Dr. Umar Johnson Discusses Inter-Racial Marriage, President Trump, Self-...
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black bird press news, voice of freedom fighters everywhere
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from the archives--of monks and ministers by marvin x
Of Monks and Ministers
By Marvin X
The recent march of protesting monks through the streets of Myanmar (Burma) has demonstrated once again the spiritual power of activist clergy. We suggest that ministers in America take to the streets in a show of spiritual power to attack political and social problems such as the war in Iraq and war in the hoods of our inner cities. Perhaps long lines of preachers leading their flocks to the promise land of social justice will have a healing effect on this wretched nation that somehow thinks it can bring democracy to Iraq at gunpoint and not have gun play at home. Yes, we need to see our religious leaders in the streets tending to dissocialized youth and delusional politicians who believe in unprovoked wars for oil and white supremacy.
But sadly, America is not Myanmar and ministers don’t have the courage of monks these days, rather they sermonize about prosperity rather than corruption in high places, lest they offend pharaoh and suffer the fate of the Myanmar monks who have been shot, beaten and had their monasteries surrounded with troops and barbwire.
No, except for a few, our ministers are content to build crystal cathedrals and travel down safe roads to prosperity, meanwhile the monks show us that spirituality is not devoid of radical political consciousness and action to liberate the oppressed rather than advocate their followers drown themselves in filthy materialism on their way to heaven.
Having had a personal relationship with ministers as diverse as the Nation of Islam’s Farrakhan and Rev. Cecil Williams of San Francisco’s Glide Church, we know social activism can be a reality with determined and principled spiritual leaders. But perhaps it is romantic to think the majority of American clergy will step out of their comfort zone, certainly not to the degree of a Rev. Al Sharpton and Rev. Jesse Jackson, although these gentlemen often seem to be ambulance chasers, showing up at every accident for media performances.
Spirituality is an awesome power when utilized for the common good, but there are communities where the religious leaders are silent and seem to collaborate with sins such as gambling, prostitution and drug dealing, even murder, for as someone noted, often if the preachers didn’t condone such vices they would have no congregation since the children of church members provide their parents with money from criminal life that is given to churches in the form of tithes, thus many ministers are silent about drug dealing and the resultant violence and mayhem in their communities. They would not dare march in monk fashion to community dope spots to pray for wayward youth, or offer to save them by providing alternative economic solutions such as micro credit that is raising millions of people out of poverty around the world.
As my daughter in Houston, Texas, boarded the bus to march in Jena, Louisiana, she noted the organization skills and discipline of activist Muslims, but when she called around to Houston’s mega churches, she said they had no knowledge of buses leaving for Jena. And we recall that when a minister named Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., attended a national Baptist convention, he was called a hoodlum and thug. And pronouncements to the contrary, we sense he would be called a hoodlum and thug by many ministers today, yes, even while they profess to love Jesus, another hoodlum and thug of his day.
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from the archives--unity, criticism, unity
Marvin X on Unity, Criticism, Unity
There are those who seem to feel there are sacred cows that are beyond criticism. We do not accept this for who is without sin, no one! We thus have the right to criticize mama or daddy if and when they get down wrong. Sometimes we can doctor the patient to death, so Mao said cure the sickness to save the patient. So we must do surgery, examine the body, look for malignancies and repair contradictions.
Of course there is a time and place for the operation. Recently a young fool attacked Amiri Baraka at a breakfast in his honor. We think this was the wrong time to verbally assault an honored guest and the person should have been chastised. Baraka is our greatest living revolutionary writer and as our elder, he deserves much respect.
Now the sacred cow of the hour is our President. There are those North American Africans who want nothing critical said of Prez. Don't say nothing about him cause the white man is saying enough negative. I agree with Cornell West who says we must respect him, protect him, but check him. There is no need to be personal since it is his political policies, not his personality we must examine critically. He seems to have slowly slipped into the permanent war philosophy of his predecessors. He has no plan of substance to solve the unemployment quagmire. Capitulating to the Republicans on no taxation of the rich while extending unemployment checks for the poor is no answer for the long term problem of joblessness.
Yes, it hurts to hear the white man say our Prez has no backbone, but it's true. His concept of compromise is capitulation. Ishmael Reed is more reserved in his criticism, but let's see what Ish has to say in his New York Times op-ed column tomorrow. Ishmael pleads us to give the Prez more time in his book Obama and the Jim Crow Media and the Nigger Breakers, but I am totally disappointed in my book Pull Yo Pants Up fada Black Prez and Yoself. I'm ready to tell the brothers to pull yo pants down and show the Prez yo black unruly asses. Even our radical Congresswoman Barbara Lee has come out against his caving in to the Republication tax program. Now you don't wanna get Mama mad up in here! Unity, Criticism, Unity!
When I wrote an article about Minister Farrakhan, he sent me a message saying that I raked him over the coals, which I did, so he asked me to please contact him first when I want to write something about him so he can tell me his side of the story. I agreed.
Of course there are those who don't want anything critical written about the minister. Now the white man is exempt since he is allowed to say anything without reprisal, but we want to kill another North American African.
Don't ever think there is freedom of speech in the community of North American Africans. They want to muzzle you at every turn, especially the culture police, the gate keepers. Where is the free press in the Pan African world? Arab world--until Al Jazeera! Don't speak about the number of journalists killed in Mexico in the last few months, years.
Gary Webb and Sacramento Bee writer Fahizah Alim who interviewed him shortly before his suicide.
In America, we need only recall the supposed suicide of Gary Webb who exposed the US government Crack connection, and also the assassination of Oakland Post Editor Chauncey Bailey in broad daylight, downtown Oakland, because he was investigating the Oakland Police Department's shakedown, drug dealing, murder squad in black face. He was also investigating corruption at then Mayor Jerry Brown's City Hall.
At this hour we await the elimination (murder) of the founder of Wikileaks. Obama has made him a dead man walking for exposing the emperor has no clothes. So much for freedom of speech in America.
I don't care what someone writes about me, true or false, because usually I will have the last word! And furthermore, I've had the unique ability to outlive my enemies. In my memoir of Eldridge Cleaver, I said some things I probably wouldn't have said if he'd been alive. But he's said things about me that were outright lies. See the collection of his writings edited by Kathleen Cleaver. I actually hesitated writing about him to respect his children who, I feel, were somewhat embarrassed at the antics of their father. I'm sure my children were embarrassed at mine.
I haven't written about my beloved friend Amiri Baraka for the same reason, although someone asked him why hasn't Marvin written about him? He replied because Marvin knows I will have something to say about him!
In my play One Day in the Life, there is a scene about my last meeting with Huey Newton in a West Oakland Crack house. The Bay Area Black Panthers were not too pleased about the scene, although they didn't mind my remarks about Eldridge in the play. When we did the play on the east coast, the New York Panthers pulled me aside to let me know they didn't give a damn about Huey Newton, that Eldridge was their man. As we know, when the Black Panther Party split, Huey's army was on the west coast, Eldridge's on the east.
In Oakland, I officiated the memorial service for Eldridge. Kathleen attended. She said it was a nice service but there were too many Muslims, which is ironic since Eldridge denounced the Muslims even before he was released from prison. Of course when he became a Born Again Christian, Muslims dominated the staff of his ministry, with myself as his chief assistant. See Eldridge Cleaver, My Friend the Devil, a memoir, Marvin X, 2009, introduction by Amiri Baraka.
Those who have sacred cows must simply keep their cows in the barn. Sometimes we have thin skin and want nothing said negative about the sacred cow.
Certainly, we felt this way about the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. We were ready to kill anyone who said something negative about the man we considered the lamb of God.
Minister Farrakhan has confessed he fanned the flames of Malcolm's murder. At the time I was critical of Malcolm but I got over it when I realized shit happens in revolution. Read the history of any revolution, African, Chinese, Russian, Cuban, Mexican, American, and you shall find similar happenings, betrayal, jealousy, envy, assassination (character and physical). As per Malcolm and Elijah, again, I love them both and always shall. They both helped form my consciousness and I cannot deny this.
I wrote a poem recently praising Clara Muhammad, first wife of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, a woman not often praised in the history of North American Africans. John Woodford, former editor of Muhammad Speaks, said it will be one of my classic poems because it honors a great woman.
A Muslim who was not part of the first resurrection got upset with the poem because of what I said about Elijah, the wretched condition he was in when Master Fard Muhammad knocked on his door in Detroit. Why did Master Fard knock on his door? Wasn't it because he was deaf, dumb and blind? Shall I say I wasn't deaf, dumb and blind when I accepted the teachings of the HEM? Shall I say I knew what was happening because I was attending San Francisco State University and the white man had hipped me to what's happening?
No, we were some blind, deaf and dumb so-called Negroes at San Francisco State University, although we had heard Malcolm rapping, but there was much Supreme wisdom we lacked that would later take our consciousness to a higher level. We (and I speak for all the black students in the Bay Area who became Muslims and/or came into black consciousness) must be eternally grateful for Brother Edward who came on campuses with Muhammad Speaks to save our lives with the teachings. In our ignut, arrogant, mis-education, we spate upon and cursed brother Edward for interrupting our Bid Whist game! Called him nigguh, motherfucker and everything under the sun for simply trying to wake up our dead, deaf, dumb and blind asses.
All the people, especially students in the Bay who came into the Nation or were influenced by the Nation in the late 60s know what I'm talking about, and this includes Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, Oba T'Shaka, Donald Warden (Khalid Abdullah Tariq Al Mansour), Norman Brown, Askia Muhammad, Fahizah Alim, Joan Tarika Lewis, Timothy Allen Simon, Abdul Sabry, Mar'yam Waidai, et al.
Unity, Criticism, Unity! We must be able to criticize each other constructively, to engage in debate and dialogue. This is how civilize people conduct their affairs. Now savages want to kill, no debate, no dialogue, no comment. Man, I wanna smoke dat nigguh! Grow up, get a life! Will you hide the truth while you know? (Al Qur'an)
--Marvin X
12/10/10
There are those who seem to feel there are sacred cows that are beyond criticism. We do not accept this for who is without sin, no one! We thus have the right to criticize mama or daddy if and when they get down wrong. Sometimes we can doctor the patient to death, so Mao said cure the sickness to save the patient. So we must do surgery, examine the body, look for malignancies and repair contradictions.
Of course there is a time and place for the operation. Recently a young fool attacked Amiri Baraka at a breakfast in his honor. We think this was the wrong time to verbally assault an honored guest and the person should have been chastised. Baraka is our greatest living revolutionary writer and as our elder, he deserves much respect.
Now the sacred cow of the hour is our President. There are those North American Africans who want nothing critical said of Prez. Don't say nothing about him cause the white man is saying enough negative. I agree with Cornell West who says we must respect him, protect him, but check him. There is no need to be personal since it is his political policies, not his personality we must examine critically. He seems to have slowly slipped into the permanent war philosophy of his predecessors. He has no plan of substance to solve the unemployment quagmire. Capitulating to the Republicans on no taxation of the rich while extending unemployment checks for the poor is no answer for the long term problem of joblessness.
Yes, it hurts to hear the white man say our Prez has no backbone, but it's true. His concept of compromise is capitulation. Ishmael Reed is more reserved in his criticism, but let's see what Ish has to say in his New York Times op-ed column tomorrow. Ishmael pleads us to give the Prez more time in his book Obama and the Jim Crow Media and the Nigger Breakers, but I am totally disappointed in my book Pull Yo Pants Up fada Black Prez and Yoself. I'm ready to tell the brothers to pull yo pants down and show the Prez yo black unruly asses. Even our radical Congresswoman Barbara Lee has come out against his caving in to the Republication tax program. Now you don't wanna get Mama mad up in here! Unity, Criticism, Unity!
When I wrote an article about Minister Farrakhan, he sent me a message saying that I raked him over the coals, which I did, so he asked me to please contact him first when I want to write something about him so he can tell me his side of the story. I agreed.
Of course there are those who don't want anything critical written about the minister. Now the white man is exempt since he is allowed to say anything without reprisal, but we want to kill another North American African.
Don't ever think there is freedom of speech in the community of North American Africans. They want to muzzle you at every turn, especially the culture police, the gate keepers. Where is the free press in the Pan African world? Arab world--until Al Jazeera! Don't speak about the number of journalists killed in Mexico in the last few months, years.
Gary Webb and Sacramento Bee writer Fahizah Alim who interviewed him shortly before his suicide.
In America, we need only recall the supposed suicide of Gary Webb who exposed the US government Crack connection, and also the assassination of Oakland Post Editor Chauncey Bailey in broad daylight, downtown Oakland, because he was investigating the Oakland Police Department's shakedown, drug dealing, murder squad in black face. He was also investigating corruption at then Mayor Jerry Brown's City Hall.
At this hour we await the elimination (murder) of the founder of Wikileaks. Obama has made him a dead man walking for exposing the emperor has no clothes. So much for freedom of speech in America.
I don't care what someone writes about me, true or false, because usually I will have the last word! And furthermore, I've had the unique ability to outlive my enemies. In my memoir of Eldridge Cleaver, I said some things I probably wouldn't have said if he'd been alive. But he's said things about me that were outright lies. See the collection of his writings edited by Kathleen Cleaver. I actually hesitated writing about him to respect his children who, I feel, were somewhat embarrassed at the antics of their father. I'm sure my children were embarrassed at mine.
I haven't written about my beloved friend Amiri Baraka for the same reason, although someone asked him why hasn't Marvin written about him? He replied because Marvin knows I will have something to say about him!
In my play One Day in the Life, there is a scene about my last meeting with Huey Newton in a West Oakland Crack house. The Bay Area Black Panthers were not too pleased about the scene, although they didn't mind my remarks about Eldridge in the play. When we did the play on the east coast, the New York Panthers pulled me aside to let me know they didn't give a damn about Huey Newton, that Eldridge was their man. As we know, when the Black Panther Party split, Huey's army was on the west coast, Eldridge's on the east.
In Oakland, I officiated the memorial service for Eldridge. Kathleen attended. She said it was a nice service but there were too many Muslims, which is ironic since Eldridge denounced the Muslims even before he was released from prison. Of course when he became a Born Again Christian, Muslims dominated the staff of his ministry, with myself as his chief assistant. See Eldridge Cleaver, My Friend the Devil, a memoir, Marvin X, 2009, introduction by Amiri Baraka.
Those who have sacred cows must simply keep their cows in the barn. Sometimes we have thin skin and want nothing said negative about the sacred cow.
Certainly, we felt this way about the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. We were ready to kill anyone who said something negative about the man we considered the lamb of God.
Minister Farrakhan has confessed he fanned the flames of Malcolm's murder. At the time I was critical of Malcolm but I got over it when I realized shit happens in revolution. Read the history of any revolution, African, Chinese, Russian, Cuban, Mexican, American, and you shall find similar happenings, betrayal, jealousy, envy, assassination (character and physical). As per Malcolm and Elijah, again, I love them both and always shall. They both helped form my consciousness and I cannot deny this.
I wrote a poem recently praising Clara Muhammad, first wife of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, a woman not often praised in the history of North American Africans. John Woodford, former editor of Muhammad Speaks, said it will be one of my classic poems because it honors a great woman.
A Muslim who was not part of the first resurrection got upset with the poem because of what I said about Elijah, the wretched condition he was in when Master Fard Muhammad knocked on his door in Detroit. Why did Master Fard knock on his door? Wasn't it because he was deaf, dumb and blind? Shall I say I wasn't deaf, dumb and blind when I accepted the teachings of the HEM? Shall I say I knew what was happening because I was attending San Francisco State University and the white man had hipped me to what's happening?
No, we were some blind, deaf and dumb so-called Negroes at San Francisco State University, although we had heard Malcolm rapping, but there was much Supreme wisdom we lacked that would later take our consciousness to a higher level. We (and I speak for all the black students in the Bay Area who became Muslims and/or came into black consciousness) must be eternally grateful for Brother Edward who came on campuses with Muhammad Speaks to save our lives with the teachings. In our ignut, arrogant, mis-education, we spate upon and cursed brother Edward for interrupting our Bid Whist game! Called him nigguh, motherfucker and everything under the sun for simply trying to wake up our dead, deaf, dumb and blind asses.
All the people, especially students in the Bay who came into the Nation or were influenced by the Nation in the late 60s know what I'm talking about, and this includes Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, Oba T'Shaka, Donald Warden (Khalid Abdullah Tariq Al Mansour), Norman Brown, Askia Muhammad, Fahizah Alim, Joan Tarika Lewis, Timothy Allen Simon, Abdul Sabry, Mar'yam Waidai, et al.
Unity, Criticism, Unity! We must be able to criticize each other constructively, to engage in debate and dialogue. This is how civilize people conduct their affairs. Now savages want to kill, no debate, no dialogue, no comment. Man, I wanna smoke dat nigguh! Grow up, get a life! Will you hide the truth while you know? (Al Qur'an)
--Marvin X
12/10/10
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history of usa interfering in elections worldwide
The U.S. is no stranger to interfering in the elections of other countries
Nina Agrawal
Update: President Obama on Thursday slapped Russia with new penalties for meddling in the U.S. presidential election, kicking out dozens of suspected spies and imposing banking restrictions on five people and four organizations the administration says were involved.
The CIA has accused Russia of interfering in the 2016 presidential election by hacking into Democratic and Republican computer networks and selectively releasing emails. But critics might point out the U.S. has done similar things.
The U.S. has a long history of attempting to influence presidential elections in other countries – it’s done so as many as 81 times between 1946 and 2000, according to a database amassed by political scientist Dov Levin of Carnegie Mellon University.
That number doesn’t include military coups and regime change efforts following the election of candidates the U.S. didn’t like, notably those in Iran, Guatemala and Chile. Nor does it include general assistance with the electoral process, such as election monitoring.
Levin defines intervention as “a costly act which is designed to determine the election results [in favor of] one of the two sides.” These acts, carried out in secret two-thirds of the time, include funding the election campaigns of specific parties, disseminating misinformation or propaganda, training locals of only one side in various campaigning or get-out-the-vote techniques, helping one side design their campaign materials, making public pronouncements or threats in favor of or against a candidate, and providing or withdrawing foreign aid.
In 59% of these cases, the side that received assistance came to power, although Levin estimates the average effect of “partisan electoral interventions” to be only about a 3% increase in vote share.
The U.S. hasn’t been the only one trying to interfere in other countries’ elections, according to Levin’s data. Russia attempted to sway 36 foreign elections from the end of World War II to the turn of the century – meaning that, in total, at least one of the two great powers of the 20th century intervened in about 1 of every 9 competitive, national-level executive elections in that time period.
Italy’s 1948 general election is an early example of a race where U.S. actions probably influenced the outcome.
“We threw everything, including the kitchen sink” at helping the Christian Democrats beat the Communists in Italy, said Levin, including covertly delivering “bags of money” to cover campaign expenses, sending experts to help run the campaign, subsidizing “pork” projects like land reclamation, and threatening publicly to end U.S. aid to Italy if the Communists were elected.
Levin said that U.S. intervention probably played an important role in preventing a Communist Party victory, not just in 1948, but in seven subsequent Italian elections.
Throughout the Cold War, U.S. involvement in foreign elections was mainly motivated by the goal of containing communism, said Thomas Carothers, a foreign policy expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “The U.S. didn’t want to see left-wing governments elected, and so it did engage fairly often in trying to influence elections in other countries,” Carothers said.
This approach carried over into the immediate post-Soviet period.
In the 1990 Nicaragua elections, the CIA leaked damaging information on alleged corruption by the Marxist Sandinistas to German newspapers, according to Levin. The opposition used those reports against the Sandinista candidate, Daniel Ortega. He lost to opposition candidate Violeta Chamorro.
In Czechoslovakia that same year, the U.S. provided training and campaign funding to Vaclav Havel’s party and its Slovak affiliate as they planned for the country’s first democratic election after its transition away from communism.
“The thinking was that we wanted to make sure communism was dead and buried,” said Levin.
Even after that, the U.S. continued trying to influence elections in its favor.
In Haiti after the 1986 overthrow of dictator and U.S. ally Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, the CIA sought to support particular candidates and undermine Jean-Bertrande Aristide, a Roman Catholic priest and proponent of liberation theology. The New York Times reported in the 1990s that the CIA had on its payroll members of the military junta that would ultimately unseat Aristide after he was democratically elected in a landslide over Marc Bazin, a former World Bank official and finance minister favored by the U.S.
The U.S. also attempted to sway Russian elections. In 1996, with the presidency of Boris Yeltsin and the Russian economy flailing, President Clinton endorsed a $10.2-billion loan from the International Monetary Fund linked to privatization, trade liberalization and other measures that would move Russia toward a capitalist economy. Yeltsin used the loan to bolster his popular support, telling voters that only he had the reformist credentials to secure such loans, according to media reports at the time. He used the money, in part, for social spending before the election, including payment of back wages and pensions.
In the Middle East, the U.S. has aimed to bolster candidates who could further the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. In 1996, seeking to fulfill the legacy of assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the peace accords the U.S. brokered, Clinton openly supported Shimon Peres, convening a peace summit in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el Sheik to boost his popular support and inviting him to a meeting at the White House a month before the election.
“We were persuaded that if [Likud candidate Benjamin] Netanyahu were elected, the peace process would be closed for the season,” said Aaron David Miller, who worked at the State Department at the time.
In 1999, in a more subtle effort to sway the election, top Clinton strategists, including James Carville, were sent to advise Labor candidate Ehud Barak in the election against Netanyahu.
In Yugoslavia, the U.S. and NATO had long sought to cut off Serbian nationalist and Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic from the international system through economic sanctions and military action. In 2000, the U.S. spent millions of dollars in aid for political parties, campaign costs and independent media. Funding and broadcast equipment provided to the media arms of the opposition were a decisive factor in electing opposition candidate Vojislav Kostunica as Yugoslav president, according to Levin. “If it wouldn’t have been for overt intervention … Milosevic would have been very likely to have won another term,” he said.
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from the archives--notes on black arts movement theatre by marvin x, poet, playwright
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from the archives--pillar award for marvin x
Congratulations Marvin X for receiving the 1st Annual Pillar Award for your Eldership and tireless work and pioneering spirit in the Black Arts and Black Power movement, thank you for introducing Eldridge Cleaver to Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, thank you for sharing your journey and testimonies, thank you for teaching us how to fight institutionalized racism and white supremacy with your strong example of self-determination through Black Bird Press, thank you moving forward to educate the masses through theater and poetry even after you got 'White Listed' from professorship in the UC System because you taught THE TRUTH, thank you for rising from the jaws of Cointelpro like a Phoenix to continue the struggle!!! We Stand Strong on your Legacy. Bless you Baba Marvin X. Ase,
-Toussaint Haki Stewart with the Elder Zone.
-Toussaint Haki Stewart with the Elder Zone.
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from the archives--marvin x fictional interview with prez obama
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harrison chastang, news director, kpoo radio, san francisco, interviews marvin x on the black arts movement business district
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dr. nathan hare emails marvin x on the true history of black scholar magazine
photo adam turner
Marvin. And as far as The Black Scholar is concerned, whenever people are talking about something they never have but part of the picture. I used to get couples in who’d broken up years ago but the courts or/and the schools demanded they get treatment re their child in trouble, and sometimes they’d be surprised of things they thought had happened or didn’t know what happened.
Say people would see articles by nationalists or somebody (and by the way, they wanted to reject Marxism that wasn’t acceptable, like Eldridge Cleaver was a no-no, a very creative professor little known in Canada), and they observer wouldn’t know what nationalism had been rejected or how hard I fought to get in something by Haki Madhubuti, or what had been rejected by whomever.
People might communicate with Chrisman as editor, but then when everything is brought to the editorial meeting before each issue he might not be for it. Plus Chrisman was always editing people’s stuff. The very first article I did, on the festival in Algiers in the first issue, he changed the first sentence. Then when we were drinking one night, he said remarked that I was a sociologist who could write like Hemingway (that sentence had been patterned after Hemingway).
I told him Bob he shouldn’t be chopping up these leading authors’ stuff a and don’t toucha sentence of mine. He wanted to be an English teacher and a chiseling poet. He could write short pieces, but not long ones. Poetry he could get together a few words a drink and take his time, but he couldn’t do a long essay very well if at all. He took off once for a month to write on a book we haven’t seen yet. He objected to m y article on Black Ecology. He’d already written one in Scanlon’s (?) short-lived but well promoted white magazine, saying “Ecology is a Racist Shuck.” Then here I come with “Black Ecology” saying we could take it higher but blacks would have to show them the way, because our ecological condition was more social, the solution would have to be more social and thus more human. It went all over the place. He opposed my publisher’s statements, according to Al Ross, particularly the one in the second issue written partly when I was in jail.
Or so Al told me. So I stopped doing them in a huff because I always had some writing assignment in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when the Harvard professor included me among “Thirteen Black Intellectuals” in an Esquire article, just saying, I didn’t need it but Bob Chrisman did because, even today, his name is nothing apart from The Black Scholar. And, though I haven’t seen a copy in many years, I’d wager it’s nothing like it was when I was there, if anybody wants to check it out. We used to do each issue on a special topic. About a very few in, Bob Chrisman announced we’d run out of topics, but I rattled off about five on the spot and we kept on, at least as long as I was there.
The Black Scholar kicked off so well because a white guy who usually got a thousand dollars for designing covers (say ten thousand in today’s terms) voluntarily did the cover through Alan Ross, who was co-owner of Graphic Arts of Marin. But he didn’t fund us, though he’d print free at first and let us use an office in the building free at first. But we started the journal by chipping in three hundred dollars apiece, except that it didn’t total nine hundred dollars, just seven hundred and fifty, because Bob Chrisman couldn’t come up with but half of his. That’s why the irony of his willing it to his daughter. Who would have thought of such a thing. I made many mistakes in life, but one was not in leaving with Al Ross as he continued to implore me to do, as we could have put The Black Scholar in the shade.
The Black Scholar kicked off so well because a white guy who usually got a thousand dollars for designing covers (say ten thousand in today’s terms) voluntarily did the cover through Alan Ross, who was co-owner of Graphic Arts of Marin. But he didn’t fund us, though he’d print free at first and let us use an office in the building free at first. But we started the journal by chipping in three hundred dollars apiece, except that it didn’t total nine hundred dollars, just seven hundred and fifty, because Bob Chrisman couldn’t come up with but half of his. That’s why the irony of his willing it to his daughter. Who would have thought of such a thing. I made many mistakes in life, but one was not in leaving with Al Ross as he continued to implore me to do, as we could have put The Black Scholar in the shade.
Nathan Hare
From: Nathan Hare
Sent: Tuesday, July 18, 2017 11:32 AM
Sent: Tuesday, July 18, 2017 11:32 AM
Marvin,
Just thinking, for what it’s worth to your friend who missed seeing me at The Black Scholar, you don’t see much of any head people when you go into a place or enterprise, seldom the president of the bank when you go to make a loan let alone to make a deposit or cash a check. Like people who go to church don’t see God there but testify that they saw him somewhere else and want to be saved. Plus when I went back to school, essentially leaving The Black Scholar except for helping them get two grants of $10,l000, in money of that day, like a $100,000l each now. I was on the Board of the San Francisco Local Development Corporation s well as on the Point Foundation in Sausalito. Among others. When Al Ross left in 1973, Robert Allen had come on as associate editor and I agreed with Bob Crhisman to let Robert Allen take Al’s place on the Board, if he’d let my former secretary, Glroia Bevien, who had been assisting Al Ross, be Business Manager. In time, with me gone, returning to school in September 1973, I was only at The Black Scholar for the weekly Friday morning business meeting. In my mind, I was going to leave when I got the degree. Al Ross kept trying to get me to leave with him and would ask me to stop by the Black Scholar Book Club he had taken with him to an office in a church at the edge of Marin City. I could have taken the Black Scholar Lecture Bureau (both entities would fold anyway) and God knows what else we could have done from there.
You didn’t have that kind of black book club in those days or black lecture bureaus who knew that the trick is not getting a list of prominent speakers so much as getting the gigs by courting BSU leaders and Black faculty and while college lecture chiefs. You can always get the speaker or the next best thing if you are presenting them with a gig. Conference planners and the like. One needs a clerk on the phone all day courting such individuals, not the speakers you can get with the drop of a dollar bill. So my office was in the back, the biggest one, usually with the door closed, and in which I even did copyreading and would find umpteen errors after the staff had finished; the office we held the weekly meetings in,. But after 1973, I wasn’t even on the premises other than Friday mornings. I left in late March of 1973, instead of August as I had planned when I returned to school, because I was getting so upset when all three continued to team up against me in my absence, which I guess they resented and Bob had as a good selling point to the unenlightened, so a meeting blew up, and I came home and Julia called Al Ross’s widow, as he had recently died, and she came over with their daughter and the three women urged me to quit then instead of August. I guess they feared something might happen though I was no longer packing, because things had come to a head that morning.
Nathan Hare
Phone: 415-474-1707
Fax: 415-589-7983
On Wednesday, July 19, 2017, 2:32:40 PM PDT, Marvin X Jackmon wrote:
Marvin,
Check out this link. http://sk.sagepub.com/reference/blackstudies/n76.xml
I just took a notion to try to see what kind of articles The Black Scholar might be doing ideologically these days – to see if it wasn’t more petite bourgeoisie noir or otherwise cloaked in Afrocentrism in the kingdom of Africana -- and this popped up wherein some clowns are saying The Black Scholar was founded by Al Ross and Robert Chrisman, with no mention l’il ol’ me! You can take an egocentric so-an-so out of white studies and polka dot studies and make him afrocentric or ethnocentric or just let him stay eccentric, if you want him to. Either way – as Don King put it recently , he’ll still be “just a nigger” (Disclaimer: Don King’s words, not mine).
marvin x reply to dr hare
doc, you know we call this revisionist negro history, another crisis of the negro intellectual. they often give their narratives of black history that jump from marcus garvey to malcolm x, never mentioning elijah muhammad. in the black arts movement history, they make me a minor player, although i worked in bam coast to coast, wrote in soulbook, black dialogue, journal of black poetry, negro digest/black world, black theatre, black scholar and muhammad speaks; founded black arts west theatre, black house, san francisco and worked at the new lafayette theatre in harlem, taught black studies at fresno state u., san francisco state u, uc berkeley, uc san diego, mills college, laney and merritt; have written 30 books. minor player my motherfuckin ass!
--marvin x
Jul 19 at 3:31 PM
Subject: Re: black bird press news--dr. nathan hare on the true history of black scholar magazine
Nathan Hare has always seemed to me a man of fascinating, wide-ranging opinions, some (just a few) of which, to me, miss the point. But when it comes to brass tacks, or hard facts, he seems to hit the nail on the head, so this is a sniper of history to take seriously.
Bob Chrisman was one of those unusual people who could speak in a string of bon mots on a variety of topics--music, literature, sports, politics, technology and more -- profound and poetic in conversation, but, as Hare notes, for some reason, except in his poetry, not given to longer prose runs. Yet, being as dogged as he was stubborn, he pulled himself together here in Ann Arbor to write a doctoral dissertation on Robert Hayden.
In the years I knew him, however, whenever I heard him speak of the founding of the Black Scholar, he always mentioned Nathan Hare as present at the creation. Since I knew that anyway, the private statement may not amount to much, and I don't know what he had to say publicly on that question. I could sense there was bad blood of some sort between them arising from the Scholar relationship. He didn't invite questions on the matter and I was not one to probe for gossip, but he didn't disparage you, Nathan. And as you may perhaps agree,
I don't know anything about Ross, but it strikes me, looking back, that it is too bad the Hare-Chrisman-Allen triumvirate couldn't hold, since it was certainly a constellation of mind and talent that could have produce a publication that blazed even more brightly and remarkably than it did in its prime.
Hey, Marvin: I sure like that T shirt!!
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belated hapi b day assata
TOMORROW: ON SUNDAY, JULY 16, 2017 @ 4:30 pm IN NEWARK, NEW JERSEY...
IS THE 70th BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION FOR ASSATA SHAKUR
THE NEW JERSEY BLACK PANTHER PARTY COMMEMORATION COMMITTEE
“To move a blade of grass is to change the world…”
Huey P. Newton
July 2017
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE!
EXILED PANTHER ASSATA SHAKUR WILL BE FETED AT 70!
On Sunday, July 16th, a cross section of activists, artists and humanitarians will come together to salute Assata Shakur, the long exiled Black Panther who resides in Cuba to mark her 70th birthday.
The gathering is called ‘For The Love Of Freedom: Assata Is Always Welcome Here-An Honoring of 70 Years of a Committed Life.’
It will not be the usual maligning of Shakur in connection with the bounty on her head that comes from the NJ State Police, the FBI and the law enforcement community.
Instead, it will be an evening of poetry, dance, song, testimony and more, appreciating the activist’s lifetime commitment to the struggle for human dignity.
Shakur was born on July 16th, 1947 to a proud, independent Black family from Wilmington, North Carolina. At the turn of the 20th century, Wilmington was the site of a vicious ethnic cleansing attack that literally ran legions of African Americans from the town. Shakur’s grandparents dared to be landowning business persons against this violently segregated background. It is from this background that would emerge her own commitment and courage that she would take into the Black Panther Party as a college student.
When the Black Panther Party was faced with the dangerous distinction of being labelled the ‘greatest threat to the internal security’ of the country by the FBI, and when NY chapters of the Party came under particular attack after surviving the NY 21 case, a case where 21 Panthers, officers and rank and file members were put on trial for bogus conspiracy charges to commit terrorist acts, charges that would have landed them in prison for the rest of their lives, Shakur and a number of other Panthers opted to go underground and create the Black Liberation Army to continue their fight.
On May 2, 1973, Shakur was shot and critically injured in an incident on the NJ Turnpike that would capture international attention. It is often referred to as the ‘Turnpike Incident,’ an apparent racial profiling stop by a NJ State Trooper. The incident left Shakur critically wounded, Zayd Shakur, the apparent driver dead and Trooper Werner Foerster dead. At her trial, forensic evidence clearly established that Shakur was shot with her hands up, and that the Trooper who made the stop, James Harper, by his own admission, started the shooting and fled the scene. Yet Shakur and her co-defendant Sundiata Acoli, now 80 and still incarcerated, were each given sentences of life plus thirty years, after being convicted for the murder of Trooper Foerster. On November 2, 1979, Shakur was liberated from what was then the Clinton Correctional Facility in one of the most incredible moments in the history of the Black Liberation Movement after enduring threats on her life while in prison. She was since given exile in Cuba. She currently has a 2 million dollar bounty for her capture and was put on the FBI’s Domestic Terrorist List retroactively several years ago.
Meanwhile, supporters of Shakur, and many others in the human rights community believe that cases like hers should be reopened in a context of a Truth And Reconciliation Commission that takes on how racism drove police violence and repression during that period, a framework comparable to what emerged in South Africa on their road to dismantling Apartheid.
In 1987, Shakur penned a moving memoir of her life story, Assata:An Autobiography. She has lent her voice to other humanitarian efforts and to the support many other of her comrades from the Black Panther Party who are still in prison as a result of the now well-known COINTELPRO Operations that were empanelled to destroy the Party and other important Black leaders. She is the subject of a moving film Eyes Of The Rainbow done by critically acclaimed filmmaker Afro-Cuban filmmaker Gloria Rolando Ocasio. While murderously maligned by mainstream press and racist and opportunist politicians, she is considered a miraculous surviving link to the Underground Railroad legacy of her ancestors.
“Assata was not even an officer or a leader in the Party, and yet there was this obsession with going after her, or rather with going after rank and file members of the Party, as intensely as they were going after its leadership.
“What happened to her is a prime example of the length that the government was willing to go to destroy the Party,” said Zayid Muhammad, a longtime supporter of Shakur and a principal organizer of the gathering.
“The fact that she survived her incredible ordeal and was able to secure some semblance of freedom, albeit exiled, is a testimony to the spiritual will of our people to survive the worse expressions of oppression and to be free,” he finished
Just as this moving gathering will feature poetry, song, dance, testimony from Shakur’s comrades, as indicated above, it will also lay out meaningful support measures to be taken in support of her Party comrades still in prison, appreciation of the Cuban Revolution and its incredible solidarity with the African world and the oppressed, and more.
This moving afternoon will take place at The REFAL Center, 271 So 9th Street, Newark at 4:30pm…"Hands Off Assata Shakur, Free Sundiata Acoli & Long Live The Panther Spirit Of Zayid Malik Shakur"
* Above: Read Assata's Book & Support The Revolutionary Art Of Captured Comrade Kevin Rashid Johnson
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black bird press news popular posts
POPULAR POSTS
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equity for oakland downtown plan
Dear Community Member,
The City of Oakland is excited to announce a relaunched and expanded process for developing a specific plan for downtown Oakland. The City began the Downtown Oakland Specific Plan process in fall of 2015 to create a vision and guiding policy to shape the downtown. The City then paused the process to hire a consulting team of local specialists in both social equity policy and community engagement to address the community’s concerns about racial disparities and displacement.
This Equity Team will supplement the work of the existing planning team by applying a social and racial equity lens to the process of developing a specific plan for downtown Oakland and deepening meaningful engagement of historically-underserved communities.
The expanded public process will include activities beginning this summer and continuing through the end of 2017, and will re-engage stakeholders and incorporate stakeholders from underrepresented communities. It has started with a series of activities targeted to leaders in communities of color and other communities whose voices are often not included in policy decisions.
Working Groups – Coming Soon!
The next phase is a series of working group meetings on four topic areas based on issues the community identified during the first phase of the specific plan process:
The next phase is a series of working group meetings on four topic areas based on issues the community identified during the first phase of the specific plan process:
- Housing, Affordability, Jobs, Training & Economic Opportunity Working Group
- Arts & Culture Working Group
- Streets, Connectivity & Built Environment Working Group
- Sustainability, Health, Safety, Recreation & Open Space Working Group
Community members interested in one of these topics are invited to join a working group. The first round of working group meetings will focus on social equity, the second on technical analysis, and the final round on implementation and prioritization. We encourage participants to commit to attending all three meetings for their working group topic.
If you would like to join one of the four working groups that will be meeting over the next several months, RSVP to the first meeting of that working group here to receive more details. The first round of meetings are the first week of August, from 5:30-8:00pm, at a downtown location near transit (specific location to be confirmed):
Social Equity Working Group Meetings
- Monday, July 31: Housing, Affordability, Jobs, Training & Economic Opportunity
- Tuesday, August 1: Arts & Culture
- Wednesday, August 2: Streets, Connectivity & Built Environment
- Thursday, August 3: Sustainability, Health, Safety, Recreation & Open Space
Other Opportunities
If these more intensive working groups are not for you, there will be other opportunities to participate in the planning process. There will be a series of neighborhood design meetings in October and public workshops in late 2017/early 2018 to help develop the draft plan. Stay tuned for more information!
If these more intensive working groups are not for you, there will be other opportunities to participate in the planning process. There will be a series of neighborhood design meetings in October and public workshops in late 2017/early 2018 to help develop the draft plan. Stay tuned for more information!
More InformationThe new EQTDTO (Equity in Downtown Oakland) outreach website for the Downtown Oakland Specific Plan is now live! Be sure to check it for more updates: https://www.eqtdto.com/
For plan documents and more information about the Downtown Oakland Specific Plan, please visit the following link: http://www.oaklandnet.com/plandowntownoakland
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Black Bird Press News & Review: Ghost writers and other ghosts in the BAMBD
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black woman is god exhibit
Co-curated by Karen Seneferu and Melorra Green The Black Woman is God: Divine Revolution is a group visual art exhibition with free admission celebrating the Black female presence as the highest spiritual form. More than 60 intergenerational artists working in sculpture, painting, new media, and photography create new myths to challenge Eurocentric notions of God.
Co-curators Seneferu and Green envision The Black Woman is God not only as an exhibition, but as a movement-building platform that explores the intersections of race and gender, dismantling racist and patriarchal notions that devalue Black women’s contributions to society. Now in its second iteration at SOMArts, The Black Woman is God: Divine Revolutionreveals Black women’s divinity and resilience despite intergenerational trauma and suppressed creativity.
Activated by live performances and a community cyper at the opening reception, The Black Woman is God asserts that subverting our notions of God is a spiritual and revolutionary act. As a statement by participating artists explains, “This exhibition is about Black women taking back their time, their rest, their dreams, and their creativity as a divine critical act, revealing how prayer and the convergences of women’s lives become transcendent through love.”
Opening with a public reception on Thursday, July 20, 6–10pm, The Black Woman is God will be activated by a performance procession of 100 Black women paying tribute to Black people who have worked tirelessly to heal the community through art, culture, and spirituality. The procession titled Opening the Way will include Black elders, youth, and girls who will walk from SOMArts’ parking lot to the gallery to honor their ancestors in an African libation before the performances begin.
The opening reception will also include performances by jazz musician Destiny Muhammad among many other legendary Bay Area performers.
Exhibiting artist Marissa Arterberry’s series of paintings titled The Funktresses is inspired by the aesthetics and soul of funk musicians — highlighting Black women’s influence on the musical genre.
A musician herself, Zakiya Harris’s video for the song Abracadabrakafrikareveals the community-building power of asserting the divinity of Black women.
Yasmin Sayyed’s painting Breath of Divinity connects to healing through an embrace of cosmologies of the African diaspora — reaching across generations to access ancestral traditions that have been erased by racist and colonial histories.
Fan Lee Warren’s multimedia painting also reaches through history, depicting archetypes of Black women artists, healers, and leaders to reveal the forgotten and erased histories of Black female divinity.
On Friday, August 25 & Saturday, August 26, from 8:00pm-midnight, Night Light: Multimedia & Performance Festival blankets SOMArts in luminous art installations, including audiovisual performances and performative interventions by over 25 artists, and digital and cinematic projections by over 20 artists. Tickets are $12 in advance and $15 at the door, or $20 for guaranteed entry to both nights of the festival. Advance tickets are available online now at: http://nightlightparty2017.eventbrite.com.
Now in its seventh year, Night Light utilizes SOMArts’ entire post-industrial space and grounds, including the garden path, street-side loading bay, theater, Bay Gallery and Main Gallery.
This year Night Light responds to the themes of The Black Woman is Godby presenting visual art installations and performances by artists of many gender identities and cultural backgrounds that reclaims the African cultural narrative of God being a Black woman.
THE BLACK WOMAN IS GOD
EXHIBITING ARTISTS
2AM
Ajuan Mance
Audacious Iam
Alise Eastgate
Angela Hennessy
Anna W. Edwards
Ayana Ivery
April Martin Chartrand
April Luvly Martin
Arinthia Jones
Ain Bailey
Bushmama Africa
Cynthia Brannvall
Djenne Ba Dynna Batties
Dawn Rudd
Dalila Dynes
Elizabeth Summers
Erica Deeman
Francis Mead
Fan Lee Warren
Heru
Hilda Robinson
Idris Hassan
JaeMe Bereal
KaliMa Amilak
Karen Oyekanmi
Karen Seneferu
karin turner
Kathleen McDonald
Kiwii McLaurin
Kimberly Johnson
Kristina “Namastina” Williams
Kristine Mays
Ladi Rev
Lakiba Pittman
Latisha Baker
Lili Bernard
Lorraine Bonner
Marissa Arterberry
Mizan Alkebul-Abakah
Maya Wamukota
Marnika Shelton
Nzinga Hatch
Nicole Dixon
Nye’ Lyn Tho
Orlonda Uffre
Redwood Hill
Rosalind McGray
Rosalyn Parhams
Sage Stargate
Sasha Kelly
Shanna Strauss
Shylah Hamilton
Sonjhai Meggette
Taiwo & Kehinde
Tania L. Balan-Gaubert
Tarika Lewis
Toshia Christal
Val Kai
Virginia Jourdan
Valerie Brown-Troutt
Venus Morris
Vanessa Addison Williams
Wawi Amasha
Worldly Sistah–Tracy Brown
Yetunde Olagbaju
Yasmin Sayyed
Zakiya Harris
Zena Carlota
EXHIBITING ARTISTS
2AM
Ajuan Mance
Audacious Iam
Alise Eastgate
Angela Hennessy
Anna W. Edwards
Ayana Ivery
April Martin Chartrand
April Luvly Martin
Arinthia Jones
Ain Bailey
Bushmama Africa
Cynthia Brannvall
Djenne Ba Dynna Batties
Dawn Rudd
Dalila Dynes
Elizabeth Summers
Erica Deeman
Francis Mead
Fan Lee Warren
Heru
Hilda Robinson
Idris Hassan
JaeMe Bereal
KaliMa Amilak
Karen Oyekanmi
Karen Seneferu
karin turner
Kathleen McDonald
Kiwii McLaurin
Kimberly Johnson
Kristina “Namastina” Williams
Kristine Mays
Ladi Rev
Lakiba Pittman
Latisha Baker
Lili Bernard
Lorraine Bonner
Marissa Arterberry
Mizan Alkebul-Abakah
Maya Wamukota
Marnika Shelton
Nzinga Hatch
Nicole Dixon
Nye’ Lyn Tho
Orlonda Uffre
Redwood Hill
Rosalind McGray
Rosalyn Parhams
Sage Stargate
Sasha Kelly
Shanna Strauss
Shylah Hamilton
Sonjhai Meggette
Taiwo & Kehinde
Tania L. Balan-Gaubert
Tarika Lewis
Toshia Christal
Val Kai
Virginia Jourdan
Valerie Brown-Troutt
Venus Morris
Vanessa Addison Williams
Wawi Amasha
Worldly Sistah–Tracy Brown
Yetunde Olagbaju
Yasmin Sayyed
Zakiya Harris
Zena Carlota
RELATED EVENTS
Exhibition
July 20–August 26, 2017
Gallery hours: Tuesday–Friday 12–7pm & Saturday 12–5pm
The exhibition is free to visit during gallery hours and during the opening reception. SOMArts Cultural Center is located at 934 Brannan St. (between 8th & 9th Streets), San Francisco, CA, 94103. SOMArts is wheelchair/ADA accessible. More information on accessibility is available here.
Exhibition
July 20–August 26, 2017
Gallery hours: Tuesday–Friday 12–7pm & Saturday 12–5pm
The exhibition is free to visit during gallery hours and during the opening reception. SOMArts Cultural Center is located at 934 Brannan St. (between 8th & 9th Streets), San Francisco, CA, 94103. SOMArts is wheelchair/ADA accessible. More information on accessibility is available here.
Opening Reception
Thursday, July 20, 6pm–midnight
The opening night celebration kicks off with live music and participatory dance celebration in the Gallery. To learn more, visit www.somarts.org/theblackwomanisgodopening2017.
Thursday, July 20, 6pm–midnight
The opening night celebration kicks off with live music and participatory dance celebration in the Gallery. To learn more, visit www.somarts.org/theblackwomanisgodopening2017.
Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon
Saturday, July 22, 1–4pm
SOMArts, the California Digital Library and Art Practical present a Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon in conjunction with The Black Woman is God to raise the online visibility of Black women artists and challenge the gaps in art history that erase or minimize Black women’s contributions as artists, activists and social change-makers. To learn more, visit www.somarts.org/theblackwomanisgodwikipedia.
Saturday, July 22, 1–4pm
SOMArts, the California Digital Library and Art Practical present a Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon in conjunction with The Black Woman is God to raise the online visibility of Black women artists and challenge the gaps in art history that erase or minimize Black women’s contributions as artists, activists and social change-makers. To learn more, visit www.somarts.org/theblackwomanisgodwikipedia.
Night Light: Multimedia & Performance Festival
Friday, August 25 & Saturday, August 26, 8:00pm–midnight
Luminous art installations, including audiovisual performances and performative interventions by over 25 artists, and digital and cinematic projections by over 20 artists. Tickets are $12 in advance online or $15 at the door, or $20 to attend both nights of the Festival. http://nightlightparty2017.eventbrite.com
Friday, August 25 & Saturday, August 26, 8:00pm–midnight
Luminous art installations, including audiovisual performances and performative interventions by over 25 artists, and digital and cinematic projections by over 20 artists. Tickets are $12 in advance online or $15 at the door, or $20 to attend both nights of the Festival. http://nightlightparty2017.eventbrite.com
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Revised: Silent Night, the New Negro National Anthem, no more Lift Every Voice and Sing
Silent Night
Silent night, holy night
All is calm, all is bright
Round yon Virgin Mother and Child
Holy Infant so tender and mild
Sleep in heavenly peace (2x)
Silent night, holy night!....
dreams of freedom in another life,
Deaf dumb blind this life
Like Hiram Biff in shallow grave
Looking for Jesus to save
rise up Lazarus
Jesus said
don't worry Mary
Martha don't moan
I got Lazarus in my arms
rise up Lazarus
Jesus said
don't worry Mary
Martha don't moan
I got Lazarus in my arms
Silent night holy night
All is calm all is bright
Passive mild like virgin child
Homeless nameless
Lost and turned out
On way to grandmother’s house
Silent night holy night
All is calm all is bright
Get off yo knees crying blues
Wake up everybody to good news
You walk with Jesus
You walk in his shoes…
Silent night holy night
all is calm all is bright....
--Marvin X
8/21/17
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the cia in hollywood
"The CIA in Hollywood: How the Agency Shapes Film and Television," by Tricia Jenkins
Published by University of Texas Press (2013)
Reviewed by Julius Taranto
Though everyone would surely prefer otherwise, public relations crises are part of the CIA’s ordinary business. The fact that so much of its work is classified puts the Agency in one of those tricky, plumber-like governmental roles: when it does its job right, no one should notice. But when it screws up, there’s a mess, and things smell awful.
The nature of any covert enterprise is rigged against popularity: the Agency can’t ordinarily brag about its hard-won successes or even update Americans with news of general competence. The FBI, by contrast, gets to issue press releases detailing high-profile arrests and convictions. But with rare exceptions, the CIA hits the front page only when something has gone badly sideways.
This asymmetry naturally gives rise to an image problem, so the CIA needs a way of loopholing if it wants to shape public perception. Fiction about the Agency—particularly television and movies, the most potent and culture-shaping mediums—has turned out to be that loophole. But it has its risks.
Depending on whom you ask, Hollywood has been either a great friend or a persistent foe in the CIA’s quest for a better public image. Some might point to media characterizations of the CIA as a rogue, hapless, or amoral institution. Just a few weeks ago, at the Agency’s request, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd talked to members of Langley’s “sisterhood,” who were “fed up with the flock of fictional CIA women in movies and on TV who guzzle alcohol as they bed hop and drone drop, acting crazed and emotional, sleeping with terrorists and seducing assets.” The point of these interviews seemed to be to insist that CIA careers are actually much more boring and difficult than they look on television.
But more probing critics might highlight that the romanticized representation of spies in film has, in fact, been a boon to the Intelligence Community. Audiences are probably seduced rather than judgmental when fictional CIA officers fall short of perfect virtue. Homeland’s Carrie Mathison may not be a girl scout or a realistic CIA officer, but there’s no question that viewers are on her side, and that they care about her more than her buttoned-up colleagues, precisely because her flaws humanize her. The Agency—and everyone who likes spy movies—should hope Maureen Dowd’s column wasn’t too persuasive, because no one wants to watch a show about unmarred professionalism and competence. They’d watch The Americans instead.
Absent flawed, interesting protagonists, in other words, CIA-themed TV shows and movies would not exist for long. And that would mean that the only time the public hears or thinks about the CIA is when the Agency is in the news, and something has probably gone wrong. So the entertainment industry’s efforts to portray the Agency hinge, paradoxically, on depicting a more flawed version of the Agency as an institution than is realistic, while depicting individual Agency officials as less lawful, less professional, and less virtuous than is realistic, either. Though possibly the most damaging effect of the television shows is not about the professionalism of individual agents or the Agency, or lack thereof, but instead that because budget constraints push TV production to take place in US locales, not abroad, the general public probably understands that Carrie Mathison is not exactly typical of Langley—but is quite unaware that the CIA is prohibited by law from operating on US soil at all.
Understanding that spy movies and shows will be produced with or without the Agency’s cooperation, Langley has established a suitably quiet relationship with the entertainment industry in the interest of securing Hollywood portrayals that are at least half-accurate, if not cloyingly positive. That Agency-Industry engagement is the topic of Tricia Jenkins’s, well, frankly underwhelming book, The CIA in Hollywood. Her effort contains a few interesting historical anecdotes, but it ultimately fails to do justice to an underserved, rich, and timely topic.
II
Here’s one anecdote: twenty years ago, following the collapse of the U.S.S.R. and the Aldrich Ames scandal, there was skeptical chatter about the CIA’s continued usefulness. Rep. Dan Glickman, then the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan both publicly questioned whether the CIA should have a future. The Agency met this image problem-turned-existential threat by commissioning a network television show called The Classified Files of the C.I.A. It was to be modeled on the 1960s FBI image-vehicle The F.B.I., and it would feature a real, declassified CIA case each week. Langley would feed fact patterns to the producers, who would use them as the basis for a story and sell the show based in part on its authenticity.
The Classified Files of the C.I.A. never made it to air after the Agency and the show’s producers, Steve Tisch and Aaron Spelling, parted ways over creative differences. But if Jenkins’s account of the concept is even a little accurate, the (alas) never seen two-hour pilot episode sounds like a masterpiece of clunky and humorless propaganda that was, for the Agency’s sake, probably best kept classified. Later, after this failed attempt to micromanage professional Hollywood micromanagers, Langley opted for a lighter touch. Rather than developing its own content, it began reaching out to filmmakers already working on Agency-related projects and offering them insider expertise—and sometimes use of the CIA’s facilities, equipment, or official seal—in exchange for some influence over how the Agency would be portrayed.
This was the project of longtime CIA officer Chase Brandon, first cousin of Tommy Lee Jones and (not coincidentally) the first CIA Entertainment Industry Liaison. Brandon developed a process at Langley just like the Pentagon’s long-established Hollywood outreach program: guidance and advice are freely given, while filmmakers requesting something more costly—the use of equipment, shooting locations, or technical consultation—have their scripts reviewed to determine whether aiding production aligns with the Agency’s mission. When a filmmaker asks for more than guidance, script alterations are sometimes suggested in the name of authenticity and a more positive take on the Agency.
In Jenkins’s telling, the first two projects influenced by this system were In the Company of Spies and The Agency. After 9/11, there were a slew of others, including Alias, The Sum of All Fears, The Bourne Identity, and The Recruit. Jenkins tries to tell a story in which the Agency, allegedly in violation of the First Amendment, disingenuously attempts to twist spy movies to its own propagandistic ends and then withdraws vital support from filmmakers who refuse to capitulate. The argument is that this unequal treatment of filmmakers based only on their different characterizations of the Agency amounts to an unconstitutional suppression of speech. Where to begin? It’s hard to swallow that Jenkins is shocked, shocked to find that public relations is going on here! Beyond that, even by her own account of which movies Langley lent its hand to and which it didn’t, it’s difficult to discern any kind of consistent pattern of positivity in these films that isn’t already implied by having a CIA officer as a sympathetic protagonist.
For example, despite the fact that neither film takes a terribly positive view of Langley, both The Bourne Identity and The Recruit feature Chase Brandon in the DVD’s “extra features” segments discussing what the Agency is really like. It’s a good move—hey, we all enjoy a good movie and, no problem, we’re kind of flattered being the villains—now here’s something to show you what we’re really about. By contrast, another Agency-aided film, The Sum of All Fears, has some rather heavy-handed touches of CIA cheerleading. (Here’s CIA analyst Jack Ryan, the cool head in an apocalyptic crisis: “The President is basing his decisions on some really bad information right now. And if you shut me out, your family, and my family, and twenty-five million other families will be dead in thirty minutes. My orders are to get the right information to the people who make the decisions.”)
A flawed or overdramatic presentation of the CIA is probably better for Langley than none at all, and over the years the Agency has supported a wide array of films. Even portrayals that caricature the Agency as an institution of ungoverned, amoral assassins aren’t necessarily so bad from a public relations standpoint: they’ll still have a thrilling, outlaw power to them. It’s not despite James Bond’s license to kill that we find him so alluring. The more critical (Syriana, The Good Shepherd) or fantastical (Alias, The Bourne Identity) films likely still help with Agency recruitment (if not internal morale). But Jenkins—an obvious, agenda-driven skeptic of the Agency—rests her whole argument on the simplistic premise that the CIA is flatly against inaccurate or uncharitable appearances in film. If that’s an Agency line, it certainly isn’t the whole picture.
By no fault of its own, Jenkins’s book suffers from a just-too-soon publication date. It doesn’t reach Zero Dark Thirty and the investigation into the screenwriter Mark Boal’s help from Langley. Jenkins also doesn’t have a chance to talk much about eventual Best Picture winner Argo, which centers on the Agency’s creation of a fake Hollywood production company (so convincing that Steven Spielberg and George Lucas submitted screenplays) in order to rescue six hostages from Tehran. Alas, there could hardly be two more fitting moments from which to launch a discussion of the coy romance between Hollywood and the Agency.
The book also declines to connect the Agency’s current entertainment industry efforts to its long history of cultural influence. (Just one example of this—and maybe an opportunity for some future inquiry—was the CIA role in generating early funding and prestige for the now-famous Iowa Writer’s Workshop.) And Jenkins only mentions in passing Langley’s relationship with USC’s Institute for Creative Technologies, where Industry professionals workshop threat scenarios and develop military and intelligence tools. So there are gaps in Jenkins’s coverage, and it misses an opportunity for a larger intellectual discussion about the proper role of a democratic government and its agencies, covert or overt, in the promotion of its foundational political ideas—but the book at least cracks the door on some undeniably cool topics.
III
When the CIA first reached out to Hollywood, it was facing questions about the fundamental utility of centralized intelligence after the collapse of the Soviet Union. But after 9/11, the Agency was vaulted to a position of prominence and is unlikely to face such skepticism about its significance anytime soon. This has surely given Langley more latitude in the types of films it can support, in addition to inclining filmmakers to think harder, and more charitably, about what the Agency does and why.
With doubters banished and solid funding, the Agency would now likely prefer to return to its role as a good plumber—where nothing goes wrong, and no one pays attention. But the occasional real scandal or high-profile movie seems inevitable. Intelligence will continue to be fertile ground for high-stakes storytelling, especially while terrorism remains in the headlines. So the question remains how to make the best of an unwanted spotlight. The CIA has a place in Hollywood, whether it wants one or not.
(Julius Taranto, a Student Fellow of the Yale Law School Information Society Project, was a writer in Los Angeles before entering law school.)
Reviewed by Julius Taranto
Though everyone would surely prefer otherwise, public relations crises are part of the CIA’s ordinary business. The fact that so much of its work is classified puts the Agency in one of those tricky, plumber-like governmental roles: when it does its job right, no one should notice. But when it screws up, there’s a mess, and things smell awful.
The nature of any covert enterprise is rigged against popularity: the Agency can’t ordinarily brag about its hard-won successes or even update Americans with news of general competence. The FBI, by contrast, gets to issue press releases detailing high-profile arrests and convictions. But with rare exceptions, the CIA hits the front page only when something has gone badly sideways.
This asymmetry naturally gives rise to an image problem, so the CIA needs a way of loopholing if it wants to shape public perception. Fiction about the Agency—particularly television and movies, the most potent and culture-shaping mediums—has turned out to be that loophole. But it has its risks.
Depending on whom you ask, Hollywood has been either a great friend or a persistent foe in the CIA’s quest for a better public image. Some might point to media characterizations of the CIA as a rogue, hapless, or amoral institution. Just a few weeks ago, at the Agency’s request, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd talked to members of Langley’s “sisterhood,” who were “fed up with the flock of fictional CIA women in movies and on TV who guzzle alcohol as they bed hop and drone drop, acting crazed and emotional, sleeping with terrorists and seducing assets.” The point of these interviews seemed to be to insist that CIA careers are actually much more boring and difficult than they look on television.
But more probing critics might highlight that the romanticized representation of spies in film has, in fact, been a boon to the Intelligence Community. Audiences are probably seduced rather than judgmental when fictional CIA officers fall short of perfect virtue. Homeland’s Carrie Mathison may not be a girl scout or a realistic CIA officer, but there’s no question that viewers are on her side, and that they care about her more than her buttoned-up colleagues, precisely because her flaws humanize her. The Agency—and everyone who likes spy movies—should hope Maureen Dowd’s column wasn’t too persuasive, because no one wants to watch a show about unmarred professionalism and competence. They’d watch The Americans instead.
Absent flawed, interesting protagonists, in other words, CIA-themed TV shows and movies would not exist for long. And that would mean that the only time the public hears or thinks about the CIA is when the Agency is in the news, and something has probably gone wrong. So the entertainment industry’s efforts to portray the Agency hinge, paradoxically, on depicting a more flawed version of the Agency as an institution than is realistic, while depicting individual Agency officials as less lawful, less professional, and less virtuous than is realistic, either. Though possibly the most damaging effect of the television shows is not about the professionalism of individual agents or the Agency, or lack thereof, but instead that because budget constraints push TV production to take place in US locales, not abroad, the general public probably understands that Carrie Mathison is not exactly typical of Langley—but is quite unaware that the CIA is prohibited by law from operating on US soil at all.
Understanding that spy movies and shows will be produced with or without the Agency’s cooperation, Langley has established a suitably quiet relationship with the entertainment industry in the interest of securing Hollywood portrayals that are at least half-accurate, if not cloyingly positive. That Agency-Industry engagement is the topic of Tricia Jenkins’s, well, frankly underwhelming book, The CIA in Hollywood. Her effort contains a few interesting historical anecdotes, but it ultimately fails to do justice to an underserved, rich, and timely topic.
II
Here’s one anecdote: twenty years ago, following the collapse of the U.S.S.R. and the Aldrich Ames scandal, there was skeptical chatter about the CIA’s continued usefulness. Rep. Dan Glickman, then the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan both publicly questioned whether the CIA should have a future. The Agency met this image problem-turned-existential threat by commissioning a network television show called The Classified Files of the C.I.A. It was to be modeled on the 1960s FBI image-vehicle The F.B.I., and it would feature a real, declassified CIA case each week. Langley would feed fact patterns to the producers, who would use them as the basis for a story and sell the show based in part on its authenticity.
The Classified Files of the C.I.A. never made it to air after the Agency and the show’s producers, Steve Tisch and Aaron Spelling, parted ways over creative differences. But if Jenkins’s account of the concept is even a little accurate, the (alas) never seen two-hour pilot episode sounds like a masterpiece of clunky and humorless propaganda that was, for the Agency’s sake, probably best kept classified. Later, after this failed attempt to micromanage professional Hollywood micromanagers, Langley opted for a lighter touch. Rather than developing its own content, it began reaching out to filmmakers already working on Agency-related projects and offering them insider expertise—and sometimes use of the CIA’s facilities, equipment, or official seal—in exchange for some influence over how the Agency would be portrayed.
This was the project of longtime CIA officer Chase Brandon, first cousin of Tommy Lee Jones and (not coincidentally) the first CIA Entertainment Industry Liaison. Brandon developed a process at Langley just like the Pentagon’s long-established Hollywood outreach program: guidance and advice are freely given, while filmmakers requesting something more costly—the use of equipment, shooting locations, or technical consultation—have their scripts reviewed to determine whether aiding production aligns with the Agency’s mission. When a filmmaker asks for more than guidance, script alterations are sometimes suggested in the name of authenticity and a more positive take on the Agency.
In Jenkins’s telling, the first two projects influenced by this system were In the Company of Spies and The Agency. After 9/11, there were a slew of others, including Alias, The Sum of All Fears, The Bourne Identity, and The Recruit. Jenkins tries to tell a story in which the Agency, allegedly in violation of the First Amendment, disingenuously attempts to twist spy movies to its own propagandistic ends and then withdraws vital support from filmmakers who refuse to capitulate. The argument is that this unequal treatment of filmmakers based only on their different characterizations of the Agency amounts to an unconstitutional suppression of speech. Where to begin? It’s hard to swallow that Jenkins is shocked, shocked to find that public relations is going on here! Beyond that, even by her own account of which movies Langley lent its hand to and which it didn’t, it’s difficult to discern any kind of consistent pattern of positivity in these films that isn’t already implied by having a CIA officer as a sympathetic protagonist.
For example, despite the fact that neither film takes a terribly positive view of Langley, both The Bourne Identity and The Recruit feature Chase Brandon in the DVD’s “extra features” segments discussing what the Agency is really like. It’s a good move—hey, we all enjoy a good movie and, no problem, we’re kind of flattered being the villains—now here’s something to show you what we’re really about. By contrast, another Agency-aided film, The Sum of All Fears, has some rather heavy-handed touches of CIA cheerleading. (Here’s CIA analyst Jack Ryan, the cool head in an apocalyptic crisis: “The President is basing his decisions on some really bad information right now. And if you shut me out, your family, and my family, and twenty-five million other families will be dead in thirty minutes. My orders are to get the right information to the people who make the decisions.”)
A flawed or overdramatic presentation of the CIA is probably better for Langley than none at all, and over the years the Agency has supported a wide array of films. Even portrayals that caricature the Agency as an institution of ungoverned, amoral assassins aren’t necessarily so bad from a public relations standpoint: they’ll still have a thrilling, outlaw power to them. It’s not despite James Bond’s license to kill that we find him so alluring. The more critical (Syriana, The Good Shepherd) or fantastical (Alias, The Bourne Identity) films likely still help with Agency recruitment (if not internal morale). But Jenkins—an obvious, agenda-driven skeptic of the Agency—rests her whole argument on the simplistic premise that the CIA is flatly against inaccurate or uncharitable appearances in film. If that’s an Agency line, it certainly isn’t the whole picture.
By no fault of its own, Jenkins’s book suffers from a just-too-soon publication date. It doesn’t reach Zero Dark Thirty and the investigation into the screenwriter Mark Boal’s help from Langley. Jenkins also doesn’t have a chance to talk much about eventual Best Picture winner Argo, which centers on the Agency’s creation of a fake Hollywood production company (so convincing that Steven Spielberg and George Lucas submitted screenplays) in order to rescue six hostages from Tehran. Alas, there could hardly be two more fitting moments from which to launch a discussion of the coy romance between Hollywood and the Agency.
The book also declines to connect the Agency’s current entertainment industry efforts to its long history of cultural influence. (Just one example of this—and maybe an opportunity for some future inquiry—was the CIA role in generating early funding and prestige for the now-famous Iowa Writer’s Workshop.) And Jenkins only mentions in passing Langley’s relationship with USC’s Institute for Creative Technologies, where Industry professionals workshop threat scenarios and develop military and intelligence tools. So there are gaps in Jenkins’s coverage, and it misses an opportunity for a larger intellectual discussion about the proper role of a democratic government and its agencies, covert or overt, in the promotion of its foundational political ideas—but the book at least cracks the door on some undeniably cool topics.
III
When the CIA first reached out to Hollywood, it was facing questions about the fundamental utility of centralized intelligence after the collapse of the Soviet Union. But after 9/11, the Agency was vaulted to a position of prominence and is unlikely to face such skepticism about its significance anytime soon. This has surely given Langley more latitude in the types of films it can support, in addition to inclining filmmakers to think harder, and more charitably, about what the Agency does and why.
With doubters banished and solid funding, the Agency would now likely prefer to return to its role as a good plumber—where nothing goes wrong, and no one pays attention. But the occasional real scandal or high-profile movie seems inevitable. Intelligence will continue to be fertile ground for high-stakes storytelling, especially while terrorism remains in the headlines. So the question remains how to make the best of an unwanted spotlight. The CIA has a place in Hollywood, whether it wants one or not.
(Julius Taranto, a Student Fellow of the Yale Law School Information Society Project, was a writer in Los Angeles before entering law school.)
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book: national security cinema
This is a book about secrecy, militarism, manipulation, and censorship at the heart of the world’s leading democracy—and about those who try to fight them. Using thousands of pages of documents acquired through the Freedom of Information Act National Security Cinema exclusively reveals that the national security state—led by the CIA and Pentagon—has worked on more than eight-hundred Hollywood films and over a thousand network television shows. The latest scholarship has underestimated the size of this operation, in part because the government has gone to considerable lengths to prevent data emerging, especially in the 21st Century, as the practice of government-Hollywood cooperation has escalated and become more aggressive. National Security Cinema reveals for the first time specific script changes made by the government for political reasons on dozens of blockbusting films and franchises like Transformers, Avatar, Meet the Parents, and The Terminator. These forces have suppressed important narratives about: CIA drug trafficking; illegal arms sales; military creation of bio-weapons; the interaction of private armies and oil companies; government treatment of minorities; torture; coups; assassinations, and the failure to prevent 9/11.
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SPECIAL BULLETIN--MOVEMENT DESIGN EDITOR PEPPER SPRAYED AT OAKLAND WHOLE FOODS
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More Pages to Explore .....