Culture Currents

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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”?

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.

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.

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.

Wanda’s Picks are right on time to lift us out of the anxiety of the day-to-day crisis attention, COVID-19 limbo and election/post-election teeth-grinding – like taking the lid off that gift box of chocolate truffles, creams and caramels, with plenty to share.

Following the 2020 election of Kamala Harris as the 49th vice president of the United States, well-known poet, Leslé Honoré, paints a conversation with a young brown girl about what she sees, and where realized dreams come from.

Let’s talk gangs, real gangs, New York City gangs, violence, hip hop and rap. The new documentary, ‘Rubble Kings,’ will lift you out of the depths of election frazzle and drop you into a different conversation, perhaps one of inspired possibilities.

A spectacular simultaneously real and virtual party/fundraiser lifted the love and light on Nov. 20-21, 2020 in the Bayview community! The SF Bay View editor’s torch was passed by Mary and Willie Ratcliff to Malik Washington who, along with Wanda Sabir and new managing editor Nube Brown and so many others, remembered the ancestors and highlighted art, dance, music, food, interviews, homegrown business and voices from the community.

While mainstream media wasn’t/isn’t looking – ever – Dr. Willie Ratcliff joined in love and gratitude at Mother Brown’s celebrating the Bayview community and Thanksgiving with the best homemade, healthy food laced with the usual warmth and good tidings to feed the spirit and body.

Speaking the revolutionary love that embodied Comrade Karen Smith and touched so many left behind, Gregory ‘King’ Enegess wholly honors and mourns her transition from this life to Rest In Power.