Culture Currents

The name Amiri Baraka has been known to me since my teens, when I was a member of the Black Panther Party. Baraka posed an intriguing figure, for he radiated both love and rage, funneled through his poems, which pulsated with revolutionary fire. He was born in 1934 in Newark, N.J., as Everett LeRoy Jones and become a rising star of the Beat era in the East Village of New York.

San Francisco has a semi-professional football team called the Golden State Giants, which has been holding open tryouts over the last couple of weeks. Tirrell Muhammad is the president of the San Francisco based Golden State Giants, and we sat with him to do this exclusive Q&A about the Pacific Coast Football League, the Golden State Giants, and NFL policy. Read Tirrell Muhammad in his own words ...

If you take a little Theolonius Monk, mix it with Yasiin Bey aka Mos Def, with a little twist of some Lauryn Hill and Curtis Mayfield and put it on an Oakland soundscape, you’ll get what bandleader and pianist Kev Choice cooked up on his newly released, soon to be classic album, “Oakland Riviera.” By far this is one of the best sounding, most creative and most political albums to come out of Oakland’s Hip Hop scene in the last few years.

“Emmitt Till” does more than call attention to how Till’s death ignited the U.S. Civil Rights Movement in the ‘50s and ‘60s. It points to the quiet heroism of Mamie Till Mobley in the face of unspeakable horror and unrelieved terrorism. Come see this dynamic and inspirational play by Tavia Percia and the Tavia Percia Theatre Company: Saturday, Feb. 1, 7 and 9 p.m., and Sunday, Feb. 2, 3 and 5 p.m., at the Eastside Arts Alliance, 2277 International Blvd, Oakland.

Augusta Collins is one of the Bluesmen who still roam around Oakland playing the music of his generation, one of the classical music forms indigenous to Black people of the U.S. Many of today’s young people do not know that in the ‘40s and early ‘50s, West Oakland’s Seventh Street was one of the Blues hubs west of the Mississippi. Augusta Collins’ music is reminiscent of that sound, and his party will hit upon that vibe.

By now millions of Americans have heard about COINTELPRO. COINTELPRO was the FBI’s evil and illegal system of spying, lying, telephone wire taps, frame-ups and assassination that violated the constitutional and human rights that they claim to uphold. I was recently asked, while doing a Black Panther Party historical tour in Oakland, how COINTELPRO affected me personally. Here is one of my stories.

It has been five years since Oakland was set on fire during the Oakland Rebellions that were a result of the BART police murder of Oscar Grant. Los Angeles based journalist Thandisizwe Chimurenga is set to release her book, “No Doubt: The Murder(s) of Oscar Grant,” in the coming weeks. This book gives a much needed political analysis of what was at work behind the curtains of this monumental police murder case.

The first in a series of empowerment workshops, “Full Court Press to Success,” will be held on Saturday, Feb. 8, 4-5:30 p.m. at the Bayview Opera House. The workshop features the new documentary film, “I Just Wanna Ball,” by Robert “Fleetwood” Bowden about the McClymonds High School Lady Warriors championship team of 2013.

Named after the author of the classic “Miseducation of the Negro” and the founder of Black History Week, which later graduated into Black History Month, this bowl is a competition, where contestants are on teams that try to be the fastest to answer questions deriving from Black history. We are taking a minute with the founder of the Dr. Carter G. Woodson Black History Bowl, Yafeu Tyhimba, so that he can discuss the competition’s history and future.

I searched frantically for you at the end ... Of the Apollo’s Sekou Sundiata celebration; ... I jumped over a chair, just missing you, at ... The Harlem Stage tribute to Abbey Lincoln; ... Finally, caught you at the Schomburg’s ... Langston Hughes Auditorium, at the ... Fidel-Malcolm Meeting book talk ... Forgave you for slipping ... On Iceberg Slim, and ... Told you, “I LOVE YOU …”

Community Empowerment Programs Incorporated will be working extensively with Leroy F. Moore Jr., founder of Krip Hop Nation, on programs that empower people with disabilities in arts, self-advocacy and music. The partnership will start working on its first annual activism, music and arts event facilitated by African American leaders hosted in Albany, N.Y., and a location to be determined in New York City shortly thereafter.

“Unfathomable City: A New Orleans Atlas” by Rebecca Solnit and Rebecca Snedeker (2013) is part visionary road map, part post-traumatic Katrina therapy, and part poetic love ode/lament to our city. One chapter addresses systems of containment – levees and prisons. In Angola, jailhouse lawyers organized voting blocks of outside allies to push for prison reform and to have decades-long solitary confinement declared cruel and unusual punishment.

Amiri Baraka was a giant to those who know him. And now that he is physically gone, his legend will only grow. The FBI once identified him as “the person who will probably emerge as the leader of the pan-African movement in the United States.” Even those who critiqued him considered him to be brilliant, even referring to him as the Malcolm X of literature and spoken word. He often said bluntly and yet humbly that “Malcolm X was my leader.” Amiri Baraka put into practice what Malcolm taught him about cultural revolution.

Leroy Stansfield’s Go Baby Productions has been organizing some of the biggest local comedy shows in the Bay Area over the last few years. I met this local entrepreneur while I was doing the Block Report on KPFA. I sat down to talk to the head comedian in charge, Mr. Leroy Stansfield himself, about his history as a comedian, the history of his company, and his thoughts on the Bay Area comedy scene. Check him out in his own words.

Even though people use the words “second best pound-for-pound fighter” when discussing Andre “Son of God” Ward in comparison to Floyd Mayweather’s reign as the boxing world’s top attraction, it is difficult to imagine Andre Ward as being second best to anyone in his field – for any reason. At 29, his 20 years in the boxing business, his 17 years of wins and no losses and his 27-0 professional boxing record stand him in good stead.

Word reached The Liberator Magazine that revolutionary Black independent media is about to expand with the impending launch of Block Report Radio Station on the internet. So they sought out its founder, Oakland journalist JR Valrey, to ask him why he devotes his life to independent media and what we can expect from the new Block Report Radio Station.

HAPPY NEW YEAR! Life continues for some, while many did not make it into 2014. Loved ones lost: MADIBA! MADIBA! BELOVED former South Africa President NELSON MANDELA; GRADY WILKINS, music director of the legendary WHISPERS; SUCCESSFUL Bayview business man MR. DAVE GARRISON; TWO San Francisco ICONS – the FAMOUS HAT LADY, RUTH GARLAND DEWSON and Legendary FILLMORE Master TAILOR and golfer CLYDE HOLLIE.

Whether we call it discipline or creating expectations for their behavior, children want and deserve clear directions as to “how to be” in this world. Without this supportive feedback and grounding, they can find themselves mired in frustration, often leading to inappropriate acting out and causing discomfort to themselves as well as those around them.

I don’t know if it is a will of iron, Ogun or foolishness, but I caught something viral, which I refused to keep, on the plane Monday, Dec. 23, when I flew to San Salvador, El Salvador, by mistake – yes, the booking agent booked me for San Salvador when I clearly said Salvador, BAHIA, Brazil (smile). I kept seeing San Salvador and thought, well, perhaps this is another way of referencing Salvador, Bahia.

The Screening Room, a new local startup TV show, features up-and-coming filmmakers with interviews about their films, the filmmaking journey and future outlook. We were honored to have the lovely Sheila V. Harris as our host in a recent episode of The Screening Room. She interviewed two local filmmakers, Karen Ruiz, a native San Franciscan, and Rock Hemlock, originally from Dallas, Texas.