Culture Currents

The SF Dept. of the Environment, Friends of the Urban Forest and hundreds of volunteers have planted 200 fruit trees at 23 locations across San Francisco as part of the City’s Urban Orchards program. Fruit trees not only absorb and sequester greenhouse gasses but also improve the city’s built environment and bring together neighborhoods to help us be a more resilient and food-secure city.

It is a great pleasure for us at Your True Standpoint to link with Krip Hop Nation, an organization of great stature and deep ethical values. We highly appreciate Krip Hop Nation as the voice of the voiceless. The parallels between the YTS family and Krip Hop Nation can be drawn from shared values evident from YTS’ call for power in unity.

Jody Moore of Alameda, Calif., and her son, Xavier, have struggled for years with the academic delays and social aggression stemming from his autism diagnosis. Everything turned around, however, several months ago, when the Moores’ lives changed dramatically for the better – thanks to assistance provided by California-based international autism support non-profit Generation Rescue.

One of the best events that is held annually in Oakland is the Oakland International Film Festival (OIFF). Since 2002, thousands continue to attend the OIFF each year. Oakland filmmakers and filmmakers from around the world continue to benefit from contacts made during the OIFF. Who will be there this year? Time will tell. Until then, read the words of the founding director of the OIFF David Roach ...

At Metropolitan Arts & Technology High School, a relatively new addition to the Bayview, senior students are busy preparing for their journey to college. Metro follows a unique educational model that focuses on four key “Rs”: Rigorous expectations of students, personalized Relationships between teachers and students, Relevant and applicable curriculum, and high student achievement Results.

Esther Cooper Jackson, born in Arlington, Virginia, graduated from Ohio’s Oberlin College, received her MA degree in sociology from Fisk University, then remarkably turned down a scholarship offer to Chicago University to earn a PhD to relocate to Birmingham, Ala., where she became the organizational secretary for the Southern Negro Youth Congress.

Much hullabaloo has been made recently about slavery as entertainment in movies like “Django Unchained.” But lost in the discussion is slavery as history. Though sadistic and macabre, the plain truth is that slavery was an unprecedented economic juggernaut whose impact is still lived by each of us daily. Here’s my top-10 list of things everyone should know about the economic roots of slavery.

In 2005, Devin Robinson was threatened with a golf club by a store owner while shopping in the owner’s beauty supply store. Out of anger, two months later Robinson had his own store. Eighteen months later he had two additional locations. In 2007, he launched Taking it Back University to train others how to be successful in beauty supply ownership too.

The steady rise of ethnic nationalism over the past decade, the replacing of history with mendacious and sanitized versions of lost glory, is part of the moral decay that infects a dying culture. It is a frightening attempt, by those who are desperate and trapped, to escape through invented history their despair, impoverishment and hopelessness.

The 23rd African American Celebration through Poetry is Saturday, Feb. 2, 2013, 1-4 p.m. at the West Oakland Branch Library, 1801 Adeline St., in Oakland, (510) 238-7352. All are welcome and if anyone didn’t hear of the event in time to be a part of the featured program, we do have an open mic at the end of the program.

There are a lot of people out there who are concerned about how you spend your money. Embrace this glorious month of February and our incomparably rich history that extends back God knows where and support the future Gabby Douglases and Colin Kaepernicks and George Washington Carvers of the world by buying Black.

Tayo Aluko, a Nigerian born thespian from Britain, wrote a play about the great revolutionary thinker, artist and activist Paul Robeson, who "has been almost completely written out of history," called “Call Mr. Robeson: A Life, With Songs,” which he will perform Feb. 24 at the East Bay Center for Performing Arts in Richmond and Feb. 28 and March 1 at the Theatre on San Pedro Square in San Jose.

Movie-goers across the country are embroiled in heavy social media discussions or water cooler arguments about Quentin Tarantino’s use and Spike Lee’s criticism of use of the infamous N-word in the blockbuster hit “Django Unchained.” During the last couple of decades there has been an interesting ongoing dialogue concerning the use, misuse and exploitation of the so-called N-word.

“The 16th Strike,” a documentary in progress, is directed and produced by T Alika Hickman with videographer Danny Russo. Hickman, the young survivor of a stroke and two brain aneurysms, is a Hip Hop artist with Krip Hop Nation – artists with disabilities – as well as a mother, activist, author and poet. She is raising funds to complete the film.

On the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., it comes to mind that from day one our society and culture have been heavily influenced by film. The recent slavery-related films, “Lincoln,” directed by Steven Spielberg, and “Django Unchained,” directed by Quentin Tarantino, will have a social, economic and psychological impact.

John Carlos is best known as the man who, along with Tommie Smith, raised a clenched fist – the Black Power salute – on the medal stand after the 200 meter race. Carlos took bronze, and Smith gold, at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics. But that moment was a culmination of months of political discussion among black leaders in America. One such discussion happened in early 1968 in New York City.

Kevin Weston and Lateefah Simon have started a national effort to register 1,000 African Americans as possible bone marrow donors and find a match for Kevin, who needs a transplant in less than two months for an extremely rare form of leukemia. They urge African Americans to join the Be the Match bone marrow registry by attending a local drive or registering by mail. It's quick and easy. Help save Lelah’s daddy. Help Kevin and Lateefah change the odds for their family by increasing the number of African Americans registered to be bone marrow donors.

Through the Justice for Oscar Grant Campaign, I met journalist and photographer Peter Maiden, who was working with IndyBay Media. He asked me to be a part of a book that he was writing on the Bay Area indy journalist movement. Many of the people that he wrote about I was familiar with their work, but I didn’t think that we had anything in common, until I read their profiles that they gave to Peter.

At the tender age of 15, Tamia Hooker is not in the streets chasing boys; she is at the Delta One Martial Arts studio throwing punches and kicks while sparring. In a relatively short time, she has achieved Black Belt status in Kajukenbo. Now she is aimed at becoming a teenage martial arts teacher in Antioch. Check out this rising martial arts star in her own words ...

TaLea “Ms. Incredible” Monet and Debray “Fly Benzo” Carpenter were married on the afternoon of 12.12.12 to the soft strains of Erykah Badu and Stephen Marley’s rendition of the beautiful “In Love with You” from Badu’s “Mama’s Gun” album at the Lighthouse Full Gospel Church, Pentecostal, 2212 Lane St., San Francisco.