Tag: African Americans

I’ve noticed in Black families that if there are four adult siblings and three of them are professionals and one is a business owner, among the family, the professionals seem to be revered more than the business owner. I have seen churches, professional organizations and magazines give more credence and recognition to professionals than to business owners.

Taiwo Kujichagulia-Seitu's theatrical piece centers around the story of Harriet Tubman rescuing her brothers from slavery during Christmas-time. “Go Tell It!” paints a picture of what is was like for men who lived through slavery their whole lives getting word from their runaway sister Black Moses, that she was coming to put them on the Underground Railroad to freedom in the North.

On Monday, Nov. 26, at Yoshi’s in Oakland, we will be honoring Kevin Weston and a number of other Black media-makers who represent for the Black community in Northern California. Everyone is invited. The night will be a celebration of life and resistance in the home of the Black Panther Party and independent rap music. Until then, here is Kevin in his own words.

We need more business owners working from their apartments, vans or cars, vacant lots, and boarded up shops and storefronts. Keep in mind on your journey down the entrepreneur road, that wealth originates from within, first. To gain access to cash, sometimes you have to look to untraditional sources online which give artists and entrepreneurs a helping hand.

Sometimes one gets tired of living in a place that doesn’t want you there, Zaccho Artistic Director, Joanna Haigood, states at the reception Thursday at the California Historical Society. The only problem is 154 years later, Black people are still unwelcome in San Francisco, which is what “Sailing Away” addresses so eloquently without words.

As part of a larger effort called the Campaign for Prison Phone Justice, a delegation representing Bay Area organizations is petitioning Conngresswoman Barbara Lee to ask the FCC to address the high cost of prison phone calls by passing the Wright Petition.

This year marks the 33rd anniversary of Black August, the annual commemoration of the liberation struggle of African people inside the United States. The month of celebration and reflection was initiated by political prisoners, many of whom were members of the Black Panther Party and the Republic of New Africa, two of the main revolutionary organizations that emerged during the late 1960s.

In Selma, Alabama, no less, scene of historic battles for Black civil rights, white supremacy advocates are re-building a monument to an early American terrorist, war criminal and widely acknowledged founder of the Ku Klux Klan, Nathan Bedford Forrest. Selma activist Malika Sanders is angry and she’s fighting back.

When Kenneth Harding, 19, couldn’t show police a Muni transfer to prove he’d paid his $2 fare on July 16, 2011, he ran, they shot him in the back and for an agonizing half hour, instead of trying to save his life, they trained their guns on Kenneth and the crowd while the young man slowly bled to death and the crowd screamed in horror. Knowing that the police murder of Kenneth Harding was the outcome of the routine, though unofficial, police practice of stopping and frisking young men of color, why would San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, a former civil rights attorney, consider importing New York City’s disastrous stop-and-frisk policy?

The first book I read after I decided to consciously educate myself to be a part of the movement was Sanyika Shakur’s “Monster” in the mid-‘90s. I was inspired by the sharpness of his ideas, his vocabulary and his grasp on history. I respected him in the same way I respected Tupac Shakur. I knew that one day I wanted to be able express myself as articulately as the two of them.

“From the Tuskegee Airmen who shed blood to defend a segregated nation in World War II to Capt. Marlon Green’s (Continental Airlines) Supreme Court decision (March 28, 1963), to Capt. Jim Edwards (United Airlines, 1967), determined individuals broke the color barrier in the commercial airline industry,” said Capt. Terry Haynie.

Summertime in the Bay Area is nothing without all of the music, food and film festivals. If you missed the Oakland International Film Festival, there is still time for you to catch the Bay’s biggest Black film festival, the San Francisco Black Film Festival, which runs June 15-17 at a number of theaters around San Francisco. This year Leo Sullivan will be in attendance. He is one of the cartoon visionaries who created Fat Albert and Looney Tunes. Digital Underground will also be a part of this year’s festivities, as well as Black Panther Party co-founder and chairman Bobby Seale.

The restraining order barring DeBray (Fly Benzo) Carpenter from the Cahill construction site and the stay away order barring Fly’s presence at Mendell Plaza are SFPD examples of this nation’s conspiracy to mass incarcerate and control the lives and the deaths of the young, Black and male in America. A victory for Fly Benzo is a victory for us all. Pack the courtroom Wednesday, May 30, 1:30 p.m., at the San Francisco Superior Court, 400 McAllister St., Department 514. Occupy Fly Benzo’s courtroom for us all.

Brittany Crawford, 20, was killed in a fatal car accident on April 1, 2012. Her organs were donated, and her generous gifts saved the lives of four people. Her parents were led to start a foundation, “Give Life, Save Life,” a non-profit organization to focus on education and awareness of organ procurement and creating a database of African American donors.

Professor Michelle Alexander’s new book “The New Jim Crow” is a monumental, well researched piece of work that presents documented facts in down to earth English about the mass incarceration of Black people within the United States’ national concentration camp system. At one point in “The New Jim Crow,” Professor Alexander presents evidence that more Black people are enslaved behind bars today than were enslaved on the plantations in 1850, before the Emancipation Proclamation was signed.

Sobonfu Somé, West African healer, says that when people die and become ancestors, they get smarter and often try to repair any damage they may have made while in this physical form. Ancestors want to be busy making our lives better. She said we can call on them to intercede on our behalf when we are troubled.

In his last public message the day before he was assassinated, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called on Black people in Memphis to support Black banks. “We’ve got to strengthen Black institutions. I call upon you to take your money out of the banks downtown and deposit your money in Tri-State Bank,” he said ...

Like the country it governs, Washington is a city of extremes. In a car, you can zip in bare moments from northwest District of Columbia, its streets lined with million-dollar homes and palatial embassies, its inhabitants sporting one of the nation’s lowest jobless rates, to Anacostia, a mostly forgotten neighborhood in southeastern D.C. with one of the highest unemployment rates anywhere in America.

The historic prisoner hunger strike led by 11 now “shrunken” but alive Pelican Bay Prison inmates advocating human rights, peace and justice continues at several prisons, according to officials, prisoners’ families and prisoner attorney Marilyn McMahon. Hunger strikers' families and supporters will rally in Sacramento again Monday, noon-4 p.m.

While many had questioned whether Barack Obama was Black enough, in the 2008 elections 96 percent of African Americans cast their vote for him. Today, the question has re-emerged.