Monday, July 26, 2010

Parable of a Nigguh's Ass




Parable of a Nigguh's Ass

One day Plato Negro was at his Academy of Da Corner, 14th and Broadway, the cross roads of Oakland. A young man came up and verbally assaulted the street professor, sticking his finger in the face of the old man, telling him he would smoke him if he did not remove the picture of his ass on the cover of his latest book Pull Yo Pants Up fada Black Prez and Yoself.

Plato Negro told the youth his picture is in the public domain, thus free for anyone to use. Furthermore, is he threatening to smoke the white man who runs Internet?

The mad youth told Plato Negro if he returned and his picture was still on the cover of his book he would smoke him.

Plato Negro seems to have a problem with photos of Negroes. A young lesbian wanted to kill him a few months ago because her picture appeared in his book with actor John Amos. Now John was not upset about his pic, but baby girl wanted to kill Plato because he used her pic to headline an article in his book The Wisdom of Plato Negro. He deleted the pic from his book after learning her brother had come to his Academy of Da Corner to kill him but started crying and could not pull the trigger. Plato was trying to promote the young lady, a singer, who had toured the east coast with him and attended a production of his play Salaam, Huey Newton, Salaam at Woody King's New Federal Theatre.

On this day, the youth claimed his ass was copyrighted! He was a rapper and his ass was on the cover of his CD.

You know we youngsters don't give a fuck bout you OG's, we'll smoke you in a minute, you know dat, right?

Plato Negro looked at the little snotty nose child. He could have smashed his nose into the ground, being the suppressed killer Plato Negro is known to be. Writing is merely a disguise and diversion to keep a killer from spreading blood on the streets of Oakland!

Plato endured the dissing by his child.

Plato Negro told his child I can kill you as quickly as you can kill me.

Two OG's stood by while the youth ranted. I know you brothers would smack this youth.

Plato Negro's brother, who often sits in Academy of Da Corner, would kill the youth once he said he was goin ta smoke him. Plato's brother is that kind of fellow. You say you gonna smoke him, well, he go smoke you first.

But Plato had a different mission.

I have come to save youth, not kill them, therefore, I shall not fight them or abuse them, for they are my children, and I shall honor them, respect them, and not neglect them!

I am patient, there is no rush, I live in the no stress zone.

The young man went away but came back a few minutes later.

He said OG, I'm sorry I got up in yo face like dat. Please forgive me!

Plato forgave him.

OG you can use my picture of my ass.

Plato Negro said thank you, youngster. I love you. You are my child. I love you.
--Marviv X
7/27/10

Black Arts West Theatre On the Move




Third Eye Video presents

poet-playwright-essayist-activist

Marvin X

reading and signing his latest books

Pull Yo Pants Up fada Black Prez
and
The Wisdom of Plato Negro

Friday, August 6, 7pm
6040 Telegraph Ave., Oakland
510-830-7901
Donation $10.00











Accompanied by Rashidah Sabreen, guitar, vocals, Elliott Bey, keyboards,Raynetta Rayzetta,choreographer/dancer, Paradise, poet/reader, Mechelle LaChaux, singer/reader, Valarie Harvey, reader, Talibah, reader


The Wisdom of Plato Negro, Parables/fables is at once both gutsy and crude, vulgar and righteous, bodacious and common. Marvin X tares at your heart while piling crap on your head. He makes you want to kiss somebody, or kill him. One comes from this encounter with the surrealism that is both art and reality, imagery and observations. His parables tell stories meant to both inform and reform, while his fables are remarkable in their almost real, yet imaginary, paradoxes that confront the reader, and his musings makes one wonder if it is live or Memorex. Marvin X gives us his blood, sweat and tears –each page a little more of himself. Thanks my brother for the journey, the insanity, the righteousness, the vulgarity, and the taste of soul.

--Dr. Rodney D. Coates



Marvin X is Plato teaching on the streets of Oakland. --Ishmael Reed

He's the USA's Rumi! He’s got the humor of Pietri, the politics of Baraka, and the spiritual Muslim grounding that is totally new in English –- the ecstasy of Hafiz, the wisdom of Saadi. --Bob Holman, Bowery Poetry Club, New York City

Is Marvin X a parable or fable? We doubt a Marvin X exists. We double doubt there is a Plato Negro.
--Amiri Barak



San Francisco Theater Festival, Sunday August 8th, 2010 at Yerba Buena Gardens. Free Admission!

Marvin X and associates Ayodele Nzingha, Lower Bottom Playaz, and Geoffrey Grier, SF Recovery Theatre, perform in the festival. See schedule below.

11:40 12:10 Screening Rm (Upstairs fm. Forum) Lower Bottom Playaz Flowers by Marvin X– A circa 1960 Black Arts dramatic short that interrogates the silence between a father and son.
12:20 12:50 Screening Rm (Upstairs fm. Forum) Lower Bottom Playaz Queen – A view of the world from the fractured mind of Graffiti Queen, the self proclaimed Dear Abby of the John.
1:00 1:30 Screening Rm (Upstairs fm. Forum) Lower Bottom Playaz Mama – A sharply drawn voyeuristic examination of HIV, family secrets and the threat of an imminent implosion in the Jefferson household.
1:40 2:10 Screening Rm (Upstairs fm. Forum) SF Recovery Theatre The Spot – Critically acclaimed story of young lovers trapped in urban society a’la West Side Story.
2:20 2:50 Screening Rm (Upstairs fm. Forum) SF Recovery Theatre Jet – A portrait of a nicotine addict and true story, explores the healthcare system from a consumer perspective.
3:00 3:30 Screening Rm (Upstairs fm. Forum) SF Recovery Theatre The Dutchman – SF Recovery Theatre players put a new twist on this OBIE award winning play by Amiri Baraka.
3:40 4:10 Screening Rm (Upstairs fm. Forum) SF Recovery Theatre A Soldiers Play – Introducing SF Recovery Theatre’s BayView Playaz in this classic murder mystery by Charles Fuller.
4:25-4:55 SOMA Room Metreon 2nd Floor The Wisdom of Plato Negro, Marvin X, Reader's Theatre:: Mechelle LaChaux, Rashidah Sebreen, Valerie Harvey, Paradise, Elliott Bey, Raynetta Rayzetta, Talibah, Marvin X A dramatic reading of the Wisdom of Plato Negro, parables/fables by Marvin X. A Production of Academy of Da Corner Reader's Theatre.

San Francisco Theater Festival - Sunday July 26, 2009

Sunday, July 25, 2010

Parable of the San Francisco Negro, Part II

Fahizah Alim, Marvin's Muse
















Painters Dewey Crumpler, Arthur Monroe; Ishmael Reed, Conyus,
Marvin X, Al Young

photo by Tennessee Reed at
San Francisco Main Library,
discussing Ishmael Reed's Obama
and the Jim Crow Media, Return of the Nigger Breakers






















Marvin X, Tennessee Reed, Conyus, Al Young








Parable of the San Francisco Negro, Part II



Today, Sunday, August 25, at the San Francisco Main Library, Ishmael Reed discussed his latest book Barack Obama and the Jim Crow Media, Return of the Nigger Breakers, Baraka Press, 2010. The esteemed Dr. Nathan Hare gave him a proper intro, befitting the great commentator Ishmael is, aside from being a novelist, essayist, poet, playwright and anthologist. Aside from his wife and daughter, the audience included Al Young, Conyus, Dewey Crumpler, Herman Rainey, Margot Dashield, et al.

Before the program began, Ishmael told me not to be selling my books at his gig, also please do not cut him up doing the Q and A. I ignored both requests. He signed a review copy of his book for me.

I respect Ishmael because he is my senior or elder, also one of America's most prolific writers, although I'm on his tail. Actually, he is the one who named me Plato, after stopping by one of my street sessions downtown Oakland at 14th and Broadway. I added Negro to distinguish myself from the Greek philosopher who plagiarized African philosophy (see Stolen Legacy by George M. James). But Ishmael has supported my projects and productions in the Bay Area, and he praised my play One Day in the Life as the most powerful drama he's seen.

But Ishmael is an interesting character, He comes from that group of black intellectuals who lived in Greenwich Village during the 50s and early 60s, including LeRoi Jones, now Amiri Baraka, Larry Neal, Calvin Hernton, Askia Toure, David Henderson, et al.

After the assassination of Malcolm X, LeRoi Jones, aka Baraka, escaped the Village and sought refuse in Harlem. Askia and Neal were already in place. Ishmael declined to join the Black Arts Movement and was somewhat critical of it. He never claimed to be a revolutionary activist, and on Sunday at library, he made it clear he was not an activist nor revolutionary. He seems to take a centrist position, neither left nor right. He made it clear during his discussion that in his mind the Left has fantasies as fantastic as the Right. He recalled when Che Guevara was interviewed on New York's WBAI, Che laughed when asked if there could be a Cuban style revolution in America. Ishmael said Madison Avenue and corporate America would immediate co-opt the revolution, thus making it a fad, perhaps in the manner of Hip Hop culture. We imagine it might be similar to everybody in New York wearing the Kafiya scarf of the Palestinian revolution, but they ain't hardly with the Palestinian revolution, especially New York Jews, but they wear the scarf.

So where is Ishmael coming from? For sure, he's a thinker with an opinion that is often outside the box of Americana. In this we are similar, although I'm to the left of Ish, to say the least. I sense Ishmael loves America while I loathe America. I'm like that song Tobacco Road,

I hate you
but I love you because you're home.
Go git some dynamite and a crane,
tear it up and start all over again,
Tobacco Road (Lou Rawls version).

Ishmael speaks as an insider, I'm an outsider. He's one of the select public intellectuals, along with Michael Eric Dyson and Dr. Cornell West. White America has never heard of me, for the most part, and neither has a large portion of black America. My audience is the rejected and despised, a population America also wants to know nothing about.

Ishmael is a truth seeker, wise enough to reject the fiction of the fabricated America reality. The good Dr. Nathan Hare taught us the fictive theory: everything America says is fiction unless proven to be fact. Ishmael is excellent at tearing apart the Hollywood fantasy America, especially that portion perpetuated by the media, the witch doctors on Television, movies and internet.

He discussed the spin doctors and others of and in the white supremacy regime who castrate the black man at every turn. He noted the icons of the 60s, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., Kwame Toure, Elijah Muhammad, Muhammad Ali, who were torn to shreds by not only the media but feminist propaganda as well. Yet who do they have to equal such giants?

My special advisor, Ish, talked about the University as part of the military/corporate complex Eisenhower warned us about. After 35 years teaching at the University of California, Berkeley, he asked where is the radical, socialist/communist academia?

I agree, after teaching briefly in academia, it is indeed part of the complex Eisenhower warned us about. Imagine, as we speak, a lawyer who endorsed torture is yet teaching at UCB, Professor Yu.

Ishmael still has much faith in Obama, while mine has waned, perhaps because he is more patient than I. After two white men tried to disrupt his discussion with leftist rants, Ish asked if they'd come with me, especially after he called upon me for an opinion on Arab liquor stores in the hood. Actually, he asked me to write an essay on the topic, but I said yes, the Arabs sell us swine and wine in the name of Allah, additionally, they sell dope, guns and pussy inside and outside their stores, and take liberties with our women, while they will murder us if we have sex with theirs, as happened in Sacramento when an Arab father found a black boy hiding under his daughter's bed. Ironically, the Arab got the NAACP chief attorney, Nathaniel Colley, to successfully defend him.

At the end of the session, while he signed books, Ishmael let me know he asked me to make a comment during the Q and A, not deliver a sermon. Now those who know, know better than ask me a question because I will give a sermon.

After pics with Ishmael, Al Young, Arthur Monroe, Dewey Crumpler, Conyus, Tennessee Reed and myself, I excused myself from a dinner invitation to make my way through San Francisco's multi-racial ghetto the Tenderloin. I had to visit my old hang out, though the artists warned me not to get stuck in the black hole.

On my way to the library, I had thought about those TL chicken wings at the Arab liquor store, but Conyus brought them back to my attention when he informed me he gave Al Young, poet laureate emeritus of California, a tour of the TL, after which Al wrote a poem, including the liquor store as subject.

When I arrived and got the chicken wings, I walked outside to meet a brother from back in the day, one of those wheeler dealers who has miraculously survived the rough and tough Tenderloin, one of the roughest and toughest ghettos in California, if not America. By the grace of God, I mastered every street in the TL, every alley, doorway, hotel room. I am not bragging, this is just a fact.

I showed my Obama book to my friend, but another brother checked it out. I also showed him Mythology of Pussy. He gave me five dollars for Mythology. Then I showed him Pull Yo Pants Up, he said he wanted Pull Yo Pants Up--said he knew enough about pussy. So I exchanged. He was happy, more so because he said he never bought a book before, nor had he ever bought a book from the author, so he was honored and said he was going to take it home to his peoples in Richmond and share it with them.

I was humbled. It is enough to kiss the ground when a black man says he's never bought a book, let alone from the author himself.

I departed the TL to across the street at Market and Powell. It is a movement from one block to another wherein one enters the world of the rich and white, the tourists from around the world who come to board the Cable Car, yes, only a block away from the TL, one of the most wretched areas in the world. A block away!

In my hustling days, I was not only the king of the Tenderloin, but on Union Square, the shopping area of the rich and famous in San Francisco. On this day I posted up by the BART escalator. I just wanted to observe before I boarded the subway back to the East Bay.

I stool around watching the action. I saw a police officer I recognized, Brother Payne who has a twin brother who worked the Cable Car line and was the champion Cable Car bell ringer. I watched officer Payne do his thing. He told a Negro to leave the area, when the Negro resisted, he pulled out his hand cuffs at shook them in the Negro's face. I knew officer Payne from the 80s and 90s when I used to hustle, so I made eye contact with him and signaled with my finger for him to come over. He came. I said how's it going, Brother? You brother Payne, right? He said yes. How you doing? He said it's rough. Rougher than it used to be. Rougher. Then he was off to a purse snatcher. I took out my promo for the book Pull Yo Pants Up. A young brother came by with two young girls who appeared to be his sisters. I gave him a promo. He read the title and said, "Wait a minute, let me pull my pants up." He pulled them up and showed me he was tightening his belt, then went on his way, but not before I said, "Thank you, brother!"

When the brother submitted so willingly, it let me know there are infinite possibilities here, and that the elders are allowing this negative situation to continue out of their sloth and laziness. Thus, we must get on our job and speak to our sons and daughters. They await the sound of our voices, the command of our message of truth.
--Marvin X
7/25/10

Friday, July 23, 2010

Parable of Pull Yo Pants Up fada Prez and Yoself



Parable of Pull Yo Pants Up fada Prez and Yoself

Ideally, Plato Negro would like to cause a paradigm shift in youth culture. Using his hometown, Oakland, as a Model City, in the lingo of Mayor Ron Dellums, we want the youth of Oakland to serve as a model of radical youth behavior by pulling up their pants and their minds, and at the same time we want the City of Oakland to pull up its pants by rearranging its budget wherein presently 75% of the budget goes to police and the fire department. We want 75% to go for youth projects, including jobs, education and recreation, also to anger management and conflict resolution.
This would immediately decrease the need for police to consume such a large portion of City finances.

Just as America has done in Iraq to decrease violence by employing youth to secure their communities, Oakland can do the same, including upgrading education with relevant curriculum
and providing housing fit for human beings.

Since she is preparing to allow the growing of marijuana to increase her tax base, she must simultaneously decriminalize the selling of marijuana on the street, especially since we know persons selling drugs suffer an addiction to either use or selling, additionally they are most often mentally ill, thus dual diagnosed, suffering addiction and mental illness, equally in need of medication. We cannot permit one segment of the population to sell drugs (whites) and criminalize another section (blacks)--this is blatant racial discrimination.

Shall the police arrest a person who legally purchases marijuana at a club, then steps outside the door and sells it?

And why should not youth in the green revolution be allowed to grow marijuana in community gardens just as Oakland is in the process of allowing corporate growers to do?For sure, these corporate growers will be white!

At the very least, police should immediately stop arresting youth for selling marijuana. And all those incarcerated should be given a general amnesty.

This is all about pulling up the pants, but with dignity, honesty, justice and fairness. Adults cannot tell youth to do anything while adults themselves are living contradictions. As Amina Baraka said, "Youth cannot learn from our mistakes if we are still making them."

How can Oakland permit the growing and selling of marijuana by rich, white corporations but continue the criminalization of youth for selling and/or growing the same?

This is sufficient reason for youth to keep sagging their pants as a symbol of rebellion, in short, telling adults to kiss their ass!
--Marvin X
7/23/10

Pull Yo Pants Up fada Prez and Yoself
Essays on Obama Drama
Marvin X
Black Bird Press, 2010
48 pages
Donation $19.95

Order from the publisher:
Black Bird Press
1222 Dwight Way
Berkeley CA 94702
jmarvinx@yahoo.com

Also available at:
Academy of Da Corner
14th and Broadway
downtown Oakland

Plato Negro Proverbs

Plato Negro Proverbs

To be ignorant, yet want to learn is an act of intelligence.
**
The tide is turning because you are turning the tide.
**

Parable of the Mind



Parable of the Mind


Plato saw a man pass his classroom in a mechanized wheelchair. He noticed the man was not using his hands to control the wheelchair, instead he had what looked like earphones and a mouth piece attached to his head, though he was not speaking into the mouthpiece. Plato surmised the man was controlling the wheelchair with his brain. How unique, Plato thought, when all else fails, use your mind!

What would the world be like if people were in the condition of this man, and in reality they are in this condition, for there is without a doubt a paralysis of the body and mind these days, though obviously the mind can still work under the most adverse conditions. They say we hardly use 25% of our brain, if that much. So there is much untapped brain matter awaiting our beck and call.

Plato watched the man as he exited the store, again, only using his brain to command the wheelchair. Plato thought, the mind is an awesome thing, if we but use it! He recalled his mother's adage, "You the mind God gave you, Boy!"
--Marvin X
7/23/10

Parable of Walter Hawkins

Walter Hawkins-R.I.P.
by Jean Damu

Many of us on the so-called Left don’t pay much attention to Black gospel music
but we should. And if you live in the SF-Oakland Bay Area and never heard Walter
Hawkins, and the Love Center choir at their annual performances at the
Paramount theater well you missed one of Oakland great natural treasures. A
friend I used to go with Betty DeBerry dragged me to my first encounter with
the Love Center choir and I will forever be indebted to her.
The Love Center Choir was a musical experience that ranked right up with the
best I ever heard-this from someone who virtually took up residence at
Philadelphia’s Uptown Theater in he early 1960’s and witnessed almost every
popular black singer of the day.. The featured singer of the Love Center choir
was the great Tremaine Hawkins, a Hawkins by marriage and the daughter of Lois,
who for decades ran the very popular Lois the Pie Queen’s restaurant in N.
Oakland.

What surprises me about all the accolades to Bishop Walter Hawkins, even from
the Likes of Jesse Jackson and Bebe Winans is that no one has mentioned that
Walter Hawkins and the Love Center was the first Black church in the US to
establish an Aids ministry, way back in the 1980’s when virtually every Black
minister ran from the topic; at a time when many outside the black church were
recommending that black ministers step down from their pulpits and introduce
themselves to their choir directors. To the degree that the African American
church is addressing and has addressed the aids issue in the recent past we can
say that Walter Hawkins led the way.

Bishop Walter Hawkins passed away this past Sunday and Oakland is
memorializing him in a two day affair at the Paramount theater.

Below is a recording of Walter Hawkins and the Love Center choir with perhaps
their best known hymn, “Goin Up Yonder.” Tremaine Hawkins is singing the lead.

http://www.facebook.com/l/49d24KInJU3wzHW-hhyC9FafNPw;vodpod.com/watch/4017722-goin-up-yonder-walter-hawkins-r-i-p-the-love-center-choir

Reply by Marvin X


Jean Damu is on the money in his remarks on Walter Hawkins and the Hawkins
family. Tremaine is simply a black goddess who steals souls with her angelic
voice, steals them for the Lord of course.

If you read my memoir of Eldridge Cleaver, I think I mentioned dealing with
Walter when Cleaver toured the Born Again circuit.
Now Walter was not high on the list of singers with the Born Again Christians,
his music was too black, the whites can't take it. Their choice was brother
Andre Crouch, who was in attendance at Walter's funeral, along with everybody
who is anything in gospel music and black art as well. Halle Berrry, Danny
Glover, Richard Ghant, et al.

In a way, I'm sorry I didn't attend, but I'm still suffering from the trauma
of Christians during my tour of Christian America with Eldridge. I received a
daily briefing of Walter's funeral arrangements and the drama at his church.
How "the believers" felt it was disgusting to give out free tickets to the
common people, since they are "above" those common folks who stood in a line
from 7:30 at night til 10am the next day to get one of the 500 free tickets,
2,500 went to the church and were only given to members in good standing. The
whole ritual revealed the strict class nature of the black bourgeoisie. As I
headed home on the bus the day of the funeral, two elegantly dressed ladies
boarded and sat across from me. When I asked, then begged to see their copy of
the program, they absolutely refused until I showed them a promo of myself,
only then when they saw I was "somebody" did they allow me to look at the
program, although I was ready to depart by this time. I was absolutely shocked
at this "Christian" behavior.
--Marvin X

__._,_.___

Thursday, July 22, 2010


Parable of the Courthouse


They asked Plato Negro to please depart the Academy of Da Corner to visit the Alameda County Courthouse. The people were confident Plato would have plenty to write about. They assured him he would see people being sold down the river, even by themselves, as they were confessing to crimes they didn't commit, even murder, yet under duress they were confessing to crimes they didn't commit. So they urged him if he really wanted something to write about, he should visit the court room.

Plato didn't rush to oblige them since he had done so in Philadelphia when the people urged him to visit the Family Court. When he finally decided to do so, he got the shock of his life. The woman came from family court in tears, the man in rage with papers in his hand, and the lawyer elated that another one had bitten the dust. The lawyer told him he appreciated the literature Plato was passing out, but he couldn't use it in his business--the anti-partner violence poems was of no use to him, in fact, he wanted the partners to keep fighting so he could earn a living.

And the man with papers commanding him to restrain himself from one hundred feet of his woman was not a happy thought in the mind of the man. And the lady was in tears because she didn't get all she wanted, maybe in terms of child support. So none of the above wanted to hear what Plato Negro had to say in his writings.
--Marvin X
7/22/10

Poinciana at the Marciac Jazz Festival

Poinciana at the Marciac Jazz Festival

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Parable of the White Bullet


Parable of the White Bullet


The people saw the police had special bullets to fight with. The bullets only killed black people. When the white police had shootouts with blacks, the bullets in the guns of the white police immediately killed the blacks, but when the police had shootouts with whites the bullets would not kill the whites, only wound them, no matter if there were ten police shooting at a lone white man, the bullets did not kill the man, nor did the white man's bullets kill the white officers, only wound them slightly.

The people were amazed to hear of a recent shootout on an Oakland freeway with a white man and the Oakland police. Ten police fired into the truck of the white man without killing him and he fired back but only slightly wounding the officers. The freeway was closed for twenty hours while the police collected all evidence of the white bullets before anyone was able to find out their secret power.

The same night a black man who was wielding knives was shot dead immediately by the BART and Oakland police officers. Again, the white bullets worked on the black. Remember, though, after shooting into the truck of the white man for twenty minutes, he survived, so we know there is something special in those white bullets.
--Marvin X
7/22/10

Parable of Look South, My People



Parable of Look South, My People

Yes, forget about the indigenous people trying to come to Gringo land, North America. We need to at least look and study political/economic events below our border. We are not suggesting a migration south, only a mental refocus to aid our own physical and metaphysical condition. In our provincial and proscribed state of mind, we are need deep in the muck and mire of Babylon, and yet as oppressed people we surely share more with our oppressed brothers and sisters than we do with the majority whites in America and especially with the social order they shall do all in their power to maintain--as in white supremacy or racist domination of the US.

As a solution to the problems of North America Africans, we must jump out the box of our thinking that is warped and tainted by US psychosocial domination and our addiction to its wage slavery, materialism and world of make believe that the US is the good guys in the white hats.

We have more in harmony with the indigenous peoples of the Americas than with are racist hating and dominating gringo Americans who have a date with destiny we shall not share. How can the robbed have the same destiny as the robbers? No, we share the victim status of all the peoples throughout the Americas, and we must come up to their level of revolutionary consciousness that is breaking them away from the Monroe Doctrine, 1823, that the US shall dominate the political/economic affairs throughout the Americas.

We must examine closely the nations that are breaking the chains of US domination of their affairs, not only Cuba, Venezuela, but El Salvador, Brazil, Boliva, Ecuador, Paraguay,
Argentina and Nicaragua. Must must immediately jump out of the box of the deaf, dumb and blind US mentality and align our political/economic agenda with the other peoples throughout the Americas. Please understand, they are Americans too! Yes, even Mexicans are Americans, indeed, North Americans. So expand your mind and get a grip that new winds are blowing from the south and we must flow with the flow, let go of are fatal attraction to this USA beast that shall try to maintain white supremacy to the end. Let us unite with the people's south of the border.

They only want to come to the US because the US has bled them naked for centuries, keeping them in a state of poverty, ignorance and disease, similar to our condition as North American Africans.

We must study their economic policies, whether socialism, communism or a more communal and equitable version of socalled free market capitalism. The radical nations south of the border are trying to configure a new way to insure their people are not simply wage slaves and whores for the gringos who only want their natural resources at a "steal."
--Marvin X
7/21/10

Monday, July 19, 2010

Third Eye Video presents Marvin X and the Reader's Theatre



Third Eye Video presents

poet-playwright-essayist-activist

Marvin X
and
Academy of Da Corner Reader's Theatre

reading and signing his latest books

Pull Yo Pants Up fada Black Prez
and
The Wisdom of Plato Negro

Friday, August 6, 7pm
6040 Telegraph Ave., Oakland
510-830-7901
Donation $10.00











Accompanied by Rashidah Sabreen, guitar, vocals, Elliott Bey, keyboards, Raynetta Rayzetta,choreographer/dancer, Paradise, poet/reader, Mechelle LaChaux, singer/reader, Valarie Harvey, reader, Talibah, reader


The Wisdom of Plato Negro, Parables/fables is at once both gutsy and crude, vulgar and righteous, bodacious and common. Marvin X tares at your heart while piling crap on your head. He makes you want to kiss somebody, or kill him. One comes from this encounter with the surrealism that is both art and reality, imagery and observations. His parables tell stories meant to both inform and reform, while his fables are remarkable in their almost real, yet imaginary, paradoxes that confront the reader, and his musings makes one wonder if it is live or Memorex. Marvin X gives us his blood, sweat and tears –each page a little more of himself. Thanks my brother for the journey, the insanity, the righteousness, the vulgarity, and the taste of soul.

--Dr. Rodney D. Coates



Marvin X is Plato teaching on the streets of Oakland. --Ishmael Reed

He's the USA's Rumi! He’s got the humor of Pietri, the politics of Baraka, and the spiritual Muslim grounding that is totally new in English –- the ecstasy of Hafiz, the wisdom of Saadi. --Bob Holman, Bowery Poetry Club, New York City

Is Marvin X a parable or fable? We doubt a Marvin X exists. We double doubt there is a Plato Negro.
--Amiri Baraka


San Francisco Theater Festival, Sunday August 8th, 2010 at Yerba Buena Gardens. Free Admission!

Marvin X and associates Ayodele Nzingha, Lower Bottom Playaz, and Geoffrey Grier, SF Recovery Theatre, perform in the festival. See schedule below.

11:40 12:10 Screening Rm (Upstairs fm. Forum) Lower Bottom Playaz Flowers by Marvin X– A circa 1960 Black Arts dramatic short that interrogates the silence between a father and son.
12:20 12:50 Screening Rm (Upstairs fm. Forum) Lower Bottom Playaz Queen – A view of the world from the fractured mind of Graffiti Queen, the self proclaimed Dear Abby of the John.
1:00 1:30 Screening Rm (Upstairs fm. Forum) Lower Bottom Playaz Mama – A sharply drawn voyeuristic examination of HIV, family secrets and the threat of an imminent implosion in the Jefferson household.
1:40 2:10 Screening Rm (Upstairs fm. Forum) SF Recovery Theatre The Spot – Critically acclaimed story of young lovers trapped in urban society a’la West Side Story.
2:20 2:50 Screening Rm (Upstairs fm. Forum) SF Recovery Theatre Jet – A portrait of a nicotine addict and true story, explores the healthcare system from a consumer perspective.
3:00 3:30 Screening Rm (Upstairs fm. Forum) SF Recovery Theatre The Dutchman – SF Recovery Theatre players put a new twist on this OBIE award winning play by Amiri Baraka.
3:40 4:10 Screening Rm (Upstairs fm. Forum) SF Recovery Theatre A Soldiers Play – Introducing SF Recovery Theatre’s BayView Playaz in this classic murder mystery by Charles Fuller.
4:25-4:55 SOMA Room Metreon 2nd Floor The Wisdom of Plato Negro, Marvin X

San Francisco Theater Festival - Sunday July 26, 2009

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Parable of the Poet



Parable of the Poet

It is not about money, fame or fortune. Not about ego, greed and domination. It is not about the teacher but the students who are taught the higher things of life, above the things below. It is not about attacking the politician, the man of religion or education, for there is a duty that comes to the poet--beyond nursery rhymes and beats, pussy and dick jingles and a turn of phrase, a cute metaphor or simile.

It is beyond all this in the realm of the poet man who stands on the corner at the gate of the city, enduring all the pain of a people, the trauma, unresolved grief, the ignorance, abandonment of children lost to the street, the frustration of mothers and fathers bewildered with sons and daughters out of control, seeking their way in ways leading to nothingness and dread.

And so they come to the poet for rhymes and reasons. I must talk with you right now, they say, mother and father anxious for solutions for daughters and sons lost in traffic, trying to find their way in the madness of the city, in the darkness of the night.

The fog is in and they are bewildered by the mist of the fog. What is the meaning of manhood and womanhood? It is a search for sexual identity with no rules in the house. The children become prostitutes yet too ignorant to make money. Young mothers with children come home without money for Pampers for their child. Young brothers are consumed by drugs yet say they are pimping in the night.

Gay and lesbian youth turn tricks for a bed on the floor or couch. Rejected by parents, they are prey in the street. Who really loves them, who really cares? Are they men, women, what is their identity? Some confused, tricked and lost on the way to grandmother's house.

We never imagined a mother could hate a child, a father could abandon a family for no price. And yet such is the time and the hour of our need. Children can go nowhere, nor can fathers and mothers, for they are caught in the conundrum of a spirituality that bonds one together when one is oblivious to the bond, when one is in denial and delusion. And so it is a mad circus with clowns all around. The wise laugh at the circus come to town.
--Marvin X
7/15/10

Parable of the Oakland Pigs





Parable of Oakland Pigs

Firstly, I am highly upset that my friend and supporter, Attorney Walter Riley was beaten and jailed by the Oakland police during the police riot. How did the police have time to focus on Walter entering his law office while people were looting the Footlocker next door? One would think they would be concerned with the looters rather than an "old man" going into his office. It is possible they knew who he was and purposely attacked him since he is a well known radical attorney.

Walter told us today he was not released from jail until 2pm the next day, thus we know he suffered one of the worse rituals endured by persons arrested in Alameda County, the trip from Oakland to the Santa Rita Jail, a process than can take 24 to 48 hours, a ritual of repeated strip searches, sitting and sleeping on concrete benches. It is one of the most inhumane treatment human beings will endure during their lifetime. Yet our brothers and sisters endure this on a daily basis. Ones hunger is relieved with Bologna sandwiches throughout the process, with an orange thrown in. But mostly it is the numerous concrete holding cells wherein inmates must often sleep on the concrete floor full of inmates, some sleeping on the toilet or beside the toilet.

The young brothers can endure this process standing up, but concrete is hard for an old man such as Attorney Riley. I have endured this process many times throughout the years, mostly for traffic tickets.

The police attack on Attorney Riley was an admiral job on the part of the OPD, according to Mayor Ron Dellums, OPD Chief Bates and City Councilpersons. The naked truth is that the OPD is a vicious gang of brute beasts in blue uniforms who oppress the citizens under the color of law.

This police gang has terrorized the people of the hood, the flatlands, for years, committing acts of homicide, shaking down drug dealers, planting false evidence and making false reports for years.
They are just another gang who operates under the color of law. They are clearly implicated in the assassination of Oakland Post Editor Chauncey Bailey, another friend and colleague.

How long can we allow these beasts to operate under the color of law? They provide no public safety. Year after year we pass Columbus Church on San Pablo Avenue with crosses in the yard on the Convent house. At the beginning of the year, the crosses are few, but surely as the year progresses the crosses grow into a garden of white symbols of death, like a garden of flowers, yet each cross is identified with the name of a young black man slain in the streets of Oakland. Few of the murders are solved. Only a few families get the attention of the Oscar Grant family, most suffer in silence and bitterness because nothing is solved, there is no murderer apprehended, no trial, no one found guilty, no healing, no closure, only trauma and unresolved grief. The families wonder why their loved ones could not get the attention of Oscar Grant?

Yet public safety consumes the City budget. Not youth programs, not jobs, not education, not housing, but public safety for those who wreak havoc on the community in the name of peace officers and correctional officers who give no peace and provide no correction, but are themselves in urgent need of peace and correction.

The true solution is not to employ more outside agitators in the guise of police, who deliver guns and drugs in the hood to expand the destabilization, but to employ the tactic used so successfully in Iraq and Afghanistan: pay the boys and girls in the hood to secure the public safety of their communities. The police are nothing but an alien occupying army and will never secure the peace because they are the peace breakers. How can you enforce peace in the hood if you are not from the hood? You can't sell dope in the hood if you ain't from the hood! You can't do nothing in the hood if you ain't from the hood. Fuck that bullshit community policing if the police ain't from the hood! The very notion is total and absolute bullshit.

Let the motherfucker who knocks on my door not only look like me but he better have a heart like me. Don't send ET to my door because I am not going to open it, warrant or no warrant.

--Marvin X
7/13/10

Monday, July 12, 2010

Parable of Walter Riley


Parable of Walter Riley


Plato Negro's friend and supporter, Attorney Walker Riley, was beaten and arrested by OPD pigs as he attempted to enter his office on Broadway as rioters and looters ransacked the Footlocker next door to his office.

The legendary civil rights attorney and humanitarian works closely with actor Danny Glover on radical social projects. Walter, wife and daughter, were in Haiti on the day of the earthquake. The Bay Area was concerned for their lives until we learned they were safe and doing humanitarian work which they've been doing in Haiti for many years.

Speaking on KPFA radio, along with his son Manual (rapper Boots Riley is another son), Walter said as he put his electronic key in his office door, the police grabbed and beat him several times with their night sticks. His son tried to intervene but the police were in such force he did not try to fight back but only help his father. Walter was taken to jail along with other protesters. Of course he will file charges against the OPD for this unjust and violent treatment of himself and others.

Walter said Mayor Ron Dellums, OPD Chief Bates and other City Council persons who asserted the police did an admiral job were full of poppycock. They were violent under the color of law, as per usual.

Riley also objected to the narrative that Oakland was beset by outside agitators. If anything, he said the OPD is a gang of outside agitators since most of them do not live in Oakland. He issued a statement on outside agitators:

The murder of Oscar Grant is a universal issue of justice and civil rights.

I do not like this divisive campaign to divide our community and protesters by calling people outsiders. Oakland is not an isolated town in the desert. This is a great metropolitan area with people from all over; with a world class university; we expect people from all over the map to participate in Oakland. Calling people outsiders in this instance is a political attack on the movement. The subtext is that the outsiders are white and not connected to Oakland. From the days of the civil rights movement to now the outsider labeling failed to address the underlying problems for which people came together.
For those whose frustration with progress leads them to violent protest, we must engage in respectful political struggle. I understand the frustration; I do not support destruction and looting as political protest. I adamantly object to calling our youth and political activists outsiders. I call upon everyone to push back against this tendency.
Walter Riley
Attorney at Law
1440 Broadway
Oakland

Saturday, July 10, 2010

James Brown - Hits medley / There Was A Time (HW Palace 1969)

Parable of Oakland's Day of Absence





Parable of Oakland's Day of Absence

Brother Gregory Fields told Plato Negro about Oakland's Day of Absence, the day when the verdict in the Oscar Grant murder trial was to be announced. Gregory said he was in a meeting with Mayor Ron Dellums when the Mayor received a telephone call about 3pm, informing him the verdict had been reached and would be announced at 4:30pm. The Mayor excused himself from the meeting. Gregory departed to 14th and Broadway. He said it was about 3:05 when he arrived.

What he observed reminded him of the movie Independence Day. Maybe the spirit of Oscar Grant was about to ascend to new heights as the people gathered to protest the expected Miller Lite verdict. The rally was scheduled for 6pm, meanwhile the mostly white workers and a few pet ti bourgeoisie black co-workers were scrambling out of their offices to avoid the coming black horde.

Gregory said the entire downtown area was in evacuation mode. People were fleeing for their lives before the black plague consumed them. City Hall was evacuated, the Ron Dellums Federal Building, the Elihu Harris State Building, Clorox, Zerox and the rest.

Persons terrified of the masses coming to protest the cold blooded killing of 22 year old Oscar Grant fled down into the BART train station, yes, to board the very train upon which Oscar was murdered on New Year's Day, 2009. Oscar could not flee for his life, but lay on his stomach, then had a bullet pumped in his back by BART police officer Johannes Mehserle.

Baldwin told us, "The murder of my child will not make your child safe." So the workers fled in fear and terror, strangely, the same fear and terror their police subject black people to every day of their lives, walking while black, driving while black, loving while black, singing while black, sleeping while black, eating while black.

No, the whites and "the other white people", those pet ti bourgeoisie blacks who are one paycheck away from the street people, one house payment away, did not want to get caught in the chaos that might upset their world of make believe, their lifestyle of conspicuous consumption, pseudo peace and tranquility, a state of utter denial and delusion.

They fled to BART, the bus, their cars. Gregory said every street in the downtown area was jam packed with cars heading out of town. On Broadway, a line of cars headed to the freeway, joining the traffic jam from San Francisco where workers were also told to leave work early. They too feared Black Power!

Before the verdict was announced, BART trains were more crowded than a New York subway on a hot summer day. Vehicle traffic to the Alameda tunnel was bumper to bumper from 20th and Webster to the entrance at 7th and Webster.

Fear of Black Power was real. Just the thought of black people rioting was causing the evacuation of downtown Oakland and San Francisco as well. Just the thought. See how much power we have without throwing a brick, shooting a gun, burning a building and looting. Just the thought!We have power, just use it and we will be free overnight.

The devils will be terrified of God's people when they stand without fear, then suddenly we see they are the fearful ones, in spite of all their police, army, navy, CIA, FBI, they shall run like roaches in the light--and we are the light if we only stop walking in darkness.

Don't the black hordes know the white man's justice is for the white man? The BART police who killed Oscar Grant was one of our own. He must be protected. Give him two years and let him go. Hell, we gave that nigger football player Michael Vick two years for killing his dogs. Two years is enough for killing a nigger. It was an accident anyway. He confused his taser with his gun. He wrote a letter from jail apologizing. What do you niggers want? Give us a break! We're trying to get home safely. All we want is peace and tranquility. Why do you think the Supreme Court approved our right to own guns? It's to protect us from you niggers.

Let us hurry. We don't want to get trapped downtown and not get home to our precious wives, husbands and children. Let us go, hurry. Hail a taxi. Hey, taxi, taxi, taxi!

It was 4pm when the verdict was announced. Guilty of involuntary manslaughter.

Hurry, get on the freeway, BART, bus, taxi, car, bike, shoes, run for your life. The black horde is coming.

By 4:45 they were gone. Downtown was a ghost, except for the beasts in blue uniforms gathering on the back streets, and the horde coming one by one, two by two, not frantic like the whites and the other white people, but angry, hurt, full of pain and trauma, trauma from long ago, way back in time of strange fruit lynchings, of the police in Richmond killing Denzil Dowell, springing the Black Panthers into motion. One of the horde was so sick after hearing the verdict he wanted to throw up, throw up the pain, shame, disbelief and disgust.
--Marvin X
7/10/10