Marvin X at his Academy of Da Corner, 14th and Broadway, downtown Oakland
photo Adam Turner
"If you want to learn about motivation and inspiration, don't spend all that money going to workshops and seminars, just go stand at 14th and Broadway and watch Marvin X at work. He's Plato teaching on the streets of Oakland."
--Ishmael Reed, Professor Emeritus, University of California, Berkeley
"Marvin X is Socrates teaching in the African hood!"
--Dr. Cornel West, Harvard University
Today the Oakland Parks and Rec Commission held a Zoom meeting that ended with the last agenda item: a discussion on Black Vendors at Lake Merritt. As usual white folks were against the presence of North American African vendors at Lake Merritt. Black vendors have been banned from vending on Lakeshore Ave. and Grand Ave. They are officially restricted to a block long strip on Embarcadero. Unofficial vendors still vend on Lakeshore during the week and on Grand Ave. weekends, although the OPD has been coming down on those vendors selling marijuana and alcohol, and playing loud music. On weekends parking is not allowed on Lakeshore or Grand Ave. on lakeside. The mostly white residents and businesses object to the presence of the official vendors under the Oakland Black Vendors Association, headed by James Copes, a longtime Oakland businessman and entrepreneur. Copes is a dedicated community activist and advocate of economic equity. Organizing the Lake Merritt Black Vendors is his attempt to teach entrepreneurship to people marginalized from the job market. He has tried diplomacy to make the white residents and business community realize they need to stop objecting to the Black presence at Lake Merritt. At today's Zoom meeting, a white person reminded the commissioners that in the not so recent Oakland history, Blacks were banned from Lake Merritt, as this writer remembers as a child growing up in West Oakland.
White speakers, in their language of subterfuge and circumlocution, told tales of the Blacks destroying the green of the lake, the pounds of garbage being found in the lake and around the lake. How terrible this is to have Lake Merritt, the pride and joy of Oakland, turned into a Black commercial entity. Surely the Blacks can find other places to play their loud music, cook bar-b-que, smoke marijuana and drink alcohol, as if whites don't do the same at the numerous parks and recreational spaces they occupy throughout Oakland.
No matter Blacks have been removed from vending on Lakeshore and the same is rapidly coming to Grand Ave., it was suggested the Oakland Black Vendors Association be limited to one day, though the final vote continues Black vending on Saturdays and Sundays until funds for this pilot project are depleted in November, just as the holiday season begins. Depending on the progress or regress of the germ warfare inflicted on America and the world to reset the geopolitical New World Order, we expect to see the official Black vendors at the lake, and most certainly the unofficial ones, especially the more economically desperate vendors who have the choice of selling or killing, let the pseudo liberal white residents and businesses decide. We suggest they retreat from their insistence on ultimately removing Black vendors from Lake Merritt. No matter what the residents proclaim in their pseudo desires for peace and quiet, while they sing Silent Night about the $700 billion US defense budget to make noise around the world as they bomb mostly poor non-white countries so they are made to suffer in silence the exploitation of lands for cheap labor and precious metals so they can talk on cell phones, as James Brown said, talking loud but saying nothing.
The neighborhood whites decry the supposed black destruction of Lake Merritt but say nothing about Black neighborhoods suffering toxic air, water, food, resulting in toxic physical and mental health. The whites only desire and feel they deserve to come home from their robber tech jobs on wall street and banker pyramid schemes to a pristine lake devoid of the black menace so upsetting to their white state of minds, whether pseudo progressive or fascist conservative, and often as per behavior and actions upon Blacks and other non-whites, the ideological difference is minimal.
As per this discussion, two things are glaringly absent. Firstly, on January 19, 2016, the Oakland City Council passed a resolution establishing the Black Arts Movement Business District, along the 14th Street corridor from the lower bottom to Lake Merritt. So North American Africans have a City mandated presence at Lake Merritt, no matter what residents think along with their avaricious petit bourgeoisie capitalist swine businesspersons.
And let me inform the ignorant Park and Rec Commissioners and the white supremacist residents of Lakeshore and Grand Ave., as per the request for a long term plan for the Oakland Black Vendors Association at Lake Merritt, the BAMBD that extends to Lake Merritt is part of the City of Oakland's Downtown Plan for the next 25 to 50 Years. Park and Rec Commissioners, is this plan long enough for you? Have you heard of the plan that only included Blacks when the final report was almost complete?
Secondly, we suggest the residents, businesspersons and commissioners, peruse SB946, the State Law on Street Vending that states vending must not be restricted from parks and lakes no matter community animus; that vendors are not to be cited and given excessive fines, nor shall their goods be confiscated; they shall not be asked for immigration papers, etc.
Additionally, before leaving office Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law the establishment of Cultural Districts throughout California. For certified cultural districts, Gov. Jerry Brown suggested a moratorium on taxation. As per equity in the City of Oakland, we suggest a five year moratorium on North American African Vendors paying permit fees, County and City license fees, Franchise Tax Board fees and IRS taxation, yes, without representation.
In closing, I call upon North American African vendors, in particular those associated with the Oakland Vendors Association, under the Honorable James Copes, to do what we used to chant at high school football games, when diehard racists under the progressive or conservative persona make their moves to block Black forward movement, we say in unity, "Push 'em back, way back, push 'em back way back." Mao used to say, "The reactionaries will never put down their butcher knives, they will never turn into Buddha heads!" In the words of Oakland's Black Panther Party, "Power to the People!"
--Marvin X
8/12/21
Co-Founder, National Black Arts Movement
Co-Founder, Black Arts Movement Business District, Oakland CA
Co-Founder, Black Vendors Association working in association with James Copes, Founder of OBVA
Publisher/Editor, Black Bird Press News and Review
Publisher/Editor, Black Street, a publication of the Black Vendors Association
Marvin X was awarded a grant from the Silicon Valley Community Foundation to organize the Black Vendors Association. He supports James Copes and his Oakland Black Vendors Association.
