How OPD has created a Golden Age for Bipping

Bipping is a post pandemic phenomenon that feels as indigenous to the Bay Area as sideshows and Mac Dre murals. I’m aware that it happens in other places but members of the criminal  underworld in Oakland have mastered it. As a matter of fact, if it were a college course then it would have to be taught at either Cal State East Bay or UC Berkeley. The art of breaking into cars and stealing all valuables inside of it in 8 seconds or less, taught by Professor Lil Hyfee/Sociology Department/3 units. 

Celebrities like Alex Rodriguez, B. Simone, and Lyfe Jennings have all been victims of this crime. And tens of thousands of folks just trying to make a living, get their cars hit up every single day in The Town. People like me.

 Last summer I got my car window broken and I literally had nothing inside my car. I caught them trying to pull down my backseat and get into my trunk. I screamed, “Yooooo!!” and the wiry teenager got into an awaiting car and they drove off. I felt frustrated, violated, and enraged. I had to pay $475. The vandals were off to the next car with no consequence. That was over a year ago. Now thieves have gotten even more brazen, but how? Why? Don’t they face any repercussions for doing this? Well, according to Assistant Chief Tony Jones as well as the rest of the Oakland Police Department, the answer is No.

In a video recently uploaded to X, he stated in what appears to be a town hall meeting, that because of Prop. 47 if they catch someone in the act of breaking into a car and that person has an ID then they must cite them and let them go. But San Francisco public defender Jesse Hsieh rebutted this claim. He said that smash and grabs and car burglaries are indeed felonies and he gets several cases for felony car burglaries. He went on to say that he was trying to figure out how the same crimes are felonies in San Francisco but citable offenses in Oakland. Then there was silence. Finally, Assistant Police Chief Tony Jones says, “Well maybe I misspoke.”

No potna! You did not misspeak. The Oakland Police Department is intentionally letting people rob The Town blind. Admit that you all are still harboring a lot of resentment from the Black Lives Matter/Defund the Police Movement. And now you want to bring every activist and George Floyd sympathizer to their knees for being recalcitrant. Once we beg you for forgiveness (a process that some have already started in the media and in city council meetings) then you will be able to hire an abundance of police, change laws to arrest more people which will ultimately lead to more prisons being built, and then you all will be able to get back to aggressively shaking down innocent Black people who look “suspicious,” and there will be no organization powerful enough to chastise you because all you’ll need to say in your own defense is; “You see what happens when we let them run amuck. Let us do our jobs or the mass bipping will come back tomorrow.” 
See video here!

And I know all of this may sound like a conspiracy. I don’t deny being a conspiracy theorist because, as a wise person once said, “The only difference between a conspiracy theory and the truth is time.” The fact that a city such as Oakland situated just north of the Silicon Valley, right across the Bay from San Francisco, with an International airport, a major league baseball team, a rich legacy, and over 420,000 residents can decide to decriminalize car burglaries is beyond absurd. We should all be very concerned about our Assistant Police Chief’s comments and how they have led to a golden age for Bippers in Oakland.                  

What becomes of a Black Utopia in Oakland?

A few weeks ago I rode my bike down to Lake Merritt to experience a black business utopia. A few days later I discovered while watching the news that the whole thing would be drastically scaled back. The news spoke of neighbors complaining and the proper business permits not being held by vendors, and it all felt very typical of my city. In the early to mid 1990’s we had an annual event called “Festival at the Lake” in which hundreds of black vendors would come together to celebrate righteous blackness at Lake Merritt which is undoubtedly the crown jewel of our city. Then one year young people rioted. If I’m not mistaken they broke out the window to a Foot Locker and a few other storefronts. I don’t know why. I do know that Oakland was consistently one of the most homicidal cities in the country at this time. This to my knowledge, though I was just a young boy at the time, didn’t seem to concern the power structure in the way that one would think that it should. However, when corporate businesses were attacked on Lakeshore Avenue the footage was shown on every local news station for several days and within a few years there was no more festival at the lake. 

In the early 2000’s we had something called Carijama at Mosswood Park. It lasted for only a few years until it met a similar fate. Young people once again were getting rowdy. Neighbors once again complained. The news once again played its part to see to it that the festival was shut down. I remember thinking as a very young adult who looked forward to the memorial day festival as an indicator that the summer was officially here, that my city seemed to be very proud of failing black people. Instead of ironing out the edges and  considering ways to make celebrations safe, Oakland would much rather shut down all things black. This brings me back to the black business utopia that I experienced a few weeks ago. 

I met a black man who was selling organic honey that he along with his son and nephew had procured as beekeepers. He, like myself, is an allergy sufferer and he began making honey because it is a natural remedy for allergies. I saw a black woman selling tacos. I bought a refrigerator magnet from a sister who does custom made engraving. I bought sage from another sister. I bought an Oakanda shirt (the fictional homeland of Black Panther and Oakland combined) from a brother with a kind disposition and an entrepreneurial spirit. And everything felt so dope. It was just so righteous and so black that I knew that it wouldn’t last-- at least not in Oakland. In a place like Atlanta for example they would institutionalize this vending. Maybe they would make vendors pay a fee and regulate the products more, but their first inclination would not be to scale it down to nothing. But alas, this is not Georgia this is California. A place where integration has come to mean every nationality can profit off of black people except black people. A place where residents replace actual black people with black lives matter signs. A place where the children of black southern migrants flee as soon as they graduate high school because, ironically enough, the American South is less racist. Can you imagine that? California with all of her liberal ideology is actually more hostile to black business owners than Georgia, Tennessee, or Texas. And Oakland is proving this to be true once again. Last weekend when I went to Lake Merritt there were less than a third of the businesses that were there the previous weekend. The Fire Department was there regulating parking and interrogating vendors and it was far less vibrant. It was clear that the utopia was dying. Or to be more concise--it was being killed. It was very disheartening to know that my city would rather create laws to keep black people in their respective corners of the city than to let us make legal money in the city that so many of us shed blood for. I rode my bike back to the eastside in a somber mood with no merchandise, knowing that my beloved city had let my people down once again.

Every Saturday and Sunday if the sun is out it gets hella litty at the jewel of my city which is Lake Merritt of course. A very eclectic array of black busin...

True to the Game

ce Cube shocked the black universe when it was announced that he had been meeting with the Donald Trump Administration to endorse his "Contract with Black America." Recently I had a zoom conversation with over a dozen brilliant black people--each one with their own unique perspectives--about how they feel about Ice Cube's move. Check it out! You will not be disappointed. Please like, subscribe, comment upon, and share this video. -Roger Porter

Consternation

As the days leading up to me returning to education pass way too quickly I find myself filled with consternation. I have been on hiatus for over a year now. I have traveled. I have created. I have sheltered in place. I have started my brand. I have made money independently. I have crafted every day of my life to be exactly what I want it to be. My time has been mine for the first time ever in my adult life. And now I have to prepare myself to surrender it to the institution once again. 

I feed off of energy during my lectures. I look into the eyes of my students. I read the room. I put people on the spot who look at me quizzically by asking them to throw their questions out on the floor. I bless those who sneeze. I engage those who appear to be sleepy. I raise the energy level in the room to the highest possible level. Now I wonder how might this skillset that took me decades to master be inhibited by Zoom. 

I have never taught an online class. The idea of lecturing to a computer screen has never been appealing to me, but here we are in the Fall of 2020. I fear that Conference Zoom is not a proper conduit for my soul. I am afraid of the disconnect that has been brought to education thanks to COVID 19. I am not sure how I will face it. I am not sure that I have the patience to return to form.  

Watts

Perhaps I’ve never felt my Oaklandness more than when I went down to Watts for the first time. We were at a skating rink. I had gone down there with my football team to play an exhibition game against the LA Sheriffs pop warner team. We lost the game, but we still wanted to go roller skating. I was with my cousin who was also on the team. He was “playing too much.” He kept faking like he was going to steal money out of my pocket. He was already 12. I was still 11. It bothered me that he was so immature.

“Stop playing blood!” I demanded of him.

And the world stopped spinning. The music stopped playing. And some older boys of about 17 years of age started smirking. A woman who was there with her young child looked at us as if we were spirits. Incredulous. Afraid. Aghast. 

“Are y’all bloods?”

“Naw.”

“Where y’all from?”

“We from Oakland.”

She shook her head.

“You can’t say that word around here.”

Her countenance was one of pure concern. Her voice shook. I can imagine she spoke to me in the same tone that Emmitt Till’s cousins used when they told him he can’t be whistling at no white ladies in Mississippi. I was only 11-years-old, but I remember being convinced that in the city of Los Angeles the idea of childhood must not exist for black boys. There seemed to be no age that was too young to not get seriously hurt for making an innocent mistake. The very concept of innocence felt painfully foreign in that moment.  And before I could process my next move, the music started playing. People began skating again, and the 17-year-old boys went on about their business. 

The next morning the bus drove us six hours north to Brookfield Recreational Center in East Oakland. I wouldn’t go back to L.A. for another 20 years.   

The Confinement Chronicles

A few months ago I sat down with the great brotha Keenan Norris to express my deep appreciation for the poetry of the late Etheridge Knight. What became of our conversation was one of the most amazing audio recordings that I have ever been a part of. Please listen for yourself here:

Notes on the shooting of Megan thee Stallion

I saw a 27-year-old iconic black woman named Megan thee Stallion hobble backwards in the middle of the street at the behest of the Los Angeles Police Department. Her wounded foot leaving a trail of blood on the concrete as she continued to walk backwards with her hands up. Recording artist Tory Lanez laid face down on the opposite side of the vehicle. Initially it was reported that the car was pulled over because an occupant was shooting in the air and that glass from the window cut Meghan’s foot. Then that narrative was replaced with a more disturbing one. Apparently Tory Lanez shot Meghan twice in the foot in a domestic dispute as she tried to leave the SUV. The police then pulled them over a short while later. Tory was charged with weapon possession and quickly bonded out. Meghan has yet to tell the police that Tory is the culprit, but she has made a few social media posts which seem to not only point the finger at Tory but at black men in general. 

“Black women are so unprotected & we hold so many things in to protect the feelings of others w/o considering our own,” she tweeted. “It might be funny to y’all on the internet and just another messy topic for you to talk about but this is my real life and I’m real life hurt and traumatized.”

I feel like a failure. 482.4k people to date liked this post. I would assume a disproportionate amount of them are black women who agree with her sentiments. Many of whom were probably retraumatized by watching a performer like Meghan who is normally so full of confidence and one who possesses an unabashed ownership of her sexuality wounded and bleeding by the hands of a black man. I hate that this feeling of being unprotected is so pervasive amongst black women. I hate the truth of it. I hate that when a black woman sees a group of black men that she does not know then she is much more likely to feel extreme anxiety than comfort. I love black women and it bothers me that in these moments of high-profile domestic abuse, my love can be overruled by the actions of a coward. I wish that I could heal Meg. I wish that I could restore the dignity of black men in the eyes of all black women who have been abused, but I cannot. All I can do is hate what I see, log off of social media, and try to come up with a real-life plan to bring some understanding to our fractured relationships.  

Meg thee Stallion was shot in the foot over the weekend and apparently she knows the culprit but hasn't told the police due to her strong anti snitching valu...

Jada's Prayer

On this gorgeous July day of the year 2020 I want to pray well before bedtime. My prayer is that I never enter a relationship with a woman who is entangled. I ask you heavenly father that you forgive me for all of the entanglements that I have had in the past and I ask you to give those women the strength to free themselves if they haven’t done so already. Please forgive me but I was raised in a generation that promoted the entanglement of black boys in every realm of society. If you weren’t entangling by the age of 13 then you were looked down upon. But now, with your grace blessed Jesus, I am free. I humbly ask that you keep me away from the Jada Pinkett-Smiths of the world oh Lord. Please don’t let her type use me spitefully Dear Lord. And I pray for her union oh God. No more chains for her, no more bondage for me, and no more entanglement for all those who want to be free. In Jesus name I pray.

Amen.

Lift Every Voice and Sing will be performed at NFL Games...and I'm juiced!

My Position on Black Lives Matter

An Oakland Artist

Over a year ago my former professor Ajuan Mance reached out to me. She asked if I wanted to be featured in a project that she and Pam Uzzell were doing on artists from Oakland, CA. The result is the video posted below. I am grateful and blessed to have a part in this documentary along with so many other great artists.
-RP

A Mirror Called Haiti: Notes on the Cancellation of Karnaval 2020

I have spent over a week trying to put my trip to Haiti into perspective. I have been searching for the words that would not only convey my affinity for the nation but would also speak to the very real feeling of precariousness that is currently gripping her. What I have come up with is this—close your eyes and imagine that Deep East Oakland is an entire country. Now open them. What you see is Haiti.

There is at once so much pride in the people, so much righteous resistance in the history, an enormous amount of potential, and a nearly extreme amount of dysfunction. One day after going up a mountain to see the very stunning Citadelle Laferrière and the ruins of the Sans-Souci Palace we stopped by a cultural center in the town of Milot. They welcomed us with African drummers and upon entering we washed our hands with the assistance of a female member of the center. Much to my surprise they were in the process of cooking for us. The lead organizer of the center, a black Haitian man of about 60, explained to us that he didn’t know what exactly was being prepared because he didn’t know what the fisherman caught that morning. He went on to say that they had been without power for several days—which isn’t unusual for Haiti. What that means, he went on, is that we don’t have a refrigerator therefore we must eat whatever we can catch on any given day. Then the next day we fish again. 

After giving us an introductory history lesson on the town of Milot the food was brought out. It consisted of fried plantains, beans, rice, and two different kinds of fish one grilled and the other fried. The fish was extraordinary. It was way better than anything you can buy at a grocery store. What I found to be even more amazing is that even after having seconds I still felt very light. Unlike the meat here in the U.S. the food didn’t weigh me down at all. 

As we we ate the food the lead organizer thanked us for coming. I was accompanied by a small group of African-Americans and one Haitian tour guide. The people at this center had cooked for all of us, went out of their way to make us feel special and this man still insisted on thanking us for visiting Haiti despite the unrest that was taking place all around the country. I felt a sense of kinship and belonging that one can only feel in a predominantly black country. It was almost emotionally overwhelming for me.

Then on the way back to our hotel the tension of national instability grew thick once more. Apparently, the disgruntled police force set several fires on one of the two bridges that leads to Cap-Haitian. They were upset because they believe they are being underpaid and instead of paying them the government was set to spend what the police thought was an excessive amount of money on the annual Kanaval celebration. So they decided to do everything in their power to shut Kanaval down (ultimately, they succeeded). We traveled over the other bridge which they had emptied several dumpsters full of trash and debris upon in an attempt to block it as well. Luckily for us we were in a larger vehicle that had the ability to drive over the makeshift roadblock. While sitting in the backseat the bumps from driving over all of the junk made me feel as though I was off-roading up a mountain in a Jeep—it was wild as hell but we made it back safely to the hotel. 

Growing up in East Oakland I remember parties being shut down just like Haitian Kanaval while I was in line waiting to get in because a kid got jumped or someone pulled out a gun. I remember sideshows being descended upon by police the second I turned my engine off and got out of the car. I remember, on multiple occasions, feeling like my community couldn’t have anything. And when we would get something nice such as a new store, apartment building or transit center, I would just wait for it to be torn up by my people. These same feelings washed over me on the way back to the hotel that afternoon. And they troubled me in the exact same manner that they did when I was a teenager in the ghetto.

My trip to Haiti was full of black power highs and post-colonial lows. There were moments of bliss when I would be in total awe of the oldest black republic in the western hemisphere that would be immediately followed by the fear that it could all implode at any given second. Haiti, in this regard, is not unlike the South Side of Chicago or the West Side of Philadelphia or Deep East Oakland. Haiti does not pretend to be paradise. Haiti is no tropical escape for black people either. Haiti is a mirror for the descendants of African slaves. And finally, Haiti does not lie to make tourists feel more comfortable. It is for these reasons that I love her.   

-Roger Porter

America’s highest ranking gangbanger: Notes on the Murder of General Qasem Soleimani

I can’t understand how the American government could possibly believe that murdering an Iranian cultural icon could bring the people of Iran closer to us. That somehow killing General Qasem Soleimani could prevent war. That we could bomb Iraq for nearly 20 years straight in hopes of establishing peace. The mentality of American high ranking officials breeds eternal enemies. The killing of a General isn’t something that any nation with pride can simply get over and it certainly isn’t going to bring them to the table of diplomacy. 

A few weeks ago I saw a video on YouTube that detailed the life of a notorious young man named KTS Von from Chicago. He was a gangbanger who murdered at least four people before he himself was killed in 2015 at the age of 21. One of the many reasons why he was so reviled and feared on the streets was because he used to wear shirts mocking all of the rivals that he had killed. “Fuck your dead homies” read one of them. Below that there was a list of names of people that he personally removed from the Earth. So of course his “ops” made him the highest priority and eventually they executed him. 

When I hear President Donald Trump say things like “Soleimani made the death of innocent people his sick passion…He should have been taken out years ago.” I liken it to him wearing a white T-Shirt with the General’s name on it. “Fuck your General” is what Trump is saying. Except he isn’t merely taunting a set, a crew, or a gang he is taunting a whole nation and many other nations who respect the man that he killed. 

America operates under a dreadful psychosis. One in which the individual killer doesn’t think that death will ultimately come for him. Is it not ironic that in 2016 Donald Trump incorporated gang violence in Chicago into his political platform? He criticized President Obama and the Democratic Party for doing a terrible job in that city and implored Black Americans to vote for him because after all “What do you have to lose?” I’m thinking that perhaps Donald Trump was drawn to Chicago due to a certain level of very discreet affection he has for The Chi. As a man may privately gloat about the successes of an estranged child who he barely knows. “He’s just like his daddy” the man would say. “Whether he likes it or not.”

 Well KTS Von is just like Donald Trump and Chicago is probably the most American of all US Cities. It is at once beautiful, heinous, nurturing, prideful, unforgiving, murderous, and attracts tourists from every region of the globe. When one looks at Chicago beyond The Bean, Soldier Field, and Navy Pier and into the areas run by black street gangs one can see white daddy looking on lovingly from the clouds. One can see the forefathers of this nation. One can see the architects of the ghetto and one can see President Donald J. Trump boasting to his confidant: “That’s my boy” he tells him. “A chip off of the old block.” Meanwhile his ops are strapping up. Just waiting to catch him lacking.    
-Roger Porter

The ownership of dreams: Notes on Colin Kaepernick's NFL workout

In a matter of hours Colin Kaepernick will have a football workout with several NFL team representatives on hand. They will be determining whether or not he will have the opportunity to play for one of their franchises. Some people are concerned because the workout is taking place on Saturday when most NFL teams are unavailable due to their respective games on Sunday. They wonder why it isn’t happening on a Tuesday which is the league protocol. Other people are praising Jay-Z. They state that his teaming up with Roger Goodell is the only reason Kaepernick is getting this opportunity. To be real, it all seems very disrespectful to the movement that Colin still desires to play in the league at all. Especially since he’s made enough money via his settlement and his deal with Nike to never have to work for the managain. Colin’s yearning to throw more touchdowns in front of tens of thousands of fans is obviously very essential to his being. The only question is why. 

We must now revisit the childhood dream that so many little American boys have. 4th and Goal, 6 seconds on the clock, the ball is on your opponents fifteen-yard line. You take the snap. You look left. You look right. You see your favorite target. Touchdown. The crowd rushes the field. You have just led your home team to a Super Bowl victory. And now you’re going to Disneyland.

 Colin almost achieved that dream in Super Bowl 47, but instead Kaepernick threw an interception to the Baltimore Ravens. Perhaps he wants that pass back. Perhaps he wants to play until he actually wins a Super Bowl title. This mode of thinking is extremely dangerous because it means that in order for Colin to achieve his dream he must be an employee of one of the many billion dollar companies that are a major reason why his people are suffering in the first place. The NFL has 32 teams. All of them are very profitable. All of them have a majority of black players and none of them have a black owner. At times we forget that the NFL is just as guilty as city planners, the prison guards’ association, the police, and the banks for keeping blacks in the ghetto. It’s the same exclusionary practices which keep all but one of the NFL owners white (Shahid Kahn of The Jacksonville Jaguars is Pakastani) that keep banks in the hood from lending money to African-Americans so that they can start a business. Therefore, it feels counterproductive for Colin to expose them as a racist good old boys’ network who colluded to keep him out of the league only to want to work for them once again. Thus, Colin has effectively allowed wealthy white men to have ownership of his dreams.

It’s very frustrating to know that with all of his social justice work and all of his support from the black community and progressives around the world, Colin Kaepernick may still be mentally enslaved. He still needs to be validated by a white organization in order to feel whole. It bothers me to see that this is what has become of knee that he took. And it frightens me to think that he may still be on his knees begging to work in the white man’s kingdom. 

-Roger Porter

Blocked and Distraught

Social media has created the most savage society in the history of humankind. Imagine being capable of making someone disappear without killing them. We establish real relationships with people online only to strike them dead as soon as they say something disagreeable. We leave no blood, no murder weapon, and no body. We just unlike, unfriend, unfollow, and BLOCK people so that we never have to hear from them again. We could have several pages worth of beautiful dialogue with another person. There could be years worth of liked photos and uplifting comments that instantly disappear once the BLOCK button is pressed. 

Consider the following scenario. One night you decide to follow a person who lives on the other side of the country because you think their comment in The Shade Room is hilarious and also because you think they are kind of cute. Then they follow you back. Now the two of you have a relationship. Via social media you were at this person’s trip to Las Vegas. You go to the company picnic with them four times a year. You feigned joy for them when they got engaged and you secretly celebrated when it was called off. You sent a DM reassuring them that “Everything is going to work out for you. I can feel it.”  and that they were still the “hottest thing on the internet” followed by a fire emoji, kissy face, heart, heart, heart. You went to Jamaica with them. You were the only person in the chatroom when they went live on the beach at 2:00am. They waved to you. And I don’t mean they pressed the wave button on their phone, I mean they actually looked at you and waved. Once you planned to take a trip to their city but it fell through the last minute when your mother got sick. Twice they said they would visit you but they never followed through. It’s ok though because the mystery of everything keeps the relationship hot. You are a voyeur of sorts. You’re a guardian angel or maybe even a genie. You only exist to the person when they need you to exist but really you’re there all of the time, watching, smiling, and laughing. You are totally immersed in the story of their life. You want to play a bigger part but at the same time you are very good at your role. And then it all vanishes.

 They stop viewing your stories. You posted three new pictures and they didn’t like any of them. It’s so unlike them. Then you DM them and it goes unseen for three days even though they continue to post stories regularly and you continue to see their comments in The Shade Room. What the hell is going on? What did you do? You wait about a week then you go to their page to send them a DM asking them are they ok. That’s when the screen reads that the page does not exist. You reason that they’re probably taking a break from social media. There’s no way that they would BLOCK you after you’ve consistently supported them for four years. Then you check their page from your back up IG account and it’s confirmed. They definitely BLOCKED you. 

You want to pour back over your messages to see where you could have possibly gone wrong but you can’t. You no longer have access to any of the DMs that you share. They were destroyed in the conflagration of you being BLOCKED. The poems that you sent them when they asked if you’re a writer, the James Baldwin quotes you sent them to express how you felt about growing up the ghetto, the pictures of you at the club with your squad, the YouTube videos of the oldies battles that y’all used to have on Sunday nights—it’s all gone. And there is no way to hold the person accountable. To you they were an essential part of your life. To them you were disposable. Now you’re BLOCKED and distraught. You can’t figure out what you did wrong other than to care deeply for a person you’ve never actually seen. 

Social Media has made millions of hearts obdurate. We have created a society in which individuals can’t see the humanity in the very people we engage with on a daily basis. We leave the most disrespectful comments for attention. We block people who have opinions other than ours. We go on rampages and unfollow people because we’re having a bad day. Social media has enabled us to call thousands of people whom we have never met our friends while simultaneously giving us the opportunity to erase all of those same so called friends. It’s a creation that eats away at the bond of kinship that is essential to any high functioning society. For every day that we spend believing that social media is a proper surrogate for real human interaction we BLOCK our own growth.   

Utah

The humongous state of California can feel claustrophobic at times. As of late these times have been occurring much more frequently. A few weeks ago, I sought to leave. I felt like if I didn’t cross the state line then bad things would happen to me. I was imploding. There’s really no other way to put it. So, I headed east. And quite randomly or maybe one can say it was by god’s design, I wound up in Utah. As I traveled through the state I was shocked by all of the natural beauty. The red clay was very reminiscent of Arizona but it wasn’t as brightly colored. It was more subdued. The landscape on either side of the highway was so striking and the canyons were so picturesque that I found myself pulling over at every looking point. Each time I stepped out of the vehicle I further internalized the fact that I was a long way from Oakland, CA.

The beauty of the state was amplified even further when I got to Bryce Canyon National Park. As I admired the shapes of the rocks in the canyon from the top of a trail something told me to look up into the sky and when I did I was forever changed. The perfectly formed clouds stood still and they accentuated the endless blue surrounding them. I’m from the west coast so I’m used to looking out at the Pacific Ocean and feeling like a speck of dirt amongst its vastness. I have never, until that moment, looked toward the sky in the middle of the day and felt the same way. There was so much sky. It was unpolluted. It was clear. It was humbling as well as comforting. I trusted the sky. I felt protected by it. I was enamored with its unwavering presence. I thought of my father and my grandparents. My friends and all of my ancestors and it brought contentment. I knew that their souls were there and I knew that mine would be there one day as well, and I was ok with that. I was at peace with where I was and where I would ultimately end up.

I took a picture which is my attempt to capture something that could never be captured. The peace that I gained in that moment has been a lasting one. I never thought that Utah would be the place that I would go to heal but that’s how it played out. And now whenever I feel downtrodden I stop and look up before I continue my life. 

I Rock with the Truth: Notes on the Deal Between Roc Nation Sports and the NFL

Are we in the pursuit of money or are we in the pursuit of justice? That is the question that is currently dividing Team Kaepernick and Team Jay-Z as we move forward into another NFL season. After Jay-Z forged a partnership with Roger Goodell and the NFL on August 14th many people viewed it as a betrayal of his former protégé Colin Kaepernick—I am one of those people. 

To be clear, I am not Team Kaepernick. Meaning I do not follow Kap blindly. I am critical of his desire to reenter the NFL. I am critical of him starting a movement that seems to have no real goals. As a matter of fact, he seemed to disappear shortly after his kneeling gained serious traction amongst both liberals and people in the center of the political spectrum that appreciated Colin exposing the myriad hypocrisies that are embedded in the fabric of this nation. One thing I would never call into question is that Colin took a knee by himself. He had no support when he did it. He lost millions of dollars in salary and endorsements for doing it (though he made a portion of it back through his deal with Nike and his settlement against the NFL). And he was ultimately banned from football because of it. That is admirable. Any time a man puts a cause over making money in a system that routinely places capital over human life then they are special. That makes Colin immortal and it says that the cause itself transcends any amount of money. This is why I was aghast when I found out that Jay Z made a deal to provide entertainment for halftime at NFL games this season and maybe be part owner of a team. Most of the details are still not public but what we do know is that there is some form of a social justice component. Money will be raised to give to nonprofits and educate people about racial profiling and police brutality. Some very prominent members of the black community including popular DJ Charlemagne the God have rallied in support of Jay-Z suggesting that he is trying to help black people and that he is taking the campaign to the next level. But Jay Z never sought Colin’s approval. How can one befriend a social gadfly like Colin Kaepernick, wear his jersey on Saturday Night live, tell other up and coming artists not to perform at the Super Bowl and then monetize a movement for your own personal gain when it was never about money?

 One can’t put a dollar amount on consciousness. One can’t throw money at a centuries old problem like racism and expect it to go away, however, it is a good business practice used to manipulate the public into believing that you actually care. Jay-Z not only knows this, he’s complicit in it. People will say that this deal will generate jobs and thus it will create opportunities for the disenfranchised. To that I would ask black people, Would you rather have a job or a revolution? Why can’t we create our own league and hire who we want? We have enough billionaires to do it. Why do we, as black people, want to actively participate in a system that was designed to keep the vast majority of us at the bottom? We are so brainwashed that I am convinced that a good deal of us would be willing to bring slavery back as long as 15% of the plantations were owned by African-Americans. But not Colin. Colin wouldn’t sell his soul for a check. Jay-Z did. And that’s the difference. I don’t rock with Roc Nation. Neither am I on the Kaepernick bandwagon. I rock with the truth. To paraphrase what the comedian Monique said earlier this year, I place my integrity over the bag. I place my morals over money and I celebrate moments in history when others do the same. Let the movement continue. Let the kneeling continue and may every billionaire owner of an NFL team be made to feel uncomfortable every time the national anthem is performed.

Prentiss Mayo takes time to thank Roger Porter

I really wanted to be there when to be there when Prentiss was admitted into Phi Beta Kappa and he wanted me to be there as well, but I had injured myself earlier that day. It was the strangest thing ever. I had sprained a muscle in my jaw while eating popcorn and it was painful as hell. I thought my jaw was actually broken. And to make matters worse, me being the man that I am, I tried to tough it out. About an hour before Prentisses’ event I tried to eat again—bad idea. I re-injured my jaw eating nachos at a Mexican restaurant on Piedmont Avenue and I had to head home. Right when I was unlocking my bike at the bike rack my pocket vibrated. It was Prentiss:

“You coming fam”

“Nah. I can’t even talk. My jaw is swollen on some random shit. I’ll have to tell you about it later. Congratulations though.”

“Alright.”

And I could hear the the hurt in his voice, however, the hurt in my mouth was telling me that I needed to go home, ice my jaw, and call the hospital—which I did. But thankfully one of my colleagues recorded Prentisses’ speech and when I viewed it I was nearly overwhelmed with joy.

I appreciated being able to play the role in the life of Prentiss Mayo that I was able to play. He was my childhood friend. We played football together. We went to high school together. Years later I saw him begging for money at a gas station in East Oakland. He was homeless and addicted to drugs. Then about four years ago he enrolled in the college where I work. He eventually became an honor roll student and was admitted into UC Berkeley. He has made me proud, he has made his family proud, and he has made himself proud. Here is the video of his speech. I respect this brotha more than he will ever know.

-Roger Porter

The Nipsey Effect

If they knocked off Nipsey then they can knock off anyone. And I suppose that I always knew that but it’s very rare that I feel it as acutely as I do right now.

Today I grieve for Nipsey and I also grieve for Sean Scott my childhood friend who was murdered in 2005. Today is his birthday. He would have been 37 years old. I used to think that I would outgrow the anxiety associated with being a black man and fearing a violent death just about everyday of my life. I realize now that I’ve just learned to cope with it largely through neglect. What the murder of Nipsey Hussle is doing is making a lot of people, particularly black men, consider the event of their own tragic death and face the reality that no matter how brilliant, devoted, talented, loving, inspiring and righteous you may be there’s always a ni**a somewhere waiting to kill you.

The Death of a Savior

Nipsey Hussle was murdered yesterday in front of a clothing store that he owned. He was murdered at the age of 33, the same age that Jesus was when he was nailed to the cross. Police are now saying that he was murdered by someone that he knew and that it was over a personal dispute. Initially people on social media were saying that it was a government conspiracy due to his upcoming documentary on the trial of Dr. Sebi—a controversial figure who claimed to have found the cure to AIDS and other STD’s—but now the energy has shifted back to us. Back to the ghetto, and back to the self-hatred that is so pervasive in the black body. This plague is the reason why Nipsey is no longer amongst the living. It is the reason why he was tragically murdered even though he was a rare manifestation of hope in a righteously absurd era characterized by the blind routinely leading millions of followers and those who sleep on the traditions of our ancestors loudly proclaiming to be woke. 

As I sit here writing, the waves of pain are crashing against my consciousness. Particularly as I write the word was in regards to Nipsey. For everything that he did was for the future of black people—future economic empowerment, future financial literacy, future black ownership of the hood—and now he will be forever relegated to the past. We will have to speak of him in the same cryptic “what if” language in which we speak of Tupac Shakur. Each time we see his profound intellect displayed during an interview, or hear him spitting rhymes over a gangsta beat, instead of bobbing our heads we will instinctively hold them—both hands pressed against our foreheads— and say “Damn.” A man so full of light who escaped a life sentence in the penitentiary, poverty, disease, ignorance and all the other symptoms of ghetto America should not have to spend the rest of eternity trapped in the past tense. There was so much more unifying that he could have done. 

Nipsey, for those of you who may not know, was the solution. If one were to go to any barbershop in any hood in this country and pose the question “What needs to be done in order to turn this community around?” People would inevitably say young people need jobs, instead of liquor stores we need more black owned businesses, the young people need a leader that will inspire them. Nipsey provided all of these things. He carried the faith of downtrodden on his back just as gracefully as he dawned the words SLAUSON BOY in the form of a tattoo between his shoulder blades. 

He was at once the descendant of American slaves on his mother’s side and of a son of the Abyssinian Empire on his father’s side. Nipsey was royalty. He was mixed with those that rose up from slavery and those who refused to be colonized. Indeed, the best blood of Africa coursed through his veins. Blood that was unfortunately spilled on the pavement in the rolling 60’s neighborhood that he loved so dearly. A community which he was committed to uplifting. 

Nipsey is dead now. Having been murdered less than 48 hours ago. He leaves two children, one girlfriend, and a legacy of love and power. And though he left too soon, he left a blueprint on the possibility of collective empowerment for a group of people that have been systematic stripped of such a concept. He will be missed by many, especially this writer. Rest easy Nip. I will ride for you. I will write for you and I will hustle hard in your honor.

Roger Porter