Marvin X Notes on BLACK AUGUST NATIONAL CONFERENCE, Oakland CA, 2018
This Black August National Conference has been called for by various prison slavery abolitionist and youth developement activist under the unity and leadership of the founding elders of the Black August Organizing Committee.
The purpose of this Conference is to formulate legal services and litigation teams for at risk youth and longest held prisoners. Establish programs to provide housing and resource access training for homeless youth, adults and newly released citizens.
We will continue to try to stem the increasing flow of our youth to jails and prisons. The numbers of youth who are homeless or simply in the streets aimlessly can be drastically cut down with organized effort within our communities.
During the course of this Conference we will establish the necessary programs that will give us the greatest potential of achieving our goal.
This Conference will bring together in unity the working spirit of comrades of the Black August Commemoration prison movement from around the country to establish a set of tactics and strategies that will be used going forward in our collective and individual efforts to better serve our youth and to liberate our brothers, sisters, comrades, family and friends from the neo-slavery prison system.
The conference will extend into various annual Black August events scheduled in Oakland, Los Angeles and other areas around the country. There will be cultural performances, pilgrimage tours, dedications and tributes throughout the month. Events will be posted here soon.
There is no time like the present for this Black August National Conference to take place. If you or your organization have been in support of or hosted Black August Commemorations and programs in the past, you are invited and strongly encouraged to RSVP this conference by registering with the National Planning Committee here on this Eventbrite invitation as our special invited guest. Food and lodging information will be added to this invite as registration submissions are received. You can also reach us at banationalconference2018@gmail.com for additional info. Registration is strongly suggested but not required.
Hosted by Oakland BAOC.
"FOR SURE THE HOUR FOR WHICH WE YEARN
SHALL YET ARRIVE
AND OUR MARCHING STEP WILL THUNDER
WE SURVIVE"
Marvin X Notes on the Oakland Black August Conference, 2018
Oakland's National Black August Conference on Incarceration was attended by a spirited group of people concerned about the millions of North American Africans in America's jails and prisons. Yes, America, home of the brave and land of the free. America, why then do you have more people in jail and prison than any nation in the world?
After Mama Ayanna's libation to the ancestors, organizer Shaka spoke on the origin of Black August as per prisoners and the community. Black August originated around the death of prison movement messiah George Jackson.
Hip Hop brother Naru was MC. Kumasi was the featured speaker. He is the griot of Black August, the undisputed historian and original source on the North American African created American Prison Movement. Life is a mother. Yesterday I was talking with a mutual friend of Kumasi's in Toronto, Canada. He told me the griot would be at Oakland's Black August. BAM! As I entered the event, there was Kumasi. We embraced and agreed to talk later.
Kumasi's lectures are a minute by minute narrative on how North American Africans navigated the American Gulags. In 1966 Black students from San Francisco State University as members of the editorial staff of Black Dialogue Magazine, were invited to the Soledad Prison Black Culture Club, chaired by Eldridge Cleaver and Alprintice Bunchy Carter. Kumasi says this Black Culture Club is the beginning of the Black Prison Movement and the American Prison Movement. As I observed and Kumasi has lectured, this club was a revolutionary military organization. Indeed, upon my visit as an editor of Black Dialogue Magazine, among several staffers who were also members of the BSU at San Francisco State University, the meeting was under military discipline.
At today's event, I asked MC Naru if I could introduce Kumasi since I deeply appreciated his role as Master Griot of Black August and the American Prison Movement. I gave Kumasi a short introduction and he took the mike, slowly weaving his story of Black August from beginning to the now.
He told how North American African Muslims had to fight to win the right to practice Islam in the jails and prisons of America, e.g., the fight to have Qur'ans, prayer rugs, imams, no pork diet. After long struggle legally and resistance within the walls to suppression of the Black identity. Kumasi told of the fight over hair styles that inmates demanded to express. Alas, only after a struggle were Black hair products allowed in the prison system.
Black August took upon itself the task of protecting Black inmates from predatory behavior by guards, white nationalists and black exploiters, those unconscious elements in the prison population.
Kumasi noted today as he has on other occasions, "It was kill or be killed, there was no other choice. You guys had your revolution on the outside, we had ours on the inside."
He said Black August let the Department of Corrections and they right wing white sycophants know, "For every one you take of us, we shall take three of yours!"
In conclusion, Kumasi called for support of the National Prison Strike on August 21, 2018. "Let
us never not connect with our brothers and sisters behind the walls."
"Malcolm X talked about the Ballot or the Bullet, well, the bullet didn't work so now we must make the ballot the bullet! Form Youth Political Organizations to get out the vote. It must not be about individual politicians but about policies in our Black Agenda. If the politicians don't do right, well...there shall be consequences!
Kumasi ended by introducing a Sister from the South Carolina Prison Movement. Sister informed us of conditions in the South Carolina slave holes, stripped suits, slave labor on the chain gang. South Carolina, Gullah Blacks, brought rice from Senegal, 60% kidnapped Africans arrived at South Carolina ports, Charleston, etc., 500 year old city of slavery and white supremacy domination.
Sister was Queen Mother of Rastas in South Carolina, former SNCC worker with Kwame Toure, Stokeley Carmichael, and H. Rap Brown, Imam Jamil Alamin.
She gave a graphic description of the recent explosion at a prison in South Carolina that left 12 inmates dead and others injured. She said the explosion was State sponsored. It wasn't about cell phones. She noted how when prison authorities recognize a natural leader, they ship him out to another facility as they did with a revolutionary brother. He departed with State troopers and a person from the Public Affairs Office. They wanted to be in charge of the narrative.
Sister said the fight for prisoner rights is a daunting task. We've fought to have African Liberation Day in prisons, Kwanza and other identifying markers of our humanity, especially while we are victims of involuntary servitude under the US Constitution.
I was asked to speak but introducing Kumasi was enough for me.
If I had seized the opportunity to speak, I would have said this:
Soldiers of the Black Liberation Army,
We have reached a critical hour in our struggle, we need a bold program to free our soldiers in captivity. I suggest we tell ole' pharaoh to let our people go. I would like to see Black August and the American Prison Movement endorse sending a delegation to President Donald Trump to kindly suggest he consider a general amnesty of political prisoners and the general population, including the violent criminals. After all, it is a sociological fact that violent criminals have the lowest rate of recidivism.
I suggest Black August issue a reply to my suggestion. No matter his right wing expressions, he pardoned Jack Johnson and a Black sister. Shouldn't any means necessary be made to free our people from the American Gulag?
We need a delegation to meet with President Donald Trump on the matter of a general amnesty for all prisoners. If you issue the statement that Black August would like to meet with President Trump on the matter of a general amnesty, I think I can make it happen, and I do not need to be in the delegation although I am willing and have no fear of dealing with Pharaoh to tell him to let our people go!
Peace and Love in Black Liberation,
Marvin X