Tag: Minister of Information JR

Islam is a very prominent faith in the Black communities of Amerikkka, and during Ramadan the SF Bay View thinks that it is important for us to have the best possible understanding of the different cultures among us so that organizing can be facilitated against a common foe, the organized bodies that are oppressing us.

Ishmael Reed is one of the most read writers of his generation, along with Toni Morrison and Amiri Baraka, living in America. In 1962, Reed co-founded “East Village Other,” a well known underground publication at the time, and was a member of the Umbra Writers Workshop, which helped to give rise to the Black Arts Movement. He has published nine novels, four collections of poetry, six plays, four collections of essays and a libretto. He currently lives in Oakland, and I approached him one day while he was visiting KPFA’s studios to ask him what he thought about the state of affairs between the police and Oakland’s Black community, with the backdrop of the police murder of Oscar Grant and, in a separate incident, the police murder of Lovelle Mixon, after Mixon allegedly killed four Oakland police officers.

A Black nation still incarcerated But patiently awaiting release it seems that respect we have to kill for while dying for peace

Sister Linda Johnson has been a legendary educator in East Oakland since the ‘80s. At her school which is known as Umoja House, she has taught generations of students who have grown up to be productive members of their communities. As a community, we must make it a high priority to give our children the best education possible so that they can come back and help solve some of the problems that we have as a people.

Very few things in life make me feel the way I feel when I come in contact with the work of a dope visual artist. It is amazing to me how, from a thought and a few strokes of the hand, a whole new world can be created that has crossed the dimension of the artist’s mind to exist in tangible reality. What is even more striking to me is an artist with a social or political agenda that refuses to make art for art’s sake.

By far one of the most revolutionary cultural groups to put words to music in the United States is the Last Poets. Many, including myself, trace the roots of rap music to the spoken word, lyrics and speeches of the Last Poets, Gil Scott Heron and the current political prisoner Imam Jamil Al-Amin, otherwise known as H. Rap Brown.

Drama has been a valuable art form to the Black experience in Amerikkka since before slavery. It was one of the ways that we maintained our history, although huge segments of the population couldn’t read or aren’t reading. I have only been to a few theatrical plays, but I love cinema, with some of the best dramatized movies to me being “dead presidents,” “Brown Sugar” and “Juice.”

Recently Cynthia McKinney has been traveling to Gaza on human rights missions challenging the illegal Israeli military blockade. She, along with a number of others who were bringing humanitarian aid to the area, were confronted by the Israeli military on two occasions. The first time the Israelis rammed their ship and nearly sank it. The second time, People’s Advocate Cynthia and the rest of the Free Gaza 21 had their boat commandeered and were kidnapped by the Israelis and taken to prison. Check out the People’s Advocate in her own words.

Minister of Information JR caught up with former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, the Green Party’s 2008 presidential candidate, upon her return to the U.S. from a week’s incarceration in an Israeli jail. She and the Free Gaza 21 – the crew and passengers, including political leaders, human rights workers, Nobel Peace laureate Mairead Maguire among them, and journalists, of the boat “Spirit of Humanity” – had been boarded, assaulted and kidnapped while sailing in international waters by a fleet of Israeli warships.

When watching movies we often see the perspective of directors, writers and producers who were not conditioned to see the world and the culture they are filming from the viewpoint of somebody living in it instead of just a spectator. Idris Hassan is one of many emerging female filmmakers who refuse to sit back and just accept someone else's view of what is happening.

Frisco's Sellassie is one of the artists in the Bay that helps to keep the independent scene together, with his partner Gina Gallo of Inhouse Talent. They are the architects of the "We All We Got" concert series, which moves around from club to club in San Francisco and features some of the hottest underground talent in the Bay.

Freak Mode is one of the hardest female rappers on Chicago's underground circuit.

One of the definite queens of soul music, folk guitarists and amazing song writers of our time is India.Arie. She has been nominated numerous times for Grammys, but more importantly she has been one of the symbols, within this decade, of dark skinned talented Black women musicians rising to prominence. Mainstream media in America, since its inception, has been about destroying the image of African people.

Right now, Adimu is working on a new documentary called "Operation: Small Ax" about the POCC: Block Report Radio show and its role in organizing in the terrible but fine year of 2009 in the Bay Area in the eye of the storm of controversies like the murder of Oscar Grant, the Oakland Rebellions, the trials of the Oakland 100, the murder of Lovelle Mixon and four OPD and more. It also includes exclusive interviews with Emory Douglas of the Black Panther Party, Chairman Fred Hampton Jr. of the POCC, Umar Bin Hassan of the Last Poets, rappers Beeda Weeda, J. Stalin, Mahasen and Chela Simone and an exclusive Block Report Radio interview with Angela Davis that was used to promote Mumia's new book.

A preliminary hearing to begin June 8 will decide whether the San Francisco 8 will have to stand trial for the 1971 murder of a SFPD officer. SF 8 member Richard Brown reports in this Block Report that more evidence has surfaced on the torture tactics used to extract the inadmissable confessions that this case is based on.

Ever since the police murder of Lovelle Mixon, after he allegedly murdered four Oakland police officers in East Oakland on March 21, the SF Bay View newspaper website, sfbayview.com, hundreds of messages have been written in the comment sections at the end of the articles by people who are undercover cyber police and people with strong pro-police sentiments, with some coming right out and saying they are members of police departments.

I have known Umi for a good half a decade and he has been a major supporter of the POCC's Code of Culture all around the country, whether it was assisting now political prisoner Aaron Patterson when he was on the streets with the many campaigns that he was involved in, or whether it is him giving comrades moving through New York a place to lay their heads.

Kathy Hughes, the owner of Radio One, which many in the Black community deem the Black Clear Channel, has issued a clarion call to Black people saying that Conyers' bill will kill Black radio. But the question remains: Is Black radio now in jeopardy or has true Black radio that is accountable to the community been dead for decades?

Ever since the police murder of Lovelle Mixon, after he allegedly murdered four Oakland police officers in East Oakland on March 21, the SF Bay View newspaper website, sfbayview.com, hundreds of messages have been written in the comment sections at the end of the articles by people who are undercover cyber police and people with strong pro-police sentiments, with some coming right out and saying they are members of police departments.

Marcel Diallo is a legend in Oakland for having put in over a decade of cultural work with the Black Dot Artist Collective, and now he is the main architect of a Black cultural district, the Village Bottoms Cultural District in the Lower Bottoms of West Oakland, near the old Army base.