Tag: African Diaspora

Education is everything and available to everybody interested, virtually and free, by attending the 10th Anniversary Breast Cancer and African Americans (BCAA) Conference.

A scintillating array of fascinating films awaits film lovers at the 23rd annual San Francisco Black Film Festival, June 17-20. Meet SFBFF’s new millennial leaders, daughter Cree Ray and son Kali Ray Jr., of director Kali O’Ray, who died unexpectedly last year in August 2020. For tickets and details, visit www.sfbff.org.

Come and get 'em while they're hot – virtual, hybrid and actual – all events happening in your SF Bay Area neighborhood.

Keeping it real, honorable, celebratory and focused, Baba Jahahara brings our news home.

In humanity lies the delicious element of creativity and imagination and bestselling author, Sumiko Saulson, embodies the gifts of writing as do her comrades here, uplifted for their unique talents, including incarcerated writers behind the bars of the neo-slavery system.

I especially want to remember the mothers who are not with their families this year due to physical distancing. I hope you are still able to connect with loved ones via technology. We are going to have a special radio show Friday, May 8, featuring Mrs. Sadie Williams, 96, in conversation with other mothers. Listen in beginning at 8 a.m. by calling 347-237-4610.

Sunday afternoon, Feb. 23, at the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco was an opportunity to see what Black Joy looks like. While Africans in Oakland were celebrating what makes us a people, in San Francisco, artists, curators and scholars were discussing Kwame Brathwaite’s work in the “Black is Beautiful: The Photography of Kwame Brathwaite” exhibit up through March 1. More than a tangible aesthetic enumerated, Brathwaite’s “Beautiful” is an opportunity to reflect on the many ways through the ages Blackness – while commodified – transgressed and transcended, even morphed into something completely incomprehensible (in that moment) like Charlie Parker’s “Koko“ or Dizzy Gillespie’s “Shaw ‘Nuff” or John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme.”

Afrika is our Black Power Base. Our life force. Our African Sun. Where is your home base, Black man? It’s Africa.

Within the craziness, artists like Cherie Hill, Gabriel Christian and Chibueze Crouch have opened with their work windows into spaces where Blackness – just everyday Blackfolkness – is a ticket or key or pass code into rooms others seated behind us out of sight and mind/full/ness cannot enter.

Five artists who identify with the African Diaspora are presenting work at this year’s San Francisco International Arts Festival that takes place at the Fort Mason Center from May 23 to June 2. In interviews with the San Francisco Bay View, they each go into detail about how their respective projects shed light on and teach about the myriad legacies of the Diaspora.

With our planetary situation worsening – from massive flooding in India to Bangladesh, fire-nados raging out of control from Siberia to California and record high temperatures in Scandinavia and the Arctic, etc. – you and your organization are encouraged to join the worldwide RISE FOR CLIMATE JOBS & JUSTICE on Saturday, 8 September. In our region, the march will convene at the Embarcadero in San Francisco, at 10 a.m. This major people’s mobilization precedes the so-called “Global Climate Summit.”

The Matatu Film and Concert series is one of many dynamic film festivals that call the Bay their home, but its most unique quality is that it highlights filmmakers from Africa and the diaspora outside of the U.S., as well as covers subjects that are important to how we see ourselves, and how we see the world. Michael Orange, the Matatu curator, has exquisite taste in cinema. Here is our back-n-forth about what Matatu has in store for May.

Hollywood films should always come with a consumer health warning to people of African descent: “Beware of ‘The Ideology of the Aesthetic,’ as Terry Eagleton would put it.” With all the hype, “Black Panther: Long Live the King” falls under this manipulative ideological warfare genre and should have been subtitled, “Down With the King,” for subscribing to what Wole Soyinka would dismiss as the pseudo tradition of neo-Tarzanism.

This declaration was authored by the pan-Africanist and socialist popular forces of the Caribbean nation of Barbados at Bridgetown, Barbados, on Saturday, Jan. 13, 2018, and submitted to the people and civil society organizations of the Caribbean for their endorsement and adoption. By describing the nations of Africa, the Republic of Haiti and the Central American nation of El Salvador as “shithole” countries, U.S. President Donald Trump has committed a despicable and unpardonable act of anti-Black, anti-African, anti-Brown racism and is “Persona Non Grata” in the entire Caribbean region.

During the last 50 years, the Gnassingbé dynasty in Togo has maintained itself in power through brutalizing and terrorizing those who dare to speak out against the corruption and misrule of the government. Under the rule of the Gnassingbés, Togo has been one of the poorest and most miserable countries in Africa. The people of Togo have decided that they have had enough of being ruled by a neo-colonial regime that exploits and murders them for the benefit of their former colonial masters.

Saturday, June 10, The Father’s Day Celebration, a free event for Black fathers and Black male father figures and their families, will give space for a joyous Father’s Day event for the whole community. The Father’s Day Celebration will begin with family portraits, activities for the kids (Barbers, Books and Bridges), a live DJ spinning tunes perfect for the occasion and a keynote speaker, Adimu Madyun. Dining will be available.

Now, as the San Francisco Bay View newspaper’s 40th birthday year comes to a close, is the time to bring up to date the historical sketch of our paper that I began with Part 1 in the January paper. Piles of old papers rest on my desk, waiting to be read once again – a banquet of stories and pictures of our lives, our hopes, our goals. Let me let you taste the flavor of the freedom we continue to fight for in the age of Trump.

Yeewket Admas is Amharic meaning knowledge horizons. With knowledge, we can expand our horizons and improve our world. Library Information Foundation for Ethiopia is a non-profit organization whose mission is to provide good quality books to Ethiopians to help them develop a culture of reading and self-improvement. We have opened or assisted the opening of 22 libraries in Ethiopia. We humbly ask for your charitable contributions to help further our goal.

Death came to the old revolutionary - put out what was left of his cigar - leaving him his military cap - so they would not place laurels - that would bother him. It is no little thing to confront the empire - & survive its rage of a mad dog - from which a bone is taken. Oh Cuba of the bitter history, - of palms, dances, songs, - of the drums of Alegba and Yamayá, - of the cane made sweet by blood and sweat - mourn and remember, sing, dance, work - for justice and never return to slavery. © Rafael Jesús González 2016

Fifty years ago, on June 16, 1966, in Greenwood, Mississippi, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) Chair Kwame Ture, then known as Stokely Carmichael, addressed a crowd of youthful demonstrators and the media covering the militant March Against Fear and forcefully re-echoed our millennial and generational demand for “Black Power.”