April 2022
*Edited newsletter, passed events and deadlines removed
Dear friends, family, and constituents,
In this week's newsletter, I’m going to spotlight the arts & culture session at the Black New Deal Symposium. As you may know by now, the symposium kicked off a phase of legislative research and development that is now ongoing with the goal to address the anti-Black policy and programming that has harmed Black communities, and as a result, continues to yield outcomes that impact all Oakland residents today. The six sessions deep dive into why this work matters. You can find coverage of all the sessions on the Latest News page of my website. My office will be continuing to engage Black Oaklanders throughout this research and development process.
In Service and Solidarity,
Councilmember Carroll Fife
Items In This Newsletter
Black New Deal Spotlights - Artists Refa Senay and Rashida Chase Present on Arts & Culture
The Black New Deal Spotlight
1. Artists Refa Senay and Rashida Chase Present on Arts & Culture
For over two decades, Oakland California native Refa One has been instrumental in the development of the genre of art known as “Aerosol Art” (Graffiti Art/Style Writing). Refa’s design aesthetic promotes African culture as a vehicle for radical political and social change. Refa One is currently the director of AeroSoul, an international organization of spray can artists from the African Diaspora.
An Oakland native, performing vocalist, & culture, arts education and wellness advocate, Rashida Chase recognizes and embraces the power that music and culture hold and uses her voice as a tool for liberation. Rashida is the Director of AMP Oakland, a curated busker series piloted in Downtown Oakland in 2019 showcasing more than 300 artists, the same year she founded Liberated Culture, a cultural enterprise that supports local artists, bridges intergenerational gaps, and uplifts the authentic culture of Oakland.
Refa Senay: It’s important for Black students to have Black teachers who are interested in Black self-determination. When this doesn’t exist in the curriculum, children suffer. Much of the self-hatred and violence we see on the streets is a direct result of the state-run and white-power informed infrastructure that has been failing Black children for at least sixty years. It's important for us to step up as a community and organize in ways where we are able to supplement conventional education and/or take over the educational process.
Learning from The Black Panther Party
The Black Panther Party had a very influential and impactful role in shaping the ways that young people in the community at that time saw themselves, from exterior aesthetics such as their beauty and hair, as well as seeing that they had the internal power to meet their community’s immediate needs. Their Ten-Point Program shared fundamental ideas for young people to navigate their everyday lives that are still relevant today. For example Point #4, “We Want Decent Housing Fit For The Shelter Of Human Beings,” is not only still relevant fifty-five years later, the housing crisis is even worse than it was in 1966. If our children learn about the past responses organizers took, they can begin to imagine how we as the Black community have enough love and discipline to organize resources and shelter to meet the needs of our brothers and sisters.
Black people at the vanguard of public art in their communities
Paul Robeson said "the artist must elect to fight for freedom or slavery, I've made my choice, I had no alternative". We as artists of African descent in the community have an obligation and a responsibility to make radical revolutionary change attractive. It is our job to plant the seeds of change into the imagination of young people. It's important for public art to speak to that and for youth to see people of African descent from their communities creating that public art. White artists have been seen to take up funds, resources and visual space in Black and urban Brown communities in order to speak on our behalf for things that they feel should be addressed. This is disrespectful. An ally must understand that when you are coming into working with oppressed groups of people, it is those people who have to be the vanguard and are the leadership that directs what is to be expressed. If you want to support them, ask them what you can do, and they will give you some instructions.
Moreover, when our young people see non-Black people coming into the Black community to do this type of work, what it says is that change comes from the outside, it doesn't come from you. And the best we can get from this is someone who becomes a caricature of trying to be someone outside of themselves, to heal themselves. This creates a schizophrenia that we just don't need, it's unhealthy. It's important for us to make sure that Black people in their community are at the vanguard in making the change there. We have so much talent here in the city of Oakland, that when properly organized, that should not be a problem at all.
Aerosol - mentoring youth through the arts
Aerosol is an organization based in West Oakland as well as in Los Angeles, across the United States, and West Africa. It has been sharing the Black Panther Party’s legacy by working with youth to create public artworks that make the Ten-Point Program visually accessible and present in the urban landscapes for community members to see and feel inspired by. Doing this work gives us an opportunity to talk to both the community and the youth we are creating the artworks with.
We took a trip to Dakar, Senegal with a group of four young people, the type of young people who are usually listed as high risk, in order to paint the Black Panther Party’s Ten-Point Platform there. The youth were able to raise funds, coordinate logistics such as getting their passports, and collaborate with Pan-African artists who had previously worked with us here in Oakland. It is possible when we organize to make this type of revolutionary radical change, that it’s a life-changing experience for young people to be able to use their voices to speak power into existence all over the world. This is part of the legacy of Oakland, when they understand that it was fourteen to eighteen year olds in the Black Panther Party that made change in the world, that they grew up on the same streets that they do, that's empowering. It's important for artists to be a part of that conversation to make sure that those voices are heard.
Intentionally reaching out to Black artists with support
From Rashida Chase: When I was Director of AMP Oakland, a curated busking program that piloted in 2019 and had over 300 performances with over 170 artists, approximately 75 were black, because I intentionally made sure that we were represented. We need to make sure that Black artists are getting opportunities and being exposed to the community, and this may require the need for upskilling and learning how to navigate systems.
When the pandemic hit there was a lot of funding that was available. I was email polling people in the musician’s community and hearing that a lot of people didn't even know that these programs existed. Many of us were already primarily working in jobs that were frontline jobs. A lot of people lost their jobs and their gigging income. We were disproportionately affected because we just did not have the ability to sustain ourselves and our families. I noticed several other white artists who were very well resourced and connected, and as a result had the ability to pivot very quickly and, in some cases, were even able to make more money than they had before. We need to intentionally reach out to Black artists to share these resources.
Supporting Black arts - Mentors and housing
The decimation of arts education in schools primarily serving Black children is extremely detrimental in our community, because as a result, our children don't have safe spaces to express themselves. I'm piloting a mentors program at Skyline High School where we have musicians assist the music teachers and mentor our youth. We hope to be in more schools over the coming years.
Housing is a huge issue. I have been collecting a lot of data from my community about what's going on with them and their needs, and housing insecurity comes up as a huge issue for a lot of Black artists in Oakland. There are a lot of people who have not been able to stay here because the cost of housing is out of control, either you are breaking your back to pay over $3,000 a month in rent or you're living with four or five people. As a result, I am learning more about real estate and development so see how we can create housing opportunities specifically for Black artists.
I'm really happy that this Symposium is happening and that we're having this conversation, because I think that artists are often left out of the conversation, even though we are the reason why people want to come to Oakland. We are literally the lifeblood of this city. It's really important that we make investments in the people who are the culture keepers, the people who are already doing the work in the community and making sure that they're able to take care of themselves and their families.
