Oakland Nocturne 2016 (R.I.P Biff's Coffee Shop)

Another seemingly apolitical difference

Between then & now I hear the old folks,

Or, say, wise elders, wax nostalgic about

Is how they used to be able to walk around Oakland

More at 1AM and 2AM and felt less unsafe.

The way they talk about Oakland in 1968

Makes me almost forget about

 the cops killing Bobby Hutton, and Vietnam

but those things at least as bad today

(Sandra Bland….Tamir Rice….Iraq….)

so it sort of cancels out, but he’s talking All Night Diners

for instance….where did they go? Why did they go?

The death of those diners should be in history books,

And the way Judy talks about Oakland in 1966

Has a lot in common with my nostalgia for NYC 2000

Or the way my grandmother talks about Reading, PA. 1952

Reading: the poorest US city according to the 2010 census

Reading: the town that died giving birth to me

Reading: Taylor Swift’s hometown

(though she came out of the gates denying it).[1]

But Oakland is home now,

Even though the physiocrats give it more

Of what they call love than Reading does,

It’s got more in common with the poorest city

Than it does with New York 2000…

Indeed, the lack of night walking here

Was oppressive even before that car hit my bike.

Subways, such as they are, stopping by midnight

So you gotta drive to go out

So you drink less and more clubs shut down

And more drunk drivers zigzag on the highways

They tore down the blues clubs

(within walking distance from where he lived)

to build.

The anti-night people so normalized here—

(Wasps from the Midwest?)

stores closed then the streets became less safe

(for those cause-effect argument buffs).

Of course it’s logical.

Since the NYC business day starts 3 hours earlier,

The west coast has to open and close earlier.

It’s logical, if one accepts colonization,

Like starting school on the hottest day of the year

Coz the east coast school schedule

Doesn’t work for this climate

And the Spanish conquistadors 250 years earlier

Imposed curfew….

Perhaps you have to be an “outsider”—

A New Yorker—specifically---

Who speaks too fast (in NYC they liked that)

To find that lack of night-running subway

Is clearly part of a “kinder, gentler,” curfew

“police state” lockdown policy

As was later made brutally obvious when,

On the one exception night---New Year’s Eve—

That they allow it to run after midnight

to appease the restaurant industry lobbyists—

they murder Oscar Grant!

And I wonder if the gentrifiers

Are really happy? And even though so many

Things in this town are named after Henry Kaiser,

It’s clear the Bay Aryans are still mad that

He lured so many black people here back in the 40s

(not that he did it because he wasn’t racist)…

Meanwhile, Gov. Brown and his puppet mayor

Keep telling us, It’s gonna be more like NYC….

And each day it’s less like what was good about NYC

Less like what was even better about Oakland

In the days when Rodger Collins sang

About those foxy ladies strutting down East 14^th[2]

(now called International because the urban developers

couldn’t bring themselves to call it Cesar Chavez)

while the cops run prostitute rings

but thank god for Khafre Jay & Malik Diamond

and their “invisible” (No cell phone) parties

with no whites allowed. I don’t mind

coz I get to listen to their radio show

and bring them into my classroom

at the school that they’re trying to replace with MOOCs.

---

[1] It’s even got a recent Tony-Award winning play

called Sweat, though Gary Adelstein’s Reading 1974: Portrait Of A City is better

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZD_5grSonbU

Video Monitoring Service (3)

on those rare occasions

you slum it in TV

or perhaps use football as an excuse

to check out some advertisements,

you notice how the cell phone

appears in so many

(even more than the car

and of course they appear together)

and hardly ever as a merely functional device

but bathed in an aura of wonder

the cell gets more close ups

than hands ever did

(except maybe for ivory soap

or “you’re soaking in it”)

and much more like cigarettes

back in the day, prosthetic

the cell appears like fingers

the center, the prop, the star—

& I don’t just mean the obvious ones

like the one for I think Cisco

in which an oh so civilized man

s(eemingly with a British accent)

is pictured in front of a river scene

with a raft (perhaps in Africa)

brags about how its APPS

can bring water to poor people

(who may have had better water

precisely to the extent they’re

less developed)

but also the adds selling cars

or food or insurance or soda

(if not yet the US army)

or banks---

pushing paperless

with its grim futurism

or the guy who won’t even answer

the urgent beeps of his cell

coz he’d have to put down his McNuggets.

the romance of seeing “Marry Me”

on a electric football scoreboard in your cell.

ah, to see the cell as the sell,

the hard sell disguised as soft sell

the luxuries sold as necessities-

the kind of progress that caused

the Kogi to come down from the mountains

in the 1980s to try to teach the Euro-Culture

to stop destroying the planet…

The sadness I feel when I see

in the younger actors smile

the same overcompensated smiles over their cells

that I see in the older actors' smile

after seeing their doctors about Cialis, etc

both with the same cheesy music

I once got paid to make (for a bank commercial).

or, worse, Journey’s “Anyway You Want It”

and yes an ad for facebook

showing a silly woman

obsessed with faking a smile for a selfie

while Wells Fargo spends more

to spin its image like BP did

after the Gusher In The Gulf

the movie Deep Water Horizon

was designed to hide….

(by the way, the Raiders won

--in overtime---and broke

the NFL record for most penalties ever in a game)

10-30-16

Imagism (with “spot of time!” TM)

This is just to say

it’s been over a year

& I still have that silly

4 ounce bottle of water

with a Bank

of America label on it—

a gift not poison, a souvenir….

& once upon a time

it was normal

for banks to have

water-fountains

and even public restrooms….

Bottled water

is more honest

for a bank

than the image

of flowing water….

But even though banks

seem to store your money,

they love the

free flow of capital better

enough to put water fountains

in their corporate headquarters

as they discuss closing more branches

and making more money

on paperless e-banking

I guess I can throw

the bottle away now

(do you need a selfie of it to verify?

you could probably Google it

and an image will appear)

Black History Manifesto (uPhakamile uMaDhlamini)

 Black History

Black struggle

Black consciousness

I remember you Steve Biko

Black History

It’s every day, my way of life,

How I was taught

How I remember

How I continue the fight

I salute you all fallen heroes

Onkgopotse Tiro, Robert Sobukwe, Malcom X,

I read and share your stories every day

Chant your names

Audre Lorde, Taytu Betul, Mirriam Makeba

I call out to you great ancestors,

Patrice Lumumba, Samora Machel, Thomas Sankara

I give thanks to you

Toussaint Louverture, Kwame Nkrumah, Kwame Ture

For my sanity I call out

Aluta Continua I call out

Not yet uhuru!

The blood shed was not in vain

Soldier on we must

Bob Marley I call out for my people’s emancipation from mental slavery

Acquiescence, fear

I draw courage and resilience from you

Winnie Mandela, Lilian Ngoyi, Charlotte Maxeke

Judged and persecuted for this black skin

In these nervous conditions,

I remember you Frans Fanon

Matla!

Yes let’s scrap Black History Month and sustain the suppression of our freedoms! Let us deny ourselves the time to interrogate and reflect on our past. “Black history is American history!” said two actors once in separate interviews. 

Would Carter G. Woodson agree that American history is Black history? For his efforts and many others who give their time to initiatives like Black History Month, and in South Africa observations like the Human Rights Day and June 16, for the restoration and remembrance of our histories.

One of the most painful realizations of the black experience is the denial and distortion of our history. And the process of discarding the lies, learning and unlearning ‘truths’, decolonizing,  liberating self against the watchful eye of white supremacy is agonizing to say the least.

It is also hard for FORGIVENESS to materialize with NO ADMISSION of the crimes committed against Black people but instead we are met with more resistance by way of accusations and machinations. “Why are Black people so damn sensitive, they should move on already?”  The Truth and Reconciliation Commission established after the first democratic elections in South Afrika was unsuccessful in providing the catharsis and reconciliation that was hoped for precisely because of the resistant tactics and lack of accountability.

The US, Canada and UK have a month to celebrate Black History and in South Afrika we have less than ten days spread across the calendar.  They may seem menial to others as in the case of the aforementioned Afrikan American actors who declared the Black History Month commemoration useless and argued Black history was American history. Reactionary commentary like theirs is problematic and neglects to see the many strides and greater ones that are achievable with the support and solidarity of the Black community across the globe.

Rather than critique the controversial BET stable one of the actors failed to recognize the importance of the platform, a Black institution which should be seen and used for the advancement of the Black struggle. We need to strengthen these spaces and moments of celebration, grow them! What if we forgot the Oscars, the Grammy and the likes and permanently boycotted them? And rallied support for our own Black conscious work and companies and products, our autonomy, freedom!

Because,

What has American history taught us?

We learn everyday of its selective memory.

American history has always written people and events out.

American history does not acknowledge the genocide it committed against Native Americans but chooses to romanticize the land grabs marked by the Thanksgiving Celebration, the same land it denies Afrikan Americans and wealth built on the backs of their ancestors nor will it admit to the trickery and dehumanization of Mexicans that continues to this day. It will never speak of its conspiracies against Latin Americans, Africans and Asians.

American History is Black History they say?

In America, Black History has been a learning opportunity of the histories and individuals that remind us of the conniving ways of capitalism that birthed the observance of Juneteenth and a chance to interrogate the systemic injustice like the prison industrial complex that murdered George Jackson, denies Mumia Abu-Jamal medication and let’s not forget the 6x9 feet cells and detention centers for us immigrants that threaten our lives every day.

Black history is also about its survival and contribution to our self-realization, self-determination and self-sustenance. What also begs our immediate attention and interrogation is the cultural misappropriation by the west kept alive by our high levels of consumerism.

Let’s not only celebrate Black History Month, but join in on the commemoration of the history of Native Americans, of the people of Nicaragua and Cuba, rally behind the people of Palestine and Western Sahara. Find our way into the discovery of many more histories hidden and denied in the Library of Congress and in the basements of European museums.

For knowledge is survival, so for whose comfort is dismissing Black commemorations as was the attempt in South Afrika to rebrand Heritage Day celebrating our diverse cultures to ‘National Braai Day. And while it may be fun and trendy, at what cost is the compromise?

Against 500 years of disarray it may seem insignificant but these are moments of freeing ourselves, of imagining and moving towards realizing a postcolonial society. Where’s your beginning, how are you liberating yourself and others around you or are you just keeping watch over the fence of your own privilege making sure we stay in our assigned boxes?

Wise women once said, “That which causes you discomfort is a cause for interrogation”.