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Wanda’s Picks November 2020

Aṣe to the memory of those nearly 1000 Jonestown victims (majority children and elders) buried in a mass gravesite at Evergreen Cemetery in Oakland, CA. “Never again” is not just a pledge, it is a call to action. Don’t forget to participate in the fourth annual “Tweet for African Ancestors of the Middle Passage” 11/25-27– warm-ups: Wednesday continuing through the massacre of indigenous people called, Thanksgiving, ending on – BIG PUSH: “Black Friday.”

Congratulations to John Burris, Esq. on his induction into the California Lawyers Association, Trial Lawyers Hall of Fame 2020 last month. It was so wonderful to see so many juris, attorneys and judges tip their hats to a man who is really a servant of the people. Sometimes I get lucky and find myself on the right list. I met Mr. Burris when I was Project Director for the AIDS Volunteer Clearinghouse for the Volunteer Center for Alameda County. We were on the 6th Floor and he had the entire 4th Floor Suite. I’d see him in the elevator and lobby sometimes. However, I saw him more often at Black Rep at many plays. When I thought about a career in law, Constitutional Law, he was my role model. I used to want to be just like him and then New College Law School closed and I decided not to attend Stanford University rather pursued a Masters in Writing at USF when my project ended.

On the Fly
TaSin Sabir @ The Inkblot Gallery in Alameda, CA

View photos in person in window of Inkblot gallery on Central Avenue in Alameda. More info at www.inkblotgallery.com


Holding tightly, but barely holding on as we slip in and out of fear and into hope for yesterday times.

We move forward blindly, arms outstretched,

Having some editorial overview or moderated content is fine but I have not included sites that go through an application soft cialis process much like seeking new employment. It is an inability in men who are unable to afford the cost of surgery and implantation can simply go with sildenafil 50mg check for more now this choice after recommendation of a medical professional, is an effective solution to this problem. Are you aware of sexual dysfunction? Some price of sildenafil good service of the many symptoms of this condition include: Non-consummation or else not having sex for prolonged period. Men’s 50mg viagra sale obsession with the size of their sexual organs is widely talked about and mocked at.

Warning! Measuring! But yearning for closeness.
The memory fading.
Stories we will tell our young if we could only remember.
This masquerade is now the only show and we are lost.
There is no map through these vacant streets, abandoned buildings, and empty parks,
Yet, we will bear down and push.
The way we did before.
Push through the pain and weeds surrounding our core and we will feel at peace.
Again. Our isolation strings us together like ropes that anchor ships to the shore.

 

Here is the campaign for the 4th Annual Ancestral Social Media BLACK FRIDAY Blast:

  1. Beginning Wed.-Thurs., Nov. 25-27, we will begin sending tweets, texts and emails. This is a run-up to the big TWEET on Black Friday, Nov. 27. If you have international contacts, this text is a global effort. Year 1, Tweets were made across the world. In Oakland, CA, we built an altar at Lake Merritt, the site of the June Libations for African Ancestors. The public were invited to write down the names of their ancestors on the sidewalk– the result was a living altar. Visit FaceBook.com/maafabayarea

This year people are encouraged to TWEET:

#REMEMBER the Ancestors;

#LIBATIONS 4 African Ancestors;

#COMMEMORATE African Ancestors;

#OUR ANCESTORS LIVE THROUGH US

  1. The image on FACEBOOK and TWITTER and TEXT and EMAIL is our Adinkra logo: Nyame Dua[1](which is the altar for ritual).  Also post the brochure on FACEBOOK and attach to emails.
  2. On Black Friday, Friday, Nov. 27 the message changes: we will Tweet, post on Facebook: BLACKPower2AfricanAncestors, plus anything else you might want to TWEET. Make sure the TWEETS all include the word: Ancestor(s) and Black (smile).  We are reclaiming the economics of blackness. We are no longer parcels to be spent at another’s will.

On Friday, the Andinkra changes to “FAWOHODIE”, the symbol for independence”, “freedom,” “emancipation.”

If there are local events to highlight, I would put them on the Facebook post, especially alternatives to spending with the capitalists.   Do not forward, start your own correspondence with your peoples. We want to have at least 10-12.5 million tweets for the numbers of our ancestors who made the journey (12.5 million) and those who survived (10 million).

A Film Review: Belly of the Beast
By Wanda Sabir

Mary J. Blige sings in “What You’ve Done” in “Belly of the Beast,” that some acts can’t be undone. She sings of “strength and no power”; “blame”, “pain” and resistance.

“But while I still got time (Time)
I’ll just keep on fightin’ (Fightin’)

“’Cause it ain’t over (No it ain’t over), ’til it’s over (‘Til it’s over)
It ain’t over ’til it’s done (Oh ’til it’s done)
‘Til these shackles are broken (Ooh, ooh, ooh)
It ain’t over (Ooh, yeah, yeah)

‘Cause some wounds never heal, do you see what you’ve done? (See what you’ve done, oh, ooh, ooh) . . .

“We won’t lay down, we’re survivors (We won’t lay down)
All my scars are my reminders (My reminders)
We won’t lay down, we’re survivors (Oh-oh, oh, oh)
All my scars are my reminders

“’Cause it ain’t over (‘Cause it ain’t over)
(‘Cause it ain’t over, ’cause it ain’t over, ’cause it ain’t over)”

I have been thinking a lot about justice. How justice seems to benefit the perpetrators more so than the victims. All the funding and resources seems to get spent on the bad guys, the ones who harm. What about the innocent victims who survive only to struggle with embodied nightmares? These demons haunt the victim who is then prey for  the hyenas circling sniffing for blood. Their tongues wrap the barely mended, saliva binds, teeth crush until escape is impossible without fracture, so the survivor stays and grows used to another noose, neck broken but not completely severed.

Eugenics, a system of population control seeped in systemic racism and sexism is an othering of major proportions by the politically powerful and elite, those who maintain and feed the dominant discourse was defeated in California not once but twice. “Belly of the Beast,” (2020) directed by Erika Cohn, a Peabody and Emmy Award-winning director tells the more recent story. Produced by Angela Tucker (dir. “All Kinfolk, Ain’t Skinfolk”), it is now streaming on POV.

Shot over a period of seven years, we meet two amazing warrior moms– Kelli Dillion and Cynthia Chandler and many supporting cast who are just as phenomenal. They don’t don capes or fly through the air, but they could.  We meet women whose stories are represented here legs dangling from examine table(s) before tucked in stirrups. Women who risk retaliation to tell this important story.

Sunny California until 1979 was the capital of eugenics—20,000 people were sterilized forcefully and through deceptive procedures. If a person was poor or “insane,” “criminal,” or “unfit,” Mexican or Black, the state facilitated the person’s sterilization. Yep, there were big bucks in decreasing the population of unfavorables.

The Central Valley in California is home to the largest women’s prison in the world. At the height of the recent sterilization there were two prisons, the other Valley State Prison for Women, both institutions made Chowchilla the epicenter for this insidious secret mission to systematically rid the state of less favored populations: Black woman, poor women, Latinx women, Indigenous women. All of this might have remained unknown except for one woman, Kelli Dillion.

Kelli Dillion, now, City of Los Angeles Commissioner, Co-Chair of Empowerment Congress Southeast and Executive Director of the Non-profit, Back to the Basics, complained of pain in her uterus and the doctor scheduled her for exploratory surgery. He told her that he saw cysts, but if there were any malignant cells he would remove them. Later when Kelli awakened from the procedure the doctor told her everything went fine.

A domestic violence survivor, Kelli left behind two young sons during her 15-year sentence and dreamed of returning home to an opportunity to start again, raise a family.  When she started to lose weight and began having menopausal symptoms and she didn’t get any answers from prison medical staff, she wrote a letter to Justice Now. Cynthia Chandler, co-founder and lead attorney, subpoenaed Kelli’s medical records and had the heartbreaking task of reading the records to Kelli detailing what happened to her.

Kelli’s dreams were shattered. There was no reason for the sterilization other than the California Corrections medical contractors’ decision to save the state money by decreasing this woman and other women’s ability to bring children into the world. There was this unspoken narrative that certain women were not fit mothers and that it was a tax savings to sterilize these women “while everything was out on the table. A couple snips and it’s done,” a nurse who set up an ObGyn clinic at CCWF said.

It was as if these women were felines who were to be spayed, not human beings with rights and feelings. One doctor would almost forcibly make women agree to sterilization if they were having a second or third child, his nurse responsible for gathering the signatures. She stated after the bill’s passage ending the practice that she thought sterilization was useful and did not regret her role in a process that left 100s of women unable to bear children.

Justice Now launched an investigation and letters from incarcerated women spoke of requests to sign medical forms while cut open and in various states of consciousness. One women shared being forced to have a C-section when she was perfectly capable of vaginal child birth.  “Why would I want to have major surgery?” She says.  While in the operating room she was asked to sign a form agreeing to the tubal ligation.  In medical records Justice Now and the Center for Investigative Journalism (CIJ) uncovered, there were tubal ligations connected to these C-sections which cost the state of California $100,000s of dollars. The interviews and surveys sent into CCWF, and the stealth meetings on the prison yard where documents exchanged hands led organizers like Justice Now and California Coalition for Women Prisoners to learn the forced sterilization was bigger than the organizers had imagined. We hear the voices of these women and their stories read aloud in the film narrative. (I met some of these women myself on legal advocacy visits with CCWP.  One woman said the doctor told her a hysterectomy would help her headaches. She suffered from mental illness.)

One loses her agency once she dons an orange garment and a number replaces her name, which made it hard for the team at Justice Now to identify the scope of the travesty given the anonymity of the victims.  The Center for Investigative Journalism and Justice Now, an organization located in Oakland which has on its board women who are incarcerated and also the formerly incarcerated, pushed the State of California legislature to ratify and enforce new legislation to stop CDCR from sterilizing incarcerated women.

Corey Brown (CIJ) says in “Reveal,” “Of the 144 tubal ligations performed on inmates from fiscal years 2005-06 to 2012-13, auditors found, more than a quarter were done without evidence of the required consent. Fifty white women, 53 Latino women, 35 [B]lack women and six women classified as “other” received the procedure. All of them had been jailed at least once. Most read at less than a high school level.”

Governor Jerry Brown signed SB1135 Sept. 25, 2014, new legislation specifically including prisons in the eugenic ban, yet, in the federal prison system here in California and elsewhere in the country, not to mention the other state prisons, sterilization is still happening. To sterilize a person is to shred said person’s humanity—and for it to continue in other legislative bodies like the federal government makes one question what kind of “beasts” hold these offices.

As California looks to establish a commission on reparations for African American descendants of enslaved people, the persons sterilized should also be compensated monetarily. Kelli is currently supporting “California reparations bill AB3052, which provides justice and compensation for the survivors. Should it pass, it is evidence that California has a willingness to acknowledge the medical injustices, the medical malpractices, and the lack of respect for human life for people of color, in which they have suffered at the hands of the people who were supposed to preserve it and protect it.” The criminal legal system needs to step up and reform its still inadequate medical care for women, especially women who are aging and now at risk for Covid-19.  “Belly of the Beast” closes with a brief look at the fallout from the legislative victory four years ago—now incarcerated women at CCWF are denied reproductive care or made to wait unnecessarily for treatment. It is appalling that taxpayers pay for the healthcare for politicians—most, if not all, able to afford their own coverage, while for the more vulnerable among us—there are no services.

Nonetheless, this win against the powerful CDCR is encouraging and can serve as a blueprint for continued systemic change.

Watch Mary J. Blige on Variety Music for Screens Nov. 30, 2020, 10:45 AM PT 

Registration is free! Sign up here to attend: https://bit.ly/3fIVxhJ 

The Singer, songwriter, actor, and producer will deliver a keynote on Monday, November 30 at 10:45am PST discussing her original song “See What You’ve Done” from Belly of the Beast!

The multiple Grammy winner explains what drew her to the doc about illegal sterilizations in the California women’s prison system. Plus: how she came to soundtrack

Kamala Harris’ walk-on music.

PUSH Dance Company Fundraiser and PUSHfest Global continues

Join Raissa Simpson, PUSH Dance Company founder and company, Wednesday, November 4 at 6 p.m. PDT as they share memories of persistence and creative change during Covid-19. Tickets start at $10.  Debuting is also the company’s first film project, a few other works, plus a discussion on Afrofuturism with scholar Halifu Osumare.  To attend this event, please go to: http://pushdance.org/festival  Video trailer: https://youtu.be/XbUhrQb9CnI

The dancers are: Annie Aguilar, JP Alejandro, Lydia Clinton, Ashley Gayle, Niara Hardister, Erik Lee, Kao Vey Saephanh, and Patrick Seacrease

October 7 through November 18, PUSHfest Global has hosted and continues to host a wonderful series of virtual programs on Wednesdays, 6 p.m. The hosts have been great and the choreographers and dance performances outstanding. There are moderated pre and post show discussions which include a lively audience. For more information visit: http://pushdance.org/festival


Afrofuturism Virtual Series con’t. with Kim McMillon, Ph.D.

The November 8th, 2 p.m. PT program will include Samuel Delany, the winner of four Nebula awards and two Hugo Awards for his excellence in Science Fiction. Delany was inducted by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 2002. The panel includes: Hope Wabuke,  Avotcja, Dr. Ayana Jamieson and Dr. Grace Gipson.

The 3-part series will end with a curated Afrofuturistic poetry reading on December 13 at 2 pm (PST). Poets reading include Ayodele Nzinga, devorah major, Eugene Redmond, Darrell Stover, Michael Warr, Avotcja, Lenard Moore, Tureeda Mikell, Ishmael Reed, Staajabu, Glenn Parris, and C. Liegh McInnis with Kim McMillon as moderator. To register visit: https://bit.ly/30fthgf

 

SF Main Library, African American Center & Maafa SF Bay Area Author Event

MAAFA San Francisco Bay Area & the San Francisco Main Library, African American Center free Virtual Discussion Series, Saturdays, Nov. 7 and Dec. 5, 11-1 p.m. PT

On Sat., Nov. 7, join QM Dòwòti Désir, author, “Redlining a Holocaust, Memorials and the People of the AfroAtlantic: Wòch kase wòch” in conversation with Professor Wanda Sabir

https://sfpl.org/events/2020/11/07/author-qm-dowoti-desir-redlining-holocaust-memorials-and-people-afroatlantic-woch

Social Justice Book Club: So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo — Nov. 16, 7 p.m.

SFPL presents a Social Justice Book Club focusing on antiracism and understanding systemic racism and inequity.

We will be discussing Ijeoma Oluo’s, So You Want to Talk About Race. This book, part memoir, part instruction manual, offers a contemporary, accessible take on the racial landscape in America, addressing head-on such issues as privilege, police brutality, intersectionality, micro-aggressions, the Black Lives Matter movement and the “N” word. We will use the book as a guidepost to host a discussion about race. Reading the book is not required but is recommended.

Registration: http://bit.ly/SoYouWant11-17-20


San Francisco Bay View  Fundraiser, Friday-Saturday, Nov. 20-21

Come on out to the San Francisco Bay View National Black Newspaper’s incredible fundraiser and celebration to continue on the legacy of our historic national Black newspaper on Zoom and at our beautiful neighborhood gathering space Mendell Plaza on Friday, Nov. 20, and Saturday, Nov. 21. The event includes a lineup of virtual and in-person musicians, speakers and food – all local, all multicultural, all love! Find more information here. Can’t make it? Donate!

Friday, Nov. 20, from 6-8pm, join us in person at Mendell Plaza and on Zoom at tinyurl.com/bayview1120. Friday includes a lineup of musicians, speakers and food – all from the neighborhood, all multicultural, all love. Friday features:

  • Wanda Sabir, Bay View Arts & Culture Editor and founder of Ma’afa Bay Area, speaking on her work with the Bay View and in Bay Area Black culture. ON ZOOM.
  • Willie & Mary Ratcliff, Bay View Publisher & Editor, speaking on the history of the Bay View National Black Newspaper and the Bayview Hunters Point neighborhood. ON ZOOM.
  • Nube Brown, Bay View Managing Editor, reading poetry and letters from prisoners and discussing the importance of supporting liberation journalism. IN PERSON & ON ZOOM.
  • Malik Washington, Bay View Assistant Editor and On the Street Reporter, out to make your day brighter and everyone’s voices louder! IN PERSON & ON ZOOM.
  • A ride along with Dennis, the newspaper distributor. ON ZOOM.
  • D10 Supervisor Shamann Walton with some words! IN PERSON & ON ZOOM.
  • Rico, aka One Tyme, hip hop artist from Bayview. IN PERSON & ON ZOOM.
  • Stephanie Woodford & Trio, Fillmore jazz musicians. IN PERSON & ON ZOOM.
  • SPOOOKY BOOOGIE, CCSF improvisational musical collaborative. IN PERSON & ON ZOOM.
  • Dat Boi Bpoppin, aka Branden Powell, Bayview resident and hip hop dancer. IN PERSON & ON ZOOM.
  • Keli Lord, CCSF’s African American Studies Department Ambassador and Bayview resident. IN PERSON & ON ZOOM.
  • A pop-up art auction! IN PERSON & ON ZOOM.
  • Homecooked BBQ from Mother Brown’s Dining Room! IN PERSON.

Saturday, Nov. 21, 1-3pm will be a little more virtual than in person. Join us in person on Zoom at tinyurl.com/bayview1121 and for some food and song from 2-3pm at Mendell Plaza. Saturday includes video interviews with local restaurants and businesses on Zoom and later speakers and food at Mendell Plaza, featuring:

  • Juan Gonzalez & Alexis Terrazas of El Tecolote. ON ZOOM.
  • Bayview mural walk with Nube Brown. ON ZOOM.
  • Ali & Teresa of Palou Market. ON ZOOM.
  • The family behind Naughty Boy Retail on Third n Palou. ON ZOOM.
  • Joanna Haigood of Bayview’s Zaccho Dance Theatre. ON ZOOM.
  • April Spears of Cafe Envy & Auntie April’s. ON ZOOM.
  • Bernadette of The Jazz Room co-interview with Xan from Fox & Lion Bakery. ON ZOOM.
  • Arieann Harrison & Gwendolyn Westbrook of Mother Brown’s. IN PERSON & ON ZOOM.
  • Family band The Curtis Family C-notes. IN PERSON & ON ZOOM.
  • African food provided by Eskender Aseged’s Radio Africa Cafe & Kitchen! IN PERSON.

Can’t make it? Donate!


Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD)’s First Virtual Art Series Collaboration continues through January 2020

Meet Us Quickly: Painting for Justice from Prison is a digital exhibition of the work of twelve artists incarcerated at San Quentin State Prison curated by Rahsaan “New York” Thomas, co-host and co-producer of Ear Hustle. It is online now at moadsf.org/meet-us-quickly

To listen to two radio interviews with collaborators in the project: Demetri Broxton, Senior Education Director and Jo Kreiter, Director and Founder, Flyaway Productions, Oct. 21 and Oct. 28 visit: blogtalkradio.com/wandas-picks


Rising from the Ashes: A Fundraiser for Asual Aswad and Michele Lee

Our Brother Asual Aswad, phenomenal photographer and artist and Sister Michele Lee, educator, medicine woman, and author, lost everything including three of their four dogs in the Bear Fire/North Complex Fire in Butte County. A friend created a GoFundMe to help Asual with photography equipment and both Michelle and Asual with other personal essentials so that he and his partner who is an Oakland Unified School teacher can more easily start anew.  I hadn’t known I knew anyone affected by the raging fires prior to this. Fires purify; however, in the purification all that is left are ashes. I can’t imagine how it must feel to see your life’s work go up in blazes and fall to the earth dust. It’s a good thing Michelle is a medicine woman and both she and Asual understand cycles and rhythms and what it means to live on the land in synch with the rotating cycles, knowing that nothing lasts forever and that things can change in an instant without warning.  In March this year, I invited Michele Elizabeth Lee to join me to talk about her book, “Working the Roots: Over 400 Years of African American Healing” (2017). Listen: Wanda’s Picks Radio Show: http://tobtr.com/11687982


[1] The Nyame Dua symbol depicts a cross-section of a palm tree, or the top of a tree stump. It represents God’s presence and protection. Nyame Dua is also the name of the place outside a dwelling or in a village where sacred rituals take place.

By

October Picks Addendum

Lots going on this weekend and next. Keep checking back.

Film Festivals,  Black Sustainable Summit, Art Performance Showcases, First Amendment Lawsuit against the City of San Francisco, Virtual Exhibition at Museum of the African Diaspora

Listen to interviews at Wanda’a Picks Radio Show for the latest: blogtalkradio.com/wandas-picks
Oct. 7, Oct. 14, Oct. 21, Oct. 28

The 2020 American Book Award winners will be formally recognized in an online event on Sunday, October 25, 2020, from 2:00–4:30 p.m.

Reservations: http://bit.ly/AmBkAward10-25-20

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SFPL YouTube Live: https://youtu.be/KlJOiwseuMg
The American Book Awards were created to provide recognition for outstanding literary achievement from the entire spectrum of America’s diverse literary community. The purpose of the awards is to recognize literary excellence without limitations or restrictions. There are no categories, no nominees, and therefore no losers. The award winners range from well-known and established writers to under-recognized authors and first works. There are no quotas for diversity, the winners list simply reflects it as a natural process. The Before Columbus Foundation views American culture as inclusive and has always considered the term “multicultural” to be not a description of various categories, groups, or “special interests,” but rather as the definition of all of American literature. The Awards are not bestowed by an industry organization, but rather are a writers’ award given by other writers.

The 2020 American Book Award Winners are:

Reginald Dwayne Betts
Felon: Poems (W.W. Norton)
Sara Borjas
Heart Like a Window, Mouth Like a Cliff (Noemi Press)
Neeli Cherkovski, Raymond Foye, Tate Swindell, editors
Collected Poems of Bob Kaufman (City Lights)
Staceyann Chin
Crossfire: A Litany for Survival (Haymarket)
Kali Fajardo-Anstine
Sabrina & Corina: Stories (One World)
Tara Fickle
The Race Card: From Gaming Technologies to Model Minorities (New York University Press)
Erika Lee
America for Americans: A History of Xenophobia in the United States (Basic Books)
Yoko Ogawa
The Memory Police (Pantheon)
Jake Skeets
Eyes Bottle Dark with a Mouthful of Flowers (Milkweed Editions)
George Takei, Justin Eisinger, Steven Scott, and Harmony Becker They Called Us Enemy (Top Shelf Productions)
Ocean Vuong
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (Penguin)
De’Shawn Charles Winslow
In West Mills (Bloomsbury Publishing)
Albert Woodfox with Leslie George
Solitary: My Story of Transformation and Hope (Grove Press)
Lifetime Achievement:
Eleanor W. Traylor

Editor Award:
The Panopticon Review, Kofi Natambu, editor

Publisher Award:
Commune Editions, Jasper Bernes, Joshua Clover, and Juliana Spahr, editors

Oral Literature Award:
Amalia Leticia Ortiz
Walter & Lillian Lowenfels Criticism Award:
Appalachian Reckoning: A Region Responds to Hillbilly Elegy,
edited by Anthony Harkins and Meredith McCarroll

State of Black World, Nov. 5


Thursday, November 5, 2020 — State of the Black World Conference V, a virtual national town hall meeting assessing the impact of the 2020 presidential election on Black America and the Pan African World.

More information to be announced. Visit ibw21.org and stay connected by following the Institute of the Black World 21st Century on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Instagram. @IBW21ST across all platforms.


Ancestral Souls Rising a worldwide power prayer event and lecture series on the “Nine Layers of the Soul” from October 31-November 8th


https://www.eventbrite.com/e/council-for-global-ancestral-reverence-presents-ancestral-souls-rising-tickets-124636468031?aff=erelexpmlt

The Council for Global Ancestral Reverence invites you to Ancestral Souls Rising a worldwide power prayer event and lecture series on the “Nine Layers of the Soul” from October 31-November 8th. The event celebration is part of the mission of the Council for Global Ancestral Reverence.

Please go to our Eventbrite active link and register for this important celebration for veneration and healing: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/council-for-global-ancestral-reverence-presents-ancestral-souls-rising-tickets-124636468031

The Council for Global Ancestral Reverence is an organization of Elders from across the African Diaspora who come together to elevate the women and men who have led us in struggle and prayer over the centuries.  We believe that Afrikan people must never forget the sacrifices that have been made to sustain the people of Afrikan descent.

This sustainably is done through unity in education, action and support for the cultural heritage of the people of the Black African Diaspora. The council is dedicated to the elevation of the ancestors for seven generations and then seven generations more, forever.

Our Mission: We commit to the council’s mission to ELEVATE our personal and communal ancestors, Educate about the power of Black Spirituality and Advocate for the freedom and dignity and humanity of the people of the diaspora (Black Lives Matter)

In the African Diaspora, there are many rich traditions that elevate and venerate the spirits of our ancestors.  One of the most powerful of these traditions is the gathering of the powerful to speak in unison to call the ancestors, to witness their lives well lived and to acknowledge to them, and others, that we remember them. We call their names and we keep them forever in our hearts.


Special to Wanda’s Picks, A Reflection on the 25th Annual MAAFA Commemoration Ritual


Dancing Tears And The Ancestral Plain
By Marcus “Zahir” Blevins

“…Who listens to the (soul) distressed when it calls on Him, and who relieves its suffering, and makes you (mankind) inheritors of the earth?” (HQ, 27:62)

I attended the 25th Annual Virtual Maafa Commemoration on October 11, 2020. It was a first-time experience and I found it to be an unexpectedly refreshing and enlightening one. I can only imagine what it must be like to attend the event at its original site on the beach, minus COVID-19, of course. But any part of the program that was physically inaccessible was made available to the public via social media; and the images of the beach, ocean, virtual throng of observers and performers, music, and remaining on-air offerings created an atmosphere of inclusiveness and worshipful reverence.

One performance in particular drove home to me the solemnity of the occasion and served as a catalyst for further inquiry and reflection. It was a simple offering through the gift of dance from Mahealani Uchiyama, and it was her soul-stirring performance that caused my mind to shift suddenly beyond the realm of merely expressive movements and into the domain of meaning and intent concerning the message behind the Maafa Commemoration Ceremony itself.

Mahea Uchiyama, Dancer, Choreographer, Musician, and Teacher https://www.mahea.com/

Māhealani Uchiyama danced across centuries of dread and dreams and oceanic terror. The outstretched arms of this tall, coffee-colored Princess energized us through the medium of her symmetrically choreographed, fluid strokes of pain and victory and continuity. And although the dance was broadcast live on social media, the realness and sincerity and virtuosity of movement and interpretation escaped the bounds of technology as her performance spilled out of the monitor into these cramped quarters I call home, laid bare my untouched, aching spirit, and thereby unleashed a cascading river of dancing tears that flowed from my eyes as effortlessly as the rising sun and with a fluidity that faithfully mocked her delicately crafted expressions.

Mahealani’s tribute came in the form of an adaptation of Melanie DeMore’s rendition of “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.” The Princess undoubtedly committed the entire piece to memory using her own brand of interpretive genius; through her movements every note sung or played, on strings, piano, drums, or cymbals or percussion was taken into consideration to help us conjure memories from the storied history of a resilient people. Her melodiously accentuated strokes carved paths through air and time to reveal yet another dimension as well—where the sweet chariots of the ancestors swing low in the waters of their vacuous haven to sustain us from that divine well of mercy and to infuse within us their own tears of triumph.

After taking in the remaining sights and sounds of the ceremony I found myself logging off the venue with a sense of profound peace, which prompted me to wonder whether or not the souls of our ancestors might moan or weep or cry? And, if so, might these expressions be communicated to or through us in the form of tears—as expressions of joy or sorrow or woe? As soon as I posed the question I remembered the truth had already manifested itself to me—it did so when I trained my tear-drenched, refracted gaze upon Mahealani Uchiyama and saw that this dancing Princess wasn’t dancing alone.

Watch the recorded event here at Facebook.com/maafabayarea: https://www.facebook.com/131523084166083/videos/460092188282153

 

 


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We don’t just vote. We build power. We organize. We strategize. We vote to build an unapologetic Black national agenda. We were 26 million strong in the streets, and we’re bringing that energy to the polls.

Build Black Power with Us

  • Watch our Black Women Lead panel today, Oct. 28 at 7pm ET on Facebook Live. Stay tuned for our second Black Women Lead panel on Friday, Oct. 30 at 5pm ET.
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    Youth Justice Poetry SLAM

    This Friday October 30th at 6pm PST, we will be partnering with @justicelanow and @ReimagineLA to highlight the power of the youth vote and educate folks on Measure J in Los Angeles county while lifting up the importance of art in the movement through the open mic.

    You don’t want to miss this one. There will be a lot of knowledge to be shared!!!

    Tag three friends that you all want to attend with and tag three artists you think should win some money!!!

    To RSVP and/or get in the lineup to perform:

    Send an email to jared@youth4justice.org or DM to @King_Jaybo_

    Prizes   $$$250 1st place   $$150 2nd place   $100 3rd place

    Judges will be @bj_mims @ashlukadraws and one more TBA

    Keep up to speed – Follow us @YouthJusticeLA

Register in advance on Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/23rd-gwendolyn-brooks-black-writers-
conference-2020-tickets-122767941217

By

Reflections on the MAAFA or Terrible Calamity . . . to be continued By Wanda Sabir

25th Annual MAAFA Commemoration SF Bay Area @ Ocean Beach, Oct. 11, 2020 Photographer ©Min. Imhotep Alkebulan

Who came up with the term microaggression? Probably the same tribe that invented the oxymoron, “white fragility.” My spellcheck which is not “smart” wanted to substitute,  “micro” for “macroaggression.” What has been my people’s experience in this nation warrants no box office hits to remind us—the rememory lives in the tissues and bones of descendants of former captives monetized. Haile Gerima’s Sankofa could have been the definitive story followed by perhaps Jordan Peele’s Get Out! a 21st century edition of the Let’s Get Rid of Black Freedmen’s Movement. Framed as “repatriation,” Southerners were unhappy with the idea of free Africans as neighbors.  50 years before the Civil War, white men in the American Colonialization Society (1816-1964) began shipping free Africans from this hemisphere to land purchased in West Africa.  Liberia was actually the first independent Black nation in 1839. However, its existence was not recognized until 1862. The whole shipping of free Black people to West Africa was a reversal of the slave trade, the agents (15,000) this time, also Black, just no long African.

25th Annual MAAFA Commemoration
25th Annual MAAFA Commemoration Ritual @Ocean Beach, Sun. Oct.11, 2020. Photographer ©Min. Imhotep Alkebulan

Now there are comedies about the slave experience—Antebellum, it doesn’t matter if one of the directors Gerard Bush, not Christopher Renz, claims ancestry in the terrible trafficking of human beings. He doesn’t get a pass. Black pain has always been marketable and as a topic juxtaposed to BLM negates the latter, because all consumers remember is captivity even when the captivity is a genetic memory – yes, there seems to be no escape in the latest screen adaptation.

In the Washington Post review (9/18/20), the writer asks, “what makes a good slave movie?” What indeed. Even Harriet (2019), which I enjoyed, made Black men evil and humanized and gave backstory to the enslavers. Yes, the writers hinted at a love triangle between the wayward “master” and at that time, Mrs. Tubman.

Right. Sickening.

Popular exploitative renditions of Black pain sell ideas that perpetuate Black or African American inferiority and inhumanity, so when an act as atrocious as an unarmed young father, Jacob Blake (29) shot seven times Aug. 23, in the back while his children sit nearby, is acceptable, so acceptable the story disappears from the news—we see Black pain and Black death normalized.

“Ancestor Shrine”: 25th Annual MAAFA Commemoration Ritual @Ocean Beach, Sun. Oct.11, 2020. Photographer ©Min. Imhotep Alkebulan  Mother and Daughter, Koren & Khepera at 25th Annual MAAFA SF Bay Area Commemoration @ Ocean Beach, Sun., Oct. 11, 2020

 

Ringing bells for the Ancestors, pictured Azizasantewa © photographer Xnanesetafari Teasley

But there is a way to diffuse this madness. What if Black people decided, as some have, to change their diet to a live-it—our consumption, images that promote who we are and where we see ourselves in the future, rather than all too familiar nooses and chains and branding irons?

For us, this is not past, it is now—

Mother and Daughter, Koren & Khepera at 25th Annual MAAFA SF Bay Area Commemoration @ Ocean Beach, Sun., Oct. 11, 2020 Photographer ©Wanda Sabir

There is nothing entertaining about Black pain. No other people’s pain is on the stock market except ours. Economists trade in Black life commodities, whether that is hypotheses on longevity which affect insurance eligibility, what companies will cover us and for how much– Believe me, we pay more for less.

Min. Alicia and son: 25th Annual MAAFA Commemoration Ritual 2 Ocean Beach, Oct. 11, 2020 Photographer ©Wanda Sabir

We have not addressed the New Jim Crow—imprisonment. When Gore posits “an inconvenient truth” he is talking about climate change and the floods and disappearing landmass.  Another inconvenient truth which is not acknowledged is the fear that greets white America when it looks outside and sees Dark Matter.

I am not saying forget the past.  It is impossible to forget this history when we live in a society where the production is expected. We want to remember our ancestors; however, the exploitation has to cease. The MAAFA is not a commodity, it is people, African ancestors remembered—It is a part of as Dr. Marimba Ani[1] cites a three part interrogation: Sankofa, Maafa, Ayaresa, each element connected. See her Let the Circle Remain Unbroken and Yurugu.

“It’s a Rainbow Portal”: 25th Annual MAAFA Commemoration Ritual at Ocean Beach, Sun., Oct. 11, 2020. Photographer ©Wanda Sabir

I reflect on the sharpness of my tongue . . . I am so glad I didn’t say what I was thinking several times over the past month.  We really do not know what another person has suffered and often this trauma affects how the person shows up. We need to cultivate empathy and learn to hold space distant enough to maintain objectivity.  I recall when Sister Sheba was telling us about how she wrote the “Ritual of Forgiveness,” how the forgiveness came from an act of survival—when we can’t forgive, “the what” eats away at our lives until it—the life, is gone. Sister Sheba suggested we start with family. Sometimes it feels easier to forgive strangers, co-workers, people one does not share veins, heartbeat, bone marrow. I wonder how one forgives as the deed bleeds, the person without remorse? Drop me a line if you know.

In a world space where we do not see each other except through filters, we need to remain mindful of how easy it is to misinterpret language, especially written language. When the body is removed, there is more room for error especially for melanin kissed people. This distancing is just so not who we are. I was talking to Brotha Clint, composer: “MAAFA We Remember You,” Monday about how I have developed a signal I use to greet other Africans, to let them know “I see you and wish you good health and prosperity.”

I put my right hand on my heart and nod towards the person if the person looks at me.  Criminalized for our packaging which everyone loves when we are not wearing it[2]—I want to make sure the person knows it is the virus that keeps me away, not the person’s Blackness.

I think about not getting to see the altar on Sunday, October 11, because whenever I looked over where it was situated, there were too many people crowded around it, not distanced.  Neter Aa Meri had not read anything I sent him; however, he was completely finished when I arrived at 5:30 a.m. Perhaps if we’d spoken, he could have had people lineup six feet apart so that we all could have an opportunity to commune with spirit. I couldn’t micromanagement that, since the bigger task was to place the solar lights six feet apart so people could see how to distance themselves. Melvin and I made a circle which included the altar and the space in front which is where the speakers made presentations.

When I finally made it over to the altar, the food had been given to the ancestors and the items distributed to people gathered.[3] I was able to meet young people, two young women named after goddess: Kali and MAAT and a young man.  Neter Aa Meri was elated to finally have some willing minds and hearts to teach this valuable practice.

I also missed the sunrise—it just went from dark to light. I saw Min. Alkebulan’s photos of the sunrise later. I think I was too caught up in a good way in the program — From Brother Dar’s inviting melodies which called our ancestors—“Many 1000s Gone” which says, “No more auction block for me. No more, no more. No more auction block for me—Many 1000s gone. [No more tasers and chokeholds and knees on our necks. . .  No more.]” Dar ended with “Oh, Freedom”  — to King Theo’s Holistic African Movement to Ava’s lovely choreography which had us acknowledging our bodies in a good way, I think one of the themes on this 25th Anniversary is certainly, “Black Power” or the Power inherent in our Blackness.

viagra buying online Each and every dose of ensure high quality of erections to turn intercourse the most pleasurable experience of their lives, and so much more, their confidence depends on it. There was no tadalafil cheap india specific difference in the visual function test, eyeball pressure, and retinal examination. Similarly, some online drug stores may choose to give seasonal promotions, order cheap viagra visit here bulk discounts, or express delivery among other options. Obesity, salt intake and lack of exercise click over here now cialis 10 mg etc. As we cleared the way for blessings to come and brushed away what was not serving us reaching arms up literally for a higher power to assist us—African Ancestors, we then danced around the circle in a literal gathering of this power.

Desmond Iman followed Ava with the primal scream and then we ended with ringing of bells for 401 years of African American history (1619-2021). We started this tradition last year, when I learned that the Golden Gate Recreation Area, which Ocean Beach sits, did not acknowledge the National Parks Day of Healing hosted by Ft. Monroe National Monument which is the site where 401 years ago at Old Ft. Comfort, Africans were traded for provisions and thus began the English Slave trade; however, in California the trade goes back 100 years earlier with the Spanish.

Uncle Bobby and Sister Beatrice joined us as well to say the names of people killed by police. October 22 is Stolen Lives Project, a day set aside to compile a national list of all the people killed by police the year before.  It is also Sister Sheba’s birthday. She is one of the founders of Stolen Lives.  She told me the funny story of how the date was chosen. Initially, organizers were looking at Oct. 12, Columbus Day, however, the thought was the Italians would not be happy, and considering Italians were a huge presence on the NYC police force, Oct. 22 was chosen. When presented with the date, Sister Sheba said, “It’s my birthday,” so while she was in NYC comrades would get a chocolate cake for her to celebrate after the Stolen Lives events ended.

Listen to Wanda’s Picks Radio, Wed., Oct. 21, 8 AM when Sister Sheba joins us to talk about her work in police accountablity, the Black Panther Party and Public Health.  She might even share a poem.  October 22 is also Bobby Seale’s, co-founder of the Black Panther Party, birthday. My father, Fred Batin was born this day too. The party was founded October 22, 1966.

Wanda Sabir in face mask with MAAFA SF Bay Area design. Purchase it and other items at the MAAFA SF Bay Area Boutique.

At the ceremony Sunday morning, I shared some thoughts on the Slave Rebellion Reenactment November 2020, hosted by Dread Scott, from Chicago, now living in New York. He’s an artist whose work disrupts as it invites silenced to speak.  As his name invokes Black humanity and the Dred Scott case where just in case our ancestors thought themselves mistaken, the highest court reiterated the claim that Black people were not created equal to white men or white women. In fact, Mr. Scott’s assertion that since he lived in a free state, shouldn’t he be a free man was met with the ruling that Black people were not citizens of this nation, therefore could not use the court to file charges against a slave owner for his captivity. This was in 1857.

Slave Rebellion Reenactment last year in East Louisiana up from NOLA referenced the largest rebellion in US history, January 1811. Encouraged by news of the Haitian revolution Africans took their freedom and white folks ran.

As we walked the road, bayous on one side, old plantations on the other plus petro chemical plants spewing poisons into the air, spilling into the water killing everything walking, crawling or flying, some of us could feel the energy of the ancestors traveling through our feet into our legs our hips and abdomen, into the heart chakra.

We marched holding our machetes, cane knives and rusty muskets. It was freedom or death.

By the time I got to NOLA my ancestors dead, heads chopped off and put on spikes along the road we’d just travelled, I was ready for freedom. My body ached, I was hungry and tired and Ready for Revolution or death.

I was feeling like chopping off heads especially when we passed a housed where this evil woman tortured her enslaved persons so horribly she was fined. I think the Africans burned the house down.

When we got to Congo Square the weary soldiers were treated like royalty and we were. We were our ancestors reimagined and the freedom they died for we need to treasure and say, never again

“Before I be a slave. I be buried in my grave and go home to my lord and be free.”

25th Annual MAAFA SF Bay Area at Ocean Beach, Oct. 11, 2020. Pictured: Iya Ava Square. Photographer, ©Min. Imhotep Alkebulan

Thanks to all the participants at the Living Maafa Ritual at Ocean Beach in San Francisco and to the presenters at the Virtual Ritual later that same morning. I have attached the program with links. The audio links do not work unfortunately. You can watch the complete program for both at these links:

Here is a link to both:

Virtual 25th Annual MAAFA Commemoration Part II

and Virtual 25th Annual MAAFA Commemoration Part I

Thanks to Brother Kwalin Kimathi who hosted the first program (as well as gave tech support as did Sister Koren Clark) and to Brotha Clint and Sister Afua who joined him in Zoom to talk about the MAAFA Tradition in the SF Bay. We also want to thank Melvin Phillips who videotaped for the livestream broadcast and thanks to Brother Che and the other men from Community Ready Corps for onsite security. Special thanks to King Theo Aytchan Williams, Iya Ava Square, Iya La Tanya Carmical, Ayikwe Scott, Baba Darinxoso Oyamasela, Mins. Alicia Teasley and Imhotep Alkebulan, Desmond Iman, Brother Neter Aa Meri and his assistants; Sistar Gwendolyn “Sunrise” Traylor; Brother Cephus “Uncle Bobby” Johnson, Sister Beatrice X Johnson.

For the second part of the 25th Anniversary of MAAFA SF Bay Area, we want to thank Sister Karla Brundage for her tech support, Sister Koren Clark for tech support, Sister TaSin Sabir for her website and media development; Brother Mike Jackson, Montgomery MAAFA and ICCAAMP for his media support; and of course all the contributors to the Virtual 25th Annual MAAFA Commemoration in order of appearance: Sister Wanda Sabir, host; Sister Opal Palmer-Adisa, Ph.D.; Brotha Clint; Baba Kola Thomas; Seestah IMAKHÜS Njinga Okofu Ababio, Brother Alonzo “Zochi” Young, (Ethiopia); Iya Mahealani Uchiyama; Aishah Bashir and her mom: revered ancestor, Iya Jaquelyn Hadiah McLeod; Tarika Lewis on her cousin, revered ancestor, Sister Makinya Kouyate; Baba Ustadi Kadiri & Sister Bisola Marignay on revered ancestor, Brother Tahuti; Ms. Nia McAllister; Sister Bisola Marignay, Ph.D.; Iya Queen Hollins, Earthlodge; Iya Osotunde aka Mama C (Tanzania); Kumasi– Black Liberation Pledge; Dr. Francis Cress Welsing, MD., revered ancestor, “A Liberating Black People’s Prayer for Peace” (©1996); Ms. Koren Clark on her father, honored ancestor: Dr. Syed Malik al Khatib (1940-2014); Min. Alan Laird, M.Div; Baba Eddie Abrams — Umoja House; Karla Brundage — The Black Arts Movement; Min. Mxolisi, M.Div., Wo’se co-founder; Sister Piwai (Zimbabwe); Sister Omitola Akinwunmi (Uganda)—she will lead the Virtual Maafa Townhall Workshop 11/22, 2-4 in Zoom; Sistar Gwendolyn “SunRise” Traylor; Brother Mehib Holmes, Atlanta, GA; Sister Kharyshi Wiginton, “MeToo,” Texas; Brother Bryant Bolling and Sistar Zakiyyah Capehart-Bolling; Honored ancestor, John Coltrane for his “Love Supreme” — and to all those who are a part of the MAAFA Commemoration SF Bay Area Global family.

Don’t forget to visit the MAAFA SF Bay Area Boutique for gifts.

[1] More biographical information on Dr. Marimba Ani (http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/30/084.html)

[2] Paradise Free Ja Love’s anthem: “They Love Everything about You, but You”

[3] I would have liked a candle to mark this 25th Anniversary, but the helpers kept walking past me to those on the left and right of me.

By

Wanda’s Picks September October 2020

Slavery and the Making of America

This year has been remarkable and certainly one none of us will ever forget. In some ways it is a throwback to antebellum policies; before lynching laws made chasing Black men down streets without due cause or choking a Black man to death, illegal–

At the end of the Civil War and Black people were freed, their value fell in the stocks literally. False floors. No longer commodities,  insurance policies lapsed and the presence of Black humanity scattered across landscapes African people cultivated and planted were visibly unwelcome. Their tangible wealth a bounty without equity or interest.

It was as if, the newly “united” nation could erase the past 400 years of servitude if the Black bodies were gone. So the American Colonization Society–white folks, rounded up and shipped some of our people (12,000) to Liberia (some before slavery ended) and others left on their own, hiring ships and sailing away (1868 from San Francisco to Nova Scotia); however, most of our ancestors stayed and no matter how many slain then and now, Black people survived. We survived the environmental pollution– toxic systemic racism that sought payment for the very air we breathed and the space, however, small, we occupied. These people just didn’t know we were not going anywhere. We were here before America and we will certainly be here when it burns to the ground.

At the March on Washington Friday, August 28, one of the speakers who’d walked across the country to Washington DC stated that it didn’t make sense to be marching, 57 years later for the same goals. What I liked about the 2020 March was the everyday people aspect of those who spoke– leaders but more community centered rather than nationally known. There were a group of women bikers from Southern Cal who rode to DC, a college student who shared how she felt as she lay beneath a dead classmate as the shooter continued to fire. There were union organizers and a white supporter. Sponsored by Rev. Al Sharpton, the National Action Network and Martin Luther King III, entitled the Commitment March: “Get Off Our Necks.” Speaker after speaker urged those present virtually or in the flesh to join an organization and do something to further the agenda for civil and human rights.

Jim Jones Peoples Temple examined in new play, “White Nights, Black Paradise,” by Sikivu Hutchinson, Ph.D.

 I attended a remarkable and enlightening play reading and discussion at MoAD, August 29, 2020.  Dr. James L. Taylor is such an erudite man and was so in his element, an expert on the history of San Francisco– with notes in hand he and playwright, Sikivu Hutchinson, Ph.D. unpacked along with audience and cast members, the phenomena, Peoples Temple. The play, “White Nights, Black Paradise,” looks at the perils of displacement and how when one feels as if she has nowhere to go and does not belong anywhere– kindness can be her undoing.

Jim Jones and his agents handpicked vulnerable people, took their wealth with the promise of care, which the church did. Later when funding ceased and the church lost its property, the vision was a new colony Jonestown in Guyana. The massive out-migration into the jungles of Guyana was celebrated by some members, while others looked on with suspicion.  Some families and friends tried to discourage the move.  Once in Guyana, people starved to death. It was not the utopia promised.  A few people got away, however, most participated in the mass genocide where over 900 people were forced to drink the literal kool-aid at gun point.

What circumstances or conditions led to the massive homelessness and psychic almost psychotic instability? How did Jones get almost 1,000 Black people, majority women and children and elders to leave without protest? What was going on in San Francisco, urban America, the West Coast that would make this Anti-Christ get religious and political leaders to give him their blessing?

My friend, Sister Maryom Ana Al Wadi, a leading pioneer in the black student movement at San Francisco State University which established the first Black Student Union on an American campus and led to the resultant broader student movement that established Black Studies courses then Black Studies Programs at American institutions of higher education, told me at that time people were looking for answers and a place of refuge and they found such at Peoples Temple.

Some people found answers in the Nation of Islam, located just next door to Peoples Temple where Sister Maryom and I were members; while others found political agency in the Black Power Movement which was winding down, yet now fast enough for municipalities that wanted to silence its Black populations.

During this period in the Bay Area and in the country, Black folks were standing up, similar to now in the Movement for Black Lives.  Black people were sick and tired of legislated violence. Watts (8/11/65-8/16/65) in LA kicked off the revolt in California followed by an uprising in Bayview Hunters Point  the night of Sept. 27, 1966 when a policeman, Alvin Johnson killed Matthew Peanut” Johnson, a teenager as he ran away from a stolen car. 51 people were injured (https://diva.sfsu.edu/collections/sfbatv/11399). However, the country was burning from coast to coast– Kerner Report not withstanding. Everyone with the power to stop the unrest, did nothing except move up the bulldozing.

This retaliation headed by officials in the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency started pushing Black folks out of the Fillmore, among the casualties Peoples Temple property where members lived communally, all their physical and psycho-social needs taken care of.  When the church lost its real estate, one would see people outside the building on Geary Blvd. begging. Sister Maryom said it was so sad, she’d walk around the block and come up Fillmore to attend the meetings at Mosque 26 on the corner.

For African Diaspora people then in the Fillmore, kicked out of their housing, the majority population unhoused and incarcerated, hungry, unemployed, Peoples Temple was a refuge. It was a place where people belonged.  Almost too good to be true, and sadly many learned too later–it was.  Urban renewal or Black removal complete, Jones took his people to Guyana, a situation worse than anything people could imagine in San Francisco, worse than what they’d left but the exit or stamped ticket read “one way.”  Once in Guyana people were stuck.

There are not many books that look at Peoples Temple through the lens of Black women. Not only does Hutchinson’s work spend the majority of time in the heads of Black women characters, she also makes these characters complex and adds a layer of sexual violence to the discourse as reason for much of the irrational belief in this man even when his sanity is called into question. Thoroughly researched, the parallels between Jonestown and Hurricane Katrina, now Laura in Lake Charles where people are not able to leave — according to Rev. Lennox Yearwood Jr., President & Founder of Hip Hop Caucus, in an interview with Davey D on Hard Knock Radio.

What is it about Black bodies moving that generates so much fear? Is this fear a projection? If I had as horrific a reputation as white America has toward Black Americans, I’d be nervous too.

These Black women members of Peoples Temple whom we come to care about are also vulnerable. They swim into deeper waters unaware that the temperature is getting hotter until they are cooked.  Is Black America cooked? Is the current state one where ovens are preheated and we just tolerate the heat until we can turn it off or become consumed?

We have a similar situation now, except African nations are telling African Americans to come home– so far there is no economic investment tied to this invitation as it was when after the devastating earthquake ten years ago President Abdoulaye Wade welcomed 163 Haitian students to Senegal to finish school there, an invitation that covered tuition fees, room and board paid for by the government. We have options, if we can get there. I’d like something a bit more concrete.

If Africa is for Africans, after the numbers stop peeking in California, now might be a good time to make a move, especially if these African nations provide a bit of support. With the coronavirus numbers rising and the economic situation worsening for many people, a fresh start in the land of our ancestors might be just the thing to heal the ever present persistent trauma that keeps Black people from realizing their full human potential.

We say no more Jonestown, but with the massive internal displacement normalized today, who’s to say?

Everything changed in the ’60s Black Fire. Then and now, there is a race war.  We have to pay attention and think for ourselves, Sister Maryom told me. “Fear conditioning is really powerful. Free labor allows us to belong wherever we choose to be.” In other words, Don’t believe the lie(s).

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 Vote.Vote.Vote.
This is a participatory democracy.
Register to vote (by Oct. 19) and vote.

Get counted. Complete the 2020 Census.  The numbers gathered impact community resources. If the numbers aren’t there, we get less tax dollars. The final date is Sept. 30.

This is the centennial for the 19th Amendment granting white women the right to vote (1920-2020). Black women didn’t get the right to vote until 1965 with the passage of the Voting Rights Act. However, Black women such as Sojourner Truth; Ida B. Wells Barnett; Fannie Lou Hamer, Mary Church Terrell, Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm and others worked for women’s right to vote.

On the 100 Year Anniversary of the 19th Amendment, little is mentioned of the Black suffragets who worked hard to get the Amendment passed. I am sure they were under no illusions that the work served a larger good.

Mary Church Terrell, (Sept. 23, 1864-July 24, 1954) was one of these key suffragettes left out.  An Oberlin graduate with undergraduate and graduate degrees, daughter of former enslaved parents, her dad the first African American millionaire, mom a business owner, Terrell founded the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) in 1896 and served as its director until 1901.  She like her friend Ida B. Wells, well known for her anti-lynching work, was a founding member of the NAACP.

Ms. Terrell says:  “A white woman has only one handicap to overcome – that of sex. I have two – both sex and race. … Colored men have only one – that of race. Colored women are the only group in this country who have two heavy handicaps to overcome, that of race as well as that of sex.”

Her elder, Sojourner Truth asked the clarifying question at the 1851 Women’s Rights Convention held in Akron, Ohio, “Ain’t I a Woman?” “You have been having our rights so long, that you think, like a slave-holder, that you own us. I know that it is hard for one who has held the reins for so long to give up; it cuts like a knife. It will feel all the better when it closes up again.”

A womanist, long before Alice Walker coined the term, Truth said, “If it is not a fit place for women, it is unfit for men to be there.”

“We have all been thrown down so low that nobody thought we’d ever get up again; but we have been long enough trodden now; we will come up again, and now I am here.”

“Now, if you want me to get out of the world, you had better get the women votin’ soon. I shan’t go till I can do that.”

Fannie Lou Hamer  (10/06/1917-3/14/1977) was beaten almost to death, lost her home and her husband

Fannie Lou Hamer

because she believed in freedom and later went to the Democratic Convention, Aug. 22, 1964, where she demanded seats for her delegation, members of the MS Freedom Democratic Party, a party she founded, then gave a speech Lyndon B. Johnson tried to block from the airwaves. She told the truth about the absence of civility for African Americans in the South, of her own torture just because she wanted to exercise her citizenship rights. A member of SNCC, she was a key organizer of Freedom Summer, where college students from across the country traveled to Southern states to register Black citizens to vote.

Hamer said: “You can pray until you faint, but if you don’t get up and try to do something, God is not going to put it in your lap . . . at a mass meeting in Indianola, Miss., in September 1964.  Hamer’s bold message—that each of us has the responsibility to work toward the just and equal society we envision —left a lasting impression on those in attendance that evening at Indianola’s Negro Baptist Church. The fact that Hamer would tell a room filled with religious people that prayer only went so far revealed the depth of her fearless activism.

Shirley Chisholm (11/30/1924-1/1/2005), the first African American elected to the United States Congress, representing New York’s 12th congressional district for seven terms from 1969 to 1983 said: Our representative democracy is not working because the Congress that is supposed to represent the voters does not respond to their needs. I believe the chief reason for this is that it is ruled by a small group of old men. (https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/shirley-chisholm-quotes)

Vote for all the Black women who worked and then died waiting for citizenship rights which did not come for 45 more years.

Webinars. . . Zoom meetings . . .
I was online Friday, August 28 all day and the same was true on Saturday, August 29. I had a great conversation with Baba Malik Rahim, co-founder to Common Ground Collective, founding member of the New Orleans Chapter of the Black Panther Party, Former Political Prisoner and an Environmental Justice Advocate. He was keynote speaker at the Gulf Coast Center for Law and Policy on Saturday was one of compassion and love for those who are hit by disaster in East Louisiana, Lake Charles and Houma. They were without water and electricity and the forecast was that they would be without such for perhaps a month. A woman who was 15 15 years ago, now 30 and a mother shared what was going on when the program started. She gave organization names to send funds too so the people in need would get the resources.


Hurricane Katrina@15 Reportback on Wanda’s Picks
Listen to Wanda’s Picks Radio Show, Friday, Aug. 28

Nana Sula Spirit pours libations during the vigil for Kim Boutte, 55, big queen of the Spirit of Fi Yi Yi Mardi Gras Indian tribe, at Hunter’s Field in New Orleans, Wednesday, Aug. 12, 2020. Boutte was shot to death Tuesday night when gunfire erupted outside a funeral repast in New Orleans East.  NOLA Advocate staff photo by Sophia Germer

Show Guests:
Malik Rahim, Human Rights Activist, co-founder, Common Ground Collective and Parnell Herbert, veteran, poet, playwright, prison abolition activist, are our first guests

We close in the second hour with Nana Sula Spirit, Baba Luther Gray and Sess 4-5

Visit the following link for Street Dance Activism for Black Liberation which sponsored the Aug.1-28-Day Meditation which is connected to the Virtual March on Washington (11 a.m. ET) and program this evening; and the M4BL National Convention 8/28.

Barbara Lee and Elihu Harris Lecture Series hosts a Tribute to Rep. John Lewis, 7 p.m. PT, 8/28

 

Baba Luther Gray with Bamboulas 2000 in Congo Square, NOLA with the

 

Baba Malik Rahim at his historic residence in Algiers, La.

 

Sess 3-4 with his partner


Film

There is a film, just released Friday, August 28, MR. SOUL! about the iconic Mr. Ellis Haizlip. Directed by his niece, Melissa Haizlip, the film survey’s America’s first Black nighttime talk show host during the Civil Rights Movement/Black Power Movement from 1968 – 1973.  It is a rich story that will resonate with audiences across the nation and across generations. With Black Lives Matter now louder than ever together with the current state of our country, and while our communities are addressing racism in a meaningful manner – Haizlip’s story of endurance, inspiration and excellence is more important than ever.

Ellis was Black, political and openly gay even before Stonewall. In his personal fight for social equality, this man ensured “the revolution would be televised.” That revolution was SOUL! – an incredible weekly television show that aired on public television from 1968 – 1973 celebrating Black American culture, art, life, love and community, and he shared it with the entire nation every week in their homes.

This inspiring film premiered at Tribeca Film Festival, and went on to screen in over 30+ film festivals around the world wowing audiences and taking home over 17 Best Documentary/Audience Award prizes and was awarded the International Documentary Association Best Music Documentary Award and the Finalist Award for the Inaugural Library of Congress Lavine-Ken Burns Film Award.

It is currently available at these cinemas:
–Roxie Theater in San Francisco
–Balboa/Vogue Theatres in San Francisco
–BAMPFA in Berkeley
–Rafael@Home in San Rafael

On Tuesday, September 1st at 6PM PST, BAMPFA hosted a special Live Stream Q&A director Melissa Haizlip and co-curator of BAMPFA’s Black Life series, Ryanaustin Dennis.  It was excellent. Complete details here.

Trending:
Michigan Mobilization Sister to Sister Action Roundtable, Aug. 30, featured, Senator Kamala Harris in a virtual event to mobilize Black female voters in Detroit; Friday, August 28, Black National Conference featured panelists and performances who discussed important issues we should consider in crafting the Black community’s agenda for the first 100 days of the new administration. It was East Coast-centered with appearances by I think someone in LA, Midwest and south, NOLA. Since the folks most impacted by climate change look like you and me, Black folks need to get on board with protecting the planet so we can continue to eat and get a free ride around the sun.

Virtual 57th Anniversary of the March on Washington

CA Senate considers Reparations Bill
Read the Bill: AB-3121 Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans

Documentary Film Festival
19th Annual SF Documentary Film Festival, Thursday, Sept. 3-20. Listen to an interview on Wanda’s Picks, Sept. 1, 2020, with Chris Metzler, Associate Director of Programming for DocFest. He joins us to talk about the 19th Season for the now  Virtual SF Doc Film Festival, Sept. 3-20, 2020

105th Annual Association of African American Life and History (ASALH) Conference this Sept. Thursdays-Saturdays beginning 9/3 & 9/5 through 9/24 & 9/26. The theme this year is “African Americans and the Vote.”

Martha Jones and fellow historian Marcia Chatelain

A conversation with Martha Jones on her new book, VANGUARD by AMERICAN EXPERIENCE on PBS with Marcia Chatelain

Join American Experience for a book discussion on “Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All”

There will be a discussion with internationally acclaimed historian and author Martha Jones on her new book, Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All, on September 8th from 2-3pm ET.

VANGUARD offers a sweeping history of African American women’s political lives in America, recounting how they fought for, won, and used the right to the ballot—fighting against both racism and sexism.

The event is produced in conjunction with the encore broadcast of AMERICAN EXPERIENCE’s The Vote, on PBS. The event will include an excerpt from the film and a discussion between Martha Jones and fellow historian Marcia Chatelain around the savvy political maneuvering of Black women from the fight for women’s suffrage to the present. They will explore Black women’s stunning political gains in the face of overwhelming obstacles throughout the 20th century, and their continued efforts to ensure everyone has a seat at the table and a voice in shaping the country.

Both Martha Jones and Marcia Chatelain are featured historians interviewed in The Vote. The event will be streamed live on American Experience’s YouTube page. RSVP on this page to join us.

Featuring:
Martha S. Jones – The Society of Black Alumni Presidential Professor and professor of history at Johns Hopkins University. Martha is a past co-president of the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians, the oldest and largest association of women historians in the United States, and she sits on the executive board of the Society of American Historians. Author of Vanguard, Birthright Citizens and All Bound up Together, she has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, USA Today, and more. For more, visit www.MarthaSJones.com, and follow Martha on Twitter @MarthaSJones

Marcia Chatelain – A Professor of history and African American studies at Georgetown University. Author of Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America and South Side Girls: Growing Up in the Great Migration. Following the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, she organized a social media response in the form of the crowdsourced #FergusonSyllabus. For more information, visit www.marciachatelain.com.

25th Anniversary Virtual MAAFA San Francisco Bay Area

Save the dates: Friday-Saturday, October 9-10: Pre-Maafa; Sunday, October 11. We will broadcast through Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/maafabayarea/ and YouTube.

The entire month of October will have a variety of virtual programming: ancestor meditation, films, artist discussions, author events, forums and with community partners. Visit Maafa San Francisco Bay Area

Congratulations!

Dr. Michael Drake, MD, is the first Black President of the University of California system in its 152-year history. My mother sent me the LA Watts Times, July 16.  Dr. Drake is on the cover of the paper and in a story written by Dr. Drake’s colleague and friend, Thomas A. Parham, Ph.D., President of CA State University, Dominguez Hills, we come to appreciate the life of a man who has a legacy of making tangible institutional change.

 

MAAFA FILM SCREENING, Friday, Oct. 2, 6-9 PM PT:

Virtual Film Screening & Discussion with Peres Owino, dir., Friday, Oct. 2, 6-9 PM
Join MAAFA Commemoration San Francisco Bay Area in collaboration with the Oakland International Film Festival in a Free Film Screening of “Bound: Africans vs. African Americans,” dir. Peres Owino, starring Isaiah Washington & Joy DeGruy, Ph.D., (12 years-up).

Sign-up in advance­­: Here. The discussion will be streamed through Facebook.com/maafabayarea, but not the film.

MAAFA (Black Holocaust) is Kiswahili for disaster, calamity or terrible occurrence. This term has been used to describe the Transatlantic Slave Trade or the Middle Passage. Peres Owino’s film is a conversation between siblings who have been separated by time, location, history and language. Though we may look familiar, much has happened in the 500 years we’ve been apart. In the film, a cohort of African and African Americans share on camera its biases, hurt, prejudices and misconceptions about each other. These discussions are juxtaposed with scenes of Dr. Joy DeGruy’s critical analysis of whiteness, hierarchy of power and historic trauma. Her social science tapestry gives Isaiah Washington, actor, humanitarian, a backdrop wherewith to house his elation when he learns where he comes from—his African ancestry. He leaves almost immediately for Sierra Leone and sees how Europe’s underdevelopment of Africa robs her people of hope, a hope Washington in a small way repairs. The director’s expectation when she arrives from Kenya, a student, excited to meet Diaspora cousins, is answered with Bound. The film project which includes Washington’s memoir, is the bridge she creates on her loom. It is a beautiful coat of many colors.

Concert for Hugh Masekela & Willie Kgositsile

 

Date: 
Sep 20th, 2020

Time: 
6:00 PM – 9 PM SAST (South Africa)

9:00 AM – 12 PM PDT Pacific Time (US and Canada)
11:00 AM – 1 PM CDT Central Time (US and Canada)
12:00 PM – 3 PM EDT Eastern Time (US and Canada)

Please feel to share the link below with like minded intellectuals. We’re looking forward to seeing everyone for this special event and will start promptly at 12 noon.

Note: If anyone wants to attend, send an email to this website and we will send you the Zoom meeting ID and Passcode. We will respond to requests up to 8:00 AM PT


On the Fly:
 Happy Birthday John Coltrane (9/23)
Friday, Sept. 25, SFJAZZ will broadcast one of the concerts curated by Ravi Coltrane celebrating his father’s legacy. 5 p.m. Visit sfjazz.org

Art Exhibit: Critical Resistance Presents: Imagine Freedom
http://imaginefreedom.art/

This week CR hosts three major events:

  1.  Tuesday, Sept. 28: Opening Celebration for our Art Action– Imagine Freedom: Art Works for Abolition RSVP here

  2. Thursday, Oct. 1: Launch of the Abolition & the University Series by our Abolitionist Educators Network, with a webinar on “Anti-Blackness, the University & Policing” Register here

  3. Thursday, Oct. 1: Launch of CR  AbolitionNOW Network‘s series with another webinar on “Black and Indigenous Liberation through Abolition”

    Register here. 

Book Talk

 

Elizabeth Pepin Silva and Lewis Watts will present an illuminating slide show and talk about the new edition of Harlem of the West: The San Francisco Fillmore Jazz Era. 

Through dozens of archival photographs and oral accounts from the neighborhood residents and musicians who experienced it at its height, the Harlem of the West SF Project celebrates this unique and rediscovered chapter in jazz history and the African-American experience on the West Coast. The Project is a platform for the Fillmore’s musicians, nightclub owners and residents of the 1940s and 1950s to tell the neighborhood’s history in their own words, as well as feature rarely seen photographs and memorabilia. The new edition of Harlem of the West: The San Francisco Fillmore Jazz Era book has been recently republished by Heyday Books. The edition features newly discovered photographs and memorabilia, as well as additional interviews with those who lived and played in the Fillmore at the height of its glory

Elizabeth Pepin Silva is an award-winning documentary filmmaker, photographer, writer and former day manager of the historic Fillmore Auditorium. She holds a degree in journalism from San Francisco State University. Instagram

Lewis Watts is a photographer, archivist and professor emeritus of art at UC Santa Cruz with a longstanding interest in the cultural landscape of the African diaspora in the Bay Area and internationally. Instagram 

Co-sponsored by Heyday Books and the Museum of the African Diaspora. .

Registration: https://bit.ly/HarlemWest9-25-20

SFPL YouTube Live: https://youtu.be/wIdScOqs20A

Memorial for Kali O’Ray, director,
San Francisco Black Film Festival,
Sat., Sept. 26

Kali O-Ray Memorial, Sat., Sept. 26, 2020 at the AAACC, 762 Fulton Street, SF, outside

From the AAACC website:

“As you may already be aware, Kali O’Ray, our beloved San Francisco Black Film Festival (SFBFF) Director and community member, has passed away. Kali led the SFBFF with a deep commitment to storytelling, featuring films that broke “the mold in which African Americans and the diaspora are many times pigeonholed.”

As we honor Kali’s legacy, we are also grieving alongside those who were impacted by his compassion, creative vision, and undeniable love for the Fillmore. 
The San Francisco Black Film Festival is a global platform for emerging and established Black filmmakers, screenwriters, and actors to present their art. Founded by his mother Ave Montague, Kali took on the role of Director after her passing and led the organization for over a decade. He continuously worked to uplift and celebrate filmmaking as a form of cultural power. 
As Mayor London Breed shared, “Kali picked up the mantle to carry on with his mom’s legacy. I am so grateful to have known and worked with Kali and will always remember him as a thoughtful and caring man.”
To offer space for collective mourning and remembering, we are hosting rotating services at the AAACC in our newly created parking lot exhibit, on Saturday, September 26 at 11am and 2pm. Masks will be mandatory as we practice Social Distancing. For our most vulnerable community, digital streaming will be available on the AAACC website.

We hope to share in honoring Kali’s legacy and comfort for his family with you at the memorial, either in person or virtually, on Saturday, September 26. For those who would like to make a donation to the O’Ray family, please visit the GoFundMe page created by Cree O’Ray, Kali’s daughter.”

Theatre Honors Anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) with Tanya Shafter’s Manatee on Mars

Tanya Shaffer, playwright

 

 

On the anniversary of the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA), two theater organizations join forces on Saturday September 26 ( 2PM Pacific, 5PM Eastern)  to virtually present award-winning playwright Tanya Shaffer’s MANATEE ON MARS, a dramedy about the struggles that children on the spectrum and their families face in the American school system.  Remote Theater, a new theater group born in the pandemic and dedicated to developing new plays, and the nationally renowned Playwrights Foundation, are partnering to present the first public reading of this play under Remote’s new play development series, Remote Studio. The reading is directed by Giovanni Rodriguez, featuring original music by award-winning composer Rinde Eckert.  Listen to the playwright and director on Wanda’s Picks Radio Show, Friday, Sept. 25, 2020, 9:00 AM PT
One Reading Only:  Saturday September 26: 2PM Pacific, 5PM Eastern

FREE REGISTRATION LINK:https://bit.ly/3kaavy8