Liberate the Marvin X 9/11 Tapes

It is a disappointment to me that there has not been more done by our community to facilitate the relinquishing of Marvin X's 9/11 Tapes, which are now in the possession of disgraced writer J.R. Valrey.

Even Nixon's White House tapes were finally released, even though they were tampered with (the infamous missing 18 minutes) and heavily dedacted, and even though there was incredible resistance by Nixon to keep the tapes from the people. But with activism and initiative on the part of people, who knew the significance of the tapes, the tapes were finally released.

Is J.R. Valrey Nixon? Maybe Nixonesque but far from having any real power to resist the power of the people if it ever came to us getting whatever we wanted. Does that mean that the people are lagging when it comes to the liberation of the Marvin X 9/11 Tapes?

Perhaps. Maybe it has not been said clearly enough that it is just as important for us as a people to take a look at the events of 9/11 from the vantage point of Marvin X ,as it would be to look at Watergate, Nixon, etc through the eyes of Woodward and Bernstein.

So I think the people should say loudly and clearly, "Come on J. R. Valrey! Give the people what they want! Let go of the Marvin X 9/11 Tapes!".

I want to see them, don't you?
--Zahieb Mwongozi

Re: JR, Agent Provocateur
A conversation between Zahieb Wongozi, Tarika Lewis and Marvin X

Marvin X:

The duty of the writer, including journalists, is to uncover and reveal truth. The more revolutionary one is, the more truth we would expect, but when a writer/journalist covers the truth, hides murder suspects, he has crossed the line of journalism into fantasy land or the world of make believe reporting and clearly has another agenda other than truth, shall we call it spreading lies. Then we have to ask for whom? And why is the socalled friend of a fellow journalist talking with the murder suspects outside the victim's house hours before the murder yet does not call his friend to warn him that he is about to be hit? Is there no loyalty among fellow journalists, no loyalty among thieves?


And yes the white man can occasionally tell the truth. When Tarika Lewis testified in the pages of the Eastbay Express, did it tell her truth about Dr. Bey? Then why is it all of a sudden incapable of telling the truth about another community scoundrel, rat, snake who just coincidentally aligns himself with Dr. Devil's son? I call him Baby Devil and the Minister of Misinformation. Could there be a relationship between Bey IV, Officer Longmire and JR? If so, what is it, certainly it is beyond journalism! If there are two rats in the house, shouldn't we suspect there might be a third rat?

I have been waiting for a copy of the material JR and I produced during 9/11 in New York, Newark and Philly. He has thus far refused to give me a copy of our jointly produced work.
Again, I can only think he is trying to provoke me into assaulting or killing him. But my advisers told me not to kill a dead fly that is already dead. Before the Eastbay Express, the Chauncey Bailey Project asked why has not the OPD interrogated JR concerning his phone conversations with Bey IV on the morning of Chauncey's assassination. Maybe the police don't need to talk with the police!
Now that Bey IV is being indicted, Officer Longmire to be fired and possibly indicted, is JR next? Yes, just as Tarika Lewis had a personal ax to grind with Dr. Devil, I have a personal ax with Baby Devil or the Minister of Misinformation. Should I have told Tarika to shut up all the years she cried to the community about Dr. Devil? She wanted justice and I want justice. Is your justice more important than mine? Would you be silent when the thief has stolen from you, would you listen to someone who told you to shut up, don't discuss this online because the white man is listening? Tell me where ain't the white man listening. When you go take a shit he is listening so don't tell me don't discuss this online. I've tried to have the matter mediated in the community with my radical brothers and sisters and they have done nothing as they do with most matters of vital concern other than play reactionary to any terror the white man inflicts on the community, never are they pro-active with solutions to community problems, yet claim to be revolutionary.
--Marvin X



From Zahieb Mwongozi:

Salaam,
I'm sending this out to you with a couple of links that you should check out. Also, I promised to include the link to the J.R. Valrey the article. The original story on J.R. Valrey was in the Eastbay Express. The link for that is http://www.eastbaye xpress.com/ news/jr_valrey_ is_an_agent_ provocateur/ Content?oid= 958839
I wrote an article in response to the Express article which I posted on blackantiwar@ yahoogroups. com , and the discussion that followed between myself and Tarika Lewis, plus Marvin X's email to me is what follows.But first, before I forget, I want to invite you to join the folowing groups:
www.livinginblack. com/zmwongozi
blackantiwar@ yahoogroups. com
Join these groups.Then you can check out my blogs and some of my music by going to:
www.myspace. com/wonkagnome
www.myspace. com/poetbench
www.myspace. com/craig_ erving

This is a recent discourse between myself and Tarika Lewis concerning Marvin X's statements about J.R. Valrey. The discussion began after I posted an article I wrote titled "Truth in Journalism: Call a Spade a Spade" . There was a discussion afterwards.
Truth in Journalism: Call a Spade a Spade
Just what is an "Agent Provocateur" ? Wikapedia defines the term thusly: "Traditionally, an agent provocateur is a person employed by the police or other entity to act undercover to entice or provoke another person to commit an illegal act. More generally, the term may refer to a person or group that seeks to discredit or harm another either directly, or by provoking, enticing, or tricking that person into committing a wrong or rash action. The website goes on to say "An agent provocateur may be a police officer or a secret (or maybe even unwitting) agent of police who encourages suspects to carry out a crime under conditions where evidence can be obtained; or who suggests the commission of a crime to another, in hopes they will go along with the suggestion and be convicted of the crime."
Who could refute, except someone who does not, or has not observed the work as a "journalist" over the years of J.R. Valrey, or except someone in serious clinical/classic denial, that Valrey is anything other than an agent provocatuer? With mankind's history replete with an assortment of Judases and Benedict Arnolds, it should be very obvious to even the most common of thinkers who an agent provocatuer is when one shows themself. Though many of the most notable of these pitiful creatures throughout history have been unwitting or genuinely unwilling to do the thing that they do, they almost always are very maleable by personal or environmental circumstances which has made them predisposed to do the work that they do.
They seem to have been compromised in some way that makes them especially ready for the task. For example there is a book titled "The Police" which astutely suggests that those persons that make good police officers are persons who originally have low to moderate self esteem, are of mediocre intelligence, and have some propensity toward being dominated, so that they fit well into hierarchical structures that function on blind obedience.
Their handlers understand that, and once they are given a little taste of whatever it is that is used to control them, whether it is fear, greed, lust, or a stroke of the ego (such as being awarded for outstanding journalism as a teen), they need more and more of it until they reach the point where they would do almost anything, suffer the most excrutiatingly painful villifications to get the the attention they crave. This approval seeking behavior thrusts them into the netherworld of mixed allegiances. They also become immediately expendable to those by whom they are sent to do their nastiness.
This makes it a very warped situation for the agent in question. Their handlers have shamefully compromised them and until their usefulness is exhausted they must go back and forth between where they are from and where they long to be but will forever be unaccepted. It is in this twilight zone that they do their works. Sadly they are accepted, often as heroes and leaders by the people from the place of their origin. Look at how many people are willing to overlook the obvious about Valrey? The twist is that what brings people like this to the precipice of Judas-cism in the first place is their desire to get away from where they're from, in hopes of becoming unified with their master. Do you think Valrey wants to write for the fucking SF New Bayview? Why does he rant about the mainstream media, his alma mater, so much if it is not a reaction formation? What child curses his mother but a child scorned?
The agent Provocatuer? Alas, he is used up like a cheap whore and dispensed with once his village has been pillaged and burned. Equally sad is the way in which the AP's champions are usually from amongst those who the AP in fact essentially hates: Those who are most like themselves, or those whom they would like to be (Marvin X? Chauncey Bailey?) and these are those upon whom they seek to exact their self hatred upon first and foremost- the community they are from.
As to whether or not J.R. Valrey is a duck or a goose is not the point. Talking on the phone to Chauncey Bailey's assassins mere hours before the killing took place is bird brained shit anyway you look at it. Once bitten twice shy. I have news for anyone from the community who feels as though they could still trust Valrey to speak as the voice of the community: You need to read between the lines. History repeats itself as farce. You are a goddamn fool and it is the Judases and Valreys who will lead your asses over the abyss.
Craig 17x


From Tarika Lewis

So Craig 17X do you know JR personally? Have you spoken to him, e-mailed him and discussed your issues with him? He is easily accessible. Are you a witness to any crime he committed? Did anyone see JR set any fires or break any windows after the Fruitvale protest? Did you hear him urge the Bakery boys to murder Chauncey Bailey? Do you know the person who wrote the article in the Express newspaper? Has JR gotten anyone in the community arrested? Has he influenced African children to sell drugs or commit illegal acts? Has he deserted his family? Does he mistreat his significant other or cheat on her?
Journalist talk to everyone...that is their job...So what if Bob Butler talked to Charles Manson just before he committed his crime does that make him his co-conspirator? OK bad analogy... If JR is ballin like that, card carrying agent... why does he ride the bus...would' nt he have something to show for his status? Police officers get paid...

More questions... Do some Black people prefer to work for other Black people even though the pay may be less? Do the journalist for Muhammad Speaks Newspaper get paid a living wage or do they love where they work? Or are they just moonlighting and working for the New York Post.

I will not take the word of some unknown journalist of the Eastbay Express who is obviously trying to make a name for himself and sell papers...and I do appreciate alot of the investigative reporting they have done...some of their journalist actually follow up and document their sources without writing a disclaimer at the end of their articles.

Your finger may be pointed in the wrong direction. I will give JR the benefit of the doubt. Why are people hell bent upon this "rush to judgement?" Now there are those among us I will never trust near my family and that is Maulana Ron Karenga. He talks cultural nationalism, unity, kwanzaa, psychologist and yet he tied up a couple of sisters used hot soldering irons, extension chords, vice grips and hose up their vaginas for three days in his garage...But I've seen the scars and Karenga served three years in the penitentiary. ..

I will never trust any man or woman that violates little girls or little boys of any color...this includes anyone who defends the perpetrator and their honor.

Is it easier to make assumptions and to talk behind someone's back? Once I heard two Ministers on the radio one Sunday morning and they were talking about each other real bad and one said..."He got his nerve talking about me when he can't get the shine out of his own pants..." Clean up your own backyard, your house, your closet, your mind, your heart like MAAT make your heart balance against the feather of truth

How much time to do spend with youth, without pay, teaching and training, giving skills, mentoring... seeing their way to consciousness and college. Have you ever been embraced by Sister Clara Muhammad or the Honorable Elijah Muhammad? Have you ever been in the presence of Miles Davis, kissed on he cheek by Dizzy Gillespie, shook the hands of Nelson Mandela, hugged by Winnie Mandela walked with Huey P. Newton...dinned with the author of URUGU? Has Oprah come to see you...Did you ever march with Ceasar Chavez, clean air or a tree...gone to Alcatraz Island before dawn with the American Indian Movement...Do you know Dick Gregory or sat at the feet of Dr. John Henry Clark...Have more than a thousand Japanese bowed down to you...or a multitude smile and clap for you. How many mothers have you guided to a clean and sober life-style and reunited them with their children, fought for them in court and got jobs college entry... Are you an engaged, committed
parent..have you ever washed your mother's feet...Have you helped any political prisoner get out of jail...Did you feed any homeless people on New Years, last Christmas, last night or any day of the week...did you protest in behalf of Oscar Grant...have you prayed for JR and hope God raises him up dust him off...Fruit of Peace. Does your good character precede...do people acknowledge your greatness... just questions...

Craig 17x Replies:

Sister Tarika,
Yes I met the brother and have been around him a couple of times. Seemed kind of aloof to me, gave me the "my doo doo don't stink" vibe. But it is, that everybody's doo doo stinks because that's what doo doo do. If you remain around it long enough the stench will attach itself to you, play in it and it will get in your eyes. It's better to have clean hands...

More questions? I have sold advertisement, folded and tossed and wrote for papers that were published by us for us. Sometimes I got paid, sometimes I didn't. When I had other means of taking care of myself and my loved ones, I volunteered. When my primary job was to write I got paid. I often tell the youth around me that it is important to distinguish between work, job or career. The liberation of the oppressed is not a job to me but it has been an adventure.

When I wrote for "The Monroe Free Press" an African American weekly newspaper in Monroe, LA, some of the stories I wrote made significant improvements in the lives of our people there. I did a series of stories that in essence "installed" the first Black registrar of Voters in Ouachita Parish. This was important primarily because at that time in Louisiana, one had to go to the courthouse (read Sheriff) to register to vote. Ouachita Parish encompasses West Monroe, LA where the majority of Black and poor people lived. When issues that affected the very lives or rights of Blacks in that area had to be voted on, one can imagine the resistance these people would get just trying to register to vote or even the aversion some may have had toward going to the lion's den when attempting to register to vote before Sister Jessie McFarland became registrar. Ok, there were several other stories that I wrote that helped OUR people there; one of the stories I worked on
helped solve a double homicide (the "Moonlake Murders of 1988") - hell, the publisher of the Free Press was also the head of the local NAACP AND the largest Baptist church in Monroe, LA- my work as a writer with the paper came with an implied expectation from the people that we vended activism and support to the African community.

Which brings me to the issue of bias in journalism. When I started in journalism I believed all of that crap about fairness in journalism, non-bias, the fourth estate, etc. I still do. Yet when any other nation has a newspaper which goes against the beliefs or agenda of the US, the US press corps refer to that organ as "The state sponsored media, blah blah..." Is the New York Times THEIR state sponsored press?

You betcha. Would I write for "The Final Call" and moonlight at the Times? Hell no, because I'm chanting them down. Besides they wouldn't publish what I wrote anyway. But then again I am from the FUBU school of journalism (iF yoU, Be yoU). It's got to be about us, for us, and by us, like Ron Karenga has said and if he said that I agree with him. I don't however endorse the crimes against the state that he has been documented to have committed, and I believe that a lot of his ilk should fry for some of the things that they have done to further damage the people.

But, "Knowledge and wisdom belong to the believers, wherever they find it, it's theirs." So if the devil has the truth I will accept it from him, but I will stone his ass afterward. The East Bay Express doesn't sell papers, they sell advertisement and the SF Bayview does not have a stranglehold on the truth either. Fact is, the people can read between the lines and those that cannot should learn to. If you are a journalist and you are talking to an assassin several times, just mere hours before he kills a man, and you are friends with that man, what does that tell me about you?

Valrey had an ongoing relationship with these people. I can only imagine how the conversation went or what it was about, but then I have a very full and vivid imagination. Duck or goose, this was bird brained shit. He has inculcated himself and this shows terrible judgment. Especially since he has taken it upon himself to be some sort of protector of the people's interest. I could go on and on, and probably will but...

Further questions?

How much time do you spend with youth, without pay, teaching and training, giving skills, mentoring... seeing their way to consciousness and college?

I teach in an after school program. I live on 82nd and Mac Arthur Blvd where my sister's daughter was murdered in a drive-by shooting with her unborn fetus in her womb. I knew Louvelle Mixon and many of the Mixon family. Those are the people that respect me and my judgement on a whole range of issues.

Have you ever been embraced by Sister Clara Muhammad or the Honorable Elijah Muhammad?

She yes He no. But my first Savior's Day attendance was in 1970 at the Mosque in San Francisco. After the Resurrection I began worshipping at Masjid Muhammed and my son went to Sister Clara Muhammed School in Oakland, CA.

Have you ever been in the presence of Miles Davis, kissed on he cheek by Dizzy Gillespie?

Only in my dreams as a child as I got dizzy watching the records turn on the turn table as my father played their records as though they were sacred gospel music.

Shook the hands of Nelson Mandela, hugged by Winnie Mandela?

No but I worked with the divestment movement at Laney College under the auspices of the Laney BSU as the Vice President, the Secretary of the Laney Literary Guild, the vice president and president and co-founder of the Muslim Students Collective, and the creator and founder of the student club PISOA (People In Support Of Azania) from 1981 through 1982. The movement was successful.

Walked with Huey P. Newton?

Yep. This is why I wrote the song "Huey P. Newton Died For My Sins".

How many mothers have you guided to a clean and sober life-style and reunited them with their children, fought for them in court and got jobs college entry?

I have been married 7 times and five of these fit the above description. I am paying child support for a child that is not mine due to one of these endeavors.
Peace


From Tarika Lewis

Thank You Brother...I appreciate and respect your opinions. I wanted very much to keep a glimmer of hope..'say it isn't so, say'it isn't so!' The why part is still perplexing to me. The Bakery's finances were already being probed and exposed in court, public opiopn already swayed...what would have been the motivation-exposing Oakland's dirty cops/undercover agents...Longmire is perhaps the tip of the iceberg...You have a wonderful day brother and thank you for responding.. .In search of Truth ... Peace

From Craig 17x

Right on Sister Love. I guess I've become a cynic largely because things of the nature of which we speak have occurred continually over the years and I have gotten to the point where I can see it coming, or at least can recognize it for what it is immediately afterwards. In this case, Longmire was the handler, Bey IV and crew the pawns and fall guys, Chauncey the foil. Questions now range from, who handles Longmire to will Bey IV have the balls to dime him out and if he does, will Longmire turn? Will the shit roll uphill or downhill? We both know the gravity of the situation.
Peace

Marvin X Repied:

Craig (Zahieb) , you motherfucker, thank you for your comments but the subject here is not JR but the devil he works for either willingly or unwillingly. For sure, I treated him as my son as I have done you and many other young men in the Bay and throughout America. He crossed me as others have and I can see no other reason than the devil has his mind and has assigned him to me. Why would he keep my creative work other than to provoke me into either assaulting him or killling him. They on 9/ll we go to downtown Newark where an undercover agent is awaiting us and covers our every move as I interview people and JR videos. Then when we arrive back in Oakland, my Patron Leroy James is accosted by some Muslims who threaten to kill me and him for something I said. Where did they get such information from except JR who conversed with me on the plane to New York. Thus he spread information to provoke Muslims to kill me.
And then the phone calls outside Chauncey's house between JR and the murder suspects on the morning of the murder, yet all the while he maintains he is a friend of Chauncey's. Wouldn't a friend call a friend and tell him some hit men are outside his door? Etc.,etc.,etc. ,etc.
Salaam,
Marvin X

Mixed Love



You had an avtomat Kalashnikova of ’47?

Assembled in minutes by children in the old USSR.

Kalashnikov and Heston are beaming with obscene pride:

In the efficiency of the automatic

In the accuracy of your aim

In hitting the Pig’s Eye

Four in a row!

You could have surrendered like Amadou Diallo

Raised your hands

Taken sixteen

And nothing in your “cold dead hands”

Except a wallet!

Or, heard the bells, like Sean Bell

“Made it to church on time”

Your wedding day now a funeral day

And nothing in your “cold dead hands”

Nothing!

Or, lay face down, a boot on your neck like Oscar Grant

And get it in the back

And be blamed

And nothing in your “cold dead hands”

Cuffed in steel.

You had an AK-47!

Easy to use

Easy to transport

Easy to kill

The AK has caused more deaths

Than Hiroshima

Than Nagasaki

Than HIV

Than the bubonic plague

Than malaria

Than all earthquakes

Than anything organic or synthetic, metal or chemical.

Kalashnikov’s automatic:

Won’t jam when dirty or wet

Has a feather trigger a child can pull

“Can turn a monkey into a combatant”

There’s pride in that…obscene pride

In the accuracy of a killer

The rehearsal on man-sized silhouettes

Dark shadows

The outline of a person

The will to kill.





The vulgar pride in:

The ABM

The drone

The nuke.

Hitting the pig’s eye.

All you needed was the will

The will to kill

The will to be free

Simply…Free

Not ideologically

Not intellectually

Not romantically

Not consciously

Not politically

Like Nat Turner

Like Malcolm X

Like Steve Biko

Like Fred Hampton

Not like that…simply

Not behind bars.

The repulsive, indecent respect some pay:

To the monsters created

To vindicate a people’s historical abuse

Surprised that the monsters

Dutifully designed

Consciously created

Meticulously molded

For the cities of Iraq

For the cities of Afghanistan

For the cities of America

Frankensteinesque

Should act other than

Monsteresque.

Is Fanon correct?

Is such violence redemptive?

Is it cleansing?

Is it a rebirth?

For a microsecond

For this generation

The score was evened.

Four pig’s eyes in a row!

Wow! How sick! This obscene pride.



Fritz Pointer

17 April 2009

Sobriety and White Supremacy

Marvin X

A society founded upon slavery and white supremacy is hard to take clean and sober, for the oppressed and the oppressor, hence the multi-billion dollar illegal and legal drug industry. Even today when youth cannot obtain illegal drugs they are turning more and more to their parents medicine cabinet for prescription drugs. This is nothing new. In my youth I used to steal from my aunt's medicine cabinet, especially since she was a nurse.
I couldn't steal drugs at my house because my mother was a Christian Scientist who use no drugs whatsoever in healing from disease.

But consider the number one addiction in America is not oil, which is merely a byproduct of American greed or white supremacy domination of the world's natural resources, even though she is only 4% of the world's population, thus why should she consume 25% of the world's energy?

And then the historic injustices that still permeate every fabric of American culture, leading Attorney General Holder to call America a nation of cowards with respect to race, despite the election of Obama, are not be addressed because America is a classic case of the addictive personality, including the most clear symptom of the addict, denial! Don't talk about it, pretend it doesn't exist, don't say white supremacy, you're playing the race card, can't we all just get along--as in maintain the status quo, don't rock the boat, live with your fears, economic, health, justice and educational disparities.

So the lies become deeper and thus the need to medicate, to cover the pain of lack of simple honesty and fairness. When we don't tell the truth, we must medicate to cover the shame of needing to lie, to advance the mythology of superiority. In various parts of this country it is done differently.
In the South they have their own way of dealing with race relations since the ethnic groups have been entwined so long, over the centuries, especially in sexual relations with the resultant miscegenation and mulatto class of house negroes. But even the field negroes learn to adjust by not directly confronting the problem, after all it might endanger the entire family, relatives might get fired. One mother told her son from California he need to leave Texas because his attitude was a danger to the family, so he departed.

In the North it is more subtle, even interracial marriage are filled with vestiges and residue of racism. Berkeley, California is a good example.
It claims to be a liberal university city but the attitude of whites is racist and it is segregated as well, with most of whites living in the hills and the blacks in the flatland, the same for Oakland as well. The Northeast is clearly as segregated as any southern city, from schools to neighborhoods, except for the neo-colonial gentrification that has pushed blacks out of their native Harlem and is pushing them out of Brooklyn.

Some would say there is no plan to this but simply an aspect of natural growth and modernization, yet in San Francisco we know the whites have long coveted the beautiful hills, view and weather of Hunters Point. Today they have finally achieved their goal of "negro removal" with black unable to afford housing in their old neighborhood. And when home prices don't preclude, property taxes certainly do. A brother who owns property in the Fillmore told me his taxes are six thousand dollars every six months.

Blacks are now leaving the Bay Area in droves, moving inland to Sacramento and deeper into central valley towns such as Stockton, Modesto, Madera and Fresno. And of course the mental stress of migration only adds to the need to medicate, thus the drugs follow the immigrants are awaits their arrival.

The fierce battle for control of drug turf below the American border with Mexico will only get worse as the economy continues to meltdown and capitalism enters its final days, simply because the need to medicate will become greater as mental depression increases due to the falling employment and housing foreclosures, events that will cause families to collapse from lack of security which only adds tension to already fragile marriages. The Meth epidemic is an example of how drugs have impacted the white communities, while the black community has never recovered from the destructive Crack era, although the drug Ecstasy has become the hip hop drug of choice leading to increased homicide as the drug causes elation then depression, often making the user want to seek revenge for some past actions by his friends, to seek them out to kill. Young females have described to me the behavior of their male friends on Ecstasy, essentially, once they get high they want to kill, to avenge the death of a friend since everybody knows who's killing in the hood.

The only real solution to the drug crisis is to attack the root causes which is white supremacy. And we have prescribed a 13 Step program of recovery in my book How to Recover from the Addiction to White Supremacy. People think they will be able to avoid a recovery program but we need only await more devastation in the economy that will heighten racial tension because soon Asians will be blamed for taking all those good American jobs to India and China. The 85% deaf, dumb and blind Americans are not told American corporations are doing the taking in their capitalist greed for cheap labor and cheap natural resources. Blaming the Asians, the Mexicans, the Blacks, will only further delude the thinking of ignorant Americans who will, in their disgust and despair, seek to medicate themselves even more to escape the reality of their sinking lifestyle of conspicuous consumption to perpetuate their world of white supremacy make believe.

The only real solution to drunkenness and despair is to change their personal and collective reality, to enter a detoxification program to rid themselves of all their delusional thinking and behavior, whether they institute total abstinence from such thinking and behavior or perhaps use the harm reduction model recently applied in recovery from chemical addictions. In short, since you are a coward, try to be less of a racist coward, try to lesson the need, want and desire to dominate and exploit the planet.

Re: Ancestors

amen...?

o.k, amen

whoa....heavy

o.k, so for a second I was getting all caught up w/ the the language ....the words.... and I couldn't seem to get over this wal that was anging strong around my consciousness

deflectin' what you were trying to say (or what you were sayin' and I was tryin' not to get)... becuz' of whatever was comin' up for me around seeing and hearing the word "ancestors" being wrapped in this cloak of "motherfuckers...whores" et al....

so I was skimming through it all.....pickin' up pieces and depth here and there.

you have always been pretty heavy, so I was like..

"ok, here we go, ummm, I know.. he's gonna go there and I don't if i'm able or if I know if I can allow myself to go that deep."

then I had to consciously stop....and make myself read it all over again..

this time, line by line...

savoring it like quinine or some other bitter tonic.

and then actually,when I allowed myself to be and really sit w/ the discomfort of it... (as silly as that sounds) ...

I found it to be really beautiful...

a marvinx-esque like beautiful, but beautiful.
nonetheless.

thanks baba

--Omolade R. Roddy
--------------------

Ancestors

Ancestors
Who are the real motherfuckers
who fucked our fathers and mothers
off the land into the good ship jesus
into the door of no return
into the sea of blood and bones
sharks and wail
arriving in the carolinas for five hundred years
ancestors as king and queen
who sold us to the ghost
Baraka teaches us
ancestors we call you in the name of nigguhs
black nigguhs in the hoods of america
not pseudo black kemetic fakes and frauds
scared to see the new imperial king of the realm
too blind by the sun of Ra to find a bone at the Pyramid
yet they search in vain year after year
when the whole earth is ours
no matter Africa
no matter Arabia
no matter Asia
no matter the Americas
no matter Europe
the earth is the black man's land
Gullahland is Africa
hear the talk see the weave enjoy the land
we are in Africa in Mississippi Alabama Georgia
take claim to the land and forever hold your tongues
dig the pyramids of Louisiana and see the Moorish mounds
see the Seminoles of Florida
The Gullahs and Geeches up and down the coast
ancestors all
who were fucked by the motherfucker
king and queen motherfucker and son of a bitch
male rape and child rape and mother rape
allowed by the king and queen
ancestors all
guilty
and charged
Sun Ra said they got to pay
Africa got to pay like the white man devil
yeah, Africa pay
you got the gold diamonds precious metals everywhere
pay
stop paying europe and pay the negro
the motherfucker you made with the red flag
guiding him to the shore through the door of no return
that bitch warrior you allowed to be raped in front of his women and children
that whore who kept us alive while sexing the master
who wanted all the women men and children
greedy bastard
and talk of clean english
fuck the english language
fuck every word of it
and fuck you too
you speak it
and love it
and seek to purify it with you fake asses
claiming ancestor holiness
let the ancestors be cursed for their iniquities
and debaucheries
the selling of souls in the centuries of time
yet you call them holy
call Mississippi holy
call Alabama Georgia Louisiana Carolina's holy ground
the marsh swamp bayous rivers creeks
holy trees of strange fruit and blood wine
call the ancestors from the woods and forests
call them from the pine trees and moss wood swamps
call them from the rice canefields cotton
from plantation and city of death in the family
Clara said she wanted to put her head in the oven
in the detroit of her time
Elijah was drunk as a coot she said
when Master Fard came selling red silk
the same red we followed to the shore
when the king sold us to the ghost, Baraka said
he told us about the railroad in the bottom of ocean
filled with bones
ancestor bones who resisted and wailed cried and shitted
not only tongues but vile moans shouts screams to the motherfucker
the son of a bitch ancestor
who pitted tribe against tribe warrior against warrior
man against woman for trinkets and barrels of rum
and we yet praise them
in our abject ignorance
we praise the culture of madness and gold
madness and diamonds
madness and chopped hands clitoris legs
and there is no end even today
the kings and queens are alive and well
working overtime to feed themselves full
as we whore and rape each other into the night of the full moon
where the silence is aloud and heard the world over
the silence of hunger and disease
silence of ignorance and demands to be king for life
to never end the terror
to never avenge the righteous
to continue the plunder until the new kingdom comes
and the wicked are reduced to dust
and the motherfucker receives his fucking
Amen.
--Marvin X
4.17.09

Ancestors

Ancestors
Who are the real motherfuckers
who fucked our fathers and mothers
off the land into the good ship jesus
into the door of no return
into the sea of blood and bones
sharks and wail
arriving in the carolinas for five hundred years
ancestors as king and queen
who sold us to the ghost
Baraka teaches us
ancestors we call you in the name of nigguhs
black nigguhs in the hoods of america
not pseudo black kemetic fakes and frauds
scared to see the new imperial king of the realm
too blind by the sun of Ra to find a bone at the Pyramid
yet they search in vain year after year
when the whole earth is ours
no matter Africa
no matter Arabia
no matter Asia
no matter the Americas
no matter Europe
the earth is the black man's land
Gullahland is Africa
hear the talk see the weave enjoy the land
we are in Africa in Mississippi Alabama Georgia
take claim to the land and forever hold your tongues
dig the pyramids of Louisiana and see the Moorish mounds
see the Seminoles of Florida
The Gullahs and Geeches up and down the coast
ancestors all
who were fucked by the motherfucker
king and queen motherfucker and son of a bitch
male rape and child rape and mother rape
allowed by the king and queen
ancestors all
guilty
and charged
Sun Ra said they got to pay
Africa got to pay like the white man devil
yeah, Africa pay
you got the gold diamonds precious metals everywhere
pay
stop paying europe and pay the negro
the motherfucker you made with the red flag
guiding him to the shore through the door of no return
that bitch warrior you allowed to be raped in front of his women and children
that whore who kept us alive while sexing the master
who wanted all the women men and children
greedy bastard
and talk of clean english
fuck the english language
fuck every word of it
and fuck you too
you speak it
and love it
and seek to purify it with you fake asses
claiming ancestor holiness
let the ancestors be cursed for their iniquities
and debaucheries
the selling of souls in the centuries of time
yet you call them holy
call Mississippi holy
call Alabama Georgia Louisiana Carolina's holy ground
the marsh swamp bayous rivers creeks
holy trees of strange fruit and blood wine
call the ancestors from the woods and forests
call them from the pine trees and moss wood swamps
call them from the rice canefields cotton
from plantation and city of death in the family
Clara said she wanted to put her head in the oven
in the detroit of her time
Elijah was drunk as a coot she said
when Master Fard came selling red silk
the same red we followed to the shore
when the king sold us to the ghost, Baraka said
he told us about the railroad in the bottom of ocean
filled with bones
ancestor bones who resisted and wailed cried and shitted
not only tongues but vile moans shouts screams to the motherfucker
the son of a bitch ancestor
who pitted tribe against tribe warrior against warrior
man against woman for trinkets and barrels of rum
and we yet praise them
in our abject ignorance
we praise the culture of madness and gold
madness and diamonds
madness and chopped hands clitoris legs
and there is no end even today
the kings and queens are alive and well
working overtime to feed themselves full
as we whore and rape each other into the night of the full moon
where the silence is aloud and heard the world over
the silence of hunger and disease
silence of ignorance and demands to be king for life
to never end the terror
to never avenge the righteous
to continue the plunder until the new kingdom comes
and the wicked are reduced to dust
and the motherfucker receives his fucking
Amen.
--Marvin X
4.17.09

The Chauncey Bailey Killing and Others

Broussard's statement may help police clear two more killings
By Thomas Peele
The Chauncey Bailey Project
Posted: 04/17/2009 04:08:22 PM PDT
Updated: 04/17/2009 04:08:23 PM PDT


OAKLAND — On the order of Yusuf Bey IV, Devaughndre Broussard and Antoine Mackey in July 2007 lured a homeless man to a dark corner where he was shot dead after raising his hands over his head, according to a statement Broussard gave prosecutors last month.

Broussard also said Mackey admitted killing another man with an assault rifle and joking about it, describing himself as "Elmer Fudd" on a hunting trip.

Broussard, who admitted in the document to also killing journalist Chauncey Bailey, is scheduled to describe all three killings to an Alameda County grand jury next week as part of a plea agreement. Prosecutors then expect to charge Bey IV and Mackey with multiple murders.

For weeks, Broussard said, Bey IV, then the leader of Your Black Muslim Bakery told him to follow the man, Odell Roberson, in preparation for killing him. The reason, he said, was revenge for the 2005 killing of Bey IV's brother, Antar Bey, by Roberson's nephew, Alonza Phillips.

On the night of July 8, 2007, Broussard, Mackey and Bey IV were "talking and chopping it up" when Bey IV suddenly gave the order: Roberson's time was up. Broussard told investigators from the Alameda County District Attorney's Office he took Roberson to a dark spot on Herzog Street where Mackey passed him an assault rifle, according to a transcript of the interview.

"I took the safety off and pointed it at him," Broussard said. "He tried to break. I'm like, stop, then he turned around and put his hands up and I (shot) him ... . Then he probably turned and I know I just kept hitting him .... his body hopped off the ground and moved a couple of inches." Broussard is scheduled to tell a grand jury next week that he killed Roberson and journalist Chauncey Bailey at Bey IV's order. He also is to testify that Mackey killed another man, Michael Wills, on July 12, 2007.

Bey IV and Mackey are then expected to each be charged with multiple counts of murder. Broussard has agreed to please guilty to two counts of voluntary manslaughter. In exchange for his testimony, he would receive a prison sentence of about 25 years with a guaranteed release date.

Both Broussard's attorney, LeRue Grim, and Deputy District Attorney Christopher Lamiero have declined to comment on the testimony or plea agreement, which Broussard signed earlier this week.

His testimony comes more than 20 months after he shot and killed Bailey near downtown Oakland. He told Lamiero during questioning in preparation for grand jury testimony that Bey IV ordered Bailey killed because the reporter was working on a story about the bakery's financial problems and internal strife.

Bey IV remains uncharged in Bailey's killing. He is charged with a host of other crimes, including kidnapping and torture, and is jailed without bail and has denied involvement in Bailey's assassination.

In addition to detailing the killings of Bailey and Roberson, Broussard said in the interview that Bey IV kept a "hit list" of people he wanted killed for "revenge, retribution." Broussard said that Bey IV also told him to be ready to kill others in Phillips' family in retribution for the slaying of Antar Bey — plans that were still being developed when police raided the bakery Aug. 3, 2007, the day after Broussard killed Bailey.

Broussard also told investigators that Mackey told him he shot and killed Wills.

Broussard said he was at the bakery and heard shots. Moments later, Mackey and Bey IV rushed in. Broussard said he followed Mackey to his room where Mackey described the killing.

"He said the dude tried to run and then he shot him," Broussard said, adding that Mackey was laughing and described himself as the cartoon character Elmer Fudd out hunting.

"I ran over there and I went to look" at where the killing happened a few blocks from the bakery. "Yusuf was like, 'go look for your self.'" Broussard said he dressed in jogging clothes so he could claim he was just exercising if police stopped him. As he neared Wills body, he said he heard a woman yell "somebody killed that boy. Somebody killed that boy." Wills apparently was a random target chosen because he was white, according to the Broussard's account.

Broussard said Mackey told him he and Bey IV were discussing the 1970 Zebra Killings in San Francisco, where African Americans had killed whites, when they saw Wills, a chef who lived nearby, who was walking home from a convenience store after finishing work.

A few days later, Broussard said Bey IV "said we got a devil....He was cocky like." Both Bey IV and his late father, bakery founder Yusuf Bey have often referred to whites as "devils" while preaching racial hatred.

In telephone calls recorded from the Santa Rita Jail in Dublin and obtained by the Chauncey Bailey Project, Bey IV often makes similar statements, referring to "white and Jew devils" and "media devils" he claims are trying to destroy him.

Thomas Peele is an investigative reporter for the Bay Area News Group. Reach him at tpeele@bayareanewsgroup.com. Visit Chaunceybaileyproject.org to learn more about the killing of journalist Chauncey Bailey.



.

A Writer’s Creed

I write to keep from killing, from slaughtering the guilty and the innocent. The choice is thus society’s, not mine, for either let my pen flow or blood shall flow upon this land because there are those who have wronged me, stolen from me, lied about me, banned me from employment, refused to invite me to their gatherings to celebrate life or even art, for that matter. So let my pen flow and do not disturb me for anything, especially some menial chore, some mundane exercise, simply leave me alone in the silence of my room. Let me think about the finer things of life, what words to say, what metaphors, what psycholinguistic turns of the mind, the sociology and history of a people, yes, let me dwell there or else there shall be chaos in the land and blood shall flow like a river, for my spirit shall be suppressed and shall seek an outlet in blood from the misery of my mind.

Yes, I am a killer in disguise, who appears in the persona of a writer for the good of society but continue to oppress me, suppress me, and I shall strike out in a moment of black madness and you who have wronged me shall see your guts spilled, your head smashed against the concrete, believe me, it is only a matter of time before I shall seek my revenge and come upon you in the night like a panther, and you shall cry out in horror and my knife shall be upon your throat and from thence to the splitting of your guts upon the ground. I shall walk away with laughter and joy only the devil himself shall understand and appreciate.

--Marvin X
April 17, 2009

Oakland--the Death and Resurrection of A City

Marvin X

A city dies a natural death when it becomes morally bankrupt, politically effete, economically depraved and spiritually caught in the morass of the cross and lynching tree. Signs of moral bankruptcy are clear when the righteous are defamed and the guilty heralded in spite of clear evidence to the contrary. A city called Jerusalem was defamed when its citizens cried,
"Give us the thieves and away with the righteous man."

In such a city the voice of truth is crushed under foot and lies are raised to the level of facts and intelligence. For many years Oakland lived under the lies emanating from a businessman. Even though many people knew the truth of his business or rather the dark side of his business, he was raised high as the example of morality and community stability. Even though one of the abused women cried for years like the Eloquent Peasant of Egyptian literature, her cries went unheard, but finally she was vindicated.

But today Oakland is beset with problems of truth in the media, apathy and lack of taking authority in the Mayor's office. The Mayor was recently shamed before the nation when the family of slain OPD officers commanded he not speak at their funeral. The question is who runs the city, the OPD or the Mayor? We know the OPD is a gang of brute beasts in blue uniforms, and like any gang they rule through terror and intimidation. The Mayor submitted to them even though he is the one who represents the City of Oakland, not the OPD. And so he is guilty of lacking moral leadership as well as political stewardship, and so power flows down, lack of power as well.
In the media we see people projected as heroes who are pseudo revolutionaries that have been exposed as agent provocateurs, yet the people are in denial just as they were in denial about the businessman. The person is being defended even when evidence is presented to the contrary. The people are like starry eyed idealists believing in a balloon even though it has burst before their eyes and all the air dissipated.

What can save such people? Surely we know things go from bad to worse. In the hood things are at such a desperate level every man is armed and ready to kill at the drop of a hat. There is no conflict resolution, there is no healing for the traumatized families who must suffer their pain of loss in silence.

The church is on every corner, but it is like the liquor store adjacent to it, providing an opiate to tranquilize the people into more apathy and degeneracy, with church whores running amok and mothers paying tithes with money from dope dealing sons and daughters, and of course the preacher happily accepts the ill gotten gain to extend his lifestyle of conspicuous consumption while preaching a world of make believe and pie in the sky after you die.

The school system is a total sham and scam. They have become merely holding cells for the neo-slavery department of corrections, or simply a place where no learning takes place because half the children drop out and the other half are maintained on drugs to keep them from their attention deficit disorder caused not by any mental problem but by a totally boring white supremacy curriculum, making them unprepared to deal in the global economy with millions of jobs outsourced to India and China, yet the educators are not preparing them for the new economic era because they are not prepared themselves.

There are those conscious people who clamor for a more Afrocentric education but do not prepare their own people to become teachers, and when conscious teachers express any degree of Afrocentricity, they are immediately booted out and join the unemployment lines. In short, there are few black teachers today, not only in Oakland but throughout the state and nation. Thus the irrelevant classroom is turning girls to prostitution as young as twelve, thirteen and fourteen. On the streets they receive an education more exciting and glamorous than studying math and English. They can be seen nightly on Oakland's International Blvd. where they join the sex trade and become further abused and marginalized from society.

The so-called conscious community is so fractious that the very thought of unity is avoided because of ideological narrow-mindedness, whether from the pseudo conscious hip hop sector or the older ideologues steeped in ideological purity from the 60s, still dreaming of some Marxist heaven or Pan African paradise in Africa. Thus the conscious events are seldom events where the common people can gather for conscious knowledge and wisdom, political education that transcends the sect and cult.

And so things go from bad to worse as Murphy told us. More killings, more drugs to medicate the wounded souls trying to exist in a once valiant city with a revolutionary tradition that shook up the world, but now a wounded elephant shot with a tranquilizer gun into nothingness and dread.

No real radical solutions are presented because it would require radical action and the status quo must be maintained to allow the blood suckers of the poor to get their checks and continue their conspicuous consumption in their pitiful world of make believe.

We have suggested repeatedly offering micro loans to brothers and sisters in poverty so they can come up as millions of poor are doing around the world. To decrease the violence we have suggested the model used in Iraq to stem violence by allowing brothers and sisters to secure their own neighborhoods by paying them to do so. But no, the blood sucking businessmen want to hire armed guards to patrol the streets, and of course they want to increase the OPD with more foreign, alien officers full of racism and white supremacy notions of how the natives must be subdued, pacified, profiled and occupied. Then when the people react to the foreign army in their midst, they are criticized for their "obscene pride" as Dr. Fritz Pointer called the peoples reaction to the actions of Louvelle Mixon who chose death as freedom rather than return to the neo-slavery of the prison system and dire lack of employment opportunities, especially for a growing number of ex-felons, most convicted of the petty crimes and would not be incarcerated if they'd had proper legal representation.

The resurrection of Oakland can only begin by thinking out of the box of yesterday's worn-out ideas that have failed repeatedly although some have benefited and thus their resistance, such as those bureaucrats in city government who are resisting the Mayor's attempt to hire ex-felons by not putting their criminal past on the employment application.

The schools must be totally and radically revamped for education in the global economy. The present curriculum must be destroyed for the relic of a gone era that it is, and perhaps many teachers will be disposed of in the process of cleaning the educational house.

We call for peer teachers from among the bright students who can obviously explain lessons in the language of their peers. Even many of the socalled out of control students are in reality leaders who are simply bored and refuse to remain silent, thus they can be trained as peer teachers as well.

The spiritual community must simply preach a new way with a new message and mission of spiritual liberation and consciousness to become synchronized with the Information Age that will not permit dogmatism, sectarianism and religiosity to continue unchecked to the point of religious and culture wars across the planet. The religious community must be shaken out of its comfort zone, whether Muslim, Christian, Jew, Hindu, Buddhist, Rasta, Yoruba or Atheist.

Oakland cannot die except by continued self deception and denial that anything is radically wrong and anything less than a radical solution will resuscitate the dying body politic. When the media pundits from the right and the left are no longer guilty of perpetuating the world of make believe, the mighty Lazarus called Oakland will rise again to astound the world.

Chapter 34: My Friend the Devil--Eldridge Cleaver

Marvin X

And then along came Crack. It wasn't before long that it appeared that not only did the masses succumb to Crack but the liberation movement as well, including and especially its leaders. The same happened in the Black Arts Movement as well. Can we not say the entire black nation fell victim? Even black studies professors fell into the crack of Crack, even presidents of colleges, such as John Green, president of Merritt College in Oakland. The bourgeoisie was not exempt, nor the grass roots. The most beautiful women from every class of black society turned into Crack whores, toss ups or strawberries. And in reality the men were Crack whores too, even the children were literally sold to the dope man. Turned out mothers told their dope dealing sons they need not trade dope for sex with Crack hos, he could have sex with his mother so she could get the dope instead of the Crack ho.

The ghetto turned into a giant auction block. Men and women sold themselves to the highest bidder for Crack. When a husband and wife ran out of Crack, the husband would demand his wife give herself to the dope man for a package. Sometimes the wife never returned. Sometimes the husband would offer himself.

Yes, brothers who claimed they weren't homosexual performed homosexual acts for Crack. Women did the same for whomever had the package. Women who weren't lesbian performed lesbian sexual acts for the dope man or whomever had the package.

What caused such moral degeneration and desperation in the black nation? We know there are no mysteries, no mystery God. So let us turn to the US Government, and we can pinpoint the Crack epidemic to Freeway Rick and a Nicaraguan named Blandon, as documented in the American Gangster Series on BET. But also thanks to journalist Gary Webb who lost his career and ultimately lost his life chronicling the Crack epidemic and the source of it, which he uncovered was the US Government's use of Crack to buy weapons for the Nicaraguan Contras in their fight against the revolutionary Sandinista Government in Nicaragua. The black nation was turned into Crack hos to benefit the American Right Wing Revolution of President Ronald Reagan, supposedly the greatest Present we ever had, but Allah brought him down so low in his last days that they wouldn't show you his picture. He was so deranged he couldn't come to his own birthday party. We are certain he approached the madness of Shakespeare's King Lear for the retribution he deserved for destroying the black nation with Crack.

Does this excuse the revolutionaries, the black bourgeoisie, or the grass roots for falling victim to the white man's tricknology? No! We had knowledge he was the devil, Elijah told us this. And after Elijah Imam Khomeini told us America was the Great Satan, and after Khomeini President Chavez came to the United Nations telling us he smelled the Devil, meaning President Bush, and then the other day came President Lula of Brazil telling the president of France he and his blue eyed brothers and sisters are responsible for the world's troubles because of their white supremacy arrogance, thinking they are the world's most intelligent people while we can see clearly with the global financial meltdown that they lack the knowledge of the lowest imbecile or mentally retarded person awaiting the little yellow bus to stop outside his house to drive him to Special Ed. I give former President Bush credit for one thing he did positive: he got mental illness placed on par with physical illness with respect to insurance and health care. And we pray he takes advantage of the mental health component to check himself in to a mental health center to recover from his addiction to white supremacy. Let us hope other Americans, black and white, will do the same. After all, Attorney General Holder has told us the American people are cowards with respect to their unabashed racism, despite the election of Obama.

To the disgrace of our ancestors, our elders, parents and children,we fell victim to Crack, myself, Eldridge Cleaver, Huey Newton, David Hilliard, and thousands of other radicals and revolutionaries. But we know, according to the Bible, there were two women in the field, God took one but left the other. Perhaps I am here to write this narrative because God spared me to tell this story. Thank you God!

Chapter 33: My Friend the Devil--Eldridge Cleaver

Marvin X


I hated to send Eldridge packing but enough was enough. I was tired of his focus on the phallus. I wanted to understand his fixation with this male organ that had caused him so much trouble throughout his life. What was the sexual psychology or pathology of this man? What was going on in the deep structure of his mind that over powered all other subjects and concerns. Obviously it was compulsive obsessive behavior. But didn't I suffer a sexual addiction as well, was not my polygamy merely the expression of a sexual addiction gone wild? After all, no matter how much sex I had it was never enough, I was never satisfied, and I am certain the women were never satisfied either, certainly not psychologically and probably not sexually since they are one--psycho-sexuality. I came to realize that my psycho-sexuality was nothing more than an expression of my addictive personality, that no matter what I did it would become an addiction, that I could never get enough, whether it was alcohol, weed or other drugs. There was no social drinking in my book, rather, my object was to drink to get drunk as possible, to smoke weed until there was no more, and to do the same with Crack which is called chasing the dragon that is forever eluding ones grasp.

So maybe Cleaver suffered a similar addictive personality, except that his was focused on his sexuality, and of course he went to the extreme with rape, actually a pathology that transcends sex into the realm of power and domination, and according to what he told me, it was not only to have power over the female but the male as well. He told me the process of the rapist. First, he would stalk the motel, lying in wait for a couple to check in and once they put the key in the door and opened it, he would charge into them, blocking the door with his foot. Then he would tie the man and woman and proceed to rape the woman while the man watched. He said his joy was not in having sex with the woman but in making the man watch his woman transform from resistance to acceptance of his sexual aggression.

Of course he told us in Soul on Ice that he practiced on black women and perfected with white women. And ultimately he served eighteen years in prison for his psychopathic behavior. Should we conclude that he was simply a sick puppy, yet thank him for whatever positive contribution he made to the liberation struggle. After all, he did not have to join the struggle, he could have been a very successful writer, but he chose social activism rather than commercial success, some might say to the detriment of many people or to the movement in general. But would it have been the same without Eldridge? Bobby Seale blames me for keeping Eldridge from the Panthers, then he blames me for introducing Eldridge to them. You can't have it both ways, Bobby!

But we can say the liberation was inundated with social psychopaths, or as Dr. Cornell West likes to say, "Those maladjusted to injustice." Yes, as in any liberation struggle, there are criminal psychopaths, hustlers, opportunists, agent provocateurs, snitches, uncle toms, along with the sincere, the honest, the romantics, idealists and dreamers. Sometimes they are in one personality, thus the complexity of some individuals and the simplicity of others.

I remember the night we were in Los Angeles during the Born Again days. We wanted to get served by prostitutes, so we were in the motel area near Sunset Strip. But as we were going into the motel with our ladies, we saw a blind man being led up the stairs by a sex worker. Eldridge acknowledged the sexual needs of the blind man and the service the worker was performing, thus he lambasted those who want to outlaw prostitution which has a social need as evidenced by the blind man. Would society deny the blind man satisfaction?

My Friend the Devil—Eldridge Cleaver

A Memoir

By Marvin X


Marvin X met Eldridge Cleaver on a visit to California’s Soledad Prison, 1966. Upon Cleaver’s release from prison in 1967, Marvin X was the first person he hooked up with.
They remained friends off and on until Cleaver’s death, May 1, 1998. Marvin did not attend his funeral in Los Angeles, but he organized and officiated a memorial service for Cleaver in Oakland, CA. Cleaver was a mercurial personality and Marvin experienced many of the changes with the author of the 60s classic Soul on Ice.

Marvin relies on his personal experience with Cleaver to describe the life of one of the most controversial men in America and the world. He recalls from memory Cleaver’s journey through Communism, Black Panthers, Christianity, Moonism, Mormonism, Crack addiction and death.

Marvin X introduced Cleaver to his old friends at Oakland’s Merritt College, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, co-founders of the Black Panther Party. Eldridge joined immediately, becoming Minister of Information. After a split in party ranks, Cleaver established his army on the East coast, Huey held down his troops on the West coast.
Internecine battles ensued, even while Cleaver fled the country to evade criminal charges stemming from a shootout with the Oakland police in which Lil Bobby Hutton was killed and Cleaver wounded. He became the international representative of the Black Panther Party, giving Black Americans diplomatic status with an embassy in Algeria, North Africa.

With astounding power of recall and vivid imagery, Marvin X describes a man ever on the search for knowledge and experience, delving into each experience with ineluctable energy.

This memoir is American history, African American history and world history.


Comments on My Friend the Devil by Marvin X

Wonderful appreciation of both Elijah and Clara. Rare perception nowadays, what with the Malcolm cult. The pendulum is swinging.
--John Woodford, former Editor, Muhammad Speaks
Editor, Michigan Today, Univ. of Mich.

Hallelujah! MX is reminiscing, I must say, entertainingly, about his historic dalliance w/ shaitan…rat on....
--Amiri Baraka, Newark, NJ

More and more I am convinced this work will be a best-seller. Though I have never read a Cleaver biography, a lot of this material seems to be new and if not factually new, it is from a novel perspective.
– Rudy Lewis, editor, Chickenbones: A Journal, Virginia

Thank you Marvin...get it all out...write it out...sweat it out...dance it out...cry it out, swear it out, walk it out...work it out....thank you for sharing ...respect.
--Joan Tarika Lewis, Violinist, Oakland
First female member of the Black Panther Party

Enjoyed your post about Cleaver. Very interesting. Contained vivid imagery.
--Martin Reynolds, Editor, Oakland Tribune

About the Author

Marvin X is one of the founders of the Black Arts Movement and the father of Muslim American literature. He has written poetry, plays, and novels. His play Salaam, Huey Newton, Salaam was produced at the New Federal Theatre in New York last year.
His first play written as a student and produced by the drama department at San Francisco State College/now Univeristy, 1965, was produced recently in San Francisco and Oakland by the Lower Bottom Playaz. His drama One Day in the Life was the longest running Afro-American drama in Northern California from 1996 thru 2000. His books of essays include In the Crazy House Called America, Wish I Could Tell You the Truth,Beyond Religion, toward Spirituality and How to Recover from the Addiction to White Supremacy. His recent poetry is Love and War and Land of My Daughters.

Contact his agent:
Muhammida El Muhajir,
Sun in Leo Agency
145 Van Buren Street
Brooklyn, New York
11221
718-496-2305

Part 32: My Friend the Devil--Eldridge Cleaver

Marvin X

After the Black Men's Conference fizzled, I returned to the classroom, teaching theatre at Oakland's Laney College. Odell Johnson, President of the college, my homeboy from Fresno, hired me. But many of my theatre students couldn't read the script. Nevertheless, I put together a musical drama entitled In the Name of Love, a poetic drama that Eldridge Cleaver showed up to see several times. He loved it because he said it returned drama to the Shakespearean tradition of poetic theatre.

There were quite a few people who came to view it more than once. At first I couldn't figure out why they were returning, but soon it hit me that maybe the topic touched their lives as good drama should. My major topic was polygamy or plural marriage. This explains why Dr. Yusef Bey of Your Black Muslim Bakery came with his entourage on several occasions. Betty King, known as the Mother Theresa of Oakland, came more than once. I found out that Betty had been in a relationship with a married man for several years so she was trying to understand some things that were going on in her life.

All during the production I was having problems with the technical staff as well as the theatre director, both of whom were Jews and had literally kept blacks from using one of the best theatres in the Bay. The Jews acted as if the theatre was their sacred turf and blacks should keep out. Well, as per usual, I came in kicking and screaming that their reign was over and we had every right to the space. The tech man warned me I might not have lights during the production, they might mysteriously cut off in the middle of a scene. I replied that I might put his lights out as well. And then one day he took items from my archives on display in the lobby and put them in his office. When I saw him in the hall I took a swing at his head but missed.
He called the dean of our department, Melvin Newton, yes, Huey Newton's brother, who had me arrested by campus police. I was later released and told to not return for a few days, but I ignored Melvin's order and returned a day or two later. He called the campus police again but I told them to call the President who overrode Melvin's order. If he ever did, Melvin has not liked me since. Actually, Melvin didn't like anyone associated with his brother, since he was nothing, certainly not the historic figure like his brother. During this time revolutionary sister Dessie X Woods (Rashida Muhammad, may she rest in peace--she has a street named in her honor downtown Oakland) came on campus to support me. She said of Melvin, "He and Huey didn't come from the same womb. Melvin came from a baboon's asshole."

I also taught a class at Merritt College called Manhood Training. I taught brother Rickey Clay (Bakari of Uhuru House) one on one. He had performed the role of Revolutionary Man in In the Name of Love at Laney. After my class he actually joined the revolutionary Uhuru House and has been there ever since. He is currently in charge of the local Uhuru Movement.

During this time the brothers from the Black Men's Conference wanted to support Dr. Nathan Hare for superintendent of Oakland Public Schools. We held a rally at Oakland High School, but when we discovered some negative background issues about Dr. Hare, we withdrew his name. But during that rally at Oakland High I met an English teacher named Marsha Satterfield who had studied my writings while a student at Southern University in Louisiana. She was highly intelligent and a dedicated teacher and soon we were living together. She became part of my polygamous family. She put up with my madness for quite some time, allowing me to subject her and my other women to much stress and abuse, verbal and physical. At a cast party, she and Hurriyah fought over whose time it was to be with me. The fight started when Marsha called Hurriyah a bitch, something Hurriyah didn't play, being a Chicago woman.

As director and writer, I took full advantage of the women, causing one dancer to tell me, "I'm not givin you no pussy, Marvin, you got enough already!"

One day I got a call from Dessie X to come rescue her from an abusive situation with a Muslim minister in San Francisco. I let her stay at my house and introduced her to Mustafa Abul Rahim, whose family had won the million dollars. Mustafa proceeded to abuse her as well, even though Dessie X had killed a white man in the South who tried to rape her and won release from prison after the Uhuru Movement came to her defense and spread propaganda about her cause. So I had to take her from Mustafa and put her under my care. When I got a temporary teaching job near Fresno, I took her with me until she started seeing ghosts while I was at work. Eldridge told me to be patient with her because she had only recently gotten out of prison and was still traumatized. I took his advice but Dessie made the mistake of calling my mother and telling her she was one of my wives. Mom told her she didn't want to hear anything about Marvin and his wives, please don't call her again.

I soon returned Dessie to the Bay Area and dropped her off at the Black Muslim Bakery where she hooked up with a brother and was married to him until she made her transition (may she rest in peace).

I was soon joined in Fresno by Eldridge Cleaver. This time he was not making dick pants but dick pots. He designed stone planters with a giant phallus at one end. When he brought People's magazine to my house for a story about his planters, I told him it was time to go and we parted again.

More on JR Valrey as Agent Provocateur

The final thing that convinced me JR was an agent provocateur was when we came back from 9/ll he began spreading outright lies about me throughout the hip hop and radical community: he told people I was smoking crack in New York or rather at the Hotel in Newark and that I was having sex with Crack hos. Now he did observe me talking with Crack ho's because I am a single man and if I like Crack hos that's my business--furthermore, if lesbians can be with lesbians and gays with gays, I can be with Crack hos and I don't give a damn what anyone thinks. As James Baldwin said to me, "I pay my rent, I do what I want."
But I couldn't figure out why JR would spread lies, bold face lies if he wasn't an agent using the Cointelpro disinformation and character assassination plan to destroy black leadership.
--Marvin X

Part 31: My Friend the Devil--Eldridge Cleaver


Marvin X

After the Black Men's Conference dropped Eldridge, I did not see him for a few months. Meanwhile I was confronted with how to deal with the black men who came to the post-conference meetings to become a part of the organization. But we were not prepared to receive the men because all our time had been spent organizing the conference. John Douimbia tried to tell me to slow down but I was moving full steam ahead, about to sink into the chasm of black male political insanity. Not having the organizational structure in order was like inviting friends to dinner but having no food. People were anxious and ready for something to happen. They were pumped up from the conference and jockeying for power in the potentially new organization. I was confronted with three forces coming at me simultaneously: the progressive black bourgeoisie, the black intellectuals and the grass roots. When I saw that John had used me to organize the project for his comrades, the black bourgeoisie, I said no way was I going to deliver this organization to the so-called progressive black bourgeoisie who were basically sycophants for the Democratic Party.

I fell back on my black intellectual comrades but they failed me. When I called upon them to take things to the next level, all they wanted to do was meet around a conference table and sip coffee. I saw they were not about to do much more than talk. After all, they informed me they had families and jobs, thus no real time for the black men's conference as an organization.

The third element was the grass roots brothers who were sincere and energetic but simply ignorant, so I could not see delivering the conference to them either. I was thus in a dilemma of major proportions. I needed a way to bring the forces into functional unity, maybe some Machiavellian approach that would allow the unity of opposites.

Instead, when I saw John was determined to make the conference a black bourgeoisie organization, I simply dropped out and the ship of black men eventually sank. Fifteen years later, Farrakhan picked up the ball with the Million Man March, but clearly there is no organization of the Million Black Men. Maybe our negrocities (Baraka term) are simply overwhelming, and except for the Obama Drama we are into reverse evolution, dancing backwards like Michael Jackson.

On JR Valrey as Agent Provocateur

Marcel Diallo

Today at 4:37am
ReplyI saw this yesterday. I wonder if we can sue the east bay express for liable. Writing a hit piece is one thing...but calling JR an Agent Provocateur when there are really agent provocateurs out here among us in Oakland causing all types of confusion and endangering the lives of all of us who are standing up for what we believe in is another level of assault. The east bay express don't live a damn about self-determined Black people. A couple of years back, they tried to character assassinate me on the cover, just like they doing JR today, the thing that they don't realize is that all press is good press, and even when they try to fuck us, we come out on top. At the end of the day, they just driving more traffic to blockreportradio.com and to the issues that JR is bringing to the forefront.

But they made sure they threw a little salt on and made light of a term that we take very seriously in our community––"Agent Provocateur". The true Agent Provocateurs are the ones who work for the Oakland Police Department, The DEA and the FBI. They are the ones who start knife fights with tanks, and get everybody around them blew the fuck up. They killed Malcolm, Informed on Garvey, dismantled the Black Power movement, and they are currently running the Oakland Rebellion into the ground. To call someone such a loaded term on the cover of a weekly newspaper, is the same is the east bay express printing "JR Valrey is a Nigger" on their cover. Both terms are what are called "fighting words" and should be likened to committing a hate crime. If anyone reading this has immediate access to a lawyer, could you please ask them if we have grounds to sue.


Marvin X Jackmon

Today at 6:04am
As far as I'm concerned JR is indeed an agent provocateur and I can site several instances of his reactionary actions. Firstly, he was with me on 9/11 in New York, actually we were in Newark watching the twin towers fall from our hotel window. JR interviewed me with the twin towers in the background. He has refused to give me a copy of this footage. I asked community brothers to intervene but to no avail. I have wanted to give him a beat down, but how would that look--Marvin X beats down youth he's supposed to be saving. Anyway, we then go down to Broad and Market where an agent is awaiting us as in preplanned. As I interviewed people while JR filmed, the agent followed us inch for inch, toe to toe. When we moved up the street, he moved with us. When we crossed the street, he crossed with us. I think JR told this agent to meet him/us there. Again, JR has this footage and has refused to give me a copy of my and his work. Then when we return to the Bay a frend of mine was approached by some black Muslims who told him I had been saying some things about the Muslims and he should stay away from me. Now the only person I was talking with about Muslims was JR on the plane to New York. I don't know if he was bugged or not, but only JR could have told the Muslims what I said.

Also, JR has been recording important events for years but has not released the tapes, such as the Tupac Conferences, thus is guilty of withholding information, which is why I call him the Minister of Misinformation. He has also taken pictures of me at events with other radical brothers but when the pics appeared in the Bay View, he had cut me out of the picture. This I call the sin of ommision or Misinformation.

He has tried to provoke me into kicking his ass on several occasions in the public but I have resisted because I know he is a sick puppy on a mission from the devil.

Most importantly, his calls to Bey IV on the morning of Chauncey's murder must be explained, otherwise we can only think he was involved. How can he say he was Chauncey's friend when he is on the phone talking with the murder suspects in front of Chauncey's house a few hours before the murder? If he were Chauncey's friend, why didn't he inform Chauncey about what was getting ready to go down?

Again, my main fear has been of his association with Chairman Fred Hampton, Jr., that JR would set him up as the agent set up his father, Fred Hampton, Sr.

Now you romantic idealists can defend this negro but I am happy he has been exposed. Maybe the devil is setting him up for disposition. Perhaps he has outlived his usefulness.
--Marvin X

Printed from the East Bay Express Web site:


JR Valrey Is an Agent Provocateur

The KPFA producer is not your typical police reporter. He grew close to accused criminal Yusuf Bey IV. He was arrested for arson in the Oakland riots. Now he's speaking up for cop killer Lovelle Mixon.
By Benjamin Taylor

April 8, 2009

Ali Thanawalla

KPFA producer JR Valrey has become as polarizing within the radio station as his journalism is within the Bay Area.
Ali Thanawalla

Valrey got the only interviews with accused torturer and liquor-store vandal Yusuf Bey IV by treating him like a respected member of the community.

Valrey has become the most prominent member of a growing anti-police movement.
On January 7, the streets of Oakland erupted into an orgy of property damage when a protest honoring murdered Hayward resident Oscar Grant turned violent. Helicopters buzzed over the downtown skyline, and you could feel tension in the air. Eyewitness accounts tell of protesters breaking store windows, setting cars on fire, and throwing bottles from rooftops. Videos show angry mobs trying to tip over police cars as officers in riot gear hung from the sides of an armored truck. By the time the rioting was quelled, more than one hundred people had been arrested. Journalist JR Valrey was among them.

One week before, in the early hours of New Year's Day, Grant had been shot in the back by BART cop Johannes Mehserle at the Fruitvale BART station. Cell-phone footage of the shooting was soon all over the Internet, and the protest was organized to demand justice for the slain 22-year-old and his family. Valrey attended not so much as an observer but as a participant.

Valrey is what you might call an advocacy journalist. With his KPFA radio segement The Block Report, his job as associate editor for San Francisco Bay View newspaper, and his position as the so-called "Minister of Information" for the Prisoners of Conscience Committee (POCC), he has become known for covering police shootings. When he reached the protest, he did something no mainstream journalist would do: He took the mike and spoke to the crowd, demanding justice not just for Grant, but also for other victims of police violence.

"Why didn't people come out when Bay Area police officers murdered unarmed Terrence Mearis, unarmed Casper Bajo, unarmed Anita Gaye, unarmed Gary King, unarmed Gus Rugley, unarmed Cammerin Boyd, unarmed Idriss Stelley, or when the police terrorized fifteen-year-old unarmed Laronte Studesville, unarmed Randy Murphy, or unarmed Nadra Foster?" Valrey asked the crowd. "Is it because these cases were not caught on camera?"

By sunset the protest was dying down, and Valrey says he left to meet some friends. But about one hour later, he says he got a call that there was rioting downtown. When he returned, he saw dozens of police in a huge circle on 14th Street and Broadway, occupying the intersection in front of City Hall. According to his Bay View article "Oakland rebellion: Eyewitness report by POCC Minister of Information JR," protesters shouted slogans at the police as angry bands of people smashed car windshields and storefronts with skateboards, their feet, and other objects. Valrey said he began taking photographs.

Mayor Ron Dellums soon made an appearance, walking through the angry crowd, as Valrey put it, "like black Jesus." The mayor made his way across Broadway to the Civic Center area and then delivered a short speech in which he called for civility to prevail. Valrey says Dellums was swiftly booed off stage and retreated back to the safety of City Hall. The rioting soon resumed. Windows were smashed, cars and trash cans were set ablaze, and protesters taunted officers or lay down in front of police lines with their faces down and their hands behind their backs, mimicking the posture of Oscar Grant when he was shot. According to Valrey's article, the police began breaking into groups of six or seven and rushing rioters, tackling and arresting anyone in the vicinity.

Valrey says two officers chased and tackled him while he was taking photographs by the Federal Building. He spent the night in Santa Rita Jail and was charged with felony arson, which carries a possible sentence of three years in a state penitentiary. In all, 160 people were arrested on the night of January 7, mostly on misdemeanor charges. All but ten subsequently had the charges against them dropped. Just four people, including Valrey, are still facing felony charges.

Oakland police would not release information describing the events the leading up to his arrest. Valrey also declined to go into greater detail, claiming that he doesn't want to compromise his defense. But he insists that he is innocent. "I have no history of arson, when I was arrested there was no lighter, no matches, not even paper to light anything."

Valrey claims his arrest was payback for his years of covering police brutality. "I was covering it as a journalist," he said. "But one thing that's different about me from the rest of the rebels is that the Oakland police know me. ... I'm not a stranger to the power structure of Oakland, so I believe like many others that I was targeted politically. ... We were basically set up on trumped-up charges."

His lawyer, Marlon Monroe, says the case against Valrey is weak and will fail: "There's no physical evidence that they can pin on JR, despite the fact that there were several officers who witnessed the arrest, as well as news cameras."

In the meantime, the arrest has given Valrey plenty of fodder for The Block Report and the Bay View. In the weeks since the riots, he has written eyewitness accounts, interviewed people present at the rioting, and run radio shows interviewing family members of Oscar Grant. He hasn't hesitated to use the KPFA airwaves and pages of the Bay View to call for community support in fighting his felony charges.

But Valrey hasn't just covered the riots and their aftermath. He has participated in "town bizness meetings" focused on what Valrey calls "police terrorism." He has helped organize POCC political actions, including a boycott of BART on what would have been Grant's 23rd birthday. And he has defended the Oakland riots as a necessary means of getting the city's attention.

Valrey has become the mouthpiece of an anti-police movement that has grown since Grant's shooting. He even defends the actions of cop killer Lovelle Mixon as a "heroic day of resistance against the police." As unpopular as these sentiments make him in many quarters, he has become a beacon for the anger that smoulders among some members of Oakland's black community.

Perhaps emblematically, his voice can be heard at the end of a new song, "Fuck the Police, We Ain't Listening," by Oakland rapper Beeda Weeda. The song begins with sound bites from news reports about the rioting, and then the chorus kicks in, Fuck the police, we ain't listening, Beeda sings. Wanna push us? Wanna push us? Motherfucker, keep pushing. Burn this bitch to the ground and leave the whole city cooking. At the song's end, Valrey delivers a brief spiel before the fade-out:

This is POCC minister of information JR at BlockReportRadio.com. We changing what they call rioting into what we call rebelling. We wasn't just tearing shit up, we were rebelling against injustices. ... We don't need just one cop arrested, we need a whole new motherfucking system.

Clearly, JR Valrey is not your typical police reporter.



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Valrey is no stranger to controversy. The thirty-year-old has been voicing his often-confrontational opinions on The Block Report for five years now. The show began as a segment called "From the Belly of the Beast" on KPFA's Hard Knock Radio. It eventually moved to Flashpoints, a daily political news show hosted by Dennis Bernstein. Flashpoints airs The Block Report sporadically, typically once or twice a week. It also airs locally on KPOO, as well as on stations in Atlanta; Los Angeles; New York; Washington, DC; and elsewhere.

Valrey says he uses his journalism to "bring it to the powers that be." He ridicules so-called "kiss-ass journalists" who warn him that he is cutting his own throat by being so up-front about his allegiances.

"I get criticism all the time because the positions I take are not the popular ones that someone who wants a career in corporate journalism would take," Valrey said. "I get more praise for what I do though. Way more praise."

Some of Valrey's positions include justifying the vandalism of the "Oakland rebellions," speaking in defense of Your Black Muslim Bakery, and glorifying the actions of Lovelle Mixon, who murdered four Oakland police officers on March 21 before being gunned down himself in a shoot-out.

"To me, a great journalist is not somebody who has everyone agreeing with them, it's somebody who strikes a chord," he said. "Whether you like what I write or you hate what I write, I don't want you to feel indifferent about what I write."

Although his journalism didn't begin as overtly political, Oakland's history of black self-empowerment has been a clear influence on Valrey's politics and approach to journalism. "I was influenced politically by my grandmother, who talked a lot about the Black Panthers," he recalled. "A lot of the ideas of the Black Panthers, like communalism, and collectiveness, we practiced as a family in general. At the same time I was reading stuff like Huey Newton and Malcolm X."

His career in journalism began after he attended a summer journalism program at San Francisco State as an eleventh grader. While attending St. Joseph's Catholic School in Alameda, he wrote an article about the racism that he said he and other nonwhite students faced within the Catholic school system. The article was published in the San Francisco Examiner on the same day that O.J. Simpson was found not guilty, and consequently received a lot of attention. When a teacher mentioned in the article threatened to sue, several local journalists came to Valrey's defense.

"They came to my defense and I really saw the power of journalism in my own life," Valrey recalled. When the teacher in question learned he had the support of the Examiner's lawyers, Valrey says she had a "religious transformation" and decided not to sue. "When I had seen the power of journalism, I saw that I could use it in the interests of not just myself but to get justice for my community."

Since 2002, Valrey has been on the staff of the San Francisco Bay View, where he covers issues of concern to the black community. For the past two years, he has been the paper's associate editor. Managing Editor Willie Ratcliff stands behind Valrey and his work, which covers international issues like the war in the Congo and political turmoil in Haiti, as well as local issues such as prison activism and police harassment.

Ratcliff said the paper receives a lot of praise for Valrey's work, which he has helped to direct. "I've tried to teach him not to use things just to provoke people and make them mad," Ratcliff said plaintively. "When you use language like 'pig,' you're just gonna get people mad. But he's learning."

Valrey says both his writing and his radio show are vehicles for his work with the Prisoners of Conscience Committee, a self-proclaimed revolutionary organization founded by Fred Hampton Jr., the son of the assassinated Black Panther of the same name. The committee was conceived of during the 1990s, while Hampton Jr. spent nine years in jail for aggravated arson. The charge was related to the firebombing of a Korean grocery during the 1992 rioting following the acquittal of officers responsible for beating Rodney King.

The POCC describes itself as "an organization that consists of African Revolutionary Freedom Fighters whose agenda is to liberate the minds and hearts of African and colonized people." The committee refers to prisons as concentration camps, gentrification as "land grabbing," police enforcement as "police terrorism," and drugs and alcohol as "chemical and biological warfare."

It was that last viewpoint that led Valrey to take one of his more infamously controversial positions as a journalist — defending the vandalism of two Oakland liquor stores.



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In November 2005, about a dozen black men dressed in sharp suits and bow ties were caught on camera trashing a local liquor store. One of the men was identified from surveillance camera footage as then twenty-year-old Yusuf Bey IV. Bey was the leader of Your Black Muslim Bakery, an Oakland business once known for encouraging black self-empowerment, but steadily gaining a reputation for violence and intimidation. The footage, which showed the men breaking bottles and smashing windows with golf clubs, was run on television news tirelessly. The story was front-page news across the Bay Area. But only one journalist was able to interview Bey. That was JR Valrey.

Yusuf Bey IV was the son of bakery founder Yusuf Bey, whose organization and followers have been implicated in a number of crimes dating as far back as 1968. In 2002, the elder Bey was charged with 27 counts of felony sex crimes, charges he never had to face in court because he succumbed to cancer prior to his pending trial. After his death, two successors were killed under mysterious circumstances before the younger Bey took the reins in 2005.

At the time of the vandalism, Valrey had known members of the extended Bey family for years. But, according to Valrey, it was the liquor store case that began his reporter/source relationship with Yusuf Bey IV.

Valrey got his interviews by treating Bey like a civic leader with a respectable platform and not like someone apparently caught on videotape ransacking two businesses. While other media outlets were asking how bakery leaders could have become so violent, Valrey avoided the question completely, and instead let Bey discuss the issue of liquor stores in poor black neighborhoods.

"The anti-liquor-store movement in Oakland is part of the new black-power era that is emerging in Oakland," Valrey said at the outset of the interview. "A few months ago, some brothers ran up in two liquor stores in North Oakland and threw all of the liquor that was being sold on the ground. That one action kicked off a movement that has Muslims from every faith involved."

Valrey: "What is the objective of the movement to get liquor stores out of the black community?"

Bey: "We had liquor stores in our community for a long period of time, and we know what goes on around these liquor stores. And one thing about it is, it's not just liquor stores. They sell crack around these liquor stores, they're able to buy crack and drugs from these liquor stores, and things like this are not supposed to be done by so-called Muslims. If you say you're a Muslim, you should have the action of a Muslim."

Most conventional journalists would have regarded Valrey's two softball interviews as a shameful case of pandering to an apparent criminal. But Valrey not only defends his right to interview Bey, but stands by his interview subject. He suggests that Bey is the victim of a racist media conspiracy.

"I did this interview with Yusuf Bey IV because I think that it is important for the black community to hear his voice through the barrage of malicious articles that the mainstream media has been putting out about him and his codefendants," Valrey wrote in the introduction to a Bay View transcription of his KPFA interview. "I'm not a judge or a jury but, as a journalist, I'm definitely not going to let the racist media bury someone that I have access to, without allowing him to say what he has to say. The mainstream media is not used to our community saying that we are going to make our minds up on what we believe independent of their white power media infrastructures."

In a recent interview with the East Bay Express, Valrey went further still. He appeared to endorse the very acts of vandalism that Bey and the other bakery members were suspected of committing.

"I thought that Yusuf Bey and the Black Muslim Bakery took a stand that local politicians haven't taken in decades, that being that the black community is drowning in liquor stores," Valrey said. "In a lot of places we don't have supermarkets but we have liquor stores on every corner, and it's an issue that has been talked about for decades and nobody dealt with it. They've never said anything to me as if they done it or didn't do it, but whoever did it, I support the fact that they did what local politicians couldn't do and they brought the issue front and center. To this day, nothing has been done to limit the amount of liquor stores in the black community, which we basically equate in the black community to biological warfare. If they were involved with that, I applaud."

And Valrey's relationship with Bey would eventually extend beyond his tacit support for acts of vandalism. It would eventually result in Valrey being implicated along with Bey in one of Oakland's highest-profile murder cases.



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The crime that forever changed the public's perception of the bakery was the August 2, 2007, murder of Oakland Post editor Chauncey Bailey. Bailey was gunned down in front of witnesses who saw a black man shoot him with a shotgun before escaping in a white van. Since Bailey had been working on a story about the bakery, that institution was immediately suspected. Because of an unrelated investigation, the bakery's compound was soon raided, and several members were taken into custody, including Bey and employee Devaughndre Broussard. The latter confessed to Bailey's murder but later recanted, saying Bey had ordered him to confess. News coverage of the crime eventually called attention to a suspicious connection between the suspected mastermind and JR Valrey.

An October 25, 2008, story by the Chauncey Bailey Project — a team of reporters and news outlets created to investigate Bailey's murder — accused Oakland Police Detective Derwin Longmire of ignoring crucial evidence connecting Bey to the crime. Cell phone records and surveillance information available to Longmire evidently placed Bey outside Bailey's home just hours before his murder. During the fourteen minutes that Bey sat parked outside of Bailey's house in the early hours of August 2, he made a number of phone calls, mostly to bakery member Antoine Mackey. But the records show he also made calls to Valrey.

"During the fourteen minutes he was outside Bailey's apartment early Aug. 2, Bey IV received two calls from a person who had known Bailey for more than a decade," the article states, "JR Valrey, a blogger and activist then reporting for the San Francisco Bay View newspaper, where Bailey sometimes contributed news items. Valrey is also affiliated with New America Media, a sponsor of the Chauncey Bailey Project.

"The records show that Bey IV called Valrey twice on Aug. 1, and that Valrey called Bey IV twice while Bey IV was parked outside Bailey's apartment on Aug. 2. The two calls totaled 2 minutes and 18 seconds. Six minutes after leaving Bailey's apartment, Bey IV called Valrey at 12:43 a.m. That call lasted nearly three minutes, the records show.

"Valrey refused to discuss the calls with the Bailey Project. '(It's) none of your business,' he said, and refused to answer other questions. 'I don't have nothing to say to you, man,' he said. 'You all are the anti-bakery project.'"

The article stated that police never interviewed Valrey regarding these conversations. But Valrey did subsequently address the accusations in the San Francisco Bay View.

"Last Sunday," he wrote, "the Oakland Tribune released an article from the Chauncey Bailey Project called 'Evidence Ignored,' which passed off misleading information as facts and omitted relevant information in apparent attempts at character assassination." Valrey proceeded to accuse the stories of containing errors and outright lies, "which have made many people outside of the self-congratulating walls of the journalism industry question its credibility, professionalism and sincerity." Valrey said he refused to answer the reporters' questions because he didn't believe they were working in his best interests, nor in those of the black community or Chauncey Bailey.

"Ever since its inception, it was never about honoring and continuing the work of the late journalist Chauncey Wendell Bailey Jr. and answering questions regarding his death, as it claims on its web site," Valrey wrote in a Bay View article. "The Project and the Oakland police seem to have more of a lynch mob mentality in their investigation. They seem to be trying to ensure that their reporting will result in some young black male or a group of them paying for the murder of Chauncey, even if they are innocent."

So what were the phone calls about? Valrey told the Express that he was calling Bey IV to talk about the case of one Laronte Studdesville, whom he described as a victim of police brutality. A meeting with Studdesville's father had been scheduled for the following day, and Valrey was inviting Bey to attend.

Valrey's editor, Mary Ratcliff, confirms that assertion. "What JR does is very much in the tradition of the Panthers," Ratcliff said. "He looks to the street — or gangs, as the police would call it — and sees that these guys are doing political organizing and they don't even know it. Maybe their intentions aren't always that great, but many of these gangs legitimately started out to protect their neighborhoods and their communities. If we could just politicize them, imagine what we could do. That's what JR's always tried to do, but that doesn't make him a gangster. I know that he had been trying to recruit Yusuf for months, telling him that there are better ways of doing things, and that's what those calls were about."

But if this was a business call, then why did it come so late at night?

"I don't remember it being around midnight," Valrey said. "It may have been around 10. We don't have a bedtime, neither me nor Yusuf Bey, as far as I know. To speak for myself, I don't have a bedtime, so we don't just stick to white business time, 9 to 5. I just don't make calls in those times and I don't think that calling someone at 12:00 implicates me in anything.

"I think that I effectively poked a lot of holes in where they were basically trying to implicate me in a murder that I'm not involved in, in any way," Valrey said. "But it also shows the weakness in their journalism, shows the laziness in their journalism. I did a very shallow investigation and poked holes all throughout what they were saying in the article I was in."

Valrey says he believes that Bey had nothing to do with Bailey's killing. "They're treating them as criminals and they're trying to be the judge and the jury."

The murder of Chauncey Bailey appears to most observers to have been based upon the notion that imminent reporting from Bailey would threaten the interests of the bakery. But Bailey was hardly a probing investigative reporter; in fact, he was widely criticized in journalism circles for how cozy he often was with his subjects. Valrey advances an equally improbable notion: that it was Bailey's ongoing efforts to expose Oakland police corruption that led to his death.

"At the time of his murder, Chauncey Bailey and Yusuf Bey were both in my phone," Valrey said, adding that he and Bailey had a good relationship. "I also know that Chauncey Bailey was working on a story dealing directly with the police."

Valrey maintains that the Chauncey Bailey Project hasn't done enough to pursue leads that Bailey was looking into police corruption at the time of his death, and has suggested not only that Bailey's murder was a police cover-up for which Bey was a scapegoat, but also that the Chauncey Bailey Project is in fact a front for the police.

Bob Butler, a reporter with the Chauncey Bailey Project and president of the Bay Area Black Journalists Association, denies Valrey's suggestion that the project is in cahoots with the police. He said the project has found no evidence implicating the Oakland police in the murder. "The last story Chauncey wrote was about the bakery. He may have been looking into possible police corruption, but we have seen no evidence to verify that claim," Butler said. "I'd be very interested to see evidence that the police were responsible for Chauncey Bailey's murder." Butler points out that the Chauncey Bailey Project published evidence last June showing that Bey admitted that he kept the shotgun used to kill Bailey in his closet after the murder. That information can be found at ChaunceyBaileyProject.org.

But this is not evidence enough for Valrey. "I think that the Chauncey Bailey Project really speaks to the disconnect between the journalist world and the real world," he said. "You have the bigwigs in mainstream journalism coming together and of course they're going to pat themselves on the back for doing a good job. But the question still remains: They did all this, and they wrote all this about Yusuf Bey, but he's not even charged yet, so really the question comes, how effective are you? Because you guys work hand-in-hand with the police, obviously. I'm not going to talk to the police, whether it's through the Chauncey Bailey Project or whether it's through a uniformed officer. If I have anything to say, I'll say it in the San Francisco Bay View or on Block Report Radio."



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KPFA has a long tradition of giving a voice to viewpoints otherwise ignored in the mainstream media. Like Valrey, many of the station's contributors have an agenda. Although some staffers dutifully adhere to the same journalistic standards embraced by mainstream journalists, others have less interest in reporting the news than in giving voice to the perceived underdog. Many of these advocacy journalists are, like Valrey, unpaid volunteer producers.

Unpaid staffers make up a political block of significance at KPFA and have the support of some paid staffers, including Dennis Bernstein, who has taken Valrey under his wing by giving him airtime on Flashpoints. As a member of its volunteer staff association, Valrey has been critical of KPFA management for some time.

Last year, station manager Lemlem Rijio curbed the influence of the often-unruly unpaid staffers. Rijio changed the rules to reduce the voting power of unpaid staffers, who for years enjoyed the same voting rights as paid staff members when it came to selecting board representation. Since around that time, Valrey has zeroed in on Rijio and other station managers.

Last August, while interviewing filmmaker Iana Jones about her documentary on black radio, Valrey used the topic as a platform to criticize Rijio. "Even today," he said, in an implied reference to KPFA, "there are black puppets put there to keep the status quo in place." He also said that the repression of black viewpoints at KPFA is being enforced "by black face, from the top." And Valrey made a point of noting with apparent disapproval — as he has done numerous times in his Bay View articles — that Rijio is from Ethiopia.

The interview was one of many times that Valrey has called for a black public affairs show on KPFA. "That has been one of my major campaigns," he said. "There's black music shows on the radio, but there's really no regular black public affairs show. KPFA has these types of programs for Asians, for Latinos, but not for black people. I would like to see The Block Report as a weekly or daily, or even a biweekly program," he said. "This really came to a head when the Nadra Foster thing happened."

Just three days after Valrey's interview with Jones, the long-running conflict between some of KPFA's volunteers and management once again came to a head when volunteer staffer Nadra Foster was arrested and removed from the station's studios by Berkeley police. Foster had reportedly been banned from KPFA for making long-distance calls on KPFA phone lines. However, she continued to work in the station's studios, coming in about three times a week. She claimed that she didn't think the ban was official, as she had never received anything in writing. When a staff member confronted her for using one of the studios, a manager called police to remove her. Foster, who had a prior criminal record, resisted her arrest, allegedly biting one of the officers during the melee. After more officers were called, Foster was forced to the ground, put in restraints, and hauled off to jail.

The Foster incident prompted Valrey to call for Rijio's resignation. However, a supporter of Rijio, who asked to remain nameless, said she was dealing with a family emergency at the time of the incident and played no role in calling the police.

More recently, Valrey again called for Rijio's resignation after several paid and unpaid staff members were reprimanded for supporting him on air after his arrest. Those reprimanded include paid staffer Noelle Hanrahan of Prison Radio, and volunteer Nina Serrano of La Raza Chronicles, who both read the following announcement: "We believe JR to be innocent of setting fires and causing physical damages, as he was professionally occupied covering this important story. ... People are showing their support by coming to his hearing Monday, February 23, at 9 a.m. at 661 Washington Street in Oakland."

Hanrahan defends her actions. "Management doesn't understand the tradition of Pacifica and why it's so important that we support and defend it," she said. "The guy is out there, and when you're out there as a journalist you get blowback, and you have to be supported. If the DA comes down on him, that probably means he's doing his job." Speaking of Valrey's call for Rijio's resignation, she said, "I want things to change at KPFA, and I support JR's right to say what he said. JR is a serious journalist doing important work. In my opinion we need ten JRs."

On the day after her announcement, Hanrahan said, she was given a formal notice of misconduct and asked to take a leave of absence. The notice, obtained by the Express, claimed violation of station policy in three regards: making a "direct call to action" over the air, broadcasting information without authorization from management, and neglecting to indicate that the information was "not the opinion or position of KPFA." Serrano said she was not given a written reprimand but warned verbally about her transgression. KPFA staffers were also given a memo reiterating these three rules and noting that their violation would lead to disciplinary action, Hanrahan said.

Valrey responded with an article in the Bay View. "KPFA was the first listener-sponsored station in the country when it went into business in 1949 and was seen as a beacon of audio resistance in Northern California. Sixty years later, East African-born General Manager Lemlem Rijio has had broadcasters reprimanded because of their support for me and the Oakland 100. All of this is some bullshit, considering that KPFA is constantly begging for money. Isn't that a 'call to action' or 'advocating action on the air'? ... We are urging everyone to call KPFA and tell them that you will not give them another cent until the General Manager Lemlem Rijio is fired or steps down. We need a constant inundation of calls to kick off this part of the campaign."



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On March 21, three Oakland police sergeants were shot and killed by parolee Lovelle Mixon. Another officer was severely injured and died the following day. Mixon, who had a warrant for his arrest for parole violation, had been pulled over on MacArthur Boulevard in what was described as a routine stop. After shooting Sergeants John Hege and Mark Dunakin, Mixon apparently walked over to the officers and shot them both again, execution-style. He then fled the scene and hid out in a nearby apartment building. Police raided the building after receiving a tip as to his whereabouts. From inside a closet, Mixon shot and killed S.W.A.T team members Ervin Romans and Daniel Sakai with an AK-47 assault rifle. He was then killed by another officer.

While most of Oakland reeled in shock over one of the deadliest attacks on law enforcement in California history, JR Valrey wrote an article for the Bay View that essentially justified Mixon's actions.

The article, headlined "Police 2, Oakland residents 4," described Mixon as "a suicide sniper who used a gun instead of a bomb to take out enemies of the community." It described the tragedy as one that "some in the black community see as a day of heroic resistance against the police." The article went on to suggest that street memorials for the fallen officers were police-created, and that reports of citizens attending them were media propaganda. "The reality is, when you go to the scene, which I did a number of times, you see very few residents of the area — especially young black males — with any sympathy for the officers."

Valrey referred to the incident as a "revolutionary suicide," and wrapped up his piece with a provocative question-cum-threat: "How does it feel when the rabbit has the gun? Welcome to East Oakland."

You can always find another side of the story at BlockReportRadio