This photo was a long time coming. Many, many moons ago, while a member of student government, I had a vision of students at the College of Alameda not only supporting their athletic teams and being proud of their college. I also wanted to encourage students to volunteer in the community.
Dreams do come true. And a piece of that dream came true last night, at the College of Alameda vs. Laney College basketball game, when I took a photo with Eddie the Eagle and Cool E. Cougar.
When I was on student government at COA, I put together a proposal to get a mascot. That mascot was Cool E. Cougar (with an "E" for education). I was the first mascot, followed by my folks Jason (aka "Mouse"). When we left, Coolie ended up in a closet somewhere.
Meanwhile, now at Laney College pursuing Journalism, I brought a mascot there. Eddie the Eagle.
Eddie had a little more support at Laney College because the athletics program was more robust, plus the school had some fly cheerleaders.
In 2007, me and Josh Wolf got together and made this highlight reel of Eddie.
But I was never able to get them together for the real work that I wanted them for; to get children excited about learning.
So, even though taking the photo was only a symbolic gesture, I'm now confident that I will be able to involve the mascots in my current initiative, Peralta Reads.
Photos: Top, Me with Eddie the Eagle and Cool E. Cougar; left, Laney College student Ebony Miller dances with Eddie the Eagle at 2009 Welcome Back Bash; right, Cool E. Cougar posts up in the AC Transit Mini-Bus at Alameda's 2008 Welcome Back Bash.
p.s. I don't have a pot belly. I just came back from eating some really good Cambodian food and was a little stuffed.
Super busy day today. If I can push through the day, there's a fun night ahead.
Banned Books exhibit at Laney College.
Already finished class. Tengo mucho tarea para la fin de semana. Wrote an article about a student protest at Laney College yesterday. Read the NYTimes. Edited some photos. And studied for Geography. Not bad for an hour and a half.
But it's tonight I'm looking forward to. Tonight in West Oakland, the Lower Bottomz Playaz are doing August Wilson's "Gem of the Ocean." I first got hip to Wilson when Laney College did A Piano Lesson a few years back. "Gem" is the highlight of the night, as I get to go with local writer Ann Jacobs.
Before that, I'm going to hit up the College of Alameda vs. Laney College volleyball game and check out the Northern California premiere of "Gerrymandering" at the Laney College theater.
But for now, I need to run for this meeting relating to the Peralta Colleges Accreditation story I'm writing.
Oh yeah, I might get my hurr did (hair done) at the Laney College Cosmetology Department.
I was completely exhausted this week. Besides launching a story I had to triple fact-check before publishing, I had a couple projects I was working on.
The most challenging project was the most rewarding. I created a newspaper for an upcoming dance performance in San Francisco called, "Sailing Away." The show is a guerilla dance performance taking place on Market Street about the history of Black folks in early San Francisco.
Most of my friends know I don't like San Francisco. But this performance will warrant me taking a trip across the pond.
The performance talks about early Black San Franciscan's like Mary Ellen Pleasant, Mifflin Gibbs and Archy Lee, and the climate that led to the Black Exodus of 1858, when hundreds of Blacks left California for Canada. It's a fascinating story that I'm only familiar with because I used to do the layout for the San Francisco Bay View Newspaper. California was a free state. But that good old "Compromise of 1850" led to the reintroduction of the Fugitive Slave Act. What made matters worse in California, laws were set up where only white people could testify. In fact, if a Black woman was raped, but no whites "witnessed" it, there was no crime. Just like slavery when white men had complete control over our bodies.
In this climate, Blacks – who then preferred to be called "Colored" – organized a major convention to fight back. When I think of these colored conventions, which took place while their brethren were still enslaved in the South, remind me of the Pan-African Congresses that began in the 1900s.
Moving on. Despite the discrimination, Black folks in Frisco were making moves. Owning property, businesses while being freedom fighters.
Mary Ellen Pleasant was widely known because she was a madam. But, like I wrote in the newspaper's headline, "Mary's more than Pleasant." Mary was a freedom fighter. Besides predating Rosa Parks and Ida B. Wells in her fight for transportation justice – she was discriminated against while getting on a streetcar – and she also used her fortune to fund abolition. As her tombstone says, "She was a friend of John Brown's."
And Gibbs was the founder of the first Black Newspaper West of the Mississippi; Mirror of the Times.
If you are in the city this weekend, be sure to go to Market Street and check out Sailing Away. The show takes place between Battery and Powell Street starting Thursday, October 7 and runs through Sunday, October 10. Performances will take place at the top of each half hour from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.
Be sure to get a newspaper. It has a lot of great historical information about the people I mentioned above, and many others.
At least it's not that green baby shit, I guess. The lyrics above (yeah, that shit rhymes) is from a new song by some Oakland Negroes. Absolute embarrassment.
With all the death and destruction associated with liquor stores in Oakland, these Negroes have gone and made an anthem for the "Liquor Store."
To be fair, the editing of the video isn't bad. The beat is decent. But the raps and content aren't worth a tall can of 211, nor the paper bad I suspect one would keep that 211 in.
This must be funded by the Yemeni Grocers Association of the Bay Area.
I'm sure my part-time Muslim, liquor store owning "cousins" love this. I can smell the blunt guts and hear the bottles popping now.
Dumb ass Coons. This sort of behavior will not get you invited to Obama's Liquor Summit.
The scholarship is in memory of Chauncey Bailey, an Oakland journalist who was assassinated in 2007. I still remember being at Camp Akili and getting a call from my mom -- Deborah James, arts editor at the California Voice when Chauncey was editor -- telling me he was murdered. I'd finally met Chauncey a year before. A story I'd written for the Laney Tower was sent out to local media as a press release. I saw the story published in the Globe Newspaper (with some edits) and I was pissed. I was looking up copyright laws and all that. I finally talked to Chauncey and he explained what happened.
The more research I do on the Black Press in the Bay Area, the more I learn about him -- and from him. He wrote a series for the California Voice in the 1990s about the Black Press. An invaluable series that should be compiled and required reading for Black Journalists.
I thought you might be interested in reading excerpts from my scholarship essay, titled, "Telling our Stories."
My friend’s grandmother once told us, “If you don’t tell your story, someone else will.”
"In 2004, when, along with 400 other families – my family was forced from our apartment in West Alameda, I thought we’d get some sympathy from our local newspaper, the Alameda Journal. Instead, many of the articles portrayed us as criminals.
A year later, I was first published in the San Francisco Bay View newspaper. Since then my writings have been featured in Black newspapers like the Oakland Post, Globe Newspaper and the Sunday Morning News. This initiation has given me a high regard for the Black Press.
Recently, I’ve committed myself to the historical study of the Black Press. I’m particularly interested in publications in the Bay Area. Through my research, I developed a few presentations on the history of the Black Press.
This summer, I was a teacher at Oakland Freedom School (OFS), a five-week literacy program through Leadership Excellence. My class, named after my shero, Ida B. Wells, focused on the History of the Black Press, journalism basics and the history of West Oakland. The young women in my class interviewed community members and wrote articles for a newsletter they deemed, “Freedom School Diaries.”
My journalism philosophy can be best summed up under the Kemetic (Ancient Egyptian) principles of Ma’at: balance, order, justice, harmony, truth, righteousness and reciprocity.
And as the Credo for the Negro Press stood during World War II, when the institution of the Black Press was under attack for its “Double V” campaign, “I Shall be a crusader and an advocate, a mirror and a record, a herald and a spotlight, and I shall not falter.
Insight into my daily regimen. Obviously of a different specimen. Me, myself & I. So fly. Welcome to the Daily Regiment.
This blog is an outlet for me to write about my life experiences. While there will be consistent themes in my writing -- because I am what I project in written form -- the topics will vary from day to day, and post to post.
That fall, I began publishing stories in the Oakland Post. He later became editor. I last saw him at 
