BAM F E S T 2021 Black August, Part One, Off the Record: Dr. Cornel West in Conversation with Marvin X, intro and praise by Dr. Cornel West and Dr. Ayodele Nzinga

In this video Dr. Cornel West praises Marvin X, as does Dr. Ayodele Nzinga in

their remarks on X at Geoffrey's Inner Circle in Oakland's Black Arts Movement Business District,

14th and Franklin, downtown Oakland. When Dr. West arrived at Geoffrey's, the first thing he told Marvin X was, "Brother about the balance of my fee, $2,500.00, I don't want a penny from you. I am here because I love you!" Need I say more about my dear friend, one of the greatest minds North American Africans have produced? What you do speaks for you! Dr. Cornel West has never said no to me when I called upon him to share in one of my events. We have tentatively agreed to participate in a Zoom or live discussion on Palestine and North American Africans at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, later this year. Stay turned to Black Bird Press News and Review for more information.  

Dr. Cornel West and Marvin X in the Green Room at Geoffrey's Inner Circle, Oakland. Two Geminis, you know the world is in trouble unless it submits to truth! You can't lie to a Gemini! We are messengers of Truth and shall speak our minds no matter who or what. Between truth and money, the true Gemini is on the side of truth, money means nothing to this personality. When Dr. West was bold enough to criticize President Obama, West was a true trooper in my book. West, in the name of truth, took issue with the reactionary imperial policies of President Obama. North American Africans, in their messianic narcissistic sycophantic adulation of our first black president, denounced Dr. West, no matter he told the truth about the first Black President who sent more migrants back across the US southern border than any president before him. Further, our first black president droned American citizens, i.e., Brother AlLakie and his son in Yemen, unleashed the terrorist Pandora's Box in Libya, igniting the ephemeral Arab Spring that morphed into the Egyptian pseudo revolution that dismissed the Muslim Brotherhood, the perennial enemy of the Middle East's pseudo Islamic  autocratic regimes.    Syria's geopolitical quagmire is a most wretched example of the middle east's conundrum wherein all the global forces fight for their regional and global policy agendas, with Zionism swimming in the deep structure, although attacking Iranian sycophants, i.e., Hezbollah and other Shia mercenaries in this end-time mythic-ritual drama beyond Biblical and Qur'anic desire for events that shall usher in Armageddon, including the return of the Christian Messiah Jesus and the Shia 12 Imam.   Isn't it amazing how myth-ritual zealots imagine the return of their Savior will end one world and initiate the New World or Kingdom of Love, Justice, Righteousness and peace. Imagine, the Holy Land must be destroyed so the new order of myth ritual can begin. Alas, the old myths of Jerusalem, Dome of the Rock, First Testament mythology of "Chosen people" (Deconstructed by Jesus in John 8:44) and executed by the Zionist and Apartheid actions of Israel  as we write.) Yet, we, in our global white supremacist denial of Zionism as Apartheid, allow Israel to persist in her Biblical fantastical illusion of a Jewish state in the midst of an indigenous population of Arabs. Yet the European globalists are enablers in this Jewish fantasy. But just as the Christian Crusaders were forced to depart the Holyland after a hundred years with the gracious request of Saladin the Kurd to Richard the Lion Hearted, who agreed to depart back to Europe, why do we think the Ashkenazi Zionists shall avoid the day of their departure from the Holy Land that they have proven  they are unable to live in peace with the children of Abraham? 

I have been aware of Palestinian suffering since I was four years old when I watched newsreels of them fleeing across the bridge into Jordan at the drive-in theatre with my parents. Although they were conscious parents, who incessantly discussed Negro civil rights as per the NAACP, who also attended the 1945 Peace Conference in San Francisco that led to the establishment of the United Nations 

Parents of Marvin X, Marian Murrill Jackmon and Owendell Jackmon I, attended the San Francisco Peace Conference that established the United Nations, 1945. Marvin X was blessed to have conscious parents. When he was born, his parents were publishing the Fresno Voice, a Black newspaper in the central valley of California. They were devoted members of the NAACP. "The only thing that bothers me is watching the Palestinians fleeing Palestine on the newsreel, and although I was horrified as a child, still my parents said nothing to me as I sat horrified and traumatized at the drive-in theatre eating popcorn and clapping for the cowboys killing Indians, too ignorant to know my grandmother was more than likely Native American from Oklahoma Indian Territory. 

Dr. Ayodele Nzinga with Master Teacher Marvin X, outside of The Flight Deck Theatre where Ayo's Lower Bottom Playaz are in residence. She is the undisputed Grand Diva of Poetry and Drama in Oakland, recently appointed Poet Laureate for the City of Oakland. Dr. Nzinga is also CEO and Founder of the Black Arts Movement Business District, Community Development Corporation or CDC. 

Dr. Nzinga, in unity with the Asian community, has won community benefit agreements from developers causing displacement in the BAMBD. Benefits have included below market rate housing and retail space for Bambd CDC residents. BAMBD Co-Founder Marvin X has encouraged Dr. Ayo Nzinga to demand equity with developers as per ownership. Black developers have chided the City of Oakland for not having their Black owned developments in Oakland's skyline. Only the Port of Oakland represents the North American African mind. Tom Berkley's shipping container lifters are the sole Black contribution to Oakland's skyline from the African mind. FYI, 20th Street is also Tom Berkley Way. Further, at mid 20th Tom Berkley intersects with Rashidah Muhammad Way, in honor of the African freedom fighter, aka Dessie X, who served time in the south for killing her attempted rapist, then came to Oakland to become a midwife in West Oakland.  West Oakland had little or no knowledge of Rashidah Muhammad. I laugh when passing her street, a revolutionary woman Oakland really knows nothing about. 

Black August, Attica Prison rebellion and slaughter by USA. All prisoners know the first order of surrender is stripping down butt naked. What is America but stripping down butt naked in every institution of life. Chris Hedges calls it American Sadism. What part of the American myth-ritual is not rooted is sadism? 

Attica prison rebellion. "When I entered Terminal Island Federal Prison for refusing to fight in Vietnam, the first thing the brothers told me was don't get sick! Whatever you do, don't get sick cause we got a graveyard of niggas who got sick." I say this to those of us in the "big yard" of the American gulag or Gaza concentration camp called ghettoes, "Don't get sick! Stay woke, stay strong physically, mentally and spiritually. Don the armor of God and pray like Hammer said, "You got to pray to get through the day."

I pray going out and coming in. I can never forget as a dope fiend, the most dangerous time was going out to cop. So even when my friends were with me, and whether they joined me in prayer, I prayed going out and coming back. Alas, we did not know if we were going to make it back from coping dope, especially during tweeker's hours, i.e., early in the morning.  I was thankful we went out late night, early morn, in our mind altered state to cope and thankful we made it back to our wretched room in the Hindu Hilton's of San Francisco's Tenderloin. 

Left to Right (FYI, man in back was loyal and devoted customer of Marvin X at his Academy of Da Corner, 14th and Broadway, downtown, Oakland. He informed me that my poster poems were on the walls of his house.): Amiri Baraka RIP, Chief Architect of the Black Arts Movement, Bobby Seale, Co-Founder of the Black Panther Party, Dr. Ayodele Nzinga, Chief student of Marvin X, Founder of the Lower Bottom Playaz Theatre  and the Black Arts Movement Business District, CDC

Marvin X and his grandson  who told him at three years old, "Grandfather, you can't save the world but I can!" Marvin X was so relieved to hear his grandson take the burden off him. Others had told him Marvin X was too much a burden oh him. They said he needed to discard the X and just be himself, the X made him assume the burdens of the world. A woman friend said she wanted him to just be Marvin without the X. She took him to relax in expensive hotels, Carmel hotel suites by Pebble Beach, took him to Sonoma for a massage. She begged him, drop that X because it is the burden of the world on your shoulders and you don't need it!

She took him for a yacht ride. Wined and dined him in Point Richmond, took him shopping in Sausalito, dining in Carmel at the golf course. "You deserve this, Marvin X, for all you have done to free our people. 

But you need RR, chill, be yourself, not Marvin X, just Marvin. Let me love you as Marvin, not Marvin X, Marvin. I know who you are, I knew long time ago, back in the 60s when you were at Merritt, we called you the petit' black bourgeoisie intellectuals. At parties you were against the wall, too cool to dance with us ghetto sisters. But we knew you and who you were as petit' bourgeoisie intellectuals. Yeah, some of you niggas spoke French, Spanish, Swahili, Arabic. You petit bourgeoise niggas didn't wanna fuck wit us ghetto bitches. I ain't saying you but your yellow nigga comrades had your brown paper bag parties where black and brown niggas couldn't come. We didn't give a fuck about them yellow nigga parties. We had enough common sense to know you yellow niggas was the same as us when popo came.

Fly to Allah, the 1968  chapbook that established Marvin X as the "Father of Muslim American literature".

Kalamu ya Salaam says, "The grouping of Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, Askia Toure, Jose Goncalves and Marvin X formed the nucleus of Black Arts Movement leadership."--Kalamu ya Salaam

A few of his thirty books. Probably the most prolific writer in the Black Arts Movement. His comrades in the Black Arts Movement, The Last Poets, say, "Marvin X writes a book a month." X says, "People ask me how to write a book. I tell them to write one page a day, at the end of the year they will have 365 pages. Nobody has reported back to me that they followed my prescription. So if you want my services as writing consultant, my fee is $200.00 per hour, half in advance. I'm in the fourth quarter of my life, I have no time to bullshit. As per my own writings, it's do or die. 

I have no time to write your story, so don't call me asking me to writing nothing. I'm trying to finish my own shit and I'm behind in my books of poetry, essays,  and parables. Writing is love and joy to me. An elder woman said to me, "If you don't enjoy what you doing, you don't know what's going on!" I replied to her, "I'm so thankful I love what I'm doing. I write in the name of Love, Joy and Truth! Truth motivates me most of all. Please tell me if I have told you a lie, an untruth. My Mother taught me Jesus said truth will set you free. And I love what Francis Bacon said, 'Truth will not make you rich but it will make you free!'" 

I have been blessed to be a free spirit. Ancestor James W. Sweeney said, "Marvin X is the freest Black man in non-free America." He added, "Marvin X walked through the muck and mire of hell and came out clean as white fish and black as coal!"--James W. Sweeney, Berkeley, CA, RIP

Ancestor Amiri Baraka said, "Writers live a privileged life," and we do as any artist does. If you have configured how to live a life in which you own your time, this is a privilege. Your wife and family may not understand or be in harmony with you, no matter, if you can create the space to write as you please, you have indeed achieved the artistic freedom Brother Sweeney describes above that Marvin X achieved.

You may not be able to approach the artistic freedom or more especially, the discipline Marvin X has mastered, but if you do the one page per day Marvin X prescribes, you will be on the road of success.

In truth, I have told many many persons my one page per day prescription but few follow. Perhaps the simple is too complex. But I know what works for me and so I know if I write a page per day, I will have a book at the end of the year. 

So, those seeking my advice and council on writing, don't bother me with b.s. I'm in the fourth quarter of my life with the only the Hail Mary left, so let me write my last notes to myself, though, for you. If I say stupid shit, let me do so.  Tell me your last words if they are devoid of ignut supid shit. Now that you are 70, 80, 90 what can you tell me beyond the ignut shit you learned in college, university, pseudo social justice sects, cults and BLM sessions of critical race theory on the devil and systemic white supremacy.

If whites cannot admit the critical factor in recovery, i.e., denial, they are not ready to enter short or long term recovery from the ADDICTION T0 WHITE SUPREMACY TYPE ONE. FYI, DR. NATHAN HARE, IN HIS FOREWORD TO THIS MANUAL OF RECOVERY, NOTES THAT WHITES SUFFER Addiction to White Supremacy Type I. Blacks suffer Addiction to White Supremacy Type II.

The two types cannot meet together. We have already experienced the trauma, grief, and, yes, denial in both group meeting together, except when a white man or woman has been so blackinezed that she or he is consciously black. Supposedly the parents of Vice President Kamala Harris met at a meeting of the African American Association under the leadership of Attorney Donald Warden, aka, Khalid Abdullah Tariq Al Mansour. The AAA was steeped in black culture, economics and politics, so deep it gave rise to the Black Panther Party, Black Studies and the Black Arts Movement.  The Los Angeles representative of the Afro American Association was Ron Karenga, aka Maulana Karenga, founder of Kwanza, although Oakland's AAA was the founder of Kwanza, according to AAA member, Ed Howard, who lectured on the Origins of Kwanza at the Joyce Gordon Gallery. (The video lecture of Ed Howard's talk on Kwanza Origins is available in the Marvin X Archives, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley).

See the City of Oakland's Downtown Plan for the next 25 to 50 years for equity of the BAMBD. Three years after establishing the BAMBD, we have no budget, no signage, i.e., banners, posters. Alas, the 2021 budget includes $250,000 for the BAMBD. We demand these funds are directed to the BAMBD, CDC that has been the functional organization in the district. The BAMBD, CDC has won Community Displacement Awards from corporations causing critical displacement, homelessness, mental trauma, seuf