December 24, 2022 By admin

Wanda’s Picks December 2022

Happy Kwanzaa! Seven Days, Seven Principles
The Village Project‘s 17th Annual Kwanzaa Celebration

San Francisco Kwanzaa Kick off December 26, 12-1 p.m.

After two years of COVID & virtual celebrations, this year’s Kwanzaa will be in – person celebrations! The Village Project and our community partners will present our 17th annual Kwanzaa celebrations at various venues throughout San Francisco and Oakland, with seven days of community events, starting on Dec. 26th through January 1st. Striving to unite and strengthen our family, community and nation, we will celebrate each of the seven principles of Kwanzaa (the Nguzo Saba). There will be16 free events in 9 different neighborhoods of San Francisco. On December 28th, the celebration will be held in the city of Oakland at Geoffrey’s Inner Circle, where Niecey will entertain with her soulful voice. Each hosting organization will present exciting and enriching cultural programs, intended to both entertain and engage the entire family. A spiritual ceremony – pouring of libations and honoring of ancestors will start each program and will be followed by a feast, live entertainment and the lighting of one of the seven candles of the Kinara. This year’s celebration will start at City Hall on Dec. 26th at 12 Noon, with Umoja (Unity) and end at St. Cyprian’s Episcopal Church on Jan. 1st at 6 pm with the lighting of the final candle, Imani (faith).

This year’s entertainment line-up includes a myriad of rhythm & blues and jazz performers, featuring Tia Carroll, Lady Bianca, Michael Skinner & Band, Terrie Odabi, and the John Coltrane Church Band, just to name a few. There will also be spoken word artists and drumming, all followed by a feast of savory delights. Vendors, along with art, drumming and dance workshops will be available for both adults and children. RSVP & Register for Meals@ www.eventbrite.com

Day 1: NGUZO SABA Schedule

UMOJA (unity): To strive for and maintain unity in the family, community, nation and race Monday, Dec. 26^th: 12 Noon – City Hall, 1 Dr. Goodlett Way; 2 pm – SF Public Library, 1000 Larkin Street; 7 pm The Origins Boutique Night Club, 1538 Fillmore; Performance by Tia Carroll

For the rest of the schedule, visit: www.kwanzaasanfrancisco.com; http://www.youtube.com/user/fillmovillageproject

Kujichagulia Night in Oakland

Ujima in Oakland

Freedom Fights Film Festival (free) December 26-Jan. 1, 2023

Nia Kwanza Celebration in Oakland, Friday, Dec.30
This year, Sister Makinya (7/1/1926-2/4/2017) is honored.

Sister Makinya Kouate, July 1, 2006 photo credit: Wanda Sabir

https://wandasabir.blogspot.com/2006/07/sister-makinya-kouate.html

Saturday, July 1, 2006, Sister Makinya celebrated her 80th birth year. As in years past the affair was held at Oakland’s Lake Merritt Boat House pier, her late parents present and honored with much ceremony witnessed by Sister Makinya’s loved ones, friends, family and age-mates.

Sister Makinya shared stories about her life. She also told us about how she established the first Black Student Union in the country at Merritt College in Oakland, years before San Francisco State University’s department, though Merritt College for some reason is always eclipsed in the narrative history even though Jimmy Garrett (SFSU), according to Sister Makinya, monitored closely how Merritt students were able to achieve this without violence, although San Francisco State University was not.

This renaissance woman is also responsible for the establishment of Kwanzaa as a seven day ritual ceremony for African people beginning in December 1967. She told me about how she and Fred T. (Jan. 20, 1945-May 12, 2022), went to Los Angeles to visit Ron Karenga, Ph.D., in December, 1966, where Karenga handed her two mimeographed sheets with the principles and few instructions about this new black holiday.

December, 1977, Karenga visited the Kwanzaa ritual here and was according to Sister Makinya, “Blown away by what they’d done with it.” Immediately following this, Dr. Karenga (founder of United Slaves or US, and Kwanzaa) began to commercialize Kwanzaa, and bring in white people, the first at a workshop in the Redwood School District, where teachers were charged $75. When panelist Sister Makinya asked one of the facilitators about the white presence, he responded that Kwanzaa as well as United Slaves was now universal.

At the same time, Karenga who hadn’t published his Kwanzaa manual yet, according to Sister Makinya fictitiously republished his 1978 Kwanzaa book with a 1965 publishing date (I don’t know how one can legally do this.) Karenga also added the extra “a” to the spelling of Kwanzaa to facilitate the copyright change.

Sister Makinya’s book about Kwanzaa is entitled: “Classic Leadership Manual.”

This week when I visited Sister Makinya at her home in Berkeley we spoke about Queen Califia, the queen whose name became the name of this state: California. I told her that from what I’ve read Queen Califia was a mythical character, from a novel written by a Spaniard. Fascinated with the story, Cortez set out from Spain searching for the island where the Amazon warrior queen lived, a place he found off the coast of Southern California. (The mural of her exploits is in the Room of the Donns at the Mark Hopkins Hotel in San Francisco, also in the Senate chambers at the CA State Capital.)

True, she could have existed; however, she is mythologized. Similarly with the film about Kwanzaa due out in December, narrated by Maya Angelou, a film A.K. Asante says he wants to be a positive film about a positive African celebration could be the definitive story about this Black legacy. I wonder if Asante plans on calling Sister Makinya? I gave him her number in May. I also wonder if he knows about the earlier PBS doc. about Kwanzaa. He did not. “The Black Candle” (2008) could have finally set the record straight, but it does not.

I wonder about people with public amnesia when setting the record straight threatens the false sense of power these men employ. Sister Makinya could, like Queen Califia, recede to the mythical realm. She said Karenga tells people who ask, that he doesn’t know a Sister Makinya.

I was at a Community Kwanzaa recently and this man named Maurice who learned how to perform Kwanzaa at the Postal Street Academy was honored as the person responsible for bringing Kwanzaa to San Francisco. You can imagine his shock when at the Center for African American Art and Culture as he accepted the honors his teacher, Sister Makinya stood up. It’s not even a question of invisibility, it’s a question of integrity and what drives people to reinvent their lives based on falsehoods.

The sister who described herself as sassy Saturday twirling around in her beautiful birthday dress does not worry about the intellectual thieves because she knows what she has done. For all who are interested in the truth, all one needs to do is check the public record or talk to those who were there in 1966, 1967-1977, like Fred T., Leon Williams, Dar and Avotcja.

This is certainly one area among many in the African community which needs a healing; both individuals: Sister Makinya and Dr. Karenga, have done great work for our community consistently for all the years between their last conversation with each other.
*Photos are from the ritual gathering 7/1/2006 at Lake Merritt. Credit: Wanda Sabir*

Books to Remember

With Every Step I Take

What Mama Used to Say

There are a few books this year 2022, that come highly recommended, one is Avotcja’s expanded collection—”With Every Step I Take 2” (2022) Congratulations! Sister Lola Hanif’s “What Mama Used to Say: Handbook of Ole Sayings,” (2022) is another. “Write Now! SF Bay “Uncommon Ground: BIPOC Journeys to Creative Activism” (2022) edited by Shizwe Segal, is an invaluable third gift. 22 Bay Area activists or artivists share their creative births and processes. The featured who’s who are Avotcja, Tureeda Mikell, Karla Brundage, Wanda Sabir, Faith Adiele, Lorraine Bonner, Kim Shuck, Mark Harris, Charles Dixon, Adrian Arias, Josué Rojas, André Le Mont Wilson and other artists.

Uncommon Ground: BIPOC Journeys to Creative Activism

If ever there were a bound-case for the power of art to transform and save lives, “Uncommon Ground” is the text that needs citing. None of us gets a pass on difficulty; however, if we live what story our lives tell, we walk in truth. In “Uncommon Ground,” artists tell it in words, tell it in illustration or paint, tell it in song, wear it on their heads, wrap it around their bodies, walk it, dance it – Spirit lives on in our work. It is the only tangible legacy that survives us once flesh dissolves.

Hope you saw the lovely Faith Ringgold: American People retrospective at the deYoung Museum, July 16-Nov. 27. She is an “uncommon” woman artist.” Ringgold’s work, her most well-known, story quilts, share a singular polarity that reflects a larger consciousness. The artist’s journey is so encouraging. She was making art when there were no models. A children’s book about Ringgold sits by my bedside. My mother rescued it from a discard bin at her local library. Robyn Montana Turner’s biography is a part of a series of portraits of women artists (1993).

What I loved most in the deYoung exhibit of which I so enjoyed, were the stories Ringgold told of sewing with her mom, travel to Europe with mom, daughters and granddaughters. I also like the magical realm she explores via tales of woe– the Maafa tales which her protagonists might not always waltz through, but they fly over and win.

They win.

Her Black Super Heroes series featuring Sojourner Truth, Harriett Tubman, Malcolm X, Martin King. . . . tell stories of victory. Watch this video about Faith Ringgold’s work.

We win.

Ringgold is an organizer. She finds other Black artists and curated opportunities for group shows and support. She protests with her arts which is storytelling, drama, theatre. Her art is Black people: we easel, we pigment, we canvas.

It is beauty. It is dignity. It gives Black life context and meaning.

R. Montana Turner opens ” with Ringgold’s statement: “‘After I decided to be an artist, the first thing that I had to believe was that I, a black woman, could be on the art scene without sacrificing one iota of my blackness, or my femaleness, or my humanity.'”

“We are here” is the theme here whether that is Ringgold or the artists in “Uncommon Ground.” For Black people, our presence in the world is something we can never take for granted.

Colossus: Freedom

**Sister to Sister Visiting Team: (L-R) Hamdiya Cooks Abdullah, Hafsa Al-Amin, Wanda Sabir (January 9, 2009)**

The final book I’d like to highlight is: “Colossus: Freedom,” co-edited by Sara Biel and Wanda Sabir. The third on the Colossus press imprint is a collection which looks at the prison or carceral system and its impact on those behind bars and their families not to mention those unaware of the disappeared.

The funds for the book benefit California Coalition for Women Prisoners. At a recent reading October 29, Sara Biel, co-editor and Colossus Press founder, and Wanda Sabir, CEO Maafa SF Bay Area, gave Hafsa Al-Amin, CCWP, a check from sales for $500.

The reading was at The Freedom and Movement Center and featured Oakland Poet Laureate, Ayodele Nzinga, Ph.D. and contributing poets. It was the first such gathering I’d attended in several years. We were tested and masked and the third wall was open, so lots of fresh air came in.

I shared one of my Sister-to-Sister missives from my blog “Interchange” dated Jan. 9, 2009. S2S was one of CCWPs visiting teams I participated in for a number of years. The team no longer exists, but I really enjoyed being with other Black women dedicated to the liberation of other Black women. Many of the women visited have been released one way or the other. By that I mean death. It’s another door of no return. Some sisters returned. That swinging door that slaps us crazy. There are no winners, just survivors. How one survives is why CCWP support as well as spaces like the Freedom and Movement Center which houses CCWP and Legal Services for Prisoners with Children and All of Us or None are so important.

To purchase copies of the book visit: https://www.colossuspress.org/buy/colossusfreedom All the proceeds go to CCWP.

MAAFA Commemoration 2022

Maafa SF Bay Area hosted its 27th Annual Commemoration at Ocean Beach October 9, 2022. It was well-attended. The theme was “We Are All Connected so We Must Treat Each Other Right.” These words from Richard Howell’s song echo into a New Year.

We walk with grace. Over the past three years many have moved beyond the veil. The line between here and there thin. Amos Tutuola’s protagonist in “My Life in the Bush of Ghosts” turns away for just a second and is lost for what feels like an eternity.

What is the lesson from the Bardo? Grasping at things only prolongs suffering. Let go of attachment to attain freedom.

Enjoy the moment which will pass. Don’t try to hang on. You will only get dragged, then dropped.

Be gentle with yourself. Appreciate this flesh house. There is nothing like it and each day it returns to its mother, earth what it owes.

Every day I awaken, I thank my arms, hands, legs, feet, stomach, intestines, liver, heart, lungs that wrap around my chest cavity, head, brain, ears, eyes, nose, mouth. . . None of these containers are filled by me. I inherited these riches. I must not squander them.

This house is a gift. I come home to this body which is a gift from the earth, my ancestors. Aṣe.

We are all connected, so we must treat each other right.

Aṣe to beloved friends and mentors, lights in perpetuated darkness:
Fred T. Smith,
Christine Saed,
Sister Haneefah Muhammad,
Jesse Douglas Allen-Taylor,
Barbara White,
Russell “Maroon” Shoatz,
Albert “Shaka” Woodfox,
Thich Nhat Hahn,
Malidoma Some.

Aṣe to all of us. May we be well. May we be safe and free from harm. May we be happy.

One City, One Book, One Theme

The final program co-hosted by MAAFA SF Bay Area for its 27^th Season was with longtime collaborator, the San Francisco Main Library, African American Center, featured stories of illegally sterilized women in California prisons (CDCR). In an unprecedented move, the state has agreed to pay reparations to the surviving women 20+ years later. It has also agreed to fund public art to commemorate these lives, so we never forget and so it never happens again—

We had with us that afternoon superstars Kelli Dillion, lead litigant, now Executive Director, Back to the Basics, LA and Cynthia Chandler, lead attorney, co-founder, Critical Resistance and Justice Now. Other survivors also joined in the discussion after we watched Erika Cohn, director’s, the award-winning film, “Belly of the Beast,” (2020) which chronicles the story.

To watch the recorded program discussion, visit the San Francisco Public Library website. To watch Erika Cohn, director’s award-winning film, “Belly of the Beast,” visit https://www.bellyofthebeastfilm.com/

November 7, 2022 By admin

Wanda’s Picks November 2022

Virtual Film Screening & Discussion@ CA Women Prisoners at the African American Center, San Francisco Main Library, Sunday, Nov. 13, 2-4 PM PT

This is the recorded discussion on the film “Belly of the Beast” and the forced sterilization of incarcerated women.

“A Brave and Startling Truth/Women Scribe the World Art” Exhibit
curated by Stephanie JT Russell, Nov. 3-Dec. 2, 2022 in @WomenWorkArt in Poughkeepsie, NY

Wanda Sabir, Artist

This is a narrative following Ms. Wanda Sabir’s “Souljourning for Truth Project 2022,” 40 days and 39 nights searching for Truth’s people. Who were her people and did they know the inheritance or legacy she left them?

Upstate New York, specifically, the Dutch African descendants and the Dutch speaking enslaved populations, didn’t leave much documentation of what it was like in this part of the country. That the enslaved people there had a different experience than that experienced by Black people in the south is documented in Truth’s Narrative, the only such record to date. Later this record would be challenged by those wanting to authenticate the details. Truth allowed herself and her story to be propagandized to support various causes: abolition, suffrage and temperance.

Sojourner Truth (1797-1883) was a womanist long before Alice Walker coined the term. She never let her audiences forget what Black women, especially the Black mother suffered. She was traumatized as a child like her peers who were separated from their parents like puppies in a litter. We see her behavior affected by this early separation when she must leave her girls and son when she leaves the plantation. Just 29 years old, we see how hard it was for her to separate herself from her abusive owner(s) once free. It was the voice inside her soul that helped her make the right choice, but she writes of her struggle to separate herself from Dumont specifically. Self-reflection is something Truth practiced. One might say she meditated. Her relationship with Jesus, her God, was both personal and specific, in that she told Jesus what she needed and received what she asked for. In her Narrative time and time again, her prayers were answered. Hers was a practical and useful faith. It yielded tangible results right away. Truth had power too; she could speak things into being.

Perhaps this was how Truth was able to trust her path and lean into the direction called. It was the same with me this summer. I had the desire to travel to New York and when I realized I could not afford to drive, a way opened. I was invited to stay in Poughkeepsie for a month May 23-June 23. My host, Iya Jo (short for Josephine) was the incarnation of my maternal grandmother, Josephine Isaac, a master chef. Iya Jo is also a master chef. I didn’t have to shop or worry about meals. For the first time in my adult life, I was taken care of. It was amazing.

When Sojourner Truth traveled, she stayed with supporters, women who believed in African freedom and the end of slavery. Some of these women even believed that Black women (Black people) were their equals. These friends served prison sentences and spent their time and money and persons in the cause of Black Liberation. They even established a utopian community in Northampton, Massachusetts. Truth lived there for 16 years (until it disbanded). The synergy and timeliness of Souljourning for Truth was arranged by the Master Planner. Juneteenth week in Ulster County opened with the display of the legal documents Truth filed and signed with an “X”. Newly discovered, these court documents also show her free person name: “Isabella Van Wagener.” Ms. Van Wagener sues the man who purchased her young son for his return. These documents had been lost. This suit was unprecedented – a Black woman in court demanding her son’s return and winning the case. Peter was illegally sold out of the state. I was able to see the document, talk to the person who discovered it in the State Archives and later meet two of Truth’s two granddaughters (6th generation). Later in Battle Creek, Michigan, where Truth lived the final 20 or so years with her daughters and son-in-law and grandchildren and where they are buried, I met a woman at the hotel where I stayed who grew up with Truth’s great-grandchildren. Barbara Allen has written two children’s books. She and her sister missed the courtroom program—However, I met the two great granddaughters a few days later on the Ulster County Truth Bus Tour.

June 15, the courtroom was open for this special occasion. Imagine, we were in the courtroom where Sojourner Truth as a young mother won this case. Visiting officials from throughout the state came to honor Truth and African American Freedom Day or Juneteenth. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many Black women and women jurists and legislators in one place. The courthouse was packed.

On the weekend tour, June 18, those lucky folks present were able to see where Truth was born, where she and her parents lived before she was sold away, plus the various locations where she was enslaved and where she stayed those early days, months . . . years of freedom. Paul O’Neill, Ulster County Commissioner of Jurors, an amateur historian and native son, narrated the tour. Just a few days earlier, he’d led us on a walking tour in Kingston from the courthouse to visit the home of the judge where Truth stayed while the proceeding was taking place.

There was no way the man who sold Peter out of state was going to win, so he settled with the court and returned the child as ordered to the care of his mother. The beautiful bright child had been harmed by the beatings (and his mother’s abandonment) and didn’t recover until he went to sea from which he never returned.

The harm suffered by this family, just one family among so many, was tragic, yet despite the horrors of slavery and poverty—Truth was not awarded damages for her son’s theft nor ever compensated for her childhood in bondage—apologies do not pay the rent, she accomplished so much. She met with two presidents and advised them on reparations for her people—neither listened. She suggested freed Black people travel west where there was less discrimination. The Great Migration proved her advice prescient. My family traveled to San Francisco from New Orleans in the second wave (1960s). I visited Washington, DC, where Truth is remembered in the Capital with a bust. She did so much and so did her daughters and grandchildren we read about in her Book of Life. Hers was a true life of service. Truth liked living in community, intentional communities, which took her to Michigan after the Northampton experiment collapsed.

Another name for Battle Creek is the Cereal Capital because at one point there were 100 brands–Kellogg a big one. One of the Kellogg brothers was a physician. He took care of Truth when she had an ulcer on her leg. Battle Creek is also the place where the Adventist church was founded. I found the history of this church and it’s involvement with the abolitionist movement interesting. Battle Creek and the larger area has so many underground railroad spaces in stores and dental offices. It was a major hub for escaping Africans. I visited the spot where her former home was located, the historical museum where her 5th Great Grandson has an exhibit tracing her life’s story and the lobbying for a State Holiday and a Monument in her honor. Both were achieved. Last year was the first anniversary of Sojourner Truth Day in the State of Michigan.

The monument, which proceeds the holiday, is huge—larger than the one in Northampton and Poughkeepsie and Port Ewen.

There were many Truth moments, whether that was seeing her doppelgänger at the Sky Walk over the Hudson seated at the foot of the monument in her honor on Pinkster weekend (June 3-6) or having Truth as Trickster (June 1) take us to the spot on Shaupaneak Ridge in Esopus, New York, where she walked into freedom with her baby daughter in October 1826 or seeing the library named in her honor at State University of New York@ New Paltz. We met two people June 1 after my early morning walk along her Freedom Trail—one woman told us about the mural at SUNY New Paltz and the other was a man from the Netherlands. He was on a bike.

Truth was bilingual—her first language Dutch. I thought her timing impeccable. Imagine sending along a man who spoke her native language. Later he went to a church where the pastor, Rev. Deborah Zuill, is credited with introducing Truth’s story back into the regional lore. He told her about our encounter. The pastor’s son and I share a birthday and he is one of the programmers for “My Kingston Kids” and knows Barbara Allen, author, activist, and Sojourner Truth’s 6th great-granddaughter. He picked Barbara and her sister up from the airport.

I stayed in a temple– candles lit daily; ancestors honored– chimes rang. During this time the strawberries were falling off the vines and other fruits and vegetables were blooming in community farms in Iya Jo’s backyard and at the Kingston YMCA Farm where youth organized Truth Day, November 26, 2021, in Ulster County.

I visited the Sojourner Truth State Park, visited the church where she probably sat in the balcony and another where her children attended with their owner once she’d left. I visited many cemeteries, among them the African Burial Ground in Kingston at Harambee. I was on the bus and traveled in sunny and rainy weather. I rode Iya Jo’s bike and walked too. Sometimes I drove or took a car– and I was lost a lot. Upstate New York is rural and vast and white. It hasn’t changed much from when Truth lived here, except, Black folks are free.

I met a lot of people and I gave everyone I met who seemed like an ally or supporter a button, “Souljourning for Truth 2022”, some folks got 2-3 buttons, additional ones: “Wombfulness Gatherings”, and “Maafa SF Bay Area.” By the time I left New York, people were calling me out and wearing my button(s)– we were starting a “Truth Movement for the liberation of Black people, especially Black womben. Truth’s reality was white in Upstate New York, but when she was in Manhattan, she was with Black people and when she retired to Battle Creek, she touched the lives of many Black people. In Michigan, it was refreshing to see so many Black people who knew her legacy.

I went on a tour at the David Ruggles Center in Northampton, Massachusetts, and saw the house where Truth wrote her book with her friends. I could imagine her seated on the porch rocking and talking and maybe smoking her pipe. I stood outside the church where Truth and other revolutionaries had meetings where all people, men and women, Black and white, had an equal vote on decisions. These were brave women and men and Truth loved them and was well-loved. It was sad that these historic properties throughout my Souljourning are owned by private persons and none of these owners are Black people. I hope this changes. Barbara Allen wants to purchase her Great-grandmother’s first sanctuary when she walked to freedom October 1826, the Isaac and Maria Van Wagener house in New Paltz, New York. We visited this home on June 18 while on the Sojourner Truth Black History Tour with the County of Ulster.

The owners were home and they showed us the place where Truth stayed with her infant Sophia and later Peter too. We touched the walls and walked on the floors and imagined her life there. But I get ahead of myself. Back in New Paltz after a long day on the road traveling from Poughkeepsie to Northampton, I went on a tour of historic homes, some built by a Black builder, a famous Civil War Veteran and master builder: Jacob Wynkoop. That same day I was a part of the Truth Tour, there was a Juneteenth in New Paltz at the Cemetery where African Americans are also buried. Mr. Wynkoop’s marker is there along with other Civil War veterans. Flowers were placed on all the plots, I think there were at least 100. Their names were read at the Libations and Prayers for African Ancestors of the Middle Passage, Juneteenth Ceremony, June 18. There were events all day and the following day, the actual Juneteenth Day, June 19, at Historic Huguenot.

In New Paltz at Historic Huguenot, we visited homes of people who owned my ancestors. As we walked into the attic, there were looms and an area set aside for the enslaved persons to sleep– in the rafters between barrels and other goods. It was probably hot and uncomfortable there while below white folks slept in beds and their children played with toys and dolls. Our tour guide shared with us a shackle, small and probably for a woman’s neck. There was also a necklace. The owner’s name, E. Hardenbergh was engraved on the shackle. He was related to Sojourner Truth’s owners who share the Hardenbergh name. This family owned her parents and all her siblings who’d been given or sold away before she was born or while she was very young, too young to remember them.

Sojourner Truth’s legacy is bigger than the material culture absent; however, that would be nice. It would have been nice to visit her final home in Battle Creek. Her final home, her first home and the places where she was enslaved are still standing and occupied by others. The home where she walked into freedom is still there. As mentioned earlier, we went into the barn and into the house where Truth slept. She speaks in her Narrative about the comfortable bed she was unable to sleep in, so she slept next to it on the floor the first night. Later or maybe the next day she slept in it and rested so well, she wondered how she would be able to convince herself to get up and go to work when resting felt so good.

Rest, Truth knew little of rest and sleep and relaxing at that time. Black women still do not rest,

not enough. The floor was the same masonry as it was 100 years prior. In town, Kingston, at the judge’s home, the fireplace stove where Truth prepared meals was the original brick and stone too. Throughout the weekend and throughout my stay, ghosts walked with us, their homes still occupied and well-cared for. For Truth, we were literally walking in this free Black womban’s footsteps.

God is certainly the master travel agent. This trip will never happen again– it was magical.

Truth sent for me and I said yes. The lessons are still unfolding. . . but the direction is clear.

This book is both a reflection and a tribute to this amazing woman’s life. When one thinks of the trauma of enslavement, her life is a case study. Truth lived a long life; she lived a life of self-determination, a life of faith. She was not perfect, and she made mistakes. Her philosophical father was a slave owner. Her first lover-rapist was that same slaveowner. Dumont. He was cruel, both he and his wife, according to Nell Painter in Sojourner Truth, A Life. Yet, Isabella Van Wagener then Sojourner Truth, managed to think beyond her circumstances which had not crippled her. How else could this Black mother sue the state for her son’s return?

The very courts that supported her capture, decided in her favor.

I think about all our ancestors, descendants of enslaved Africans and what we carry. Despite all of this pain, we have contributed immeasurably to this nation and its people. Imagine how much we could have done and could still do if we were able to face the trauma and learn more healthy life strategies.

True reparations start with this.

Not another generation needs to experience this unresolved chronic illness or trauma we are passing along to our children who live in the wombs that bore the wombs all the way back to the first womb who stepped on the ship in West Africa and womben who stepped off the ships onto this soil.

How do we honor Truth?

The QR Code is for the Souljourning for Truth Freedom Walk, June 1, 2022.

Theatre
Ain’t Too Proud – The Life and Times of the Temptations. The show is finally coming to the Bay Area. We couldn’t be more excited about this. The Broadway smash hit musical will play November 9 – December 12, 2022 at the famed Golden Gate Theatre,
1 Taylor St. San Francisco

BroadwaySF, part of the Ambassador Theatre Group announces that single, non-subscription tickets for AIN’T TOO PROUD: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE TEMPTATIONS are on sale now. AIN’T TOO PROUD will play Broadway SF’s Golden Gate Theatre (1 Taylor Street) November 9 – December 4, 2022. Tickets, ranging in price from $56 to $256, can be purchased at broadwaysf.com.

ATP features the Grammy® winning songs and Tony® winning moves, AIN’T TOO PROUD is the electrifying new musical that follows The Temptations’ extraordinary journey from the streets of Detroit to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. With their signature dance moves and unmistakable harmonies, they rose to the top of the charts creating an amazing 42 Top Ten Hits with 14 reaching number one and being voted the greatest R&B group of all time by Billboard Magazine in 2017. The rest is history — how they met, the
groundbreaking heights they hit, and how personal and political conflicts threatened to tear the group apart as the United States fell into civil unrest. This thrilling story of brotherhood, family, loyalty, and betrayal is set to the beat of the group’s treasured hits, including “My Girl,” “Just My Imagination,” “Get Ready,” “Papa Was a Rolling Stone,” and so many more.

The show is at BroadwaySF’s Orpheum Theatre (1182 Market Street, San Francisco). The Performance Schedule is November 9 – 13, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday at 7:30 PM; Thursday* Saturday; Sunday at 1:00 PM; Sunday at 7:30 PM. Check the website for other special times and dates.

Ticket Prices range from $56 to 256 and are available to purchase at broadwaysf.com.

COVID-19 Policies: All ticketholders are required to comply with BroadwaySF’s COVID-19 policies. For policy information, visit broadwaysf.com.

SF Mime Troupe on Vimeo through Nov. 6

Online video recording through November 6, 2022, 11:59 PM PT. It’s free. Back by Popular Demand! Stream for a limited time on Vimeo before the election! Free with the use of promocode “powertothepeople” although donation are heartily accepted!

September 30, 2022 By admin

September-October 2022 Picks

Schomburg Center presentation on Dick Gregory, Ase!

MAAFA Commemoration 2022

Masking is required to participate. If you are ill, stay home. Thanks!

Sojourner Truth’s Quest for Freedom

Thurs, Oct 13, 1:30-2:30, Redefining Crazy Conference, Mental Health Association of San Francisco (virtual). Readings from Uncommon Ground and conversation by Tureeda Mikell and Shizue Seigel about staying sane in an unjust world. REGISTER HERE

Sat, Oct 15, 3-6 pm: Write Now! 3rd Saturday Workshop for BIPOC writers & artists Build community by sharing your prose, poetry, or artwork—in progress or finished—with established and emerging fellow artists. Read aloud, show slides, and get the supportive feedback you need. Or just come and listen. SIGN UP HERE. The BIPOC Hatchery creative working workshop (2nd Tuesdays of the month) is on hiatus.

BOOK LAUNCH – Write Now!’s 5th Anthology is Here!

UNCOMMON GROUND: BIPOC JOURNEYS TO CREATIVE ACTIVISM

Sun, Oct. 23, 2-4 pm LIVE, San Francisco Public Library Koret Auditorium

More info: SFPL.org. 30 Grove St, near Civic Center BART

Prose, poetry, and artwork art by 22 established Bay Area writers and visual artists responding in depth to these questions: What inspired you to pursue art, creative writing, and activism? What cultural, spiritual, and community values have shaped your life? What sustains your creative practice in turbulent times?

Book launch and book signing feature readings and visual art presentations by Salma Arastu • Adrian Arias • Avotcja • Lorraine Bonner • Karla Brundage • Tehmina Khan • CK Itamura • André Le Mont Wilson • Tureeda Mikell • Josué Rojas • Kim Shuck • Shizue Seigel • Kimi Sugioka • Elizabeth Travelslight

Pease Press • 284 pages and 114 color artworks • $22.95

MORE INFO: www.writenowsf.com/uncommon-ground

Free Screening of New Film about Emmett Till October 19 at Jack London Cinema

“Picture Motion is hosting a free community screening on 10/19 in Oakland for the upcoming film Till starring Whoopi Goldberg & Danielle Deadwyler about Mamie Till’s struggle for justice and equality after the murder of her son Emmett. Please click here to reserve your tickets. And contact asif@picturemotion.com for free group sales and speaking opportunities. Learn more about the film here.“

Virtual Townhall on Long COVID

Lecture@ Allen Temple

Black Men’s Group

Book Party!

New Play by acclaimed playwright, Ishmael Reed @Theater for the New City

Ishmael Reed, playwright, “The Conductor,” @Theater for a New City, October 13-16, 2022
theaterforthenewcity.net

Listen to interview with Ishmael Reed and Emil Guillermo on
Wanda’s Picks Radio Show, Wed., October 5, 2022
Listen to an interview featuring many women cast members (+Imran Javaid) on
Wanda’s Picks Radio Show, Wed., October 12, 2022

“The Conductor”, a new play by Ishmael Reed
A Review
By Wanda Sabir

Over 150 years later, who would have guessed there would be a need to revive an old transportation system moving human beings from slavery to freedom? In this instance it isn’t physical enslavement, rather social attempts to capture and eliminate viewpoints that subvert the dominate discourse.

21^st century conductor, Warren Chipp (actor Brian Simmons) is subsidized and Black. Yep, this time the folks on-the-lam are South Asian or Indian. The color is brown. The irony is the person Chipp is helping escape is his ideological enemy—Shashi Parmar (Imran Javaid) in fact, Shashi caused Chipp to lose his job at The San Francisco Chrysalis, a local newspaper, he was columnist for.

A staged reading, hosted by Theater for a New City, it feels like a real play. Somehow the actors make the virtual walls disappear as characters pass newspapers to one another cross screens and a character grabs another character and hits her. I have watched the scene twice to figure out how they do it. Warren Chipp is the resident sage and captain of the railroad ferrying South Asians out of the county. No one wants them, not even Canada.

Ishmael Reed’s new work, “The Conductor,” as in Underground Railroad, is a spin on a system that worked. Within its historic context—California was supposedly a “free state,” however, not according to maverick newswoman, Delilah Beasley in “Slavery in California.” Not according to Biddy Mason, enslaved woman later millionaire, who took her owner to court and sued for her freedom and that of her family and friends and won.

Typically Reed-like, “The Conductor” is a hold onto your hats and get out your pens masterpiece—you will want to take notes and look up references.

The work is located within a context highlighting San Francisco Bay Area political themes with national and global impact– We watch the events of the past election with San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin’s and the San Francisco School Board’s recall, not to mention the racial tension at Lowell High School between Chinese and Black students. Facts are skewed or completely ignored as capital driven ideas are dined on voraciously by the American public who swallow without thought.

Witty and fast paced – there is balance between the sides—far right meets the left in Chipp’s living room on TV and in person. Carla Blank’s direction is sharp—everyone is on his or her toes. I love the reference to the San Francisco Bay View and journalist Melody Wells (Kenya Wilson aka Wanda Sabir) and of course “The San Francisco Chrysalis” and Warren Chipp. TV news stations feature popular anchor: Hedda “Buttermilk” Duckbill (actor Laura Robards) and Gabriel Noitallde (Emil Guillermo). The two anchors (performed by outstanding actors) parade the other side of the opinion poll.

Though there is much laughter and surprise in Reed’s “Conductor,” the “sorrow songs” provide a sobering chorus as those who know notice how seriously the alt-right take themselves. It is die, not do or die—martyrdom and self-sacrifice, an operative systemic belief that is dangerous to freewill and democracy. No one is safe on the perceived wrong side which switches back and forth depending on who the lynch mob is after.

It is interesting how even as Parmar hides out as he waits to escape, he does not believe his position is wrong despite Chipp’s stream of consciousness tickertape—the guy is always on. Journalism is in his blood, that or African ancestors. If you get lost, Tennessee Reed’s voice as narrator will get you back on track.

When he can stay awake, Parmar stops Chipp several times to ask his host how he knows so much about race and history including South Asian history. Chipp tells him he has a personal tutor (a funny foreshadowing.)

At one point Parmar who clearly feels himself superior to the “conductor,” says that he would not like a Black man as a brother-in-law when talk turns to South Asian’s who pass for Black American. Parmar looks surprised when Chipp tells him “Krishna” in Sanskrit means “black” or “dark blue” or the “all attractive.”

He can’t pass for a Black person, but his sister, Kala Parmar (Monisha Shiva, actor) can and does. As if she hears her name called, Kala shows up too at Chipp’s apartment—it is a regular “(a)way station”. While her brother hides she shares a lot of history about the “untouchables,” Black South Indians and how women are treated in India, especially “dark-complexioned women like her.” As she talks, journalist Melody Wells (Kenya Wilson) learns that this woman sitting across from her looking like a soul sister is “passing for Black.”

We get a crash course in Indian history along with a racial history lesson too. Since when is being a Black woman a radical and preferred destination? Melody is broadsided by this motorcycle-riding California College of the Arts lecturer. A Black-woman wannabee, she kind of coasts through the history lesson.

Chipp says Black folks invented forgiveness. . . we also seem to have no problem with honorary Black people who join the race when politically expedient and then diss the disguise as soon as possible.

Melody does not let the visiting “Black woman” get away with juxtaposing her unique experience with blackness with that experienced by her sisters and ancestors for 500+ years.

I am not feeling pretense Black people either. I don’t care how many bell hooks books they have read or Ntozake Shange poetry they can recite. It was a real twist to see Kala professing Blackness. One wonders if this is a phase. Kala has just escaped her fate or delayed it—if karma is real. She is not in India; she is in America. She is not fighting for women’s liberation; she is here saving herself.

The alliances between Black Americans and the Indigenous people – civilized tribes who owned Black people, Irish and Jews and Chinese and South Asians – Indians, Pakistani, Bengali who stood with Black people until “they got over” is one-sided, “The Conductor” exposes. Black people do not benefit from the fraternity or in this case sorority expected in such alliances. These connections are forgotten the crisis is avoided or a new landscape is reached. As Chipp says to Parmar, as soon as they can—they all cross over and “become white.”

The Conductor is about getting paid—no one is working for free or enslaved to an idea of a “promised land.” I like Chipp’s attitude. He is a man with values, whose first line of defense is overhead– who is signing the check? Who is looking out for me?

“Reed can always be counted on to explore new territory in film, theater, fiction, and non-fiction. For over one hundred years film, theater, books, and thousands of newspaper articles, which are often cliché-ridden, have defined the racial divide as being between Blacks and whites. Reed’s play, “The Conductor,” shows that Blacks and whites are not the only racial groups contributing to the racial divide” (press release).

For tickets visit https://theaterforthenewcity.net/shows/the-conductor/ Thursday Oct. 13, Friday Oct.14, Saturday Oct.15 at 8:00 Sunday Oct. 16 matinee at 3:00 pm

Tickets are $18.00. For information call: 212-254-1109

Theatre
SF Mime Troupe’s “Back to the Way Things Were” free online screening 10/24-11/6

**The Way Things Were is screening online Oct. 24-Nov. 6**

Poetry Reading: Colossus: FREEDOM

**https://www.colossuspress.org/buy/colossusfreedom**

October is Black Panther History Month

Film@ College of Alameda

In celebration of Latinx Heritage Month the COA Ethnic Studies faculty invites you to a special screening of Oakland’s own Fist Up Production’s Bakosó: Afro Beats of Cuba!

Directors Eli and Kahlil Jacobs-Fantauzzi will take us on a musical journey to Cuba to experience the unique and rich traditions of Afro Cuban music and culture. In addition to the special screening, we will provide light refreshments and an opportunity to speak with the directors. All students and faculty are welcome to join in person or over Zoom.

When: Thursday October 13th 12:30- 1:45PM
Where: H building, room # 212 and 213
To join over Zoom please pre-register here:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/bakoso-film-screening-college-of-alameda-tickets-431269337197

“Undoing Time: Art and Histories of Incarceration” @BAMPFA through Dec. 18

**Xaviera Simmons**@ “Undoing Time: Art and Histories of Incarceration”

Xaviera Simmons, artist, “Undoing Time” @BAMPFA

A conversation with Xaviera Simmons, one of the artists featured in “Undoing Time: Art and Histories of Incarceration” at BAMPFA through Dec. 18, 2022
By Wanda Sabir

Xaviera Simmons is one of twelve artists, invited to participate in an exhibition that queries the concept, incarceration and its effect on the bodies, minds and spirits of those caged and their captors, not to mention the communities they leave, their bereaved families and the social institutions impacted in both positive and negative ways. The exhibit was convened by the Arizona State University Art Museum, which organized and premiered the exhibition in 2021. “Undoing Time: Art and Histories of Incarceration” opened Sept. 3 at the UC Berkeley Art Museum, Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) and features a film festival this October and a variety of panels, conversations, tours and other events in October-November through Dec. 18. This iteration is curated by Guest Curator Julio César Morales, BAMPFA Chief Curator Christina Yang, who coordinated the exhibition’s BAMPFA presentation with Curatorial Assistant Claire Frost. What makes this exhibit unique is the collaborative approach between art makers, activists and historians whose work here once again brings into the gallery space the voices of those vanished and silenced.

When one walks into the BAMPFA and turns left into the first gallery, Simmons’s work greets patrons—walls of words, monitors with words falling across the screen next to giant planks with carefully scripted block letters fill boards of varying sizes. As one walks around the edifice, we see framed portraits, animation on a screen and other images. However, it is the video of a woman shadow boxing followed by another silent or silenced woman arranging flowers in a bowl that drew my attention after I watched the falling words across the screen until I’d made sure I’d seen all its configurations.

Beauty.

Simmons and I spoke a couple months ago before the exhibit opened. We found that we lived on the same figurative block and so were able to shortcut the trivial and get to the bloody truths—exchanging bandages and cleaning fluid as we prayed for water or at least common sense to strike heads of state.

Is there such a thing as “undoing time”? Once time is gone, there is nothing undone except a life(s).

What is beautiful about this exhibition which features nonwhite artists, four artists from the Bay Area, is how it slows one down . . . the lives affected, the magic or medicine that keeps some of us safe and what is sacred. There are a lot of video installations, conversations one needs to wear headphones to listen, writing assignments, thought-provoking questions about how we are implicated or indicted when inattentive and then there is a Cloud room where we get a crash course in the aesthetics of what it means to be human and who gets to decide. All the terminals were not working when I was at the museum, so I will have to return. I hope before the exhibit leaves there will be a transcript of the conversations at the Pizzeria and other exhibits with headphones for those patrons who do not want to put them on.

I liked the openness of the gallery spaces—the white walls, living plants, the giant eagle sculpture. . . string art on a wall, the story of a prison’s closure and the community’s transformation – it was like traveling in another country or world. Who are these people one might ask? They are we, would be the answer. Such injustice is normalized for so many of us— “Undoing Time” is a neutral space to entertain an alternative reality. For tickets and information: BAMPFA, 2155 Center Street Berkeley, CA, (510) 642-0808, bampfa@berkeley.edu. The museum is open Wednesday-Sunday, 11-7. Free admission 1^st Thursdays.

Xaviera Simmons’ sweeping practice includes photography, painting, video, sound, sculpture, text and installation. Her work engages the formal histories of art through the construction of landscape, language, and the complex histories of the United States and its continuing empire building internally and on a global scale.

Simmons received her BFA from Bard College (2004) after spending two years on a walking pilgrimage retracing the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade with Buddhist Monks. She completed the Whitney Museum’s Independent Study Program in Studio Art (2005) while simultaneously completing a two-year actor-training conservatory with The Maggie Flanigan Studio, NY.

Recent solo exhibitions include Crisis Makes A Book Club at The Queens Museum (2023) “Nectar” at Kadist, Paris (2022), “The Structure, The Labor, the Pause” at Sarasota Art Museum (2022), “Convene” at Sculpture Center, New York; “Overlay” at Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University; “The Gold Miner’s Mission to Dwell on the Tide Line” at The Museum of Modern Art- The Modern Window, New York; and “CODED” at The Kitchen, New York.

In Winter 2021 Simmons worked as the inaugural guest editor of Art Basel Magazine and In Spring 2020 she was awarded the prestigious The Charles Flint Kellogg Award in Arts and Letters from Bard College. Simmons is a recipient of Socrates Sculpture Park’s Artist Award (2019) Agnes Gund’s Art for Justice Award (2018), as well as Denniston Hills’ Distinguished Performance Artist Award (2018). The artist has exhibitions, performances and projects slated to open globally through 2024.

I found her articulate and lovely to speak with. Our rapport was immediate cross distance and generation and medium. I am happy to finally share 30 of the 50 minute conversation with you, the rest will be online at wandaspicks.com

Wanda Sabir: There were a couple of moments in your bio, particularly around the pilgrimage that you did I was curious about. I was wondering was that the same pilgrimage tracing the transatlantic slave trade of our ancestors. Was that the same one they made a film from, and it was connected to the East Bay Meditation Center. There was a conversation a while back with participants. They showed a film. There were these different convening points

Xaviera Simmons: The pilgrimage was from 1998 to 2000. It is a small part in the second version of ‘Eyes on the Prize.’ I can’t remember the name of that film at this moment. I mean, I think around that time there are maybe like one or two other types of pilgrimages. but this one was pretty unique, because it was anchored by Buddhist monks, and it was like an interfaith experience. So that’s if that’s the one you know, then yeah, that’s the pilgrimage that I was on.

WS: I have to look through my notes. It’s been a while since I saw the film. The East Bay meditation center, which is a space for people of color, hosted the dialogue with people from the journey and the film director. The EBMC was founded by an African American Buddhist woman. Yeah, there was a film, and I’m sure you’d enjoy it. This is a film about the pilgrimage, about how it came together, and what happened in New York, around the organizing. It’s really good. I even had an interview with the director on my radio show. [The premise was to heal those places of rupture. The earth holds trauma and this was to release that energy through prayer and meditation. The pilgrims stayed with community members who hosted them on their travels and then people got on a boat.] I will look for it and send it to you.

Another piece you mention in one of the interviews I watched was about the Executive Order, and the “40 acres and a mule,” and what you said about Spike Lee’s signature: “40 acres and a Mule Productions.” As a child, you queried your family around these topics—What is an Executive Order? What is 40 Acres and A Mule?

Then later, when you became a grown person, and you’re doing your own art practice, the work comes together for you around this query. I just wanted to talk to you a little bit about your practice, because it’s so multilayered—you’re an actor. You’re a filmmaker. You’re an etymologist; you’re a historian. How do you bring all of these threads to this current commission and group show: “Undoing time: Art, and Histories of Incarceration” which ties in really well, unfortunately to the whole idea around captivity and capture and poverty and impoverishment and displacement, which you know some of the things that I read about your work are themes that run through your work too. So that’s sort of what I want to talk about now, just want to get to know you a little bit.

XS: “Thank you. That sounds wonderful. Well, I’m just gonna go into what you just spoke about and try to tease out some of the things inside. I will say that I feel very anchored. My anchoring [as] an artist is really tied to [history].

“When I was in high school, I really took art history very seriously at the same time, I took European and American history very seriously [too], so those convergences I’m literally still thinking through how those things are intertwined, because they are. They’re always tied [together]: the art historical foundations of painting and sculpture are tied to religion and in the Eurocentric sense it’s tied to the church primarily.

“In other people’s cultures it’s tied to their different spiritualities. I think that that’s something that I’m always thinking about, and then how that tie to the kind of contemporary social economic conditions.

“But I want to start by saying that I’m interested in materials. I really love looking at experience dealing with textures textiles. I used to sew my clothes like doll clothes since I was a kid. I was always in thrift stores, and even when I was really young. I would go by myself, within easy reach to my home there was a vintage store.

“For me, the textiles and the materials and the colors, and the color palette and the historical connotations, and the historical, both art and socio-political and contemporary are the things that are really the seeds of my work. And then everything else is like layers on that.

“So that’s one thing.

“I think every day my ideas around landscape and place, and this country in particular, the United States. I try to be specific in the place that I’m talking about, and for me the United States is a particular space. I try to stick to that language – this is the United States.

“This is the [geography] I’m most familiar with. This is the place the group of people that I grew up with and that I’m culturally kin to ‘our people’ – all descendants of this institution of slavery for the most part.

“The United States is also an empire like any other empire that we understand historically.

It’s the same, and so it’s just a contemporary version of other empires. I think that that’s really important [concept] because empires also destabilize other countries. That means that while I’m specific to the United States in terms of my inquiries, it’s a global conversation, because the United States, even though I am a descendant of enslaved peoples, which are, you know an amalgamation of all kinds of people. Some of us know who we are, and some of us don’t.

“Even as people who live in the United States, we are part of the global domination of others.

I think that I sit in that now and the last thing I’ll say before we keep going is that, ‘40 acres and a mule’ is really critical to an understanding of yourself as an enslaved person no not an enslaved person, excuse me, but a person who descends from that institution.

“Ultimately there’s also a conversation, I mean, and it’s a complicated one, around you know and this is I’m taking this from another artist— being a stolen person on stolen land, which we know. We worked this land, but this land had been stewarded by various thousands of different indigenous peoples before we arrived as captives, intermixed and raped into existence basically.

“As I’m maturing and having deeper conversations, I don’t want to just stop with ‘40 acres and a mule.’ We have not as a group come to terms with our full indigenous conversation and then also the indigenous conversation we need to have with people on the continent of Africa. People who are indigenous to here, and the people who are indigenous to Europe usually get our most wrath (chuckle). You know what I mean, but there’s many conversations that Black Americans who descended from slavery need to have in order to fully experience the kind of ‘freedom’ quote unquote ‘freedom, liberation’ that we keep desiring –their solidarity.

“Those are contemplations I try to put inside of my work inside of the materials that I think about and enjoy.”

WS: I think the query is really important in view the stopping and the starting. We haven’t been able to have a continuous conversation. We needed to be in conversation from the beginning, because by now, if we would have been in conversation these past you know almost

157 years, since we’ve been free, then we be in a better position now as a nation.

I’m talking United States of America, but also globally, because this stuff extends. It’s a projection.

XS: “Hmm!”

WS: As you know as a person who has traveled. You’re sitting right now in Oaxaca and Oaxaca has a particular history as a place, and Mexico, in relationship to California in relationship to Arizona and Texas.

XS: “It’s the same place.”

WS: Yes, exactly the same place. And then you think about the people. You know these are our people.

XS: “They really are.”

WS: It is so interesting to have a philosophy that claims our people even when they don’t want to be claimed. You know how we do. We call people brother and sister, and sometimes the response is—I’m not your sister, we don’t have the same mama. As a diaspora, we claim the whole continent, you know. These are our African people, even if our people don’t necessarily claim us. I was just thinking about New York as a country, and I think about my place of origin, New Orleans as a country with distinction, and I notice that you’ve done some work there and it shows up in the current work, in the conversation, so you know sort of having these interconnections that are unacknowledged, you know.

XS: “Yeah.”

WS: And I think that it’s really good when you’re an artist and you go deep to excavate these connections, and make them more visible. I think that’s what your work does. Please talk a little bit more about that and bring us into this current exhibit, and how you were tapped to be a part of this unique query that was multiple years in its development, you know, for the University of Arizona Museum, which took over the whole museum, this conversation around these people –our people who are disappeared in plain view, those who are incarcerated, who lose their rights of citizenship, and sometimes they’ve lost their rights for the rest of their lives, so they’re slaves forever, even when they’re released. They can’t vote. People can’t live in housing that is supported by the government, yet they pay taxes. They can’t serve on juries.

XS: “Well, my work inside of ‘Undoing Time’ I thought of it as a brain. There’s like many different aspects to it: there’s text works. There are photographs. There are videos. The whole thing is kind of like a sculptural work. Obviously, none of these conversations are linear.

“I think a lot about the one time I spent at Angola in Louisiana which was catalyzed by Art for Justice, which also helped fund that exhibition and the research around it. Then

having friends, colleagues who have been inside, were formally incarcerated. There’s never a clear way to articulate. We’ve been given language to articulate it through different films that that have come into the fore and different books that have come into the fore.

“But as an artist [what is my role]? I’m not a documentarian nor am I a filmmaker in the traditional sense. So for me I’m thinking about what’s not legible in a kind of straightforward narration or historical artifact. What came up was thinking about humans and subhumans and how consistently complicating the human itself in the United States literally means a white human being in in the context of the history, you know.

“So, like, how do I talk to that figure? And then how do I also meditate on the contemplation of what the effects of that figure?

“The first kind of like push against is through is the systemic whiteness, the systemic white supremacy, right? We don’t have language that is legible. We have a certain way of speaking about that experience that I think has now become kind of codified in a way in our bodies in some forms, and I think in some ways like as an artist, I’m trying to complicate my understanding of when we say incarceration, when we say whiteness, what does that mean?

“And in a way there’s something about humanness and subhumanness I kept thinking about. Underneath it all, there’s always a concept [of otherness] there even in Angola, right? When I went there with the group, or even during the pilgrimage when I traveled for two years, when we went to all these sites and met all these communities, even inside of those spaces there’s green; there’s blue there’s brown; there’s color. There’s a sun, I think about that when I went to Auschwitz. It’s like there is color. There’s something about understanding the complications of death. Really, I don’t know how to put it any other way of understanding the complications of death, of bondage, of life, of livelihood.

“It’s – what’s the word— ‘incommensurable,’ like it’s not and it’s illegible? But what I do know are that the material conditions that are produced by the systemic circumstances that have been constructed in the United States are ‘A. made up’ and ‘B. unacceptable’ right?

“And so how do I make that visible, while, at the same time how do I make kind of illegible language in my mind from like seeing these places and being inside of captivity places that we call prisons, and jails and detention centers?

“How do I make that? How do I keep bringing language down so that’s the text piece. How do I keep making a language do something that I am not used to it doing? And then also, how do I speak in the language of myself as an artist, but also of art historical, sociohistorical framework?

“But ultimately, even when you see the work, I hope people who engage in the work also obviously look at all the other works inside of the exhibition but then go deeper? Do a little research. Watch another video, find interest in the artists that you’re looking at and watch another video, because I think if you, for instance, looked at another video of mine, you would realize that like I pretty much for a reparative model— point blank, that’s it. You don’t have to go too far to find where I’m gonna talk about the material conditions.

“Ultimately, I’m interested in a total monetary, spiritual, total reconstruction, total rupture. It’s actually gonna take time and resources. Not too much time. Every community is gonna need resources to even contemplate what that reconstruction can look like. And then you have to implement it.

“You know what I’m saying? You have to recognize what are the needs on the Federal level?

What are the needs on the State level? What are the needs on the local, county level, city level?

Family level. Then how do you contemplate that?

“That’s the only way, I think the United States will ever experience a liberation. There have to be mechanisms for moments of contemplation, and that’s where artwork comes in, because artworks massage the mind, because they go at a slower pace than the time that we –you and I, are speaking. They sink in later, so you need that contemplation. You need resources poured into artists to contemplate those things. Then you need like an engagement from museums.

You need engagements from city centers, from politicians, and so on, and so forth. So there’s a lot of work that I feel like I’m trying to do when I make one work, and I still always have to think about the respect of material.

“I am in Oaxaca right now and it’s everywhere. There’s a respect for material, even when it is for your livelihood, there is still like a respect for sitting and making. So how do you do those two things? You know one seems short, right? It’s the doing, because you know it by now, it’s a practice. But the other is like, what are you putting in the doing? I think ultimately, what I’m putting inside of the doing inside of the materials is a real desire for a total restructuring, because New Orleans like San Francisco, for me, like the Bay are two of the most traumatizing places I have ever been to; while at the same time showing me what this country is, both historically in the case of New Orleans, like the foundation, and then San Francisco and the

Bay, what’s happening now.

“You could literally, if you, put New Orleans and San Francisco together and you looked at their histories, you would basically get the clearest. . .

“I didn’t get this until you said what you said earlier. I think you would get pretty much the clearest understanding of the United States because of their proximity to the water and their proximity to Mexico and their proximity and the way that in the future –which you could say the future would be San Francisco and the Bay with its Tech craziness, which is how we’re living now, and the conditions that socioeconomic pace is producing.

“And then New Orleans, which is still producing the same, and also historically has produced the same. So, in a way, if you conflated those two states alone, you would pretty much if an alien dropped down, I think I would say, look at the history of New Orleans. Look at the history of the Bay— we could put Chicago in there for fun and you pretty much would get a clear understanding of the United States.” (To be continued)

Cal Shakes’ Season Concludes

_{James A. Williams as King Lear. Photo credit: Kevin Berne}

“Lear” According to Marcus Gardley, A Review

_{Marcus Gardley, playwright (photo credit Amazon)}

“Lear” by William Shakespeare, adapted by Marcus Gardley @California Shakespeare Theatre through October 2, 2022

When Marcus Gardley’s wonderful adaptation of “Lear” by William Shakespeare opens, the playwright cautions the audience to forget what they know about the play because his “Lear” disrupts the narrative, invites the disenfranchised into shake the foundations of the west, erase geographies and set new authority in the land. This land happens to be the San Francisco Bay Area, specifically Lear’s castle in the Fillmore, another parcel in Albany and Rockridge in Oakland. In a free verse opening pagentry the Black jetsetters establish their reign, more, their right to reign. Everyone is dressed to the nines, even the servants show up proper. In this world premiere folks buckle up for the ride, unless these are yo peoples and you’re used to holding onto wings and tails.

Co-directed by Dawn Monique Williams and Eric Ting, Cal Shakes Artistic Director (his final production too), the work, which concludes this Sunday, certainly deserved a standing ovation. I followed the crowd down the hill to my car and waited for the traffic jam to subside. As I stood talking to my companion, Destiny, Harpist from the ‘Hood and Criswell Muhammad walked by. Of course, I called out a greeting— I hadn’t seen the lovely couple in three years. I don’t get out much anymore and well, it was so nice to see them. One of the many gifts of theatre is its role as convener. There were sprinklings of Black folks in the meadow. I would have loved to hear what the fathers and daughters thought of “Lear.”

For those who enjoy character and story—it’s what we do—we, the people, we, the human family Gardley’s “Lear” connects to “Dem Bones . . . Dem Dry Bones.” We are born, script in hand, writing our lives. Pencils ready and erasers too, we decide which material stays and cut what we decide is unnecessary like King Lear (actor James A. Williams) does when in grief and sorrow he makes a big mistake and almost loses his mind trying to right an error which like a rip in fabric runs away.

Williams as Lear takes up space in the story—he fills the stage and then shrinks as he is chiseled and challenged by those he loves. Just as the absence of love can erode one’s person, love is also the medicine which heals what is broken.

Sometimes a person gets another chance.

In Gardley’s “Lear,” we meet a Black man, King Lear, recently widowed with three lovely daughters “Cordelia” (actor Sam Jackson), Goneril (actor Leontyne Mbele-Mbong), Regan (actor Emma Van Lare). Grieving, the aged King wants to feel needed by his daughters. When his favorite and youngest child’s declaration is found wanting, Cordelia is tossed from her home and her sisters are given their father’s kingdom. It’s a bad move, because once the two elder daughters have everything, they toss away the old man like a wet rag. He is too much trouble; imagine his retinue is 100 knights! The daughters tell him he needs to cut it down to 4-5. Too many mouths to feed and beds to make ready.

These three powerful Black women actors are magnificent in these roles. It is unbelievingly real. I was aghast! How could they treat their father like this? How could they betray their marriage vows? How could their husbands be so gullible?

Older sisters, Goneril and Regan are regal in their mischief and madness. There seems to be no end to their scheming. They are loyal to no one. They love no one except themselves. However, ruthlessness meets its match in Edmund (actor Jomar Tagatac). Yet, they are beautiful, witty and cunning. They take after Pops who admires them as he fears for his life. Each woman’s strength is both a gift and here a curse. The two conspirators immediately cease their pretense to care as Dad is shuffled between their two homes like so much chattel. The sisters laugh at their younger sister whom they say didn’t know how to play the game and loses her family and her home.

Notes are passed and intercepted. The king goes mad and sees ghosts, while his age-mate Gloucester, (actor Michael J. Asberry) believes ill of his legitimate son, Edgar, (actor Dane Troy), who loves him. Gloucester’s outside child, Edmund wants his father’s wealth and power. Dad’s love would be okay too, but liquidated power: land and rank— wealth, is a greater consolation prize for Edmund who is moving across the board—mate and check as he beds the King’s daughters to victory.

Senility might be a theme here, old men who are easily duped, but we’re talking King Lear- all hail and his friend, the mighty Gloucester?! It can’t be age. The King is 80, but he is sharp, alert until his ego gets the better of him. Is ill-judgment a byproduct of a questioning heart, a heart that that listens to whisperers of evil who drop poison in serving dishes or cups, sweetened with their bitterness or greed? These “smiling faces”[1] set traps which ensnare these elder statesmen with lies that strangle. All the men are fools—well all the men with power and money. Even the ones with power and no money like “Edgar,” Gloucester’s “legitimate” son, cower rather than stand up. The folks with backbone or integrity happen to be Black women: Cathleen Riddley’s “Kent”; Sam Jackson’s “Cordelia”; Velina Brown’s “Black Queen.”

Perhaps it takes the loss of one’s sight or one’s mind to shake a person into what’s true and valuable—lovingkindness, honesty, humility, truth? Suffering is not something human beings can avoid— we want to believe that change is not coming, no matter what Sam Cooke says to the contrary. With Marcus Shelby’s score and live performance with musician Scott Larson, the setting a literal upper room—where a Black Queen (Velina Brown) slips in and out as she travels between realms –between what is heavenly and what is not – a spirited presence casting light and shadow on the lives of those she loves—confused Lear and her daughters, whom she cannot save.

Maybe courage is a third value to round out the work, character work these souls must complete before they move on and the story ends. The hill is a slow climb—over two hours. There are rages and a literal thunderstorm, a war and lots of death—it is after all a tragedy. Those who survive are lucky. These characters misstep and fall often as the stakes grow so high one needs a ladder to see oneself clear.

My favorite characters are the fathers, Lear and Gloucester, who allow praise to cloud their judgement. I also love the Black Queen, who is always present—Dressed in white she has a standing gig in the heavenly bandstand— Marcus Gardley writes as only Marcus can Black American characters who are accessible and real. King Lear in his fedora hat, has agency. We know him. We appreciate the wise fool character (Sam Jackson). This Elizabethan device used by Shakespeare and so well and Gardley too, is not just for comic relief. In African culture there is the “Djali ya” who knows the stories of a people so the “wise one”[2] can remind us who we are. I love the djali ya’s discourse on the three brothers: Klu Klux and Klan. The djali ya runs into the threesome at a restaurant that doesn’t serve “Negroes.” They tell her that “they will do to her whatever she does to the burger, so she gives it a wet sloppy kiss.”

Though the characters are elite, their problems and issues are not. Greed is something we know. Loss is another feeling many of us know well. Love and loss chase one another across the length and breadth of this work, along with fear and shame. We all know folks like this. It’s Shakespeare so it’s over the top, and it’s a tragedy so lots of people die horrible deaths. Well evil does not go unpunished and even good people die, right?

“Lear” is a father daughter(s) story. It’s a story one doesn’t see enough, Black girls and their dad, Black women and their dad. Gardley’s stories are epic, and he links the land and wealth to a time when Black people were not free and once freed were still not equal. Black families and how we were able to hold onto this institution despite the systemic efforts to dismantle it and undermine its importance is always topical as its currency is still a thing in this nation where Black lives do not matter, so why should Black families?

The fool or jester tells a joke about the complex or compound concept, Black Power and how that makes America tremble. It is the cause of so much legal unraveling of our Black Lives. It’s funny, the Sunday afternoon audience was predominately not us—yet this is an American story. I wonder how many people know about Black removal—we hear a lot about Indian removal acts, not so Black community which is still disappearing as I write this review. This absence from the larger narrative is why Gardley’s “Lear” is so important as was his “Black Odyssey”, “Jesus Moonwalked Across the Mississippi”, “The House That Will Not Stand”, “The Gospel of Loving Kindness,” “Every Tongue Must Confess,” all produced here in the Bay at Oakland Theatre Project, Cal Shakes, Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, The Magic Theatre, Berkeley Rep or introduced at Bay Area Playwright’s Festival. Often productions were theatrical collaborations as is “Lear” a joint production between Bay Area Theater Project (formerly Ubuntu Theater Project) and Cal Shakes.

“Lear” reminds me a lot of Gardley’s “The House That Will Not Stand.” Perhaps because of the New Orleans references and people in “Lear” who migrated to San Francisco. Perhaps it is the strong Black woman motif. Although it is called “Lear,” Gardley’s play clearly centers Lear’s daughters, his departed wife and his good friend, Kent. Cathleen Riddley’s “Kent”, the King’s friend, not only goes looking for him, but she also rescues him and keeps him safe when he fails to recognize danger. Lear’s women are in charge, perhaps because they know intimately systemic racism, sexism and class dynamics and how to place these systems in opposition to one another to their advantage. Typical Black woman stuff—not necessarily healthy, but a behavior we continue to foster. Kent calls us on this undue and unfair responsibility as she thinks about accepting the position—codependency? What happened to cleaning up one’s own messes? She asks everyone.

Remember Betty Wright’s song “Clean-up Woman,”— “take a tip, you better get hip”. Perhaps “Lear” might inspire some of us to not make a mess in the first place.

The play is not for young children (under 12), there are adult situations, language and besides this, the play is long and kids will not get it. Gardley is exceptional in his ability to take a Eurocentric classic and recast it for the people in service of the people. He never forgets his origin story.

I love it when Edmund, the villain, who does not deserve our sympathy spits a rap. He asks for our sympathy or at least understanding and support. It seems that once a person spills blood it gets easier to spill more. Blood is a metaphor. . . substitute lies, cheating, theft. Many times, in “Lear,” people are fools because they want to be. This is another lesson—there is no fool like an old fool, but foolishness has no age.

In the end, the king’s dignity is restored. I loved it the way his hat is his crown. A great gesture. Those assembled bow as he is offered his hat and then puts it on.

_{L-R: James A. Williams and Cathleen Riddley (background) in LEAR, the world premiere modern
verse translation of Williams Shakespeare’s King Lear by playwright and Oakland-native Marcus Gardley.
Photo: Kevin Berne}

Williams is great mad and humbled. His fall from grace is huge. I think the ground shifts beneath us, at least I felt it the evening I was there. The king juxtaposed with Asberry’s Gloucester is an amazing character study and remarkable acting. It was amazing to watch Asberry, because the actor is such a great guy. He is also a real-life dad with a daughter. The same is true for the three sisters—the two older sisters are so bad; the acting is so good and their husbands are so weak – well-done cast! And the plotters, especially the master plotter, Edmund is so over the top! Excellent work!

The setting is 1969. The Black Panther Party monitors police activity in the Black community. In the fight choreography the weapon of choice is a switch blade not a gun or sword. Gardley uses the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense as an alternative system to the one King Lear is a part of. It’s time to dismantle the master’s house. Monarchies are not for the people.

As already mentioned, the acting is great all around, with phenomenal direction, wonderful sets and lighting design and costumes and the music, well the music is also a character and Shelby is a great creative artist, the stage one of his elements. Velina Brown’s singing is worth the ticket all by itself. Kendra Kimbrough’s choreography is also awesome and the dream team direction with Dawn and Eric and of course other designers too many to call—y’all are also da bomb! Without your expertise those wonderful actors would not be able to do their work so well.

The play is closing Oct. 2. Take your white hankies and join the ancestors in the house on the hill— Visit https://calshakes.org/lear/ The Bruns Memorial Amphitheater is in Orinda. It is an outdoor theatre, so dress accordingly. Evenings are cooler. The grounds open two hours before, so patrons are welcome to bring a picnic meal. There is also food served on the premises. There is a Covid policy. Please read in advance. The BART Station is serviced by a shuttle to the theatre. The shows Thursday-Sunday are selling out.

[1] Undisputed Truth’s “Smiling Faces”

[2] Wise One by John Coltrane

August 5, 2022 By admin

Wanda’s Picks August 2022

Ase to all the ancestors who made their transition this month: Fred Batin, my dad, Comrade George Jackson, Jonathan Jackson . . . and to those who were born this month such as Gen. Harriet Tubman. Wishing all the children a healthy and fun school year. May you remain free from disease. May you be receptive to new ideas. May your creativity be fostered and grow.

Ase to Albert Cinque Woodfox (Feb. 19, 1947-August 4, 2022)

At the end of a good day for the new abolitionist movement, Albert Woodfox and Robert King, survivors of the Angola 3, tortured for decades in the infamous 18,000-acre plantation-turned-prison called Angola in Louisiana for the warden’s fear of “Black Pantherism,” reflect with their longtime friend and comrade Wanda Sabir. – Photo: Wanda Sabir

*Two former long-term political prisoners hooked up – Albert Woodfox of the Angola 3 and Laura Whitehorn, cellmate of Marilyn Buck and friend of Linda Evans.* Photo credit: Wanda Sabir. Photos from the article: Millions for Prisoners Human Rights March, Washington, DC, 2017.

We grieve the loss of our former client and friend, Albert Woodfox, who passed away August 4 of complications caused by COVID-19. He was 75.

A member of the “Angola 3,” Mr. Woodfox was one of three men who were wrongfully convicted after the April 1972 murder of a prison guard at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, a former slave
plantation turned prison, also known as “Angola.” Narrowly escaping death sentences—which the Supreme Court had, at the time, declared unconstitutional—each of the Angola 3 would
instead become permanently isolated in a 6 by 9 foot cell, under 23-hour a day lockdown conditions, for durations ongoing decades. Fellow prisoner Robert King was released in 2001, and Mr. Woodfox’s co-defendant Herman Wallace, was released in 2013, just days before he passed away of cancer.

The wheels of justice turned, tortuously, even more slowly in Mr. Woodfox’s case. After decades of having his conviction overturned and then reinstated, Mr. Woodfox was finally released in February 2016. By then he had been held for over 40 years in solitary confinement. In exchange for freedom from the cells, Mr. Woodfox maintained his innocence and entered a plea deal to lesser offenses. Mr. Woodfox is widely believed to have been held in solitary confinement longer than anyone else in the history of United States.

Throughout the decades of his incarceration, Mr. Woodfox’s case, and the rank injustices exposed by his wrongful conviction and confinement, were widely publicized. (https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-may-03-na-angola3-story.html;
https://www.npr.org/2008/10/28/96199165/favors-inconsistencies-taint-angola-murder-case;
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/13/us/louisiana-angola-albert-woodfox.html). Since his 2016 release, however, Mr. Woodfox grew to be even more widely venerated as an activist and author (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/16/how-albert-woodfox-survivedsolitary; https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/mar/04/after-40-years-in-solitaryactivist-albert-woodfox-tells-his-story-of-survival; https://groveatlantic.com/book/solitary/).

Even while held in isolation for a crime he did not commit, Mr. Woodfox relentlessly sought to share with others the mental and emotional freedom he had found within himself. On the inside,
that meant teaching fellow prisoners to read by creating and sliding workbooks down the prison tier; doing legal work to help others with their cases; and, together with Herman Wallace and Robert King, going toe-to-toe with officials and administrators to protest, file grievances and win lawsuits that made Angola prison ever so slightly more humane. But as a returning citizen, Mr. Woodfox continued to dedicate his life to liberation. He spoke unflinching truth to power about the atrocities of our criminal legal systems. He addressed audiences all over our country and across the world—from school children to federal judges, and from all walks of life in between—to talk about the transformative power of collective organizing,
solidarity, and resistance.

Mr. Woodfox’s mother, Ruby Edward Mable Hamlin, taught him that “[a] man ain’t nothing without his word.” And we are fortunate that Mr. Woodfox left the world a beautiful book full. In 2019, Mr. Woodfox published Solitary: Unbroken by Four Decades in Solitary Confinement. My Story of Transformation and Hope, a searing biography that tells the story of his extraordinary unbroken spirit and relentless activism. Critically acclaimed, Solitary was a Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist, and winner of the Stowe Prize and American Book Award. As one publication put it, as concerns mass incarceration, Solitary, “should make every reader writhe with shame and ask: [w]hat am I going to do to help change this?”

There is no way to name all those who live on to love Mr. Woodfox in spirit. He will be missed by his legion of incredible family and friends. Apart from being survived by his brothers James Bob Mable, Haywood Mable, Michael Mable, and Donald Mable, Mr. Woodfox is survived by his life partner and co-author, Leslie George; his daughter Brenda Poole; three grandchildren, and four great grandchildren. He will be missed by countless people—most of whom he never met—who have been inspired by Mr. Woodfox’s legacy. Inspired to think more deeply about mass incarceration, prison abuse, and racial injustice; to create more beauty and truth in artful antidote to the ugly inhumanities of our world; and to join him in the perennial struggle against ongoing, intersectional oppressions. Mr. Woodfox will be missed even, maybe especially, by the stray pup who adopted him and Ms. George just a few years ago on the levee, Hobo. And certainly, Mr. Woodfox will be missed the lineage of lawyers, paralegals, experts and others who worked to secure his freedom for nearly half a century.

Bay Area Playwrights Festival 2022

https://playwrightsfoundation.org/2022-bay-area-playwrights-festival/

I have been really loving the second closing weekend of this 45th Anniversary Season of Bay Area Playwright Foundations signature program. The theatre experience is one I can’t explain. You have to be there. The presentation I am watching now, How to Say Goodbye to Your Lover by Elana Dykewomon. It is live online. Tonight is the closing program. I think there are 100 people online now and there are others at the theatre. Don’t miss this season. Visit BAPF.

Virtual Conference

Join virtually August 20th 11am PST. Here is the link — Click here to enter zoom — This is the first “Lets Build” virtual event. It’s an event to help bring Black community together through conversation and networking.

This event will be hosted by A.Krishna Cox and Ajman Thrower.
Speakers are:
Gaylon Logan Jr (@villageconnectinc),
Tureeda Mikell (@storymedicinewoman),
John Sley Pierre (@traces_et_memoires),
Ashley Scott (@ashleyscottkw ),
Dr. Sean Teal(wepray.org,@parayereverywhere).

There will be a panel discussion on the topic “Black Identity”. We hope to see you there.

Happy Kwanzaa! Seven Days, Seven PrinciplesThe Village Project‘s 17th Annual Kwanzaa Celebration

San Francisco Kwanzaa Kick off December 26, 12-1 p.m.

Kujichagulia Night in Oakland

Ujima in Oakland

Freedom Fights Film Festival (free) December 26-Jan. 1, 2023

Nia Kwanza Celebration in Oakland, Friday, Dec.30This year, Sister Makinya (7/1/1926-2/4/2017) is honored.

Books to Remember

With Every Step I Take

What Mama Used to Say

Uncommon Ground: BIPOC Journeys to Creative Activism

Colossus: Freedom

MAAFA Commemoration 2022

One City, One Book, One Theme

Virtual Film Screening & Discussion@ CA Women Prisoners at the African American Center, San Francisco Main Library, Sunday, Nov. 13, 2-4 PM PT

“A Brave and Startling Truth/Women Scribe the World Art” Exhibitcurated by Stephanie JT Russell, Nov. 3-Dec. 2, 2022 in @WomenWorkArt in Poughkeepsie, NY

Wanda Sabir, Artist

TheatreAin’t Too Proud – The Life and Times of the Temptations. The show is finally coming to the Bay Area. We couldn’t be more excited about this. The Broadway smash hit musical will play November 9 – December 12, 2022 at the famed Golden Gate Theatre, 1 Taylor St. San Francisco

SF Mime Troupe on Vimeo through Nov. 6

Schomburg Center presentation on Dick Gregory, Ase!

MAAFA Commemoration 2022

Sojourner Truth’s Quest for Freedom

Free Screening of New Film about Emmett Till October 19 at Jack London Cinema

Virtual Townhall on Long COVID

Lecture@ Allen Temple

Black Men’s Group

Book Party!

New Play by acclaimed playwright, Ishmael Reed @Theater for the New City

TheatreSF Mime Troupe’s “Back to the Way Things Were” free online screening 10/24-11/6

Poetry Reading: Colossus: FREEDOM

October is Black Panther History Month

Film@ College of AlamedaIn celebration of Latinx Heritage Month the COA Ethnic Studies faculty invites you to a special screening of Oakland’s own Fist Up Production’s Bakosó: Afro Beats of Cuba!

“Undoing Time: Art and Histories of Incarceration” @BAMPFA through Dec. 18

Cal Shakes’ Season Concludes

“Lear” According to Marcus Gardley, A Review

Ase to Albert Cinque Woodfox (Feb. 19, 1947-August 4, 2022)

Bay Area Playwrights Festival 2022

Virtual Conference

Happy Kwanzaa! Seven Days, Seven Principles
The Village Project‘s 17th Annual Kwanzaa Celebration

Nia Kwanza Celebration in Oakland, Friday, Dec.30
This year, Sister Makinya (7/1/1926-2/4/2017) is honored.

“A Brave and Startling Truth/Women Scribe the World Art” Exhibit
curated by Stephanie JT Russell, Nov. 3-Dec. 2, 2022 in @WomenWorkArt in Poughkeepsie, NY

Theatre
Ain’t Too Proud – The Life and Times of the Temptations. The show is finally coming to the Bay Area. We couldn’t be more excited about this. The Broadway smash hit musical will play November 9 – December 12, 2022 at the famed Golden Gate Theatre,
1 Taylor St. San Francisco

Theatre
SF Mime Troupe’s “Back to the Way Things Were” free online screening 10/24-11/6

Film@ College of Alameda

In celebration of Latinx Heritage Month the COA Ethnic Studies faculty invites you to a special screening of Oakland’s own Fist Up Production’s Bakosó: Afro Beats of Cuba!