by Kenneth G. Keel

Folsom Prison, California’s second oldest prison next to San Quentin, opened in 1880.

On April 9, 2012, a memorial service for Mousy Brown was held at the Folsom State Prison Greystone Chapel. Everyone in attendance would agree that the event was a dignified tribute for a legendary man. The obituary pointed out in part: “Mousy’s formative years occurred during the period known as the Black Power Struggle and the Civil Rights Movement … Moreover, it should be noted that this brother never forgot his identity or obligation to our ethnic culture or its youth. This man’s presence will forever be felt, missed and recognized by the masses!”

During his prime, body-building was at the top of Mousy Brown’s long list of accomplishments. Before becoming California’s governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, along with Franco Colombo, filmed a documentary about inmate body-building routines behind prison walls. Mousy Brown was a major part of that documentary.

During the past few years, Mousy Brown waged a tireless battle to regain his good health, to no avail. Despite knowing the nature and extent of Mousy’s medical condition, CDCR officials refused to grant him a compassionate early release to spend his final hours with his loved ones.

Rick James in 1996, the year he left prison

“Next, I am the founder of the Kumi African Nation Organization (also known as 415). … During all of the time that Rick James and I spent together conversing, I became his combination of things. I was his confidant, body-building trainer, right-hand supporter and very close friend. As far as protector goes, since I was a well-known convict throughout the California prison system, it came with the territory of Rick James and I hanging together each day of prison life.”

Rest in Peace, Mousy Brown! And our deepest condolences are expressed to his family members, friends and associates.

Send our brother some love and light: Kenneth Keel, D-12127, FSP 5-C1-38, P.O. Box 715071, Represa CA 95671-5071.

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by Dennis Haywood

San Francisco – The name Beasley has rung true in the streets of Bayview Hunters Point since before the Double Rock housing projects were built in the 1950s. Of all of the Beasleys, there was none who controlled the streets like James Beasley Jr. As told to his daughter Monet, James tells his amazing story in the soon-to-be-released autobiography and documentary entitled “Deep Rooted,” both of which are being developed into reality by Concrete Jungle Publishing.

James describes how he rose from the mean streets of Hunters Point to become possibly the largest cocaine dealer in the history of California. At his peak, $3 million drug deals were common and there were no luxuries unobtainable. He had luxury homes in different cities and was buying and developing real estate before the housing boom. James Beasley Jr. attended the Grammys with the Jacksons as a guest and he ran a criminal organization that made him a millionaire 20 times over.

By gaining that wealth in an illegal manner, James was made to suffer the consequences of unexplainable wealth, because in the end, the federal government arrested him on drug and tax charges through a joint investigation with the DEA and the Internal Revenue Service.

He was called a menace to society and in 1991 he was sentenced to 30 years under bogus cocaine laws and for tax evasion, which has given him plenty of time to reflect on his past mistakes. A man who could easily be filled with regret and anger over receiving such a long sentence for a non-violent crime, James is reaching out and thinking of ways to restore pride and dignity in Bayview Hunters Point through existing youth organizations, and he plans to start his own non-profit organization when he returns to the streets of San Francisco shortly.

Darryl Reed and James Beasley Jr. celebrate Lil D’s 20th birthday.

Through his autobiography “Deep Rooted,” James wants kids and young adults that have already been or are on the fence about getting into the illegal drug business to take a step back and look at what happened to him. He wants young African-American males from his old neighborhood to fear the results and revere the bright future that waits if they strive to be great in an effective way.

James Beasley Jr. understands the destruction he caused in the 1980s and in no way does he feel he can make up for it all, but he is certainly heading in the right direction towards redemption.

Dennis Haywood is the CEO of Concrete Jungle Publishing Co., www.concretejunglebooks.com, and can be reached at dhaywood@concretejunglebooks.com.

Video streaming by Ustream

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by Wanda Sabir

Brianna Amaya, Wanda’s granddaughter, at the Tassafaronga Farm – Photo: Wanda Sabir

Happy Mother’s Day to all the mothers and nurturers this month. I have been really feeling connected to the Great Mother Yemaja for the past couple of months now. One of the highlights last month was connecting with Wanda Brown, who recently rejoined the family after 27 years away. Friday, April 13, was her lucky day, affirmed just days later at her 50th birthday April 17, her first celebration as a free woman in many years. We were so happy to have our sister home. She is the first case out of San Francisco to use the Habeas Project. We hope her case will set a precedent.

When women are released, it reminds me of what it must have felt like when Jan. 1, 1863, rolled around and the Emancipation Proclamation was signed, then again Dec. 15, 1865, when the re-enslaving Black Codes were enacted. Families were still looking for separated loved ones – a mother sold away, a child sold away, a sister or brother sold away. We knew where Wanda Brown was, but it took a long time to save for her freedom. The California Habeas Project is a collaboration that enhances justice for domestic violence survivors incarcerated for crimes related to their experiences of being abused. Visit http://www.habeasproject.org/. TCHP is housed at Legal Services for Prisoners with Children.

We can’t forget what happened to MOVE May 13, 1985, Mother’s Day weekend, and the incarceration of the Move 9 for all these years and the continued denial of parole. Visit http://www.onamove.com/.

Mumia Abu Jamal made 58 last month and the 40th anniversary of Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace’s stint in solitary confinement was commemorated nationally and internationally with a rally on the Louisiana Capital steps. Over 200,000 signatures were delivered to Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal’s office. The signatures represented each day of solitary confinement for 40 years or 14,600 days. Albert has a hearing scheduled for May 29.

I showed my Critical Thinking class Vadim Jean’s “In the Land of the Free,” the story of the Angola 3 – Albert, Herman and Robert King, founders of the Black Panther Party chapter in Louisiana’s notorious Angola prison-plantation; King won his release in 2001 after 29 years in solitary. The film is narrated by Samuel Jackson. Jackson, the cover story in the March Ebony, was not asked by Kevin Brown what motivated him to participate in the film project. A man whom the writer describes as “in Hollywood but not of Hollywood,” Jackson himself, agrees. He says: “I’ve said to White Hollywood folks, ‘First thing you need to understand is, I am a nigga. I’m a nice guy, but there are certain things that go “click,” and I become that guy y’all really worry about at night. ‘Cuz that’s really who I am.’ I learned how to live in two worlds. That’s my whole life. That’s why y’all hire me. I am genuine. I bring something genuine about that type of guy who scares White people they can safely watch on-screen.”

Robert King’s “From the Bottom of the Heap, the Autobiography of Black Panther Robert Hillary King” is coming out with a second edition. One of the new chapters looks at the n-word. Perhaps Jackson should be sent a copy gratis (smile).

My students were shocked and appalled when they learned of the Angola 3 case. They could not believe in this country that such travesties exist, despite having just completed reading Michelle Alexander’s “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.” I’d looked forward to hosting an event at the college looking at solitary confinement, what Amnesty International claims along with others as a human rights violation. I’d planned to have women I’d met at Occupy San Quentin in February, who’d experienced such confinement, speak, show Jean’s film, have psychology students address the health issues surrounding such confinement, and close with an open discussion. No one at the college was interested, despite the many students we have on campus walking around in electronic shackles. So I showed the film to one of my four classes and had them write arguments based on themes from the film.

Wanda and Robert King go bike-riding together in Austin, where Robert lives, in June 2009.

But back to Mother’s Day, for the past month, I have been wearing white – hanging with elders like Luisah Teish, an author, storyteller and priestess of the Ifá-Orisha faith from New Orleans, Louisiana. She is the founder and president of Ile Orunmila Oshun. She has an art show opening this month at The Sacred Well, 536 Grand Ave. in Oakland. For information about the reception and artist talk, call (510) 444-WELL or visit http://www.sacredwell.com/.

Film: ‘Straight Outta Hunters Point 2’

Kevin Epps screens “Straight Outta Hunters Point 2” on Sunday, May 20, 2 p.m., at the Bayview Opera House Ruth Williams Memorial Theatre, 4705 Third St. in San Francisco. “As a filmmaker and activist,” Epps says, “this is the most important screening of all, premiering the film in the neighborhood where it all started.” The screening takes place during Malcolm X’ birthday weekend, and it will be hosted by Kevin Epps himself to celebrate the spirit of community organizing and activism. For information, call (415) 724-8610 and visit www.kevepps.com.

Dance honoring Sacred Mother Yemaja

CubaCaribe expanded to the East Bay last year, and this eighth anniversary year they continued to grow with a lecture series at MoAD, master dance classes, a community party and a weekend of new work choreographed by Ramon Ramos Alayo, Alayo Dance Company. I missed the opening weekend in San Francisco at Dance Mission; however, I was able to attend weekend two at Laney College in the East Bay and see Alayo Dance Company’s premiere of “Oil and Water.” The program opened with two short works: “Grace Notes,” featuring musician Jeff Chambers on electric bass, and “Layers of Love,” a work featuring four women dancers. The first work featured three dancers, two men and one woman. The choreographer was one of the dancers, Fredrika Keefer and Victor Talledos the other two.

After Gladys “Bobi” Cespedes’ wonderful talk about the female Orishas at MoAD, she and Luisah Teish posed for me. Divine royalty in the house (smile). Teish has an art show at Sacred Well in Oakland, 596 Grand Ave., April 29 through May. Bobi will be performing at the 34th Annual Ethnic Dance Festival with Las Que Son Son, Cuba, June 16-17 at the Novellus Theatre at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. – Photo: Wanda Sabir

“Layers of Love” is a beautiful work, the four dancers – Lauri Anderson, Shelly Davis, Alisa Dillion-Ogden and Fredrika Keefer – paired, their gowns matching, either blue or pink with white accents. The theme is love – like a layer cake, Alayo says there are three levels: chance glance into the other’s eyes and one is gone, hooked, captured (smile); second, heart expansion, where one gives and receives love; and third, the move to create a space where the two souls, now one, manifest a sacred space where they hold each other in clarity and peace.

“Layers” is more of an emotional interaction, Joshua Bell and John Williams’ music creating a mood where the dancers carry us along – the audience willingly participating in a journey where lovers’ paths traverse and collide, the two souls never apart for long. At least that is the hope once the song ends.

‘Oil and Water’

I am a New Orleans native – I like to say my people are indigenous to Pearl River county – an area connected by a river which travels between Mississippi and Louisiana. Gladys “Bobi” Cepedes, priestess and scholar, gave an enlightening talk at the Museum of the African Diaspora just a day prior to the premiere of Alayo Dance Company’s “Oil and Water” as a part of the CubaCaribe Festival’s lecture series. Her talk, which looked at the female Orisha in the Yoruba tradition via Lucumi, focused on the lesser known female deities, such as Obba Nani, Dadda or Banyanyi, Oba Nani, Yewa, before speaking about Oshun, Oya-Yansa Iansa, Yemaya and Olokun. It was a great preparation for Alayo Dance Company’s “Oil and Water.”

Eighth Annual CubaCaribe presents Alayo Dance Company in “Oil and Water” April 27-29, referencing the oil disaster in the Gulf April 20, 2010. – Photo: Wanda Sabir

You have heard the saying, not to cast one’s pearl after swine, and when I think about this government’s investment in fossil fuels and the inevitable errors involved when we disregard the rights of other creatures to life as we disturb their natural habitats – drilling and digging in their living rooms, creatures who have just as much right to this planet and her gifts, perhaps more, than we, homo sapiens – I think about being a descendent of Pearl River county Mississippi, my birth gem pearls as well.

“Oil and Water” looks at the recent spills in the Gulf of Mexico and the lives lost along the Mississippi River in Mississippi and Louisiana, using Kyleigh Nevis’s video design that projects images and text on the canvas behind the cast. Pelicans and crabs, fish and the ocean are covered in thick gooey oil, while in the foreground on stage are dancers dressed in blue for the waters. Mama Yemaja sits above the stage suspended while her children dance below, tell stories and grieve over the destruction of the beaches and pollution of the waters and the nasty gooey intoxicating oil, which covers the water like a blanket personified as the oil dances across the stage –bodies costumed in plastic.

When the curtain rises, the blue costumes glow in the dark; it is really lovely. Then when the lights come up, there are singers and drummers stage right, and in front there is a lovely young goddess dancing, others seated nearby. Throughout the work, dancers from different sides of the stage perform, coming together in the center of the stage, skirts twirling as they spin and turn, moving to either exit.

When Mama Yemaja is lowered to the earth, the energy shifts again. She is commanding and powerful. Her fury at man is palatable, as is her gentleness to her creatures. The soloist is excellent as is the entire company, but hey she’s the star (smile). I don’t know why we are not given her name or the names of her children as soloists. Yagbe Onilu is the lead singer. In CubaCaribe, Onilu told stories and led us in a song. He was quite dramatic this weekend as well, and even though the words were in Yoruba, we got the gist of his message. “Oil and Water,” which pulls on the strong histories of Santeria, also integrates the vocabulary of modern dance and live Cuban folkloric music in a unique ritual created in collaboration between Ramon Ramos Alayo, Susana Arenas Pedroso and Alain Soto. Besides Alayo Dance Company and the chorus and musicians, Grrrl Bridge also participates.

There were so many surprises in the work, especially when Yemaja gave birth. This male-female duet was really lovely – Yemaja seated while her children rejoiced in their new life. Alayo Dance Company premieres are always classic, whether that is the first piece I saw a while back which looked at the enslavement of African people and their resistance or another work which looked at Black leadership – Malcolm X and President Obama, maybe Martin King. The first was premiered in Black Choreographers Here and Now, when the choreographer was new to the San Francisco Bay Area. Later when the work was performed in its entirety, I remember seeing Elouise Burrell standing on a platform above our heads singing – just like Yemaja in “Oil and Water,” there was no net. Alayo likes his spirits in the air. Visit www.cubacaribe.org.

Benefit for Avotcja

Friday, May 18, there is a benefit for Avotcja, musician, poet, radio host, at Ashkenaz Music and Dance Center, San Pablo at Gilman Street in Berkeley, at 8 p.m. Avotcja has MS and she is being proactive. She is still mobile; however, just case she becomes wheelchair bound, she can keep trucking literally. The fundraiser is to purchase a lift for her van. She has a wheelchair already. She throws a terrific party! Visit http://www.ashkenaz.com/2011/may12.html and http://www.avotcja.org/.

San Francisco International Art Festival

The U.S. debut of Raices Profundas Mixed Repertory, co-presented by SFIAF and Plaza CUBA, opens the SFIAF Wednesday, May 2. The festival runs through Sunday, May 6, at the Marines Memorial Theatre, 609 Sutter St., San Francisco. Visit http://www.sfiaf.org/2012Festival/artists/Raices-Profundas.html.

Raíces Profundas comes to SFIAF with an incredible show that displays the talent and virtuosity of the group and its director-choreographer Juan de Dios Ramos. This is the first time this ensemble has been to the United States, and while the company is in town there will be classes at Dance Mission and other community events. The performance follows the dynamic history of Cuba’s music and dance genres, starting with the colorful Afro-Cuban traditions, including Palo Monte and the fiery Orisha dances of the Yoruba pantheon – like Elegua, Oshun, Ogun, Chango and Yemaya.

The second half of the show gives the audience a glimpse into Cuba’s popular music and dance styles, such as Chankletas, Son, Cha Cha Cha and contemporary Cuban Salsa. The two parts of the show are tied together by the group’s interpretation of the sensual and provocative movements of the Rumba cycle: Yambu, Guaguanco and Columbia.

12th Annual Malcolm X Jazzarts Festival

This year’s Malcolm X Jazzarts Festival is Saturday, May 19, Malcolm X or El Hajj Malik El Shabazz’s birthday, from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. at San Antonio Park in Oakland, 18th Avenue and Foothill Boulevard. Join the Bay Area community in celebrating a people’s hero, Malcolm X. Eastside Arts Alliance began what is now a community institution over a decade ago. It is an event for the entire family with live jazz mingling with hip hop, dance and spoken word stages, not to mention the visual art, great food and community partners who help pull folks into activism and service. This year the lineup includes Daria Nile Trio, Avotcja and Modupue, a tribute to Billy Bang featuring an all-star string summit with Michael White, India Cooke, Kash Killion, Tarika Lewis, Sandy Poindexter, Muziki Roberson and Eric Hunt. The Kev Choice Ensemble closes the festival. Visit www.eastsideartsalliance.org.

Dorsey Nunn of Legal Services for Prisoners with Children, and Harriett of All of Us or None at a staged reading of Michael Kroll’s “Just Like a Dog.” Dorsey, founder of LSPC and a member of All of Us or None, was part of the star-studded cast of death penalty abolitionists at Requiem for the Death Penalty. – Photo: Wanda Sabir

‘To Be Young Gifted and Black, That’s Where It’s At’

“Young, gifted and Black / We must begin to tell our young / There’s a world waiting for you / This is a quest that’s just begun.” Nina Simone wrote these words after seeing the Broadway production of “To Be Young, Gifted and Black,” the story of Lorraine Hansberry, author of “A Raisin in the Sun.” Performances at the Multi Ethnic Theater (MET), which first produced the play in 1994 at the Gough Street Playhouse at 1620 Gough St. near Bush in San Francisco. Previews begin Friday, May 4.

Their current production, in association with Custom Made Theatre, is presented because so much of what Ms. Hansberry said in the ‘50s and ‘60s still needs to be heard today. The official opening night is Tuesday, May 8, at 8 p.m. For information about the run, call (415) 333-6389 or email lewiscampbell@sbcglobal.net and check http://wehavemet.org.

Lorraine Hansberry was born on May 19, 1930. Her play “A Raisin in the Sun” is read by students throughout our country and around the world. She died on Jan. 12, 1965. Were she alive today she would be 82 on May 19. MET dedicates this production to her memory and to Stanley E. Williams, founding artistic director, and Quentin Easter, founding executive director, of San Francisco’s Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, which was the first theater company to occupy the Gough Street Playhouse. The light grid above the playing area was installed by the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre.

‘Bitter Melon’

“Bitter Melon” is Raissa Simpson’s site specific work performance, May 25-28 at Dewey Monument, Union Square in downtown San Francisco. Steeped in the cultural histories of San Francisco’s African American and Filipino communities, the work will take place throughout the square’s central plaza with large scale projection onto the monument itself, intermingling performers and public. The work uncovers the hidden realities or parallels in the African American and Filipino cultures. This new performance cracks open questions to the contradictions of life: national and cultural identity, natural disaster and war – the power of loss and redemption.

The free performances will be given Friday, Saturday and Sunday, May 25-27, at 8 p.m. or at sundown. Union Square Park is bordered by Geary, Powell, Post and Stockton streets in San Francisco. For more information about “Bitter Melon,” visit www.pushdance.org or www.deweylive.net.

On the fly

Not in over 30 years has a professional company performed “A Raisin in the Sun” in the Bay Area. Hailed as “one of a handful of great American plays,” this monumental performance is directed by African-American Shakespeare’s L. Peter Callender and runs May 12-27 at the African American Art and Culture Complex’s Buriel Clay Theater, 762 Fulton St., San Francisco. Call (415) 762-2071 or visit www.African-AmericanShakes.org.

AXIS Dance Company performs “Full of Words” at the SFIAF May 12 and 13 at 609 Sutter St., San Francisco, at Marine’s Memorial Theatre. Visit http://www.sfiaf.org or call (415) 399-9554. AXIS commissioned U.K. choreographer Marc Brew to create “Full of Words,” which had its world premiere at the Malonga Center in Oakland last fall. Judith Smith, AXIS’ artistic director, had been following Marc’s career since he became disabled in 1998 in a car accident while on tour with a ballet company in South Africa.

Shinelle Azoroh as Angel and Tobie Windham as Guy in Pearl Cleage's "Blues for an Alabama Sky" now playing at the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre through May 12, 2012. - Photo: Steven Anthony Jones

Union Square Live 2012 presents free music, dance, theater and movies in Union Square from April through October at 12:30 and 6 p.m. on Wednesdays and 2 p.m. on Sundays; visit www.unionsquarelive.org or call (415) 477-2610.

The 2012 Yerba Buena Gardens Festival kicks off May 6, 1-2:30 p.m., with the Omar Sosa Afreecanos Quartet. Visit www.ybgfestival.org or call (415) 543-1718 for more detailed information. All events are free.

The world premiere of “Tenderloin,” commissioned by the Cutting Ball Theater, opened there April 27 and runs through May 7. Using transcripts of interviews conducted by seven San Francisco actors, “Tenderloin” takes theater out into the neighborhood and brings the neighborhood into the theater. From these living sketches, a portrait of the Tenderloin itself emerges. Visit http://cuttingball.com/season/11-12/tenderloin/.

Sweet Honey in the Rock

Sweet Honey in the Rock performs at Zellerbach Auditorium at UC Berkeley Sunday, May 6, 7 p.m. Call (510) 642-9988 or visit http://www.calperformances.org/performances/2011-12/world-stage/sweet-honey-in-the-rock.php.

‘From the Inside Out, Food as Medicine’ workshop with Sister Makinyah

Join Sister Makinyah Saturday, May 5, 12-2 p.m., for a healthy organic meal served by Sister Naderi Jomoke. She will share her secrets to longevity and good health. She’s 85 years, 10 months into her life, or 31,355 days. “From the Inside Out: Food as Medicine,” workshop and luncheon will be held at the Harriett Tubman Terrace Apartments, 2870 Adeline St. in Berkeley, across from Berkeley Bowl. The cost is $20 general and $15 for junior high students and seniors. Money orders and checks are accepted. Make them out to Educational Associates. For reservations and information, call (510) 848-0994.

Bay View Arts Editor Wanda Sabir can be reached at wsab1@aol.com. Visit her website at www.wandaspicks.com throughout the month for updates to Wanda’s Picks, her blog, photos and Wanda’s Picks Radio. Her shows are streamed live Wednesdays at 6-7 a.m. and Fridays at 8-10 a.m., can be heard by phone at (347) 237-4610 and are archived on the Afrikan Sistahs’ Media Network.

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Laura Linney, Gabourey Sidibe, Bernie Pollack, Eric Pleskow, Peter Weller, Angie Bolling shine at Dallas International Film Festival

by Jackie Wright

Dallas – They call it “Big D” and there is a reason for it. The Dallas International Film Festival with its “Star Awards” closing weekend is just a reminder that “they do it big in Texas.” The Dallas Film Society led by Lynn McBee, chairman of the board of directors, and Lee Papert, president and CEO, pulled out all the stops as it honored Laura Linney, Bernie Pollack, Eric Pleskow and Gabourey Sidibe with “Dallas Star Awards,” kicking off the concluding weekend. In addition, the Dallas International Film Festival (DIFF) screened more than 180 films from 27 countries during its sixth annual event, April 12-22.

James Faust and Gabourey Sidibe answer questions from the audience. – Photo: Jackie Wright

Covering the event for San Francisco-based LaHitz Media, this reporter was reminded of director and filmmaker Jacquie Taliaferro’s constant refrain about “jobs and money” generated by the film and entertainment industry and the need to cultivate commerce in communities of color as films and entertainment are created. “In addition to the entertainment value, the film industry should use its power and influence to educate and improve the state of humanity by leveraging commerce to empower more people economically,” says Taliaferro, a consultant for African Diaspora and other filmmakers interested in achieving visibility during the annual May Cannes International Film Festival.

“In Texas, the motion picture and television industry is responsible for 41,269 direct jobs and $1.5 billion in wages in Texas, including both production and distribution-related jobs. Over 7,200 of the jobs are production-related,” according to the Motion Picture Association of America.

Talking it up with a young lady working at the Angelika Theater, delighted to see all the activity generated by the DIFF, was a reminder of the impact of the film industry in providing basic employment at theaters across the nation. The DIFF gave me the occasion to talk to the future with the first time employee Shanqua L. and also learn more about Lee Roy and Tandy Mitchell of Cinemark, a company founded by Mitchell built with the philosophy of preferring people over profits that now generates billions of dollars. The Mitchells were feted at the opening ceremony April 12 at the Majestic Theatre, with the entire festival being dedicated in their honor.

“In addition to the entertainment value, the film industry should use its power and influence to educate and improve the state of humanity by leveraging commerce to empower more people economically,” says Jacquie Taliaferro, a consultant for African Diaspora and other filmmakers interested in achieving visibility during the annual May Cannes International Film Festival.

The glitz and glam of the film industry permeated the DIFF in a sense, but the theme kept coming back to the dollars to make sense of it all for me. As Dallas Film Society Artistic Director James Faust interviewed Gabourey Sidibe on Saturday, the question of workflow came up and the drought actors sometimes experience.

Jackie Wright reports from the Dallas International Film Festival Red Carpet for LaHitz Media, San Francisco.

Sidibe’s Q&A segued into her “Big C” colleague Laura Linney’s remarks before the screening of the independent film “You Can Count on Me” that stars Linney. Gordon Smith of Altair IV Productions put together a short but powerful retrospective of her outstanding work.

From blond bombshell to mousy brown brunette, from brown eyes to blue eyes, Smith did a masterful job of capturing poignant clips of Linney’s essence as an actress. His video montage included 2004 “Kinsey” with Linney (Clara Bracken McMillen), restrained and tortured, pouring her heart out to her husband Alfred (Liam Neeson) about why she did not act on her impulses to have sex outside of their marriage.

Linney should have won the Oscar for that role, no disrespect to Cate Blanchett and “Aviator.” Smith’s clip choice is still playing over and over in my mind to the point that I’ll be hitting Amazon.com for a DVD of “Kinsey” in the very near future.

After the montage, Linney talked about the heart of the industry, the creativity and the suffering that sometimes comes with filmmaking. Linney described being on a set in Upstate New York for 23 days making a film with a paltry budget of $1.2 million with nowhere to sit. “We wound up sweeping out an old chicken coop in order to have somewhere to sit after days of acting. So much for the glamor of show business,” she said.

The Dallas International Film Festival had close to 1,000 volunteers. Among them was Lisa R. Covington, who owns an events management company. Family members Damita Teemac and Adanna Teemac made it a family affair as they all volunteered for several days.

Mother-daughter volunteers Adanna and Damita Teemac – Photo: Jackie Wright

In addition to DIFF’s 25th anniversary screening of “Robocop,” in collaboration with the Oak Cliff Film Festival with Angie Bolling and Peter Weller on the Red Carpet Saturday night, there were many unique collaborations and supporters of the festival, including the Texas Black Film Festival. TBFF screened the films “Wolf” directed by Ya’Ke Smith and “LUV” by Sheldon Candis. The cast of “LUV” includes Common, Michael Rainey Jr., Dennis Haysbert, Danny Glover, Charles S. Dutton and Michael Kenneth Williams.

“Wolf” with cast Mikala Gibson, Shelton Jolivett, Jordan Cooper, Eugene Lee and Irma Hall received the TBFF’s Best Texas Film Award. Director Smith has also received the Director’s Guild of America Student Film Award, an HBO Short Film Award and a Black Reel Award, among others.

DIFF was enjoyable, delightful, insightful and emotionally taxing, given some of the films, but the importance of the bottom line was ever present for me, thinking of LaHitz’ Taliaferro’s insistence on evaluating jobs and commerce generation. Hundreds of people came out for DIFF and some even from other states, reinforcing tourism and commerce.

One of the most interesting things said about money matters were Ed Neumeier’s comments posted by Troy Randall Smith: “These young filmmakers are great. Hollywood is spending $250 million to chase $1 billion, but the real future of film is going to come from places like Dallas.”

For a look at more details about the winners and other awards, visit the Dallas Film Society at www.DallasFilm.org. For San Francisco Bay Area art connoisseurs, the DIFF fit in between the Oakland International Film Festival held April 5-6, the San Francisco International Film Festival, now through May 3, and in advance of the Cannes International Film Festival, May 16-27, and the San Francisco Black Film Festival, June 15-17. Keep that in mind for your plans in 2013! “See you at the movies.”

Jackie Wright is the president of San Francisco-based Wright Enterprises, a public relations firm serving the corporate, non-profit and government sectors. A seasoned media and public relations professional, the former Associated Press Award-winning broadcast journalist has 20 years of experience, with a specialty in crisis communications and media training. She can be reached at jackiewright@wrightnow.biz.

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Dregs One delivers in-depth commentary on police brutality and how it is affecting communities of color

by Crystal Carter

San Francisco – Oscar Grant. Kenneth Harding. Trayvon Martin. These are just a few names of young Black men who have yet to receive justice in the criminal justice system. Dregs One addresses the issue of police brutality and the abuses of power that have been committed by police and the justice system in the Bay Area and beyond.

“We need to analyze the system and find ways to deal with crime and attack the issues that cause crime instead of attacking the people that live in areas where these crimes happen,” says Dregs One.

The community gathered around DeBray “Fly Benzo” Carpenter at an April 18 pre-sentencing press conference and rally in Mendell Plaza, where Fly was brutalized and arrested Oct. 18, 2011, for recording the police and where Kenneth Harding had been murdered by SFPD on July 16, 2011. He is set to be sentenced on April 20 on three misdemeanors; the jury acquitted him on the felonies he’d been charged with. From left in the back row are Archbishop Franzo King of St. John Coltrane Church, Lisa “Tiny” Gray-Garcia of POOR Magazine, Kenneth Harding’s mother Denika Chatman, Mesha Irizarry of the Idriss Stelley Foundation, Larry Felson of Revolution, DeBray "Fly Benzo" Carpenter, Fly’s attorney Severa Keith, journalist Alex Schmaus, videographer Kilo G Perry, Kenneth Harding’s uncle Marco Scott, Sharena Thomas, Fly’s cousin Kelley, writer TaLea Monet and her baby daughter; in front are activists Rebbeca R. and Kitty Lui. – Photo: Malaika Kambon

Acts of police brutality are not isolated events. They are part of a larger epidemic dealing with race issues and misinformation on the part of the aggressors.

About Dregs One

Not only is he a hip hop lyricist and producer, Dregs One is a youth advocate working with inner city youth in San Francisco and the surrounding Bay Area. He has recently released a mixtape titled “The Inspiration” and a debut album titled “The Wake Up Call.” You can listen to his music here.

About ‘The Wake Up Report’

Dregs One is very active in his community and has been a youth advocate for over three years. He decided to start posting a video blog addressing issues that he saw were not getting enough coverage in his hometown of San Francisco. So far, he has produced four webisodes on issues of gentrification, food justice, the cost of higher education and now police brutality.

Keep up with him at dregsone.tumblr.com, twitter.com/dregs_one, facebook.com/dregsone415 and youtube.com/dregsonegmc.

Bay Area-based journalist Crystal Carter can be reached at ccarter6@gmail.com.

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Filmmaker points his camera at police-occupied, war-torn Black ghettos

by Chanell Parson

After seeing Sieh Samura’s new documentary, “Block Reportin’ 101,” about San Francisco Bay View newspaper’s longtime reporter, The People’s Minister of Information JR Valrey, I wanted to interview him. In his own right, Sieh Samura has already shot and put together an international film in his father’s homeland, the war-torn Sierra Leone; now he is pointing his cameras at the police-occupied, war-torn Black ghettos of the USA, with a documentary that speaks almost as much about cases of police terrorism in Black neighborhoods nationwide as it does about the radio show it is named after.

You hear the names of Oscar Grant and Sean Bell, but “Block Reportin’ 101” also makes you aware of of Askia Sabur in Philly, Deandre Brunston in Compton and many others; some are power-slammed out of wheelchairs, a teenage girl is face-planted into the floor of a juvenile facility, police dogs are allowed to eat off people’s arms, while others are hog-tied while incarcerated and punched in the face by America’s boys in blue, and these are just a few of the acts of police terrorism talked about and caught on tape.

Sieh Samura’s “Block Reportin’ 101” will be featured at the 10th Annual Oakland International Film Festival, on Saturday, April 7, at 3 p.m. at the Oakland Museum, 1000 Oak St. Come through to see this budding filmmaker in action. Following the screening of the film, meet and join the Q and A with Sieh, MOI JR and M1 of dead prez, who is featured in the film.

Chanell Parson: Can you tell us a little bit about your history as a filmmaker? How did you get started?

Sieh Samura: Well, I always wanted to be a media maker. I grew up in the ‘80s and ‘90s when directors like Spielberg, Spike Lee, George Lucas, the Coens and Mario Van Peebles were really being celebrated. Independent film became extremely popular in the ‘90s and we were introduced to the new filmmaking styles of people like the Hughes Brothers, Tarantino and even Robert Townsend. I was in awe of their work and always wanted to find my role in the same field while being independent of corporate control.

Chanell Parson: Can you talk about your first documentary that was shot in Sierra Leone?

Sieh Samura: “Sweet Salone” was my first feature length documentary and it was primarily filmed in the West African country of Sierra Leone, where my father was born. The people of Sierra Leone were recovering from a long and brutal civil war that was forced on them by the world market for diamonds.

Filmmaker Sieh Samura, better known as C-ya

I’m very proud of “Sweet Salone”; that film turned out to have a positive effect on their copyright laws and policy. Something that all of the artists were lobbying for. It’s a beautiful country with warm people.

Chanell Parson: What is “Block Reportin’ 101” about and why did you pick the Minister of Info JR and his radio show as a subject?

Sieh Samura: “Block Reportin’ 101” is a feature length documentary about JR Valrey and his show called the Block Report. JR speaks directly to the audience and explains his role as a journalist and some of the things that motivate him. He brings up and we explore the Bay Area as a cultural hotspot when it comes to popular American culture like music and dance and the legacy of revolutionary politics and Black liberation that is rooted in the area.

Minister of Information JR hosts two weekly shows on KPFA 94.1 FM and kpfa.org: The Morning Mix every Wednesday, 8-9 a.m., and The Block Report every Friday night-Saturday morning, midnight-2 a.m.

Chanell Parson: What is most intriguing about MOI JR’s journalism to you?

Sieh Samura: I think that it is rare to find people repeatedly sticking their neck out for the benefit of the least powerful in our society or the oppressed. We should support and engage with people who stand up for us. If I find myself the target of government or corporate powers where can I really turn to in this society? How would I go about getting my story out and combatting their endless media resources? The place to start is with someone like JR and the Block Report.

It is rare to find people repeatedly sticking their neck out for the benefit of the least powerful in our society or the oppressed. We should support and engage with someone like JR and the Block Report who stands up for us.

Chanell Parson: What do you want the viewers of “Block Reportin’ 101” to walk away with after seeing this film?

Sieh Samura: I hope that viewers will not only be more aware of JR, who he is and what he does, but I also hope for people to become more informed about our society and how it works, so that they will be less likely to fall victim to one or more of the numerous traps that are constantly set for us by the capitalist power structure. This is something that I think JR is very good at articulating.

MOI JR celebrates another great Block Report Radio show with the crew and that night's guests. Listen in on Friday nights-Saturday mornings from midnight to 2 a.m. for the latest and best music, revealing interviews and free wheeling discussion of hot topics with listeners calling in. Lots of ticket giveaways too.

Chanell Parson: How did it feel being selected to be a part of the Oakland International Film Fest? Have you applied to other film festivals?

Sieh Samura: It is validating to be a selection at OIFF and stand next to all of their other impressive selections, past and present. This film is probably most relevant to Bay Area audiences, so I am excited to be able to share it with them and am humbled by the welcome.

Chanell Parson: What is the importance of independent community media?

Sieh Samura: Media that represents communities needs to be independent of corporate or government control or they will inevitably be used as instruments of control. People who live and work in communities do not have the resources that big mainstream media have to saturate the public with their messages. Independent community media allows everyone to have a voice.

Chanell Parson: When is “Block Reportin’ 101” screening at the Oakland International Film Fest? How could people keep updated on future film screenings?

Sieh Samura: “Block Reportin’ 101” will be screened on the opening eve of the festival on Saturday, April 7, at 3 p.m. There is an official website to watch trailers and clips and get info on screenings and updates at www.blockreportin.com. JR and myself and M1 of dead prez, who appears in the film, will all be there at the OIFF premier, so I urge people to come down, watch the film and talk with us. Thanks.

Bay Area-based writer Chanell Parson can be reached at chanellparson88@gmail.com.

JR Valrey gives it to you straight in ‘Block Reportin’ 101’

by Kristina Rose

Denika Chatman, mother of Kenneth Harding, who was murdered by San Francisco police July 16, 2011, and her 4-year-old daughter have been supported in their grief and their quest for justice by Minister of Information JR.

The screening was held at Check Other Outfitters in Midtown and from the moment the film began, the room was quiet – the audience attentive and engaged. The film is phenomenally orchestrated with firsthand accounts of those impacted by excessive and unnecessary police “force.” The powerful imagery of real time raw footage examining the savage cruelty of police brutality brings reality to the documentary.

The powerful imagery of real time raw footage examining the savage cruelty of police brutality brings reality to the documentary.

The film does not desensitize or debilitate the social issue at hand, which in turn brings empowerment and enlightenment to its viewers. In this documentary JR Valrey gives it to you straight without the smoke screens and disclaimers, painting a vivid picture of police terrorism in America.

In organizing through the media and on the streets against police terrorism, Minister of Information JR is carrying on the tradition of the Oakland-born Black Panther Party.

In this documentary JR Valrey gives it to you straight without the smoke screens and disclaimers, painting a vivid picture of police terrorism in America.

After the well accepted presentation of “Block Reportin’ 101,” JR disclosed that this was the first official viewing of the film and no other city had been privy to view it yet. The audience was pleased and honored to have been in attendance for such a monumental moment. The floor was open to a Q and A discussion forum which overflowed with lengthy questions and accolades for the film.

JR Valrey brings a voice and a platform to the citizens of Oakland who have grown despondent and outraged due to police injustice. Valrey is destined to make a major impact on a national level in his political movement to fight police brutality.

Reminiscent of Tupac in his heyday, Valrey speaks expressively, exercising his freedom of speech and bringing prominence to real Black issues that we face on a day-to-day basis. When he speaks, people listen. He has the ability to hold your undivided attention as he educates the masses on a cause that he is well informed and passionate about. JR Valrey is currently on a city-to-city tour promoting his film, “Block Reportin’ 101,” and his book as well. We wish him much success.

Houston-based writer Kristina Rose can be reached at harleychevelle@gmail.com.

Related Posts

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by Jacquie Taliaferro

Pan African Film Festival

Jacquie Taliaferro

Speaking of CB, big ups for his Grammy win and also Larry Batiste, our Bay Area’s own, for producing the music for the pre-Grammy show!

Back to PAFF, which is back in the same spot at Crenshaw and MLK Jr. Drive, the old Magic Johnson Theaters, after a short hiatus in Culver City. It is unfortunate that there are not more theaters able to host the super films at PAFF and the other film festivals, so that more filmmakers can escape the festival circuit and actually make money.

LaHitz Media at Pan African Film Festival

“Toussaint Louverture” was the big winner with three awards. Directed by Philippe Niang and starring Jimmy Jean-Louis (NBC’s “Heroes”), “Toussaint Louverture” is the long awaited two-part epic film of the life of Haitian revolutionary, who led the first successful slave revolt in world history by defeating the imperialist armies of Napoleon Bonaparte.

Other highlights of PAFF include “Dark Girls” by Bill Duke and D. Channsin, which features interviews with Viola Davis and many others, and “The Story of Lover Rock,” a U.K. documentary directed by Menelik Shabazz. “Lover’s Rock,” often dubbed “romantic reggae,” is a uniquely Black British sound that developed in the late ‘70s and ‘80s against a backdrop of riots, racial tension and sound systems.

Other world premieres were “Woman Thou Art Loosed: On the 7th Day,” directed by Neema Barnette and starring Blair Underwood, Sharon Leal, Nicole Beharie and Pam Grier, and “We the Party,” directed by Mario Van Peebles and starring Snoop Dogg, YG, Michael Jai White, Sally Richardson-Whitfield, Melvin Van Peebles and a group of newcomers. These films are hot!

Pam Grier will be in San Francisco at the Castro Theatre on St. Paddy’s Day, March 17, thanks to Peaches Christ Productions and the San Francisco Black Film Festival.

Academy Awards – Diaspora and Images

The Academy Awards is one of the most talked-about, celebrated, controversial, most watched, written about and generally fussed over events in America. It is up there with the Super Bowl, World Series, NBA All-Star Week (it was on the same day the West won) and the World Cup – wait, not the World Cup. The rest of the world is World Cup crazy but not the U.S.

Most of the world does not care about the Academy Awards, especially outside of English speaking countries. How many know Tan Wei won Best Actress for “Crossing Hennessy” at the Chinese Film Media Awards or that the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) presented David Yates the 2011 John Schlesinger Britannia Award for Artistic Excellence in Directing. And by the way in 2007 Denzel Washington was honored with the Stanley Kubrick Britannia Award in Film Excellence. BAFTA has given tribute to their counterparts “across the pond” for at least 25 years.

FESPACO (Festival Pan-Africain du Cinema et de la Television de Ouagadougou) in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, West Africa, hosts one of the largest film and arts festival in the world every two years. How many people know about this festival let alone who won what?

The Academy Awards has marketed itself very well. That gold statue is coveted and can become real gold – cash – if taken advantage of upon winning. Every other year, if not every year, the “Black issues” come up. Are we being recognized – and for what and how many of us?

This is by far one of the most dysfunctional relationships that exists.

Sidney Poitier, the first “Negro” to receive an Oscar for Best Actor graciously accepted his award:

1964 Academy Awards – Sidney Poiter’s acceptance speech

He has since received a Life Time Achievement Award from the Academy in 2008.

In a Hollywood Reporter article, Spike Lee is quoted: “In 1989, ‘Do the Right Thing’ was not even nominated [for best picture],” said Lee, with some mock outrage. “What film won best picture in 1989? ‘Driving Miss Mother F-ing Daisy!’ That’s why [Oscars] don’t matter,” said Lee. “Because 20 years later, who’s watching ‘Driving Miss Daisy?’”

In the Spike Lee-directed film “Malcolm X,” Denzel Washington’s masterful near reincarnation of Malcolm X in 1992 received a Best Actor Oscar nomination, yet he won the top award in 2008 for a less noble role in “Training Day.” He masterfully played the part of the acceptable stereotypical Academy Awards voting gallery expectation of a Black man. He and Halle Berry both broke a barrier that year with her getting the Best Actress Oscar for “Monster’s Ball” as a downtrodden Black woman, yet again an acceptable stereotypical Academy Awards voting gallery expectation of a Black woman.

Gorgeous Halle and brilliant Denzel were beautifully and symbolically packaged as bookends of the underlying story of the Academy’s gritted teeth defiance of Black artistic excellence.

OK, OK. Let’s not forget Octavia Spencer did win the 2012 Best Supporting Actress for her role as a defiant maid in “The Help.” I am sure Hattie McDaniel is smiling from heaven. Also, Sean P. Diddy Combs won a Best Documentary Oscar for “Undefeated,” about a North Memphis high school team of underprivileged football players.

Actress Mary Pickford, co-founder of United Artist (UA), Louis B. Mayer, head of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), director Cecil B. DeMille and producer Irving Thalberg started the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1927 with two aims: to mediate labor disputes and improve the movie industry’s image. Today those aims would translate into ameliorating hiring practices and improving the industry’s diversity in images.

Black actors have won 13 Academy Awards over the years, won in fact by 12 people; Washington has won two. But that’s out of a possible 332 given out since 1929, an infinitesimal 4 percent.

Denzel Washington said of the Academy, “If the country is 12 percent Black, make the Academy 12 percent Black. If the nation is 15 percent Hispanic, make the Academy 15 percent Hispanic, Why not?”

“I don’t see any reason why the Academy should represent the entire American population. That’s what the People’s Choice Awards are for,” said Frank Pierson, a former Academy president.

Time to let it go. Any good relationship counselor would say, “Go and lead a happy life and start by being free of what ‘they’ think.” Simply said. However, if you are in the film industry in America, Oscars present an artistic golden ring, a “bling bling” you can’t “ch-ching” ignore as artist or audience.

The NAACP Image Awards

The 43rd NAACP Image Awards was held just prior to the Academy Awards. For many it is the award show of award shows.

LaHitz Media behind the scenes at the NAACP Image Awards

Harry Belafonte and Sidney Poitier at the 2012 NAACP Image Awards. Click the image to see Belafonte interviewed by Jacquie Taliaferro “back in the day” about collaboration with Poitier and more.

Chairman’s Award winner was Cathy Hughes, the founder and the chairperson of Radio One, Inc., the largest Black owned and operated broadcast company in the nation. Now a publicly owned company, Radio One makes Hughes the first and only Black women to chair a publicly held corporation.

Jacquie Taliaferro speaks with Robert Townsend at the 2012 NAACP Image Awards. Click the image for behind the scenes interviews with Robert Townsend and Roland Martin and special appearances by Lenny Kravitz, Vanessa Williams, Mike Epps, Taraji P. Henson and more.

Vanguard Award winner George Lucas was on hand to receive his award.

Many of the top TV shows were nominated with their stars in attendance: “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Law and Order: Special Victims Unit,” “The Closer,” “Treme,” “Thurgood,” “Luther,” “The Big C,” “Glee,” “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” “Tyler Perry’s House of Payne,” “Men of a Certain Age,” “NCIS: Los Angeles,” “Private Practice,” “CSI: NY, Modern Family,” “Desperate Housewives,” “The Game,” “Love That Girl,” “Southland,” “Person of Interest” and the list goes on …

I love LA at least for 10 days or so and covering Awards Month is about the best “10 days or so” LA can produce for this native San Franciscan.

Back in the day, Jacquie Taliaferro interviews Harry Belafonte in Jamaica, with introductory clip of Sheryl Lee Ralph. They talk about “Carmen Jones” and “Buck and the Preacher Man,” a collaboration with Sidney Poitier.

Shout-outs

Pam Grier will be in San Francisco at the Castro Theatre on St. Paddy’s Day, March 17, thanks to Peaches Christ Productions and the San Francisco Black Film Festival.

Robert Gossett of “The Closer” will star in Pearl Cleage’s “Blues for an Alabama Sky,” directed by Michelle Shay at the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre.

David Roach presents the Oakland International Film Festival April 6-8.

Kali Ray will appear at the San Francisco Black Film Festival, June 15-17.

Jacquie Taliaferro, filmmaker and director of LaHitz Media, can be reached at lahitznews@yahoo.com or (415) 821-1111. NAACP Image Awards and PAFF footage was shot by Alexander Taliaferro and edited by Karwanna Dyson, Big Mouth Productions, karwanna1@gmail.com.

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by DeBray Carpenter, aka Fly Benzo

These two Xochipala-style figurines at the Metropolitan Museum of Art date from the 13th-10th century B.C. Some historians believe this culture was a predecessor to the Olmecs.

According to Michel N. Laham, M.D., and Richard J. Karam, J.D., in their informative essay, “Did the Pheonicians Discover America?” evidence shows that there were actually two trips made to the Americas long before Colombia. The first of the two trips was taken circa 600 B.C. by the Egyptian Pharoah Necho with the aid of the seafaring Phoenicians. The second trip took place circa 450 B.C. by the Carthaginians. These voyages have for some reason been excluded for the traditional history books.

This, however, comes as no surprise considering the fact that much of the overwhelmingly convincing evidence that ties Native American civilization to Africa is suppressed. Genetic trees were recently produced which prove that the entire human population descends from an African female that the media named “Eve,” and geneticists subsequently found the same for the male they named “Adam.” Since the introduction of the “Adam and Eve” genetic trees, they have also been used to determine, in the first exodus, the routes the early Africans took out of Africa.

The Costa Chica region, near the Gulf of Mexico, is the area in Mexico with the highest population of Mexicans with African roots. This is primarily due to the fact that Veracruz, a city in the area, served as a slave port throughout the early colonial period.

However, there is sufficient evidence to prove that the African presence preceded the colonization of America by the Europeans. Some evidence introduced by Ivan Van Sertima in “Van Sertima’s Address to the Smithsonian,” the first chapter in “African Presence in Early America,” to support this claim would include ancient monuments such as the Olmec heads (statues with African features), pyramids with kings buried inside as they were in Egypt and dark figurines made to look exactly like some of the mummies in early Egypt (with arms crossed over chest, fingers spread and ribs outlined) as well as a sculpture of an Olmec woman from Xochipala in pre-Christain Mexico, approximately 3,000 years old with African headdress and ear pendants.

The Gulf of Mexico, the end-point of the currents that flow from Africa to the Americas, was the coastline upon which Olmec civilization, considered to be the “mother-culture” of America, thrived. Van Sertima reports that in 1964, the International Congress of Americanists argued, “There cannot now be any doubt but that there were visitors from the Old World to the New before 1492.”

To support this claim, in 1858 an enormous stone head was discovered and described as having “Africoid” features. Upon further examination, this head was discovered to have seven braids, signifying African headdress.

This portrayal of an Olmec king, showing his African hairstyle, is from the Tres Zapotes archeological site in Veracruz, a largely Black city on the Gulf of Mexico.

Discrimination in Latin America is also widespread and prevalent. John Logan, in his educational research paper, “How Race Counts for Hispanic Americans,” places Hispanic people in three categories: Hispanic Hispanics, Black Hispanics and White Hispanics. He reports that Black Africans are significantly more subject to discrimination, especially in major Latin American cities. He also stated that they live in more densely populated neighborhoods with similar conditions to non-Hispanic Blacks.

According to John Mitchell’s Los Angeles Times article, “Mexico’s Black History Is Often Ignored,” Mexicans are a “mixed race.” “But it’s the mixture of indigenous and European heritage that most Mexicans embrace; the African legacy is overlooked,” he adds. This only further solidifies the theory of discrimination and the myth of Black inferiority in Latin America.

Black inferiority is a notion so prevalent in America that mulattoes – people of mixed Black and white descent – are looked down upon and in Dr. David Pilgrim’s Ferris State University article, “The Tragic Mulatto Myth,” there are many examples of mulattoes, specifically females, portrayed in the media as unhappy and anxious to have a white lover, which would ultimately lead to their downfall. There are also other instances where a mulatto woman who could pass for white would have her secret exposed and commit suicide, other women were painted as seductresses and mulatto men were portrayed by the media as rapists who had both the “greed and ambition” of the white man combined with the “savagery and barbarism” of the Black man. Once again, the myth is Black inferiority is enforced and the Black condition exacerbated by the media.

With such vile conceptions of Africans, the question arises, if African history and Africa’s contributions to society and the world were celebrated, would discrimination and mass incarceration of Blacks be so prevalent? The obvious answer is yes; however, a lot of work still needs to be done in order to correct the wrongs inflicted upon Africans in America and beyond and a lot of effort will be needed to rewrite an accurate representation of the history of mankind.

Chicago advertising legend Tom Burrell, in his book, “Brainwashed: Challenging the Myth of Black Inferiority,” argues that the subliminal promotion of White superiority and Black inferiority has been the biggest and most successful marketing campaign in history. Burrell, leading into the first chapter of the book, quotes W.E.B. Du Bois’ statement:

“But in propaganda against the Negro since emancipation in this land, we face one of the most stupendous efforts the world ever saw to discredit human beings, an effort involving universities, history, science, social life and religion.”

With Black inferiority being so widespread and prevalent in the Americas, it comes as no surprise that people would want to disconnect themselves from their African lineage and would rather their history be considered “home-grown” or indigenous. Burrell is quoted in the Dawn Turner Trice’s Chicago Tribune article, “Challenging the Myth of Black Inferiority,” stating, “We have to understand that images, symbols and words can be so powerful and ubiquitous that they affect behavior without us knowing it.” This just goes to show the subconscious effect of propaganda on our society and the way people are perceived and prejudged.

Burrell also writes in his book of the low expectations African Americans, due to propaganda, have of themselves and other African Americans and how even the images of successful Black figures can serve to support these thought patterns. He writes that successful Black figures being put in the spotlight are seen as “exceptions to the rule” and further accentuate the myth of a post-racial society by creating the illusion that anyone can succeed. Burrell calls this the “paradox of progress.” The common misconception of a post-racial society combined with propagandized images of African-Americans serve to subconsciously preserve the myth of Black inferiority and to preserve the subconscious aspect of discrimination and inequality in today’s society.

Wilma A. Dunaway, in her scholarly book, “The African-American Family in Slavery and Emancipation,” argues that there has been a preposterous notion that slavery was a “paternal institution” that “civilized and Christianized” Africans and that they were somehow better off than many free Northern workers due in part to the fact that they were “cared for” by their masters in their non-working hours and old age.

However, much of the research surrounding the institution of slavery in the United States has been conducted by the examination of journals and diaries kept by slave owners and therefore is extremely biased to make the slave owners seem humane and the slaves to seem inferior in order to justify the ridiculous institution of slavery and to downplay the impact that it had and continues to have on people of African descent as well as the shaping of Western society.

DeBray “Fly Benzo” Carpenter has been the target of incessant police harassment and brutality since he began leading protests against the police murder of Kenneth Harding on July 16, 2011. He was recently convicted by a jury that included no Blacks of three misdemeanors – resisting arrest, obstructing a police officer and assault on a police officer – stemming from a brutal assault on him by police in a public plaza in front of a crowd of witnesses. The trial, which lasted several weeks, made schoolwork difficult, but he is maintaining his straight-A grade average. Here he is working on an assignment in the Rosenberg Library at City College. – Photo: Sara Bloomberg, The Guardsman

Bayview Hunters Point community advocate and straight-A City College student DeBray “Fly Benzo” Carpenter can be reached on Facebook, at Fly Benzo’s Blog, where this story first appeared, or via flybenzo@gmail.com.

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by People’s Minister of Information JR

Lela Nicole

M.O.I. JR: Can you tell us a little bit about your project, Oaktowne?

Lela: Oaktowne is a television show based on three neighborhood friends, Derrica, Cheyanne and Monet, who live in Oakland, California. The show is centered around their lives and the trials and tribulations they endure while living in the Bay Area.

M.O.I. JR: How did you come up with the concept?

Lela: Oakland is my hometown and there are so many flavors to the city. I was sick and tired of the media just capturing one part of Oakland and I wanted to bring awareness that Oakland is not just a city full of crime.

Oakland has a lot of great history and there are still many people in our community doing things to better the city. So what better way to bring awareness to my hometown than by creating a show based on some of the facets of the Town and how they continue to impact my life.

M.O.I. JR: How long did it take for you to cast, produce and shoot Oaktowne?

Lela: Eight months from casting to the finished product.

M.O.I. JR: Was this your first major project and what was the process like?

Lela: Yes, it was the first project that me and my business partner, Mishalene Bloom, produced for our production company HomeGirlVision. We also hired the cinematography crew Preme Photography to film our entire project. It was definitely a learning experience.

M.O.I. JR: You were recently picked to be in the 2012 Oakland International Film Festival. How did it feel to have your work acknowledged on that level?

Lela: It’s a very humbling experience to have our first film showcased in my hometown.

M.O.I. JR: When will Oaktowne be screened at the OIFF?

Lela: April 7, 2012, at 2 p.m. at the Oakland Museum.

M.O.I. JR: What are some of your aspirations as a producer and writer?

Lela: To produce, create and write projects that will stir up and provoke thought and that will ultimately entertain.

M.O.I. JR: What do you hope to do in the film world in the next five years?

Lela: My goal in the next five years is to continue the Oaktowne Movement and to have our first season picked up by a major distribution production company and to continue to create and write new projects.

M.O.I. JR: Why did you become a filmmaker?

Lela: From a young child I always loved to read and write. I also have a passion for telling stories, and it’s proven to be one of my greatest qualities. So what better way than to express my God given gift than through filmmaking.

M.O.I. JR: Was it hard for you to put your dream of making a television show into reality?

Lela: It was process. I was always conscious of my passion to create Oaktowne, but I had to enter the season where I had the time to develop the finished product.

M.O.I. JR: How can people keep up with you?

Lela: Visit our website, www.homegirlvision.com, and you can also follow Oaktowne and myself on Twitter @OakTowne_TV and @iamlelanicole.

The People’s Minister of Information JR is associate editor of the Bay View, author of “Block Reportin’” and filmmaker of “Operation Small Axe,” both available, along with many more interviews, at www.blockreportradio.com. He also hosts two weekly shows on KPFA 94.1 FM and kpfa.org: The Morning Mix every Wednesday, 8-9 a.m., and The Block Report every Friday night-Saturday morning, midnight-2 a.m. He can be reached at blockreportradio@gmail.com.

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• Ten days in LA
• The plight of Mumia Abu Jamal: 30 years and counting

Radio Africa & Kitchen Chef Eskender Aseged

There will be an opening night party at the restaurant on March 7 at 5 p.m. with food, drinks and live music. Reservations are required and can be made by email, radioafricak@yahoo.com, or phone, (415) 420-2486.

The restaurant has the backing of the City of San Francisco, which granted Aseged the restaurant space in the heart of the Bayview District and provided some of the start-up funds. Aseged raised additional funds through a successful kickstarter campaign.

Aseged has already established roots in the Bayview community. In 2010, he help found the Bayview Community Garden, located across the street from the restaurant. Radio Africa & Kitchen, at Third Street and Oakdale, will use the vegetables grown in the garden in its seasonal dishes.

“I am thrilled to be strengthening my ties to the vibrant Bayview District,” said Aseged. “I think my East African cuisine will appeal to both locals and visitors, and I hope the restaurant becomes a community gathering spot where neighbors gather to share a dish and conversation.”

The name Radio Africa & Kitchen comes from Aseged’s experience of growing up in Ethiopia with very few outlets for popular music and sports. Only one household per neighborhood might have a radio, and kids would gather and listen to soccer matches and music, sharing laughter, conversation and snacks.

Although this is his first independently-owned restaurant, Aseged is no stranger to the San Francisco culinary scene. After arriving in San Francisco from Ethiopia in the late 1980s, he spent the next 20 years working in the Bay Area with such luminary chefs as Jeremiah Tower, Joyce Goldstein, Nancy Oaks, Daniel Peterson and Daniel Humm. During this time, inspired by these great chefs, he began experimenting with different food preparations of his own.

In the fall of 2004, Aseged started his first “pop up” restaurant right in his own home, serving meals to small groups of friends. These pop ups expanded to a variety of Bay Area cafés over the course of the next seven years.

Aseged describes his cuisine as “Red Sea meets Mediterranean.” Sample dishes at Radio Africa & Kitchen will include white corn soup with prawn escabeche and epazote; roasted leg of lamb with summer vegetable ratatouille, couscous and chermoula; green lentils with mint raita; eggplant lasagna with Israeli couscous and Idiazibal cheese; and mushroom wot with berbere and artichoke-tomato confit salsa.

The restaurant will also be open for lunch starting April 3. Radio Africa & Kitchen is at 4800 Third St., San Francisco. For reservations and more information, call (415) 420-2486.

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Guest Amoeblogger JR Valrey on the air at KPFA Berkeley – Photo: Ali Thanawalla

by JR Valrey

Black History Month was born out of Black History Week, which was created by Carter G. Woodson, author of “The Miseducation of the Negro,” in the early half of the 20th century. Since then, many people celebrate it by learning about the great pyramids of Egypt or by memorizing Malcolm’s “The Ballot or the Bullet,” which is cool, but I want to modernize and diversify the list a little bit. These are some books, movies and albums that I would add to the list of the “Black Experience Study Guide,” because they had a profound effect on how I look at the world in a spiritual, social, political and cultural sense.

This list is my humble contribution to uplifting people’s consciousness about what is happening to Black people internationally, as well as how we feel about life after having our backs against the wall for centuries, with few exceptions. As the late legendary jazz saxophonist John Coltrane would say, “Here are a few of my favorite things.”

1) ‘The New Jim Crow’ by Michelle Alexander

“The New Jim Crow” is one of the best books that I’ve ever read in my life. It gives a chronological history of how the U.S. has become the biggest mass incarcerating nation in the world, way beyond Russia and even apartheid South Africa.

This book talks about the role that political architects like Richard Nixon, Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and more played in bringing us to the scenario, where 2 million people are currently behind bars. Michelle Alexander also makes the poignant point that there are more Black people in this country tied to the criminal justice system today than there were in 1850, a decade before the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. “The New Jim Crow” is an essential read for anybody doing serious study on the on-going war being waged against Black people in the U.S. by the government.

Bay View editor’s note: A revised edition of “The New Jim Crow” has just been released in paperback; therefore, it is now available to prisoners in states like California that do not allow hardback books. It can be ordered from the publisher, The New Press, 38 Greene St., Fourth Floor, New York, NY 10013, for $19.95 (though it’s a little cheaper on Amazon).

2) ‘The First Minute of a New Day’ by The Midnight Band

Gil Scott Heron and Brian Jackson of The Midnight Band were two of the most influential musicians of their era, musically and lyrically. Many have heard of some of their contemporaries like Curtis Mayfield and The Last Poets, but somehow this band seems to get lost in the sauce when it comes to official recognition.

This album is like a time capsule, detailing spiritually the wants and desires of African people that have been oppressed in the Americas for centuries. Songs like “Winter in America,” “Ain’t No Such Thing As Superman” and “Pardon Our Analysis” are timeless masterpieces … not only scathing critiques of the system that has its boot on our necks, but empowering messages for oppressed people to keep their heads up, fist in the air and eyes peeled on the path to self-determination. Songs like “The Offering,” “Must Be Something” and “Alluswe” are revolutionary prayers, extensions of the spirituals enslaved Africans were singing on plantations in the South to organize and politically educate themselves.

The late Gil Scott Heron was one of the most passionate writers of any genre, in my opinion, ever produced in the United States. Brian Jackson is the perfect musical compliment. This dynamic duo has been sampled in rap music by 2Pac, The Coup, Freeway, Common and Kanye, just to name a few.

3) ‘Kongo: 50 Years of Independence of Congo’

This is a documentary that employs animation to tell the history of the mineral rich, under-developed, war-torn African country known today as the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Everyone who listens to the international media from the United States, Europe or the Arab world has heard the stereotypes of African governments being backwards and corrupt and squandering resources, but very few have heard of the European powers who manufactured these situations, helping to put these puppets in power for the benefit of European economies.

An image from “Kongo: 50 Years of Independence of Congo”

“Kongo: 50 Years of Independence of Congo” also paints a bold portrait of the late great first Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba, who strived to fight off secessionists who wanted to split the most mineral rich areas from the country for the benefit of a few and the Western powers. It was my first time hearing the names of Congolese anti-colonialist like Simon Kimbangu, who was a liberation theologist and died a political prisoner because of that fact, and Paul Panda, who was a Black man of Congolese descent from Belgium, who spoke up and organized for African independence on an international level.

This film discusses the life of the dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, who was in power for decades, and who was in part responsible for the assassination of Patrice Lumumba. It also talks about the rise, with the assistance of the Rwandan government, of Laurent Kabila, who was later assassinated, and his “son,” the current front man “running” the Congo, Joseph Kabila.

In most electronic devices, there is a mineral called coltan, and 80 percent of the world’s supply of this essential mineral is in the Congo. So for all of us who use laptops, iPhones, iPads and PS3’s, it is our responsibility to know the human costs and environmental costs of these products and to do what we can to eliminate the carnage. The Congolese people deserve to have their sovereignty and right to self-determination respected, and if people want to make and buy things that require minerals from the Congo, then they should pay the Congolese who are the caretakers of that land a fair price.

To properly respect other cultures, we need to educate ourselves, and learn something about them. This documentary is a great start to educating oneself on Congolese political history.

4) ‘The Wiz’

“The Wiz” is a brilliantly crafted cinematic masterpiece that was shot in New York City with an all-star cast featuring Michael Jackson, Richard Pryor, Lena Horne, Nipsey Russel, Diana Ross and more. Although it is an adaptation of the widely known “Wizard of Oz,” it is the Black version that is spiced up with beautifully written and performed music, as well as soulful choreography.

The climax of the film is when Dorothy, played by Diana Ross, and her crew of misfits make it into the Emerald City, aka Oz. There Richard Pryor, who plays the Wiz, scares the hell out of the motley crew using big speakers hoisted on the top of tall buildings and a huge metal face that breathes fire and gives people the impression that the Wiz is indestructible. At one point the Wiz yells through his microphone that the color is red and all of the people follow the trend, even making up songs and dances to celebrate the color. A few minutes later, the Wiz changes the trendy color to green and the people follow suit, making up a new song and dance. This reflects the brainwashing power of the corporate media.

Shot during the political and cultural dishevel of the ‘70s, this tale of mass media manipulation of the human race is even more important today, looking at the fact that more people know of Jay Z and Beyonce’s new baby than know about the war in the Congo, which has already claimed 6 million African lives. Most people in the U.S. could name more sports figures than politicians who make decisions every day that dictate the quality of our very lives. This is a testament to the power of the media.

5) ‘The 7 Day Theory’ by Tupac Shakur aka Makavelli

This was the last album that Tupac Shakur worked on and oversaw before he was assassinated with the help of various police agencies in Las Vegas in September of 1996. Different from “All Eyez on Me,” “The 7 Day Theory” was, in my opinion, one of his most contemplative albums right alongside the classic “Me Against the World.” These were the two albums where we got to see the genius come out of Pac without any obstacles or filters.

Tupac recorded “All Eyes on Me” after he was shot, set up and convicted on trumped up rape charges. The rage and party nature that makes up “All Eyes on Me” reflects a young Black spokesman for his generation that was still maturing, and he was trying to psychologically bounce back from being almost killed and unjustly accused, imprisoned and crucified in the media.

“The 7 Day Theory” is the album he started after he was able to shed those feelings, expel those demons and revolve back to what it is he set out to do. Pac was very verbose about his political leanings, on songs like “Blasphemy,” “Whiteman’s World” and “Hold Ya Head.” He lyrically sprayed venom on “Bomb First” and “Hail Mary,” where he starts out with “I’m not a killer but don’t push me/ revenge is like the sweetest joy next to gettin’ pussy/ picture paragraphs unloaded/ wise words being quoted/peeped a weakness in the rap game and sowed it/ bow down. “

A lot of people had a problem with Pac calling out other rappers on this album. But isn’t that the roots of rap? When KRS 1 and MC Shan battled, it was Hip Hop; when Common attacked Ice Cube, it was Hip Hop; but when Pac spoke up in his rhymes, people couldn’t take it. They thought that he went too far. His words, his writing and his passion were so in tune with each other that people thought that it was dangerous. Isn’t that the sign of a great writer, poet, rapper and musician?

His commentary on other musicians was only a secondary reason why I appreciated this album. The No. 1 reason is that Pac, his emotions and the things that would happen to him in the world gave the planet a bird’s eye view to the worldly intellect, the gentleness of spirit, the confidence and the arrogant, rough attitude of young Black men that is created once we realize that in every country, in every kind of society, it is us against the world: White on top and Black on the bottom. Rich on top and poor on the bottom.

This album elegantly weaved all of these feelings into a cohesive product that the oppressed all over the world and those who identify with them related to, because they knew that Pac meant everything he said, with everything in his being. I aspire as a writer to be able to connect my brain, heart and pen like Pac did on this album.

6) ‘Block Reportin’’ by JR Valrey

This is the book of interviews that I wrote. I think that “Block Reportin’” is an essential read because I interviewed people who made major contributions nationally or were involved in major earthshaking events: controversial people, talented musicians who stand for a cause, legendary political figures who speak on behalf of Black people from all walks of life and more.

Interviews range from the late poet and jazz and blues man Gil Scott Heron to the fire spitting lyricist M-1, half of one of rap’s dopest revolutionary groups, dead prez, to courageous peace activist Cynthia McKinney, who talks about her experience being kidnapped and made a political prisoner in Israel, to Hajj Malcolm Shabazz, the grandson of the international human rights leader Malcolm X (Hajj Malik El Shabazz) to CIA financier Freeway Rick Ross, the real dude, not the rapper, to Black Panther political prisoner and the prolific writer Mumia Abu Jamal plus more.

I don’t believe in polite journalism, though I do believe in truthful journalism, so I ask questions that may seem invasive at times, but it is in the spirit of true political education. In the book, I don’t speak the “Queen’s English.” I speak the dialect of masses, the people in the streets who live around us. The reason I do this is to communicate information, not to pass some kind of English exam.

Unlike most school textbooks that talk about the people who are no longer breathing, “Block Reportin’” deals with the people who are still breathing, kicking, fighting and speaking out. This is important because their stories are not over. In some cases you can join their movement and help to affect the outcome, like in the case of political prisoner Mumia Abu Jamal or in the case of the war in the Congo that is still on, having claimed over 6 million lives and caused catastrophic environmental damage.

The chapters in “Block Reportin’” are only a few pages long, and there are more than 30 personalities for the reader to analyze who talk about subjects as eclectic and abstract as Malcolm X’s connection to jazz music, which I talked about with Umar Bin Hasan of the Last Poets, and as concrete as the curriculum of the Black Panther Party’s Liberation School, which was headed by Ericka Huggins, who shared her knowledge with me in a KPFA recording studio.

“Block Reportin’” is my attempt at hooking real living history and history makers up with people who live within these neighborhood and cell blocks, because ultimately I believe that our history and the history of resistance in this country in all its forms should be documented and distributed by us. If we fail to do so, our enemies will bury it and change it.

7) ‘Dark Alliance’ by Gary Webb

Sometimes it is said in the Black community that the truth is only the truth when it comes out of the mouth of a white man. So to that extent, I had to include this book on my list of top seven choices of books, movies and music that I would recommend for Black History Month.

“Dark Alliance,” written by San Jose Mercury News reporter Gary Webb – who was later murdered – details the U.S. government plans that were executed in the ‘80s to sell cocaine in Black neighborhoods in the Bay and in LA. The mission was to fund counter-revolutions, off the books and out of the gaze of U.S. taxpayers, in El Salvador and in Nicaragua. This book exposes explosive information linking the elite in the highest echelons of the United States government to international drug trafficking.

This is another book that exposes the true nature of the government that we currently live under. Many of the people – excuse me, criminals – named in this book are still alive and still impacting influential circles in the government, military and intelligence agencies of this county. So even after you’ve read the last page, the story is on-going and still unfolding. We’ve had shortages on water in California recently, but never on cocaine, which is grown in South America.

“Dark Alliance” is a classic piece of journalism that I believe should be a mandatory read for every high school and college student in this country.

For more on guest Amoeblogger JR Valrey, visit the blockreportradio website.

The People’s Minister of Information JR is associate editor of the Bay View, author of “Block Reportin’“ and filmmaker of “Operation Small Axe,” both available, along with many more interviews, at www.blockreportradio.com. He also hosts two weekly shows on KPFA 94.1 FM and kpfa.org: The Morning Mix every Wednesday, 8-9 a.m., and The Block Report every Friday night-Saturday morning, midnight-2 a.m. He can be reached at blockreportradio@gmail.com. This story first appeared on Amoeblog, the online forum of Amoeba Music Inc.

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by Carlos Zialcita

Johnny Otis and Carlos Zialcita

He invited me to sit in on a number. I remember it well. It was one of my favorites, “My Babe,” a tune that was a big hit for famed blues harmonica player and singer Little Walter. I guess Johnny figured I must have known it. He was right – and I immediately felt comfortable sitting in with this “larger than life” rhythm and blues legend.

We hit it off immediately, and he also got along great with my wife Myrna – immediately recognizing her African roots – and engaged both of us in lively conversation and the trademark Johnny Otis humor and banter. I was thrilled that my initial meeting with Johnny went so well. He invited us to come back. Myrna and I would return as often as we could, usually bringing some of Myrna’s cooking. If fact, Johnny would often say, “Don’t you come back without some of that adobo….”

One day, Myrna and I returned to the café and brought Afro-Filipina blues and soul diva Sugar Pie DeSanto and her brother Domingo Balinton. It was quite a reunion for Johnny and Sugar Pie, who had not seen each other in years. I was immediately struck by the fact that he called her “Palaya” – a nickname that Sugar sometimes called herself along with close friends and family members. Sugar Pie’s real name is Umpeylia Balinton.

I was aware of the history between these two giants of rhythm and blues and was in awe as I watched them interact. Johnny discovered Sugar Pie at a talent show in San Francisco in the early 1950s. Sugar Pie recently shared with me that it was in 1954 that Johnny gave her the nickname “Sugar Pie.”

My friendship with Johnny grew quickly as we found many things in common that we enjoyed, in addition to music. I had always been a fan of Johnny, his music and his politics. I used to perform “Willie and the Hand Jive” with a band I had a in the mid-‘80s called the California Cadillacs. I had also performed with Big Mama Thornton several times, along with Charles Brown, Lowell Fulson, Percy Mayfield and several other artists Johnny had worked with.

Johnny would often invite me to his house after the show for lunch. There he would share with me his record and book collections and sometimes take me into the studio where he painted and showed me his artwork. It was Johnny who introduced me to Dr. Fred Cordova’s book, “Forgotten Asian Americans,” about the history of Filipino Americans in the United States. He told me, “This is a story that has to be told.”

He showed me his menagerie of different birds as well as the Koi fish he had in a pond. I was very intrigued by the life-size sculptures on his property of three voluptuous naked women. There were paintings in the house also, against the wall in the living room, where he also had a grand piano. Phyllis, Johnny’s lovely wife, who is Afro-Filipina, also became a very good friend to Myrna and me.

My visits to the café and to the Otis residence nurtured my friendships with different members of his band, which included his son Nicky Otis, a drummer, and grandson, Lucky Otis, who played bass. Johnny’s band would eventually accompany me on my CD “Train Through Oakland,” with Johnny playing piano, vibes and even drums (on one cut).

That came about when I asked Johnny simply – would he produce a CD of me. He graciously offered his band, his recording studio, an engineer and his own musical contributions of several songs. In addition, I became a house guest during the many weekends we spent recording, mixing and mastering the CD. It was definitely more than I could have ever imagined.

Johnny Otis and son (Nicky, Shuggie?) on the air back in the day

“Train Through Oakland” and the experiences surrounding the making of it, will always remain one of the most memorable milestones of my life. It will stay with me forever.

It was also around this time that Johnny decided to teach a class on the history of Black Music in America. He joined forced with Larry Douglas, one of the trumpet players in his band and a college professor, to create a concept for the class and propose it to the Peralta Community College system. The class was Music 15-B: Jazz, Blues and Popular Music in American Culture, a 3-unit college class transferable to the UC system. It also fulfilled lower division requirements for Ethnic Studies, Humanities, History and other Liberal Arts departments.

The class was an instant hit. I remember Johnny calling me one day to ask if I would like to work with him in the class as its coordinator. He knew I worked with computers and multimedia. He wanted me to help him with curriculum development, preparation of handouts, the showing of films, and the scheduling of speakers and live bands.

His concept for the class was revolutionary and drew large enrollments. It holds the record for the most popular class ever in the history of the Peralta Community College system. This intense collaboration between Johnny and me brought us closer together, as I would often consult with him on all the different aspects of his class. He lent me his books, gave me numbers of different speakers and entertainers to contact. I essentially became his “right hand man” as he would often refer to me.

I even did the payroll – telling his wife Phyllis who to make checks out to and disbursing those checks every Monday night. The class was incredibly popular, with the help of Johnny’s radio show and word of mouth amongst the students and the community San Francisco Bay Area music and Johnny Otis fans.

At the end of every semester, Johnny would host a “Red Beans and Rice Night” with my wife Myrna preparing the meal that would feed approximately 150 people. This became a ritual twice a year for over 10 years. To no one’s surprise, Johnny loved Myrna’s cooking and even put her recipe for Chicken Adobo in his “Rock and Roll Cookbook.”

Gradually, Johnny’s health deteriorated. This inevitably meant the end of the class as we knew it. I tried running the class without Johnny’s presence, bringing in Lucky Otis, his grandson. Peralta Community College District decided to “franchise” the class and offer it at each campus. At one point I was assisting the professors at both Berkeley City College and College of Alameda, going from one campus to the other on Monday nights.

The funding for the class was also reduced dramatically, making it impossible to book the live entertainment and speakers like we previously had done. This became for me – the “end of an era.” It was like the end of Rock and Roll and early Rhythm and Blues itself – it’s time had come and gone.

Eventually, Johnny and Phyllis decided to sell their property in Sebastopol and move to Southern California where their two daughters and son Shuggie live. This is where Johnny would spend his remaining years, close to his family and out of the public eye. He had essentially “retired” and made the choice to no longer pursue all the different activities he was known for.

On Dec. 28, 2012, Johnny reached the age of 90. He died at 12:05 a.m. on Jan. 17, 2012. He had lived a full life as head of his family, as a musician, producer, mentor, talent scout, owner of a record label, radio personality, politician, civil and human rights activist, poet, writer, painter, sculptor, cartoonist, chef, church minister, educator and organic farmer. It was a life of the inspirational and consummate “Renaissance Man” – a life for the ages. There will never be another one like him. Mabuhay ka Johnny Otis!

©2012 Carlos Zialcita

This story first appeared in POOR Magazine/Prensa POBRE with this note from co-editor Tiny, aka Lisa Gray-Garcia: “Mama Dee and me met Johnny Otis and Carlos Zialcita in the beautiful History of Black Music class they taught through Laney College in Oakland. Each week Johnny and Carlos would “bring” the sounds, rhythm and rockin’ love of Little Richard, Etta James, Smokey and the Miracles and so many more throughout herstory. My mama, a jazz singer and R&B dancer who never sang in public, traumatized by racist hate in foster homes and orphanages she lived in in Amerikkka, felt like she was finally home each week in the presence of cool-guy hair-having Carlos and beat-smooth-talking Johnny.”

Boyd Matson, NBC News, Burbank, notes: “Johnny Otis, one of the pioneers of rhythm and blues, said he always wanted to be Black. And for most people who heard his music, they thought he was. He discovered and worked with some of the early great R&B vocalists who would lay the foundation for rock and roll. Otis produced Big Mama Thornton’s original recording of “Hound Dog,” which Elvis Presley would later re-record to help launch his career. I did this profile piece on Otis for the Today Show back in 1983.”

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During a visit to the offices of the historic Black newspaper the Los Angeles Sentinel, Malcolm Shabazz paused to contemplate a portrait of his grandfather, Malcolm X. – Photo: LA Sentinel

It is not in the memory of man that this beleaguered, unfortunate but nonetheless proud community has found a braver, more gallant young champion than this Afro-American who lies before us, unconquered still. I say the word again, as he would want me to: Afro-American. Afro-American Malcolm, who was a master, was most meticulous in his use of words. Nobody knew better than he the power words have over the minds of men. Malcolm had stopped being a “Negro” years ago. It had become too small, too puny, too weak a word for him. Malcolm was bigger than that. Malcolm had become an Afro-American and he wanted so desperately that we, that all his people, would become Afro-Americans, too.

Martin Luther King sent his loving condolences to Betty Shabazz by telegram the day before Malcolm's funeral. Click to enlarge.

They will say that he is of hate, a fanatic, a racist who can only bring evil to the cause for which you struggle! And we will answer and say to them: Did you ever talk to Brother Malcolm? Did you ever touch him, or have him smile at you? Did you ever really listen to him? Did he ever do a mean thing? Was he ever himself associated with violence or any public disturbance? For if you did, you would know him. And if you knew him, you would know why we must honor him:

Our own Black shining prince – Photo: Herman Hiller, World Telegram

Ossie Davis, who himself passed on in 2005, was a great actor, director, poet, playwright, writer and activist and a close friend of both Malcolm X – El Hajj Malik El-Shabazz – and Martin Luther King. He emceed the 1963 March on Washington, where Dr. King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech, and he delivered this unforgettable eulogy for Malcolm X. He re-read part of the eulogy at the end of Spike Lee’s 1992 film, “Malcolm X.”

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by Paradise Free Jahlove

Black Oscars: Oscar Grant (above) and Oscar Micheaux

And February is not my favorite month because Feb. 1 is International Kiswahili Language Day – and Swahili is our potential international Pan Afrikan unifying language and multibillion dollar economy. And Feb. 2 is Ground Hog’s Day (the name of one of my favorite movies of all time) and on the 14th is Valentine’s Day and also during this month is President’s Day. And the NBA All Star game is played, as is the Super Bowl, and Mardi Gras begins and the Academy Awards are held in Hollywoood and my Black Oscars awards are held during the same day to celebrate Black elegance, eloquence, art, activism and excellence and honor and pay tribute to the Black Oscars, from Oscar Micheaux to Oscar Grant!

No, all these glorious reason aren’t the only reasons why February is my favorite month of the year or the main one. The main reason I love February is because it’s Black History Month … or, as I often call it: Afromantic History Month. The month we roll out the red, black and green carpet and choose to fall in love with ourselves all over again. And better yet, “Rise in love.” It’s our 28-day Honey Moon.

February is the month where we march hand in hand back down memory lane and see how far we as a people have come and how far we need to go … after learning from our mistakes of the past so we won’t repeat them again in the future. It’s the month we go out of our way to excavate some of the inexhaustible supply of Black Gold, splendiferocity, moxy, mojo, juju and great works of our people and great heroes of glorious pastimes so we can march forward into our much deserved promised lands and luminous tomorrows of resplendence.

Invariably every year around this time you’ll hear a brother or sister crack or whine about how “they” gave us the shortest month of the year to celebrate Black History. When in actuality Black historian, author and scholar Carter G. Woodson created Negro History Week in 1926 to honor the time frame in which the emancipation president Abraham Lincoln and his freedom fighting friend and foe Frederick Douglass were born. And later, in 1976, “we” would take it upon ourselves to expand that week into Black History Month.

Black folks in Ohio and other parts up north, though, have started to celebrate Black History Month in June around Juneteenth and Father’s Day in much warmer weather because February up there is the coldest month of the year.

However, here is an astonishing gem, caveat and Black History Month scoop: It is my contention, intuition and belief that Abe Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington and W.E.B DuBois returned to the world stage approximately 100 years later as JFK, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King and Elijah Muhammad. Malcolm and Frederick both came up hard and were stern countenanced, reddish brown-skinned, fiery orators. Booker T. and Martin both preferred to work through the system for our rights. W.E.B. and Elijah were both bald on top, wrote books for Black folks and were concerned about our social status and economic growth in America. And both Kennedy and Lincoln were significant in the lives of Black folks, both had Johnsons as vice presidents who became president because both Kennedy and Lincoln were assassinated – Lincoln in a theater by a man who hid in a warehouse and Kennedy was shot from a warehouse by a man who hid in a theater.

But whether you believe any of that or not, how afromantic would it be if we took that almost $100 billion we will spend in February and spent it on ourselves and make Black history by making Black Americans $100 billion richer!? Now wouldn’t that be afromantic! Buy Black Wednesday!

Paradise is president of the International Black Writers & Artists Local 5 in Oakland and was recently honored by the City of Oakland with “Paradise Day,” on Oct. 6! He may be reached at oaklandworldsfair@yahoo.com. Paradise also facilitates the Buy Black Wednesdays Facebook page and group, hosts the Black Wednesday Show every Wednesday at 6 p.m. on www.harambeeradio.com and blogs at www.blackwednesdays.blogspot.com.

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by Marpessa Kupendua

Chaka Khan and her “little sister,” Whitney Houston, perform together in happier times. – Photo: CBS

Chaka Khan appeared on CNN’s Piers Morgan broadcast on Feb. 13, two days after the death of her “little sister,” Whitney Houston. This was a privileged and rare moment, as she spoke vividly, yet calmly, with the soul that we know her for, despite Piers’ acting out his shtick of “hard-hitting” rudeness. Tales of Chaka’s past no-shows and hazy performances are legendary and she, obviously pained and weary, frankly discussed being a recovering addict. She also anecdotally talked about “getting high” with Whitney and Bobby, although the humor they shared was the primary focus of her remarks and not the drugs. In fact, Chaka spoke on her dismay that Whitney hadn’t been better sheltered from temptations and shared her own coping mechanism of avoiding parties, drugs and alcohol by arriving at celebrity-laden events just prior to their commencement so that she wouldn’t fall victim to her own demons.

Chaka also discussed the macabre Clive Davis pre-Grammy party, where gussied-up celebrities red-carpeted and guzzled champagne after only learning of Whitney’s death a few short hours before, her corpse a few floors above them and Whitney’s devastated daughter fighting to get in to see her at the full-fledged police scene, in one of the most bizarre and unseemly displays of narcissism and arrogance ever recorded. “I thought that was complete insanity,” Chaka Khan told Morgan. “I don’t know what could motivate a person to have a party in a building where the person whose life he had influenced so enormously, and whose life had been affected by her … I don’t understand how that party went on.” Even after Piers’ defense of Davis and the insensitive “mourners” – who partied long into the night – Chaka stood firm and continued, “A more honest tribute, in my opinion, would have been, maybe, call everybody together, say a prayer, let’s eat dinner and go home.”

Chaka also discussed the macabre Clive Davis pre-Grammy party, where gussied-up celebrities red-carpeted and guzzled champagne after only learning of Whitney’s death a few short hours before, her corpse a few floors above them and Whitney’s devastated daughter fighting to get in to see her at the full-fledged police scene.

The next day, Feb. 14, The Grio’s tawdry and sensationalist headline burst forth onto Facebook – and is still being quoted as fact to this day: “Chaka Khan’s favorite memory of Whitney Houston: ‘Getting high together’,” complete with a garish photo as the cherry on top. Like a tattling child, The Grio demonized Chaka by purposely inflaming her remarks for a heightened reaction of righteous indignation. The pay-off? Hundreds of Facebook comments where at least 90 percent of respondents were livid, sickened, name-calling and even threatening to boycott Chaka.

Others in the Black internet press also created false intrigue instead of standing with and even applauding Chaka for not towing the corporate line and embracing the boldness with which she outed the callousness of the industry and her peers. This is what we get from having “our own” spaces fronted by white mainstream media on the web: neo-Black press in “post-racial” America.

“I think we all, as artists, because we’re highly sensitive people, and this machine around us, this so-called ‘music industry,’ is such a demonic thing, it sacrifices people’s lives and their essences at the drop of a dime … I had a manager once say to me, ‘ You know you’re worth more money dead than alive.’” – Chaka Khan

As we condemn celebrities for their excesses and an industry rife with corruption, exploitation and drug dealing of every sort, can’t we handle the truth when they tell it? The deletion of 31 categories of mostly ethnic music from the Grammys is impetus enough to put Hollyweird on full blast instead of piling on in condemnation of one among them who dares to speak out.

Others in the Black internet press created false intrigue instead of standing with and even applauding Chaka for not towing the corporate line and embracing the boldness with which she outed the callousness of the industry and her peers. This is what we get from having “our own” spaces fronted by white mainstream media on the web.

Media Take-Out.Com, touting itself as “The Most Visited Urban Website in the World” and whose founder has no problem admitting that “we get 90 percent of our stories from insiders looking to spill the beans, like hairstylists, bodyguards or bitter ex-girlfriends” headlined: “Chaka Khan REFUSED to Perform a WHITNEY TRIBUTE at the Grammys!!!” even though her widely circulated tweet stated: “As I grieve the loss of my friend and ‘little sister,’ I don’t feel it appropriate to perform at this time. Continue to pray for the family.” She also told Piers Morgan that she was not willing to perform “I’m Every Woman,” because she “felt it was ridiculous and very inappropriate.” Is this the dirty mattress on which The Grio wants to lie?

The Grio should reflect upon our great Black divas such as Billie Holiday, Dinah Washington, Esther Phillips, Phyllis Hyman and carefully consider on what side of history their published offerings to the international community will fall when students and researchers read reports of the tumult surrounding the death of Whitney Houston in years to come. Mimicking the lowest common denominator and caring not the cost to the spirit of a grieving woman telling her very personal story is certainly not anything remotely resembling a true griot (keeper of history).

As the Black internet press regurgitates what the tabloid press puts out to lure in readers, they are just as scurrilous as any rag on the supermarket shelves. Not a mind-blowing revelation, to be sure, but during momentous times like these it would behoove all of our writers to take out the trash more often.

Recommended reading

1. “Whitney Houston: 1963-2012,” Dream Hampton. “Modern stars are simultaneously coddled and mocked for their addiction. Our collective voyeurism, schadenfreude and hypocritical rush to judgment would suggest that our own families are junkie free … Addicts need strong, supportive, sober friends who circle them and then rejoin that circle when the addict relapses.”

2. “Didn’t We Almost Have it All?” Terry Howcott. “Not only did her voice lift us up out of our shoes, but she reflected our collective talents and our complex struggles, our sober focus and our cunning and baffling addictions.”

3. “We Don’t Really Know Their Lives,” Thandisizwe Chimurenga. Billie Holiday, Dinah Washington, Marjorie Hendricks, Phyllis Hyman and others of our “beautiful, fierce, regal and gifted Black women whose (voices have been) stilled far too early.”

Marpessa Kupendua is a political and human rights activist, writer and the editor of Dread Times. She can be reached at nattyreb@gmail.com.

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• Gray-Haired Witnesses bring shocking case of the Scott Sisters to Washington

Official selection of the 2012 Sundance Film Festival premieres on PBS Monday, Feb. 13, at 10 p.m. PT on KQED Channel 9

by Wanda Sabir

A cynical new form of slavery was resurrected from the ashes of the Civil War and re-imposed on hundreds of thousands of African-Americans until the dawn of World War II. Armies of “free” Black men labored without compensation, were repeatedly bought and sold, and were forced through beatings and physical torture to do the bidding of white masters for decades after the official abolition of American slavery. As it poured millions of dollars into Southern government treasuries, the new slavery also became a key instrument in the terrorization of African Americans seeking full participation in the U.S. political system. This youngster is being punished in a forced labor camp in Georgia around 1932. – Photo: John Spivak

It was a system in which men, often guilty of no crime at all, were arrested, compelled to work without pay, repeatedly bought and sold, and coerced to do the bidding of masters. Tolerated by both the North and South, forced labor lasted well into the 20th century.

For most Americans, this is entirely new history. “Slavery by Another Name” gives voice to the largely forgotten victims and perpetrators of forced labor and features their descendants living today.

Prisoners in Mississippi in the 1880s were forced to return to picking cotton, they work they’d performed when enslaved. – Photo courtesy “Slavery by Another Name”

Sam Pollard is an accomplished feature film and television video editor and documentary producer and director whose work spans almost 30 years. His first assignment as a documentary producer came in 1989 for Henry Hampton’s Blackside production “Eyes on the Prize II: America at the Racial Crossroads.” He received an Emmy for one of his episodes in this series.

Between 1990 and 2000, Pollard edited a number of Spike Lee’s films: “Mo’ Better Blues,” “Jungle Fever,” “Girl 6,” “Clockers” and “Bamboozled.” Pollard and Lee also co-produced some documentary productions for the small and big screens: One, “Four Little Girls,” a feature-length documentary about the 1963 Birmingham church bombings, was nominated for an Academy Award. Pollard recently won his sixth Emmy for Best Editing on the HBO documentary “By the People: The Election of Barack Obama.”

To hear an interview with “Slavery by Another Name” author Douglas A. Blackmon, visit http://www.blogtalkradio.com/wandas-picks/2008/12/26/wandas-picks. An interview with Blackmon by Bill Moyers when the book came out in 2008 is transcribed at “‘Slavery by Another Name’: the re-enslavement of Blacks from the Civil War to World War II.”

Channels and airdates

• KQED Channel 9: Monday, Feb. 13, 10 p.m., and Tuesday, Feb. 14, 4 a.m.
• KQED World: Wednesday, Feb. 15, 7 a.m., and Wednesday, Feb. 15, 10 a.m.

Bay View Arts Editor Wanda Sabir can be reached at wsab1@aol.com. Visit her website at www.wandaspicks.com throughout the month for updates to Wanda’s Picks, her blog, photos and Wanda’s Picks Radio. Her shows are streamed live Wednesdays at 6-7 a.m. and Fridays at 8-10 a.m., can be heard by phone at (347) 237-4610 and are archived on the Afrikan Sistahs’ Media Network.

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• Two reviews: Sieh Samura’s ‘Block Reportin’ 101’ will be featured at the 10th Oakland International Film Festival, on Saturday, April 7, at 3 p.m.

by Davey D

Bobbi Kristina Brown and her mom, Whitney Houston, sing a duet on Good Morning America in 2009. According to TMZ, Bobbi Kristina, 18, was rushed to the hospital today from the Beverly Hilton Hotel, where her mother had been found dead in her bath, but later released. She got into a shouting match with police when they refused to let her see her mother’s body. Whitney's cousin, Dionne Warwick, was also turned away.

There are already tributes on various radio stations, as we can tune in and hear Whitney Houston music hours. Many deejays are digging into their grates working on Whitney Houston mixes.

There’s no denying the artistic talents Whitney possessed. If we had to take a poll and ask who has/had the best voice in music, Ms. Houston would no doubt be in the top 10. Songs like “I Will Always Love You” and “Greatest Love of All” best personify her greatness. She was a giant among giants who will surely be missed.

With that being said, as great as her singing has been, as inspiring and as jaw dropping as her songs have been, as engaging as she’s been on screen and in concert, we will have to do a lot more than a mixtape or Grammy tribute to honor Whitney Houston. We will have to do lot more than induct her into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame or grant her a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame.

Whitney and Bobbi Kristina arrive at Clive Davis' Pre-Grammy Gala at the Beverly Hilton exactly one year ago, on Feb. 12, 2011. – Photo: AP

At the time of this writing, I along with most of us have no idea as to what ended Whitney’s life so suddenly at age 48.

Sadly as people came out of their initial shock, speculation of drug abuse was on many people’s minds and tongues. CNN’s Don Lemon said during his breaking news broadcast yesterday that we have to talk about Whitney’s addictions because it was such a big part of her. Correction, Don: Addictions have been a big part of American society. I’m gonna come back to that in a minute.

During various broadcasts about Whitney’s passing, we heard discussions about her losing her voice and making a comeback. A comeback from what? Her demons. Eventually all conversations about Whitney came back to that infamous interview with 20/20’s Diane Sawyer, where she talked about drugs and how crack is wack.

Whitney Houston at the United Negro College Fund’s 46th Annual Awards in 1990 – Photo: Ron Galella Collection

We were addicted to the reality show with her and former husband Bobby Brown. We were addicted to the gossip around her. Is she still dating Bobby? Is she dating singer Ray J? Was she drunk or high at the last party? How many times did we wake up and turn on some urban radio station to hear a host getting their clown on about Whitney Houston. Now many of those hosts wanna lead the way to doing tributes for someone they routinely insulted.

She became the poster child for drug abuse and addiction in an industry that is chock full of people dead and alive who have all succumbed at one time or another to some sort of addiction. Over my 25-plus years in this music industry, I’ve seen a whole lot of ugly truths we like to keep hidden behind the glitz and glam.

Anyone in the music and entertainment industry can tell you stories of executives and shot callers who routinely do lines of coke, pop pills, do speed, take ecstasy or drink themselves under the table while “moguling.” Those abusive habits are far too often shared with the “talent,” the artists. In a business where egos are massive and insecurities shallow, taking a “lil something something” to get amped up or “get you open” is all too commonplace. People don’t wanna talk about it, but it’s true.

If we look at the pantheon of great Black artists hooked on drugs of one type or another, the list is long: Billie Holiday, John Coltrane, Jimi Hendrix, Dorothy Dandridge, Dinah Washington, Richard Pryor, Ole Dirty Bastard, Sly Stone, David Ruffin, George Clinton, Frankie Lymon, DJ Screw, James Brown even the King of Pop Michael Jackson, and that doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface. Keep in mind these are just Black artists. If I start adding names outside our community like Amy Winehouse, Kurt Cobain, River Phoenix, Elvis Presley and Jim Morrison, to name a few, the list gets substantially longer.

Bobbi Kristina with her parents, Bobby Brown and Whitney Houston

During the pioneering days of Hip Hop, which is the generation many of us are a part of, many of those early pioneers who paved the way had serious bouts with an array of drugs – cocaine, angel dust, freebase, sherm, alcohol etc. If you really look at the history, you see by the mid ‘80s many pioneering figures disappeared for a time. Many had to deal with those demons. Some returned to the fold; many didn’t. Many are still struggling 30 years later.

By the time the crack era hit in the early ‘80s all the way up to the ‘90s, if folks weren’t hooked on taking it, they were hooked on selling it. A lot of that is outlined in the VH1 Documentary, “Planet Rock: The Story of Hip Hop and the Crack Generation.”

Our collective pride and addiction to looking good and being cool in the face of danger has not allowed us to even talk about this in any sort of honest way. It’s not a pretty picture. But we lost another star way before her time and she was a part of that legacy – whether it was directly related to her cause of death or not.

Addictions are prevalent. They’re all around us and underscore the hypocrisy of America. We got folks clowning Whitney for substance abuse problems while they sip syrup, shoot up, snort cocaine, eat fast foods, do meth or literally sell their souls and their mama’s soul for 15 minutes of fame.

Whitney Houston at the Kelly Price & Friends Unplugged: For the Love of R&B Grammy Party in Hollywood on Feb. 9, 2012, two days before her death – Photo: FilmMagic

We’re addicted to wanting to know more about the drama behind Whitney’s death more than we are the state of her daughter, Bobbi Kristina, who just lost her mother. How many of us took a moment to say a prayer or reflect on what she might be going through?

Hell, many of us are addicted to our iphones, ipads and other gadgets that we feel we must have at all costs even as they make us go into debt to own them or give us brain tumors to use them.

Someone said Whitney represented a generation of people. Yep, she sure did. She repped the good, the bad and the very ugly and painful. She was not alone in her addictions. We all share them. Some minor, some major.

In honoring Ms. Houston, will we talk about that or remain addicted to painting rosy pictures and acting like we aren’t touched by the scourge of addictions that’s systemic in our society? And if you don’t think our addictions are systemic, I suggest we take a long hard look at the so-called war on drugs and the current carnage taking place South of the border in Mexico and Columbia.

In honoring Ms. Houston, will we talk about that or remain addicted to painting rosy pictures and acting like we aren’t touched by the scourge of addictions that’s systemic in our society?

Who do you think is the economic incentive for all the drugs being shipped into this country from those places? It’s us. Who do you think was behind funding secret wars a la Iran-Contra through the sale of cocaine? Us again.

Heck, if we really wanna get deep, let’s talk about what our troops are dealing with on the battlefield and how they cope after three or four tours and what many wind up doing to deal with life on their return. No, we don’t wanna talk about those addictions. We wanna act like there’s no such thing.

In 2012 if the best we can do is a mixtape and a few tribute songs, then we missed the mark

If we wanna really honor Whitney, how about helping put an end to the demons that plagued her and so many others? If we wanna honor Whitney, how about us having a honest, impactful and earnest discussion about addictions and mental health so we can spare future generations this pain.

If we wanna honor Whitney, how about us having a honest, impactful and earnest discussion about addictions and mental health so we can spare future generations this pain.

Something to ponder. RIP, Whitney Houston

Listen to Davey D on Hard Knock Radio Monday-Friday at 4 p.m. and his Morning Mix show every Tuesday at 8 a.m. on KPFA 94.1 FM or kpfa.org. He can be reached at mrdaveyd@aol.com. Visit his website, daveyd.com, and his blog, Davey D’s Hip Hop Corner, where this story first appeared.

Live performance in Chile in 1994

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• Clowns and conspiracy nuts: an open letter to Michael Krasny, KQED Forum host

by Jean Damu

Bay View publisher Willie Ratcliff congratulates the seven legendary Tuskegee Airmen – LeRoy Gillead, James Goodwin, Clyde Grimes, Richard Harder, Harold Hoskins, James Warren and Les Williams – honored by San Francisco Supervisor Malia Cohen and the entire Board of Supervisors Jan. 24. – Photo: Lance Burton

However – and with all due respect – for those of us who wrote their high school book reports after reading the Classic Comics version or watched the Disney Channel version and, perhaps even more worrisome, for those of us who may be Tyler Perry fans, then “Red Tails” is surely a must see.

For those, however, who took the time to read a book or take seriously African Americans’ participation and contributions to everyday life probably will want to take a pass. “Red Tails” is decidedly not another “Glory,” the 1989 Morgan Freeman film that was relatively accurate in its telling the story of the Massachusetts 54th Regiment, the first all-Black infantry unit of the Civil War.

“Red Tails,” so named because the Tuskegee Airmen painted the tails of their planes red, is a cartoonish caricature of great fighting men who contributed much to the world’s titanic struggle against fascism that was WWII. But who, according to Lucas and film writers John Ridley (“Under Cover Brother” and Fox News contributor) and Aaron McGruder (“Boondocks”), had no personal relationships with family or Black women – not one Black woman appears in the film – and who were hopelessly criminal in their refusal to follow orders and complete a mission as assigned.

To be fair, all the exploits attributed to the Black pilots in “Red Tails” are absolutely true. Black pilots were originally assigned to strafing duty, the most dangerous of all air assignments, with outdated planes. They did blow up an ammunition train. They did destroy a German airfield, and one airman was among the first allied pilots to shoot down an ME (Messerschmitt) 262 fighter jet.

But for purposes of calming and soothing the qualms of Lucas’s financial backers and film industry banks who feared a film with a nearly all-Black cast would bomb – figuratively speaking of course – at the box office, all these exploits are depicted as being carried out by one lone rogue pilot, a pilot so undisciplined and uncontrollable that in real life he would have been subjected to court martial and likely expelled from the service.

Actually in real life the 332nd all-Black fighter group was assigned to clear the sea-lanes and provide air cover for the Allies’ invasion of Sicily. In the film, key members of the 332nd abandon their mission to provide air cover and criminally wander off to bomb a German airfield. Progressive military leaders don’t like to stifle self-initiative, but David Oyelowo’s role as Joe Little, rogue fighter pilot, was beyond anything reasonable or credible. Those kinds of stunts are far more suited to Saturday morning television, at which McGruder is quite successful.

Far in excess of the cartoon caricatures that are the Tuskegee Airmen in “Red Tails” are the embarrassing, emasculated 332nd squadron leading characters assigned to Terrence Howard and Cuba Gooding Jr.

Gooding is particularly annoying as an eternally pacific, pipe-smoking mentor to his young protégé pilots. But what he comes across as is nothing more than a pretentious MacArthur wannabe, never personally putting himself in harm’s way and never taking the damn pipe out of his mouth. Meanwhile Howard’s character, Col. A.J. Bullard – a nice tip of the pilot’s cap to Eugene Bullard, a Black pilot who flew for the Lafayette Esquadrille during WWI – is a thinly disguised representation of the Tuskegee Airmens’ primary leader, Lt. Col. (later Gen.) Benjamin O. Davis. In “Red Tails,” both Howard and Gooding are little more than administrative pencil pushers far removed from any form of combat and would more appropriately have been costumed in aprons and granny hats rather than flight jackets.

In reality, Davis and other senior flight squadron officers all had their own planes and fully participated in combat missions. This was true not just in the Black units but all the white units as well. During WWII the Army Air Corps was an OJT air force. For everyone it was an on the job training because military air science was a new field and few knew very much about it.

Importantly Davis’ plane was named “By Request,” because after the Red Tails became known for providing particularly close protection for bombing raids and bomber groups’ losses diminished, they were requested specifically by the white bomber groups for protection.

As a matter of course, the actors can’t be blamed for the miserable script that was handed them. We have to assume they did the best they could.

Curiously, the “Red Tails” episode that raised the biggest question centered on the pilot shot down, captured by the Germans and taken to prison camp. What followed on screen was apparently cut and pasted from the 2002 Bruce Willis vehicle, “Hart’s War,” which featured Terrence Howard as the downed Tuskegee man.

A far more revealing episode could have been provided about the two Red Tail pilots who actually were shot down over Yugoslavia, rescued by an armed patrol of the Yugoslav Communist Party and repatriated to the Allies on the Italian border. But those kinds of political points are not attractive to film writers and producers sucking up to the banks.

But Ridley and Lucas somewhat redeem themselves.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Ridley relates that in the run-up to actually writing the Red Tails story, Lucas provided him with a van full of newspaper and magazine articles and military combat and personnel records that took months to research and review.

Unfortunately, very little of Ridley’s research found its way into McGruder’s clumsy script.

However, where Ridley’s research paid off remarkably well was in the making of the “Red Tails” companion piece, “Double Victory: the Documentary.”

Here the real and nearly complete story of the Tuskegee Airmen’s struggle against fascism overseas and racism at home is honestly and inspiringly told. It ranks among the very best, if not the best documentary ever made telling the role of Black military men in WWII.

Black women’s role as spiritual and material sustainers of the Black pilots as wives and girlfriends is fully revealed. We learn that when the first class of Tuskegee Airmen graduated, Lena Horn attended the dance that followed and danced with every graduating cadet. We get misty eyed when one former Red Tail, now in his mid-80s, tells us that after the first graduation dance, he walked his girlfriend home and asked, “Will you fly with me for the rest of our lives?” Yes, she said.

“Double Victory: the Documentary” is absolutely everything “Red Tails” is not. It’s the only redeeming aspect of the main feature. This is the film everyone absolutely should see.

Jean Damu is the former western regional representative for N’COBRA, National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America, and a former member of the International Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, taught Black Studies at the University of New Mexico, has traveled and written extensively in Cuba and Africa and currently serves as a member of the Steering Committee of the Black Alliance for Just Immigration. Email him at jdamu2@yahoo.com.

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by Minister of Information JR

Block Report Radio interview broadcast recently on KPFA 94.1FM

M.O.I. JR: How are you?

Runoko: I’m very good, my Brotha. How are you?

M.O.I. JR: I’m great. I know that you have been doing a lot of research around the planet, relating to different civilizations, talking about the seed of those civilizations being Africans. Can you tell us a little bit about who you are, for those who have never heard of you.

Runoko: Well, my name is Runoko Rashidi. I’m a historian first and foremost and I guess an anthropologist too. I travel a great deal. Over the last 12 years, I’ve been very fortunate to have visited a hundred different countries, colonies and overseas territories in a certain time, all in search of the African presence. I write a lot, I spend a lot of time on Facebook just disseminating information and I’m also an author.

I have a new book that came out; it’s called “Black Star: The African presence in early Europe.” So that’s what I am, Brotha. I’m a historian, and I love Black people. I’m trying to make the world a better place.

I believe that what is so important is that people know who they are and have a high sense of self-esteem and have a degree of confidence that can only come from knowing your history. And I think that if you think you start with slavery, you’re messed up. And that’s what we are taught, that we either have a very negative history of slavery and colonization or that we don’t have a history at all, that we emerged out of the jungle a long time ago, and we act that way. And so we need a knowledge of self in order to counter the negative imagery and influences that we have, so in fact that it can be a guide for our behavior.

We are taught that we either have a very negative history of slavery and colonization or that we don’t have a history at all, that we emerged out of the jungle a long time ago, and we act that way. And so we need a knowledge of self in order to counter the negative imagery and influences.

M.O.I. JR: Let’s talk a little bit about your new book. What is the significance of the new book, and why did you pick the early African presence in Europe as the subject?

Runoko: Well, it just kind of came up that way. I’ve done a lot of work on the African presence in early Asia, in particular, going all the way back to the 1980s working with Dr. Ivan Van Sertima, who is an ancestor now. And I’ve also researched Africans in many other parts of the world. I spent a great deal of time in Europe, so over a period of time, I was able to gather up a lot of information.

I submitted a large manuscript to a Black publishing house in Europe a couple of years ago, and for some reason they focused on Europe. And since the manuscript was so large, I think we just decided and common sense dictated that we would take one section in particular on Europe, since the book was being published in Europe, and focus on that. So it’s a nice work. It’s a nice companion volume to the stuff that I have on Asia.

I’ve done a lot of research on Kemet, on Egypt. And really where my head is right now, where I’m being led to, is the Pacific and Australia. To my knowledge, there has never been an African-centered book to focus on the Black presence or African presence in that part of the world, and so something like that will be pioneering. It would be like Europe in the sense that it’s another chapter in the global history of African people – and chapters that only Africans themselves can write.

M.O.I. JR: Let’s get deep into your book. Tell us a little bit about the history of Europe and when Africans got to Europe.

Runoko: Well, there were many migrations out of Africa. The first migration, I don’t know if I should say migration or migrations, into Europe probably would have taken place, I don’t know, 40-50-70,000 years ago. And there would have been sporadic ice ages in there that would have transformed those original Black-skinned people into the Caucasoids that we know of today. Now there may have been several migrations like that. Maybe the first migrants perished in that ice. I don’t know.

Runoko Rashidi and Emmanuel Mah, the head of Books of Africa publishers, at an appearance in London in December 2011

So ancient Europe, pre-historic Europe, had these series of ice ages and it dramatically affected those original Black people, not only physically, but also psychologically, and it made them into what we can call a much colder people where survival of the fittest was the dominant theme, and might made right and a dog became a man’s best friend. And that was the Europe that those Africans went into and were transformed into, if that makes sense.

Pre-historic Europe had these series of ice ages and it dramatically affected those original Black people, not only physically, but also psychologically, and it made them into what we can call a much colder people where survival of the fittest was the dominant theme, and might made right and a dog became a man’s best friend. And that was the Europe that those Africans went into and were transformed into.

So the first African presence in Europe is in the pre-historic phase, where African people are the first people in Europe, and they mutate, if that is not too cold a word. And then we follow the history of African people a little later, and you find Africans still in the pre-historic phase, but they are worshipped as deities. You find these images of the Black woman, no doubt in my mind worshipped as god in Europe, especially in central Europe 20,000 years ago.

Alexandre Dumas – Photo: Nadar, 1855

Then you have Africans in the Greco-Roman world itself. It would appear that there was a Black community in ancient Athens and a Black community in the city of Corinth, where Paul went and preached and thus the Corinthians. And then you have Africans in the Roman world, African senators, African popes, African theologians, African marytrs, African saints, African writers, the head of Roman legions African – you had that.

Then you have the Moors, these Black people who converted to Islam and dominated southern Europe for hundreds of years. You have the Black Madonnas, and then you have slavery introduced, and this introduces a different kind of African who somehow was still able to distinguish himself, and thus you have the African family background, to say for example to Alexandre Dumas, the Brotha in France who wrote “The Three Muskateers,” who said, “One for all and all for one,” who said, “Your work may be finished, but your education is never complete.” He said, “A man’s mind is elevated to the status of women with whom he associates.” This is a Black man who identified himself as such.

Alexandre Dumas, the Brotha in France who wrote “The Three Muskateers,” who said, “One for all and all for one,” who said, “Your work may be finished, but your education is never complete.” He said, “A man’s mind is elevated to the status of women with whom he associates.” This is a Black man who identified himself as such.

You find the same thing and even more with Alexander S. Pushkin, the father of Russian literature, who was a man of African lineage. So African people have always been in Europe. Then you have Africans who fought in the colonial armies of Europe, in the British army, in the French army, in the Dutch army, the German army, the Belgian army, the Portuguese army, the Spanish army.

Alexander Pushkin by Vasily Tropinin

Abraham Hannibal, maternal great-grandfather of Alexandre S. Pushin, father of Russian literature, was born in Cameroon. – Photo courtesy of Dieudonne Gnammankou via Runoko Rashidi

Runoko: No, I don’t think that they are any more embracing than Europeans are here. Most of them are not aware of it, and if they were aware of it, a lot of them would resent it, because Africa is made to look so bad in the world. You hear these expressions, even from Black folks in the United States: I’ve heard people say, “Call me anything but an African.” I’ve heard Sistas and Brothas, educated Africans in America, say, “Thank God for slavery because at least it got us out of Africa.” “Slavery might’ve been bad, but at least we were able to meet Jesus” – those kinds of things.

When I do presentations, I start by asking people a lot of times, what do you think of when you think of Africa? And, my Brotha, I get three answers consistently: One is wild animals, is the first thing that people always tell me, and the second thing is disease; then you can follow that by poverty, hardship, corruption – bad things to the point where people don’t want to identify with Africa. You know the way in which we are taught: African booty scratcher, African this, jungle, the Tarzan, King Kong – so you’re permeated with a negative image of Africa.

So in 2011, when a Black man comes up and says, “You come from Africa”; no matter how white you are, your lineage is ultimately African. Well, hey, that doesn’t make me a popular fellow. But there are some people that are open, that are interested in scholarship, who have a receptive mind for the truth or facts as they are presented. They are very different, and those people are rare.

M.O.I. JR: Can you talk about the difference in which Africans see our way versus the way that European society sees its women? Even back from the time of antiquity, how would you compare people like Auset or Isis to Queen Elizabeth, or somebody like that who is in the pantheon of the Europeans?

Runoko: Nobody has ever asked me that before, Brotha. Auset for those that don’t know, is the same as Isis. It’s just that Isis is the Greek name, Auset is the African name. She is the feminine aspect of God, from Kemet, from ancient Egypt. And the name Auset means the throne. And Auset has had a history that is far more significant, as opposed to a real figure like Queen Elizabeth.

“The Black Madonnas of Europe are the superstars of the cult of Mary. I absolutely love them. They are recent depictions of the Black mother goddess, especially Ast (Isis). This is one of my favorites. This is the Black Madonna and child in the church of St. John In Luxembourg City, Luxembourg. I went to great lengths to see it and photograph last August,” writes Rashidi in Facebook. – Photo: Runoko Rashidi

M.O.I. JR: Wait. Wait. Expand on that. What did you just say? They are miracle workers because they are Black?

Runoko: (laughing) I don’t know how many people are familiar with what we call the Black Madonnas or Black Virgins.

M.O.I. JR: I’ve seen them, but I can’t really say that I know the history.

Runoko: Well, these are the superstars of the cult of Mary. They are depictions of the Virgin Mary and the infant Jesus, I guess in the Catholic world, in the Orthodox Church in Eastern Europe, that are Black. And they are the most important of all the Madonnas and child figures in Europe. They are called Black Madonnas or Black Virgins, and there are more than 500 of them that have been documented. The majority of them are in France, but they are in virtually every culture in Europe. And because they are Black, it is seriously believed by the devotees of this religion that they are able to perform miracles.

“Our Lady of the Dark Wood,” Black Madonna of Switzerland – Photo: Runoko Rashidi

Joan of Arc used to pray before a Black Madonna. Soldiers in France going on the Crusades to take Palestine away from what they considered the infidel Muslims would stop before a shrine of the Black Madonna. People who had diseases like polio or diseases of that type, you could see the braces and the crutches that they threw away in the church. You could see the notes that people wrote to the Madonnas pasted in the church, because of the miracles that they were thought to have performed.

They are called Black Madonnas or Black Virgins, and because they are Black, it is seriously believed by the devotees of this religion that they are able to perform miracles. You could see the notes that people wrote to the Madonnas pasted in the church, because of the miracles that they were thought to have performed.

They are truly the superstars of a cult of Mary, and they are called Black Madonnas or Black Virgin statues and they are scattered all over the world. And it’s one of the most fascinating chapters in “The African Presence in Europe.” It’s deep. It’s very profound. And I show a lot of pictures of them in my presentation.

M.O.I. JR: Can you tell the people a little bit of history of the Moors, ‘cause if my information is correct, this was one of the last African conquering civilizations before the Europeans took over, after the voyage of Columbus.

Runoko: Yeah, that’s true. That’s true. The word Moor means “scorched.” It means black; it comes out of the Greco-Roman world. And it was a term applied to Black populations in Northwest Africa: Algeria, Morocco, maybe Tunisia, Mauritania, certainly Northwest Africa. And the first time we find the Moors, they are fighting in the army of the Carthaginians led by Gen. Hannibal Barca. They were an important part of the Carthaginian army.

Hannibal crossing the Alps

You know the Arabs come out of the Arabian Peninsula, they go into Egypt, they go into Libya, and they don’t meet much resistance. And then they get into Algeria, and they meet fierce resistance. And the resistance comes from the Berbers and the Moors. And they are led by a Black woman, interestingly enough, named Al-Kahina, probably a prophetess of some sort, and they fight a serious war against the Arabs, but they are ultimately defeated.

Now about 710, the Moors convert to Islam and, as Muslims, they go into Spain in 711 along with some Arabs and they defeat the white Spanish Christian army and re-introduce civilization into Europe after the collapse of the Roman Empire. They introduce concepts of literacy, of hygiene, of science, of mathematics, of agriculture.

M.O.I. JR: Let me get you to back up. When you say lost civilization, what are you talking about? I know you said what they gave them. When a civilization collapses, what does that mean?

Runoko: That means you kind of go backwards. You lose the things that made you great or the perception of the world that made you great. And so when the Roman Empire falls, after its invaded by the northern European Barbarians, I guess you could say that civilization in Europe was kaput. People are really living in a very primitive state, where even basic things like bathing are considered sinful, where reading and writing becomes virtually unknown again. And this is the kind of lifestyle – I won’t call it a civilization – this is the kind of culture that you find in Europe, and this is like in the fifth century.

Moorish nobles playing chess in 13th century Spain, a page from the chessbook of Alfonso the Wise. Note the Black servant giving orders to a white servant or slave. – Photo: Runoko Rashidi

Early in the eighth century, here come the Moors, these Black people on horseback who cross over from Africa into Europe, who build libraries and palaces and gardens and re-introduce public hygiene and improve the medical practices. Among the Moors, the role of women was very, very high. People had a degree of freedom that they didn’t experience in the white Spanish era of Spain.

Then other movements of Moors, particularly one called the Almoravid come in, in the 12th century led by a Brotha named Yusuf ibn-Tashmin, a Black man, but it doesn’t last very long and the Moors start to fighting among themselves again. Then another Moorish army comes in, and that doesn’t last very long. These white Spanish Christians are relentless, and by the 15th century, they have put so much pressure on the Moors that the Moors have been backed into the southernmost regions of Spain. And finally in January of 1492, a Moorish leader named Boab Dil, a weak Moorish ruler, surrendered to the forces of Ferdinand and Isabella of Aragona Castille. I believe Jan. 2 or Jan. 6 of 1492.

La Mezquita de Cordoba, Spain, a stunning example of Moorish architecture, was built as a huge mosque, then converted to a Christian cathedral in 1523.

M.O.I. JR: Last question because we are running out of time: How do you look at what just recently went down in North Africa, particularly in Libya, where you just identified the people calling them Moors, later Berbers. Muammar Qaddafi was a Berber. Can you put what happened in Libya over this last year into a historical context?

Runoko: Libya used to be a Black country. All of Africa was a Black continent. For one thing, Libya produced a Black man who become the emperor; his name is Septimius Severus. He was born in Northern Libya in a place named Leptis Magna in April of 145.

Libya used to be a Black country. All of Africa was a Black continent. For one thing, Libya produced a Black man who become the emperor; his name is Septimius Severus.

Libya has a Black history. It has an African history. Over a period of time, beginning in the eighth century, it’s overrun by Arabs, and it loses its Blackness, maybe even before then. Certainly by that time, you could see North Africa being transformed Black to Arab and Berber. Now you have white Berbers and Black berbers. I’ve seen both. Now, what happened in Libya was just tragic. It was a shame. It was a disgrace. There was no getting around it.

Not all Libyans are Arab; nearly half are Black Africans. This Libyan woman is Tuareg, an ancient nomadic people of the Sahara renowned as great warriors. They developed an alphabetic script to write their language in the third century. – Photo: Runoko Rashidi

And then you have other Africans, who come from various parts of Africa, going to Libya to look for work, who are trying to use Libya as a transit zone to leave Africa altogether and go to Europe. And so I think that a lot of the Sistas and Brothas who I have heard about who were killed during this overthrow of the Qaddafi regime, I think were those Black migrants. I don’t know to what extent Sistas and Brothas that have lived in Libya for generations were affected.

Now I’ll give you an example: I take people on tours and in July I took a group to Kemet. I take a group to Egypt every year. And on the first day that we were there, I was with my small group and interestingly enough I ran into two groups of Black folks besides ourselves. One was a group of four newlyweds, two couples from Darfur, of all places, in the Sudan. And we met each other right by the Great Sphinx, Herumakhet.

We talked, and interestingly enough what we talked about was Malcolm X. How about that? And right after that I met a son of a very Black young Brotha with a very heavy melanated son, and we got to talking. I said, where you from? They said, we’re from Libya. And I said, oh, you are among the migrants? And they said, oh no, we’ve been there for a very long time. And so I don’t think we know enough about the indigenous and Black populations in that part of the world to really speak with any degree of accuracy.

But I deplore what happened in Libya. I think it’s a damn shame, and I have nothing good to say about it. I think it shows how powerless African people are in many ways to resolve a conflict on their own continent – and how, even 50 years after independence, most African countries are still relatively impotent.

Let me say this, and I know we got to go. Why is this important? Well, what you do for yourself depends on what you think of yourself, and what you think of yourself depends on what you know of yourself, and what you know of yourself depends on what you have been told. So we are able to link the ancient past, what happened in pre-historic Europe, to what is happening in Libya today, because we know there is no disconnect between the past, present and the future. They are all linked. And people who know their history are in a better position to defend themselves and advance their own interests than people who do not.

The People’s Minister of Information JR is associate editor of the Bay View, author of “Block Reportin’“ and filmmaker of “Operation Small Axe,” both available, along with many more interviews, at www.blockreportradio.com. He also hosts two weekly shows on KPFA 94.1 FM and kpfa.org: The Morning Mix every Wednesday, 8-9 a.m., and The Block Report every Friday night-Saturday morning, midnight-2 a.m. He can be reached at blockreportradio@gmail.com.

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by Wanda Sabir

At the Rainbow Recreation Center, Brother Fred hands out bagged food while his youngest son, Bilal, checks names off the list. Bilal studied law in Britain and is a solicitor. – Photo: Wanda Sabir

Saturday morning, Jan. 28, 2012, I called friends looking for someone to ride bikes with – remember my club, Ramadan Rides: Rides for Every Body? We should ride to San Quentin on Feb. 20 for the Occupy Action. Let’s talk about it.

Hamdiyah called me back and couldn’t ride – a meeting this morning at Legal Services for Prisoners with Children, but she told me that her husband, Brother Fred, and his youngest son, Bilal, visiting with his wife from Egypt, where he told me he is working with displaced Sudanese refugees, were feeding people at Rainbow Recreation Center, International and Seminary. Bilal studied law in Britain and is a solicitor.

I walked over to Rainbow, where each Saturday for the past seven years East Bay Educational Program has been giving away food to needy Oaklanders. With a line around the block when I arrived, Brother Fred and Bilal had a list with peoples’ names. As they gave them a bag of food, produce and dry goods like macaroni we spoke about food security and people served here weekly, numbering from 200 to 400 persons. At the beginning of the month, Brother Fred said the lines tend to be longer. There were people being served from all walks of life, all ethnicities and all ages and physical abilities. One woman I met told me that she picks up food and often gives it to neighbors who are not able to get to the site.

I love feeding people – there is a rush that one gets and a feeling of warmth when one satisfies this need which is basic to all one’s endeavors. Can’t think when you’re hungry. True, Americans do not know true hunger, but one can’t compare hunger in a Third World country at war to hunger in a First World city like Oakland, where we have our battles, but …

There is hunger and there is homelessness and unemployment and under-education here. It might not look like the Alexandra Township or Soweto, but for us it is cause for concern and I was so happy to find something in my neighborhood to smile about and want to participate in.

In case you haven’t heard, I do not like my neighborhood, my block or any of the blocks nearby. The feeling of a small town which I felt in West Oakland’s Oak Center before all of us were evicted and/or left when our bid to change the Oak Center 1 apartment complex into a cooperative was denied – was when I loved this city. Now, I just live here. I am a property owner who feels gipped. I know the few homeowners I share property lines with, unless the house is owned by a bank, the worse type of slumlord. These neighbors wave and say hi as they blast their music on weekends and late at night, operate illegal businesses out of their homes and take up all the parking on the street. None of the homeowners nearby are Black nor are the renters. I am not plugged in at all. All I like about East Oakland is the Bay Trail at Zone Way – once I hitch my bike to my car and drive to it. There I can let my worries about safety and poor city services pave the road behind me as I toss them over my shoulder.

I enjoyed Madagascar, perhaps more than Johannesburg, which is a city that is like New York, unfriendly. I met a few nice people through friends and a few expatriates who wanted to be reached – all didn’t return calls. I was like, I gave ten years of my life to free your nation – can’t I get a phone call response. It was weird. But the good people I met like Shaka Jamal’s friend, Tsakane was a great brother. He and his wife and little boy picked me up one evening when I was dying of boredom and took me by a friend’s who is a visual artist, a fine artist, to visit with his wife and baby girl. That was fun. We never got back over but it was great meeting Black folks and finding out what they thought on the eve of the African National Congress’s 100th anniversary Jan. 8 in Bloemfontein. I couldn’t find anyone interested in going – with 82 percent unemployment and most of the kids failing the Metric or high school exit exam that same week, the timing was kind of dismal – not to mention the controversy with President Jacob Zuma and Julius Malema, the leader of the ANC Youth League.

Crystal Carter spoke of how for the past five years she has been coming to Rainbow, often getting food to share with neighbors who can’t get out. As Carter gave Brother Fred a hug, she said she often comes because it’s good for her soul. Recovering from a really horrific car accident hasn’t been easy on Carter either, as she has had to adjust to living with less income. – Photo: Wanda Sabir

I stayed at a youth hostel in Melville. Melville is a college town, walking distance from Johannesburg University and the premier university of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg or Wits. While I was there, there was a stampede at JU, where the mother of an applicant was trampled to death, others ended up in the hospital where they described being impaled under foot as people stepped on their chests and necks, arms and legs trying to rush the gate which was pushed down by anxious enrollees.

In America people camp out on Black Friday for a good deal. This past November a person was shot in a parking lot over a TV. In Joburg people camp out in front of a university to get a shot at late admission. Not that a college degree guarantees employment, nope, but it is something constructive to do with one’s time. I met a college graduate in Soweto. He is recycling plastics. Another young man wants to be a doctor; he is a tour guide sharing his reality with others.

The tours set up by the hostel were really Euro centered – animals and buildings, not people. Of course there were people there but there was no opportunity to really connect. I didn’t do any road trips – next time. I want to see the parts of South Africa that don’t look like cloned America. The cost of living was similar to here and the Ashby Flea Market had better gifts and goods than I saw in Rosebank, a celebrated African marketplace in a suburb outside of Joburg proper. I saw many products I could get cheaper here. I heard there were African films, indie films and directors, but I didn’t see any such films in any of the theatre listings, which were playing American films.

Lonnie Scoggins, program co-founder, is proud of his granddaughter, who spoke of how much she enjoyed helping others on Saturday mornings with her grandfather. – Photo: Wanda Sabir

While in Joburg, I couldn’t find any African music or places to dance or hear poetry. I was near Seventh Street, a place known for its music and lively night scene, but nothing was happening. The time when I was there was between holiday and the start of school – a kind of limbo time. I thought of the irony of a Seventh Street in Joburg like the Seventh Street in Oakland. The weekend I left there was a concert with Pinise and Bheki Khoza at The Lucky Bean, which sold out before I could get tickets. I thought about walking down and just hanging out, but one doesn’t hang out in a big city alone. Selaelo introduced me to jazz singer Brenda Joyce, whom I spoke to but didn’t get a chance to meet this time. I think she’s been in South Africa for 17 years.

I can’t begin to know what it must feel like to live in a country owned by the colonizers. The SA government doesn’t own or control a third of the land, just public land where the railroad tracks lie. There are no more gold mines in Joburg, though the wealth is still tied up by multinationals – some African, most not. I saw many old mines where people sift for gold dust. Oprah’s school sits behind one such mountain. While I was in the country, her first class graduated.

These newspapers were spread out on the sidewalk for sale in Joburg on Jan. 12. – Photo: Wanda Sabir

Mbeki actually opened a conference, which began in Cape Town as I was leaving the country. It’s entitled: The Knowledge Conference.

The Rosebank Market in a suburg of Johannesburg is reminiscent of the Ashby Flea Market in Berkeley. – Photo: TaSin Sabir

The police were looking for counterfeit goods; the only problem was they were beating up pedestrians in the way of their SWAT operation, spraying pepper spray at close range, snatching cameras off witnesses filming the brutality and humiliating onlookers like a taxi driver who laughed. He was made to lie face down in a muddy puddle. The police used the fire department’s Jaws of Life to pry the bars from merchant windows closed when they saw the police coming. One woman said the police take her entire inventory.

I thought this attention to corporate profits was rather insane, yet typical in a world where corporations have more rights than flesh and blood people. The only response to the excessive force complaints was to make sure they were documented, that the operation wasn’t supposed to harm pedestrians.

The newspaper for the homeless community, like our Street Spirit or Street Sheet is called: Homeless Talk: Helping the Poor Help Themselves, www.homelesstalk.org.za. On the cover is “homeless babe,” a scantily clad woman with a whistle in her mouth. Looks like the kind of whistles women wear to alert the police – counter intuitive juxtaposition of images, especially given the high level of violence against women in South Africa, per the news coverage. This is why playwright Selaelo Maredi’s latest work is about violence against women. I was privileged to see the first staged reading while I was there at the Westend Theatre in a historic area of Pretoria called Tshwane.

Paepae Kenny Mmekwa, Usuthu Art Productions, invited me to hear his percussion group perform the following week, so that’s what took me back to Pretoria. We danced too. Paepae is also a famous choreographer in the Pedi tradition. This dance uses the movement of birds and other animals. It was really fun. Lulu or Abu Baker, who is a member of the Mouride Brotherhood (the Muridiyya), told me that the day I was visiting was the day of the great pilgrimage at Touba in Senegal, so he left to go pray after we dropped by a diner. He told me they chanted all night – sounded really nice. The fourth member of the group was Joseph Mmaphuti Kgomo.

A young woman sells art prints at the Rosebank Flea Market outside Joburg. – Photo: TaSin Sabir

Motshepe, a member of the percussion ensemble, connected me with his uncle, Tlokwe Sehume, who for many years brought a cultural program to Pretoria that united the cultural traditions of the indigenous South African people from all the regions. Normally hosted in the past during Heritage Month, the absence of funding suspended the production for the past few years. With the ANC’s 100th celebration, it is back this year.

Sehume will be in Austin, Texas, at the University of Texas in March and when back in South Africa will host this highly anticipated and welcome collage of African culture. It shows how despite differences there is more the various ethnic groups share than they differ. This is also seen in the great Museum Africa. Visit www.medupromotions.co.za. He calls his work “music of the mountains.”

The Usuthu Art Productions percussion ensemble is composed of, from left, Motshepe Kgawane, Lulu “Abu Bakr” Tseola, Joseph Mmaphuti Kgomo and Paepae Kenneth Mmekwa in front of the drums. – Photo: Wanda Sabir

The enemy of the people in the past is the same enemy today: greed, power, self-interest. This enemy doesn’t have a particular hue, although in Africa, more often than not, he isn’t Black – he is green or gold or multifaceted. There are Black leaders who are keeping the people oppressed, but in South Africa the wealth never really changed hands. The Black African-led government is not really in charge of anything significant, which is why most of the people are still suffering.

I met a movie star at the local IT café which I hung out at and filed my grades one rainy afternoon. The rain was no joke in South Africa or Madagascar. Once one hears the thunder and sees the lightning, run for cover. The rain, which falls at an angle, wets you unless you have a large umbrella and serious rain gear. I took to wearing sandals and TaSin and I carried rain ponchos or plastic rain jackets.

I met Mike Mvelase, who plays Kaphela, Kethiewe’s husband, in the popular African show, Generations on SABC 1. He wasn’t going to Blomfontein either. I also met a sister who is a journalist, poet and jeweler, Faith Balaji. Her business is called negritude.

Paepae, Joseph, Abu Bakr and Motshepe are joined here by Margaret Makoka of Cool Arts. – Photo: Wanda Sabir

My last day in town I actually tasted South African food: a starchy item mixed with beans and some screaming cabbage, green sweet potatoes and pumpkin. We dropped by a fast food place, but the food was too spicy. The food at Woolworths was really yummy – funny, Woolworths isn’t owned by Black Africans, but they work there. Wal-Mart is on its way.

I went to a Black church on Martin King’s birthday, My Father’s House, but couldn’t get a lift to the program the American Blacks were throwing that afternoon for King’s Birthday, so I ended up working on my application for the World Cultures doctoral program at UC Merced, which was due Jan. 15. One great thing about being in Africa was getting an extra 10 hours. When I woke up later on the next day in Joburg, it was still Jan. 15 in California.

My last day in Joburg I spent at Artist Proof Studio talking to artists like Prince Newtown, who crafts jewelry from utensils. I bought earrings made from forks and he gave me rings from other cutlery. He also had really beautiful sterling work. He was quite flamboyant and fun. I loved his costume work, like the glasses made from scissors forks. He also made hats.

It started storming so I ended up spending the entire day at Artist Proof and left just in time to get back to the hostel, change clothes and leave for the airport – I thought my flight was Monday, when in fact it was Tuesday, so this was my second run. I had a rehearsal the evening before and still almost missed my plane when I spent too much time trying to spend the last of my rand. The attendant actually came looking for me, and then we sat in the hanger for another hour.

Wanda joins the percussionists and dancers of Usuthu Art Productions in the State Theater rehearsal studio.

Gregory Maqoma, a choreographer who has performed here like Kweyama, who produced work at UC Berkeley in 2009, was here with his acclaimed solo performance, “Beautiful Me.” Moving into Dance is a part of what’s called the dance corner, where I believe at least three, maybe four companies are housed. Paepae went there – it is the second oldest dance company in South Africa.

Many of the institutions are not Black African founded, like Moving or the company next door or Artist Proof for that matter. The new South Africa seems to be a place where a homogenized population is the aim. Opening night for plays at the Market Theatre was so Berkeley as in bi-cultural and urban chic, although I did see Black men with Black women. The majority population is still Black, even if the directors for these works were not all Black and in the recent search for an artistic director the aim was to keep the leader Black.

Well, I’ve been back a week now and don’t necessarily feel like running around and have been lying low, teaching four classes and getting back acclimated to this time zone. For the first time, I actually have jet lag. I am taking an Afro-Haitian dance class with Colette Eloi, new adjunct faculty at Laney College. She just completed her MFA.

Alexandra Township is near the center of Johannesburg. Its infrastructure was designed for a population of about 70,000. Current population estimates vary widely from 180,000 to 750,000. – Photo: Wanda Sabir

I was looking through my business cards and ran into one with Yvette Hochberg’s name written on the back. She passed peacefully, I hear, the day there was a fundraiser scheduled for her. I got a letter from a brother with an herbal remedy – thanks, but it arrived too late.

Independent Lens ‘Daisy Bates: First Lady of Little Rock’

“Daisy Bates: First Lady of Little Rock” airs Feb. 2 on PBS at 10 p.m. (check listings). Director Sharon La Cruise’s excellent first feature film highlights the story of a wonderful self-made woman, Daisy Bates, whom Bayard Rustin introduces at the March on Washington as the organizer of the Children’s Civil Movement, referencing her organization efforts in the 1957 integration of Central High by the Little Rock 9. She and her husband owned the first Black newspaper, the Arkansas State Press, which certainly provided a platform for their politics.

The story of her presidency of the Arkansas chapter of the NAACP was a contentious one, as were most of her actions and victories. The director balances the criticism of Bates and her praise well. A beautiful woman, Mrs. Bates was accused of loving the camera too much, of being uneducated, which in my opinion made her work that much more remarkable. She took up with a married man for 10 years before he and she married; however, she never held her life up as an example of perfection for moral scrutiny – in fact, she would never have been the poster child for the Civil Rights Movement. Rosa Parks, Bates’s good friend, was, when in fact Emmett Till was the poster child literally for the start of the Civil Rights Movement. Mrs. Bates brought the movement full circle when once again she let the children lead.

She played not only a crucial role in the fight against segregation, but a thankless role, which cost her husband the newspaper he loved and Black people a major vehicle for liberation. She died almost penniless, and her grave remained unmarked from 1999 to about 2007.

La Cruise’s film is a wonderful treatment and long overdue tribute to a woman who up to now remained one of our unsung heroes. I don’t remember her story or photo in the “I Dream a World” exhibition, but I am happy the director was captivated enough to write Mrs. Bates’ attorney and, after two years, during which Mrs. Bates died, decide to step out on faith and make this wonderful film based on Bates’s memoir: “The Long Shadow of Little Rock,” containing much archival material and conversations with friends and colleagues who knew Mrs. Bates.

“Daisy Bates: First Lady of Little Rock” presents a woman whose complexity at birth is not lessened by her life, which is certainly more interesting than anything one could imagine as this woman keeps her peers and foes on their collective toes. Her relationship with her husband, Lucious Christopher “L.C.” Bates, an insurance agent and an experienced journalist, is one of teamwork. Certainly he was a man who was secure in his masculinity to the extent that he allowed his wife the freedom to be herself – certainly a more public persona than he, not to say that they were not without their tribulations. They never had any children; to a certain degree, the work – African liberation – was their passion and their child.

Born to a mother who was raped and murdered by three white men, who were never prosecuted, and raised by friends of the family after her father abandoned her, Daisy Bates was a woman who used her life to right the wrong she experienced as a child growing up in the small lumber town of Huttig, Arkansas.

Never a dull moment, one sees echoes of Zora Neale Hurston in Daisy Bates, also Dr. Dorothy I. Height. She was a fearless woman who held her own in all male assemblies, a woman racists called Mrs. Bates. Listen to an interview with the director on my radio show, www.blogtalkradio.com/wandas-picks, Jan. 27 and don’t miss the itvs.org national debut.

‘Mighty Be Our Powers: How Sisterhood, Prayer, and Sex Changed a Nation at War’ by Leymah Gbowee

“Mighty Be Our Powers: How Sisterhood, Prayer, and Sex Changed a Nation at War” is Leymah Gbowee’s challenging and exciting story about peace in Liberia, a country once at war. Liberia is a country with a complex history. It is the country where formerly enslaved African Americans were shipped once slavery ended and free labor was outlawed, which in itself created a dilemma, “Mighty” discloses.

African Americans brought with them a plantation mentality where American-born Blacks thought themselves better than indigenous Africans and over the centuries developed a class system based on a birthright despite the eventual blurring of concrete indicators as African Americans became more African. Gbowee’s story is really inspiring. Before the war, she’d planned to attend university to become a doctor, and war – the immediacy of war – changed all that temporarily as the protagonist became a mother and common law wife.

“Mighty” speaks to how dreams never really die as long as there is memory and hope and support. It also speaks to the great sacrifices a leader makes and the price these sacrifices exact on her, emotionally and physically, and on her family. The people whom the protagonist loves and whom she sacrifices much for often don’t stand by her in the end, as petty drama and jealousy eat at the fabric of their bond.

Excellently recounted, “Mighty” shows a woman whose life is a work in progress. At times I lose track of her age and then realize how young Gbowee is and what decisions she has to make concerning the lives of so many others. When the peace talk protests grow intense, she is awake around the clock. I am amazed she has time for debriefing and self-reflection. Her sister’s support and her children’s understanding is amazing. I love the aspects of the book that look at the culture she is a part of, which is clearly not Western. The end of the book is too quickly summed up.

There is too much left to cover; I hope this is just Part 1 of the story. I’d love to read the story from the perspective of Gbowee’s children, adopted and ones she bore. I’d love to hear the story from the perspective of the wonderful friend she had in Tunde.

“Mighty” isn’t a love story, unless perhaps it is the story about a young woman coming to value herself and that love’s growth. “Mighty” addresses the stress or pressures a leader faces and how unhealthy habits escalate and grow. True to form, we learn that Gbowee is stubborn and learns her lessons the hard way, whether that is as a girl or a more mature woman. She is not one to be pushed.

Luckily we know the end of the story – that she survives. “Mighty” fills in the details as we count the casualties along the way. It is a sad and triumphant story. No one wants the hero’s journey. Those who jealously pulled at Gbowee’s glory didn’t really want what she suffered, though in many cases her comrades suffered as much or more. I wish there was more regarding the strategy the organizers used and more information about what their handbook covered. It would have also been great to hear more of the women’s stories, perhaps in another book we will.

“Pray the Devil Back to Hell,” directed by Gini Reticker, produced by Abigail E. Disney, shows the courage of the Liberian women who defeat the Charles Taylor war machine with prayer and nonviolent resistance. The women, led by movement spokesperson Leymah Gbowee, assemble along the road where the president’s caravan passed twice daily. Dressed in plain white garments, these women – from the city, from the countryside, rural women, educated and uneducated women, Christian and Muslim women, women who called on the ancient indigenous spirits and goddesses – sat or stood together in the oppressive heat and in the summer storms getting wet and growing dark and weak as they became the key voice for peace in a country that was violently spinning out of control. The film is on-line at http://www.pbs.org/wnet/women-war-and-peace/full-episodes/pray-the-devil-back-to-hell/. There are also links to other films in the “Women, War and Peace” series, as well as to interviews with Ms. Gbowee.

Unlike her memoir, the film “Pray the Devil Back to Hell” is a heroines’ story, the story of a nation which is confronted by its most vulnerable population, its women. Liberia’s quest for peace is a story, a story which ends as it begins. The film could be a miniseries; the culminating event is not the end, rather the beginning, which we’d never know unless we read 2011 Nobel Peace Prize winner Gbowee’s tale of triumph and personal sacrifice.

I am happy Abigail Disney told me about the memoir when we last spoke in a radio interview – what a wonderful journey it has been this weekend. I am just disappointed I wasn’t able to meet Ms. Gbowee when she was here on tour last year.

22nd Annual African American Celebration through Poetry

The 22nd Annual African American Celebration through Poetry is Saturday, Feb. 4, 1-4 p.m., at the West Oakland Branch Library, 1801 Adeline St., (510) 238-7352. I started this event 22 years ago, and I host it. This year the theme is great Black women. All are welcome to attend. There is an open mic at the end of the program.

Author event

Tim Wise is touring with his new book, “Dear White America: Letter to a New Minority,” with a stop at Cal State East Bay Thursday, Feb. 2, 7 p.m. It is a free event. Visit http://csueastbaytickets.universitytickets.com/user_pages/event.asp?id=164&cid=26. The location: MPR, New Union, Cal State East Bay. Contact ASI Diversity Center at CSU East Bay, (510) 885-3908 for more information.

Film

At Stanford University, Tuesday, Feb. 7, 7-9 p.m., in the Black Community Services Center there will be a screening of a “We Still Live Here – Âs Nutayuneân.” The director will be there as well as linguists. The film is about an indigenous nation which revived a “sleeping” language. The Wampanoag nation are the people who welcomed the Pilgrims and helped them through that difficult first winter in the New World. Remember that first Thanksgiving? Listen to our interview Friday, Jan. 27. She is my second interview. Visit http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/we-still-live-here/film.html and http://www.makepeaceproductions.com/screenings/201201-stanford.jpg.

Theatre

Community Works presents the Bay Area Premiere of Daniel Beaty’s “Through the Night,” Feb. 11 at Brava Theater, 2781 24th St., in San Francisco, 7 p.m. This is a celebration of Community Works’ 15th anniversary. Tickets are $40 with $100 VIP tickets, which include preferred seating and entrance into the Sweet and Savory post-show reception with the playwright-actor Beaty and honorees. Visit brava.org and communityworkswest.org. CW produces work that empowers youth and strengthens families impacted by incarceration.

‘Word Becomes Flesh’ at Black Choreographers Here and Now

Marc Bamuthi Joseph’s “Word Becomes Flesh” at Laney College, 900 Fallon St., Oakland, Feb. 11, 8 p.m., Feb. 17, 8 p.m., and Feb. 19, 4 p.m., at Dance Mission in San Francisco, $25 general admission, $15 students and seniors. It is a collaboration between La Peña Cultural Center, Black Choreographers Here and Now, and the Living Word Festival.

Formerly a solo performance, this male soul journey is now danced by multiple men. In the work the characters question their masculinity, approaching fatherhood, relationships with their baby’s mama, not to mention their fathers and father’s fathers. It is a fluid tapestry that traverses landscapes above and below plane surfaces.

Bamuthi is a lovely choreographer and writer, so the poetry is in his character’s feet as much as in the words one hears from their mouths. I don’t remember if they speak; when it was a solo work, Bamuthi spoke. I have only seen the work as a company performance once, and alas, that detail escapes me. When I met the choreographer perhaps 15 years ago, it was as a poet. He was in a film screening I attended called “Slamnation.”

This work is not as abstract as his last, performed at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, “Red, Black and Green,” which was physical theatre as well as a visual art work, similar to site specific works used by Joanna Haigood’s Zaccho Dance Company and Alonozo King’s LINES Contemporary Ballet.

“Word Becomes Flesh” is a fluid evening-length choreopoem written in the form of a narrative verse play. Presented as a series of performed letters to an unborn son, the piece uses poetry, dance and live music to document nine months of pregnancy from a young single father’s perspective. These performed letters incorporate elements of ritual, archetypes and symbolic sites within the constructs of hip hop culture. Directed by Marc Bamuthi Joseph, it features Daveed Diggs, Dahlak Brathwaite, Dion Decibels, Ben Turner, Mic Turner and B.Yung.

Second Annual Ubuntu Awards Dinner

Saturday, Feb. 11, 5-9 p.m., is the Second Annual Ubuntu Awards at the Lake Merritt Hotel, 1800 Madison St., Oakland. Dr. Yao Graham, Third World Network, Africa, will give the keynote. Linda Burnham will be the mistress of ceremonies. Honorees include Adam Hochchild, Christine Chacha, Jacqueline Copeland-Carson and Mutombo Mpanya, Dr. Robert Scott (posthumous), The Allen Temple AIDS Ministry and Dr. Wangari Maathai (posthumous). For tickets or more information, call (510) 663-2255 or email PriorityAfrica@priorityAfrica.org.

More film

The Indie Film Festival is in San Francisco Feb. 9-23.Visit http://sfindie.virb.com/. The African Film Festival continues at Pacific Film Archive, UC Berkeley, 2575 Bancroft Way, Berkeley, Jan. 26-Feb. 29. Visit http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/filmseries/african_2012. Friday, Feb. 3, at 9:30 a.m. on Wanda’s Picks Radio we speak to the director of the New York based African Film Festival on tour. Some of the films I have seen and recommend are “Kinshasa Symphony” and “Viva Riva,” which I have a love/hate relationship with. As the first feature to come out of Congo in decades, it is too bad such an unsavory character stars. It is Melvin Van Peebles’s “Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song” set in Africa, with bloody African sensibility and a boogyman that looks just like the protagonist.

Also at PFA, Saturday, Feb. 11, 3 p.m., is “Screenagers: 14th Annual Bay Area High School Film and Video Festival” (U.S., 2010-11, c. 90 mins.). The artists will be there in person. Witness the future of film in this innovative program of works by local high-school students, curated by their own peers.

Also at PFA, on Wednesday, Feb. 8, 7 p.m., is “The Green Wave,” by Ali Samadi Ahadi (Germany/Iran, 2010, 80 mins.). It’s introduced by Jeffrey Skoller. This riveting documentary for the 21st century combines powerful animation, minute-by-minute Twitter feeds, blog accounts and cell phone footage with conventional on-camera testimonies to recount the abortive 2009 antigovernment Iranian youth revolt. Dubbed “the Green Wave,” it was a revolution in flux, yet evergreen with hope.

Black Choreographers Here and Now

Black Choreographers Here and Now will be performed in two locations, in Oakland and San Francisco, Feb. 10-26. Visit www.bchandn.org.

Museum of the African Disapora events

This month the MoAD, 685 Mission St. in San Francisco, will host films on Thursday evenings, 6-8 p.m. and for the month of February will offer a two for one admission. Visit moadsf.org/visit/calendar.html.

'Redefining Black Power' cover

Thursday, Feb. 9, 6:30 – 8:00 p.m., Joanne Griffith will be at Marcus Books, 3900 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, Oakland, with guests Hodari Davis, national program director for Youth Speaks, with Dereca Blackmon, social justice activist, to discuss “Activism in the Age of Obama” and her new book, “Redefining Black Power,” at Marcus Books in Oakland. For more information, call (510) 652-2344.

Alliance for California Traditional Arts 2011 Apprenticeship Program

Master artist Patricia A. Montgomery and apprentice Helen Anderson discuss the work and process for the three quilts Helen Anderson will have on display Feb. 4, 1-3 p.m., at Eastbay Church of Religious Science, 4130 Telegraph Ave, Oakland. In the work, Anderson uses the adinkra symbol, the Sankofa bird who is looking over his shoulder, to literally retrace the European slave trade as a way to heal the trauma of post-traumatic slave disorder. The intended six month art-making journey ended up taking a year, a year in which Anderson learned quilting techniques and discovered in the art-making process keys to her own pain unlocked by the stitching, piecing, matting, placing, covering and uncovering process within the textile – the fabric and the quilting metaphor where nothing is ever really lost or discarded. Hum, so what does that mean for a people sold and purchased, disrespected and abused?

Initially the plan was to create six quilts – one per month. Anderson completed three quilts. This means the journey is not over – rather it has just begun – but then that’s the way life works, isn’t it? Healing is an on-going process. Patricia said of Helen that her Sankofa journey was material and spiritual, that her stitching was experiential, a different process than her own. The vitamin one takes today serves this moment; one has to keep taking supplements, keep drinking water and washing oneself in the river of remembrance. Both the master teacher and student will join me on the air Friday, Feb. 3, 8:30 a.m., so tune in: blogtalkradio.com/wandas-picks.

SFJAZZ Spring Season

For all the SFJAZZ events January-June , visit www.sfjazz.org.

Art at Jazz Heritage Gallery

James Knox, Jim Dennis and James Gayles have work on display at Jazz Heritage Gallery. The reception is Thursday, Feb. 2, 6-9 p.m., with a panel discussion in the Jazz Heritage Center Theatre, 1330 Fillmore St., San Francisco, from 6-7 p.m. This will be followed by a reception from 7-9 p.m. in the Lush Life Gallery with live music provided by guitarist Calvin Keys. The photography exhibit runs from Feb. 1 through March 4.

Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company at Cal Performances

On Friday and Saturday, Feb. 24 and 25, at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Berkeley Campus, Bancroft Way at Telegraph Ave., Berkeley, Bill T. Jones brings his new work, “Story/Time,” to Cal Performances for its West Coast premiere. The work is based on more than 70 very short stories from Jones’ life. This work features a collaboration between Bill T. Jones, choreography, and writer and director Ted Coffey, music and moving images. Tickets are $30, $40, $46, $52, $60 and $68, available through the Cal Performances Ticket Office at Zellerbach Hall. Call (510) 642-9988 to charge by phone, visit www.calperformances.org or buy your tickets at the door.

Bay View Arts Editor Wanda Sabir can be reached at wsab1@aol.com. Visit her website at www.wandaspicks.com throughout the month for updates to Wanda’s Picks, her blog, photos and Wanda’s Picks Radio. Her shows are streamed live Wednesdays at 6-7 a.m. and Fridays at 8-10 a.m., can be heard by phone at (347) 237-4610 and are archived on the Afrikan Sistahs’ Media Network.

Related Posts

• Wanda’s Picks for April 2012
• Wanda’s Picks for January 2012
• Wanda’s Picks for May 2012
• Wanda’s Picks for December 2011
• Wanda’s Picks for March 2012