Bits and pieces here. 

Charlie The Moderator is the author of the emails I get from playhata.com. His Bush musings this morning were, like Michael Moore’s letter, too good to resist:

 

How many of you listened to Dubya as he hijacked all of the tv channels last night? Well he said 21,500 more troops are needed to fix his mistakes.

 

Ok, so President Bush admitted mistakes have caused failures in Iraq, but defied war-weary and politically lazy Americans to do something about it last night by announcing he is sending 21,500 more U.S. troops into the cauldron. That’s just more targets, the way I see it, but  Bush insisted his new plan “will change America’s course in Iraq.” In truth, Bush’s surge forward is really a step back.

 

Meanwhile, longtime poet and activist Marvin X has written a review of the new Will Smith film, “The Pursuit of Happyness.” I’ve seen it. My one-sentence review: It’s a heartwarming film that somehow is both about Black self-determination and Right-wing values.

 

Contradictory? Welcome to the (African-)American experience. 🙂 But I have to yield to Marvin X on this one. Please read:

 

The Pursuit of Happyness
 
Starring Will Smith
 
Review By Marvin X
mrvnx@yahoo.com  

Will Smith has processed himself into a great actor—from rapper to “Fresh Prince,” to “Ali” and other characters. But “The Pursuit of Happyness” lacked the full drama of being down and out in the most beautiful city in the world, San Francisco.

The film was a Miller Lite version of homelessness, and the narrow focus on the main character excluded the high drama of homelessness in San Francisco’s Tenderloin—that poverty area two blocks from the famous Cable Car line at Market and Powell, and a few blocks from the Shopping area for the rich, Union Square. 

The contrast is so overwhelming we wonder how could the filmmaker fail to show us this. It is totally shocking to tourists who often make the wrong turn coming out of their hotel room and find themselves in the Tenderloin, the multiracial ghetto inhabited by Blacks, Latinos, Asians and poor whites, with a great amount of the population addicted to drugs. All we see of the homeless are them standing in line at Glide Church, administered by Rev. Cecil Williams, the angel of San Francisco’s homeless, addicted and afflicted, the male version of Mother Theresa. Cecil appears in the film as himself; after all, no one can perform his role except him.

The most dramatic moment is this scene outside Glide when Rev. Williams allows the main character and his son to get in line for a room. But it is powerful because we see the army of the homeless and the hungry in America. This moment is communal and we see the individual as part of a nation of homeless.

France has called homelessness a matter of national security. France is calling for its citizens guaranteed housing. America can do likewise. There is absolutely no excuse for homelessness and hunger in America, the richest nation in the world.
 
I lived the life of a homeless drug addict in San Francisco’s Tenderloin. On one level, it was good to see the main character was not drug addicted. But it would have added so much more drama.

(Maybe his little, frustrated wife should have been on drugs, because she has no real motivation to depart for New York, leaving her son behind for a two-dollar job. Her character was weak and should have been explored, or at least included a violent departing scene.  Since Will Smith used his son, why not have [his real wife] Jada as his wife? Surely they could have created more drama, including a love scene that was absent in the film.)
 
After I spent a decade in the Tenderloin (and God only knows how I made it out alive—thank you God Allah) as a Crack addict, I knew many mothers and fathers who abandoned their children for the drug life.

Yesterday, a young lady at my outdoor classroom, downtown Oakland, told me she became homeless in San Francisco because her mother was doing Crack and she had to escape, so she lived in the street. The young lady, now 19, said she grew up in foster care.
 
A few weeks ago, a young brother recently released from prison, asked me about his mother whom he hasn’t seen since he was a baby. She has been lost in the Tenderloin for years, and I have seen her from time to time, so I told the young man—also a product of foster care, now the California Department of Corrections—to go stand at 6th and Market and eventually he will see his mother, passing by on a mission impossible. I had told my nephew to do the same to find his father, lost and turned out in the TL. This is some of the pain the film lacked.
 
It showed the grand beauty of San Francisco, but again, it should not have neglected the contrasting ugliness.  There was a scene with Chris and his son at the East bay bus terminal, where they spent the night along with other homeless, although we don’t see the others in the film. I spent many nights on those benches at the East bay terminal; it was difficult to find bench space in those days, around the same time as the film, early 1980s.

 
Ok, this is one man’s story, the struggle of an individual to get ovah in America, a slave narrative. Slavery was communal, not individual, so we need to know about all those others who are still there, who didn’t make it out. Can they get out? I got out. Chris got out, so it takes discipline as he demonstrated. You got to be ’bout it ’bout it. For Chris it was one step forward two back, but he fought all the way, trying to be husband, father, and worker in a racist society. Apparently he was successful.
 
Marvin X’s latest collection of essays is “Beyond Religion, Toward Spirituality” (Black Bird Press, 2006. ISBN: 0-9649672-9-4). His book is available in Oakland at De Lauer’s books, 14th and Broadway, and Your Black Muslim Bakery, San Pablo at Stanford.  Otherwise, send $19.95 to Black Bird Press, P.O. Box 1317, Paradise Calif. 95967.
Visit marvinxspeaks@blogspot.com and http://www.nathanielturner.com .

 

Also, I noticed that longtime commentator Earl Ofari Hutchinson is on The Huffington Post. Here’s his commentary on Black-Latino tensions.

And, this makes me chuckle every time I hear it.