Each February we get to think about Black people. Yep. At this time the term reverse racism or self-indulgence disappear overnight. BLM shorthand for Black Lives Matter are topical for this brief and short month. Suitably thankful for a national nod in our direction, the children of the formerly enslaved cram as much of their lives into these 28-29 days because on March 1, the dominant narrative gets taken off pause.
While Black history month is not passé, the need to have such a month should be. Why are Americans unfamiliar with any history that does not support superiority of the ruling class? Even if its population is shrinking, the dominant culture which traces its lineage to European ancestry controls publishing, media and government, that is, information and its dispersal. Crumbs from the master’s table forms the line to the guillotine, yet most birds are still picking away.
We even had a mulatto president and what did that change for Black people in America?
Zero. We have a mulatto Vice President now. Hope the outcome differs than the previous scenario. I am hopeful. VP Kamala Harris didn’t dream about who she was and stumble into consciousness in a random book, she was intentionally groomed and then polished. Her initiation carefully crafted as she stepped from Berkeley to DC and then back to San Francisco Bay. She enrolled in a citadel of Black History, Howard University. Her predecessors include: Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael), E. Franklin Frazier, Melba Roy Mouton, Mamie Clark, Frances Cress Welsing, Vernon Jordan, Mary Ann Shadd Cary, Thurgood Marshall, L. Douglas Wilder, Andrew Young
Our self-esteem went up, however, self-esteem doesn’t spend or accrue interest.
Blackness is not monetized unless it is repackaged and marketed via a camouflaged lens. Whiteness sells, Blackness does not unless the product is a negative idea. How many reformed Black men does it take to make guilty liberals feel better? How many posters of “returned citizens” does it take for the judicial system to get a pass for massive indiscretion?
Jim Crow exists. Michelle Alexander calls it “new” because of the 21st repackaging, but nothing is new. In fact, the current systemic incarceration of women, specifically, looks more like chattel slavery when women’s bodies belonged to the state which could rape, mutilate, breed without consequence. It still happens. The state of CA was sued for its involuntary sterilization policies on women prisoners as if losing one’s reproductive function was somehow connected to safety. As if a woman who could no longer bear a child, was less likely to bring another “criminal” into the world.
Cesspool thoughts.
Okay, so back to Black history. Since the narrative is controlled by the government, the safe “stories” are sanitized versions of Dr. King, Harriett Tubman. . . Booker T. Washington, George Washington Carver, Mary McLeod Bethune, James Weldon Johnson, Maya Angelou . . . maybe. But the radial Africans like Malcolm X and Hon. Marcus Garvey, Sojourner Truth and Delilah Beasley and other regional agitators are less known.
How is it possible that someone could not know Ms. Ella Baker if they know Mrs. Rosa Parks? If someone knows Thurgood Marshall, how could a person not know Dred Scott?
Why are Black Americans studying the slave revolts—all of them, not just Nat Turner’s? Why don’t more Americans know the story of the first Africans to be traded for provision in 1619 at what is now Ft. Monroe National Monument?
One would think such exploration is unnecessary, yet in a conversation with the Hon. Barbara Lee early January, a KQED radio host of a new podcast expressed surprise at the extent municipalities would go to disenfranchise African American voters. When she heard the questions registrants were told to answer questions like “how many jelly beans are in this jar?” or what’s so and so president’s middle name or recite the Declaration of Independence, she wondered, like most of us do, how in the heck these now ancestors persevered. It’s not that California made the subsequent gene pool softer, it’s just that those of use from the south—Congresswoman Lee Texas and I, New Orleans we had grandparents or parents who lived this humiliating experience.
Yet, they were not humiliated. Ms. Hamer lost her housing when she signed up to vote. She “couch surfed for weeks and months until she found shelter. Her husband lost his housing too and he left her. He wanted no part with the voting. He was an ideological twin to General Harriett Tubman-Ross whose husband wouldn’t leave the plantation when she went to show him the way to freedom.
Yes, this our country with hidden contingency clauses.
Adam David Miller “A.D.” learned this when he innocently typed a note to a girl he was interested in. The note was intercepted by a woman at the store where the girl worked and he was arrested and put in the city jail. His mother and other older adults couldn’t understand what he was thinking. The sheriff asked if he intended to rape the girl and if he’d been involved with the girl.
He stopped eating and the sheriff, who’d know him all his life, thought the kid might die on his watch. A.D. had been saving money to buy his mother a lot to build a house—systemic poverty haunted this man-child and hunger, not unlike Richard Wright’s incessant appetite for truth as well as human viands marked his early life.
A.D. was given a ticket to exile, and as he read the note with instructions on how to find his sister in NY and kind Christian couples and singles older women on the bus then train helped him navigate the newness of city life, he realized that his home was gone forever. This ticket into exile was a ticket into erasure. It was a rite of passage, yet, but not a righteous passage. A.D. thought he was free, however, as he watched Black passengers move from the back of the bus to the front once they crossed the Mason Dixie line and then reverse it, he began to understand his “place,” something no one had explained to him while in Orangeburg, South Carolina. The A.D. we meet constantly pushed the line, the colored only expectations line – He successfully stretched rubber bands, binding tenuous relationships – whether this was in friendship or employment except this last time when he crossed a line he could not retreat.
We honor A.D., who was a master teacher a phenomenal writer and a man I wish I’d had an opportunity to get to know better, but thanks to his collected works on pages and carved into cement, we have an opportunity to learn more. We salute A.D. at the 31st Annual Celebration of African American Poets and Their Poetry, Sat., Feb. 6, 1-4 p.m. It will be a virtual event guests can screen through Facebook.com/wandaspicks We will also honor QR Hand, another revolutionary poet, whose passage late Dec. was met with sadness and surprise. Friends and relatives will join us this year to honor both men as we also celebrate the theme: THE BLACK FAMILY: Representation, Identity, and Diversity. ASALH is the organization Dr. Carter G. Woodson founded in 1915. He is the founder of Negro History Week which included Frederick Douglass’s birthday on Feb. 14 and President Lincoln’s Feb. 12 birthday. NHW is now African American History Month. In 1976, President Gerald Ford made Black History Month, on its 50th anniversary, a nationally recognized observance.
Playground Solo Final Week: Friday-Sunday, Feb. 5-7, 2021
Listen to an interview with Diane Barnes on Wanda’s Picks, Jan. 29, 2021
Listen to an interview with Carla Vega on Wanda’s Picks, Feb. 3, 2021
Both are featured, Fri., Feb. 5, 7 p.m. at Playground SOLO
Co-presented by the City of Oakland’s Cultural Affairs Commission and the Offices of Council President Nikki Fortunato Bas, “Stories of Solidarity” is a virtual town hall conversation and concert led by Oakland’s Asian Pacific Islander and Black artists standing together.
This is a free event.
Land Acknowledgement ritual by: Calina Lawrence
Performances by:
Greer Nakadegawa-Lee, 2020 Oakland Youth Poet Laureate
Directory links allow you viagra super store to increase the size of manhood. This http://deeprootsmag.org/2015/11/11/journey-to-the-healing-moment/ cialis uk sales will ensure more satisfaction. cialis without prescription in stock We all now know that such disorders may set off in children in early childhood. Vitamin B5 Also known as Pantothenic acid, B5 has been considered helpful in the fight against erectile dysfunction. it relaxes the penile muscles & is a basic contribution to the erection. purchase cheap viagra helps for the complete eradication of the worries of physical intimacy & the ingredient in this medicinal product is sildenafil citrate which has been confirmed as a potential PDE5 inhibitor by the medical experts. Kev Choice
Tao Shi
Olafemi “Bankh” Akintunde
Howard Wiley
Terisa Siagatonu and more.
The event will be streamed live here and via Council President Nikki Bas:
https://www.facebook.com/
So, join us Thursday, February 25 from 5:00PM – 6:30PM as we continue the deep tradition of Oakland Asian Pacific Islander and Black artists coming together, across dividing lines, to create a cultural response to racism rooted in power, healing and solidarity.
This event is sponsored in partnership with: Oakland Asian Cultural Center | (OACC) | AYPAL | RedBay Coffee | Oakland Public Library’s Oakland Youth Poet Laureate Program | Life is Living | Oakland Rising | The Oakland Post | Piano Black Tea Co. | Alkalin Rye | House of Sato | Civic Design Studio | GOOD GOOD EATZ
Oakland Theatre Project presents: Binding Ties: The 16th Street Train Station through March 7
“Binding Ties: 16th Street Train Station” at the Oakland Theater Project (formerly Ubuntu) begins its 2021 Season with a site specific work created by Dr. Stephanie Anne Johnson and Michael Copeland Sydnor in 1991. In the reprise, Johnson works alone, Copeland-Sydnor now deceased. Folks jokingly speak about the disappeared Black people; however, Wood Street from 7th over to 17th where patrons enter the fenced off train station looks nothing like the slides that illustrate the work, not to mention the people in the townhouses and condos—these new neighbors who are not descendants of Pullman porters or maids who cleaned the passenger cars in silk uniforms—they had to pay for themselves. We hear one character talk about her shift which allowed her to get her children ready for school in the morning, even if it meant they are alone much of the night (3 p.m.-12 midnight.)
There is an actor on the ground who opens the play and then acts as a translator between scene changes.
The score competes lovingly with the narration, text that of the historic characters whom we come to know and care about.
A house manager with a cool light saber points to an usher just ahead once we drive in who escorts cars to designated parking spots. The guides show up again afterward to help us file out without incident. There are no concessions, but if you have to go to the toilet, there is a port-a-potty on the premises. I think we were told the play would be an hour, but it was a bit longer the evening I attended.
After being escorted to a parking spot patrons turn their radio dial to the frequency where the theatre sound lives. If you don’t have a radio in your car like me, make sure you have an app on your phone before you leave home or a portable radio.
The VIP tickets are parked center stage, while the regular patrons ($25-$35 donation) are to the side of the larger façade at the front of the station. One of the characters in a projection speaks about how the white patrons act like the Black men are pieces of furniture. We hear of the work by CL Dellums and A. Phillip Randolph who eventually help organize the first Black Union after the first March on Washington. “Binding Ties” is an ancestor tale. Though the men and women whose livelihood was tied to West Oakland are gone, their stories are a part of the archives in the Oakland History Room, the Bancroft Library and so many books. There is something to be said about historic preservation and the integrity of sacred spaces consecrated by Black labor, Black love and Black life—however, the empty space behind the walls images are projected on speak to the erasure of Black people from the Oakland landscape. Land trusts is one way of securing permanence; however, the best way to secure space is for Black people in places like West Oakland is for municipalities and citizen constituency to understand and value a Black presence.
There are no tickets sold at the OTP performance, so get your tickets in advance: The shows are at 7:30 p.m. gates open at 7 p.m. Thursday-Sunday. There are limited PAY-WHAT-YOU-CAN TICKETS: $5 / $10 / $15 / $20 per vehicle. General admission is: $25 / $30 / $35 per vehicle with PRIORITY TICKETS (Reserved priority parking) at $50 per vehicle. Visit https://oaklandtheaterproject.org/binding-ties
Truth to Power: Barbara Lee Speaks for Me Film Screening
Opening Remarks & Virtual Screening of Truth to Power: Barbara Lee Speaks for Me
3:30 pm Click the link below to access the opening reception on Zoom
Link to access opening remarks
Meeting ID: 160 561 3665 Passcode: 853801