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Black Panthers, Vanguard of the Revolution hits the Bay Area and the world
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Film Review: Dr. Ayodele Nzinga considers Stanley Nelson's Black Panthers, Vanguard of the Revoution
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Will Oakland establish the Black Arts Movement Cultural and Business District?
Traditional
If you ever find
yourself, some where
lost and surrounded
by enemies
who won't let you
speak in your own language
who destroy your statues
& instruments, who ban
your omm bomm ba boom
then you are in trouble
deep trouble
they ban your
omm boom ba boom
you in deep deep
trouble
humph!
probably take you several hundred years
to get
out!
--Amiri Baraka
![]()
From: Parker, Alicia<AParker@oaklandnet.com>
Date: Mon, Oct 12, 2015 at 2:57 PM
Subject: Plan Downtown - Artists Group on 10/27 at 11am
To: "info@joycegordongallery.com"<info@joycegordongallery.com>
![]()
![]()
![]()
![]()
![]()
![]()
If you ever find
yourself, some where
lost and surrounded
by enemies
who won't let you
speak in your own language
who destroy your statues
& instruments, who ban
your omm bomm ba boom
then you are in trouble
deep trouble
they ban your
omm boom ba boom
you in deep deep
trouble
humph!
probably take you several hundred years
to get
out!
--Amiri Baraka
CALLING ALL BLACK PEOPLE
ARTISTS, VENDORS, BUSINESS PERSONS
We are calling for the Black Arts Movement District along the 14th Street corridor, downtown Oakland, from Martin Luther King, Jr. Way to Alice Street. This corridor should be the resurrection of 7th Street, West Oakland, Harlem of the West. It should be the cultural and economic expression of North American Africans who have been the vanguard of resistance to white supremacy domination in Oakland and America. Yes, Oakland is the City of Resistance, like Fallujah in Iraq. Let's be clear, during the 1960s North American Africans in Oakland suffered a military defeat by the US Government's Cointelpro, the effort to prevent the rise of a black messiah and the liberation of the Black Masses. The revolutionary Black Panther Party was ultimately defeated on the streets of Oakland by police, military and intelligence agencies of America. See Stanley Nelson's film Black Panthers, Vanguard of the Revolution. Fifty years later we are still fighting the police, miseducation of our children, urban removal (now called gentrification), joblessness and incarceration; still suffering traumatic slave syndrome, unresolved grief and a pervasive toxic environment.
Culturally, housing for North American Africans is disappearing rapidly, artistic institutions are few and funding is minimal while European American art and cultural institutions flourish, especially in the downtown area.
Our cultural gatherings are under attack. We are fined for singing in church while Black, drumming while Black, partying at Lake Merritt while Black: No amplified music, no Bar b Que, no alcohol= No Nigguhs at the Lake! Black women from the Bay were recently kicked off the Napa Wine Train for laughing while Black.
Richard Wright said it best in Native Son, "Your very presence is a crime against the State!...."
It is time to stand our ground, maybe it's the last stand, but stand and resist white supremacy domination in Oakland. Oakland's socalled multi-racial demographics is not what Oakland is about. Oakland is the City of Resistance to oppression and pervasive discrimination in every sphere of cultural life: political, economic, educational, religious. Resistance is the key to Oakland's past and future. The Black Arts Movement District will continue the tradition of art for liberation, not to perpetuate the world of make believe projected by the dominate culture.
WE call upon all conscious people to attend the upcoming planning meetings to demand the Black Arts Movement District.
--Marvin X
Black Arts Movement co-founder
510-200-4164
jmarvinx@yahoo.com
www.blackbirdpressnews.blogspot.com
From: Parker, Alicia<AParker@oaklandnet.com>
Date: Mon, Oct 12, 2015 at 2:57 PM
Subject: Plan Downtown - Artists Group on 10/27 at 11am
To: "info@joycegordongallery.com"<info@joycegordongallery.com>
Dear Ms. Diouf,
My name is Alicia and it is my pleasure to invite you to a meeting to discuss arts in Downtown Oakland. As part of Plan Downtown we are convening a meeting with artists and cultural leaders on Tuesday, Oct. 27 at 11amat 1544 Broadway. The group will be composed of artists, downtown gallery owners and curators, representatives from performance venues, and cultural leaders. We will discuss the place for arts in the future of downtown, how to ensure equity as we grow as a city and how to reach the widest audience (across cultures and ages).
It would be great if you are able to make it. I’ve attached some flyers so that you can add the other community events to your calendar. We’re having a “hands-on design” session at 6pm Monday, Oct. 19 (the Rotunda Building, 300 Frank Ogawa Plaza), a “pin-up” session at 6pm on Thursday, Oct. 22 (1544 Broadway) and a “work-in-progress” presentation at 6pm Wednesday, Oct. 28 (The Paramount Theatre, 2025 Broadway).
Please let me know if you have any questions or need any clarification. I look forward to hearing from you. (510) 238-3362
Thank you,
Alicia Parker, AICP, Planner III | City of Oakland | Bureau of Planning | 250 Frank H. Ogawa Plaza, Suite 3315, Oakland, CA 94612 | Phone:(510) 238-3362 | Fax: (510) 238-6538|Email:aparker@oaklandnet.com | Website:www.oaklandnet.com/planning
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Black Bird Press News & Review: New Anthology of Activists: Talking Back: Voices of Color
↧
Eldridge Cleaver: My friend the Devil by Marvin X
Eldridge Cleaver: my friend the Devil
Marvin X
Published by Black Bird Press, Berkeley, 2009
Used /Soft cover/ Quantity Available: 1
FromBolerium Books Inc.(San Francisco, CA, U.S.A.)![5-star rating]()
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Black Bird Press News & Review: Eldridge Cleaver: My friend the Devil, A Memoir by Marvin X
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National Black Political Leaders Conf., calling for proportional representation in US polytricks
Register for the National Black Political Leadership Conference in St. Louis, MO, October 30, 31, 2015
On Friday, October 30th and Saturday, October 31st 2015, the Universal African Peoples Organization (UAPO), will host a National Black Political Leadership Conference. This conference will be held at Greater St. Mark Family Church, 9950 Glen Owen, St. Louis, MO. Pre-registration for this two day event is $35.00 and $45.00 at the door.The objective of the conference is promote the concept of "Proportionate Political Representation" for our people and to encourage our people to focus on who will be our candidates for powerful political offices such as United States Senators, Governors, and other statewide and local positions. In fact, in 2016 there will be 34 United States Senate seats and 11 Governors positions up for election. Accordingly, across this country, we need a total of 56 strong and progressive Black men and women to challenge for each of these positions and campaign on a common platform of domestic and foreign issues impacting our lives daily. Such a bold move would be historic, especially in light of the present day reality,that there are no Black Governors and only 2 Black US Senators.
Again, this is why we need "Proportionate Political Representation." If you have leadership skills and would like to help shape a new and powerful political destiny for our people, then you must join us. You can pre-register by going directly to Eventbrite.com and type in National Black Political Leadership Conference or go to our websitewww.uapo.org and click on National Black Political Leadership Conference . We will see you at the conference. For additional information call (314) 477-4629 or (314) 454-9005.
↧
Drone Papers expose US 'Assassination Complex'
Drone Papers: Leaked Military Documents Expose US 'Assassination Complex'
Based on cache of secret slides leaked by national security whistleblower, stunning exposé by The Intercept reveals inner workings—and failures—of the U.S. military's clandestine efforts in Afghanistan, Yemen, and Somalia
The Intercept has obtained a cache of secret slides that provides a window into the inner workings of the U.S. military’s kill/capture operations at a key time in the evolution of the drone wars — between 2011 and 2013. (Image: The Intercept)
A stunning new exposé by The Intercept, which includes the publication of classified documents leaked by an intelligence source, provides an unprecedented look at the U.S. military's secretive global assassination program.
The series of articles, titled The Drone Papers, follows months of investigation and uses rare primary source documents and slides to reveal to the public, for the first time, the flaws and consequences of the U.S. military's 14-year aerial campaign being conducted in Yemen, Somalia, and Afghanistan—one that has consistently used faulty information, killed an untold number of civilians, and stymied intelligence-gathering through its "kill/capture" program that too often relies on killing rather than capturing.
"The series is intended to serve as a long-overdue public examination of the methods and outcomes of America's assassination program," writes the investigation's lead reporter, Jeremy Scahill. "This campaign, carried out by two presidents through four presidential terms, has been shrouded in excessive secrecy. The public has a right to see these documents not only to engage in an informed debate about the future of U.S. wars, both overt and covert, but also to understand the circumstances under which the U.S. government arrogates to itself the right to sentence individuals to death without the established checks and balances of arrest, trial, and appeal."
The source of the documents, who asked to remain anonymous due to the U.S. government's aggressive prosecution of whistleblowers, said the public has a right to know about a program that is so "fundamentally" and "morally" flawed.
"It's stunning the number of instances when I’ve come across intelligence that was faulty, when sources of information used to finish targets were misattributed to people," he told The Intercept. "And it isn't until several months or years later that you realize that the entire time you thought you were going after this target, it was his mother’s phone the whole time. Anyone caught in the vicinity is guilty by association – it’s a phenomenal gamble."
As outlined by The Intercept, the key revelations of the reporting are:
- Assassinations have depended on unreliable intelligence. More than half the intelligence used to track potential kills in Yemen and Somalia was based on electronic communications data from phones, computers, and targeted intercepts (know as signals intelligence) which, the government admits, it has “poor” and “limited” capability to collect. By the military’s own admission, it was lacking in reliable information from human sources.
- The documents contradict Administration claims that its operations against high-value terrorists are limited and precise. Contrary to claims that these campaigns narrowly target specific individuals, the documents show that air strikes under the Obama administration have killed significant numbers of unnamed bystanders. Documents detailing a 14-month kill/capture campaign in Afghanistan, for example, show that while the U.S. military killed 35 of its direct targets with air strikes, 219 other individuals also died in the attacks.
- In Afghanistan, the military has designated unknown men it kills as “Enemies Killed in Action.” According to The Intercept’s source, the military has a practice of labeling individuals killed in air strikes this way unless evidence emerges to prove otherwise.
- Assassinations hurt intelligence gathering. The Pentagon study finds that killing suspected terrorists, even if they are legitimate targets, “significantly reduce[s]” the information available and further hampers intelligence gathering.
- New details about the ‘kill chain’ reveal a bureaucratic structure headed by President Obama, by which U.S. government officials select and authorize targets for assassination outside traditional legal and justice systems, and with little transparency. The system included creating a portrait of a potential target in a condensed format known as a ‘Baseball Card,’ which was passed to the White House for approval, while individual drone strikes were often authorized by other officials.
- Inconsistencies with publicly available White House statements about targeted killings. Administration policy standards issued in 2013 state that lethal force will be launched only against targets that pose a “continuing, imminent threat to U.S. persons,” however documents from the same time reveal much more vague criteria, including that a person only need present “a threat to U.S. interest or personnel.”
- New details of high-profile drone kills, including the 2012 killing in Somalia of Bilal al-Berjawi, which raise questions about whether the British government revoked his citizenship to facilitate the strike.
- Information about a largely covert effort to extend the U.S. military’s footprint across the African continent, including through a network of mostly small and low-profile airfields in Djibouti and other African countries.
The investigation comes as the Obama administration announced plans on Thursday to delay withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. Administration officials told CNN that troops may conduct "counterterrorism operations" against Islamic State (ISIS) militants there.
But as the documents reveal, assurances from the Obama administration that drone strikes are precise and used only in cases of "imminent" threats are themselves based on intentionally vague definitions of "imminence."
"Privately, the architects of the U.S. drone program have acknowledged its shortcomings," said Betsy Reed, editor-in-chief of The Intercept. "But they have made sure that this campaign, launched by Bush and vastly expanded under Obama, has been shrouded in secrecy. The public has a right to know how the US government has decided who to kill."
As the source himself said, "We’re allowing this to happen. And by 'we,' I mean every American citizen who has access to this information now, but continues to do nothing about it."
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Black Bird Press News & Review: Will Oakland establish the Black Arts Movement Cultural and Business District?
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AFRICAN DIASPORA BAZAAR AND CRAFTS FAIR, NOVEMBER 28, VENDORS WANTED
Vendor Booths Available!
|
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Black Bird Press News & Review: Blacks 4 Palestine needs your signature now!
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BLACK FARMERS' LIVES MATTER
Black Farmers' Lives Matter: Defending
African-American Land and Agriculture
in the Deep South
African-American Land and Agriculture
in the Deep South
 |
| Ben Burkett on his farm in Petaluma, Mississippi, with his great-nephew. Photo courtesy of Grassroots International. |
The US Food Sovereignty Alliance upholds the right to food as a basic human right and works to connect our local and national struggles to the international movement for food sovereignty. The Federation of Southern Cooperatives, primarily African-American farmers across the deep South, shares the prize with the Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras, Afro-indigenous farmers and fisher-people. The prize will be presented in Des Moines on October 14, 2015.
The 2015 US Food Sovereignty Prize goes to two organizations that are demonstrating just how much Black lives matter, as they defend their ancestral lands for community-controlled food production. The Federation of Southern Cooperatives, primarily African-American farmers across the deep South, shares the prize with the Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras, Afro-indigenous farmers and fisher-people. The prize will be presented in Des Moines on October 14, 2015.
Food sovereignty goes beyond ensuring that people have enough food to meet their physical needs. It asserts that citizens everywhere must reclaim their power in food systems by rebuilding the relationships between people and the land, and between food providers and those who eat.
The US Food Sovereignty Alliance upholds the right to food as a basic human right and works to connect our local and national struggles to the international movement for food sovereignty.
The Federation of Southern Cooperatives strengthens a vital piece of food sovereignty: helping keep lands in the hands of family farmers. Its members are farmers in 13 Southern states, approximately 90 percent of them African-American, but also Native American, Latino, and White.
The Federation's work is today more important than ever, given that African-American-owned farms in the US have fallen from 14 percent to 1 percent in fewer than 100 years. To help keep farms Black- and family-owned, the Federation promotes land-based cooperatives; provides training in sustainable agriculture and forestry, management, and marketing; and speaks truth to power in local courthouses, state legislatures, and the halls of the U.S. Congress.
Below are excerpts from an interview with Ben Burkett, an active member of the Federation. Burkett is also a farmer, director of the Mississippi Association of Cooperatives, president of the National Family Farm Coalition board of directors, and a member of La Via Campesina's international board
"Our view is local production for local consumption. It's just supporting mankind as family farmers. Everything we're about is food sovereignty, the right of every individual on earth to wholesome food, clean water, air and land, and the self-determination of a community to grow and eat what they want.
"The Federation of Southern Cooperatives grew out of the civil rights movement [in 1967]. Racism is still here in the marketplace and in credit, but we have learned to deal with it and not give up on changing the system. We struggle every day to bring about a change.
"We recognize the natural flow of life. It's just what we've always done. We want to go back to the way things were. It's supporting mankind as small farmers and family farmers. It's not so much a matter of making money, it's a matter of carrying on so your farm will continue on. But you have to make some profit off it in order to keep it going.
"Myself, I'm a fourth-generation farmer on a farm that my great-grandfather homesteaded in 1889. That wasn't but about 20 years after the end of slavery. He got 164 acres from the United States government. I still have the title - they called it a patent - signed by Grover Cleveland. And we're still farming that same land.
"Some say the system is working. It appears to be working fine, but corporate agriculture is not sustainable. Our system of growing food is heavy, heavy, heavy dependent on petro-chemicals, on inorganic compounds, mostly petroleum-based. And then it takes too much control out of the local community. Now, it might last for several decades, but in the end it can't last.
"You've got a few companies that want to control all the seed stock of the world, and they've just about got a handle on marketing three of the main commodities: corn, soybean, and cotton. [For us,] it's hard to find seeds that aren't treated with the Monsanto-manufactured Roundup Ready. I've tried to find cotton that wasn't treated, but I couldn't. Now they're working on controlling wheat and rice.
"And they make those seeds so most of them don't regenerate the next year anyway. But if you do save any of the seeds, Monsanto and the other companies are going to prosecute you for saving their property. Those seeds are patented, the property of the seed company, so they reserve the right to keep them. They'll take you to court and make you pay back their money. Basically you're just sharecropping for them, you're leasing their seeds.
"I don't think that's fair. Once you've bought the seeds and planted them on your own land, it looks to me like they ought to be your own seeds. That's the essence of life. Where did Monsanto and the other companies get their first seed from? Someone gave them to them. Those seeds didn't fall out of the sky.
"We've been - I don't want to use the word co-opted - trained by the institutions of agriculture, the companies, the university system, and technology, to give our rights over to the company, which I think is absolutely wrong. We have to be more proactive than reactive as small farmers, family farmers. We can't wait for the government and large corporations to dictate to us what we can do in our region.
"They've got a unique way of buying you off to not fight here. The American consumer doesn't care as long as it's cheap. But no matter what farmers plant, the consumer's got to change the system. People buying the end product have to complain. As long as they don't complain, there's no need even talking about it."
The prize is given by the US Food Sovereignty Alliance, which is comprised of food justice, anti-hunger, labor, environmental, faith-based, and food producer groups. To learn more about the work of the Federation of Southern Cooperatives, please visit http://www.federation.coop/.
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Oakland to fine church for singing while Black!
Oakland threatens to fine a church for loud music
Updated 6:13 pm, Thursday, October 15, 2015
Pastor Thomas A. Harris III of the Pleasant Grove Baptist Church said he was surprised to receive a letter from the city’s nuisance abatement division on Aug. 31, saying the “excessive noise” of organ, drums and amplified vocals during the church’s weekly choir rehearsals is a nuisance to neighbors — and violates city law.
According to the letter, the church could be hit with a $3,529 initial fine, and penalties of $500 a day, until it abates the noise.
“This is strange,” Harris said, adding that it’s “quite unheard of for a church to be fined because of joyful noise.”
“If you come around a nursery, you’re going to hear babies crying,” he continued. “If you come around a church, you’re going to hear noise.”
The problem, according to a copy of the complaint to the city, is that the loud music goes on sometimes until 2 a.m. The copy of the complaint was sent to the local NAACP head, George Holland, but excluded the name of the person who complained, self-described as an 11-year resident of West Oakland who had never had problems with the church noise until 2014.
Harris said the choir practice ends at 9 p.m. He also said he didn’t know which of his neighbors complained but assumed the person must be a newcomer to the area.
“The area we’re in now has changed drastically,” he said, noting that newcomers may not understand the culture of a 65-year-old black church. He said that the choir rehearses from 7 to 9 on Wednesday nights and that the church has no intention of changing.
“We’ll try to work with the community,” he said. “We don’t want to disrespect them, but we don’t want to be disrespected.”
During one particularly joyful week in August, the peal of gospel music resounded “around the radius of the church” and could be heard from half a block away on all sides, according to a diagram the neighbor sent to city officials.
The complaint says all Oakland residents “should be able to sleep in peace and maintain good health.”
Holland, the NAACP Oakland chapter head, was deeply troubled by the noise complaint, calling it a sign of cultural divisions in Oakland.
City spokeswoman Karen Boyd said the city’s letter to Pleasant Grove was a courtesy notice informing the church of the city’s noise ordinance, which mandates quiet hours between 9 p.m. and 7 a.m. She said the city hadn’t received any more complaints and didn’t intend to fine the church.
In the past two years, the city has sent eight such courtesy notices to churches in Oakland for complaints about noise, litter and other annoyances. Only one church was cited, Boyd said, because people were skateboarding in the parking lot.
Rachel Swan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail rswan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @rachelswan
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Black Arts Movement Master Poet/Playwright/Activist Marvin X, NOW AVAILABLE FOR BOOKING
Black Arts Movement Master Marvin X commanding the BAM Poets' Choir and Arkestra, Malcolm X Jazz/Art Fest, Oakland, 2014
collage Adam Turner
Long time agowise sister said
enjoy life
enjoy good times
when bad times come
roll wit da punches.--B.
And so it is. love the moment.
humble, merciful.
imagine the mind of lover
joy pain
love in love in hate
between spaces
bodies entwined
Sunday love
Saturday love
what is love
then what
after the fuck
momentary joy
release
then what
the physical
now mental
then what
afraid to talk
speak love
touch embrace
what is love
after the fuck
then what?
--Marvin X
Marvin X is available for booking. Call 510-200-4164.
BOOK MARVIN X
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Three Black Revolutioanry Warriors: Angela Davis, Marvin X, Sonia Sanchez
And resist, resist, resist we must. This is our tradition to over come oppression. It is not unique. All people seeking freedom will and must resist to the last drop of blood. And oppression is worst than slaughter, Al Qur'an. What is death for the cause of millions who gave their lives for us to continue the fight until victory? Do not defy our ancestors, make them happy and joyful that we have continued the struggle until victory, no matter the price.
![]()
Black revolutionary warriors, scholars, artists: Angela Davis, Marvin X, Sonia Sanchez
They paid the price for Black Lives Matter to continue until we are free, with self determination and sovereignty. All were banned from teaching in white academia. Sonia in New York, Angela and Marvin X were banned from teaching in California on orders of Gov. Ronald Reagan: Angela was banned from UCLA because she was a Black Communist, Marvin X was banned from Fresno State University because he was a Black Muslim.
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Will Oakland establish the Black Arts Movement Cultural and Business District?
Traditional
If you ever find
yourself, some where
lost and surrounded
by enemies
who won't let you
speak in your own language
![]()
who destroy your statues
& instruments, who ban
your omm bomm ba boom
![djembe rhythms & african drum rhythms - djembefola.com]()
then you are in trouble
deep trouble
they ban your
omm boom ba boom
you in deep deep
trouble
humph!
probably take you several hundred years
to get
out!
--Amiri Baraka
![]()
From: Parker, Alicia<AParker@oaklandnet.com>
Date: Mon, Oct 12, 2015 at 2:57 PM
Subject: Plan Downtown - Artists Group on 10/27 at 11am
To: "info@joycegordongallery.com"<info@joycegordongallery.com>
![]()
![]()
![]()
![]()
![]()
![]()
If you ever find
yourself, some where
lost and surrounded
by enemies
who won't let you
speak in your own language
who destroy your statues
& instruments, who ban
your omm bomm ba boom
then you are in trouble
deep trouble
they ban your
omm boom ba boom
you in deep deep
trouble
humph!
probably take you several hundred years
to get
out!
--Amiri Baraka
CALLING ALL BLACK PEOPLE
ARTISTS, VENDORS, BUSINESS PERSONS
We are calling for the Black Arts Movement District along the 14th Street corridor, downtown Oakland, from Martin Luther King, Jr. Way to Alice Street. This corridor should be the resurrection of 7th Street, West Oakland, Harlem of the West. It should be the cultural and economic expression of North American Africans who have been the vanguard of resistance to white supremacy domination in Oakland and America. Yes, Oakland is the City of Resistance, like Fallujah in Iraq. Let's be clear, during the 1960s North American Africans in Oakland suffered a military defeat by the US Government's Cointelpro, the effort to prevent the rise of a black messiah and the liberation of the Black Masses. The revolutionary Black Panther Party was ultimately defeated on the streets of Oakland by police, military and intelligence agencies of America. See Stanley Nelson's film Black Panthers, Vanguard of the Revolution. Fifty years later we are still fighting the police, miseducation of our children, urban removal (now called gentrification), joblessness and incarceration; still suffering traumatic slave syndrome, unresolved grief and a pervasive toxic environment.
Culturally, housing for North American Africans is disappearing rapidly, artistic institutions are few and funding is minimal while European American art and cultural institutions flourish, especially in the downtown area.
Our cultural gatherings are under attack. We are fined for singing in church while Black, drumming while Black, partying at Lake Merritt while Black: No amplified music, no Bar b Que, no alcohol= No Nigguhs at the Lake! Black women from the Bay were recently kicked off the Napa Wine Train for laughing while Black.
Richard Wright said it best in Native Son, "Your very presence is a crime against the State!...."
It is time to stand our ground, maybe it's the last stand, but stand and resist white supremacy domination in Oakland. Oakland's socalled multi-racial demographics is not what Oakland is about. Oakland is the City of Resistance to oppression and pervasive discrimination in every sphere of cultural life: political, economic, educational, religious. Resistance is the key to Oakland's past and future. The Black Arts Movement District will continue the tradition of art for liberation, not to perpetuate the world of make believe projected by the dominate culture.
WE call upon all conscious people to attend the upcoming planning meetings to demand the Black Arts Movement District.
--Marvin X
Black Arts Movement co-founder
510-200-4164
jmarvinx@yahoo.com
www.blackbirdpressnews.blogspot.com
From: Parker, Alicia<AParker@oaklandnet.com>
Date: Mon, Oct 12, 2015 at 2:57 PM
Subject: Plan Downtown - Artists Group on 10/27 at 11am
To: "info@joycegordongallery.com"<info@joycegordongallery.com>
Dear Ms. Diouf,
My name is Alicia and it is my pleasure to invite you to a meeting to discuss arts in Downtown Oakland. As part of Plan Downtown we are convening a meeting with artists and cultural leaders on Tuesday, Oct. 27 at 11amat 1544 Broadway. The group will be composed of artists, downtown gallery owners and curators, representatives from performance venues, and cultural leaders. We will discuss the place for arts in the future of downtown, how to ensure equity as we grow as a city and how to reach the widest audience (across cultures and ages).
It would be great if you are able to make it. I’ve attached some flyers so that you can add the other community events to your calendar. We’re having a “hands-on design” session at 6pm Monday, Oct. 19 (the Rotunda Building, 300 Frank Ogawa Plaza), a “pin-up” session at 6pm on Thursday, Oct. 22 (1544 Broadway) and a “work-in-progress” presentation at 6pm Wednesday, Oct. 28 (The Paramount Theatre, 2025 Broadway).
Please let me know if you have any questions or need any clarification. I look forward to hearing from you. (510) 238-3362
Thank you,
Alicia Parker, AICP, Planner III | City of Oakland | Bureau of Planning | 250 Frank H. Ogawa Plaza, Suite 3315, Oakland, CA 94612 | Phone:(510) 238-3362 | Fax: (510) 238-6538|Email:aparker@oaklandnet.com | Website:www.oaklandnet.com/planning
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Black Bird Press News & Review: Will Oakland establish the Black Arts Movement Cultural and Business District?
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UK's Guardian Newspaper review of film Black Panthers, Vanguard of the Revolution
Black power’s coolest radicals (but also a gang of ruthless killers)
With the US convulsed by contemporary incidents of racist police brutality, a new documentary charts the rise of the Black Panthers. But what is the true legacy of the revolutionary group once feted by the 1960s left and whose look defined ‘radical chic’?
Black Panthers at a Free Huey Newton rally in Oakland, California in 1969. Despite their self-consciously macho image the Panthers did try to involve women. Photograph: courtesy of Pirkle Jones and Ruth-Marion Baruch
Sunday 18 October 2015 04.30 EDT
The right to bear arms that is enshrined in the US constitution is now most fiercely defended by rightwing libertarians. But it wasn’t always the case. In the mid-1960s, that decade of revolt and turmoil, Huey Newton, a 24-year-old law student in Oakland, California, realised that citizens of that state had the legal right to carry arms openly.
A teenage thug who taught himself to read, Newton had consumed revolutionary literature from Marx to Malcolm X and had become, in his early 20s, a political activist bent on promoting the rights of his fellow African Americans. But he was steeped in violence. After serving a short sentence for stabbing a man with a steak knife, he returned to college and, with his friend Bobby Seale, set up the Black Panther party in 1966.
We wanted to give this film the spirit of this revolutionary fervour
Director Stanley Nelson
This was an era when black politics was inextricably bound up with the civil rights movement and the non-violent protests led by Martin Luther King. Yet increasing numbers of young blacks, appalled by scenes of African Americans being brutally treated by well-armed white police, were frustrated by what they saw as the passivity of the civil rights movement. There had been riots in Watts in Los Angeles in 1965. Malcolm X had called on black Americans to combat oppression “by any means necessary”, but he was killed that same year. There was a vacancy for a new black vanguard.
It was Newton’s idea to go out on armed patrol with other Black Panthers and bear witness to racist or provocative police action. For the most part, these patrols were limited to Oakland; the rest of the US remained largely ignorant of the young revolutionaries. But then, on 2 May 1967, the Black Panthers showed up at the California state assembly in Sacramento carrying loaded weapons. They were dressed in black leather jackets with rollneck jumpers, berets, sunglasses and shotguns. It was a stunningly cool and defiant image and overnight the Black Panthers forced themselves to the front of black radical politics in America.
Very soon, they were known throughout the world, inspiring black radicals and all-purpose revolutionaries in the UK, Europe, the West Indies and even Africa. Jean Genet, the French writer and activist, became a committed supporter. Hollywood stars flocked to get a glimpse of this excitingly dangerous new phenomenon. And the composer Leonard Bernstein held a celebrity-packed fundraising party at his New York home, complete with uniformed Panthers, which was famously satirised by Tom Wolfe who minted the phrase “radical chic” to describe the rich and famous toying with revolutionary causes.
More generally, the Panthers were taken up by the counterculture as a kind of domestic version of the anti-imperialist struggle being waged in the Vietnam war. AsTodd Gitlin, a leading member of the US counterculture, stated in his book, The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage: “Nothing made the idea of revolution more vivid to the white left than the Black Panther party.”
Huey Newton, centre, on his return from China, with Elaine Brown on the left. Photograph: Bettmann/Corbis
This historic period is emotively captured in a new documentary, The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution, made by Stanley Nelson, a long-time chronicler of African American struggles. It’s a powerful film, full of dramatic footage and a pulsating soundtrack of funk and soul. And it could hardly be more timely. The past couple of years have seen a spate of incidents of police brutality towards African Americans, many of them captured on video. With protests taking place from Ferguson in Missouri to New York, we have been reminded that although there may be a black president in the White House, the plight of far too many African Americans is that of second-class citizens and victims of racist law enforcement.
Without making a direct correlation, the film shows that recent flashpoints have a long and tumultuous history. Yet it’s also unquestionably an idealised vision of the Panthers. The story it tells is of noble intentions undermined by the dark machinations of the US state, in the malign guise of the FBI and the omnipotent figure of its devious director, J Edgar Hoover.
There is little doubt the Panthers were targeted in ways that were often viciously excessive, including what amounted to extrajudicial killings. But there is even less doubt that among their own senior ranks were pathological killers, ideological madmen and depraved opportunists. But that side of the story is either only referred to in passing or ignored altogether. For example, the film features interviews with a charming and now grey-haired former Black Panther called Ericka Huggins. Although the image of the Panthers was potently male, more than half the members by the late 1960s were female. Their story has been sidelined and it is to the documentary’s credit that it seeks to redress the marginalising of female voices.
We hear Huggins speak about what initially galvanised her to join the Panthers, how she committed herself to the cause and how, with a heavy heart, she finally left, having been assaulted by an increasingly deranged Newton. What she doesn’t mention – and nor does the film – is the case of a 19-year-old Panther foot soldier called Alex Rackley. In May 1969, after her Panther husband, John Huggins, was killed in a shoot-out with black nationalists, Huggins moved with her baby daughter to New Haven, Connecticut, where she led the local chapter of the Black Panthers. For no good reason, Rackley, an illiterate young man, was suspected of being an informant. At that time, the FBI had infiltrated the organisation and fear of informants was widespread. And so Rackley was interrogated under torture. He was tied to a chair and had boiling water poured over him and was then left tied to a bed for three days in great pain, in his own mess. Not only did Huggins witness these scenes,she was recorded reading out a charge sheet of Rackley’s “confessions”, after which he was taken to a nearby swamp and shot dead. Huggins and Seale were charged with murder, kidnap and conspiracy, the allegation being that they commissioned the crime. After a celebrated trial, both walked free. Huggins’s defence was that she was coerced into playing along with the killers – Warren Kimbro and Lonnie McLucas – by the national “field marshal” of the Panthers, George Sams.
The Black Panthers: Vanguard Of The Revolution director Stanley Nelson. Photograph: Sam Alesh
Of this whole tragic episode, not a word is mentioned. Why? “Ericka Huggins was acquitted,” Stanley Nelson tells me on the phone from the States. “You can’t keep trying people in the media.”
Huggins was indeed acquitted – the jury found her not guilty by 10-2. But no one can say she wasn’t there during the torture. Nor that she didn’t remain in the Panthers for almost another decade. Why did she stay with an organisation that harboured such sadistic killers? “Because I was committed to the party, not to orchestrations of the FBI,” she tells me from her home in Oakland. “I was committed to serving people. That’s why I stayed.”
As far as she is concerned, the FBI were ruthless puppet masters, able to turn good men into cold-blooded killers through the power of suggestion. It’s a handy theory that absolves the Panthers of responsibility for their own actions and it’s one the film implicitly, and sometimes explicitly, supports. As Nelson says: “We did ask people about that [Alex Rackley] story. But to retry someone who’s been acquitted, I don’t see the relevance of it. What exactly does it prove? It’s a very complicated story. You have a psychopathic infiltrator from the FBI, spurring the Panthers on to commit these acts.”
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The accusation that Sams was working for the FBI has been repeated many times but with no definitive proof and there is nothing to suggest the torture was conducted under FBI direction. All the same, when I ask Nelson whether there was a critical point at which things started to go wrong, he says: “If you wanted to single out one thing, I think it would be J Edgar Hoover and the FBI. I think the Panthers might have been able to sort out their internal problems themselves.”
This is, to say at the least, a large assumption, But it’s one that fits the film’s perspective. As Nelson rightly says: “The way the Black Panthers are remembered is not the way that they were thought of at the time.” And one judgment of the film is that it sets out to recover that earlier understanding of the Panthers, when they were seen by many as an inspiration rather than an embarrassment. “We wanted to give this film the spirit of this revolutionary fervour going on,” says Nelson.
In an immediate sense, it’s a question of image and style. The Panthers were striking in the first instance because of how they looked. This was the era of afros and black consciousness and no one did it with more panache than the Panthers. Seldom has a sense of danger, radicalism and street cool been combined to such mesmerising effect.
One former henchman in the film recalls a gathering of sympathetic Hollywood A-listers which Black Panthers attended in full black leather-and-guns garb. “Those stars,” he says laughing at the memory, “they just loved that shit. They just ate that shit up.”
Ericka Huggins is released from prison after the case against her for the murder of Alex Rackley was dismissed, May 1971. Photograph: Dave Pickoff/AP
There was a willingness in progressive circles to give the Panthers the benefit of any doubt, owing to their unimpeachable revolutionary credentials. For they didn’t just shout “kill the pigs”, like a lot of angry students, they really did go out and shoot the police dead. Newton killed Oakland police officer John Frey in a shoot-out after Frey stopped him in his car early on the morning of 28 October 1967. Newton suffered a stomach wound in the exchange and was arrested in hospital. There followed a nationwide campaign to release him.
In the film, we see crowds carrying placards with the legend “Chairman Mao says ‘Free Huey’”. Nothing could more efficiently sum up the gleeful naivety that at the time masqueraded as a revolutionary stance. Mao was responsible for the deaths of countless millions of his citizens and Newton was a deranged narcissist ever ready to pull the trigger.Fittingly, in 1971, Newton visited Chinaand, while he didn’t meet Mao, he did have an audience with Zhou Enlai.
In a sense, the Free Huey campaign worked. Although Newton was found guilty of voluntary manslaughter, the conviction was overturned and in May 1970 he was released. Two further trials resulted in hung juries and the case was finally dismissed. By then, the party was in meltdown.
Revolutionaries tend to specialise in internal struggles and the Panthers were no exception. While Newton was in prison, their minister of information, Eldridge Cleaver, tried to take control of the party. Cleaver was an ex-con who had written Soul on Ice, a series of essays on his political journey from “supermasculine menial” to arch-black liberationist. In the book, he admitted to raping white women as “an insurrectionary act”, an outlook he recanted without ever quite losing the misogyny and racism that informed it.
In the film, we see Cleaver as a charismatic but unpredictable leader determined to engage the police in acts of violence. After leading a botched ambush in which two policeman were wounded and a 17-year-old Black Panther was killed, Cleaver fled to Cuba and from there to Algeria, where he set up an international office of the Black Panthers, receiving ambassadors from North Vietnam and North Korea. From Algeria, Cleaver also set about challenging the newly released Newton’s leadership, which resulted in a split in the party and much bloodletting. There is a fascinating recording played in the film of a phone conversation between the two men that sounds like the prelude to a prison fight, with Newton calling Cleaver a “punk”.
“Maybe Huey and Eldridge were both so flawed that it could never have worked,” Nelson acknowledges. “But the other thing is that we couldn’t find a picture of Huey, Bobby and Eldridge together. One or more of them was always in jail or exile. They never got to sit down eye to eye and work out their problems.”
Cleaver was joined in exile by his wife, Kathleen Cleaver, then a 23-year-old firebrand. Now a professor of law, she’s one of three impressively articulate women who figure prominently in the documentary. The other two are Huggins and, perhaps the most compelling of them all,Elaine Brown, a former cocktail waitress in a strip joint who joined the Panthers, like many black Americans, after the assassination of Dr King in April 1968.
Despite their self-consciously macho image, the Black Panthers did attempt to involve women. “We really wanted to talk to women about this,” says Nelson. “Elaine [Brown] said it very well, that ‘we didn’t get the men from revolutionary heaven’. We did not want to say that the Panthers succeeded in doing away with sexism. But we did want to say that it was at least on their minds.”
Kathleen Cleaver, photographed in Oakland, 1968. Now a professor of law, she was the wife of Eldridge Cleaver. Photograph courtesy of Jeffrey Blankfort
There was a period in the mid-1970s, in fact, when Brown became chair of the Black Panthers. However, the film doesn’t cover this era or the ironies involved in it. Newton and Brown were lovers (this is also not mentioned) and she was devoted to her leader. On one occasion, as she admitted in her autobiography, she slept with the white Hollywood film producer Bert Schneider, a Black Panther hanger-on, and in return Schneider made a $12,000 contribution to the rent of Newton’s penthouse apartment. Newton made Brown chair when he fled to Cuba in 1974.
He left the country to escape another murder charge. It was alleged that on 6 August 1974 Newton shot a 17-year-old street prostitute called Kathleen Smith in the face, apparently because she referred to him as “Baby”. She died after three months in a coma. Newton lived in Cuba for three years and stood trial for Smith’s murder on his return. But the main witness refused to testify, following an attempt to kill her, and Newton again walked free after two deadlocked jury trials.
Huggins soon learned that Newton had killed Smith. Why didn’t she leave the party at that stage? “I think you’re looking for answers that I really can’t give you,” she says defensively. “I’m a little confused about what you want me to say. Is there something you’re looking for?”
I ask for an explanation of why she remained loyal to a killer of a 17-year-old girl and she says that the shooting was an accident. “Nonetheless, a woman was killed. However, I had my work to do in the Black Panther party, so I continued to do it. That’s the best I can explain to you.”
Again, none of this is mentioned in the film.
Given the circumstances in which Huggins’s friend Elaine Brown took control, it could hardly be claimed as an unambiguous victory for feminism. In his memoir Radical Son, David Horowitz, a former Bay Area white radical turned rightwing activist, recalled his involvement with the Panthers and Brown’s leadership.
He claims that she had a taste for violence and certainly she wasn’t much bothered by Newton pistol-whipping a man so badly that he required brain surgery. Later she wrote: “It is a sensuous thing to know that at one’s will an enemy can be struck down… For a black woman in America to know that power is to experience being raised from the dead.” Horowitz lost his faith in the Panthers and, as a consequence, progressive politics as a whole after his friend Betty van Patter, who worked for the Panthers on Horowitz’s recommendation, was kidnapped and killed in 1974. Just before she disappeared, she had fallen out with Brown. The police never linked the disagreement to the crime and no one has ever uncovered any evidence to suggest Brown was involved. She has denied having anything to do with Van Patter’s death. ButHorowitz and others remain convinced the Black Panthers were responsible for his friend’s murder.
Brown left the party soon after Newton’s return, when he authorised the beating of a woman who ran the Panther Liberation School. Finally, she had had enough of the party’s sexism and misogyny. As for the others, Seale wrote a cookbook, advertised Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and remains involved in black studies.Newton, a cocaine addict, was shot deadas a result of a longstanding gang feud outside a crack house in Oakland in 1989. Huggins went to the funeral of her rapist. What does she think of him now?
“You know, Andrew,” she tells me. “I can’t think of any human being that hasn’t had to battle with their own internal struggle. The Huey I first met was my dearest friend and ally to everyone I knew. And I loved him. I know that every human in the world has brought about harm, so I don’t have a judgment, so to speak.”
Cleaver returned to the States in 1975 and got involved in various Christian sects before finally becoming a Mormon and a diehard Republican.
It was an ignominious ending for a revolution. But there was a moment, and it’s there to see in Nelson’s rousingly captivating film, when the future looked very different. And as long as African Americans are subjected to police brutality and racism, it remains a future that’s well worth remembering.
The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution is out on Friday 23 October.Click here for information and details of screeningswith director Stanley Nelson and former Black Panther Mohammed Mubarak
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City of Oakland's Downtown Plan--We Demand Black Arts Movement Cultural and Business District for 14th Street corridor
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We hope to see you at tonight’s Hands-On Design Workshop, which kicks off a ten-day series of events to engage the public in planning Downtown Oakland’s future. At the end of the ten-day charrette, the community and planning team will have collaboratively developed the bones of Plan Downtown, which will guide future land use, development, housing, employment, transportation, community character and arts and culture in Downtown. Monday, October 19, 6 to 8pm Hands-On Design Workshop – TONIGHT The Rotunda Building, 300 Frank H. Ogawa Plaza Consultants will lead the public through discussion and activities to identify the important issues associated with the future of Downtown and illustrate how Oaklanders might like to see the area evolve. Tuesday, October 20 through Tuesday, October 27 Open Design Studio 9 am to 6 pm daily (closed Sunday), open until 8 pm on Tuesdays and Thursday 1544 Broadway, across from Latham Square Drop by at any time to meet the City’s Plan Downtown team, including experts in fields such as environment, architecture and economics. Share your ideas, ask questions and find out what other Oaklanders are envisioning for Downtown. Thursday, October 22, 6 to 7 pm Pin-up Open House 1544 Broadway An illustrative plan designed throughout the week to help visualize change will be pinned up on the wall for the public to see and discuss. Saturday, October 24, 9 am to Noon Downtown Walking Tour Tour departs from 1544 Broadway The walking tour will highlight areas of change and opportunity in Downtown, giving tour participants a chance to consider the existing urban form and possibilities for growth. Tuesday, October 27, 12:30 to 1:30 pm Parking Summit 1544 Broadway City transportation staff will provide information about the Downtown Oakland Parking Study and facilitate a conversation about parking strategies. Wednesday, October 28, 6 to 8 pm Work-In-Progress Presentation The Paramount Theatre, 2025 Broadway The planning team will present the ideas, goals and draft visualizations generated for Plan Downtown to get feedback from the public to make sure the plan is on the right track. For more information on the Plan Downtown Oakland, please visit the project web page at www.oaklandnet.com/plandowntownoakland. |
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NYC Police Terror
"NYC #RiseUpOctober Stop Police Terror Press Conference On Steps of City Hall"
Press Conference TODAY @ 11:00am Sharp!
We Need ALL Anti-Police Terror Activist Leadership @ Today's 11am City Hall Press Conference In Support Of Those "Stolen Lives" Families from NYC Who Are United Together For This Saturday's #RiseUpOctober National March Against Police Terror On October 24th In New York City.
Please Try To Come Help Represent Today... If You Can!
Ukuthula,
Zulu Nation King "Bro. Shep"
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