Culture Currents

Stone Ramsey is one of the businessmen behind the curtain who has aided and assisted everybody from Dru Down and Yukmouth to the Gov and Pac. Now he has transformed his relationship in music with ghetto wordsmiths Keak Da Sneak and Mistah Fab into literature, and Stone Ramsey is writing street lit with these rappers. Check him out, as you think about what you and yours will be reading next year.

“The only way to move from these super-high anxiety states to calmer, more cognitive states, is rhythm,” he concludes. "This needs to happen before children see a therapist, because otherwise they may be too fearful and distraught to participate."

Every October, Americans pause to celebrate Columbus Day. Children are taught that the Italian navigator discovered America. Parades are held in his honor and tributes tell of his skill, courage and perseverance. Historians, archeologists, anthropologists and other scientists and scholars now know that Columbus did not discover America. Of the various people who reached America before Columbus, Black Africans appear to have been the first.

Now that people are allowed to profit from the herb, will the people who were involved in the illegal commerce be released? Who is benefitting from the new U.S. Green Rush?

Bayview Hunters Point is the soul of San Francisco. It’s changing but its history and heroes can’t be erased and must be celebrated. They are the foundation and inspiration for the thriving community we will rebuild. In “Picture Bayview Hunters Point,” a labor of love, says director Joanna Haigood, Zaccho Dance Theatre, a BVHP-based cultural treasure, performs that history and presents those heroes unforgettably. Bring everyone, especially the children and young people, to this lavish but free performance – inside and outside the Opera House.

Gabriel Clyde Powell was born on May 14, 1978, at Saint Luke’s Hospital in San Francisco, California, to proud parents Edward Emile and Norean Marie Powell. He loved spending time with his family, laughing, and always wearing a smile on his face. He was a fun loving and caring person, devoted son, brother, father and friend, always thinking of others first. “To know him is to love him.” Gabriel departed this life on Saturday, Jan. 12, 2019.

Poverty skolaz’ schools are everywhere. Our teachings are essential, haphazard and immediate, fluid and static. Our research is based on our lives and our experience, our solutions, our vast knowledge of what works and what can work.

"There is so much power in stillness. We live in a very fast paced world with Internet and everyone on their phones every five seconds and everyone’s attention span is crumbling. I think it is definitely easier to be busy, to be on the run from your life, to be out there in the wilderness fighting for your life than it is to be actually still and really connect to the people who made you. That’s much more challenging. So yeah."

Beyonce performed Etta’s signature song, “At Last” at President Obama’s inauguration in 2009, laying claim to the tune James relied on to make a living. James told an audience shortly after that that Obama “is not my president” and “that woman he had singing for him, singing my song … she’s going to get her ass whipped.”

“'Beloved' would have been considered gothic horror if it had been written from a white character’s point of view by a white author.”

Bayview Hunters Point residents can now wake up and open their doors with something to smile about. The R.O.B.I.N Hood project has been going door to door, making positive strides towards promoting healthy dental hygiene throughout the community. Rubin Sorrell, a Bayview native and a recent graduate of North Carolina A&T State University, is the founder of R.O.B.I.N Hood.

Along with the Panthers visionary activism, they wrote and performed poetry. Panther poets “(un)consciously” recited language with body gestures to influence and inspire social change.

Mumia Abu-Jamal’s eighth book written from prison cells in the state of Pennsylvania, USA, is a selection of 107 essays that date from January 1982 to October 2014. They cover practically the entire period of his incarceration as an internationally recognized political prisoner. Most of the pieces were written while he was on death row after being framed for the murder of police officer Daniel Faulkner on Dec. 9, 1981, in the city of Philadelphia.

Welcome! Welcome – canoe, slave ship, raft, riverboat, barge, banana boat, tug – WELCOME: to the boat we’re All in –

Underground rappers don’t get recognized like those who are singing hip hop music today. The underground music is usually done by independent artists who may have a separate label and are known mostly in their communities but also tour worldwide to get their name known. This description suits a particular artist who came from Fresno, California. His name was Asiatic, but he changed it to Planet Asia.

Land and housing is a humane right for All; not a privilege and a way to reap more profits for the monied interests! As WE see it, these latest efforts to “re-develop” and “gentrify” our cities – from San Francisco to Oakland, Harlem to Chicago and beyond – are a continuation of the centuries-long horrific wars of mass genocide perpetrated by European capitalism, European (white) nationalism and the false doctrines of European (white) “superiority” and racist terrorism.

Sly and the Family Stone are some of the architects of Bay Area-based funk music and, for that matter, Bay Area hip hop, which has borrowed more than just a little bit from the funk. “Coming Back for More” is an excellent documentary that looks at the life and musical rise of the legendary Sly, who started his musical career as a radio personality on the KSOL.

Huge love, Herculean accomplishments and eternal light burning bright in the Bayview Hunters Point Community and beyond as beloved Black Queen Yolanda Jones transitions to the Ancestors spreading her human spirit and ‘We gonna do this!’ along her journey into the Universe. Rest in peace Yolanda Jones.

“12 Years a Slave,” the story of a free Black man kidnapped by slave traders, has won an Oscar for Best Picture of the Year and a slew of other awards. But in one important respect, the movie comes up short. Missing from the film is the slave rebellion and revolt that Solomon Northup portrayed so vividly in his book.

Ava DuVernay undertook the documentary “13th” in order to explore and bring attention to the Prison Industrial Complex. The film’s title refers to the 1865 amendment to the U.S. Constitution, in which slavery was abolished “except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.” The story told by “13th” thus goes back to the early chain-gangs of Black prisoners – men arrested for petty offenses under the post-Civil War Black Codes who were then contracted out to perform labor that they had previously performed as privately-owned slaves.