Tag: UNIA

“A Lifetime of Being Betty,” to be released Aug. 17 at Freight and Salvage in Berkeley, at 8 p.m. Tickets are $20 in advance, $24 at the door. Visit www.thefreight.org/event/1858290-little-village-foundation-berkeley/.

The Central California Intelligence Center received a Suspicious Activity Report from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation in 2010. A guard reported that he conducted a search of two inmates’ cells. “Both inmates are Muslims who appear to have radical Islamic views. Both inmates have since been placed in our Administrative Segregation” (the hole). Anti-Muslim sentiments do not only exist in the outside world, they exist in prison, too.

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

The Saint John Coltrane Church is a historical fixture in the San Francisco Black community and a direct descendant of the work of the late great Marcus Mosiah Garvey and his Universal Negro Improvement Association. One reason the Coltrane Church is important is that it defines for itself who are the saints that are worthy of our praise, instead of basing its doctrine on the philosophy and understanding of god that came out of the Council of Nicea.

Libations to Ornette Coleman, musician, composer, March 9, 1930-June 11, 2015. Libations also for Brother Tahuti, a beloved elder who made his transition mid-June. Those of us who commemorate our African Ancestors of the Middle Passage have formed an organization which took me recently to Washington, D.C. At the website guests can learn about commemorations throughout the United States and beyond.

After winning their freedom in the bloodiest conflict in U.S. history, Blacks were in many cases and places denied basic human, civil and political rights, literally forcing New Afrikans back into slavery by denying them a right to life. Over the years the government declared and waged war on the New Afrikan communities - war on unemployed "vagrants,' war on crime, war on drugs, war on gangs - culminating in mass incarceration.

On Aug. 9, police in Ferguson, St. Louis County, Missouri, murdered Michael Brown, 18, as he put his hands in the air to let his friend escape. Then the police aimed their full U.S. military-strength force at all the youth of Ferguson who dared to demand justice. With the world watching and their hands in the air, identifying the police as the source of the violence, night after night, young people waded INTO the tear gas and stood unflinching with guns in their faces. Oscar Grant’s Uncle Bobby, Cephus Johnson, calls them the most fearless youth of our generation. And they vow not to stop until killer cop Darren Wilson is brought to justice.

Congratulations to Gerald Lenoir for carrying the torch and blazing the way for so many social justice issues from HIV/AIDS awareness in the Black community to his recent work in just migration for Pan Africans. Much success on your new work! Farewell to Alona Clifton and much success in Atlanta. Congratulations also to Almaz Negash, founder and director of African Diaspora Network in Silicon Valley for her national recognition and award at the Continental African Leaders Summit in Washington, D.C.

In the year 2014, as we recognize this as the centennial year of the Jamaican, Caribbean born Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey’s (born Aug. 17, 1887, died June 10, 1940) founding of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League in 1914, Pan Africanists need to hold conferences to discuss the conditions of over 1,200,000,000 Africans and people of African descent.

It is the collective mission of the organizations who now own Liberty Hall and will do their work there – Overcomers With Hope, Bay Area Black Nurses Association and Healthy Communities – to keep the legacy of service and communal collaboration alive in the African American community of West Oakland and Oakland as a whole.

Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia said: “I have heard of that idea (that I am the reincarnation of Jesus Christ). I also met certain Rastafarians. I told them clearly that I am a man, that I am mortal, and that I will be replaced by the oncoming generation, and that they should never make a mistake in assuming or pretending that the human being is emanated (originated) from a deity (God).”

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.

The Marcus Garvey Building, also known as Liberty Hall, located at 1485 Eighth Street in West Oakland, is an A-1+ rated national historic landmark that has fallen victim to the mortgage crisis and has been taken from the community through a foreclosure bulk purchase by Citi Property Holdings, Inc., a Florida-based hedge fund. Join the fight to keep Liberty Hall, the Marcus Garvey Building, in the hands of the West Oakland community that it has cared for, loved and served for more than 100 years.