Black Panther Party History Month opens with a rare gem by Stanley Nelson featuring key players who tell the story of a movement rarely told well or as completely as maverick director Nelson does. Nelson is in town for the opening of “The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution” at Opera Plaza in San Francisco, and Landmark throughout the East and South Bay October 2. It is also Breast Cancer Awareness Month too. Black women, get those mammograms early.
October is Maafa Commemoration Month
In the San Francisco Bay Area, we remember the African Ancestors of the Middle Passage each October which is Maafa Awareness Month in the State of California (per proclamation by then California Assemblywoman, now Congresswoman, Karen Bass). The 20th Annual Maafa Commemoration is Sunday, October 11, at Ocean Beach, Fulton at the Great Highway. Black people come together to calls the names of African Ancestors who died without ceremony, and whose bodies were often not given a proper burial. This is our opportunity to rectify that and give them, “a good death.”
Program 1: The Emancipation Walk with Hassaun Ali Jones Bey
We celebrate our longevity as a people Sunday, October 4, 11 a.m. all are welcome at Church for the Fellowship of All People, 2041 Larkin Street (near Broadway) in San Francisco at 11 a.m. for the Emancipation Walk hosted by Hassaun Ali Jones Bey. Participants will sing spirituals and walk the inner circumference of the worship sanctuary as if walking a labyrinth, but in this case the labyrinth will symbolize the BaKongo Cosmogram that brought enslaved Africans from many different cultures and religions together as one people in the Americas. The BaKongo cosmogram depicts the world as a cross with the realm of the living above the cross’s horizontal line, the realm of the dead below.
Immediately following the service in the Fellowship Hall the congregation and guests will have an opportunity to converse about African Ancestors of the Middle Passage and how this capitalistic violation of African and African descendant’s human rights and dignity set the tone for a legalized and socially sanctioned, systemic and dynamic racializing of the western world then and now. Black lives didn’t matter to the powers that be then, and Black lives certainly do not matter now. In the life scale, Black lives are less than a nanogram.
Program 2: The Ritual Commemoration
The following Sunday, October 11, is the Maafa Commemoration or Black Holocaust Ritual. People of African Ancestry are welcome. Wear white if possible, dress warmly, bring the children, drums or other instruments, a food item to share (with plates, cups, cutlery). Please also bring something for the community altar—photos of loved ones who have made their transitions, white flowers, chairs for the elders to sit in, tables for the food to sit on, and we appreciate donations as this is not funded by grants. For information email: mail@maafasfbayarea.com or call (641) 715-3900 ext. 36800#, mailing address: P.O. Box 30756, Oakland, CA 94604
Program 3: Tahuti Ball at La Peña Cultural Center
Sunday evening, October 11, 6-9 p.m., there will an event honoring Brother Tahuti who made his transition in June. “The Tahuti Ball” will feature pianist Rudi Wongozi and the Sounds of New World Afrika, the ensemble Odimwa, Dr. Ellen Foster-Randle, poet Charles Curtis Blackwell, Afrometropolita featuring poet and host, Paradise Free Ja Love and other artists at La Peña Cultural Center, 3150 Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley. There will be an open mic for testimonials, as well as a Tahuti inspired art exhibit by Paradise. Donation: $10 at the door.
A New Color @ Mill Valley Film Festival
In A New Color: The Art of Being Edythe Boone, directed by Mo Morris, Edy says, “You can’t change your beginning, but you can sure put a nice, beautiful ending to the story.” And so we follow Ms. Boone, Edy to those who know her as she shares her love of painting with children at an Oakland school and elders at a senior center in Richmond. At 70+, the spry woman is not thinking about slowing down. From Harlem where she not only knew rivers, she also knew steep crystal stairs the self-taught artist has scaled multiple mountains in both the Jim Crow East Coast and West— from single parenting and great-grandmothering to showing all of us what resilience and healing looks like for a family when violence almost knocks her off her scaffolding when nephew, Eric Gardner was choked to death by a NYPD July 17 last year.
In the delightful story which is full of the kinds of lessons one wants to frame, this first film, is about a rare woman, a Bay Area treasure whom the City of Berkeley has honored and so does this lovely tribute film which has two screenings at the Mill Valley Film Festival Saturday, Throckmorton Theatre in Mill Valley, Saturday, October 10, 2:00 PM and Friday, October 16, at Rafael 2 Fri, Oct 16 11:45 AM. Purchase tickets at http://bit.ly/1KFdYzq
The film will also have an East Bay screening and panel discussion at the IMPACT HUB OAKLAND, November 4th at 6:30 p.m. at the 2323 Broadway, Oakland, CA 94612 as part of the HUB’s 3 day long “Women’s Film Forum.” For all the news visit anewcolorfilm.com For a recent interview with Edy and director listen: http://tobtr.com/s/7914915
Black Business Network – Tag Team
The Black Business Network is an opportunity for black business owners to distribute their products through tag team networking. The BBN connects black consumers with black owned businesses. The main distribution is online; however, there is a store located in Atlanta. While I am not clear on all the aspects of BBN, it certainly uses the concepts of Ujima and Ujamaa, collective work and responsibility and cooperative economics to foster Umoja or unity, among black people. Poverty is not a part of Black Heritage, so to have a forum where we can support black owned businesses as well as market our products ourselves is key. The products distributed range from apparel to educational resources. The Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey, co-founder of the UNIA-ACL is prominent philosophically in this movement to claim and make reality abundance for black people. Visit http://www.blackbusinessnetwork.com/Opportunity/
Dimension Dance Theatre’s “The Town on Notice” juxtaposed with Aviva Kempner’s film “Rosenwald”
Within the San Francisco Bay Area, specifically Oakland and San Francisco, the removal of indigenous populations is unprecedented as corporations buy up available landscape and then force out communities, often those living in rental property they can no longer afford.
There is a black arts movement in San Francisco called 3.9, the number indicative of the percentage, at the time, of black residents there. These successful efforts at black removal have historic precedence if one just traces the Great Migrations of WW2 and even prior to this, when the south, no longer habitable – if ever, was a place all who could left. In a recent film, “Rosenwald,” dir. Aviva Kempner, its protagonist, JR or Julius Rosenwald, a German Jew, eventual co-owner of Sears, Roebuck & Co., took courage and inspiration from Booker T. Washington, educator and founder of Tuskegee Institute. With community support and investment, JR built 5,300 schools in the rural south providing 660,000 black children with access to education. Perhaps the lesson here is evacuation is not always necessary, and how together two men were able to force segregated municipalities to invest in black community development.
The fact that Rosenwald had the capital to invest in black upliftment, certainly changed an America which sought on all fronts, not just in the South, to disenfranchise its black American citizens. The late civil rights activist, founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Hon. Julian Bond speaks about how the Rosenwald schools educated his brother and (I think) uncle. The Hon. John Lewis called the Sears catalog a “wish book.”
Rosenwald saw similarities between Jim Crow and fascism and sought to do something about it. He grew up in Springfield, Ill., Abraham Lincoln’s hometown. His father and uncles knew the former president. A deeply religious man, JR was inspired by the Jewish ideals of tzedakah (charity) and tikkun olam (repairing the world). He also had a deep concern over racial inequality in America. This awareness grows when JR, a man who didn’t complete high school, reads educator and Tuskegee Institute founder Booker T. Washington’s seminal “Up from Slavery.”
“Tzedakah” is similar to the Islamic term “sadaqat.”[1] It is a principle which looks to those who have much to share with those who have less; however, implied in this spirit of charity is dignity. One is cautioned to safeguard the other person’s dignity. When JR entered into partnership with Booker T. Washington, a man he greatly admired, to build schools in black southern communities, the economic costs were split three ways: he invested a third, the black community invested the second third and the school district came up with the final third. Sometimes the black community also donated the land the school was built upon. Right away this partnership gave the black community not just ownership but pride and respect.
While looking at how to build cost-effectively, JR was going to use Sears prefabricated housing models for these structures, but Washington’s architect stepped in and designed the schools which were then were built by the families. This sweat equity added to the sense of ownership and pride in the completed work.
JR saw it is his duty to spend his money now, not take it to his grave. Those notable ventures outside of the rural schools project, had to be his grants to black artists and scholars like Marian Anderson and Gordon Parks, W.E. B. Dubios and Langston Hughes. He also built YMCAs throughout the country so that single black men could have places to stay, especially when traveling. His legacy survives in a Chicago housing complex where included in the design were businesses, places for social community gatherings and childcare. He also built the Technology and Science Museum in Chicago.
His collaboration with Booker T. Washington, then later the establishment of an organization which continued the educational development of the rural south is an example of community psychology, a recent field developed in the trenches. Most of the early community psychologists might not have even been psychologist but the work of healing the psyche or souls of communities is not limited to a particular field or area of study.
These institutions, Tuskegee Institute and Rosewald schools, allowed black people an opportunity to grow and see beyond the limit situations imposed by systems of racism, during a time in American that segregation was legal. Unlike, those who left, Rosenwald schools allowed communities to stay intact; people did not have to leave home. Granted, schools were burned down, as were other African American institutions, but organizations like the KKK did not win. People were determined to not be run off. Black Americans were committed to fighting for the land ancestor blood fertilized. Today in the south, many of these families remain.
There is no anonymity in occupation. We change the space as much as it changes us; even though, historically, the human element has proved a more caustic element in the relationship. Artificial or people generated technologies can rob us of certain appreciation we could have when in nature. Our programming or civilization often takes the magic out of experience. Exiled from land and exiled from our bodies, it is easy to see no harm in destruction of habitats not human centered. True appreciation of the sacredness of all life is possible when we decentralize the human being and recognize the soul within all living or animate entities.
What we perceive is only an approximation of what is really there, because as human beings we can only hold one way of seeing cognitively at a time. When the topic is gentrification, the systematic elimination of a people from a place they called home, there opens up a space within this dislocation which operates like a sinkhole swallowing from within its victims very essence. Similar to a burglary or home invasion, this violation is felt intimately.
Human beings are physical beings and are attached to space. Space is an element that fashions our identity. When a people no longer have a home or home base –a literal geography, it is felt psychically and emotionally. People identify, shape their identities and are shaped within the spaces they occupy. Often the loss is visibly irreconcilable. The wisdom such places hold is no longer able to be articulated spatially, even if psychically memories survive and push through in dreams and art making.
Gentrification is political, economic, and racially motivated, often at the same time. The global south winds are blowing across America, intentionally destroying families and communities; however, within this assault and attack people and communities are resisting as Rosenwald and his partners did, as Deborah Vaughn, co-founder, Dimensions Dance Theatre does in a new work, “The Town on Notice,” premiering October 17, 8 p.m., at the Malonga Casquelourde Center for the Arts Theatre, 1428 Alice Street, in Oakland.
The Town on Notice is a dance production that looks at historic and present ways black people have and continue to resist those systems which attack and seek to maim a collective black consciousness, the SELF with capital letters, the fully integrated and evolved human being connected to, not separated from all life. “The Town on Notice” is inspired by artists who look to Congo and Haiti and hip hop culture and New Orleans post-Katrina.
As I walk through West Oakland and hardly recognize the neighborhoods I lived in thirty years ago, (a place where I could not buy a home, with down payment in hand), I see pockets of resistance in the architecture, in the people who refuse to sell no matter the offer. It is a place where life is still priceless. Vaughn says she grew up in Oakland and she is not leaving. She learned to dance at Oakland Recreation Centers; she attended and graduated from Mills College. This community psychologist in work, if not name, in the 40 years she has been head of the company she founded taught hundreds of boys and girls in her Rites of Passage Program, not to mention mentored emerging now professional choreographers and dancers like Latanya Tigner and Laura Elaine Ellis.
There are people with such legacies as Vaughn whose presence is like a tree, a great tree whose branches cover and shelter and shield so many, we would be devastated if she and her company were no longer here. The same is true of the sounds and smells and attitudes that were what we knew when we thought Oakland if there were suddenly, no there there. In the felt absence, much of what is Oakland remains, like Deborah Vaughn and Dimensions Dance Theatre, which is why “The Town on Notice” call out to the community in this work is so necessary. This conversation inspires the art which presenters hope will also inspire conversation in the lobby before and after the show in an old-fashioned African American traditional rent party.
The audience will be encouraged to talk with each other over a drink and music about place and displacement and who has rights—the right to stay, the right to return? “The Town on Notice” is just the first step in a larger community action. A people need to be conversant on how urban removal or gentrification policies rise from a context often historic, intentional and mean spirited. Such conversations (as ones started Oct. 17) will seed and sprout organized steps to halt the cyclical people elimination strategies inherent in urban development policies.
For tickets to “The Town on Notice” visit brownpapertickets.com or call 800-838-3006 Tickets are $25 in advance, $30 at the door. To listen to radio interview with Deborah Vaughn and Micia Mosely (comedian) a collaborating artist, visit http://tobtr.com/s/7914867
Film
The Amazing Nina Simone opens in Berkeley at the Rialto Cinemas for a limited run, October 23-26. The talk back is October 24. The title comes from a 1959 release by the same title. If you are in New York, Oct. 16-18, film screening at AMC Empire, there is also a Nina Simone art exhibit opening October 15, 7-10 p.m. at the MiLes Gallery, 103 Allen Street @Delancey.
Daily the gallery is open 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. October 16-18 Visit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1bH2qEvQ0k
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“Shout Gladi Gladi,” co-directed by Adam Friedman and Iain Kennedy, narrated by Meryl Streep, is the story of medical centers in Malawi and Sierra Leone where women are at risk for obstetric fistula. There are also companion risks, such as high infant mortality and high mortality rates for the parents as well. The story centers on a European woman, former nurse, Ann Gloag, who is driven to build and support these clinics. Although Melinda Gates’s name might resonate more in the western moneyed circles, it is Nobel Laureate, playwright and scholar, Wole Soyinka’s presence in the film which gives it credibility. He takes on colonial philanthropy, which we see evidence of in the film when Gloag shows us partially completed building projects along an otherwise barren landscape where European agencies threw money at a project, yet had no interest in its completion or sustainability. Soyinka looks at Gloag’s Freedom from Fistula Foundation critically as he lauds FFF as a good model, a model of aide that is sustainable once the bucks dry up or the white people leave.
I wasn’t expecting to like the film— it is another film like so many others that look at “poor Africa,” “let’s save Africa,” but to its credit, the directors show how the resources Gloag provides enable the African doctors, nurses and social workers to do their jobs more efficiently and effectively, saving many lives with education and prevention strategies. It is hard work and those on the ground are shown doing the work. Though the majority of support staff are African, we see Dr. Wilkinson, who is the Senior Surgical Consultant for the Freedom From Fistula Foundation and other persons supporting the work of African clinicians at the two medical centers profiled in the film. It is not clear that the larger Fistula Care Centre at the Bwaila Maternity Hospital in Lilongwe, Malawi was run up to this year by Dr. Stephen Kaliti and that Dr. Wilkinson supports his work.
The Aberdeen Women’s Centre (AWC) in Freetown, Sierra Leone is also profiled. We meet an African physician recruited by Gloag to work in the Centre. He is shown working long hours with very little technical and monetary support outside of the assistance provided by Gloag’s organization. Prior to his arrival, Dr. Gbawuru-Mansaray manged both centers. She is now in Kenya, doing the same work at Freedom From Fistula Foundation’s fistula project at St. Mary’s Mission Hospital in Nairobi, Kenya. Besides the local and international physicians, there are also midwives and other health workers who comprise the effective teams who are reducing obstetric fistula and other related maternal and child diseases in these regions.
As an aside, I looked up the business interests that support Gloag’s Freedom From Fistula and found that her monies come from the Stagecoach Group plc It is an international transportation business, in Scotland, the UK and the United States presently. They own Megabus. When you ride Megabus, your monies go to support ending obstetric fistula (smile). Who would have known, right?
If there are black philanthropists and black doctors from the Pan African Diaspora lending their expertise in to our people in Africa and elsewhere, we need to tell those stories too. Right now, all the stories heralded in popular media are of the Ann Gloags, whom are helping save lives, extending lives and improving the quality of such lives. “Shout Gladi Gladi” tells a story about fistula which has not been told. More well-known are the stories of child brides and resultant difficult deliveries. We do meet children patients, one a rape victim, but the majority of patients suffering obstetric fistula (or prolonged, obstructed childbirth) profiled in “Shout Gladi Gladi,” might have had a different outcome if they’d had proper prenatal care which is FFF’s goal: prevention and education.
One of the heroes of the story is a medical social worker who goes out into the ghettos to let the women know about the free treatment for themselves and their children. The men support the clinic and hospital. There are stories of women who have suffered, 20-40 years incontinence–leaking urine and bowels. After the surgery, Vanesia Laiti’s husband and entire village celebrate her healing. In her 70 years now, she’d suffered symptoms for over 40 years. She spoke of wearing a pretty dress, one she had not been able to wear while sick.
Often the women and girls are outcasts after the injury, because they leak excrement which has a bad odor. One woman says, “There are no Depends to wear,” so the woman is unable to stay clean. In other films I have seen on the topic involve cultural traditions where girls are married to older men. These girls’ obstetric fistulas have to do with their underdeveloped reproductive systems. These child brides invariably have difficult childbirths.
The hospital and clinic are open 24 hours. The social worker goes out in the hospital van in Sierra Leone to get women to come to the hospital so they can help them deliver safely. It is all word of mouth. She says it is dangerous, because people see the van and think the social workers have money. However, she says the risk is worth it. In the countryside in Malawi, the women live really far from services, so the local ambulance — a wagon hooked to a bicycle is really crucial in saving the lives of a mother and her baby. Ann Gloag, on a visit in this area, recognizes this and pays to have the bicycle ambulance repaired.
As the camera pans the area along the route to the hospital we see many buildings in varying states of completion. This is the result of what Soyinka calls colonial philanthropy: partially completed buildings, out of date equipment, and wasted potential because there was no enough more to complete a project or sustain it once completed. When money is thrown at a people for projects developed without community involvement, such projects fail. The success of Ann Gloag and her team is tied to their partnership with the communities served. While not completely autonomous, because of the need for continued financial and technical support related to treatment (for patients who need more specialized protocols), the model is still sustainable and respectful of cultural traditions and values.
The centers stay open through the Ebola crisis and even reduce the spread of infection where they are located. Sadly, one of their doctors gets the virus and dies.
The term Gladi Gladi refers to a celebration of the women’s new lives. There is a designer whose job is to make garments for this celebration where there is music and dancing and drumming. It is a time when the women who are now well prepare to go back home to begin new lives; while the women who are still in treatment see a preview of what is to come for them. At the Gladi Gladi celebration, the woman receive a gift, BBOXX, a product which supplies electricity through solar energy. This gift allows the women to start a business right away once they return home. They can charge cell phones and provide light to their villages. They are independent women, never dependent on another to provide for their needs ever again. They are full of confidence.
We see these hospitals and services providers as a light, literally in darkness.
The film, “Shout Gladi Gladi”, opens Oct. 9 at Landmark Opera Plaza in San Francisco. Gloag says to women, “it could be you. You are just blessed to live in a country where you were able to get the right kind of medical assistance. Some of these girls are just 13 and 14 years old, but if we weren’t there to do the surgery, their lives would be over. They are kids and we can give them their lives back.”
On the Fly
12th Annual Trolley Dances in San Francisco, Saturday-Sunday, October 18-19, in San Francisco feature artists Heather Baer, Byb Chanel Bibene, Kim Epifano, Valerie Gnassounou-Bynoe, Alex Ketley, Amy Seiwert and ODC Theater “Pilot 66” artists Zoe Bender and Sheena Johnson. Performances or tours (6) are @ 11am, 11:45am, 12:30pm, 1:15pm, 2pm, 2:45 pm. Each tour runs approximately two hours and starts at Point Bay View Boat Club, 489 Terry A Francois Boulevard. It’s a free event; MUNI fare is $2.25 for adults, $1.00 for seniors and youth, and free for children 4 and under. Visit epiphanydance.org Superfly ‘70s Cinema Soundtrack and Halloween Costume Party featuring James Earley and the Superfly Band with Special Guest, Fillmore Slim at Yoshi’s Oakland, Sat., October 31, 2 shows, 7:30 and 9:30 p.m. at 510 Embarcadero West, Jack London Square, Oakland. For information and tickets visit: yoshis.com Spirit Sound & Silence Retreat, Saturday, October 24, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Holy Redeemer Center, 8945 Golf Links Road, Oakland. RSVP (510) 595-5598. Sliding scale $35-150. Scholarships available, no one turned away for lack of funds. The retreat is facilitated by Dr. Liza Rankow and the OneLife Team, featuring the music of Destiny Muhammad, “Harpist from the ‘Hood.” The Sentence Unseen: Portraits of Resilience opens at AAMLO this month. OneLife Institute Celebrates its 10th Anniversary with a special reception on Sunday, Oct 4th from 3-6pm at Imagine Affairs Art Lounge, 408 – 14th St, downtown Oakland. Tammy Hall, pianist-composer, will be the featured musician, with special guest performers, including: Kymberly Jackson (jazz flute), and spoken word artists Cat Brooks and Jazz Hudson. www.facebook.com/events/919212434760564 Eventbrite link for info and free tickets: https://onelifeanniversary.eventbrite.com/ Twitter @OneLife_Inst
Book Club
At Last, Last Friday Book Club at the Oakland Public Library, Bradley Waters Community Room, Main Library, 5 p.m., 125 14th Street, Oakland, (510) 238-3138. Host: Jacqueline Luckett.
Former Women Prisoners Honored at The Fire Inside Gala
The Fire Inside 20th Anniversary Celebration, Saturday, November 7, 7 p.m. at the Women Building in San Francisco, 3543 18th Street, San Francisco. Suggested donation, $25 at the door, $20 in advance. No one turned away for lack of funds. A major highlight of the event will be presentations by many formerly incarcerated women and trans people who have been leaders and members of CCWP over the years. Featured guests include: Patrisse Cullors, Co-founder of Black Lives Matter, Jayda Rasberry, organizer with Dignity and Power Now, Thao Nguyen, Thao & The Get Down Stay Down, Heiwa Taiko Drummer. For information visit info@womenprisoners.org and (415) 255-7036 ext. 4.
Poetry Reading:
An Inaugural Poetry reading for a Quarterly Series at the Oakland Main Library, Bradley Waters Community Room, 125 14th Street, Oakland, Saturday, Nov. 7, 2:30 p.m. The Series is called: Boundaries without Bars: Free for All/Freedom for Some. Are there different freedoms for different people in this country? Where are the boundaries of your freedoms? What feelings does the song “Don’t Fence Me In” evoke in you? For information call: (510) 238-3138
Author Event
Ta-Nehisi Coates, author of the recent book “Between the World and Me” and last year’s “The Case for Reparation” will be in be at the First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way, Berkeley on Wednesday, October 28, 7:30 PM. Tickets can be found at Marcus Bookstore. check him out before he moves to Paris.
Write NOW! Fillmore writing workshops
Three writing workshops led by author Shizue Seigel at the San Francisco African American Historical & Cultural Society, 762 Fulton Street, 2nd Floor, every 2nd Wednesday, 10am -noon
Participants will have fun writing down their memories of San Francisco’s African American community. Writers will be able to share what they write and listen to others’ work. Along the way writers will also have the opportunity to discover their own voices and styles in these lively interactive writing workshops led by Shizue Seigel.
Financial Planning Assistance
Congresswoman Barbara Lee, Senator Loni Hancock, Assembly Member Rob Bonta, Alameda County Supervisors Keith Carson and Wilma Chan, Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf, Oakland City Council President Lynette McElhaney, and the Oakland City Council invite you to:
A Day of FREE Financial Planning, Saturday, October 10, 9-4:00 Oakland City Hall, 1 Frank H. Ogawa Plaza
Do you need help with planning for your or your children’s education?
Are you struggling with debt and mortgage payments?
Do you need advice on how to wisely invest your money?
Do you have questions about estate planning?
Please attend this day-long clinic to have these and other specific financial questions addressed by professional financial planners. These planners are volunteering their time and expertise to provide unbiased financial planning information.
Participants can receive as many private consultations or attend as many educational workshops as they like. For further information and to pre-register for the event, visit http://financialplanningdays.org/event/oakland-financial-planning-day or call 877-861-7826.
Walk-ins are welcome, but admission will be granted first to those who have registered online. A large crowd is expected, so people are encouraged to register early.
[1] http://www.islamicbulletin.org/newsletters/issue_6/zakat.aspx