Celebrating Malcolm X

In honor of the 84th birthday of Malcolm X, May 19, Sylvie Bayeaux and The Malcolm X Theater Project present Michael Lange in a one-man performance re-enacting Malcolm’s “The Ballot or the Bullet” speech.
Michael Lange has made hundreds of appearances nationwide performing speeches of Malcolm X over the last two decades. Lange, an Oakland native, teaches at San Jose State.  He is an accomplished actor, playwright, director, and musician. He is also the son of author and former television personality, Jerri Lange, and brother of actor Ted Lange.
An Oakland performance will take place on Sunday, May 24, 2 p.m., at the Oakland Public Conservatory of Music, 1616 Franklin St.  The cost is $15 or $10 for students and seniors at the door.  Advance tickets are available for $10 at brownpapertickets.com.
A San Francisco performance will take place on Saturday, May 30, 2 p.m., at the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) at 685 Mission St.  The cost is included in the $10 general or $5 student and senior admission to the museum.
For information contact (510) 485-6338.

Richmond Cuts Back on Funding For Festivals

By Katherine Tam
West County Times

The economic slump has Richmond city leaders pulling back on how much they donate to local festivals.
The city will provide $45,000 each to the organizers of the Cinco de Mayo and Juneteenth festivals this fiscal year. Officials promised to give the same — not more, not less — to the Homefront Festival next fiscal year.
That is less than what officials gave the festivals last year, when Cinco de Mayo and Juneteenth received $65,000 each. The Homefront Festival received nearly twice as much — $125,000 — as part of a plan to create a “signature event.” Organizers of the three festivals hoped the city would duplicate those amounts this year.
However, the recession has officials thinking twice. The city organizes several events, including the July 3 fireworks and Senior Ball, and cannot afford to fund other events at the same level it used to, Councilwoman Maria Viramontes said.
“I think that’s too much in light of the circumstances we’re in,” she said. “We also have issues we have to be disciplined about here.”
Richmond is holding off on filling as many as 77 vacant positions this year because of declining property tax revenue. It fared better than other cities that have resorted to midyear layoffs or cuts to public services. However, officials are bracing for additional revenue losses next year.
A City Council majority voted Tuesday to give $45,000 to each festival. Councilmen Nat Bates, Tom Butt and Jeff Ritterman abstained.
The National Brotherhood Alliance, which organizes Juneteenth, spent $80,000 last year. The 23rd Street Merchants Association, which hosts Cinco de Mayo along with other civic groups, typically spends about $78,000. The Chamber of Commerce spent $250,000 putting on the Homefront Festival, which celebrates the workers, including women and African Americans, who took on wartime jobs in the shipyards during World War II.
“It costs a lot of money to put on a festival, especially when you’re directed to not charge and have free events for the public to come,” said Judy Morgan, chamber president.
Rafael Madrigal, head of the 23rd Street Merchants Association, agreed. “It’s an investment. Cinco de Mayo brings people to Richmond, so we get better consumerism. If the businesses don’t do well, the (city’s) tax base is affected.”

Performing Arts Center Moves Ahead with $15 Million Renovation

By Katherine Tam
West County Times

To walk into the Winters Building in Richmond’s Iron Triangle neighborhood is to be immersed in a confluence of sound.
On a Thursday evening, a group of teens rehearses a modern dance piece in the main theater. Upstairs, a student practices piano, and a teacher counts off steps as she leads a class in Mexican dance. Members of Iron Triangle Theater cluster around a television, watching a video of their last performance and looking for where they can improve.
San Pablo resident Monserrat Armendaris-Ibarria lists off more than a dozen classes she has taken here, a diverse roster that stretches from urban ballet to Brazilian dance.
“Maybe because I’ve been here so long, I don’t know life without it,” she said.
The East Bay Center for the Performing Arts at Macdonald Avenue and 11th Street is on a mission to reach twice as many students and is embarking on a $15 million retrofit of the historic Winters Building it calls home.
The renovation would create two new 200-seat theaters — one on the ground floor that can double as community banquet space, the other on the second floor — by knocking down walls and reconfiguring the interior. The theaters will be equipped with removable railings and seating, and be used for rehearsals when performances aren’t scheduled. The reconstruction will add 5,000 more square feet of instructional space.
In addition, the building will be brought up to fire safety codes and structurally reinforced with a steel-and-concrete frame behind its walls. The historic facade, with its notable decorative arches that date to 1925, would be preserved and restored. Practice rooms and restrooms would get face-lifts.
Center organizers have been working on collecting about 80 percent of the funds through grants and tax credits since 2004. The city of Richmond has pledged $4.5 million from city coffers. Center organizers are pushing ahead, even amid the recession, and will seek public donations around late August.
They hope to break ground in July and finish in late summer or early fall of 2010, said artistic director Jordan Simmons.
The East Bay Center for the Performing Arts, founded in 1969, taught performing arts and held events at Grace Lutheran Church at 24th Street and Barrett Avenue before relocating to the Winters Building in the late 1970s.
Today, about 2,000 students walk through the doors every year. Most live in Richmond and San Pablo, with a sprinkling from El Cerrito, Berkeley and elsewhere in the East Bay.
What they lack in experience when they first enroll, they make up for in curiosity.
Richmond resident Marshall Hooper, 15, took music classes for three months at school but found he wanted more guidance. He found more structure at the center that helped fine-tune his skills — and in a more social environment than practicing at home alone, he said.
Hooper plays the trumpet, steel drums and is a member of the Iron Triangle Theater, and spends about 12 hours a week at the center. His course schedule reflects the center’s eclectic offerings, which range from acting techniques and guitar to West African drumming and hip-hop dance.
Expanding theater and instructional space at the Winters Building will allow the center to reach more students and hold a larger audience during performances, Simmons said. The existing sole theater seats about 100 and lacks a raised stage, meaning students perform on a floor that’s level with the audience.

Richmond, San Pablo Celebrate Cinco de Mayo

By Chris Treadway
West County Times

The local celebration of the Mexican Army’s 1862 defeat of the French at the Battle of Puebla will be marked by two days of festivities spanning two cities.
Whether you come for some or all of this year’s Cinco de Mayo offerings, there will be plenty to choose from Saturday and Sunday in San Pablo and Richmond.
The weekend kicks off with a parade Saturday at 10 a.m. at 24th Street and Barrett Avenue in Richmond and proceeds along 23rd Street and then to the Civic Center in San Pablo.
The procession will have more than 50 entries and about 1,200 participants, including dancers, musicians, a team of dancing horses, schoolchildren, civic and community representatives and classic cars.
Isidora (Chela) Martinez-McAfee, an active member of the community who retired from teaching after 30 years in the ESL department at Richmond High School, will be the grand marshal of the parade.
The festivities continue Saturday on the grounds of St. Paul’s Catholic Church at 1845 Church Lane in San Pablo, which will have live music and dance, food, games and activities, vendor booths, prizes and more from 10 a.m. until 5 p.m. at its fifth annual Cinco De Mayo festival.
Admission is free at the alcohol- and drug-free event sponsored by St. Paul’s Parish, the San Pablo Soccer Association and the San Pablo Police Department.
All proceeds will go toward retrofitting St. Paul’s Church.
On Sunday, the focus will be back on 23rd Street in Richmond for the third annual Cinco de Mayo Festival, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.
The daylong fiesta will have food and entertainment along a half-mile stretch of 23rd Street, which will be closed to traffic between Clinton and Rheem avenues from 6 p.m. Friday through about 7 p.m. Sunday to accommodate the bleachers, stages and other amenities at the festival.
The event, organized by the 23rd Street Merchants Association and sponsored by the city, will have stages at each end of the street and one in the middle, offering continuous entertainment. In between, there will be lots of activities for children and families, along with food, vendor and community booths and events such as a bicycle rodeo.
Organizers estimate the festival attracted more than 20,000 people last year, and they hope to draw at least 30,000 this time.
“We’re more family-oriented. There’s no alcohol,” said Rafael Madrigal, head of the 23rd Street Merchants Association.

Black Police Group Hired to Review BART Police

The BART Board of Directors has unanimously selected a national organization of Black police officers to conduct a comprehensive top-to-bottom review of the BART Police Department in the wake of the Jan. 1 killing of Oscar Grant III on the Fruitvale BART Station platform.
“The National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives (NOBLE) will look into all aspects of the BART Police Department,” BART Boardmember Carole Ward Allen said.
Ward Allen chairs the Board’s newly created BART Police Department Review Committee whose aim is to provide greater focus on the exercise of BART Police responsibilities.
The review will take approximately four months and cost $127,688.
NOBLE was hired to provide an independent assessment of the fundamental aspects of BART police, including recruitment, hiring and promotion training and equipment in the  use of force, conduct of investigations, diversity, cultural awareness and sensitivity and avoidance of racial profiling; and  policies and procedures to determine if they are comprehensive and reflect best practices.
“The goal of the study will be to provide BART with evaluation results and recommendations that will help us identify any changes we need to make to ensure the BART Police Department is structured and administered effectively and that the department follows the industry’s best practices as appropriate in the environment in which BART operates,” Joel Keller, Vice Chair of the BART Police Department Review Committee said.
As part of this process, NOBLE proposes community engagement approach that is designed to bring law enforcement and concerned citizens together to identify community concerns and apply principles of community policing to create a shared vision and joint strategy to address concerns.
“What we really liked about NOBLE’s proposal is that the organization truly demonstrated it understands the value of engaging the community in the process while at the same time it showed it has the expertise to conduct a comprehensive top to bottom review of our police force,” BART Boardmember Lynette Sweet said.
Founded in September 1976,  NOBLE has a long history helping numerous police departments across the country.

INDICTED

Grand Jury Charges Yusuf Bey IV and Antoine Mackey in Chauncey Bailey’s Murder

By Thomas Peele,
Bob Butler and Mary
Fricker, The Chauncey
Bailey Project

A grand jury on Wednesday indicted Yusuf Bey IV, the scion of the defunct Your Black Muslim Bakery, on three counts of murder for ordering the killings of journalist Chauncey Bailey and two other men in 2007, an Alameda County deputy district attorney announced.
The indictment of Bey IV, 23, includes charges with special circumstances — allowing prosecutors to seek the death penalty against him. He allegedly told two of his followers that in exchange for killing Bailey, he would teach them how to file fraudulent loan applications that could reap hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Another man, Antoine Mackey, 23, was indicted on three counts of murder with special circumstances, including Bailey’s killing.
The grand jury also indicted Devaughndre Broussard, 21, in the killings Bailey and another man, Odell Roberson. His charges also carry special circumstances.
But Broussard, until Wednesday the only person charged in Bailey’s death, cut a deal with prosecutors in which he is expected to plead guilty to two counts of voluntary manslaughter in exchange for key testimony against Bey IV and Mackey.
In a statement to prosecutors last month, Broussard said Bey IV ordered him and Mackey to follow Bailey, learn his routine and then “take him out” before he could publish an article in the Oakland Post about the bakery’s troubled finances. Broussard said Bey IV promised the two help in securing loans worth hundreds of thousands of dollars through fraudulent applications.
Wednesday’s indictments came just hours after a judge for the second time ordered Bey IV to stand trial in an unrelated kidnapping and torture case from 2007 for which he faces a life sentence if convicted. The attorney representing him in that case, Anne Beles, declined to comment on the indictment.
Broussard will receive a sentence of about 25 years in exchange for his admissions and testimony, his attorney, LaRue Grim, has said. Grim said his client is prepared to plead guilty next week.
Bailey’s sister, Lorelei Waqia, said she grudgingly approves of the plea agreement with Broussard because it strengthens the chances of convicting Bey IV and Mackey in her brother’s slaying.
Bey IV “and Mackey are more dangerous than Broussard. In the perfect world, he (Broussard) would get life but that’s how a plea bargain is: You have to give a little to get a lot. It’s worth it to get the other guys,” Waqia said.
Still, Waqia said, the charges will bring little solace.
“Anything that happened from the day he passed until now is not going to bring him back. So, for me, there’ll never be closure because I’ve lost a brother; my father has lost his namesake; his son, my nephew, has lost a father who was a mentor to him,” she said.
Bey IV and Mackey are scheduled for arrangement next week. Bey IV is in Alameda County’s Santa Rita Jail on unrelated charges, but Mackey is in San Quentin State Prison on a burglary sentence.
The indictments of Bey IV and Mackey come after a lengthy re-investigation of Bailey’s killing by the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office.
The Oakland police homicide investigator first assigned to the Bailey case, Sgt. Derwin Longmire, is suspended and the department is moving to fire him after he was found to have compromised the investigation and had undocumented contact with Bey IV against orders.

Riding a Wave of Support and Good Will

By Post Staff

President Barack Obama continues to ride a wave of support and good will as he faces daunting challenges to revive a shattered global economy, restore the country’s foreign relations and initiate domestic reforms on issues as wide-ranging as police surveillance, universal health insurance and funding for public schools.
At the same time Michelle Obama has achieved superstar star status as a role model for fashion, food and family.
From day one, President Obama has been on the move. In his first week in office, he announced new restrictions on lobbying, met with Iraq war commanders, called foreign leaders to discuss Middle East peace and signed an order to close Guantanamo Bay Prison.
On the economic front, he is working to revive the auto industry, save the banks, stem home foreclosures and has pushed through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to fund his economic stimulus plan.
His foreign relations initiatives include a timeline to withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq and attending the G-20 Summit in London and the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago.  He has reduced restrictions on travel to Cuba and has met already with the leaders of Russia, France, Germany, China, Venezuela and Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain.
Domestically, Obama lifted the ban on stem cell research and is putting together his plan to establish universal health coverage in 2009.  He is also advocating green energy and is backing legislation to protect credit card users.

E.P.A. Clears Way for Greenhouse Gas Rules

By John M. Broder

The Environmental Protection Agency has formally declared carbon dioxide and five other heat-trapping gases to be pollutants that endanger public health and welfare, setting in motion a process that will lead to the regulation of the gases for the first time in the United States.
The E.P.A. said the science supporting the proposed endangerment finding was “compelling and overwhelming.” The ruling initiates a 60-day comment period before any proposals for regulations governing emissions of heat-trapping gases are published.
Although the finding had been expected, supporters and critics said its issuance was a significant moment in the debate on global warming. Many Republicans in Congress and industry spokesmen warned that regulation of carbon dioxide emissions would raise energy costs and kill jobs.
Democrats and environmental advocates said the decision was long overdue and would bring long-term social and economic benefits.

Oakland’s Pacific Institute Honored By EPA

In recognition of commitment to protect the environment and California’s vital freshwater resources, Pacific Institute researchers Heather Cooley, Juliet Christian-Smith, and Peter Gleick were presented with a 2009 Region 9 Environmental Award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The Pacific Institute in Oakland was specifically recognized for work that has altered how California approaches its water crisis, offering solutions to help keep the state’s vital agricultural sector thriving while still reducing groundwater overdraft and protecting the fragile Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta ecosystem.
Forty groups and individuals throughout California, Arizona, Nevada, Hawaii, Pacific Islands, and tribal lands were selected for their commitment and significant contributions to the environment.
In September 2008, Institute researchers Heather Cooley, Juliet Christian-Smith, and Peter Gleick released a report quantifying the potential for water-use efficiency in California’s agricultural sector through the implementation of available, cost-effective water efficiency measures that many farmers are already successfully using.
The Pacific Institute report, “More with Less: Agricultural Water Conservation and Efficiency in California - A Special Focus on the Delta,” has generated discussion around non-infrastructure-oriented solutions that have long been absent from management conversations during a pivotal time in California, when drought persists and solutions to the San Joaquin Delta crisis remain complicated.
The trio continues to work with on-the-ground stakeholders to investigate and help implement practical solutions to pressing water issues, meeting with irrigation districts, farmers, and community members from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Valley to the Imperial Valley. From stimulating management discussion, to meeting with growers, to creating actual planning and policy recommendations, Cooley, Christian-Smith, and Gleick has been a catalytic force as California grapples with its freshwater management problems.
“California’s Secretary of Agriculture A.G. Kawamura and other leaders throughout the state have stated that doing nothing is not an option. We agree,” said honoree Dr. Juliet Christian-Smith. “We will continue our work helping keep California’s vital agricultural sector thriving, recognizing the need to reduce groundwater overdraft, prepare for the increasing threats of climate change, and respond to the state’s water crisis.”

City Kills Cinco de Mayo; Chinatown Festival and Black Cowboy Parade, Next?

By Esteban Dessalines

By Esteban Dessalines The city of Oakland will be poorer this year because of the absence of the festivals and parades that demonstrate the cultural diversity of our city. There are differing opinions as to who is at fault for this tragedy.  One thing that is not in dispute, though, is that we all suffer because of the loss.  Elected officials, community leaders, and “just plain folks” from around the neighborhoods all have something to say about the situation. The view from here is that we need to stop talking about the problem and start doing something about it.  As a former leader of the Oakland Black community once said:  “If you are not a part of the solution…then you are a part of the problem.” Without the Cinco de Mayo, Día de Los Muertos, the Black Cowboy parade and the Chinatown Street Festival, we lose the opportunity to teach our children the value of diversity in culture in a way that books and lectures never could. We also lose the much-needed commerce of visiting tourists.  These festivals and parades are a big draw for visiting tourists. A number of issues seem clear at this point. Organizers of these parades and festivals must become more creative in their approach to financing.  The city of Oakland needs to prioritize the holding of the festivals and parades.  In addition, the Oakland Police Department   should review and modify its staffing patterns so that it might better “protect and serve” the entire population of Oakland. As news of the cancellation spreads, city leaders are beginning to weigh in. “Special event permits must be taken out of the hands of the Oakland Police Department.  There is too much temptation to ‘feather the nest’ with overtime.  We can’t let the issue of police overtime deter our beautiful city from celebrating its diversity,” said local businessman and community leader Geoffrey Pete. Council member Densely Brooks also focused on reforming the event permit process. “I think it’s important that these festivals and cultural events continue,” she said. ‘I believe that having sole discretion over the question of permits and requirements for these things in one department needs to be looked at.” A number of issues seem clear at this point. Organizers of these parades and festivals must become more creative in their approach to financing.  The city of Oakland to prioritize the holding of the festivals and parades.  In addition, the Oakland Police Department should review and modify its staffing patterns so that it might better “protect and serve” the entire population of Oakland. Councilmember Nancy Nadel had a different approach to funding the festivals. “I agree that the cancellation of these events is a terrible thing.  That is why I am supporting an increase in the hotel tax, which will appear on the special election ballot in July.  Part of the funds generated by that tax increase would be used to support these parades and festivals,” Nadel said. “As for the feeling that some people may have that the right to freedom of assembly is only guaranteed to those who can afford to pay the Oakland Police Department,” she said, “the right to assemble is one thing (but) the right to close off streets and require assistance to do that is another thing.” Further dialogue about this issue will lead to greater understanding and finding some viable solutions. Esteban Dessalines is a freelance writer and photographer, who is active in community affairs with the Lower Bottom Neighborhood Association in West Oakland.  He is founder and Managing Director of Anbessa Foundation (www.anbessafoundation.org).  He can be reached by email at esteban.dessalines@gmail.com or at UrbanOracle.blogspot.com.

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