical love sounds to any who passed his corner near Union Square on their way to Chinatown. In my madness, the beauty of Sonny's music had me like the Sirens of Greek myth, I bowed before Sonny with a donation for the blessing he put on my soul, snatching me from my madness in my wretched room on iniquity. Imagine I tried to deny the music rocking my soul to the core, then rushing out the room for another run in the night, but not before bowing down to Sonny Simmons and the beauty of his music he made me love more than that 747 Paramedic Crack hit we adore. 

So many nights I'd hear Sonny blowing through the fog. I knew he was calling me but I tried to ignore him in the wretchedness of my room stuck on stupid in the Hindu Hilton. But the beauty of Sonny's music made me throw down the crack pipe. He blew me out my room many foggy Frisco nights. I ran out to find the corner where he stood blasting sounds from heaven, where else is beauty and truth from? I stood before him as he blew into the Frisco fog, his eyes closed just blowing the most lyrical sounds ever heard. 

I rushed from bowing before him, escaping to the dreaded Tenderloin to continue my madness til the morning sun. But not before giving Sonny a donation for dragging me out of my room of wretchedness iniquity and gloom. 

After all, I heard Sonny in his beauty but denied I heard anything, til the beauty of his music overwhelmed me, from my room I had to run, find the source of Sonny's fun. The beauty of his horn blowing through the fog, like it didn't matter for this god to play at all. 

Yes, I miss you Sonny Simmons, all those foggy Frisco nights, smashing through the fog in Union Square like a mad dog, on that corner near Geary and Post on the way to Chinatown. Sonny nothing can make me forget those nights when you were calling me back to reality. Thank you, Sonny. What a wonderful soul you be.

So many nights Sonny I used to hear you cry wail. You were one with the fog as I searched in my madness to find your place in the night. When I found you on some corner, I could only bow down in the beauty of your sound and sight. 

Wailing your soul, even in my Crack madness I stood before you because I knew your horn was pure gold. Maybe you were playing for needs like mine, maybe for the love of music, your gift to mankind. All I know is I heard your beauty through the fog many Frisco nights and ran from my SRO hotel room because I knew it was you and your sound was true as the river flows, sun rises, as lovers come and go. Thank you Sonny Simmons for your jazz in the night, black classical music if you call it right. The greatest music ever created in human history, transcending suffering to the joy of liberty. The expression of souls never submitted, only to the God of Liberty requited.

--Marvin X

8/19/21

Oh, Sonny Simmons, thank you for calling me to your horn those foggy Frisco nights

The Marvin X Jazz Test of Blackness

1. Recognize Duke's A Train

2. Recognize Monk'a 'Round Midnight

3. Recognize Mile's Kind of Blue

4. Recognize A Love Supreme, John Coltrane

5. Louis Armstrong's St. James Infirmary

6. Bessie Smith, You boiled my first cabbage 

7. Billie Holiday, Strange Fruit

8. Sketch's of Spain, Miles Davis

9. Song of My Father, Horace Silver

10. Space is the Place, Sun Ra

Parable of Revolution in the Hood or Do 4 Self

 Parable of Revolution in the Hood

We got up one morning and the hood was under occupation of Black Liberation Fighters, dressed in black, AK47s in hand. NO pigs in sight. All is peaceful, sun shining bright. Gentrification has ended. The settlers have vacated the homes they robbed, stole and lied to occupy and displace us. The BLF asked the settlers to leave their keys and depart without harm. The displaced were welcomed back home from Antioch, Stockton, Sacramento, Tracy, Fresno. The people were  happy and joyful to return to their hood. They danced in the street, overjoyed the reparations plan included Wall Street transferring titles to land and single family homes to the poor and dispossessed, the mentally ill and dual diagnosed, who now and forever will live under the land trust that cannot be encumbered by eminent domain. 

Under the land trust, the people shall enjoy life estates, i.e., they shaal be able to occupy their dwellings for life, no title to properties in the hood can be transferred, sub-leased or sold. The land trust belongs to people in the hood, collectively.

Do 4 Self is the theme or leit motif in the hood. Buy Black, Live Black, Love Black, Die Black is taught to every man, woman and child. To Buy Black, Live Black, Love Black, Die Black is not to hate anyone, it is to do what other people do, so why not me and you? 

Do Chinese hate other people because Chinese enjoy shopping in Chinatown? Do Mexicans hate blacks and others because Mexicans shop in Mexican town? Do whites hate blacks because whites shop in white town and enjoy shopping white? This coming holiday season go to white town and observe whites shopping white, smiling and singing Xmas carols while Black town is bleak, broke, hungry, going about with a plethora of physical and mental disabilities, foremost obesity from their addiction to white supremacy toxic food, devitalized, genetically produced with an over supply of fertilizers, insecticides and dyes. No, Blacks in the hood suffered a multiple maladies long before Covid19 appeared to take them out at a rapid rate since their central nervous system was operating at its lowest capacity. Caught between the virus and vaccine, Blacks had little resistance to the germ warfare of Dr. Fauci, the Globalists and the Chinese People's Army spread globally after trials in America, then transported to the Wuhan lab in China. If you believe a bat caused Covid 19, let me sell you the Brooklyn Bridge tomorrow at noon. 

In the Do 4 Self state of mind, we shall spend money at every opportunity with our own kind. Although we love Ancestor Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rites (and you know where you get your Last Rites, Master Sun Ra taught) Movement for ending the pain of segregation. But integration destroyed Do 4 Self in the hood. Black economics has never recovered from integration and the concomitant destruction of Black cultural and economic independence. Busing didn't change the stats on Black mis-education, alas, Public Schools continued dumbing us down with the white supremacy curriculum and did the same to white folks too. Do 4 Self Education is the only way to true Black liberation and elevation of the Hood Nation. We agree with Ancestor Fidel Castro who said, "The weapons of today are not guns but consciousness!" Black consciousness will stop you from killing your brother and sister. Consciousness will tell you when you kill your brother and sister you kill yourself." And James Brown told you the Big Payback is a Mother...." You know everything goes around comes around. So don't go down when it takes the same energy to come up! 

You've heard life is a thinking man's game, so don't think with your dickhead, use your brain. You want to spend 25 years to life in prison because you thought you owned something you can never own. To own another person's body or any part thereof is called chattel slavery or personal property slavery. There's only two forms of ownership: real estate and chattel real or personal property. You cannot and will not ever own your lover, partner, wife, husband or significant other, so be satisfied to own yourself. No matter the matter, partners come and go, alas, don't 50% of marriages end with divorce? So enjoy yourself for the moment you made share with a lover, just know these days few relationships and marriages last forever. 

Perhaps life in the hood would be better if partnerships were for life with no divorce, then lovers would work thing out, rather than flee into the night with another. Alas, flee off with the same person only with a different name. Thus you repeat the same ritual and myth from the last failed relationship. So maybe if you had solved the problem with person A, there would have been no need to depart from A to B, then from C to D, E, F, G! Now, in your fourth quarter with only the hail Mary pass left, have you learned anything or still repeating things that declare you are insane? Do you still want to own somebody or have you finally learned to let the black bird fly? For sure, if you let the black bird fly, the possibility is great the black bird will one day return home when it discovers other lovers were worse than you.

So revolution in the hood is beyond house and land, first the mental revolution will make you the new African and/or Kemetic, Aboriginal Man and Woman of planet earth and the universe. So first get your minds together and I assure you, your asses shall follow. Surely you have heard seek ye first the kingdom of God and all things shall be added unto you. And most certainly you have heard the people were destroyed for lack of knowledge, not lack of money. And even with money, didn't Ancestor James Brown tell you, "Money won't save you but time will take you out!" Solomon told you that there's a time for all things, time for love, time for hate, time for war, time for peace.....

Al Qur'an says By the Time, surely man is lost, except those who exhort one another truth....

Do 4 Self and don't worry about nothing else. Don't worry, those who have wronged us shall become our footstools. I remember when I was hustling in San Francisco at Market and Powell, the turnaround for the cable car. A white man was shining shoes so I told him to give me a shine. Muslim Brother Edward came by and went into shock at seeing the white man shining my shoes. Ancestor Brother Edward (FYI, he must be credited and honored for recruiting Black college and university students into the Nation of Islam, almost singlehandedly by selling Muhammad Speaks Newspaper to us deaf dumb and blind so called Negro students at San Francisco State University, UC Berkeley and San Jose State University. In the name of all of us Black students, I say Brother Edward, "Thank you, thank you, thank you. May Allah shower His blessings upon you in Paradise." Brother Edward said, "All praise i due Allah. Allah said the day would come when the devil will bow down to the Black Man because he knew from the beginning the Black man is god of the universe, the maker, the owner. And the black woman is the mother of civilization." And Brother Edward chuckled as those who knew him to often do. 

--Marvin X

8/16/21

A POEM FOR ALL VENDORS: THIS

 

Wednesday, October 22, 2014

Marvin X poem FOR ALL VENDORS: THIS

Young men at Marvin X's Academy of Da Corner, 14th and Broadway, downtown Oakland. They are reading an article about themselves that appeared in the Oakland Post Newspaper. 

THIS

This is not about making money

Not about selling books

Not about ego or fame

Not about women or children

Old age and sex

This is not about sin or some preacher

Some holy book or how one prays

It is a simple thing

Like tears in the eyes

Like working the last nerve

Like standing when feet are tired

Talking when silence is the desire

Like showing love when hatred is behind the smile

Like feeding the poor when they ask

Like listening to an old woman who is homeless

Like hearing the story of a mad negro and a mad African one after another

Like listening to street children with grills in their mouths tell stories of the spirit world

This is the daily round

This is the work unfinished

To express truth no matter who is around

And knowing truth is a circle coming round and round and round 

This is not about the personal or the lover who is lost in traffic

This is not about the teacher but the student who will learn to stand to teach what he is taught

About the comrades who will gather as peers on the corner to save themselves

Not about the black the white the mixed or the mad

It is coming together to realize life is a moment to seize or be lost in eternity. 

It is knowing action and reaction

Passing the tone test in the presence of the beast.

It is about getting through the day so one can fight tomorrow.

It is about seeking knowledge above food, rent and pleasure.

Knowledge is the power that turns the universe into a ball

We throw into space and time until it explodes into particles of a new world for all to see and wonder.  

--Marvin X

10/2/07

Monday, October 27, 2014

Oakland's Lakeshore District patrons at Marvin X's Academy of da Corner

A Black Vendor at Lake Merritt Speaks to Black Street Magazine's Videographer Ken Johnson

 Rev. Blandon Reemes, Academy of da Corner students/authors Aries Jordan, Latoya Carter and Master Teacher Marvin X, on a visit to Alameda County Juvenile Hall to give out books from North American African authors, sponsored by Oakland Post Newsgroup, published by Paul Cobb.

Poetic Letter to Taliban

  Poetic Letter to Taliban

The white Taliban flag flying above a Coca-Cola advertisement at a roundabout in Kabul on Sunday.Credit...Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times

Marvin X reading at the University of Chicago, 2015

photo Burrell Sunrise

Western savages and mountain men of Afghanistan

twenty year battle royal of nothingness dread

Western savages  departed repeat drama of Vietnam

Taliban victors now 

Didn't "Viet Cong" say, "The spirit of the people

greater than enemy technology."

Afghanistan mountain men no history of defeat

Alexander the Great's fled down mountains

Like Sisyphus,British, Russians, American crusaders 

flee mountain land with dicks in hand

can't defeat mountain men 

20 years trillion  dollars down for nothing burgers no victory

We ain't mad at you Taliban

kicked white man ass for fun

Now time for collaborators sycophants translators 

please spare women girls

mountain caves

Allah gave women girls brains too

Didn't Prophet Muhammad marry working woman

rich intelligent Khadijah

didn't he cry on bosom of Khadijah when revelation came

He liberated women justice fairness 

even in polygamy he said

If you can't treat them equal

and you can't 

leave polygamy alone

Oh Taliban why you want ignorant women half your nation

You are not in Prophet's time never shall be

Come from mental caves 

Muhammad raised you from Ya'um Jahiliyyah, days of ignorance

you return like hog to slop

The Prophet commanded Iqra bismillahi

la jahiliyyah 

iqra iqra 

read in the name of your Lord recite

Qur'an Hadith Sharia not end of knowledge

Iqra Ayat Al Kursi, The Verse of Knowledge

Prophet said Seek knowledge from Spain to China

heard of Moorish Spain

oldest mosque in China

Muslim science ruled world beyond Qur'an Hadith Sharia

where your numbers come from cave man of Europe

Moorish Spain taught you to bathe shower brush your teeth 

gave you knowledge to escape from Dark Ages

into Renaissance

No dark ages in Africa Egypt Timbuktu 

Golden Age of scholars scientists 

heard of Ahmad Baba

Mansa Musa richest man in the world

put Gates Bezos to shame

Oh Taliban and niggas in the hood too

Yeah, you Taliban low information vibration negroes

Pull up your minds and your asses shall follow

Oh Taliban you come from womb with AK47

Plenty guns from Americans, Russians Pakistanis

tanks, trucks, bombs bullets

Shall you turn victory into loss

Do not slay your brothers in the name of dogmatic religiosity

sectarian mythology shall not prevail

only sirata al mustaqim

straight path

Shall you behead brothers sisters fathers mothers who don't agree 

reject your interpretation 

Are you in league with Nigerian barbarians Boku Haram

Oh Taliban you murder in the of Allah

The world is tired of bloody streets  burning villages roadside bombs

farmers can't grow crops animals can't graze in grass

wars for broken bones hearts minds consume too many lands

give peace a chance

Oh Taliban you marched into Kabul today

don't turn victory into loss

Look at your women children in their eyes

exhausted from war death destruction misery

American depart for other wars other lands

Al humdulilah you stopped the opium

Abyad Shaitan made it flow

Now Abyad Shaitan go

who shall fill vacuum 

Iran  

Chinese People's Army 

Call Loya Jirga assemble tribes ethic groups 

Share land with brothers sisters or destroy victory

Hubris makes men of victory men of tragedy

Prophet Muhammad man of destiny

walk in footsteps of Prophet Muhammad

Did Muhammad enslave or set free

Didn't he free Bilal, first Muezzin

cried Al Ahad Al Ahad Al Ahad

Allah the One 

Oh Taliban 

Does Qur'an Hadith Sharia say make love to little boys in madrassas

Haram

shall you marry girls not yet women

Haram

This not Qur'an Hadith Sharia

Ya'm Jahiliyah 

Light  Darkness don't mix

men walk in dark claim they in light

actions reveal darkness of souls

Afghanistan woman said father raped her

then went to Juma'ah salat on front row

father daughter fucker

wretched customs in your land 

like tribalism everywhere

beyond civility humanity 

below beasts 

Oh, Taliban, so right you wrong, so holy you ugly dirty funky

we applaud you defeating crusaders

Allahu Akhbar Allahu Akhbar Allahu Akhbar

Oh Taliban 

don't be devoid of Allah's mercy Rahim

Oh, Taliban make your people happy

let peace love freedom justice 

flow through your precious land

mountains valleys streams

Let Afghanistan live her dreams

 --Marvin X/El Muhajir

8/6/21

Revised 8/15/21

James Copes and Marvin X, Organizers of Black Vendors at Lake Merritt, rap on DO 4 SELF

This interview was videoed by Ken Johnson of the Black Vendors Association, a project partially supported by a grant from the Silicon Valley Community Foundation. We also acknowledge the assistance of the Berkeley Juneteenth Foundation, the BAMBD or Black Arts Movement Business District, CDC and the City of Oakland, especially Council Members Nikki Bass and Carol Fife. 

FYI, on January 19, 2016, the BAMBD was established by the Oakland City Council and extends from the Lower Bottom of 14th Street to Lake Merritt. The BAMBD is part of the City of Oakland's Downtown Plan for the Next 25 to 50 Years, and it includes a North American African presence at Lake Merritt.

Marvin X, Co-Founder of the National Black Arts Movement and Mayor Libby Schaaf at Laney College on the 50th Anniversary Celebration of BAM at Laney College, 2015.

photo Jahahara Alkebulan Ma'at

Community Planner, Organizer Marvin X and Lynette McElhaney, President of the Oakland City Council.

Marvin X, Paul Cobb, Conway Jones, Jr., Margaret Gordon and numerous Black Artists were critical and persistent  in urging then President McElhaney to push through legislation to establish BAMBD, Oakland's Black Cultural District that includes Lake Merritt. See map above.

photo Adam Turner

During the month of Black August, the BAMBD presents BAMBDFEST, a celebration of Oakland's Black Cultural District, with major support from the California Arts Council. For information about this year's BAMBDFEST throughout the month of Black August, please go to www.bambdfest.com or www.blackbirdpressnews.blogspot.com

Stay tuned for Black Street, Official Magazine of the Black Vendors Association. Publisher/Editor Marvin X can be reached at jmarvinx@yahoo.com or 510-575-7148.

 

Oakland's Lake Merritt White Die Hards and Black Resistance

 

Marvin X, Director, Adama Mosley, Secretary, Ken Johnson, Videographer/photographer, editor, driver. Ken has made his limo available to the BVA for special events. Ken is a retired SF Muni bus driver but has been the videographer for Marvin X over 30 years. They are currently working on a documentary The Wild Crazy Ride of the Marvin X Experience. We are also doing a video documentary of Black street vendors at Lake Merritt and throughout Oakland. 

"When James Copes told me the urgent need to promote the Black vendor narrative to counter and negate the white supremacist Lake Merritt narrative, it was clear to me that a Black Vendor Magazine is urgently needed to tell our story and history of being denied a presence at Lake Merritt, as occurred when I grew up in West Oakland, 7th and Campbell.

We are supposed to accept the denial of a presence at Lake Merritt in 2021. WTF, the current residents and business persons adjacent the lake are of the same white racist personality as those who kept us from the lake in the 50s, though the current version of Oakland KKK frame their narrative in pseudo liberal linguistics while the truth is that after WWII, German Nazis arrived in Oakland, e.g. Kaiser, Bechtel, et al. Google the history of Nazis in Oakland and the political families who emerged from them. You shall be utterly shocked at the fascist history of Oakland.

Back to Lake Merritt

Oh, the Blacks are destroying the green, the water polluted with black garbage, their music too loud for white sensibility and civility, we can't take the smell of weed, bar-b-que and the drunken behavior of the Blacks from purchasing those distilled spirits of alcohol merchants. Thank God somebody snitched the other day that the black alcohol vendors were armed. What if they had gotten into another shootout as they did on their newfound holiday called Juneteenth! Can you believe the blacks didn't know they were freed from slavery until nearly two years later. What happened to their grapevine? Why didn't they beat their fuckin drums to let them know Lincoln freed their black asses. And they actually thought they were going to get 40 acres and a Gov. mule? WTF. Forty acres in a lot of land. Thank God they killed Lincoln an stopped that 40 acre shit.

But whenever white folks party at the lake, they party in full blown white supremacy culture, no matter left or right. Can you believe the lake residents have the same mentality as the pig who denied George Floyd the right to breathe as he begged and called his Mama. Do the Lake Merritt whites really want the black vendors out of sight forever and ever, no matter where they go, Pittsburg, Antioch, Stockton, Sacramento, Modesto, Fresno, Hanford, Bakersfield, anywhere but Lakeshore. What right do the Blacks have to be at the lake, we pay taxes and vote with corrupt politicians to have the lake for us only. Why can't the blacks understand this. Why do they persist? WTF.

Yeah, they the same in West Oakland: white gentrifiers called police saying there was too much noise coming from the rehearsal  of the black church choir. WTF.  Church been there 50 years, whites got there yesterday, close to West Oakland BART so they can get to the financial district in San Francisco to rob and steal the world don't you know? And they come home from global pyramid schemes demanding the Blacks only sing Silent Night, so they can go to bed and dream of more wretched schemes like how to unite with the Chinese and spread germ warfare in the breeze. It's called the Big Payback, James Brown said. My brother told me his task in Vietnam was to paint poison on the trees. And you think what goes around don't come around? Better learn to speak Chinese.

You white haters of Blacks at the lake, you heartless, soulless capitalist swine, bloodsuckers of the poor, don't give a damn about the green or garbage in the lake. If you cared for Mother Nature, why is the earth on fire? If you cared about the rivers, lakes, streams, oceans, why is there an island of plastic in the Pacific Ocean three times the size of Texas? If you cared about the universe and multiverse, why is outta space filled with junk flying and floating everywhere? You should be banned from planet earth and outta space too because your record of destruction is clear: you fuck up everywhere. See Dr. E. Franklin Frazier’s little known classic Race and Culture Contacts in the Modern World. Imagine as we experience the Covid 19 Pandemic, Frazier told us long ago the diseases of the white man were more lethal than his guns upon the native populations. Covid 19 is the Eugenicists dream, down from Margaret Sanger, Hitler, Rockefeller, Bill Gates mama and daddy who fused Eugenics and technology (IBM that morphed into Microsoft), emerging in the present era with Bill Gates, Dr. Fauci and the Hunan lab receiving Covid 19 virology, claiming it came from a bat, Globalist/Chinese People’s Revolutionary Army mythology. If you believe Covid 19 came from a bat, you also believe the two million Uyghur Muslims are happy in concentration camps as the Jews were under Hitler’s Nazism and Africans kidnapped into the American slave system, where 2.5 million languish today as Constitutional slaves under the 13th Amendment allowing involuntary servitude for crimes, the convenient way America reinstituted its full blown addiction to free labor as the backbone of capitalism.

And the Black presence at Lake Merritt is your despair? Go somewhere and comb your hair. Love your woman, have a baby, stop wearing women's clothes like you crazy. Bring the Taliban to Oakland, they'll make you stand up like a man. After all you sins against Blacks, you still continue your attacks, only because you can, because you pay politicians and police to carry out your despicable, diabolical plans under the pseudo guise of clean green, Holy Mother Earth, whom you curse. Then have the nerve to chant Green while you continue the theft and robbery of aboriginal lands and peoples in Africa, Asia and Latin America of their precious metals to further your dastardly satanic schemes. I say take your dog, yes, your best friend, this will insure your immediate end. For you and dog are one, made for each other, you are father, dog is son. Your woman is nowhere in this equation, you know the saying: woman and dog missing, reward for dog! Take your dog, you be praying Oh holy god on North winds, sky, return my dog so we can fly over heavens hills again, I miss my dog, without my dog I cannot win. Women are fine and we love them too, but without dog we men are not true. For we are dogs too. 

 

With its grant from the Silicon Valley Foundation, Marvin X and the BVA will give support to the Oakland Black Vendors Association, under the direction of James Copes. "Since I am a recluse (solitude is critical to my creative personality), I have no problem supporting Mr. Copes who is a people's person. He is more diplomatic than I, so let me plan and structure the vendors into a solid economic institution, maybe on the model of the Pullman Porters Union. We are aware of how the 30,000 mostly Latinx street vendors united to win passage of SB946, the State Law on Street Vending. We North American African street vendors can unite to do for self, to advocate for equity and social justice.

 

 

BVA Director Marvin X and Secretary Adama working in their mobile office

photo Ken Johnson

 

I know James and I are in accord on such matters, including providing basic educational and  business skills for entrepreneurs, especially brothers and sisters in the hood who are marginalized from achieving economic parity in the marketplace. Far too often we are not allowed employment as stop sign holders at the plethora of development sites in Oakland and across America for that matter." The Black Street Vendors Association can teach economic independence for brothers and sisters who may never occupy retail shop space. Although it is the vision of Mr. Copes, many vendors and myself that with unity we can acquire retail space as we advance. Again, look at the Latinx as a model, e.g., they start with a cart, then taco truck, then a market and restaurant. Elijah Muhammad said see what others do and emulate them whether they are white, brown or yellow. Don't sit around hating and being jealous of them, do what they do and come up as they do.

Don't they imitate you in all that you do, didn't they learn rap from you, jazz from you, blues, swagger from you, how to dress from you? Flip the script and learn from them to come up, yes, to the Upper Room of your Father's and Mother's house!" Sell Black, Buy Black, Die Black!

 

 

Marvin X says, "Black Vendors, are you ready to ride into the sunrise of do 4 self economics? Elijah Muhammad told you the day shall come when you shall not be wanted by your master, you shall be forced to do 4 self. That day has arrived. Do 4 self or die, or shall you cry to some god up in the sky? Did Bezos see god on his rocket ride? I have only one message for you: You are in God and God is in you. I'm through! Do 4 self or dodo. When you ready to do 4 self, even the white man will help you. This is true. Better ax somebody as they in the Big H, Houston, TX."

photo Ken Johnson

White supremacy continues at Oakland's Lake Merritt

Marvin X at his Academy of Da Corner, 14th and Broadway, downtown Oakland

photo Adam Turner

"If you want to learn about motivation and inspiration, don't spend all that money going to workshops and seminars, just go stand at 14th and Broadway and watch Marvin X at work. He's Plato teaching on the streets of Oakland."

--Ishmael Reed, Professor Emeritus, University of California, Berkeley

"Marvin X is Socrates teaching in the African hood!"

--Dr. Cornel West, Harvard University

Today the Oakland Parks and Rec Commission held a Zoom meeting that ended with the last agenda item: a discussion on Black Vendors at Lake Merritt. As usual white folks were against the presence of North American African vendors at Lake Merritt. Black vendors have been banned from vending on Lakeshore Ave. and Grand Ave. They are officially restricted to a block long strip on Embarcadero. Unofficial vendors still vend on Lakeshore during the week and on Grand Ave. weekends, although the OPD has been coming down on those vendors selling marijuana and alcohol, and playing loud music. On weekends parking is not allowed on Lakeshore or Grand Ave. on lakeside. The mostly white residents and businesses object to the presence of the official vendors under the Oakland Black Vendors Association, headed by James Copes, a longtime Oakland businessman and entrepreneur. Copes is a dedicated community activist and advocate of economic equity. Organizing the Lake Merritt Black Vendors is his attempt to teach entrepreneurship to people marginalized from the job market. He has tried diplomacy to make the white residents and business community realize they need to stop objecting to the Black presence at Lake Merritt. At today's Zoom meeting, a white person reminded the commissioners that in the not so recent Oakland history, Blacks were banned from Lake Merritt, as this writer remembers as a child growing up in West Oakland. 

White speakers, in their language of subterfuge and circumlocution, told tales of the Blacks destroying the green of the lake, the pounds of garbage being found in the lake and around the lake. How terrible this is to have Lake Merritt, the pride and joy of Oakland, turned into a Black commercial entity. Surely the Blacks can find other places to play their loud music, cook bar-b-que, smoke marijuana and drink alcohol, as if whites don't do the same at the numerous parks and recreational spaces they occupy throughout Oakland. 

No matter Blacks have been removed from vending on Lakeshore and the same is rapidly coming to Grand Ave.,  it was suggested the Oakland Black Vendors Association be limited to one day, though the final vote continues Black vending on Saturdays and Sundays until funds for this pilot project are depleted in November, just as the holiday season begins. Depending on the progress or regress of the germ warfare inflicted on America and the world to reset the geopolitical New World Order, we expect to see the official Black vendors at the lake, and most certainly the unofficial ones, especially the more economically desperate vendors who have the choice of selling or killing, let the pseudo liberal white residents and businesses decide. We suggest they retreat from their insistence on ultimately removing Black vendors from Lake Merritt. No matter what the residents proclaim in their pseudo desires for peace and quiet, while they sing Silent Night about the $700 billion US defense budget to make noise around the world as they bomb mostly poor non-white countries so they are made to suffer in silence the exploitation of lands for cheap labor and precious metals so they can talk on cell phones, as James Brown said, talking loud but saying nothing. 

The neighborhood whites decry the supposed black destruction of Lake Merritt but say nothing about Black neighborhoods suffering toxic air, water, food, resulting in toxic physical and mental health. The whites only desire and feel they deserve to come home from their robber tech jobs on wall street and banker pyramid schemes to a pristine lake devoid of the black menace so upsetting to their white state of minds, whether pseudo progressive or fascist conservative, and often as per behavior and actions upon Blacks and other non-whites, the ideological difference is minimal.

As per this discussion, two things are glaringly absent. Firstly, on January 19, 2016, the Oakland City Council passed a resolution establishing the Black Arts Movement Business District, along the 14th Street corridor from the lower bottom to Lake Merritt. So North American Africans have a City mandated presence at Lake Merritt, no matter what residents think along with their avaricious petit bourgeoisie capitalist swine businesspersons.  

And let me inform the ignorant Park and Rec Commissioners and the white supremacist residents of Lakeshore and Grand Ave., as per the request for a long term plan for the Oakland Black Vendors Association at Lake Merritt, the BAMBD that extends to Lake Merritt is part of the City of Oakland's Downtown Plan for the next 25 to 50 Years. Park and Rec Commissioners, is this plan long enough for you? Have you heard of the plan that only included Blacks when the final report was almost complete?

Secondly, we suggest the residents, businesspersons and commissioners, peruse SB946, the State Law on Street Vending that states vending must not be restricted from parks and lakes no matter community animus; that vendors are not to be cited and given excessive fines, nor shall their goods be confiscated; they shall not be asked for immigration papers, etc.

Additionally, before leaving office Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law the establishment of Cultural Districts throughout California. For certified cultural districts, Gov. Jerry Brown suggested a moratorium on taxation. As per equity in the City of Oakland, we suggest a five year moratorium on North American African Vendors paying permit fees, County and City license fees, Franchise Tax Board fees and IRS taxation, yes, without representation.  

In closing, I call upon North American African vendors, in particular those associated with the Oakland Vendors Association, under the Honorable James Copes, to do what we used to chant at high school football games, when diehard racists under the progressive or conservative persona make their moves to block Black forward movement, we say in unity, "Push 'em back, way back, push 'em back way back." Mao used to say, "The reactionaries will never put down their butcher knives, they will never turn into Buddha heads!" In the words of Oakland's Black Panther Party, "Power to the People!"

--Marvin X

8/12/21

Co-Founder, National Black Arts Movement

Co-Founder, Black Arts Movement Business District, Oakland CA

Co-Founder, Black Vendors Association working in association with James Copes, Founder of OBVA

Publisher/Editor, Black Bird Press News and Review

Publisher/Editor, Black Street, a publication of the Black Vendors Association

Marvin X was awarded a grant from the Silicon Valley Community Foundation to organize the Black Vendors Association. He supports James Copes and his Oakland Black Vendors Association. 

From the archives: Black Vendors at Lake Merritt, by Clifford L. Williams, Oakland Post Newspaper

 

Black Vendor Group Flourishes on Oakland’s Lake Merritt

Published

 12 months ago 

on

 August 13, 2020

By

 Clifford L Williams

Entrepreneur James Copes and Oakland City Councilmember Nikki Fortunato Bas discussing the Lake Merritt Black Vendors Group activities. Photo by Jordan Long Copes.

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What started out to be a protest against a purportedly racial-bias incident on the shores of Lake Merritt near the Cleveland Cascades in April 2018, has turned into a weekly, weekend gathering where vendors can showcase their products and services to the public.

The incident was sparked by an individual known as ‘BBQ Becky.’ Becky called police on a Black family who were peacefully having a picnic at the Lake. At first, there was a protest staged by members of the victimized family that brought out musicians, poets dancers and other entertainment as well as vendors selling crafts, clothing, wares and food. Every weekend since that incident, Black folks have been gathering at the same area, barbequing and staging community activities.

In the past few months, Black entrepreneurs (mostly micro-businesses) have been pitching their tents, displaying their products and selling everything from ice cream, to T-shirts, to hair products at the Lake. The enterprise is thriving full-force, which includes dozens of entrepreneurs and first –time sellers that have bolstered the area’s Black economy.

While City officials aren’t completely supportive of the event due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Black vendors have met and have implemented plans to ensure health and safety codes are not being violated by the vendors.

Spokesperson James Copes of ‘Old School Copes’ noted that precautions to ensure health and safety guidelines are in place and being practiced. “Each vendor booth participating at our event is supplied with free face masks and hand sanitizers for our customers when they visit our booths,” Copes noted.  “Additionally, all vendors along Lakeshore are encouraging people to social distance while browsing among the booths.”

“We don’t have the ability to force people to follow certain safety rules, but we make it a point to inform them that when entering any booth, they must adhere to the regulations we have set in place.”

Oakland City Councilmember Nikki Fortunato Bas, whose district covers the Lake Merritt area, has been supportive of what the Black vendors are doing.  “This marketing enterprise is encouraging and brings a much-needed boost to the economy of the Black community,” said Bas.

“Especially during COVID, we have to follow the rules and policies set forth by the County and City and to work with the City Administration to ensure the public’s safety. Oakland’s Parks and Recreation Advisory Commission will be meeting on August 12th on how the public can use the parks, including the Lake Merritt.”

“The vendors will continue to serve customers on the Lake,” said Copes.  “It’s important to them economically. People are wondering how they’re going to make it and pay their bills.  This has been one way to help people subsidize their income and develop and grow their business.

“But it’s not just about selling products; we are bringing people together and having conversations about our daily lives and how we can work collectively. We are creating community.”

“We are buying and spending monies with each other.  This is helping people to become self-reliant.  That’s how Black enterprises should work.  Additionally, non-profit groups have joined the vendors to do fundraising projects.”

“We will continue to be respectful of the people who live in the neighborhood.   We will remind people not to park in people’s driveways, and we will shut down at 8:00 p.m. and clean up the areas around each booth.”

For more information on the Black vendors’ group, email oldschoolcopes@gmail.com.