As we say Happy Birthday to Cancer/Leos, we say may your ascension be smooth and beautiful to ancestors making their way home.  Dr. Price M. Cobbs (1928-2018) is known for the seminal study, Black Rage, he and his colleague Dr. William H. Grier authored.  Dr.Cobb made his transition June 25. He was 89.  We offer condolences to his family in Philadelphia and San Francisco Bay Area, specifically his son, Price, grandson and god-daughter, Alision. It is uncanny, that Dr. Grier died when 89 too, Sept. 3, 2015.

When we think about the effects of race on the African American psyche, Dr. Cobb is right there with Dr. Frances Cress Welsing in his acessment of the pathological cesspool we swim in daily in this nation. Black Rage was an analysis of the rage that erupted when King was killed, published the year he was killed. 50 years later it is just as dangerous, perhaps more dangerous to be a black person in America. Everywhere one turns white people seems to feel that they can put their hands on black people, whether this is in the sky — on my return from Nigeria, two KLM attendents blocked my passage or at a coffee house or service station. Remember Jordan Davis (17), the black youth who was shot in 2012 because a white patron at the service station (45) didn’t like the volumn of the music?

Our dearly beloved comrade Richard E. Brown (1941-2018)
eased on down the road last month, June 21 too.
He was a tireless warrior for justice. I remember when he was a judge in the community court and when he was on trial again re: SF8. Though his health was failing, he would still show up with a smile and gentle energy. I last spoke to him about Kiilu and he shared a few words about his comrade in tribute. Ashay. Ashay. Ashay-o!

On the Fly:
Labor Fest  July 1-31: The music, theater and art programs include many locally produced shows. They include performances by the SF Mime Troupe, a Comedy Fest, and an art and poetry night. Many of these are also free with a few by required paid admission: July 4: SF Mime Troupe – 2018: Seeing Red: A Time-Traveling Musical, free, 2:00 pm at Dolores Park; Listen to an interview with director, Edris Cooper-Anifowoshe, on Wanda’s Picks Radio Show; July 20: The Rockin’ Solidarity Labor Chorus : No Human Is Illegal, free, 7:00 pm at First Unitarian Universalist Church; July 31: Play- Fight for 52¢ – Written and Performed by Howard Petrick – 70 min., free, 7:00 pm at ILWU Local 34 Hall.  San Francisco Frozen Film Festival July 19-21 at the Roxie; Stern Grove Festival: July 8: Mexican Institute of Sound with Special Guest Ginkgoa; July 15: Anoushka Shankar, Land of Gold, Han Han; July 22: San Francisco Symphony with Jayce Ogren, Conductor; July 29: San Francisco Ballet with Helgi Tomasson, Artistic Director; August 5: Femi Kuti and The Positive Force, Sol Development; August 12: Ronnie Spector and the Ronettes.  San Francisco Jewish Film Festical July 19-August 5;  Born to Drum, Women’s Drumming Camp, July 19-22   San Francisco Film Festivals 2018 

Boots Riley’s “Sorry to Bother You” opens theatrically July 6

Oakland ‘Coup’ bandleader and rapper Boots Riley now has a director’s chair. His much talked about and anticipated film titled “Sorry to Bother You” will open in San Francisco Bay Area theaters on Friday, July 6, 2018.  He talked with Marcus Lorenzo Penn, MD about his music and his hometown Oakland in 2016 at Oakland’s annual Book Festival. It was their book party and the party was heating up. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YP-r_PT9bbY&t=9s

SF Ethnic Dance Festival July 14-15 and 21-22 Plus a Free Festival Opening Event at City Hall July 6

The San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival will return for a second year at the War Memorial Opera House July 14-15 and July 21-22, to celebrate its 40^th anniversary as the largest, longest-running, and most comprehensive world dance and music event of its kind in the US.  The Festival’s 2018 40^th anniversary lineup will feature Bay Area-based groups from Alaska, Bolivia, Cambodia, China, Cuba, India, Korea, Liberia, Mexico, Peru, the Philippines, Spain, Tahiti, the continental US, and Zimbabwe. Four groups will make their Festival debuts and the season will feature eight world premieres created specifically for the 40^th anniversary season. The Festival opens with a free public celebration with performances in San Francisco City Hall’s rotunda on Friday, July 6. Two different programs will be presented at the Opera House July 14 & 15 and July 21 & 22, and a complete list of dates and artists may be found below. Tickets are priced $25-$45 and go on sale beginning April 24 at sfethnicdancefestival.org.

Listen to an interview with Festival Co-director Latanya Tigner on Wanda’s Picks Radio Show, June 13,  http://tobtr.com/10821769

2018 SAN FRANCISCO ETHNIC DANCE FESTIVAL SCHEDULE

Free Festival Opening Event at San Francisco City Hall, Friday, July 6 at Noon at the Rotunda Dance Series performance by AERODANCE (Indian Folkloric – Gujarat), Mussel Rock Cloggers (Appalachian Clogging), and Kim Shuck, Poet Laureate of San Francisco.

It is important therefore, to know and follow buy cipla cialis the principle of dampness turbidity. You 20mg levitra canada may be required to quit tobacco, drugs and limit intake of alcohol. You can create more nerve stimulation in http://appalachianmagazine.com/2016/05/18/7-photos-of-coal-miners-that-will-leave-you-speechless/ viagra canadian pharmacy her genital passage using the bigger and stronger male organ. In time of delivery of the medicine cialis 20mg tadalafil then he can also opt for Kamagra 100 mg jelly is the highly recommended and popular version of this drug used by the users. Opera House Weekend One
Saturday, July 14 at 8pm
Sunday, July 15 at 2pm
TICKETS: $25-$45, ON SALE TUESDAY, APRIL 24, at sfethnicdancefestival.org, or by calling City Box Office: 415.392.4400

Performances by 11 Bay Area dance and music ensembles showcasing traditions from around the world. Preshow musical performance outside the Opera House by Te Pura O TeRahuraʽa (Tahitian ʽAparima) and in the lobby by Vinic-Kay (La Gente y El Canto) (Mexican Folkloric)

Performances by: AguaClara Flamenco (Spanish Flamenco), Arenas Dance Company (Afro-Cuban), Bolivia Corazón de América (Bolivian Folkloric– Tarabuco and Potosí), Chitresh Das Youth Company (North Indian Kathak), Ensambles Ballet Folklórico de San Francisco (Mexican Folkloric – Tabasqueño), Leung’s White Crane Lion & Dragon Dance Association (Chinese Dragon Dance), Nunamta Yup’ik Eskimo Singers and Dancers (Alaskan Yup’ik Eskimo), Parangal Dance Company (Philippine Folkloric – Meranao), Te Pura O Te Rahuraʽa (Tahitian ʽŌteʽa and ʽAparima), and Ye Feng (Chinese Contemporary).

Opera House Weekend Two
Saturday, July 21 at 8pm
Sunday, July 22 at 2pm

TICKETS: $25-$45, ON SALE TUESDAY, APRIL 24, at sfethnicdancefestival.org, or by calling City Box Office: 415.392.4400. Performances by 10 Bay Area dance and music ensembles showcasing traditions from around the world.  Preshow musical performance outside the Opera House by Chinyakare Ensemble (Zimbabwean Traditional) and in the lobby by Hermanos Herrera (Mexican Folkloric)

Performances by: Ananya Tirumala (South Indian Kuchipudi), Antara Asthaayi Dance (North Indian Kathak), Caminos Flamencos (Spanish Flamenco), Charya Burt Cambodian Dance (Cambodian Classical), De Rompe y Raja Cultural Association (Afro-Peruvian), Los Danzantes de Aztlán de Fresno State (Mexican Folkloric – Huapangos), Nimely Pan African Dance Company (Liberian Folkloric), and OngDance Company (Korean Traditional and Contemporary).

More Music Festivals:

Union Square Live: From April to October, you can catch free cultural performances at SF’s Union Square. These events are usually every Wednesday and Sunday. Click here for this year’s festival.

Yerba Buena Gardens Festival: The Yerba Buena Gardens Festival also offers free music and other cultural programs all summer long. Performances are held several days a week between May and October. Click here for more details.

Sunday Streets: The annual Sunday Streets event features blocks of car-free streets in a specific district on one Sunday each month. This allows pedestrians to bike, run, or walk without worrying about traffic. Each event also provides live music, free health screenings, and other community activities. Click here for this year’s schedule.

Union Street Festival: The Union Street Festival is typically the kick-off to SF’s famous summer festival season. This lively event features live music, gourmet food, and dozens of merchant booths with unique arts and crafts. You will also find a premium craft beer and wine tasting pavilion. Click here to learn more.

North Beach Street Festival: Another popular SF Street Fair is the North Beach Festival. This one also features live music, amazing street food, and several fun activities for the kids. Click here to learn more about this year’s festival.

The month is nearly over, but as Juneteenth approaches there is even more liberation work to come. The arts are the vehicle for freedom. Our ancestors present in every song, gesture, word, stroke, frame. If we listen, what is forgottereturns, not to haunt, rather to enlighten and inspire. Ramadan, the month of fasting for Allah has passed and with its rehearsal an opportunity for those who observed practice in compassion—our abstinence an opportunity to feel the hunger pains whether the hunger is for food or kindness, acknowledgment or support.

The moon is in Gemini. The phase between spring and summer, the solstice, a time to be in the moment, the now and forever: Mercury, Venus and Mars present at sunset. It is a time, I read, to discard and be intentional in what and who we surround ourselves, especially what we allow to hang on or hang around. Baggage is heavy. New moons are an opportunity to clean house. The celestial orchestra (universal clock) sets the tone for our metabolic rhythms—when we are in tune.

Imagine men walking in space—we are unlimited potential energy. Gravity does not define us. Imagine a black woman, London Breed, mayor-elect of one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world, San Francisco. Breed is our ancestor’s wish personified. Perhaps she will continue what President Obama was unable to accomplish for this nation, for a city-state?

I have discarded a lot of weight over the past nine months and walk lighter physically, breathe more easily (when I remember to stop the habit of holding my breath). Rationing breath, as if the air supply is limited. Do we come into the world with tanks already filled?

Gemini shifts into the next house, Cancer as the calendar moves forward. I ease into another cycle as the 50s recede and I end my year of dedication to my father, Fred Bilal Al Islam Batin’s memory and life. I was told he is pleased with my sacrifice. I honor him in this new phase of my work on the planet. I also honor my grandmothers, Rosetta and Josephine who are responsible for my mother and father’s lives once they arrived, and even before that when black women’s wombs were their shelter. Ashay and thanks for the care—flesh of my flesh, my grandmothers did their best given the tools and weapons handy, given the handicaps, acknowledged and perhaps not like Jim Crow and other southern biases in the guises of gender and race, age and economic discrimination. I am here because Grandmother Rosetta and her cousin Grandmother Josephine chose to carry these two people: Mama and Daddy to fruition.

Though the birthing was perhaps easy, the rearing was difficult and my parents suffered as children, they too preserved and so I am here and so is my brother and we are, hopefully, a little less fractured psychically than our descendants and our children less scarred than all of us.

Wellness is an ongoing process. It is an ongoing conscious process. Unlike drinking water and slumber, we have to remember to take care of our souls. Soul work is not always a priority just as mental health isn’t a part of the narrative of longevity. We do not all do daily spiritual and psychic warm-ups – called prayer or meditation by some. It is necessary to heal what is broken inside those of us who are descendants of the triangular trade, the not so hidden passage that haunts our collective and individual gene pools.

A DNA result is not necessarily all that it will take to address the vacant spaces within African Diaspora psyche; however, for some it is helpful. The DNA research is classist and limited. Not everyone has a spare $300 or even $100 for the test. After the result, then what? How do you get home—to a country in Africa?

When I started traveling to Africa, I was told to leave my expectations behind, so I did not have any expectations. I just wanted to see what the hype was all about. Granted, I hoped I would feel something, but except for the ceremonies I participated in and the stays with families early on, I just felt discomfort and was happy I could return home at the end of the sojourn. When in East Africa, I was not invited to any cultural programs I had to arrange my own tours. My knowledge of Africa is as a tourist not as an insider even though I did get to meet healers—it was just a part of the ancestors being in charge.

I decided to change my emphasis when I no longer knew people personally where I was traveling. I decided when I finally went to Ghana I wanted to trace the trade route. I enjoyed visiting those places where our ancestors once tread and pouring libations—touching the tree, sitting on the rock, getting eaten by flies and mosquitoes, stepping into the water, feeling the sharp stones on the soles of feet connected by hundreds of years of cells—an unbroken tapestry that is Transatlantic narrative history still choked and suppressed, gagged and hung, denied and ignored.

I met many good people who are doing great work, work I wanted to support, which I have and continue to do.

When we in the Diaspora are told to get over the Trade, to get over the pain, that acknowledgement stifles forward movement, I am always pained by the dismissal. As I approach Elmina slave dungeon men badger me to purchase their goods; they tell me don’t be so sad, they give me shells with their contact information engraved as gifts—the shell a microcosm of the trade in reverse—Africans willingly selling themselves. They don’t know what it means to be enslaved—granted colonialism was terrible; however, Africans never lost their languages, land or knowledge of self. For those that did, it was a choice and this knowledge has not completely disappeared or been erased.

For those of us in the Diaspora, it is a memory assessable in our waking dreams. It shows up in the art we create. The freedom is a spiritual journey we are constantly having to reassess and defend.

Sankofa means to never forget, to forget is to miss the lesson. Our collective survival as a people outside home, cut off from homeland, is evidence of Sankofa. Our ancestors are the bird who looks back in wonder. The egg is us—pure genius, pure potential.
A recent study in Italy and UK confirmed that with regular exercise for30-40 minutes a day in a http://deeprootsmag.org/2015/08/09/summer-song/ pfizer viagra mastercard week may be recommended, along with lowering intake of sugary foods and fatty edibles. When endometrium grows discount levitra in pelvic cavity, it brings tissue adhesion and lump which both make the modification of uterus. There are total three forms Kamagra is manufactured from the originals; hence, cialis 5 mg deeprootsmag.org there are rarely any chances of adverse side effects. They are supplying viagra fast shipping of branded ones and at the same time they are supplying he medicine or generic kind.
To lose so much, yet still remain the envy of all others, even those who remain at home—is the gift (egg). Our ancestors birthed the egg—and did not drop it, despite the lashes and the setbacks, the pain and persecution which continues today.

Right now the San Francisco Black Film Festival in its 20th year continues at a variety of locations, as does the 42nd edition of Frameline SF. Frameline which began Thursday, June 13 continues through June 24.

Stern Groves Big Picnic kicks off the summer festival of music Sunday, June 17. This is also the anniversary of Berkeley Juneteenth. Today Juneteenth celebrations are in Oakland, San Jose and San Francisco, perhaps even elsewhere.

Next Saturday, June 23 is the quarterly Be Still Retreat in Oakland. June 27-July 1 is the 50th Anniversary of the ABPsi Conference in Oakland.

Faye and the Fellas

The Dynamic Miss Faye Carol…Dynamic Duo! Themed Sunday Afternoon Residency at The Back Room with Special Guests Alvon Johnson, Nicolas Bearde, Charles McNeal, & Freddie Hughes

Sundays in June 2018, 5pm at The Back Room 1984 Bonita Ave Berkeley, CA 94709
510-654-3808. All Ages – ADA accessible. Tickets $25, online or cash only at the door

Visit Ms. Faye Carol at www.fayecarol.com

The Dynamic Miss Faye Carol and her Dynamic Duo! announces their return to The Back Room with “Faye and the Fellas,” a one-month-only every-Sunday residency in June 2018 featuring special guests Alvon Johnson, Nicolas Bearde, Charles McNeal, & Freddie Hughes. The Bay Area legend of jazz, blues & cabaret and her dynamite young pianist Joe Warner promise to thrill and delight audiences with swinging sounds, funky grooves, luscious ballads, and down home blues and will host four of the Bay Area’s best and most prominent male vocalists and instrumentalists in a series of themed afternoons. This unique collaborative residency will showcase the best the Bay Area has to offer in jazz, blues, R&B, and world class entertainment.

June 3: “Blues in the Afternoon” feat. Alvon Johnson www.alvonjohnson.com

June 10: “Crooners Corner” feat. Nicolas Bearde www.nicolasbearde.com

June 17: “Soulful Sax Sounds” feat. Charles McNeal www.charlesmcneal.com

June 24: “The Heart of Soul” feat. Freddie Hughes

We mourn the loss of Kiilu Nyasha (5/22/1939 to 4/10/2018), Freedom Fighter and Revolutionary Journalist, Arts and Black Panther Party member, who is survived by a son and daughter and many friends and loved ones. Celebrate her life May 20, 3-7 p.m. at the African American Art and Culture C0mplex in San Francisco, 762 Fulton Street.

Marvin X writes:

There are those who talk revolution

those who make revolution

With heart mind soul body blood sweat tears

Every ounce of being

Every step revolutionary step

Unchain the chained

Liberate captives.from dungeon

Free the global wage slaves

No matter no family

No matter no walk

Crawl revolution

Kiilu

Like Mumia

Chained yet free

what’s your excuse

Kiilu chained in big yard

Yet free to free unfree

Long live revolutionary sista

Kiilu Nayasha.

Black Panther Woman

Harriet Tubman Woman

Kiilu would have freed more slaves

if they had known they were slaves!

–Marvin X

revised 4/13/18

Listen to a tribute hosted in her honor: Libations for Kiilu Nyasha on Wanda’s Picks Radio Show.  We also pour libations for the genius that was the great composer, musician, Cecil Taylor and theologian Rev. Dr. James Cone (Aug. 5, 1938 – Apr. 28, 2018), father of black liberation theology.

EJI’s National Memorial for Peace and Justice; Legacy Museum:From Slavery to Mass Incarceration open in Montgomery, Alabama

Slavery has indeed marked this nation. It’s soot leaves a residue the best detergent cannot wipe away or wash out. Truth– bitter, the missing ingredient is hard to swallow, let alone see, yet this is what The National Memorial for Peace and Justice and by extension The Legacy Museum: From Slavery to Mass Incarceration demands we face. It is not in your head or imagination that these atrocities to other people reside. No, when on the hill at the top of Caroline Street in Montgomery you enter the sanctuary and see West African artist, Kwame Akoto-Bamfo’s Nkyinkyim Installation sculpture of captured Africans– men and women and babies, juxtaposed with text along walls which remind one of a village thatch or clay, the steel like grey of the pavement or road covered in flint rocks along a curving grassy meadow.

We walk along the path towards these hanging planks oddly familiar. They are the size of tombstones, the kind that seal the grave– keep the body from floating off (rising again). If the reference to burial sites and graveyards escapes visitors for the moment, when we emerge on the other side of the hill to the area where we see the tombs– hundreds to be claimed by the townships where those persons listed once resided — the reference is strikingly clear.

If the idea is atonement and reconciliation, then so far, none of the townships have stepped forward to claim its citizens or as EJI put it “confronted the truth of its history.” Not yet. To claim a monument is to admit your county, your town has unsolved murders and killers among its residents. The statue for murder does not go away, so why are black people advised to “get over it” whenever we want to mourn, remember and seek justice for the dead or fallen among us?  Why is it okay for Jews to pursue killers with the assistance of an international court, yet for these acts of terror against black Americans there is no legal resolve or public interest by those in national or international power?

When El Hajj Malik El Shabazz took the plight of the American black people to a national court at the UN, he was killed. The same is true for Martin King when he took the racial justice for black people conversation beyond this nation, he was killed.

Although, there are certain things which one should keep in his mind before taking this cialis online overnight medicine.Sildenafil citrate is just like any other medicine; which means that it has certain restriction and side effects. It is common in males, who are unable to gain harder and fuller erection, could not penetrate into her and offer sexual pleasure to their ladies. levitra professional cheapest However, Kamagra medicines cute-n-tiny.com order generic cialis are now available in select online pharmacies. cute-n-tiny.com levitra without rx There is no need to point of uncertainties of life if you suffer from both disorders.
The National Memorial designed by Michael Murphy, co-founder, executive director, MASS Design Group, begins the conversation on race America has never had, yet needs now more than ever as the numbers of incarcerated black men and women are greater than those enslaved, and the normalizing of such state acceptable.  #45 has given white men permission to once again resort to public lynchings. Black America is in a state of emergency.

“True peace is not just the absence of tension, but the presence of justice,” Dr. King stated. Stevenson replies “we remember [w]ith hope, because hopelessness is the enemy of justice. With courage, because peace requires bravery. With persistence, because justice is a constant struggle [, and] [w]ith faith, because we shall overcome.”

The Memorial for Peace and Justice’s importance is rooted in its insistence on and highlighting of black power, the power to resist, reform and survive. There is really no stopping us.  Sankofa is alive on the hill amidst the sadness because we dare REMEMBER and as Hank’s black men depicted in the sculpted piece continue to “Raise Up,” as Dana King’s three ladies (representing three generations) push forward an agenda in “Guided by Justice.”

As Stevenson’s text combined with Elizabeth Alexander’s poem, Invocation, Maya Angelou’s encouragement and Toni Morrison’s wisdom guide our steps we walk the labyrinth that is both literal and figurative black life.  The gardens in front of the museum where people gathered to talk Sunday afternoon are along a path that invites meditation and reflection. I loved the wall made from bricks fashioned by black men who were at one point enslaved. Walls are really powerful symbols and we all remember the story of the three pigs and what happened when the wolf tried to blow down the last house.

Is this the finale to America as we’ve known it? I just reflect on Marian Wright Edelman’s lockets with Sojourner Truth and Gen. Harriet Tubman’s faces on them, as she spoke at one of the excellent plenaries at the two-day Peace and Justice Summit.  Facilitated by Michel Martin, with Gloria Steinem, I kept hoping she tell us about her choice in jewelry.

She did.  Truth and Tubman give Wright Edelman, champion for Freedom Schools and children’s rights, strength to continue the work. She just thinks about these two women and she is encouraged and rejuvenated.

When we look at a monument and touch the unforgiving corten steel, it like structural racism and white supremacist ideals that shaped values which devalued blackness and its melaninated mankind– we remember that ideas while fastened to structures which seem immobile and impenetrable, when the water hits it, it bleeds like the rest of us; it dissolves into the ether like other ideas no longer acceptable.

This is the challenge the Memorial asks, that the 800 monuments ask, that the more than 4,000 African American men, women and children lynched whose names are engraved on these bars of steel ask of us– make some noise, it is time to end the silencing shame.

Black lives matter here. Black people deserve to feel safe. When we think about the largest internal migration out, that is, the Great Migration in the ’30s-’40s (’60s) from the south anywhere else north, east, west, it was tangibly connected to the racial terror lynchings depicted here.

Still haunted, some families are not ready to break the silence– this stoicism or unacknowledged terror is all that is keeping the pieces from shattering.  It is hard to function broken, but to live in terror is brokenness.  To break black spirit was the purpose of the lynching in the first place– to terrorize not just the family, but the community. In this way we would bend to the dominate culture’s will living down to their expectations.

The Memorial uplifts the names of those killed. . . lifts the bodies until we have to lean back to see the names and the counties where the victims resided. I hesitate to use the term “victim,” because the reason why the men, women and children were killed points to something else– these men and women and children were free people at a time when free black people were seen as a threat to the social fabric where whiteness was the warp and woof.  It is different in Alabama. The Confederacy lost the war, yet predicated on racial terror and violence  “We the People” did not and does not include blackness.  This writer was not invited to the press preview of the Legacy Museum or the Memorial for Peace and Justice, however, in the many articles published by the corporate press especially those papers in Montgomery, the fact that the week chosen to open Monday, April 23, the Confederate Memorial Day just illustrated the need for a monument to honor black people killed just because they were black.

The state holiday was one of the many ironies I noticed while in Montgomery. I kept thinking about crime scenes and how there were so many criminals with monuments or statues, street names and plazas. Though Bryan Stevenson’s Equal Justice Institute’s work has erected multiple historic markers highlighting slave warehouses and auction houses and places of note throughout the city to counter the dominate racist narrative, who’s listening if the economics for Montgomery stay the same?

The historic hotel not far from EJI where Martin King would stay remains closed. All the money that came into Montgomery probably didn’t touch black community, because I did not see any restaurants owned by us, nor was this highlighted in any material I was given to read. The hotels I saw were all chains I’ve seen here in the Bay Area. Maybe the shuttles were owned  by a black company. I don’t know. I did see a lot of black people working, young black people working, but if the owners were black, I couldn’t tell. Until we call those economic shots then the Memorial is not complete.

We honor and continue their work. Though many men were killed for supposedly having a relationship with a white woman, more often this was not true and if it was it was consensual not rape. However, the majority of the racialized terror was because black men stood their ground, were smarter than white men, had more money or better business sense. Men were also lynched when they refused to see themselves as subservient. They saw themselves as equal to white men (maybe superior) and willing to die for it.

As I walked through the monuments calling names, I saw so many women’s names. I knew black women were lynched but not the large numbers. I was surprised to see how many families were killed. Some lists looked like the terror was over a week, with multiple people lynched daily.

The stories these named and unnamed black people tell just by their presence in the memorials cause one’s heart to stop in one’s throat.  It is hard to witness. I can’t imagine how it must have been for the child trying to remove his father’s boots once his body was cut down. The child wanted to make sure his daddy made it into heaven.  He’d heard that you couldn’t wear boots into heaven.

Similar to the Truth and Reconciliation Hearings in South Africa, the steel monuments are a political statement that municipalities and its constituents can’t ignore. One headline asked the question, “What next?”The Memorial invites conversation with strangers as one walks the sacred corridors where the bodies swing, lie in state.  Talk on Sunday afternoon was for reparations for the families of the deceased, that the families whose ancestors responsible for the killing pay restitution to the families harmed. We spoke about EJI setting up a fund for such donations for the families. It could be an education fund, a medical services funds, a housing fund . . . whatever the facilitated conversation between victim and perpetrator’s ancestor. We also spoke about setting up a fund for indigent prisoners.Not able to leave right away, many visitors gathered or sat at the entrance talking Sunday afternoon after our visit to discuss restorative justice practices and what facilitated conversations could look like. This would be an important next step, because most of the people walking through the Memorial were black people and white people from out of town. I met a woman who traveled all the way from Sidney, Australia. I met a lot of people from California. I would like to know what ordinary white Montgomery folks felt when they looked at the names of black people lynched in their counties.

I went to a lot of cemeteries this weekend– from Africatown, The National Memorial for Peace and Justice and then to Tuskegee to pay homage to Mr. Booker T. Washington and to Dr. George Washington Carver. We passed by the cemetery across from The First Baptist Church (also known as the Brick-A-Day Church) on North Ripley Street. Rev. Ralph Abernathy pastored there (1952-1961). It was one of the largest churches in the south. We also passed by the pastor’s home and Nat King Cole’s home too.

The River Front reminds me of the River Walk in New Orleans where the Maafa Commemoration takes place– this year is NOLA 150th Anniversary; however, the quietude which permeates Montgomery and even Selma is disturbing.

It is a false peace.
.

If all these bodies can be aesthetically exhumed, then what else is there to uncover? As Stevenson says slavery did not go away, it just transformed, adapted to new circumstances. This is the city where only enslaved black people were allowed. If a black person were freed, he or she had to leave town , otherwise the papers would be null and void. There is even a Confederate White House where school kids are taken on field trips. A black woman is one of the tour guides. I wonder what she tells them . . .  as I think about a more substantive use of the children’s time. What happened at the South Carolina Statehouse three years ago is not happening in Alabama, where Gov. Kay Ivey passed a law May last year, which makes it impossible to removed a monument, rename a building or street which has been on public property for more than 40 years. “That includes most, if not all, Confederate monuments in the state” (J. Kaleem).

This means that the criminals will grace this landscape in perpetuity. ‘” The law defined schools, buildings and streets as “memorial” if they are “erected for, or named or dedicated in honor of, an event, a person, a group, a moment, or military service. She says to critics ‘all generations learn not only from our heroes and our greatest achievements, but [she does this] to ensure we learn from our mistakes and our darkest hours'” (Kaleem).

This is easy to say when one is not harmed by a system that perpetuates not darkness rather whiteness. The work of EJI continues with its National Monument to Peace and Justice and in its Legacy Museum. The stories we hear as we enter the slave chamber where holographic spirits tell us their haunting stories, stories not for the faint of heart. These stories are only amplified when we listen to the stories of modern slaves, many still alive, escapees present in the form and shape of our very own Dorsey Nunn, Executive Director, Legal Services for Prisoners with Children, and Hamdiya Cook, Chief Operating Officer, LSPWC, who with other returning citizens, give testament just by their presence to the value of such a museum, such a monument, such a place founded by a man, Bryan Stevenson who put the two together — mass incarceration and slavery visually for all with eyes to witness and act.

Of course, the concept — “The New Jim Crow,” even before Michelle Alexander, is not uniquely Stevenson’s but these monuments to lives brutally snatched from families in racially motivated terror killings is a soothing balm.  The antidote began years ago when volunteers and family members of ancestors lynched began collecting soil from the place where the crime took place. Recognition that even the earth needed healing.

Between sessions at the two day Summit, April 26-27, we watched footage of these treks to public spaces where killings took place. Often, the soil collected in large mason jars might be the only tangible part left of the person killed. Spectators mutilated, chopped up, burned . . .carried off pieces of mangled bodies as souvenirs.

At the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, there is an altar with dirt from multiple places inside a glass monument. Someone placed white roses on the top of it. The altar or “soil monument” sits across from the water running down a wall. Here visitors are “invited to remember the thousands of victims of lynching whose names will never be known.  So much of the Memorial is metaphor, a shifting metaphor . . . the Middle Passage . . . the Atlantic Slave Trade. . . the Mississippi River.

 

Nuecheer Franklin with visitors from Prichard, Alabama

The National Monument for Peace and Justice All photos copyright Wanda Sabir

The Legacy Museum in Montgomery, just like the prison cells and references to solitary confinement at, The National Museum for African American History and Culture in Washington, DC, does not include a place for action-steps or networking with organizations– which it should, both nationally and locally. Fliers and postcards should be available as well as information about local or regional organizations like Pastor Kenneth Glasglow’s Defense Committee is hosting Stop the “Legal Lynching” in 21st Century Alabama, May 9, 5 p.m. ET.   It will be a national call. Visit glasgowdefensecommittee.org or PastorGlasgowDefense@gmail.com He is the founder of The Ordinary People’s Society (TOPS). Rev. Glasgow’s freedom is threatened.

Other organizations are: All of Us or None and the Formerly Incarcerated and Convicted People and Family’s Movement.  I was surprised when I was in DC for the Millions for Prisoners Human Rights  march, no literature there about the huge action that weekend. But the Legacy Museum just opened so I am sure in the future such can and will probably happen.

I have to confess, after visiting The National Memorial for Peace and Justice, I couldn’t settle into a place where I could experience the Legacy Museum. I didn’t want to read all the materials and I certainly did not want to write down all the information. I’d hoped the catalog would have had information about what the museum contained, but it didn’t. For anyone familiar with what EJI does, you have already read the information in other places which is what I liked about the Memorial and Legacy. If you missed a point in one place, it was repeated in the other. The connections are intentional and visceral from the jars of dirt to the red bricks made by enslaved craftsmen to the black bodies crucified then (1877 to 1950) and now.  I did enjoy the art work: paintings and sculpture of Elizabeth Catlett and others.

Wanda Sabir, Mrs. Qwen Carr, (Eric Gardner’s mother); Candice Francis, ACLU, N.Cal; Jimmie C. Gardner, Exoneree. I met Jimmie at “The Millions for Prisoners Human Rights March” last year. He spoke.

Black men at Starbucks, black woman at Waffle House? Remember Denny’s? Slavery continues. Lynching continues, but not for long.  The Memorial is a way to collectively validate the worthiness of these lives — the 4000+ listed here on monuments, named and unnamed.  It is also a wake-up call to white America and to others who would strip from black Americans their human rights that we will not stand for it any longer.

The Legacy Museum: From Slavery to Mass Incarceration is open daily (8-9), the Memorial (8 until dusk or 5 p.m.)

Justice Teams Network in Los Angeles and Oakland

On the 50^th Anniversary of Dr. King’s Assassination, Wednesday, April 4, we need to stop and reflect on the many landmark movements which began 50 years ago like hip hop—

Though its articulation is grounded in African Diaspora linguistic performance body-politic, an embodied black politic which is holistic in its presentation as it is grounded in spirit, hip-hop like other African aesthetic traditions has imprinted itself on American and other youth cultures especially style and attitude. The flavor that is black culture whether it is speech or how one tips her hat is so embedded in a racialized cultural landscape that is antithetic black life in all forms—blackness is still BAD, to be avoided, yet Blackness is a commodity exported, carried in purses and found on most household shelves cold and room temperature.

If the Black Woman is God, then Black people are Gods too. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad said it first in Student Enrollment No. 1. “We are the maker, the owner, cream of the Planet Earth, God of the Universe. Now in the Student Enrollment the role of God was referencing black men exclusively; however, in 2018 it’s another story altogether. It was another story when in Kemet, black women ruled as pharaohs and queens. Patriarchy is a misstep black people need to eliminate from its collective vocabulary because consciousness does not support such attitudes.

For the Oakland Museum of California to showcase such culture in an exhibit entitled: RESPECT: Hip Hop Style and Wisdom now through August 2018 is to elevate this conversation and its creators to a level unprecedented.  It is not as if hip-hop needed validation; however, for some—the 1 percent, such presentation means audience shift like Loma Prieta toppled bridges, redrew lines, erased entire geographies.

With RESPECT elevated as an aim and lens through which the gaze is primed and aimed, Trumpites & Company are now interested. Media marketing has expanded its base. Perhaps attitudes will now shift in positive ways?  In Martin King’s speech “Where Do We Go from Here,” he quotes theologian Theodore Parker: “‘the arch of moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice’”[1]

Literacy is never a waste and to become literate in hip-hop, is to become literate in the Black Arts and Black Power movements interlocking discourse. It is a retelling of the same story—the “forced migration” of millions of African people renamed “redlining,” “imminent domain” and “gentrification.” These descendants of other migrants moved en masse from another continent to this land, only to become trapped in urban enclaves or nouveau dungeons a.k.a. prisons.

Like “jazz” named by others to describe a creation which shifted the earth on its axis so that folks had to hold tight when gravity released its claim on earth— the same is true for hip hop, a new name for the historic rumbling that is black urban culture. It’s the same people driving the machine, each generation passing the torch forward and back—Sankofa is an attitude, a direction and value. Its innovative Afrikan folk tradition branding —Ashay!

Though hip-hop resonates globally, especially as an expressive arts vehicle for disenfranchised communities—those people paved and storm-fenced and walled from view—it is a creation born out of bondage, black bondage in Garvey’s Jamaica taking root in Queens, New York traveling south and west where folks were diggin’ ancestral vibrations. Not monolithic, this creative expression expansive as were the four elements: rap a.k.a, MCing or rhyming, d-jaying & turntabling, graf or writing, b-boying “which encompasses hip-hop dance, style, and attitude, along with the sort of virile body language that philosopher Cornel West[2] described as ‘postural semantics’” and a fifth element “knowledge” or wisdom according to Africa Bambaataa.[3] who in an interview said his success as the godfather of hip hop is “all based on funk and spirituality. You treat people with greatness and greatness will come back to you” (McCormack).

From the cypher – the African Village, the ubongi where the town gathers to converse, solve disputes, develop solutions – to the turntable where Morse code signals altered the universe permanently, to the graf or writing code, before coding became a thing—black folks have always been transcendental in their assessment of reality. The style and the musical lyricism continued in the African folk tradition: blues, jazz . . . freestyling another name for Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Kwame Ture, Ella Baker, Sojourner Truth, Muhammad Ali, Dick Gregory, Marcus Garvey, President Thomas Sankara, Winnie Mandela, Queen Hatshepsut and so on.

There is so much to see and watch and listen to and experience at the OMCA’s RESPECT: Hip-Hop Style and Wisdom—all I can say is visit often. There are talks and other family friendly activities planned from Yoga to Chess to the Barbershop Talks.

There is a stand with books—“wisdom” where a mic invites dialogue. The exhibit space opens with the Dojo—recorded interviews, films, and more unchartered space where if anyone is inspired to “break” – he or she can. There is a chess game set up, plus lots of cushioned benches are spread throughout the connected galleries so patrons can comfortably watch the extended videos which are a signature aspect of curator Rene Guzman’s style. He likes open and accessible. If anyone recalls the Black Panther exhibition just last year. RESPECT continues the story. Adisa Banjoko, a.k.a The Bishop and Susan Barrett, connect the visual, material and spiritual culture cross genres, cross generations. These are the Panthers and their Panther cubs. Hip hop certainly owes much of its context and relevance to the work started by revolutionaries who waged counterinsurgencies, domestic battles which cost many their lives and freedom to date. Those legacies continue today on the 50th Anniversary of Lil Bobby Hutton’s assassination two days after Martin King’s. Don’t miss the program April 7, 1-5 p.m. at Bobby Hutton Park, (a.k.a. deFremery Park), 18^th and Adeline Streets in Oakland, (916) 455-0908, ItsAboutTime/BPP Facebook. Hip-hop resonates with other dominant nations because the oppressive stench of racism and white supremacy leaks into their kitchens from beneath sinks where pipes are shot full of holes like NAFTA and other trade(r) agreements.

Some of my favorite aspects of the exhibit are reflected in the largess of the work: even the gowns are supersized—it is as if giants wore them. The films and testimony, music and art give patrons a grounding in the work. There are so many wonderful photographs by renowned artists and new artists too. The collages are great too. I just wish the photographers had been able to also have videos or a code connected to the work so patrons could dial into hear the backstories. I will have to give a more in depth review once I have read everything and watched all the films and spoken to the consulting curators: Adisa and Barrett. Stay tuned. In the meantime, I have interviewed two exhibitors: Traci Bartlow, choreographer, dance historian, entrepreneur, in this exhibit photographer who has two collages and Amanda Sade whose large poster sized portraits and other work speak to the colors and vibrancy of hip-hop style, its artists and people. Listen to a conversation with both artists on Wanda’s Picks Radio show, March 28 and Eric Arnold, journalist, historian, documentarian, activist, who created the Hip-Hop Atlas of the Bay (45 spots) on the same show. He closes it out.

As I walked around during the press opening I would eavesdrop on conversations between artists and others who had relationships with people pictured in the framed work.  I love the inclusion of Nijel Binns’s marquette or statuettes of the Hon. Marcs Mosiah Garvey, Min. Malcolm X and Tupac Amaru Shakur – it is just one place among many others where hip hop forefathers are connected to this artistic child of the Revolution. (Listen to an interview with the sculptor on Wanda’s Picks Radio Show March 14).

I heard many people who know a lot more about hip hop culture than I do,[4] speak about what is absent or left out. I don’t know how anyone saw everything in one afternoon and I was there for four hours. There are also several places where patrons can add their stories to the archives. It will take multiple journeys through the material to completely grasp the magnitude of RESPECT: Hip Hop Style and Wisdom. http://museumca.org/exhibit/respect-hip-hop-style-wisdom

Flow: Hip-Hop Yoga-Mindful Movement on 1^st Fridays @ at OMCA: 4/6.5/4.6/1.7/6.8/4
Chop It Up-Barbershop Community Conversations @OMCA:4/28 (Hip-Hop & Entrepreneurship); 5/26; 6/30;7/28
Cypher Sunday-Rap, Dance, Beatboxing @OMCA: 4/1 &15; 5/6 &20; 6/3 & 17; 7/1 &15; 8/12
Hip-Hop Trivia-Test Your Knowledge@ OMCA: 4/20; 5/18; 6/15; 7/20
Mic Check/Checkmate-Chess Games@OMCA: 4/11; 5/9; 6/13; 7/11
Plug ‘n’ Play—Live DJ Sets@ OMCA: Every Friday, April 6-August 10
Visit museumca.org/events

Queens: Women, Chess, Hip Hop, Friday, April 6, 7-8:30 p.m in the Great Hall, Level 2. The conversation and interactive chess event inside the exhibition RESPECT: Hip-Hop Style & Wisdom, features Rochelle Ballantyne and Jennifer Shahade with Adisa Banjoko, Hip-Hop Chess Federation founder and writer of Bobby, Bruce & the Bronx. A rising star, Stanford graduate Ballantyne is the Black female closest to achieving chess title of “Master.”

Also Friday, April 6: The Women’s Music Festival- A Night at the Oakland Museum (6-10 p.m.) which includes a panel on Women in Hip-hop panel at 8 p.m.

As part of the 2018 Women in Music Festival, this special ticketed event includes access to RESPECT: Hip-Hop Style & Wisdom and WIM’s first-ever panel discussion on women in Hip-Hop. Tickets are $20 (including admission) and are available for purchase through the Women in Music Festival website. Get tickets

Later in April, Kevin Powell: The Education of Us Tour, Friday, April 20, 7-8:30 p.m.

Weekend Tours of RESPECT: Hip-Hop Style and Wisdom
There are tours scheduled on Saturday and Sundays, 1-1:45 p.m. beginning April 7-8. The tour is included with the museum admission and the $4 charge for special exhibitions.

BLACK GODS MATTER Lecture, with renowned Yoruba chief priest Babalawo Araba Awodiran Agboola, of Oworinsoki Kingdom Lagos, Nigeria

Babalawo Araba Awodiran Agboola, of Oworinsoki Kingdom Lagos, Nigeria. Araba Agboola’s family have been Babalawo’s (Ifa Priests) since the beginning of time, tracing all the way back to the times of Orunmila, the chief architect of the system we know as Ifa. His father, Araba Ifasina Agbool was the Araba of Lagos, and a major force in the resilience of African traditional religions in the face of colonialism and cultural genocide.

His lecture, Saturday, April 7, 6-9 p.m., at Piedmont Avenue Elementary School, 4314 Piedmont Ave, Oakland, will cover the following topics: What is Ifa?What is an Orisa?Is it “voodoo and witchcraft”? Tools for how to begin and maintain African spiritual practices. How to build a relationship with your ancestors.There will also be time for a Q & A session.

This family friendly night will also feature an Orisa inspired concert by Sistah Iminah and friends. A $20 love offering is asked, however no one will be turned away for lack of funds. YOUTH ARE FREE.

Araba Agboola is a living encyclopedia of African oral history that has been passed on for thousands of years, the Odu Ifa. He made history as the first college gratitude Babalawo in Nigeria and has traveled the world continuously educating thousands of people in Nigeria, Brazil, Venezuela, throughout Europe and across America. This is a rare opportunity and we are honored to have him come to Oakland during his 2018 World Tour.

Film Festivals
BAMPFA’s African Film Festival

The Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive’s African Film Festival 2018 continues this month with “Green White Green” dir. by Abba Makama (Nigeria 2016), Thursday, April 19, 7 p.m. The Festival has two May screenings, Wed., May 2, 7 p.m. “Africa and the Diaspora: Short Films, featuring the work of four directors, with director, Carlos Javier Ortiz, We All We Got and A Thousand Midnights (USA), in person that evening.

Listen to an interview on Wanda’s Picks Radio (March 2, 2018) with Senegalese director, Mamadou Dia, whose work Samedi Cinema (2016), celebrates the passion two boys have for film and what it takes to raise the funds to see a show. Other films that evening were shot in Burkina Faso and Jamaica by directors Cedric Ido’s Twaaga (2015) and dir. Lebert Bethune’s Jojolo (1966). For tickets and information visit: https://bampfa.org/program/african-film-festival-2018  BAMPFA is located at 2155 Center Street Berkeley, (510) 642-0808

America ReFramed, in its new series looks at Incarceration and Recidivism

For three consecutive Thursday evenings (8/7c p.m.) beginning April 3 with “Milwaukee 53206,” dir. Keith McQuirter’s film; “Beyond the Wall,” dir. Jenny Phillips and Bestor Cram’s on April 10 and in Annelise Wunderlich and Richard O’Connell’s film: “The Corridor,” airing April 17, the award-winning weekly documentary series, hosted by Natasha Del Toro, America ReFramed looks at mass incarceration, recidivism and trauma.

After the screenings on The World Channel, the films are then made available to audiences on the website: worldchannel.org   America ReFramed is about access, engagement and action. Christopher Hastings, Executive producer, says that each series is chosen for its relevance to communities perhaps silenced by such inequities as those visited here— social justice inequities within the judicial and criminal corrections systems. “The Corridor” is about 5 Keys School housed at the county jail in San Francisco. Education is a proven pathway to freedom.

Audiences will witness how within the system of corrections, rehabilitation is not supported in a concrete way whether this is Milwaukee where the zip code 53206 is a ticket to a life behind bars or we are looking at men returning to Lowell and Lawrence, Massachusetts. We witness young men, one underage without housing, addicted to drugs—men who have fallen between the cracks in a system too inflexible to respond to immediate often urgent needs.  We also see how race limits or denies men and women who have proven they have changed an opportunity to fully participate in society. 90 percent of those locked up come home, yet barriers to employment, housing, and other supportive government services keep parents estranged from their kids and estranged from full access as citizens to their democratic rights. For information about the program, visit: http://worldchannel.org/programs/america-reframed/

Boots Riley’s Coup at the San Francisco International Film Festival with his film: “Sorry to Bother You” screening in San Francisco and Oakland, April 12

Happy Birthday to Raymond Lawrence “Boots” Riley! What a way to start a new solar revolution—b. April 1, 1971, than with a first feature: “Sorry to Bother You” that is centerpiece for the San Francisco International Film Festival 2018. I hadn’t known Boots was a film major. Certainly, his lyrical poetry for the Coup and Street Sweeper Social Club, fill an aural canvas—the live soundtrack bumping the ante “higher” as it dances these concepts into unsuspecting minds whose bodies wake up in the middle of a slide into critical thought BAM!

Boots is a political activist and artist with a tested literal and philosophical work that keeps the volume on blast— His film screens twice in one day, at 6:30 p.m. at the Castro theatre in San Francisco and at 8 p.m. at the Grand Lake theatre, two art deco landmarks, classy upscale venues—a fitting setting for a film that examines place, gender and opportunity. “According to Riley, ‘Sorry to Bother You’s’ Oakland location is a key element of the film, ‘The story and my understanding of the world and everything springs out from this geographical spot’” (San Francisco Chronicle). Boots is very much a man of the people, people who stand up and make things happen. Son of a veteran of the Civil Rights Movement, Walter Riley, Esq., on the 50^th Anniversary of Dr. King’s assassination, “Sorry to Bother You,” looks at how what we do to fit in—ethical compromises, can come back to haunt us.

“Sorry to Bother You” centers on an Oakland-based telemarketer named Cassius Green who discovers a magical key to professional success. It takes on such topics as racism and corporate greed — some (film) buyers felt its satire was deft, while others griped that it juggled too many ideas.

“Annapurna, which specializes in auteur-driven fare such as ‘The Master’ and ‘Detroit,’ was pretty blunt about its love for the picture.

‘We f—ing love this movie,’ the studio said in a statement.

“The film stars Lakeith Stanfield (“Get Out”), Tessa Thompson (“Creed”), Armie Hammer (“Call Me by Your Name”), David Cross (“Arrested Development”), and Terry Crews (“Brooklyn Nine-Nine”). Boots, director, already had the album written with music featured in the film (Variety).
People who have existing medical conditions are at greater risk of developing cheapest viagra erectile dysfunction, according to a new study. Advent of many diseases these days has become extremely dangerous for all these men and they need to consult a consultant psychiatrist cialis tab in Kolkata to get the best desired result. General spebuy viagra in spain ts do a universe of damage by not having the capacity to perceive complex emotional instabilities, frequently diagnosing “misery” when it’s not melancholy by any stretch of the imagination. These online stores can help you buy the best quality levitra 5mg online at an unbeatable price.
“Nearly as deranged as it is politically engaged, Boots Riley’s sui generis “Sorry to Bother You” is the kind debut feature that knocks your socks off, tickles your bare tootsies with goose feathers for a while, then goes all Kathy Bates in the final stretch, ultimately taking a sledgehammer to your kneecaps. What, there’s no category on Netflix for movies like that? Too bad: The Oakland-based rapper isn’t waiting for permission to speak his piece, pioneering a new form of wildly inventive, highly confrontational satire that dares to question the system, pitting an immensely likable black actor (Lakeith Stanfield) against the fat-cat capitalists (represented here by a coked-out, sarong-wearing Armie Hammer) responsible for inventing a new 21st-century form of slavery” (Debruge).

San Francisco International Film Festival: April 4-17 Picks con’t.
https://www.sffilm.org/2018-sffilm-festival/  or call (415) 561-5000.

The Rescue List dir. Alyssa Fedele and Zachary Fink April 6, 11, 12. April 11 there will be a panel discussion afterward facilitated by Human Rights Watch.

Lake Volta in Ghana is the largest man-made lake in the world; it is also notorious as a locale for forced child labor. Bay Area filmmakers Zachary Fink and Alyssa Fedele’s beautifully shot documentary charts the courageous efforts of a local safe house to rescue the kids, give them schooling and therapy, and prepare them for reintegration into their families. Though it contains many intimate and moving moments with the children, the star of the film is real life hero Kwame, who initiates several dramatic rescues.

Visit SIFF Festival Highlights: https://www.sffilm.org/2018-sffilm-festival/spotlights/festival-spotlights

Also don’t miss: Tre, Maison, and Dasan, three boys who all share something in common – one of their parents is in jail. Denali Tiller, dir., doesn’t just document the tale of so many children (1 in 14), she allows the children to participate as lead storytellers in a story they want to share with the world. What is powerful about these kids is how they continue to hold onto their dads and mom, despite the turmoil such love wrecks on their lives. These kids choose to visit their parents who in some cases were in prison when they were born which means the child never knew their parent as a free person. One father asks his son if there are victims on both sides of the equation. The boys wear the microphones while visiting with their fathers and mother. When one hears that prison disrupts everyone’s life “Tre, Maison and Dasan” illustrate how this is true. The film is screening April 8, 10, 13.

“Wrestle” shot in Huntsbille, Alabama: April 6, 9, 10.

The last film, “The Judge,” dir. Erika Cohn. Screening, Apr. 6, 7, 13.

Judge Kholoud Al-Faqih became the first female appointed to any of the Middle East’s Shari’a courts in 2009, challenging longstanding traditions and customs of women’s roles in society. Constantly battling controversy over her position, Al-Faqih offers guidance, mentorship, and support both in and outside the courts. In this intimate portrait, director Erika Cohn captures the determined and compassionate judge as she strives to achieve justice in a system that so often does not favor women.

On the Fly:
7 week South African film series at the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) begin April 18 with MAMA AFRICA, a documentary on Miriam Makeba.  All programs begin at 6:30.  https://www.moadsf.org/blog/born-free-film-looks-at-post-apartheid-south-africa-april-18-may-31/  Meklit Hadero @ SFJAZZ April 6; 16^th Annual Oakland International Film Festival  April 3-7 Visit http://www.oiff.org/  Film: Making a Killing: Guns, Greed, & the NRA, Sat., April 14, 1:30-3:30 p.m. at the Alameda City Council Chambers. It is a free screening, not suitable for small children. Watch the trailer on bravenewfilms.org/makingakilling; Joining Forces Against Policing and Jails in San Francisco: A Half Day Summit against the Prison Industrial Complex, Sat., April 7, 10 AM to 3 PM at City College, Mission Campus, 1125 Valencia Street. For information nosfjail@curbprisonerspending.org 510-444-0484 nonewsfjail.wordpress.com; No to US Wars at Home and Abroad, Oakland, Sunday, April 15, Spring Action: March and Rally, 11 AM-12:30 p/m. Assemble and Rally at Lake Merritt Amphitheatre 12^th and 4^th Avenue on Lake Merritt Blvd.; 12:30 PM March from Oscar Grant Plaza near 14^th and Broadway. For more information visit Facebook.com/endwarsspring2018 ; SF WAR Walk Against Rape April 7, 10 a.m. registration and program starts at the Women’s Building in SF, 3543 18^th Street.

San Francisco Bay View Fundraiser

Solitary Man: A Visit to Pelican Bay State Prison performed by Charlie Hinton and Fred Johnson is Saturday, April 21, 3 p.m. at the Black Repertory Group Theatre, 3201 Adeline Street, Berkeley (near Ashby BART). Following the performance there will be a panel featuring torture survivors, attorneys and allies. Donation is $10-20. Visit sfbayview.com and Facebook:/solitarymantheplay

Destiny Arts’ presents: “Evolve,” April 6-15 @ Laney College Theatre

This year, EVOLVE will take thousands of audience members on a journey into The Museum of Forgotten Truths. Along with the teenage members of the Destiny Arts Youth Performance Company, their 9-12 year old counterparts in the Destiny Junior Company, and a group of 16 grandmothers, the performance also features the work from an array of guest artists, including: Suzanne Gallo of the internationally-acclaimed vertical dance company, BANDALOOP, performers from Molodi, a body percussion troupe from Las Vegas, Keith Terry, artistic director of Crosspulse and producer of the International Body Music Festival, Risa Jaroslow, artistic director of Risa Jaroslow & Dancers, and Samara Atkins and Jenay Anolin, artistic directors of Mix’d Ingrdnts.  Show times: 4/6, 4/7, 4/13, 4/14: 7:30pm; 4/10: Field Trip Shows: 10am and 1:30pm; 4/14: 2pm (1st of two shows); 4/15: 5pm Visit: https://destinyarts.org/get-involved/events-calendar/

Bay Area Book Festival April 28-29

The Future is Female at the fourth annual Bay Area Book Festival (BABF) as the popular, internationally recognized two-day celebration of writers, readers and the written word in downtown Berkeley expands its longstanding commitment to the power of women in print with special thematic programing and adds a pre-Festival conversation. BABF has established a new membership group called Women Lit to support programs at the April 28-29 Festival (including a special Women Lit members’ salon at the Festival with leading women authors), present year-round public events and private salons, foster networking and community among Bay Area women, and engage the public around female authors and woman-focused issues and topics: www.baybookfest.org/women-lit-overview/ and www.baybookfest.org/women-lit-about/.The Festival takes place at multiple locations in downtown Berkeley.

SF State’s Going Global Museum opens April 26

San Francisco State has a new venue to showcase its extensive collections of cultural items — including the mummies from the University’s Sutro Egyptian Collection. The Global Museum opens its debut exhibition “Going Global: From San Francisco to the World” on April 26. The admission-free show will remain on display through May 2019.

Three beautifully painted sarcophagus lids will greet visitors in the museum’s main gallery. In an accompanying room opening in the fall, visitors will be able to view the two intact mummies.

In the works since 2014, the Global Museum is 1,922 square feet — nearly double the size of SF State’s old museum. Permanent collections include several thousand items of art and material culture from Africa, the Americas, Asia, Egypt and Oceania, spanning the ancient world to the 20th century. Highlights include the mummy Nes-Per-N-Nub, once a high priest of the Temple of Karnak. His remains occupy a triple-nesting sarcophagus, one of only three in the U.S.

Adolph Sutro, San Francisco mayor in the 1890s, purchased the mummies and displayed them at the Sutro Baths until the mid-1960s. George K. Whitney Jr. donated them to SF State in 1964.

EastSide Arts Jazz Series April 2018

The series begins Friday, April 6, 2018 – 7PM with the incomparable Avotcja as she presents ON THEIR SHOULDERS WE STAND #3: poets and musicians pay homage to the artistic brilliance of our Ancestors, a benefit concert for the Eastside Cultural Center’s Youth Arts Programs featuring some of the Bay Area’s best: THE TROUBLE MAKERS UNION, NANCY HOM, FRANCISCO HERERRA, BILL VARTNAW, BOMBALELE, DUOMUXA aka Marci & Ricardo Valdivieso, THE SALT PEOPLE w/Kaylah Marin, Kevin North, Val Serrant & Henry Mobley, MARIA MEDINA THE WORD WEAVER RUMBERA . . .  and many more

The following week headliner is Marshall Trammell & Warrior Ethos, Friday, April 13, 2018, 7pm – Warrior Ethos: Nommo “a secret, exclusive screening of a fantastic new film focusing on one of our favorite musicians” and discussion session after the film. Saturday, April 14, 2018, 8pm – Warrior Ethos: Listening Sessions – Mutual Aid Project reunion performance.

Closing out the series on April 20-21, 8pm is the legendary David Murray – one of the very best jazz musicians playing, makes a rare Bay Area appearance – coming to EastSide for two nights. Get advance tickets this event will sell out!  All events are held at EastSide Cultural Center, 2277 International Blvd, Oakland. For more info at www.eastsideartsalliance.org

Save the Date: May 19,2018 – 11am – 7pm – 18^th annual Malcolm X JazzArts Festival – As we all gather together at this annual festival to regroup, to build, to feed our souls, and to acquire knowledge we embrace the theme for this year’s festival:  A cultural reconstruction for third world self-determination.

John Santos presents:  Puerto Rico Del Alma! (Puerto Rico Soul!)

The collaboration takes place over three workshops, community gatherings at La Pena Cultural Center, April 21, culminating with a concert at SFJAZZ, April 22.

Plena workshop with Taller de Plena con los Maestros:Tito Matos, Juan Gutierrez & Jerry Medina. The workshop will highlight the richness of this popular music form rooted in the rich history, politics and activism shaped by the daily lives of Puerto Rican working class people, Saturday, April 21st, 4:30 – 6:00, La Peña Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck Ave., Berkeley, $25. Please bring panderetas and güícharos if you can. There will be a limited # to share.

Its main instruments are the pandereta, an Islamic-derived frame drum held in one hand and played with the other, and the güícharo, a gourd scraper of indigenous Taino origin. Three visiting master musicians will conduct this workshop: Juango Gutierrez is the founder and director of the landmark, Grammy-nominated Pleneros de la 21 (NY 1983) that claims the longest history of presenting traditional Puerto Rican Music in the US among active groups. Hector “Tito” Matos is a force of nature as a virtuoso panderetero, founder and director of the powerhouse, Grammy-nominated Viento de Agua (NY/PR 1997), as well as a leader of the movement that has researched and resuscitated the plena among Puerto Rican youth in recent decades. Also participating will be legendary Puerto Rican band leader and vocalist extraordinaire, Jerry Medina, who was a founding member of the iconic group, Batacumbele in 1980.

Saturday evening, April 21, is a Puerto Rico Report / Reportaje de la isla, co-presented by Tito Matos & Defend Puerto Rico, 7:00 – 9:00 p.m. also at La Peña Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck Ave. in Berkeley. Cost: $15 – $50.  It is also a fundraiser for Tito’s reconstruction work and uplifting of Puerto Rico in the aftermath of hurricanes Irma and Maria that caused such widespread destruction in September of 2017. The other beneficiary is Defend Puerto Rico that is conducting considerable relief work on the island. Tito will give us up-to-the-minute information about the state of the island and the spirit and amazing efforts of the island’s inhabitants, friends and family to survive, resist and rebuild. The Bay Area’s own Eli Jacobs-Fantauzzi and Frankie Ramos are intimately connected to this bi-coastal organization. An update on their urgent work will also be presented.

Closing out the weekend is Rhythms of Resistance with The John Santos Sextet with Special Guests, Sunday, April 22, 2:00 at SFJAZZ, 201 Franklin St, San Francisco, (866) 920-5299.

ROBERT MOSES’ KIN presents: DRAFT

Robert Moses hosts an annual project of solo performances of collaborative artists created with brief encounters with the choreographer. This year the program is April 13-14 at 8 p.m. and April 15 at 5 p.m. at Dance Mission, 3316 24^th Street, San Francisco. On this same program, Moses will perform his classic solo work, Blue Guerilla (1995).  I can’t remember the last time I saw Moses dance. This is a rare treat, especially after witnessing the extraordinary work in his 23^rd Annual Season featuring Bootstrap Tales, a work that looked at foster care youth who age out of the system and often end up on the streets of San Francisco and elsewhere. Tickets are $25. To purchase visit Brown Paper Tickets or call: or 800-838-3006 or www.RobertMosesKin.org  https://vimeo.com/groups/contemporarydance/videos/55455443

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/111013-the-arc-of-the-moral-universe-is-long-but-it

[2] britannica.com/art/hip-hop

[3] https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/26/q-a-afrika-bambaataa-spin_n_659614.html

[4] It has been years since I taught classes on Tupac Shakur Legacy: Nature or Nurture/Choice or Destiny; Women in Hip Hop; and the History of Hip Hop. I am rusty (smile).