Culture Currents

Writer Marcus ‘Zahir’ Blevins joyfully shares his personal, seminal, transformative and enlightening journey into the 25th Annual Virtual Maafa Commemoration, an experience expressed as moving beyond any perceived boundaries.

Call the police at our peril. Tony Robles clearly describes that reading “How Not to Call the PoLice Ever” might transform reaction to response by providing the realization that the present system is, and always has been, a set-up.

Could massive internal displacement today rewire the Jonestown of yesterday? Wanda Sabir offers an up-close narrative of the MoAD-hosted reading and discussion with Dr. James L. Taylor, playwright Sikivu Hutchinson Ph.D., audience and cast of the play “White Nights, Black Paradise,” dissecting the Jim Jones’ Peoples Temple phenomenon.

The stories of domestic violence against women around the world is told again and again. Is this the telling we listen to, the one we hear, the one we feel, the one we commit ourselves to by standing in her place and saying “No More”?

AfroComicCon brings real and actual kicks this Saturday, Oct. 24 to comic fans old and new, young and old. Virtual this year due to COVID-19, the annual event started in 2017 by the Oakland Technology & Education Center, will be held for free – a day full of live and pre-recorded programming – sponsored by the NNPA, the Oakland A’s and Pixar Entertainment.

MAAFA 2020 weaves ritual, honoring, spirit, drumbeat, heartbeat, veins and bone marrow in dance, joy, tears and love through the very essence of the fabric of African descendents in the infinite circle of rememberance with footthrob on Ocean Beach, absorbing the 401-year history, blood and pain of the Old Fort Comfort English Slave Trade – not forgetting 100 years prior, the slave trade brought by the Spanish.

Racism reaches its ugly tentacles into any crack available to it, as proven on multiple levels by the COVID-19 pandemic ravaging the U.S. Forced to resort to technology with apps like Zoom to communicate with each other and enable some form of education for our children, it is increasingly evident that racism via “Zoombombing” against Black people has emerged nationwide.

We await release of imprisoned political leader Baba Jalil Muntaqim, hold honor for new ancestors, explore the road to reparations, bestow condemnations and congratulations on those who have earned such, reminder to Register and Vote, and wish for everyone safety and healing in the midst of capitalistic health rationing.

Black Lives Matter no matter how you embrace or argue it – we are in the reckoning and there is no going back. Trying to figure it out from the head will get you wherever it gets you. Go to the heart and you will be there.

Sunday, Oct. 4, the Bay Area Book Festival presents Berkeley #UNBOUND, an all-day, free, virtual mini-festival, kicked off with a ticketed keynote program on Saturday night, Oct. 3. Writing While Black for this October 2020 guarantees a superb abundance of boredom relief during the continuing COVID-19 reality.

As gentrification continues to gobble up the streets of San Francisco, Brenda Kittrell (1955-2020) is remembered as a well loved and respected member of the Potrero Hill community. She advocated tirelessly for public housing, safety and community on local state and national levels and supported the possibility of home ownership for low-income African Americans living in San Francisco.

One of the most important moments perhaps in the process of a Black child’s life is “The Talk.” The COVID-19 pandemic crisis and the upheaval caused by the recent police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and so many others, are pushing parents with an urgency to have “The Talk” with their children earlier than later.

The story of the 2020 sports-strike-wave-against-racism is already one of both inspiration and cooptation. To have any sense of where this story might go, we need to understand why it detonated in the first place.

Vote and register (y)our interests for changes and recovery from this ongoing deadly coronavirus pandemic; deepening imperialist monopoly capitalist economic depression; worsening corporate abuse of Mama Nature; European and american “white” terrorist wars against The People.

Oakland in the ‘80s and ‘90s blessed us with the likes of Tony, Toni, Tone, young MC Hammer, Digital Underground, Too Short and Dawn Robinson of En Vogue, just to name a few, at a time when there were only a few home studios. Joe Capers, aka Blind Joe, a blind musician and producer, was one of the creators of the sounds of the Oakland music scene in the 1980s and early 1990s.

Racial violence against Black America is a regular part of America’s history; hiding and denying this racial violence is also a part of America’s history. For decades, African Americans have complained about police brutality. White America dismissed them or paid little attention and this denial allowed White America to feel innocent.

Another star shines in the night sky. Ronnie Goodman passed away in early August this year. He died on the street, just after his 60th birthday, on the same corner where he’d been living for more than a year. We stood around waiting for the medical examiner to come and take him. The cops had put a sheet over him.

The wave of strikes by athletes against racist police violence is not ebbing. On Thursday night, the New York Mets and Miami Marlins took the field, held a 42-second moment of silence (in honor of Jackie Robinson), and then walked off. They left behind a shirt that read “Black Lives Matter” on home plate.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY! to Ms. Verlie Mae Pickens, who is well known and a leader in the Bayview community, celebrated her 104th birthday on June 11, 2020. The COVID-19 forced postponement of the yearly celebration of her birthday, normally a large festive party and dinner to honor Ms. Pickens.

We have left no legacy behind in the Fillmore. I’m telling you that in 10 to 15 years the only way you’re going to know that this part of San Francisco used to be Black is by looking at the bricks, or by the tour guides on buses that tell you, “This used to be the great jazz district.”