Congratulations to my niece, Wilda Batin for being honored by the City of San Francisco in February for Black History Month as one of the children who made the Honor Roll for 2012. My brother has smart children (smile).  My condolences to the Shaheed family for their loss. Brother Khalil Shaheed (Jan. 19, 1949-Mar. 23, 2012), founder of Oaktown Jazz Workshop was a wonderful human being whose presence will be missed. Stay tuned for a community memorial /celebration of his life. Donations can be sent to: http://www.oaktownjazz.org/ Visit http://wandasabir.blogspot.com /, obits, and the audio from the funeral service.

Reflections on a Recent Event

Reciprocity. Does what goes around really come around? What happens to people who take things that do not belong to them? What happens to the people who eat the rotted flesh? What happened to asking for what you need? When did “no” cease to be a potential answer to a number of questions? Where does the pain go when aspirin covers its existence? Is there a waiting room for ill adjustment, a place where PT or physical therapy is available for those with appointments? What does it take to walk upright? Is this the reason why so many are still crawling?  Does one have to have one’s bones crushed in order to walk upright?  What happened to that primal tail? Is this the invisible, yet, slippery space between human and beast?

It is not the things they took when they entered my home without my permission that bothers me a week later. It is the fact that they knew or hoped I wasn’t home, so their intention was not ethical or legal; the thieves wanted a free ride on my carpet when I was paying toll or FasTrak each month to cross the bridge(s). There are no free passes. Everything has a price even if certain costs are hidden. We pay for naturally occurring phenomena like water and gas, heat and light. What about memory? What about the trauma connected to theft—a violent act, even when there are no signs of entry? What does the victim do with the assault when peacekeepers do not take the assault seriously or have become immune to the act and lack empathy; so they skip certain protocol like dusting for fingerprints, looking for foot prints, physical evidence not to get the “stuff” back, but to perhaps interrupt the potential  reoccurrence?

While the policeman sat in our living room, my daughter was directed to the website where she could type her own report. He mentioned gang activity and gave us a list of assignments –Police Detective 101 boot camp. In other words, the department was not going to do anything, which is perhaps why he was sitting in the house at 2 a.m. two days later, instead of the afternoon the day it happened. In the meantime, laws protect the perpetrators such as our neighbors from hell across the street.

Intentional communities are the way to go. No more random hits and misses in the neighborhood scenario—buy land and have people fill out applications to live next door to you. I think, tenants in common is a legal arrangement that somewhat addresses this, an arrangement which is not guaranteed, but a little better to handle than a slum lord or repossessed home, wayward tenants and a legal system that favors the unruly. I pull out of my driveway into traffic and the car speeding down my block that hits me is in the right legally, and if the driver is injured or sustains property damage my insurance goes up?! Residents can park huge vehicles in front of one’s home, drip oil, drop debris and the police say—“they are not breaking the law.”

Intentional communities means, I have to make sure first that you have sense and belong to the same species as I do before you can fill out an application to share my geographical living space.  Now, people can fall from the sky or cross a border and ignore common courtesies like playing one’s music at a moderate level, not turning a residential dwelling into a scrap yard. . . .
 
My home was burglarized and my chest has been hurting since then, and I don’t know what to expect when I get home daily from work. I can’t stop thinking about the identity of the mysterious persons who came into my house while I was away and took things. It isn’t even about what they took. It is all replaceable, but the idea that it happened, that this place—this neighborhood, is not safe. Before, I’d leave items on the porch, now we don’t even allow the mailman access to the front door.

Monday: House burglarized. Tuesday: Khalil Shaheed’s funeral—we were thinking about getting a dog, but I am not sure if I want another child. I’ll have to think about it.

Soldier (2000) by June Jordan: A Book Review

Last month was the 20th anniversary celebration of June Jordan’s Poetry for the People. Held at UC Berkeley the organizational home, where it resides in the African American History Department, it was a wonderful two days if one could get through the floods and torrential rain, that opening Friday night. Hosted by Aya de Leon, poet, teacher and new administrator of the program, with alternating P4P alumni or current students who hosted workshops and shared poetry. The two days culminated with a performance and reading with Patricia Smith, and of course an all star Bay Area line-up. Since then, I have been reading June Jordan, I ordered the Blueprint, short for June Jordan’s Poetry for the People: A Revolutionary Blueprint and well as another copy of her memoir, Soldier. I am going to make my way through her collections of essays and poetry, my goal to have read her entire body of work by summer’s end. I have just been feeling like poetry lately, June Jordan’s in particular, but Climbing PoeTree with Alixa and Naima at the Lyricist Lounge at La Pena Cultural Center in Berkeley a couple of weeks ago was mind altering, just at the 20th anniversary of June Jordan’s P4P was. In fact, some of the poets there, were also at UC Berkeley that weekend, folks like Ariel Luckey. Perhaps I have always like June because her name is my birth month, warm days into heat waves, short days running endurance races with one another—until the winner is crowned equinox. Her name is the beginning of personal droughts and a reminder to drink water, June is Flag Day and Father’s Day—father’s a nebulous entity for both of us—June is just before summer fun really begins. . . . It is an anomaly, both a crab and a twin, air and water, masculine and feminine.

I start my journey with Soldier: A Poet’s Childhood by June Jordan. I remain transfixed – the life narrated here is so amazing and horrific at the same time, yet I can hardly put it down. It is an intensely quick read.  When I was just half way through I didn’t think little June would make it to 12 a short however, event filled childhood.

Her dad wanted a boy, so given a girl he was still determined to treat her like a boy. She was his helper on building projects around the house. He took her deep sea fishing at 2 a.m. in the morning—she the only girl on the boat and he beat her daily, waking her from sleep with punches. He taught her to spar and if her guard was down, he’d knock her flat on her back. This same father also took her to the symphony and to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He taught her to look people, even adults, in the eyes and to stand up straight, to throw her shoulders back and walk confidently and proudly, even if the only people she saw walk like this were white.

Jordan’s descriptions of her neighborhood in Brooklyn contrasted with that in Harlem where her family lived before her dad bought a house which brought with it, childhood illnesses for June. She had a timeline, before Harlem and after—the before always a better time, a time when her mother and father seemed happier. In Brooklyn she learned the word, “sacrifice,” and hated its sound and rhythm. She also hated the term, “first,” as in first black child to attend the Robin Hood Summer Camp or Midwood High or the girl’s prep school, Northfield, where she was the only black child.  She says: “There were fifteen hundred students standing outside that school, and I was the ‘only’ one.

I didn’t like it.
I felt small.
I felt outnumbered.
I was surrounded by ‘them.’
And there was no ‘we.’
There was only me.
I didn’t like it.
And because I’d been skipped two years ahead, I was like a pint-sized mascot to my class: I was twelve years old and a sophomore, and the whole thing felt wrong” (248-249).

Her mother tries arguing with her husband about his fascination with white people. One of the only times she challenged his beliefs; he slapped her so hard, June ran down the stairs to rescue her.

his family from their apartment to a house, this is why he had June transferred from one school to another.  Perhaps this was why he beat her.

She writes that she never had to do anything except read and study: no cooking, cleaning even making her bed. June’s brilliant cousin Valerie stayed with their family. Valerie could play the piano and was good in school too. She also looked just like June’s beautiful mother. Yet, despite the beatings, June seemed to have enough pleasant moments during childhood to make it happy.

I kept thinking she was going to grow up and kill her mean father, but, she just takes the abuse. She asks for a gun, she starts sleeping with a knife, but the beatings continue. When she reports her father to the police, they tell her to be a “good girl.”  She falls in love often— this daring, resilient, brilliant little girl who uses the pronoun “he,” to describe herself—girls like June always win. However each notch on her belt is measured in light years or a pound of her flesh.  

I don’t understand why her mother married this man or why she lets him continue to beat her child. Why she doesn’t leave, why she doesn’t tell someone is a mystery all the way to the end. Later in the book we meet Valerie’s mother and stepfather, Uncle Teddy who went to law school. Uncle Teddy provides a buffer for June, but he treats her like a boy too and ridicules Valerie, his step-daughter for being a girl.

I love the passages where Jordan speaks about listening to language a different way, her economic enterprises-–she wins a poetry contest and learns that she could start a business, writing poems for her friends. I also appreciate her childhood rationale for the brutality she sees and witnesses from her father and from the police when they beat knock all her neighbor’s teeth out when they don’t believe he lives where he says he lives—sound familiar? I also appreciate June’s rationale and continued affection for her mother when her mother also starts knocking her down without warning.

She writes about going to the Dodgers games to see the handsome Jackie Robinson. She says her parents”acted like the Dodgers were going to save the world. They’d hired Jackie. . . . And Jackie could play, couldn’t he? Nothing was impossible anymore. And if Jackie hit a home run then the shouts and pounding feet could wake the dead” (247).

Despite all this, Jordan recalled how long a bus ride it took to find a good grocery store or fruit stand. She also writes about the first black Laundromat and how exciting it was to have such a business in the neighborhood. She writes about broken promises and straight As on report cards. Soldier is quite the journey and the voice, the voice is that of a little girl trying to learn her way through a mine field littered with cluster bombs which go off too frequently. Soldier is the story of immigration and how one family lives with the Pan African dissonance that occurs between the two cultures, American and Caribbean as represented by Jordan’s father and Uncle Teddy, two seemingly different, yet very similar men.  Soldier looks at beauty coupled with the African American color complex.  June was told often she was not beautiful, so she had to use her brain, but the little boys whom June liked, told her otherwise. Perhaps the most endearing aspect of Soldier is the author’s ability to juxtapose the good with the bad, more often than not, these attributes never the property of one single character which made these “good character" slips all the more surprising. June’s maternal grandparents offered a continuity for June not present anywhere else. Her grandmother and grandfather modeled a patience and love for family, June could wrap up and sleep next to at night; offer a seat to at the breakfast table, or hold in her pocket when she needed an ace to win yet another battle, a lone soldier on the field.

Youth Poet Laureate Call for Submissions

The Cities of Oakland and San Francisco are each about to gain new, young, and articulate representatives. For the first time ever, the Oakland Public Library and San Francisco Public Library, in partnership with Youth Speaks (the country’s leading nonprofit presenter of spoken word performance, education and youth development programs), are staging competitions that will result in two Youth Poet Laureates, one from each city. The winners will each be honored with $5,000 in scholarships and the opportunity to officially represent their communities through poetry, media, and public appearances. The search for talented young writers (age 13-18) begins Sunday, April 1 – just in time for National Poetry Month – when judges will begin accepting submissions. The deadline for all submissions is May 15. Finalists will be announced in early July, and the winners will be announced in September. Youth, parents and teachers can learn more and apply online at: www.youthspeaks.org/2012poetlaureate. To be eligible, finalists must be 13-18 years old and a current resident of the city for which they apply. Help sessions for applicants will be held in late April and early May. For more information contact Amy Sonnie at 510-238-7233.

Oakland International Film Festival @ 10 Year Anniversary

Oakland International Film Festival Friday-Sunday, April 6-8, at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Street, Oakland. Visit http://www.oiff.org/2012schedule.pdf


Being Elmo: A Puppeteer's Journey

Narrated by Whoopi Goldberg, "Being Elmo: A Puppeteer's Journey" chronicles the life story of Kevin Clash, the puppeteer behind the popular "Sesame Street" character Elmo.  The film screens on KQED Channel 9, Thursday, April 5  —  10:00pm  and Friday, April 6  —  4:00am. It also screens on the PBS Cable channels.

Hear the Cry II

April is Rape Awareness Month. I remember many years ago, on a Good Friday, drizzle present, the sky gray, the day cold, hundreds of people gathered in front of Oakland City Hall, 14th Street and Frank Ogawa Plaza, to bring attention sexually exploited and trafficked minors in Oakland. It was a good thing to do on Good Friday, a day that marks the death of something followed by rebirth. Wouldn’t it be great if, the instance of sexual exploitation and trafficking of minors was significantly impacted by what we do collectively in gatherings such as Hear the Cry. At Hear the Cry I, Assemblyman Sandre Swanson shared recently passed legislation which made conviction of perpetrators swifter with stuffer sentences, and in Oakland another official spoke about the decriminalization of the children who are victims and should be protected from harm, not blamed for its occurrence. 300 candles will be lit for the children’s lives. This year some of the confirmed speakers are:  The program is 5-7 p.m.  For information call: (510) 482-4656 or visit www.vooakland.org

Stopping Our Silence (SOS): Silencing the Inner Critic
This third annual healing conference and performance hosted by Lyric Dance and Vocal Ensemble & Osun 07 Fashions, is Saturday-Sunday, April 14-15, at On Stage Studio (Kids N’Dance), 3840 MacArthur Blvd., Oakland, (510) 434-6773 or This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it Saturday, April 14, from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. there is a free conference, followed at 7 p.m. by a performance for mature audiences. Facebook.com/StoppingOurSilence To listen to an interview with presenters visit: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/wandas-picks/2012/03/23/wandas-picks-radio-show

Theatre
Love Balm for My SpiritChild Staged Reading - Encores
Bay Area Mothers Use Theatre of Witness to Fight for Justice for Murdered Children

Love Balm for My SpiritChild: Testimonies of Healing Justice through Mothers' Memory is a 4-part healing performance workshop series that celebrates the spirit of commemorative justice in mothers. The Love Balm performance features testimonies from the mothers and grandmothers of Kenneth Harding Jr., Oscar Grant III, Kerry Baxter Jr., Christopher La Vell Jones, Daniel Booker and more. The performances will take place at The Black Dot Cafe in West Oakland on April 14 and 21 at 2 p.m. Tickets are sliding scale: $7.00 - $20.00 at the door. The performances are encores of the original reading at Eastside Arts Alliance in January, 2012.

One Life Institute’s Spirit Sound Silence Retreat
Gather for a day of spiritual renewal, inspiration, and healing surrounded by the beauty of nature. Retreats are held quarterly and meet on a Saturday from 10AM - 4PM (9:30AM arrival and registration).  This next one is April 21 at Holy Redeemer Center, 8945 Golf Links Rd., Oakland 94605. A hidden oasis at the foot of the Oakland Hills, it is 3/10ths mile west of the intersection of Hwy. 580 and 98th Ave. As you enter the wooded property and drive over the creek, look for the large meeting hall on your right. Visit http://www.onelifeinstitute.org/retreats.html Listen to an interview with Dr. Liza who along with the OneLife Angel Team facilitate the retreat at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/wandas-picks/2011/10/26/wandas-picks-special-wrevliza-j-rankow-destiny-harpist. Destiny Muhammad the "Harpist from the Hood,” also in the interview is the musical inspiration.

Tuition is based on a sliding scale $35 – 100 (more if you can / less if you can't -- no one turned away for lack of funds). Scholarships are available. Advance RSVP requested for planning purposes. Please e-mail OneLife at: This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it

Soweto Gospel Choir: Grammy-Winning South African Group @ Herbst Theatre at the San Francisco War Memorial Building, Thursday, April 5, 8 p.m. (401 Van Ness Ave San Francisco, CA 94102)

Hailing from South Africa, the 25-member Soweto Gospel Choir blends traditional, tribal and modern African gospel with Western spiritual sounds. Formed in 2002, they've won two Grammy Awards, worked with the likes of Robert Plant, and had multiple No. 1 albums on the Billboard World Music charts. The New York Times has hailed the group as having "a magnificently velvety blend" on songs that are "both spirited and spectacular." Soweto Gospel Choir's most recent album, 2010's African Grace, was also nominated for a Grammy Award.  I read that the event is sold-out, but show up anyway, there might be a ticket for sale or giveaway (smile).

On the Fly:
Stage Bridge Senior Theater Storytelling Concert, Sunday, April 29, 3:30 p.m., $10-12 at La Peña Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley. Visit www.lapena.org Jon Fromer with Friends and Family performs April 21, 8 p.m. also at La Peña Cultural Center. Julia Chigamba & Chinyakare Ensemble with special guest, Musekiwa Chingodza, at Ashkenaz Music and Dance Center, 1317 San Pablo Avenue, Berkeley, Saturday, April 7, 9 p.m. Visit www.ashkenaz.com Tickets are $12 in advance, $15 at the door. 1st Annual Bay Area Community College HIV/AIDS Hip Hop Showcase April 12, 2012, 6-9 p.m. Laney College Theatre, 900 Fallon Street. For information call (510) 689-3967 or This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it Keith Josef Adkins' The Final Days of Negro-Ville a part of the Rough Reading Series April 16 & 17, 2012, sponsored by the Playwrights Foundation with The Center For New Plays at Stanford University and Bay Area Theaters to present early drafts of new plays by rising national playwrights. Be a participant in the early development of a new work. Come every month, on a consecutive Monday or Tuesday evening to witness a new play in the making! Visit http://playwrightsfoundation.org/index.php?p=53 To RSVP email This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it or call 415.626.2176. Readings are free with a suggested $10 donation. To attend Stanford readings, email This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it Cal Performances: Sunday, April 1, 2012, Keith Jarrett performs at 8 p.m. in Zellerbach Auditorium at UC Berkeley. The concert celebrates the release of his newest solo piano CD Rio, recorded live in concert in April 2011, and considered by Jarrett to be his best solo piano recording since The Köln Concert. Thursday, April 19, 2012, 8 p.m., Seun Kuti with EGYPT 80. There will be a free preconcert talk in the lobby at 7 p.m. hosted by Chuy Varela, music director of KCSM radio and special guests, to be confirmed. Visit http://www.calperfs.berkeley.edu/performances/2011-12/world-stage/seun-kuti-felas-egypt-80.php   Cuttingball Theatre present: The Tenderloin by Annie Elias with the company, directed by Annie Elias is April 27 – May 27, 2012. In this ethnography, the denizens of this historic yet blighted area of San Francisco get to have their say, much the same way director Paige Bierma gives voice to the same population in her short film A Brush with the Tenderloin, which chronicle’s muralist Mona Caron work, a mural that incorporates a bit of history mixed with currency and future hope. Visit http://abrushwiththetenderloin.com/ and http://cache.blogtalkradio.com/wandas-picks/2011/10/05/wandas-picks-radio-show  SFJAZZ presents: Sierra Maestra performs April 4, 7:30 p.m. at YBCA Forum in San Francisco; Anoushka Snakar presents Traveller: A Raga-Flamenco Journey, Thursday, April 19, 2012 at the Herbst Theatre in San Francisco; Charles Lloyd New Quartet featuring Maria Farntouri, Sunday, April 22, 7 p.m. at the Herbst Theatre; Paco de Lucía, at the Paramount Theatre in Oakland, Friday, April 27, 8 p.m. Visit www.sfjazz.org for the complete lineup.

Film about Brother Malcolm X, El Hajj Malik El Shabazz

EastSide Arts Alliance and Malcolm X Grassroots Movement present...

FINAL FRIDAYS FILMS of Resistance and Solidarity – in the Spirit of Bandung 

his own story – as it really happened.  

Friday April 27, 2012 @ 7pm at 

EastSide Cultural Center, 

2277 International Blvd, Oakland with 

delicious healthy refreshments, community discussion 

wheelchair accessible, FREE event

Malcolm X, the 1972 documentary directed by Arnold Perl, was conceived in 1969, four years after the human rights activist's assassination. Initially intended as a drama, in the end, producer Marvin Worth and Perl created an in-depth documentary film. Betty Shabazz, Malcolm X's widow, served as a consultant to the filmmakers.

Final Fridays Films of Resistance and Solidarity, a free 

monthly community event produced by EastSide Arts 

Alliance (ESAA), is supported in part by a grant from the 

National Endowment for the Arts and screens on the last 

Friday of every month. ESAA is dedicated to uniting art with 

activism to work for community empowerment and cultural 

development, and to build bridges between the disenfran

chised, racially and ethnically divided communities that b

eside in Oakland, CA.

Music @ Floyd Pellom's 57th Street Gallery

Dr. Terence Elliott, an accomplished pianist, composer and producer as well as an educator of humanities and music, performs at the 57th Street Gallery, 57th Street and Telegraph in Oakland, Saturday, April 28, 2012; 8:30-11:00 p.m. with Greg Simmons, bass; Mike Spencer, drums. The doors open at 5 p.m. There is a $15.00 admission   

Bow Hammer Skins  @ 57th Street Gallery, 57th Street and Telegraph

Bower Hammer Skins is a Bay Area based jazzed quartet featuring vocalist RAJA, Herb Ruffin on keyboards, Karese Young on Viola and Mike "Phat Foot" McCoy on drums.  The group performs originals and jazz standards.
(Sunday, April 29, 2012; 6:00pm-9:00pm and doors open at 5:00pm) There is a $12.00-$15.00 admission cost.
For information call 510-654-6974  or email This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it or visit www.57thStreetGallery.com

Quijeremá Perform with Special Guest

Quijeremá will be performing with special guest guitarist Alex de Grassi at Yoshi’s Jack London Square, Thursday, April 12, at Yoshi's Oakland. For more information visit: http://www.quijerema.com

SheRose of Our Time: A Tribute to The First Lady, Michelle Obama @ Joyce Gordon Gallery

Curated by Eric Murphy this exhibition which features the work of 13 women and one man, is pretty phenomenal—does this writer know any other words for great, fantastic, superb, outstanding—yes, I know you have been counting the phonemes which sound like “f.” How can a writer get tongue tied? You might ask. Her business is words. Is her pencil lead broken or bitten off? Not exactly, but I have been sitting here writing for about eight hours—I am so past my deadline, I might be writing this for myself (smile).

March got off to a bang at JGG and April has excellent programming lined up, including the special and anticipated “Joyce Awards” Thursday, April 5, 5-7 p.m. This exhibit features the work of some of the SF Bay’s more powerful artistic voices, including women who are reviving silenced voices whether that is a language, as is the case with Christine Balza with her Babayin Script, an indigenous script for the Filipino people or Flo Oy Wong who gives voice to her sister, Li Hong I who is now mute in a variety of mediums—canvas, ribbons made from rice sacks anchored with kindling sticks and a dress with tiny framed images, or Karen Seneferu who in collaboration with Kemba Shakur of Urban Releaf, an organization that brings green ecological excitement to concretized communities –this excitement is illustrated in Karen’s ribbon people (my name). One looks at the wall in the back room and after listening to Kemba’s interview, care of the Oakland Museum—if you saw the John Muir exhibit, then you heard her interview. Karen has created a community around the hotspots, indicated by pushpins where Urban Releaf has planted trees. When all circuits are intact, one can see a projection of a city map, but I liked the idea of seeding a nation one tree at a time. These red ribbons leaning on one another look to have a single thread connected a synergy and the symbiosis as evident as the connection between the boy soldiers in Sudan or Congo is connected to the story of child soldiers in Oakland.  Karen rolls like that, or I should say, sets us up like that (smile). Seneferu’s work, Boy Soldier, is an installation, conical with a head atop the structure, below an assemblage of small personal items. This artist’s work always gives one pause. . . . If one is rushing, one has to stop and still the chaos which her work often facilitates. Betty Nobue Kano is within her person a movement, whether that is her work creating a space for Asian American women to create and exhibit work, to her long time work with Cuba, evident in one of the pieces, a serigraph with Andres Cisneros, Make Trade with Cuba. Like Joan Brown, Kano works large and I remember speaking to her years ago about her process and she said she paints to live jazz. Musician friends come to her studio to play while she paints. I love her Amimi Singing and To Be Joyous I. In one work, there is a singular line across the horizon of the canvas; small circular strokes on a black surface create a delightfully dense texture.

Judy Stone’s series of enamel on copper bowls and other vessels are intriguing, while Deborah Lozier’s Balancing Act and Wedding line as object, enamel and Patina on copper, the former enamel on copper and steel. Such a delicate topic on such durable matter. Joan Finton’s photography is exquisite, many of the images dark with lightning moments. I like L.Frank’s titles: Vanishing Point, Even where the ancestors live, Stone Bowl. She is sharing the second part of the afternoon with Christine Balza, Saturday, April 7, 3-4 p.m. (Christine 1-3). Judy Stone is hosting an enamel workshop at The Crucible. Visit www.thecrucible.org The Saturday, April 14, 1-4 p.m. there will be a public forum with Urban Releaf. The Joyce Gordon Gallery is located at 406 14th Street (at 12th Street BART exit). Call (510) 465-8928 or This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it

Down The Congo Line

Dimensions Dance Theatre presents: DOWN THE CONGO LINE, an evening of dance choreographed by LaTanya d. Tigner and Isaura Oliveira, directed by Dimensions Dance Theater artistic director Deborah Vaughan
The show is Saturday, April 14, 2012, 8 p.m. at the Malonga Casquelourde Center (1428 Alice Street @ 14th Street, Oakland. Tickets are $20 in advance,  $25 at the door, children under 18yrs $15 available through brownpapertickets.com or at the Malonga Center, Dimensions Dance Theater office, 3rd floor, M-F 4-7 p.m. For information: 510 465-3363 or dimensionsdance.org The performance at Diamano Coura’s Collage des Africains was just a smidgen, just a taste, the full production will have live music provided by MJ’s Brass Boppers, Katrina Diaspora Survivors living in the SF Bay, plus Kiazi Malonga, lead drummer for Fua Dia Congo with other drummers from his troupe; and Abel Damasceno Moura and Vinicius Oliveira accompanied by other percussionists. Listen to an extended interview with choreographers and DDT director: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/wandas-picks/2012/03/16/wandas-picks-radio-show

Theatre
Pearl Cleage’s Blues for an Alabama Sky

Lorraine Hansberry Theatre’s Blues for an Alabama Sky by Pearl Cleage, directed by Michele Shay, featuring Robert Gossett (TNT’s The Closer), opens April 7, with previews April 4-6. The run at LHT, 450 Post Street, San Francisco, is April 4-May 12, 2012. Visit www.lhtsf.org or call (415) 474-8800.

John Brown*s Truth
Musically improvised theatre, William Crossman’s John Brown’s Truth directed by Michael Lange, is back for a three consecutive Sunday run, beginning, April 15, 7:30, April 22, 7:30 and April 29, 7:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley, (510) 849-2568 ext. 20. Crossman’s work uses Afro-Caribbean, jazz, European classical, spoken word, and dance to tell the story of abolitionists John Brown’s anti-slavery raid on Virginia 150 years ago. Visit johnbrownstruthmusical.com

The Women's Film Institute presents the 8th Annual International Women's Film Festival
 
The Women's Film Institute presents the 8th Annual San Francisco International Women's Film Festival, a comprehensive, compelling three-day lineup of films directed by women. The 2012 selection of diverse films celebrates the exceptional contributions of women in the world of cinema and represents a convergence of excellence in filmmaking from talented women worldwide. From a documentary about President Obama's sister to a hilarious date-night comedy from a woman's point of view, to a series of selected shorts from around the world, the festival promises three days of exciting and memorable films. Please see the full event description for the schedule of screenings.

Films screen at the Roxie Cinema, 3117 16th Street (at Valencia Street), San Francisco, CA 94103, (415) 863-1087, San Francisco Women's Film Festival, http://www.sfiwff.com

April 13, 2012 at 7:30pm: SFIWFF Opening Night -- http://sfiwff.festivalgenius.com

The Education of Auma Obama

Branwen Okpako's The Education of Auma Obama is a captivating and intimate portrait of the U.S. president's older half-sister, who embodies a post-colonial, feminist identity. An academic overachiever, she studied linguistics and contemporary dance in Heidelberg, Germany, before enrolling in film school in Berlin, where she met Nigerian-born director Okpako in the nineties. After living in the United Kingdom for a short period, Auma Obama eventually moved back to Kenya to mentor a young generation of community activists, social workers and other ambitious young men and women who lacked her privileged education and training, but were nonetheless determined to make a positive contribution to their society.

A San Francisco Bay Area premiere.

April 13, 2012: Morir de Pie (Die Standing Up)
When faced with a fatal illness, the son of Mexican communist militants, a promoter of socialism and the Cuban Revolution, with a great physical and ideological resemblance to Che Guevara, decides to undertake a personal revolution, to welcome the woman he has always had inside him. Handicapped and discriminated, Irina Layevska defies adversity and faces life with her true self supported on this journey by her lifelong partner, Nelida. A story of courage to live and love that has no gender. A San Francisco Bay Area premiere.

April 14, 2012 at 3:00pm: Butterfly Rising
When her brother dies, singer Lilah Belle sets out to escape her grief and embarks on a road trip, but not before coaxing the new-to-town, most scandalous woman in Artesia — Rose Johnson — to go with her. These two broken souls steal a vintage truck and head out on the open road to a fated encounter with the mythical, magical Lazarus of the Butterflies. What occurs with the strange Butterfly Man transforms their destinies and binds the women to each other forever. Director Tanya Wright (Deputy Kenya Jones on HBO's True Blood) will be appearing in person for a Q&A after the film screening.

April 14, 2012 at 7:30pm: Connected: An Autobiography About Love, Death & Technology
Have you ever faked a restroom trip to check your email? Slept with your laptop? Or become so overwhelmed that you just unplugged from it all? In this funny, eye-opening, and inspiring film, Director Tiffany Shlain takes audiences on an exhilarating rollercoaster ride to discover what it means to be connected in the 21st century. From founding The Webby Awards to being a passionate advocate for The National Day of Unplugging, Shlain’s love/hate relationship with technology serves as the springboard for a thrilling exploration of modern life…and our interconnected future. Equal parts documentary and memoir, the film unfolds during a year in which technology and science literally become a matter of life and death for the director. As Shlain’s father battles brain cancer and she confronts a high-risk pregnancy, her very understanding of connection is challenged. Using a brilliant mix of animation, archival footage, and home movies, Shlain reveals the surprising ties that link us not only to the people we love but also to the world at large. A personal film with universal relevance, Connected explores how, after centuries of declaring our independence, it may be time for us to declare our interdependence instead. Director Tiffany Shlain will be appearing in person for a Q&A after the screening.

April 15, 2012 at 3:00pm: Poetry of Resilience
Poetry of Resilience is a documentary by Academy Award-nominated director Katja Esson about six international poets (Li-Young Lee, Lillian Boraks-Nemetz, Majid Naficy, Alexandre Kimenyi, Yashuhiko Shigemoto, Choman Hardi) who individually survived Hiroshima, the Holocaust, China's Cultural Revolution, the Kurdish Genocide in Iraq, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Iranian Revolution. These six artists present us with a close-up perspective of the "wide shot" of political violence. Each story is powerful, but the film’s strength comes from its collective voice: different political conflicts, cultures, genders, ages, races – one shared human narrative.

A San Francisco Bay Area premiere, Poetry of Resilience will be preceded by the short films "Lady Razorbacks," "Blank Canvas" and "The Barber of Birmingham." In addition, ITVS (Independent Television Service) will present sneak previews of upcoming films to be featured in their Women and Girls Lead public media campaign, including Half the Sky, a miniseries based on the best-selling book by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn.

April 15, 2012 at 5:15pm: Perfection
Directed by Christina Beck

Kristabelle, still living with her mother, cuts herself in an effort to feel alive. Her mother, addicted to plastic surgery, also allows herself to be cut in a desperate effort to maintain her youth. Through the help of a pot-smoking young lover, a newly sober British stand-up comic and Chinese medicine, they find that love can be more than skin deep.
Director Christina Beck will be appearing in person for a Q&A after the film screening.

April 15, 2012 at 8:00pm: SFIWFF Closing Night: That's What She Said
Bebe (Marcia DeBonis) is getting ready for the most romantic date of her life, and she needs her BFF (Anne Heche) there to cheer her on. Too bad about the whole bitter and jaded thing. And the clingy stranger with the bad habit (Alia Shawkat). And the rain. And the barf. And, oh yeah, the thing with the dildo. Friendship. It’s amazing how hard it can get. That's what she said! Written by Kellie Overbey. Directed by Carrie Preston (Arlene on HBO's True Blood). Writer Kellie Overbey will be appearing in person for a Q&A after the screening.


The San Francisco Women's Film Festival (SFWFF) mission is to honor, showcase and facilitate the creation of films that are directed or co-directed by women. Women's Film Institute (WFI) was established to address the under representation of women in the film and media industries. WFI's mission is to honor, showcase, and facilitate the creation of films directed or co-directed by women. WFI achieves its mission by supporting, promoting, exhibiting, and honoring the achievements and contributions of women in the world of cinema.

SACRED MUSIC, SUNDAY FELLOWSHIP | Carlos Aldama's Life in Batá with Dr. Umi Vaughan
Sunday April 22, 2012 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm

Join us for a demonstration of Afrocuban/Yoruba music and dance by Carlos Aldama and Umi Vaughan with the group Emese, Messengers of the African Diaspora and musicians from Oshogbo, Nigeria. Dr. Vaughan will speak on his recent book, Carlos Aldama’s Life in Batá: Cuba, Diaspora, and the Drum. Through one man’s journey, the book traces the history of the batá from Africa to Cuba and the U.S., and documents the inventions and tensions inherent to the movement of the batá tradition between shores and generations. This book gives an intimate perspective on an African apprenticeship system in the Americas: how the batá drums are played, how they are integrated into a religious liturgy, but also how their practice affects the individuals who swear themselves to the drum. In doing so, the book simultaneously reveals the interactions and relationships among the vying and positional diaspora communities that provide batá specialists their life work. The program will be followed by a booksigning.

Umi Vaughan is an artist and anthropologist who explores dance, creates photographs and performances, and publishes about African Diaspora culture. He has conducted extensive anthropological research in Cuba about Afrocuban music and dance, and created numerous scholarly presentations, art exhibits, and cultural events in the U.S. and abroad. Dr. Vaughan is currently Assistant Professor of Africana Studies at California State University, Monterey Bay.

Carlos Aldama is a master batá drummer from Havana, Cuba. He is a founding member of Conjunto Folklórico Nacional de Cuba (1962). His life has been dedicated to the teaching and the performance of Afrocuban music. This passion and commitment to the rich life of Cuban people have seen him teach and perform music throughout Europe, Latin America, the Caribbean, and Africa.

Free with MoAD Admission.

REQUIEM FOR THE DEATH PENALTY, A Series of Events

Art Reception
April 21 (Sat) 6-9pm- Reception at 111 Minna Gallery, San Francisco

COME 6-7PM-- AND ENJOY A HOSTED WINE BAR BY SKY VINEYARDS (NAPA), DOMAINE DROUHIN (OR), AND BENZIGER AND HOOLEY (SONOMA).  DELANCEY STREET RESTAURANT AND NOE VALLEY DELI WILL PROVIDE REFRESHMENTS.  SCHARLETTE HOLDMAN IS OUR HOSTESS FOR THE EVENING, WITH JEANNIE STERNBERG AND GARY SOWARDS PRESENTING THE AWARDS TO THE LETHAL INJECTION TEAM. Malaquias Montoya will be featuring his Books/prints; Live jazz featuring Harrison Goldberg on sax; Nonhost full bar 6-9pm.

Films
April 22 (Sun) 10:30am- Film: Procedure 769: Witnesses to an Execution, (Q&A's afterwards)
Landmark Shattuck Theater, Berkeley

A VERY MOVING DOCUMENTARY BY DUTCH FILMMAKER JAAP VAN HOEWIJK-- A MUST SEE![Earlier showing: April 17 (Newman Hall, Berkeley)]

Survivors' Panel
April 22 (Sun) 3-5:30pm- Interfaith Gathering of People of Faith at Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology, Berkeley

A SURVIVORS' PANEL DISCUSSION AND AN INTERFAITH SERVICE WHERE PRAYERS AND INVITATIONS TO HEALING WILL BE OFFERED BY FATHER LOUIS VITALI (TENT.), RABBIS DEBORA KOHN AND MICHAEL LERNER, ALAN SAUNEKE, REV. ROBERT CROMEY, SISTER MARIANNE FARINA AND OTHERS.

Theatre
April 23 & 24 (Mon/Tues) 7PM- Staged readings of Michael Kroll's Play- "Just Like a Dog"
Shotgun Players Ashby Stage, Berkeley

STARRING SCHARLETTE HOLDMAN, CLIFF GARDNER, ANDY LOVE, SCOTT KAUFFMAN, CORNELIA BUSSE, JAMES GEAGAN, DORSEY NUNN AND CHARLIE PIZARRO!

COME OUT AND SUPPORT THOSE WHO HAVE FOUGHT AGAINST CAPITAL PUNISHMENT!
 

The Old Settler: A Review

John Henry Redwood’s play, The Old Settler at Black Repertory Group Theatre has been extended April 5-8, Thursday-Friday, 8 p.m., Saturday, 3 and 8 p.m. and Sunday, Easter Sunday, 5 p.m. Produced for Women’s History Month, this play looks at the relationships between three generations of women: Elizabeth, Quilly and Lou Bessie, all ironically attached to the apron strings of one Husband Witherspoon (actor Clarence “Ray” Johnson Jr.). It is a play that looks at honor and fidelity, kinship, especially that between women society judges past their prime, as if value could be judged by shelf life or refrigeration—neither the case in the 1940s when one kept items cold with blocks of ice. But I digress. This Bay Area production is directed by Tico “Choir Boy” Wells, one of the original cast members in the play when it first opened at The Mc Carter Theatre in Princeton, NJ and The Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, CT in 1997. The original production was directed by Walter Dallas. Since then the play has been done numerous times including a television production with Debbie Allen and Phylicia Rashad. The play which boasts a stellar cast at BRGT, also looks at what happens when one migrates north where often, as is the case with the youngest woman, Lou Bessie (Tavia Percia), there is no one waiting for you. The opposite is true for Quilly (Paula Martin) whose sister Elizabeth (Angel Lands) provides shelter for her younger sister in Harlem when their mother dies and the younger sister relocates.

I’ve seen several interpretations of The Old Settler and until the current production at Black Rep; I didn’t know there was another way to play it. In the capable hands of the current cast with first one then another director, the newest Dr.Arletha “Angel” Lands, whose also appears as Elizabeth, Lou Bessie’s rival, the play which is about an older woman who rents a room to a young man and the two fall in love, is deepened when actor Clarence Ray Johnson Jr.’s “Husband,” conveys a genuine love for Elizabeth and the decision reached about their relationship more hers than his.  This not only allows Elizabeth’s character more control and a way to save face; it also leaves space for the two sisters to reclaim their severed ties.

Is the playwright hinting here that sisterhood is a stronger bond than any transitory or temporal relationship with a man, young or old? Is he also saying, in his juxtaposition of a young hot thing, Lou Bessie and Elizabeth, who reminds Husband of his recently deceased mother, that when one changes or loses the values which build strong character, then one loses herself, which is what happens to Lou Bessie who compromises, perhaps even leases if not sells her soul, to stay in her beloved Harlem? Husband refuses to follow her lead, even if he seems to follow her everywhere else.

People take a lot when they are lonely; they are also extremely vulnerable when they are alone as well. Elizabeth is prime for the take, yet, this Husband is gentle with her and I appreciate that, especially in 2012 when The Old Settler Factor is real for a lot of women who are getting infected with HIV disease, losing their homes and possessions to men younger than they. And then there is Lou Bessie who one cannot altogether fault for playing her cards right to get with the in -crowd, even if that means sleeping with her child’s father, Bucket, at night, while cleaning for a white woman, by day. She latches onto Husband, flattered he came north to find her. She also knows he has land and money, so why not "play" or take advantage of the country hick? However, Clarence Ray Johnson Jr.’s character might be from a small town, but he certainly is not small minded or as naïve or in love as she thinks. A single mother, whose child is being raised by her mother back home, Lou Bessie a.k.a. Charmaine seems to be careening along in a caboose without a driver.  

Just because one is called an old settler, and in Elizabeth’s case “an old old settler,” does not mean the woman is willing to “settle.” She is excited and in love, but she is not a fool. Perhaps if John Henry Redwood would have pushed the envelope and let the affair work out as it might have if set in another place or time. One wonders if when there is a span of over ten years between partners is it love or lust or usury or a little of both?

The set and sound design are also really wonderful.  BRGT is located at 3201 Adeline Street, Berkeley. For information call (510) 652-2120. Visit http://blackrepertorygroup.com/Main_Stage.html

55th Annual San Francisco International Film Festival April 19-May 3

What is it about a love story that pulls one in? Is it the lovely people, the tragedy our love of weeping while guests in another person’s tragedy— Right, it can always be worst that what we let on, so we learn to let go. For the artistically inclined especially if one is a filmmaker as Terence Nance is, he mends his heart over a treatment and then short film, How Would You Feel? This film becomes the catalyst for the runaway hit at Sundance, where the director both won best film for his first feature, The Oversimplification of Her Beauty, he also wowed the audiences with his live musical performance. What I loved about the film which still intrigues me was its nonlinear format and the musicality of its imagery, whether it is cartoon, claymation, or black and white or color, documentary format or surrealism. At one point, when granted I was lost, I just admired its artistry and beauty. Oversimplification is a lovely work—filled with people who are black and beautiful—now how often does one see a film like that?

As the protagonist takes us on his internal journey, he occasionally stops to catch us up, since this treatment is both a film and a novel—and a class project. It gets messy and when it does, stay with it and just let the images take you where they will—what’s important to the narrative will make sense. Boy meets girl. Girl likes boy. They break up because from what I can glean, he doesn’t know how to tell her what’s on his heart. I don’t know if his exploration via the film helps or not, but I think it will help audiences who might be stuck in a similar space where nothing is simple in love, but it’s not complicated either (smile). This is not a documentary, but it is based on something that happened to the director and the woman in the film, is actually the woman in his heart at one point. But then, I could be totally wrong. An Oversimplification is rightly titled, and as such defies description (smile). You have to go see it for yourself. On his website, the director has other films, shorts, which he is not thinking of making into features—there is one Clap, I highly recommend given Trayvon Martin and the child who inspired the work, Ayanna Jones, a nine year old girl murdered and burned alive by the police in Detroit, Michigan. The work is Clap is Pharoahe Monch’s first visual from W.A.R. (We Are Rengades). Visit http://media.mvmt.com/2011/03/14/clap-a-short-film/ The director and I had a wonderful conversation Friday, March 30, 2012 about An Oversimplification, Clap and the film he is working on presently, music and his album coming out soon. Visit http://www.blogtalkradio.com/wandas-picks/2012/03/30/wandas-picks-radio-show

The film which has its California premiere at the 55th Annual San Francisco International Film Festival, April 22, 8:30 p.m. at PFA, will screen three more times in San Francisco at the Sundance Kabuki: MON APR 30  9:00 p.m., TUE MAY 1, 12:15 p.m. and WED. MAY 2, 4:00 p.m. The director will be in town for the San Francisco screenings and for the Sacramento International Film Festival also this month. Visit http://www.sffs.org/ and  http://www.sacramentofilmfestival.com/

Check back later on-line for other recommendations for the SFIFF. 

Art
Black Flight: Our Sojourn. Our Connections. Our Stories, is in the Hall of Culture, 3rd Floor, 762 Fulton Street, San Francisco, through Sunday, June 17.  I enjoyed walking though this exhibit during and after intermission at the African American Shakespeare production: Julius Caesar. Phenomenal production. I perused the Black Dolls exhibition first, which appealed to me in varying degrees. Uneven, the dolls which used craftsmanship appealed to me more. There were just too many Cabbage Patch dolls and others like this, which while certainly a part of a collection, left out the more obscure dolls like “Little Souls,” the pendant dolls in a locket I had which one could wear around her neck, the child size doll I got when I was maybe 6 or 7. I could hold her hand and walk with her, the Chatty Cathy –older and younger, which I owned as well. I was a doll collector and I gave away my collection when I reached 18 and got married and moved away from home. Since then, I have started a new collection, so while this show, curated by Neshormeh Lindo has its virtues, the breath is limited especially given the huge black doll craftswomen who host a show yearly in the fall in Oakland. There one can see black dolls going back to the early nineteen century, as well as craftwomanship featuring both abstract and classical Pan African dolls of all sizes and shapes and materials. I have purchased a few and received others as presents. Some of these dolls made from cornhusks remind me of the wooden dolls I have from Quilombos in Brazil.

Upstairs though, I was amazed by the wonderful photography and murals looking at the African presence throughout the world, in places like Vietnam and Germany. While most of the photographs were on the wall, there were several artists whose work was installed in as slide shows. I really loved the one with work from the artist’s trip to Haiti. I loved the photographs from Congo, South Asia, Mexico and my daughter, TaSin Yasmin’s photographs of her work in Madagascar. Dr. Marcus Lorenzo Penn’s photographs of Ghana are at this point iconographic given the many exhibitions they have graced since the one at the African American Center at the San Francisco Main Library many years ago, the Float Gallery in Oakland and last year’s Maafa event at the Oakland Main Library where we had a Teen Poetry Reading and a screening of Traces of the Trade. Dr. Penn’s photographs are so lovely, and when one thinks about Ghana, his imagery inevitably comes to mind (smile). The exhibition is a beautiful statement about the beauty that is Pan Africa. I wish there were on-going conversations between the artists and the public throughout the exhibit in response to the query the curator posited:  Where are we going? What is carrying us across the waters? How do we define this new expatriate experience, not to mention the cultural connections theses artists from America made on their trips and the stories these photos hold. All exhibitions are FREE and open to the public Tuesday - Saturday 12 Noon - 5 p.m.

The Forum: Conversations at YBCA

The Forum: Conversations at YBCA is a new quarterly series of moderated conversations with policy makers, activists, cultural figures, and innovators of national prominence. The series exemplifies YBCA’s ongoing commitment to serving as a communal meeting place for the discussion and dissemination of contemporary ideas.

In this debut program, YBCA welcomes Kamala Harris, the Attorney General of the State of California. Harris is the first female, the first African-American and the first Asian-American elected to this office. She has gained widespread recognition for her role in negotiating a nationwide settlement with major American banks over home foreclosure abuses and for her views on the death penalty, internet privacy and same-sex marriage. Harris will be joined on stage by award-winning, nationally-known journalist Farai Chideya, whose reporting has been featured in Newsweek, The New York Times, and on National Public Radio.

Wed, Apr 18, 7 p.m. in the YBCA Forum, Third @ Mission in San Francisco. $20 General Admission, $10 YBCA Members. Regular admission available April 1, 2012.

Take advantage of SPECIAL ADVANCE SALE 50% OFFER. Offer Expires April 7, 2012 - PROMO CODE: KAMALA10


April at YBCA
David Zambrano: Soul Project, Fri, Apr 27, 8 pm, Sat, Apr 28, 8 pm in the YBCA Forum

YBCA welcomes internationally renowned choreographer David Zambrano, a monumental figure in the international dance community for more than a quarter century, with his newest work, Soul Project, a series of virtuosic solos set to live recordings of classic soul tunes by such artists as Aretha Franklin, Ike & Tina Turner and Gladys Knight & The Pips. This performance is part of a debut U.S. tour of Soul Project produced by MAPP International Productions.

Alonzo King LINES Ballet: Spring Home Season
Thu, Apr 12 – Sun, Apr 22, Admission: $30-65 at the Novellus Theater at YBCA, Third at Howard Street in San Francisco

Alonzo King LINES Ballet presents their Spring Home Season, including Triangle of the Squinches, a collaboration with musician Mickey Hart and architect Christopher Haas, and Scheherazade, a re-envisioning of stories from 1001 Nights. Visit: http://ybca.org/



All of Us or None at OMCA

The Oakland Museum of CA: All of Us or None: Social Justice Posters of the San Francisco Bay Area and The 1968 Exhibit both up March 31-August 19, 2012 Visit museumca.org or (510) 318-8453. A film series, Final Fridays starts April 27, 8:30-10:30 p.m., also on final Fridays from 5-9 p.m. OMCA Summer Nights, with half price admission, and from April to July, Amoeba Records DJs spin hits from 1968. /

I completely missed the press preview, but I informed Kelly, publicist that I might not make it—it’s too hard getting to an event on a Friday after a radio broadcast. It involves a lot of preparation and then the actual production I am literally sitting on needles until it is over, no matter how early I woke up to prepare, how well the conversation is going technically and in the studio, I enjoy the shows more once I can sit back and just listen to the podcast. So I arrive and there are these busloads of kids inside. I find out that it is a national day of dance at museums and this cast of artists are about to dance down the stairs and throughout the open galleries—hum, can I watch this and visit the exhibit. Adam gives me an imperceptible nod – which makes me rethink my priorities—I pass on the dance production, but I was certainly tempted. Later on that evening at Sheena Johnson’s opening night performance where I saw Raissa Simpson, director, PUSH Dance Company, I learned that she was one of the dancers at OM, and I missed her—darn!  She has something big coming up in May, Jewels in the Square in San Francisco. Stay tuned.

Anyway I visited All of Us or None, guest curated by James Comisar, first—for those who were there and perhaps recall the posters this will be a nostalgic stroll through memory lane. True to the new Oakland Museum mission, there are iPod kiosks where patrons can log access posters and add lore to the narrative, especially where they first saw it and who painted it—like an OM Wiki links. Visit www.the1968exhibit.org

In the center of the gallery there is a workshop space where printmakers will set up shop and demonstrate printmaking techniques and give away the posters. I recognized many posters and artists by name. Many of the images were humorous. I recall a similar exhibit years ago at SFMOMA on music.

When one arrives at the end of a press preview, she misses all the special talks by luminaries like Comisar and the curator from the Minnesota History Center where 1968 originated. The exhibition will be traveling the country through 2014. The open gallery where one can trace the events monthly before entering the exhibit which, though labeled is rather difficult, at times to decide—what month is this? Where am I? Clearly when faced with the medial helicopter with recorded narratives of four soldiers who speak about the war while actual footage cycles on a screen behind the gurney. When one looks up and sees the span of the helicopter wings and thinks of the TV show MASH which, I didn’t know was actually filmed in California.

Not far away there is a TV room where one can sit on pillows (I think) and watch old shows like Bewitched, the film, The Planet of the Apes, and other shows like The Brady Bunch. TV Guides paper the installation which looks like the inside of Dick Clark’s American Bandstand Studio. The Republican National Convention is there, and I remember Chairman Bobbie Seale’s being chained in the trial known as the Chicago 8. His run for president is also shown in the exhibit, as is Black Panther Party memorabilia circa 1968.

What I really like in 1968 is the section where the helicopter sits; near the door there is a shot of Arlington Cemetery where graves dot a landscape, an actual grave marker there in the installation. What is remarkable is the way the light and camera imagery interact to give one a variety of views, from personal to national—the cost of war in lives. This exhibit certainly does not celebrate conflict, given the variety of voices present in an exhibition where two national heroes were killed President JFK and Dr. Martin King. The train that took his body from New York to DC shows in photographs the sorrow this nation felt over the death of this man. Now contrast this installation which has photographs taken from the train in a slide projection—with the pew where one can sit and watch Martin King give his last speech, and then see the place where he was killed, the funeral procession and his young family. There is even a copy of the Obsequies dated April 9, 1968, 10:30 a.m. Ebenezer Baptist Church, 2:00 p.m. The Campus of Morehouse College, Atlanta, Georgia, on display.

Strong imagery.

Both exhibitions make one think about the past in a new way, and it is great that so many public programs are planned to give the community an opportunity to express this views as they engage one another in a discourse that places the issues addressed in the political posters and in the 1968 political discourse in another context. What have we learned from the past, if anything that could eliminate the need to retrace the trek of discontent, disillusion, and defeat? 1968 was an election year. There is a voter machine that one can use to elect the candidate of one’s choice (smile).

I also like the simulation of the Apollo space capsule, the news coverage yet another multimedia aspect of this thoughtful and well -constructed exhibition from January: “The Living Room War,” February: “We’re Losing The War,” Lounge—TV & Movies; March: “”The Generation Gap,” April: “I Have Been to the Mountaintop,” May: I Am Somebody,” June: “The Death of Hope,” Lounge—Music; July: “Love It or Leave It,” August: “Welcome to Chicago,” September: “Sisterhood is Powerful,” Lounge—Style; October: “Power to the People.” A key object here is the torch from the 1968 Olympics and an American Indian Movement jean jacket. November: “The Votes Are In.” Key objects voting booth, Nixon buttons. Although Kennedy is winning in Oakland (OM 2012); he loses nationally (smile). December: “In the Beginning.” We come full circle as we enter a room decorated the same as that in the January section. What does this mean? We’ve traveled 12 months, 365 days and it is as if we never left home. Scary thought.

In California there are a number of notable moments, among them, January 6, the first adult human-to-human heart transplant operation in the United States is performed at Stanford University Medical Center. Johnny Cash backed by June Carter, Carl Perkins, and the Tennessee Three, performs his famous concert at Folsom prison January 13.  February 12, Eldridge Cleaver published Soul on Ice. The film Easy Rider goes into production completed by summer. March 5 is the date of a walk out by Mexican American students at two Los Angeles high schools which set in motion a massive protest movement for Chicano studies and bilingual education. Luis Rodriguez, award winning author of Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A. and the recent, It Calls You Back: An Odyssey Through Love, Addiction,  is one of the leaders of this movement. 

Significant dates in California during March and April 1968 are: March 10, Cesar Chavez ends a twenty-five day fast in Delano, California, in protest of the violence against striking migrant farm workers. April 6, two days after Martin King is assassinated, Bobby Hutton is killed in a police shoot out at de Fremery Park, West Oakland. April 10, at the annual Oscar ceremony in LA, the drama, In the Heat of the Night, is named Best Picture of 1967. It starred Sidney Poitier, Rod Steiger, and Warren Oates, and was directed by Norman Jewison.

Black Panther Party at the Oakland Public Library, plus other programming

April 7 LET US NOT FORGET History and art by Black Panther Party Minister of Culture Emory Douglas. West Oakland Branch, 1801 Adeline Street, Oakland, (510) 238-7352, 1 - 4 pm
 
Also at the Oakland Public Library: April 20 E-GOVERNMENT MADE EASY Learn how to navigate government resources online. Main Library, 10 - 11:30 am; April 25 MYSTERIOUS PLACES An evening with best-selling mystery writers Cara Black, Rys Bowen, and Owen Steinhauer. Main Library, 6 - 8 pm; April 28 LUNCH BUCKET PARADISE A book talk with author Fred Setterberg. Dimond Branch, 2 - 3:30 p.m. Link to Oakland Public Library Events: http://www.eventkeeper.com/code/events.cfm?curOrg=OAKLAND

http://www.oaklandlibrary.org/PR/pr032812youth_poet_loreate.pdf

Community Forum on Solitary Confinement

The Outer Limits of Solitary Confinement: A Public Forum to Support the California Prisoner Hunger Strike, Friday, April 6, 2012, 6pm - 8pm at UC Hastings College of the Law, Louis B. Mayer Lounge, 198 McAllister Street, San Francisco.

This free San Francisco event organized by the International Coalition to Free the Angola 3 and co-hosted by the Hastings Race and Poverty Law Journal and the Hastings chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, will mark 40 years of solitary confinement for Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox of the Angola 3, by exploring the expansion and overuse of solitary confinement, and mobilizing support for the Amnesty International Petition to remove them from solitary confinement and support for the California Hunger Strikers. Includes Keynote with Angola 3’s Robert H. King, 2 films and additional speakers.

The International Coalition to Free the Angola 3 stands in solidarity with the courageous prisoners that recently initiated hunger strikes throughout California prisons ( www.prisonerhungerstrikesolidarity.wordpress.com/). The event will examine how the torture and wrongful convictions of the Angola 3 are part of a much larger problem throughout US prisons. With presentations from several speakers involved with supporting the hunger strikers, the audience will be presented with many ways in which they too can lend their support in the fight against solitary confinement and other forms of torture in California prisons.

The keynote speaker will be Robert H. King, of the Angola 3, who was released in 2001 when his conviction was overturned, after 29 years of continuous solitary confinement. King says today that “being in prison, in solitary was terrible. It was a nightmare. My soul still cries from all that I witnessed and endured.  It does more than cry- it mourns, continuously.”

Since his release, Robert H. King has worked tirelessly to support the other two members of the Angola 3, Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox, who have been in solitary confinement since April 17, 1972. This coming April 17, which marks the 40th anniversary of their solitary confinement, King will be joined by Amnesty International and other supporters at the Louisiana State Capitol in Baton Rouge to present Amnesty International’s petition to Governor Bobby Jindal demanding that Wallace and Woodfox be immediately released from solitary confinement. Read more about Amnesty International’s Angola 3 campaign, here: http://www.amnestyusa.org/angola3

At the UC Hastings event, King will talk about the Amnesty International petition demanding transfer from solitary and the broader struggle to release Wallace and Woodfox from prison altogether. Interviewed in a recent video by Amnesty International ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kotf68mrqCI), King says about Wallace and Woodfox: “All evidence shows that they were targeted simply for being members of the Black Panther Party. There is really no evidence, forensic, physical, or otherwise, linking them to the crime. When I think about the ten years in which I’ve had time to be out here, that is ten more years that they are there.”

In their investigative report ( http://www.amnestyusa.org/research/reports/usa-100-years-in-solitary-the-angola-3-and-their-fight-for-justice ), Amnesty International similarly concluded that “no physical evidence links Woodfox and Wallace to the murder.” Even further: “potentially favorable DNA evidence was lost. The convictions were based on questionable inmate testimony…it seems prison officials bribed the main eyewitness into giving statements against the men.  Even the widow of the prison guard has expressed skepticism, saying in 2008, ‘If they did not do this – and I believe that they didn’t – they have been living a nightmare for 36 years!’”

Additional speakers will include:

•       Hans Bennett, Independent journalist and co-founder of Journalists for Mumia
•       Terry Kupers, Institute Professor at The Wright Institute in Berkeley, California
•       Manuel La Fontaine, Northern California Regional Organizer for All of Us or None
•       Aaron Mirmalek, Leonard Peltier Defense Offense Committee Oakland
•       Kiilu Nyasha, Independent journalist and former member of the Black Panther Party
•       Tahtanerriah Sessoms-Howell, Youth Organizer for All of Us Or None
•       Luis “Bato” Talamantez, California Prison Focus and one of the San Quentin 6
•       Azadeh Zohrabi, Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Hastings Race and Poverty Law Journal
•       And more (Full speaker bios below).  

In addition, two short films will be featured: The Gray Box: A Multimedia Investigation, by Susan Greene, The Dart Society, and Cruel and Unusual Punishment, by Claire Schoen, for the AFSC Stopmax Campaign.

Event notes: Hastings is on the corner of Hyde and McAllister, two blocks from the Civic Center BART station. The Hyde Street side entrance is wheelchair accessible. Refreshments will be served and signed books will be for sale. This event is free and open to the public. Donations for prisoner support will be gratefully accepted.

MORE SF BAY AREA EVENTS WITH ROBERT H. KING:

Let Us Not Forget: Honor Fallen Comrades and Political Prisoners, Saturday, April 7, 1:00pm, West Oakland Library, 1801 Adeline Street ( www.itsabouttimebpp.com ). For more information: (916) 455-0908.

Oakland International Film Festival, Sunday, April 8, 3:00pm, Oakland Museum, 1000 Oak Street, at 10th Street (http://www.oiff.org/ ). King will be speaking in conjunction with a screening of the new British documentary about the Angola 3, entitled “In The Land of the Free…”

REBEL HOME DANCE: A Review
Congratulations to Sheena Johnson, artistic director, Rebel Home Dance, for her fantastic show, Landhome which featured new work and a reprise of older work with artistic collaborators, Chris Evans and David Boyce in Freedom Study #2 which featured Chris in a solo projected scene dancing in tree landscape, before joining Sheena on stage in a sound sculpture peopled with human and instrumental voices answering the question: When have you felt the most free? This lovely work, which was a part of the Black Choreographers here and Now a couple of years ago, felt new in the intimate and cozy Temescal Art Center in Oakland.  Yellow House Project: Beauty, the choreographers tribute to the memory of her great uncle Billy and the home in Erie, Pennsylvania, which was destroyed a metaphor for Uncle Billy’s life, destroyed by Sheena’s great grandmother, Ida Sue Brown, due to misguided Christian beliefs that her son’s queer sensibilities were somehow wrong. Sheena asks in this work performed by the amazing dancer and choreographer, Atasiea (a.k.a. Kenneth L. Fergusin): “As a queer person, what can I learn of love, loving and being loved by discovering and re-imagining my Uncle Billy?” Atasiea was one of the choreographers honored at DESTINY’s Toy Story, closing weekend at Laney College last month. Toy Story was pretty phenomenal! I sat in the balcony, so when the dancers went aerial, it was as if they were flying just outside my window (smile). Kudos to the writers!

Did I mention in the Yellow House piece that I was lucky enough to sit behind Chris Evans as she played the cello? Nice! Land/Home the work we were looking forward to, was set in a waste land, large pebbles on the floor along with broken rock –the surface the size of a man’s foot. Performers and choreographers: Sheena, Byb Chanel Biben, m.a. brooks, Jochelle Elise Perena and Jasmine Vassar. The installation artist was Ernest Jolly and the music Aretha Franklin, John Legend and Ben Harper. I hope this work will get another performance—the questions posed about land and home in a disappearing landscape—if one’s home is sinking into the ocean or the air is polluted along with the soil so one has no way to sustain oneself, what happens? The dancers work together and then solo—each embodying a different question: What is the Promised Land, if one is dis’placed?  Is lost permanent? Where is one’s homeland?  In a conversation on my radio show, Sheena and I agreed that one’s home is inside one’s heart. I have a little pin shaped like a house with a heart welded to it. As a person in the Diaspora, rooted in the nebulae—home, the concept, is both tangible and intangible, but my heart is real.  

There is text and laughter in Sheena Johnson’s work Landhome. She asks: “How do we create a home that holds all the beauty and complexity of being people displaced from our homelands? How have our bodily encounters with and impositions upon land informed how we seek, crave and create home for ourselves?”  Don’t miss The Yellow House Project, June 26-27, 7:30 p.m. at THEOFFCENTER in San Francisco. Visit sheenajohnsonrebelhome.blogspot.com and listen to the pre-show interview at: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/wandas-picks/2012/03/23/wandas-picks-radio-show