
The Oakland International Film Festival is Friday-Sunday, April 6-8, at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Street, Oakland. Visit http://www.oiff.org/2012schedule.pdf. This year’s headliner is one of the most controversial independent films ever made, “The Spook Who Sat by the Door.” Watch it again here.

When the Occupy San Quentin rally ended, San Rafael police followed us to the Richmond Bridge. I don’t know if it was Jabari Shaw’s orange CDCR jumpsuit that kept them wondering – Is he an escapee, one of ours? – or if it was the sheer magnitude of fearlessness represented by women like Kelly, a former prisoner who would not let her traumatic experience silence her. One brother got so full looking at the guards on the other side of the gate watching that he looked like he was going to leap the gate and hurt someone as he recalled the violations of his person over and over again. Members of All of Us or None dropped everything to embrace him when he left the stage.

Life isn’t fair: Too many kids and not enough food, fat cats bringing in all the money and government services like free hospitals and free education is not free for those who need it because, like everywhere, bureaucracy breeds corruption, whether we are in Madagascar or the United States.

Tuesday, Aug. 16, 2011, was the opening of August Wilson’s play, “Seven Guitars,” directed by Kent Gash, at the Marin Theatre Company. I hadn’t seen the play in about 15 years. Wilson was alive then and he was work-shopping his latest – play five in the eventual 10-play cycle – at ACT-SF with the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre in a co-production.

When Martin Luther King was killed in Memphis, he was about to join the sanitation workers in their protest for a union and more decent wages. The movement for civil rights was taking hold in the North and America didn’t like it – so off with King’s head.

It is not often one sees a play written and directed by Black women, the director, Liesl Tommy, from Cape Town, South Africa. Only a fine writer like Lynn Nottage could take such tragedy and make us smile and laugh between the tears.

Happy Kwanzaa! I will be traveling in Africa over the holidays. I am covering the World Festival of Black Arts and Culture in Dakar, Senegal, and then on to Festival in the Desert in Timbuktu, Mali. My radio show weekly broadcast may feature a surprise live interview from Senegal or Mali if technology serves me well.

Grammy Award winning South African ensemble Ladysmith Black Mambazo is coming to town March 12 at UC Berkeley.

It’s first Friday and the holiday season is in full swing. The usual first Friday haunts are hosting late night events: the Oakland Museum of California on 10th and Oak Street, Joyce Gordon Gallery on 14th Street near Broadway. Sister Souljah is in town.

Dropped in to see the McCoy Tyner Trio with Marc Ribot on guitar. Tyner is always a treat and this ensemble featuring Gerald Cannon on bass and Eric Kamau Gravett on drums is phenomenal!

Today we had an exclusive interview with Troy Anthony Davis’ sister Martina Correia, who has been standing for justice for her brother for 19 long years. Troy Davis is scheduled once again for execution Monday, Oct. 27, by the state of Georgia if a stay is not granted.


