Marvin X: Part Three: My life in the Global Village--Notes of an Artistic Freedom Fighter

Oakland Town Hall Meeting on Gun Violence

Hosted by Congresswoman Barbara Lee

January 30, 2016, 1PM

Taylor Memorial United Methodist Church

1188 12th Street

West Oakland CA

Fifty years later, it is almost impossible for me to attend rallies against the police for murdering our young men and women. I applaud  people like Oakland's Cat Brooks, Chepus Johnson and the Black Lives Matter Movement. Thank God they have the energy. After fifty years, I'm emotionally and mentally drained, especially after losing my own son to suicide. Imagine, on psycho drugs, he walked into a train, a brilliant young man who graduated from UC Berkeley, attended Harvard and studied in Syria at the University of Damascus. Dr. Nathan Hare says suicide and homicide are but different sides of the same coin, often situational disorders caused oppression. Often homicides are suicides because the person didn't have the nerve to kill himself so he made someone else do the job. Franz Fanon said the only way the oppressed can regain their mental health is by engaging in revolution to end oppression. Revolution is seizing power. Ras Baraka has demonstrated this in Newark, NJ. And he was blessed with revolutionary parents, so he is well trained for his mission to transform Newark, NJ, a city much like Oakland.

--from Part two: My life in the Global Village by Marvin X

They advise you when you are faced with a terrorist that you should hide, run or fight, but when your babies are dying,  it's time to start fighting!--Dr. Ayodele Nzinga 

 

                                                                    

US Congresswoman Barbara Lee

Despite my declaration to myself that I would cease attending meetings on police and/or Black on Black homicide (for my mental health), this Saturday I found myself at a Town Hall meeting on Gun Violence, hosted by Oakland's beloved Congresswoman, the Honorable Barbara Lee.  The meeting was moderated by the Honorable Lateefah Simon and Special Guest Lynette McElhaney, President of the Oakland City Council, with youth panelists Treyvon Godfrey and Dane'Nicole Williams.

The meeting began at 1PM but I had arrived at 10AM, confused about the time after a Friday tumultuous but insightful conversation with my childhood friend and co-worker on the Black Arts Movement District, Paul Cobb, also publisher of the Post News Group. Paul had to inform me that we are now officially recognized in the 14th Street corridor, downtown Oakland, with the monumental task of creating the Black Arts Movement Business District, not for ourselves but generations to come for the next fifty to one hundred years.

We were both blessed to have grown up together on West Oakland's 7th Street, Harlem of the West, end of the line for the Amtrak train and headquarters of the Pullman Porters Union, the first Black union in America, founded by A. Phillip Randolph and Oakland's C.L. Dellums, uncle of Oakland's radical Congressman, Ronald V. Dellusms, also a former mayor.

Paul and I often fondly recall growing up in West Oakland, a Black cultural and economic district, similar to San Francisco's Fillmore and New York's Harlem. We were blessed with parents and relatives known as RACE MEN and WOMEN, i.e., people dedicated to the upliftment of the North American African nation. Our parents were inspired by the Marcus Garvey Movement. Before moving to Oakland, my parents published a Black newspaper in Fresno The Fresno Voice. In Oakland they became florists at 7th and Campbell. Paul's relatives owned a grocery store near 7th and Pine.

Paul Cobb and Marvin X

photo Walter Riley, Esq.

When we learned there was talk of a Black Business and Cultural District along the 14th Street corridor, Paul said, and I agreed, well, ok, let's move from 7th to 14th Street, that's a double up!
After the City Council passed legislation establishing the Black Arts Movement Business District, Paul urged me to become more politically astute. "You got to stop writing all day and connect with people. Don't be selfish but invite others under the BAMBD tent. You have been successful, so let the community enjoy the success! You can expand on your success or shoot yourself in the foot and destroy the "movement" you have created. Let the entire community rejoice in this BAMBD project. Do the necessary things to make it legitimate so no one can say you are running a fraud or scam."

In truth, Marvin X has no desire to run a scam. He's called for a billion dollar trust fund for BAMBD, not for himself, but to lay the foundation for generations to come. "I have no need of a billion dollars. I'm beyond money. People ask me how I get things done, how I bring people together like Sonia Sanchez, Nikki Giovanni, Angela Davis, the Last Poets, Askia Toure, Haki Madhubuti, Dr. Cornel West, Danny Glover. I reply that I get on the telephone and  tell them what I'm doing. They know I'm not running a scam! After all, we've known each other, most of us, fifty years. We are true troopers. We've gone through revolution and those of us who've survived know we are true to the game! We'll take a bullet for each other!"

 Angela Davis, Marvin X, Sonia Sanchez

p

 Marvin X and Danny Glover, both were in the BSU at San Francisco State University; later Danny performed in Black Arts West Theatre, San Francisco, 1966, co-founded by Marvin X and playwright Ed Bullins.
photo Kenny Johnson

BAM co-founders Amiri Baraka (RIP) and Marvin X

After a 47 year friendship, this was their last picture together 

cerca 2014

Because Paul Cobb wanted me to connect with Congresswoman Barbara Lee, especially since she gave the Black Arts Movement a commendation on last year's 50th anniversary and sent a representative from her office to ask what I needed for the celebration at Laney College, I returned to the church about one thirty, just in time to hear a video of President Obama discussing gun violence. As I listened to him, my mind said America is the number one arms merchant of the world so why does she not expect  "blow back" for the mass murder of men, women and children around the world, mostly poor people in mud huts without electricity, clean water and bathrooms, full of ignorance, disease and reactionary religiosity? How can you, Mr. President, have a weekly check off list of people to kill around the world, including American citizens, yet not expect blow back? The universe doesn't work like this. As James Baldwin said, "The murder of my child will not make your child safe!"

We appreciate you, Mr. President, but do the right thing: transfer that trillion dollar military budget into education, housing and jobs for poor and middle class Americans. Offer America's marginalized young men and women the same three things you offer insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan if they stop the violence and pledge allegiance to their constitutions: education, housing and jobs.

And stop cherry picking prison reform, give a general amnesty to the 2.4 million incarcerated brothers and sisters, 90% of whom were dual diagnosed at the time of their arrests, i.e., they suffered drug abuse and mental illness, not to mention their pervasive economic condition of dire poverty, unemployment and miss-education.

After the video of President Obama, the Town Hall meeting began with a panel discussion moderated by Lateefah Simon. She introduced the panelists that included youth and politicians Barbara Lee and Lynette McElhaney, President of the City Council. Thus began the session dealing with the trauma and grief I had vowed to avoid after fifty years of the same. But it was inescapable because I was trapped in the room, sitting next to Paul Cobb, my friend of nearly 65 years. People began to testify, from youth to adults, including Lynette McElhaney, President of the City Council, who's just buried her grandson due to violence. We heard from high school students who'd suffered the lost of twenty friends in the last year. Unbelievable! One student said she'd lost eight of her friends. Then a mother spoke who said she'd lost both her sons and was now childless. She said the killers walk around the community without fear, are often arrested for gun related charges but released. The distraught mother said no gun laws would prevent such killers from their mayhem. Tears began to swell in my eyes.

FYI, in 1979 I was teaching at the University of Nevada, Reno part time and working full time as a planner for a Community Services Agency, living a good life. But I used to read the San Francisco Chronicle to keep abreast  events in the Bay Area until I got tired of reading about the Oakland police killing one Black man per month. One morning I read the Chronicle to see the OPD had killed another Black man so I read no further, throwing the paper down in disgust, but picking it up later only to turn to the back page to discover the youth the OPD had killed that day was my best friend's 15 year old brother, Melvin Black. There was a picture of my friend Rahim and his sister Charla Black protesting outside Oakland City Hall. I was horrified, then numb but soon received a call from my comrades in Oakland who told me to get the hell out of Reno and come help the family and community in their grief.

I resisted because I was living the good life, being treated royally by the Reno Mormon conservatives. You know Black nationalists get along great with racists better than we do with pseudo white liberals--see Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Letter from a Birmingham Jail. FYI, Nevada is the most conservative state in the union--Gov. Ronald Reagan's presidential campaign was run from Reno, Nevada--his best friend was Reno Senator Paul Laxault, and the head of the Republican National Committee was Frank Ferankaf of Reno.

Aside from teaching at UNR, Nevada Community College and CSA, I received two conference planning grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities via the Nevada Humanities Committee.

I was able to invite Eldridge Cleaver and other Bay Area folks  to participate in two conferences I produced for the Nevada Black community: Dr. Harry Edwards, Nantizi Cayou, Dr. Wade Nobles, Professor Sherely A. Williams, Sacramento Bee writer Fahizah Alim, et al.

I finally decided to depart Reno and return to the battleground of Oakland to helpe organize a rally at the Oakland Auditorium in which five thousand Blacks gathered from 12 noon til midnight without incident, as reported in the San Francisco Sun Reporter by Edith Austin, Godmother of Bay Area Black politics (RIP).

After the rally with participants Angela Davis, Paul Cobb, Oba T'Shaka, Dezzie Woods Jones, Dr. Yusef Bey, Eldridge Cleaver, Donald Warden, aka Khalid Tariq Al Mansour, and Minister Farakhan, the OPD killing of Black men stopped but Crack cocaine and drive by killings began and has continued until today. I worked with Oakland's Mother Theresa, Betty King (RIP) and her Neighborhood Pals, Inc., and with mother's who'd lost sons to drive by killings in the turf wars that followed the cessation of OPD killings under the color of law. A Police Review Board was established that was impotent and exists today with the same impotency.

Today, I sat listening to the testimonies of those suffering grief and trauma from America's 400 year war against North American Africans, victims of the American Slave System as Ed Howard informed us.

Oakland Post Editor Chanucey Bailey
assassinated in broad daylight, downtown
Oakland

Suddenly a man came up to Paul Cobb threatening his life over an article that was published in The Oakland Post. (Paul's Editor, Chauncey Bailey, was assassinated in broad daylight at 14th and Alice, over an article that was never published and the material was public information!) The man continued threatening Paul, claiming the article put him and his family's life in jeopardy and if anything happened to any member of his family, Paul was going to pay.  An undercover OPD officer heard the conversation and ushered the man out the church.

Now I was truly traumatized and full of grief, ready to depart to my space to recover, which means I was ready to go write about today's dramatic events. I stayed on to greet and take a picture with Congresswoman Barbara Lee and converse with others present, including Comedian Donald Lacey who is pushing a sign saying LOVE LIFE as people enter Oakland on the freeway. Donald's daughter was murdered while sitting in a car across the street from McClymonds High School, once and still Oakland's School of Champions.

We stayed with Paul until the OPD officers arrived and he filed a complaint.

Can you believe this incident with Paul happened at a church event to curb gun violence? We know violence in our community is so pervasive it occurs at funerals of violence victims. There is no end to this madness! In a 1968 interview with James Baldwin at his New York apartment, he said to me, "It's a wonder we all haven't gone stark raving mad!"

--Marvin X

1/30/2016

From Part Two: My life in the Global Village

Notes of an Artistic Freedom Fighter

I have called for the Red, Black and Green flag to fly up and down the Black Arts Movement Business District along the 14th Street corridor, downtown Oakland. Saluting the flag should help us regain our mental equilibrium and make others, including police, recognize we are a nation of people and must be respected as such. I often give the example of the gay/lesbian flag that flies down Market Street in San Francisco as one goes toward the gay/lesbian community. By the time one gets to the  community, one gets the feeling that we must have respect for this community and not engage in homophobic language and behavior. It should and must be the same in the BAM Business District. This must be a sacred space that we must respect. And this vibration must spread throughout our community. I suggest the Red, Black and Green fly throughout our community to let ourselves and the world know we are a people with cultural consciousness, who originated from the womb of civilization. It will help us understand when we kill our brothers and sisters, we kill ourselves. When others kill us, they kill themselves as well. James Baldwin said, "The murder of my child will not make your child safe!"

--Marvin X

1/17/16

Dismantling White Supremacy Among US Poets

by Alexis Clements  

• January 25, 2016

Simone White addresses the audience at the January 6, 2016 “White Room” event at the Poetry Project, New York, NY. Seated at table (left to right): Christopher Stackhouse, Cheryl Clarke, Ariel Goldberg, and Mahogany L. Browne (photo by the author for Hyperallergic)

Within certain chambers of poetry in the past year, a series of incidents, specifically involving white poets presenting work that has been called out for its callous racism, has led to a great deal of debate on the internet and elsewhere.

Three of the most prominent incidents are:

• Kenneth Goldsmith reading a re-organized autopsy report of the recently slain Michael Brown at a conference, a performance for which Goldsmith was paid.
• Vanessa Place tweeting the unedited text of Margaret Mitchell’s novel Gone With the Wind, 140 characters at a time, and attaching the image of actress Hattie McDaniel to her profile while doing so (this was actually a long-term project started in 2009 that became the subject of debate only last year).
• Michael Derrick Hudson adopting the pseudonym “Yi-Fen Chou,” implying that his work was that of a Chinese woman in an attempt to manipulate the editors of the journals he sought to be published in, and last year being selected for inclusion in the 2015 edition of The Best American Poetry.

These are hardly the only such incidents of 2015, but they are the ones that have been recently offered up as telling symptoms of a larger problem. The whiteness of these poets is not the only point of the debates, it’s also the fact that each of them attained or has status within the poetry community, whether it be through publication in a major anthology, teaching and speaking it at gigs, or, earning income from poetry-related events and activities. In other words, this is about race, but also status, and the control and awarding of resources.

In September of last year, not long after the story of Hudson’s deception broke, the poets Juliana Spahr and Stephanie Young, both white women who have teaching jobs in poetry at Mills College, published a lengthy essay in the Los Angeles Review of Books titled, “The Program Era and the Mainly White Room.” It was clearly intended to garner further conversation within the poetry world around race, status, and resources. The essay mentions the above events, but leaps off primarily from the fact that the vast majority of physical spaces that they and their colleagues visit to hear and share work are peopled largely by white poets.

Spahr and Young focus the bulk of their analysis on higher education, specifically MFAs and PhDs in creative writing. Crunching a couple decades worth of data, they looked for clues as to why, even as the proportion of women and writers of color enrolled in these programs has increased with time, the white room persists. Two of their findings are worth repeating:

1. In separating out the schools that fully fund MFA students versus those where students must pay or go into to debt to attend, the fully funded programs were noticeably whiter and more male. “In 2013, 21 percent of graduates from debt generator schools identified as women and other than white. At the fully funded programs, that number was only 10 percent.”
2. And this: “Worth noticing here is how intensely the MFA system resembles a Ponzi scheme.” See the chart below mapping the increase in MFAs being awarded and the number of tenure track jobs available to MFA grads:

Chart 7 from “The Program Era and the Mainly White Room” by Juliana Spahr & Stephanie Young (via the Los Angeles Review of Books)

As a brief counterpoint to the mainly white room of creative writing graduate degrees, Spahr and Young offer a cursory look at racially and ethnically specific arts organizations tied to radical political movements in the US during the 1960s and ’70s, such as the Black Arts Repertory Theatre, El Teatro Campesino, the Watts Writers Workshop, and the Nuyorican Poets Café. But they cut off that history rather abruptly by asserting that those movements “got killed in multiple ways” and don’t meaningfully acknowledge the continued existence of some of these spaces.

At the end the essay, they leave off with: “For us, for now, the best we can do is work to understand so that, when we create alternatives to the program, they do not amplify its hierarchies.”

So, now it’s 2016. Certainly the passing of another solstice does not a new landscape make. But when I heard that Simone White, program director at the Poetry Project here in New York, was organizing a live event that would take up Spahr and Young’s essay, I was curious to attend because I feel connected to that space and some of the people who are part of its community.

White invited a number of writers to respond to the essay in writing, including Tisa Bryant, Jen Hofer, Krystal Languell, and Rachel Levitsky. Their contributions were read aloud at the beginning of the event. Following that, there were additional written and unwritten responses from those present in front of the room: Mahogany L. Browne, Cheryl Clarke, Ariel Goldberg, and Christopher Stackhouse, with Simone White participating as well.

Many of the writers and speakers raised two points of contention with Spahr and Young’s overall reasoning: 1) their implication that the white room is the only room, and 2) their implication that everybody wants to be in the white room. While Spahr and Young do briefly note in a couple of spots that some people may simply not want to participate in the white room, they really don’t examine why that’s the case, nor do they do more than briefly mention a couple of spaces they know of in the Bay Area that are not mainly white. In other words, they posit a white room and focus their inquiry almost entirely on the white room, without much looking outward, or in from the outside.

But beyond the arguments with Spahr and Young’s ideas and methodology, what was most interesting to me about the conversation at the Poetry Project were the moments when those invited to contribute and speak made concrete suggestions about how to counteract or simply abstain from the white room.
Here is my attempt to briefly lay out what I heard:

Structural Oppression

“In order to cross the threshold and enjoy whatever intellectual communion on offer, the POC poet-writer has to wrangle with discomfort, alienation, and the bewildering ambiance of elitism, exoticism, and exceptionalism, among many other complexities that at once flatter one’s ego and siphon from one’s spirit, in exchange for education, publication, employment.” —Tisa Bryant, in written contribution to the event 

Structural oppression is Spahr and Young’s jumping-off point, but their analysis, while useful as regards certain aspects of higher education, remains a bit myopic for choosing only to focus there. What structural oppression looks like from a wide-angle lens starts from the ground up, and early on in life. There are dramatically different levels of access to arts education from the very beginning of childhood through adulthood. Moreover, European cultures and those of European descent remain the focus within the vast majority of US arts textbooks, museums, government buildings, cultural centers, etc. Meaning that the stories people are taught from a young age center on white people the vast majority of the time. And, when it comes to the idea of pursuing a life as an artist, economics are a factor at every turn. As Christopher Stackhouse noted: “You have to be able to afford to sit and write a poem.” All of which is to say, myriad structural oppressions are at play long before graduate school would even be an idea in someone’s head.

Interestingly, Stackhouse seemed to offer a point of agreement with one piece of Spahr and Young’s methodology: statistics. “No one wants to look at numbers because poets are above all that … that’s a crock of shit,” he offered. The reality is that while statistics and the collecting of data can be incredibly dubious, there has been power and wide-scale consciousness-raising in the past few years with the publication and widespread sharing of some the more straightforward counting exercises: income inequality, the VIDA count, the Guerilla Girls decades-long arts accounting, Micol Hebron’s Gallery Tally, Kim Drew’s one-tweet count at the Whitney Biennial, to name just a few.

And more recently, when it comes to the question of the white room in New York City, one of the first projects that Arts Commissioner Tom Finkelpearl announced after his appointment was a simple count of the race and gender in the leadership of arts institutions around the city. While he’s made it clear that the only action he’s going to take is to do the count, and that there are no current plans in place to institute policies based on the results, my sense is that the act of counting alone has the potential to drive some organizations to do better at mirroring the population of the city.

Simone White at the Poetry Project (photo by the author for Hyperallergic)  

Counts can prove particularly useful when focused on leadership because one of the most straightforward ways to begin to tackle structural oppression when it comes to race is to increase the diversity of those in power, i.e to better spread the control of resources. A shift in the race of leadership is not sufficient to end oppression, but it is necessary.

Pretending Aesthetics Are Benign

Stackhouse also offered a number of insights and provocations on aesthetics, speaking about his own ambivalence around becoming a “well-trained poet,” and about “acculturation and training your vocabulary.” In response to his comments, I couldn’t help thinking about areas of the arts that attach terms like “avant-garde” or “experimental” to themselves — about how so many young writers aspire to be “avant-garde” by trying to mirror the behaviors and artistic mannerisms of past, often European, artists. And in arts programs from grade school to grad school, students are actively encouraged to look to “masters” of European art as the models to train themselves to be.

Thankfully, we no longer live in a world where a single dominant art movement is there to ride ahead of or overturn — there are hundreds, if not thousands, of simultaneous styles and progressions within our myriad culture. So what “avant-garde” or “experimental” means to me, when I hear it today, specifically within institutional settings (i.e. from people who have some measure of access to institutional arts in the US), is precisely the opposite of the words’ meanings — the people claiming those titles wish to align themselves with an imaginary dominant art movement. Put another way, it’s an assimilationist desire that many white people themselves are driven by and promote, when there is little left in the art world to assimilate to other than lauding career and money, or “achievement” as it’s more typically described.

As a white woman in the arts, I can attest to having spent time trying to assimilate to this fuzzy fever dream and it’s only in the past few years — as conversations around race, labor, gender, privilege, cultural self-determination, etc., have picked up new steam — that I’ve really begun to understand how much past models of success in the arts are influencing so many artists, inclusive of all races.
But the most pernicious lie beneath “avant-garde” or “experimental” is that some people falsely claim that this designation somehow absolves them of the political context of their work. This is ultimately the kind of maneuver attempted by Kenneth Goldsmith when defending his reading: “I always massage dry texts to transform them into literature, for that it [sic] what they are when I read them.” As if somehow, the work is an entity separate and divorced from any context other than art, as if art itself were a non-political context. This could not be a more flagrant delusion.

Thinking about all this at the event, it seemed to me that there is no simple way out of this rabbit hole of aspirational assimilation — because what are you, what is culture, if so much of artistic production has been driving at assimilation for generations? Trying to find a way out of assimilation, do you look for specificity? Locating an individual’s cultural specificity or claim to a culture is far more complex than looking at their race, class, or genetic material, particularly in the US, with its history of racial genocides, colonialism, mass immigration, and opportunism and exploitation, all of which dramatically alter and generate cultures over time. And what are the implications of specificity beyond race? Today it’s primarily artists of color who are asked, “where are you from?” every time their work is evaluated, whereas white artists are given the assumptive leeway to pursue any path they please. Stackhouse seemed to echo this frustration when he said: “We have to make rooms for individuals.”

Group portrait by Melvin Edwards of (left to right): Bob Rogers, Ishmael Reed, Jayne Cortez, Léon-Gontran Damas, Romare Bearden, Larry Neal; seated: Nikki Giovanni and Evelyn Neal, in New York City, 1969 (image courtesy the New York Public Library, © Melvin Edwards)

All the Other Rooms

“Maybe this place set terms that we don’t want.” —Simone White
“I wasn’t sure I wanted to break into those spaces in that way.” —Mahogany Brown

Why would anyone subject to racism want to keep going to a relentlessly racist space? This question was posed in a variety of ways throughout the night.

People have been walking away from and refusing the white room, the male room, the straight room, the able-bodied room, all the rooms, for a long time. Alternative spaces and radical political movements did not get “killed” in this country. Narratives of failure around radical politics often look at too short a time span, too little of a sweep of history. Tactics can succeed or fail, individuals have most certainly been killed, groupings dispersed or dismantled, conditions altered, opportunities squashed, but that does not equal an erasure or a negation of lasting impact — short-lived successes can serve as long-term inspirations and drivers, as I learned from historian and curator Yasmin Ramírez in her work highlighting the lasting impact of Puerto Rican members of the Art Workers Coalition on the arts landscape of New York City.

I’ve noticed that a number of artists I’ve spoken to of late are strategic about the spaces they choose to step in and out of. Beneath this is a deep questioning of who they share their energy with, which offers the artists some measure of control over when and how they will engage with others.
But of course, the question of the mainly white room seems to be most deeply about the white presumption to have access to every room and to every ear within that room. The culture defines that as the American birthright — you can do anything and go anywhere you please — but reserves access to that mythical birthright to only a few.

The Role of Event Organizers

“Will there be enough time when there is never enough time? Will there be wine?” —Cheryl Clarke, at the Poetry Project

At a much more basic, pragmatic level, Simone White and Mahogany Brown noted that the question of who is present within a given room at a given time, has a great deal to do with the conditions of their life, their work, their families, their location, transport, etc. Can you show up? Do you have to be at work instead? Does it cost money? How much? Will there be child care or do you need to find or hire someone? Will there by food, water, bathrooms? Is the space accessible? Will there be enough space? What kinds of people have attended in the past? How were you treated by them in the past? How much energy do you have? Are you well enough?

A simple thing for event organizers to do would be to ask those questions and think about different people’s experiences of and in their space.

“As for events, there are too many and the purpose of an evening is seldom clear. Some hosts seem to do the hosting in order to be thanked,” Krsytal Languell noted in her written contribution. Her point seems mostly intended for white artists and white-led institutions organizing events, whose audiences consistently end up being primarily white. How about sharing your space, letting other people make use of it on their own terms? How about literally doing less to make room for others — to share the resources you have, or open up the possibility that the resources you are using could be put to use elsewhere? How about slowing down a bit? Don’t grasp so tightly.

And of course, there is the topic of discomfort, specifically the need for white people to accept that they will feel uncomfortable during conversations around race and in spaces that are not majority white. The need for white people to sit quietly with that discomfort has been discussed exhaustively elsewhere, but Stackhouse summarized it eloquently at the event:  “Are you willing to be ignorant … and to do so when it offers you no immediate pleasure?”

Certainly this is not a complete list of everything that could be said on the question of race in arts spaces, but this is some of what I heard from those present and some of what it gave rise to. From what I heard, there are opportunities for change — places to start anyhow, located not in some amorphous and overarching world of the “arts,” but in individual people and specific spaces. 
The live event “White Room” took place at the Poetry Project (131 E 10th Street, East Village, Manhattan) on January 6.

SOS: Calling all Black Artists to attend City of Oakland downtown plan meeting at Malonga Center, 1428 Alice Street, Monday, Feb. 1,6pm

Message body

Connect
Monday, February 1, 2016, 6:00 to 8:30 pm
Malonga Casquelourd Center for Arts, 1428 Alice Street

Schedule
6:00 pm: Arrival & Reception
6:30 pm: Presentation
7:30 pm: Open House

Please join us for food and conversation at a community meeting and open house to consider policy and design options to make Downtown Oakland the thriving, diverse, safe and equitable neighborhood that Oaklanders want to see at their city’s core. Based on the community’s feedback from two months of extensive public conversations, the City will be presenting ideas for solutions in a specific plan for Downtown to help meet the community’s needs, including:

• Policies and programs to protect and support artists, small businesses, and residents at all income levels, including options to develop funds needed to meet these needs
• Plans to encourage development that will fill in the gaps in our neighborhoods with living-wage jobs, new housing, new retail space and community benefits
• Designs for public streets and gathering places that welcome and connect all residents, with a focus on transit-accessible public spaces that are safe for bicyclists and pedestrians of all ages

An open house will follow the presentation, where you can take a closer look at the options, offer new ideas and revisions, and talk with the designers, staff, and other community members. Cantonese interpretation will be available, and refreshments will be served. To preview the goals and policies that will be available for discussion at the open house, please visit the Latest News section of the Plan Downtown Oakland Website: Latest News.

Play
To experience some of the future possibilities firsthand, come to Frank H. Ogawa Plaza from February 4th through 6th for the Our City: Oakland Public Design Fair. The Plaza will be transformed into a place for people of all ages to play in new ways. Eleven locally-built public design projects will premiere at the Fair, inviting residents and visitors alike to reimagine the future of our public space.

PLEASE NOTE: Festivities for the public start on Thursday, February 4th at the Plaza and run through Sunday, February 6th from 8:00am to 8:00pm each day. The closing party on Saturday, February 7th will be held at Pro Arts from 7:00pm to 10:00pm, and is open to the public. Visit the Our City: Oakland website for details.

Heal
The City of Oakland is committed to advancing policy and institutional change to address structural inequality throughout Oakland. To support concrete steps toward this goal the Planning Department is issuing a Request for Proposals (RFP) to develop a social equity strategy that will guide this and future specific plans. The strategy would ensure that policies are developed to address the physical environment and economic conditions for all people, including those with the fewest resources, through the promotion of participatory engagement and positive social change.

Please forward this email and the link to the RFP to any organizations and consultants who are leaders in social equity policy, planning and participation: RFP for Oakland Social Equity Strategy. A pre-proposal meeting will be held at City Hall on Thursday, February 4th at 3:00pm in Hearing Room 3.

Let's celebrate the Black Arts Movement Business District with a Marcus Garvey Unity Parade and Founders Concert!

 The Honorable Marcus Garvey

We think North American Africans in Oakland should celebrate the Black Arts Movement Business District with a Marcus Garvey parade down 14th from MLK, Jr. Way to Lake Merritt for a rally and festival. King Theo of the Malonga Center should lead the people with his dancers doing the BAM BAM  (suggested by Dr. Nathan Hare). Videographer Kenny Johnson said, "We gonna be doin da BAM Thang everywhere."

;

King Theo

 Sonia Sanchez

We also propose a benefit concert for the Black Arts Movement Business District Trust Fund. The concert will present BAM Founders and showcase the BAM Babies--the next generation of artistic freedom fighters.

YGB, Young, Gifted and Black

l
BAM Baby, Mayor Ras Baraka, Newark NJ


 Nikki Giovanni

Alice Walker

Askia Toure

The Last Poets

 (invited, unconfirmed)
Danny Glover
The Last Poets
Sonia Sanchez
Nikki Giovanni
Alice Walker
Avotcja
Askia Toure
Marvin X
Ishmael Reed
Al Young
Mayor Ras Baraka
YGB
Paris
Marc Barmuthi

The BAM Poet's Choir and Arkestra:

Paradise

Kujichagulia

Marvin X and Danny Glover

 
Universal Negro Improvement Association soldiers. Did you know
there is a Marcus Garvey UNIA Hall in Oakland?


 The UNIA Black Cross Nurses. We call upon the Bay Area Black Nurses Association to participate in the BAM Business District Unity parade.

On the 50th Anniversary of the founding of the Black Panther Party in Oakland, we call upon the BPP veterans to participate in the BAM Business District Unity parade. Panther Cubs also!


The 200,000 North American African troops were critical to the US winning the Civil War. We call upon Black Veterans to march in the BAM Business District Unity parade.

FYI, BAM/Black Power activists were patriots who believed in the values of American democracy. We believed in the American revolution. We quoted the US Constitution in our raps and principles. We believed in the consent of the governed, yet we suffered taxation without representation. We suffered a military defeat by the US Government. We hereby call upon all veterans of the US military to connect and support the BAM/Black Power veterans, especially those in need. We call on Black military veterans to reach out and touch the soldiers in America's domestic war against the freedom and independence of North American Africans, e.g., Black Panthers, Nation of Islam, Socialists, Communists, Liberation theologists and others. Now there are some who completely missed the 60s. They are like the girl who said Wake up to what? Poor girl doesn't even know she's asleep. But US military veterans, reach out and touch your brothers in the war for freedom in America.

We call upon the Nation of Islam to join the BAM Business District Unity Parade.

BAM poets Amiri Baraka and Maya Angelou doing the BAM BAM!

We suggest the Marcus Garvey Unity Parade in honor of the man who taught us Black Unity.

"Up you mighty people, you can accomplish what you will!" He gave us the Red, Black and 

Green after hearing a racist song, "Everybody got a flag 'cept a Coon!"Let's do the BAM BAM!

For more information about this proposed event, call 510-200-4164 

jmarvinx@yahoo.com

University of Chicago Sun Ra Symposium Roundtable Discussion

BAM Master Sun Ra's Afro-futurist film Space Is The Place

BAM Master Sun Ra Interview (Helsinki, 1971)

Black Arts Movement Master SUN RA SPEAKS - UC BERKELEY LECTURE PT 1

The Parables of Plato Negro, aka, Marvin X

Parable of Black Man and Block Man

Parable of the Rats

Parable of the No People

Parable of a Real Woman

Parable of the Preacher's Wife

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Parable of Black Man and Block Man 

When a fool is told a parable, it's meaning must be explained to him.--African proverb

You got black man and block man.

Watch out for block man!

--Sun Ra

There was a black man and a block man, both were black men, but block man had a big block head. He used to stand at the crossroads waiting for black man to come through so he could block him from going in any direction. If black man tried to go east, west, north or south, the playa hatin, jealous, envious block man would cause black man to either stop, stumble or fall.

Sometimes black man would purposely fall because he knew the African proverb that to stumble or fall is only to go forward faster. So after being blocked at one turn, he would fake a fall and go forward on his journey up the hill.

Of course block man would be waiting for him at a pass up the hill and again try to block black man from going farther. But black man, being athletic, was able to leap to the side and gracefully go pass block man.

And even though block man had a lot of friends who were blockheads too, black man had friends in the sun, moon and stars who watched out for him.

Black man had friends in the wind, seas, rivers, trees and all over the earth. So block man didn't have a chance with his evil scheme to block black man. All black man had to do was flow in the flow and make sure he wasn't swimming against the current of the universe, for in the counter flow the block men were waiting patiently for him, sharpening their knives, ready to remove the heart and soul of black man.

So black man planned and block man planned, but black man was the best planner. As long as his mind remained clean and sober, he could see block man coming a mile way.

Parable of the Rats 

The rats all have the same gait: they scurry about, back broken by an abundance of lies, half-truths and disinformation, defamation and other tactics of rat behavior. Even their facial expressions have a rat like appearance, so you can see them coming a mile away. You can smell a funky rat. We suspect the two legged variety even has a tail hidden inside their pants or underneath their dresses, yes, there are rats of every gender, every color, class. Some are sewer rats, some are wharf rats, some are subway rats, church rats, house rats. But their behavior is the same. They are on the lower level of humankind, these two legged rats. They can do nothing right. They cannot give justice even with the scale in view while they weigh goods. They will lie while you look at them playing with the scale. They will try to convince you the scale doesn't work while it is their minds that have not evolved to work on the human level.

There is only one thing to do with such rats: set a trap for them or feed them poison cheese and watch them puke and vomit until they die. Better yet, let the cat catch their asses. It is beautiful watching the cat catch a rat, seeing how still the cat will become while stalking his prey. But the cat will lie in wait for the rat as long as it takes, never moving, never batting his eye. And then he leaps upon his prey and devours him. It is a beautiful sight when when the cat and rat game reaches the climax and ends with the consumption of the rat by the cat.
--Marvin X
7/15/15 

Parable of the No People

No, no, no! That is all you say. Everything about you is no. Your lips say no, your eyes, your heart, your mind, your arms, your legs, your feet. You are a no person. I run from you. You say no to God. I am afraid of your no touch. I cannot expand my mind around no people. You will kill my spiritual development. No no no no!
When you say yes to life you open the world of infinite possibilities. I understand no part of no, only infinite possibilities. No does not exist in my world, only yes. Yes to love. Yes to success, yes to hope, yes to truth, yes to prosperity, yet to divinity, yes to resurrection, yes to ascension, yes to eternity. I am the language of yes. If you cannot say yes, get away from me. I run from you, want nothing to do with you. There is no hope for you until you open your mouth to yes.

Cast away the yes fear. Let it go, let God. Yes. No matter what, yes. No matter how long, yes. No matter how hard, yes. Let there be peace in the house, yes. Let there be love between you and me, yes. Let there be revolution in the land, over the world, yes. We will try harder, yes, we won't give up, yes. We shall triumph, yes. Yes is the language of God. Yes is the language of Divinity, Spirituality.

All the prophets said yes. Adam said yes, Abraham said yes. Moses said yes. Solomon said yes.Job said yes. Jeremiah, Isaiah said yes. The lover in Song of Solomon said yes. David said yes. John and Jesus said yes. Muhammad said yes. Elijah and Malcolm, Martin and Garvey, Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth said yes. Fannie Lou and Rosa Parks, Betty Shabazz and Coretta Scott said yes. Mama and daddy said yes. Grandma and grandpa said yes. All the ancestors said yes. Forevermore, let go of no and say yes. Dance to yes. Shout to yes!


--Marvin X 

Parable of a Real Woman 

There was a man who had many women in his life. They had come and gone, with himself at fault most of the time. But he wouldn't give up, he continued his self improvement and search for that special woman. He talked with elder women about what he should do. One told him he'd never had a real woman! If so, she would still be with him, no matter what, through thick and thin, up times and down times. Well, he asked, how would he know when such a woman was in his presence. First, clean up your own act, she said. Scoop your own poop. Rid yourself of defects of character. Make amendments to all those you have harmed in life. It takes humility to do this.

Still, how will I know the real woman? The older woman answered, you will know because when she comes over your house and sees something amiss, she will take authority to correct the situation. If your house is dirty, she will immediately ask if she can clean it as a favor to you, as an act of love. She will not want any money for her services. And she will clean your house as it has never been cleaned before because she knows what she is doing. Yes, she is a pro, not only with house cleaning but with every thing she does, including her love making. She will make sure you are satisfied and herself as well.

She will demand respect and will respect you. She will demand freedom and give you freedom. She will speak in the language of love so smooth that it will be like a razor cutting to the heart. You will be bleeding to death but not know you are cut.

You will do what she suggests and do it willingly because it will not be a demand but a request said so subtle you won't recognize it for what it actually is: a demand. And you will love doing what she requests.

When you need space and time to yourself you won't need to explain, she will pick up the vibe.

And you will do the same for her.

She will not be jealous and envious of your talent and skills or how handsome you are to other women. She knows she has you in her pocket because she is confident of herself, and not worried about some other woman taking her man.

If you are taken by another woman, it must be the will of God that you go. She knows God will replace her emptiness with someone even better than you. But she will give you time to get a grip on yourself and find your way back home. Just don't take too long and when you come home don't be asking about what she was doing while you were gone.

A real woman will put her resources at your disposal if you are worthy of them, as the prophet Muhammad was treated by the wealthy trade woman Khadijah. There is no selfishness in love. All is for the beloved, but a wise woman ain't no fool. As the song says, the greatest thing you will ever do is love and be loved in return.

The man thanked the elder woman for her wisdom and departed on his search.
from the Wisdom of Plato Negro, parables/fables, Marvin X, Black Bird Press, Berkeley, 2012.

Comment on the Wisdom of Plato Negro

The Wisdom of Plato Negro is for the forty something up. No persons who haven't lived a few years can appreciate the things Marvin X says in The Wisdom of Plato Negro. You need to be at least forty to understand, and even then, this is not a book to read in one setting, even if it is easy reading. It is a book to read in a relaxed situation, and then only read one or two of the parables at a time. They must be carefully digested, each one.

Think about them, what was the real meaning? Again, if you haven't lived a few years, there's no way you can appreciate some of the things he says. For example, the Parable of the Real Woman. A young man who hasn't had many experiences with women cannot possibly understand this parable. If a woman comes to his house and cleans it out of love, a young man cannot appreciate this. He will tell her thanks, then go get a flashy woman who is never going to clean his house, mainly because she doesn't know how. But the dude will go for her because she is cute, but the real woman he rejects, the one with common sense and dignity, who may not be a beauty queen.

--Anon 

Parable of the Preacher's Wife

There was a preacher who had a most beautiful wife. She used to come pass Plato Negro's street academy on da corner of 14th and Broadway, downtown Oakland. She was so beautiful Plato Negro had to stop teaching whenever she passed. Her skin was clean and glowing. Her clothes were of fine cloth. Her legs were well shaped, her shoes expensive.

At first she would take Plato's writings home to read. But she came one day to tell him she could not read anymore of his writings because they were not in accord with the Bible, specifically the King James version.

Plato Negro asked her if she knew the history of King James, that he was a pervert, murderer, robber, rapist who gave "his version" of God's word? How could such a devil have a version of God's word? Would you believe John Dillinger's version of the Bible? During the reign of King James kidnapped Africans arrived in North America by way of the Good Ship Jesus, captained by Sir John Hawkins, author of that Christian classic song Amazing Grace. Yes, along with John Hawkins, King James I was among the wretched gang of English slave traders.

The preacher's wife said she didn't care about King James, all she cared about was what Jesus said. How do you know what Jesus said, all you know is what somebody said Jesus said, and we know how people lie? The only time he wrote anything was on the sand. And we know what happens when the tide comes in.

Plato Negro was hurt when she refused to take anymore of his writings. He told her she was too beautiful to be so narrow minded, and that truth was in many books besides the Bible. Didn't Jesus say truth would set you free?

I am free, said the preacher's wife, Jesus set her free and she didn't need to read anything else.

Plato wanted to know how could she be so beautiful, yet so ignorant. She told him some of her history, that she had been a dope fiend on cocaine, had been tossed up by men in the dope house, but Jesus saved her.

You saved yourself, Plato Negro told her. We know God helps those who help themselves. If you take one step He will take ten. When you were ready to stop being a dope fiend, you stopped, Jesus had nothing to do with it! Plato sensed she was leaning on Jesus for a crutch, that there was something still in her soul that was not right and she had more healing to do.

But my husband is a preacher, she said. So what, Plato Negro replied? He has known many wicked preachers, so it was of no value that her husband was a preacher. Every tub must sit on its own bottom.

The preacher's wife was silent for a moment. She seemed to be considering his words. He told her there is only one truth and that if it was true for her, it was true for him. By degrees you shall come to see the truth of my words, he said.

The story of Jesus is a very ancient tale, told in many countries thousands of years before the birth of Jesus. We know at least sixteen crucified saviors, all had a virgin birth, stars were seen in the sky when they were born, wise men came to visit the baby savior who later taught but was eventually crucified, resurrected and ascended to heaven.

For a moment, Plato Negro saw a light flicker in the head of the preacher's wife. Beautiful woman, he said, go in the name of Jesus, if it is Him whom you serve. Just know there is one mind, one truth, one spiritual energy in the universe and we are all connected to that force, the just and the unjust.

She said goodbye and crossed the street. Plato said to himself, "Cute but psycho!"

--Marvin X

4/1/10

For more information on the Savior myth, see The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors by Kersey Graves; Anacalypsis, Godfrey Higgins; Man, God and Civilization by John G. Jackson;The Golden Bough by Sir James George Frazer.

from The Wisdom of Plato Negro, Parables/Fables, Marvin X, Black Bird Press, Berkeley Ca., $19.95. Available from Academy of da Corner, 14th and Broadway, downtown Oakland CA. 
jmarvinx@yahoo.com