Casper Banjo's Homegoing

The mortuary was full and when I arrived Safi was singing--I hadn't known she could sing. Lee Williams had escaped from the Veteran's Hospital in Martinez and Malik Seneferu spoke next. I was overwhelmed. Luckily I had something to do--I pulled out my camera and began to videotape the service for Akili. Casper's paintings and prints decorated the space near the altar--his body draped with the American flag. He had on his hat and by his side there was a brick. The analogy of bricks is so rich with sturdy possibilities. After the service we went over to the Prescott-Joseph Center for the repast. It was an opportunity to talk to people I hadn't seen in a while and to meet others like Ms. Frances Dunham Catlett, an artist who will be 100 years old next month. I wanted to hear more Casper stories. The room was full of them; Marilyn was wrong--there was a lot more to be said, time was just short and we had to leave the venue and move along...Casper's body there in the place alone.

Casper Banjo Actions

Candlelight vigil Tuesday, March 25, 7-8 p.m., at 73rd Street at Garfield, Oakland, near the police sub-station where the shooting occurred. Organizers are looking for a turnout of at least 200 people for the vigil and the memorial service.

Memorial service Wednesday, March 26, 11 a.m., at the Baker Funeral Home, 980 Eighth St., Oakland. After the memorial there will be a repast at Prescott-Joseph Center, 920 Peralta St. at Ninth Street, Oakland, (510) 208-5651.

Rally Thursday, April 10, 6 p.m., Oakland Citizens’ Police Review Board meeting in the City Council Chambers, third floor, One Frank H. Ogawa Plaza, Oakland. For more information, call Leroy Moore at (510) 649-8438 or email sfdamo@yahoo.com.

Casper Banjo killed March 14 by OPD

Taken at AAMLO last year at the Black Artists of Oakland booksigning.Pictured are Duane Deterville, co-author (in hat), seated is Casper Banjo. Above him is Ted Pontiflet and at the top, another artist.
Photo credit: Wanda Sabir


When I heard that Casper Banjo had become Oakland’s latest homicide, shot to death by Oakland Police, I couldn’t believe it. I asked Orlonda Uffre, who was the bearer of the sad news Monday evening, why would OPD shoot to kill a 71 year old man? Obviously, no black man is safe from assassin’s bullets, not even old black men.

I immediately thought about the film, “Reign Over Me” (2006) with actors, Don Cheadle and Adam Sandler where Sandler’s character is traumatized with grief over the loss of his entire family in a 9/11 plane crash, so he designs new kitchens for his dead family who will never return until one day he snaps—takes his gun and in the center of New York traffic waving it and as he dares the police to shoot him and put him out of his misery. But the police are surprisingly sympathetic. Suicide by police doesn’t work if you’re a white man with a real gun on film, but let the person be a black man in East Oakland, in front of the Eastmont Station and even in the movies he’d get killed, never mind that in real life it’s a toy gun—the news article called it a “replica.” The police don’t try to negotiate when they see that you’re an old black man. They don’t use kindness and if that doesn’t work, shoot the gun out of your hand—no, they kill you. At 7 p.m. on Friday evening at Eastmont Town Center, not far from where Casper lived, it’s almost a ghost town. Not many people are around at that time.

Know for his brick print designs, I recall how supportive Casper was of other artists, especially younger artists. He studied at the California College of Arts and Crafts and at the Art Institute and taught at Laney College in the 1950s. The article I read said he was a transplant from Memphis, he and four siblings.

One time when my daughter was in art school, he took the bus to San Francisco and then walked over to the California College of Arts and Crafts for her show. I remember asking TaSin’s father to give him a ride home after they dropped me at BART. I’d see him all the time on the 62 bus when I rode public transportation for a year.

Friday evening, as I rode BART to San Francisco last week after leaving James Gayles’ “Jazz Masters” preview reception at Swarm Gallery, Casper was being gunned down. I don’t live far from 73rd Avenue. Last month there was a drive by across the street from my house that is as of yet, unsolved. My neighbor whose house guests were injured said the police haven’t said anything about suspects. Oakland police are working longer shifts now too, wired on caffeine, trigger fingers might be a bit more jumpy than usual.

I’ll certainly miss Casper. He survived heart surgery, but couldn’t survive Oakland PD. I spoke to his neice who said the funeral is Wednesday, March 26, 11 a.m. at the Baker Williams Funeral Home, 980 8th Street, Oakland, CA, (510) 836-3436. Casper didn’t have insurance and his neice spent the money to claim his body from the corners. Donations can be sent to Akili Banjo at P. O. Box 2493, Berkeley CA 94707. Checks can be made out to her. Casper is a former Marine, so they will transport his body to Dixon, 23 miles from Sacramento, to one of their cemetaries where he will be interned. The repast follows immediately, about 1:30 p.m., at the Prescott Joseph Center in West Oakland at 920 Peralta Street.

We need to take care of out elders—accompany them at night on errands, give them a ride and make sure they are not worried about shelter and food, the basic necessities everyone should have, especially those who are responsible for paving the road for us today like Casper Banjo. I missed him at the Jazz Masters preview. He certainly would have been at the Thursday, March 20 reception. We will miss him dearly; he was one of Oakland’s treasures.

Alice Walker in conversation with Saidiya Hartman (March 14, 2008, 7:38 AM)

We were so excited last night to see Alice Walker, I am still jumping up and down in my heart the next morning. This semester, I've invited my students to hang out with me on Thursdays. We've been to the theatre, to a lecture and now to an author event, since this Thursday get together started. We were a small group from College of Alameda last night at the Museum of the African Diaspora. Seated near the staircase where Alice Walker entered the room, was oh so exciting! Aisha chose such a great seat! I just wanted to take photo after photo of Alice Walker and Saifiya, both of whom were fighting colds. Walker, standing to my left, so close I could hug her, which I did in my mind, as she kept smiling at me.

Later on, my students and I took pictures with her. We couldn't help jumping up and down later on as we reflected on this great woman, who after 50 years has given her papers and writing to a university archive and now she says, "she's free."

Freedom, what a concept.

The evening was one of ancestor talk--Walker said they were her audience, they inspired her, and they pushed her. Similarly Saidiya felt the same--driven by an inexplicably powerful force that motivated as it aroused both women to do the work of repairing the damage.

After the talk, I felt even more charged and motivated. I saw a lot of friends, Carol Marie, Cornelius Moore and Stewart Shaw. I met a cute baby girl, six months old named Zora.

My class has just finished Alice Walker: A Life by Evelyn C. White--Belvie Rooks introduced her friend. This was another, "oh my gosh moment!" We'd read about her in the White book, which I highly recommend. Amy Goodman recommended the book to me after she was in conversation with Walker a few years ago at Media Alliance's anniversary fundraiser.

My Walker Wow moments are too numerous to count, but the last time I saw her, was at the Obama rally in San Francisco last year. She was the one who introduced him. When I saw her, I knew I was in the right place and that my faith was in the right man.

No one is perfect, but we certainly need to work on our souls daily and I think Obama is a man who is polishing his, just as I am polishing mine. But back to Walker. The conversation was suitably scholarly, but not so much to leave the audience out. What I hold close is Walker's tears when thinking about the ancestors and the work she was called to do. She spoke of Zora Neale Hurston's spiritual assistance in helping her find her grave in the cemetery where she placed the marker.

I also appreciated her sorrow over the displacement and killing of other species by human beings. I mourn over the death and impending deaths of the polar bears and the insects and the plants and so many other microscopic organisms we are ridding the earth of through our over consumption.

We are facilitating our own demise because I think the planet which was here before us will be here when we're gone.

Walker praised Saidiya for her book, Lose Your Mother, which I purchased that evening. In it Saidiya looks at the impact of the European slave trade on the black family, especially the mother. Walker referenced a section in the book where an African woman puts on shackles as a joke and the author gets angry. She is told later by an elder man that they don't talk about this loss, nor do they think about it much, because if they did they would be too sad and cry.

Walker said they need to be wailing! This comment followed her reflection on her first time to Africa and story she wrote about an African girl who commits suicide, a topic not explored much then or now. Walker said she loved Africa, but this love was not blind--there was much work there with the patriarchy and at the time when she first arrived as a college student in the '60s, female genital mutilation.

There was no Q&A, but afterwards the author spoke to her audience as she signed books. As I gazed at her, standing so close to my side, I marveled over her journey, one I saw in her face, in her smile, her wave, her pose, her settling into her chair as the microphone kept going off--I saw it in the way she poured the water after someone opened the top (which was too tight for her to loosen). I saw her journey in the glasses which covered her famous eyes--especially the right one which her daughter told her looked like the planet lived inside--how appropriate for a woman who loves the planet as much as she loves those who call it home.

It was just marvelous last night! I am still jumping up and down. We then went across the street to see the film: The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo which opened the Human Rights Watch Film Festival at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and then walked through the King Memorial Sculpture and waterfall --the wind was blowing and we welcomed the cleansing breeze. Afterwards we continued our moseying over to Mel's where we had a late dinner. Service was slow, but the burgers were good when they finally arrived.

The three of us began to plot our next move--Sweet Honey in the Rock was the next big stop, but the women said they come to Swarm next week to hear me on the panel at James Gayles' Jazz Masters Exhibition.

International Women

Celebrating Woman’s History Month, International Women’s Day
I hadn’t realized the date was upon me, but I do recall being happy March 1 to be celebrating two women I love, Hafsa and Tomyé. It was Tomye’s birthday and Hafsa, having lost her mother that week and a husband, not to death, but divorce, was rededicating her life to herself—the cleansing sage symbolic of her new path, the melodious thikring (an Arabic term referencing a chant where one remembers Allah's greatness, mercy and forgiveness) guaranteed light at the end of a long tunnel, and the circle of sisters, trees in her forest. It was a beautiful afternoon of poetry and tears and hugs and love. Tomyé’s birthday party, later that evening, for me, was a gift for all present at her party. Guests were invited to bring cloth as motif for their relationship with Tomyé: love in the shape of hearts, imported...and shimmering…

The following week, my college class and I went to see Cynthia McKinney at the Women of Color Resource Center’s second annual “Speaking Fierce” event. McKinney, former congresswoman of Georgia, now Green Party nominee for President of the United States, spoke at length statistically about the state of this union and why we all need to stand for something—passive rides over. McKinney was in a reflective mood as were many of the presenters and performers that evening from poets Climbing PoeTree whose work was affirming and encouraging, and Bushra Rehman whose work reflected her life in New York, a child of Muslim immigrants both anecdotally and interpretive—she didn’t have a chance this assimilated citizen of the new land, to Sgt. Eli Painted Crow of SWAN who is still suffering from her tour of duty in Iraq—one can see it in her eyes, a representative from TEMPO a program sponsored by WCRC that teaches women to do media work, both radio and film. A clip from a program on sexually exploited teenage girls was shared. Congresswoman Barbara Lee wasn’t able to be there but she sent Tina Flores who gave me something to look forward to on the fifth anniversary of the invasion and occupation of Iraq, Lee’s townhall.

This was the context of an evening that ended so fittingly with Jennifer Jones, whose mother was in the hospital as she sang her well –-“my mom’s not dying; our women are like the Ice Age,” she said. “We’re not going anywhere.”

As McKinney and Robert H. King hugged and then caught up with one another’s news,I looked around the sanctuary at First Congregational Church of Oakland, a place I have so many fond memories of. I remember seeing Yolanda King here at the end of the Season of Peace, April 4, the anniversary of her father’s death. I recall the concert Jennifer Jones’ mentioned where she sang for the last time with the Oakland Youth Chorus…I remember the many “In the Name of Love” events there, Media Alliance’s celebration where Alice Walker and Amy Goodman were in conversation. I can’t begin to recall all the excellent author events. Such fond memories. McKinney was seated alone and we just kind of invaded her space—the perfect public persona she took pictures with my students and I, as she put on her buttons: Free SF8 and one with Martin Luther King Jr.’s photo. I thought about Alice Walker again and her home state, Georgia, a state reflective of a country that was not ready for Cynthia McKinney. Barbara Lee’s letter, read by Tina Flores, spoke of how “women held up half the sky,” McKinney was holding up more than that, if one considered her involvement in setting the record straight on Capitol Hill. She is the one that introduced legislation to impeach the president, his secretary of state, Rice and Vice President Cheney. She led the New Orleans tribunal and if you remember, the fact finding inquiries into the electoral fiasco in Florida and Ohio. “Black men between 16-64 make up half the unemployed in that state.” She said stated in a litany of statistics masquerading as a speech. That’s Clinton’s state, I thought. “In Chicago, it will take 200 years,” according to the State of the Dream Report (c/o United for a Fair Economy), “before black Chicagoans quality of life equals that of its white residents.” That’s Obama’s city, I thought. Hum.

“Don’t let them cut your tongue out—you are the diamond, not the one mined but the one in the sky,” Climbing PoeTree said just moments earlier. “It’s time to move like water.”

McKinney mentioned Jena, Louisiana, where black boys were charged for their retaliation to the nooses hung on the tree at their high school, but the hate criminals were allowed to walk freely without consequence. She spoke about political power and the power of positioning oneself in the gears of mechanisms until they grind shut. (She also mentioned that the new WCRC executive director Anisha Desai comes from United for a Fair Economy—there are no coincidences.)

The former congresswoman said references to Obama’s religion and Clinton’s cleavage were diversions to keep the public distracted about the issues of governance. Will either nominee take control of the car and park it while they contemplate alternative transportation?

Eli Painted Crow said, “We forget to stay connected to real relationships. She said she was for peace and that we would not have peace as long as we were always fighting against something—the very nature of protest is violence. She told us about 13 Grandmothers for Peace and the medicine of the drum, a drum created by women for men. “Now women are taking back the drum.” She said. We created the drum to teach men to respect women, to respect the earth—this is the story left out. We were born with power and despite the protests by some men and women to women drummers, we have taken it back and they will get used to it. Eli Painted Crow said as she invited us to sing a song with her as she held the circular instrument and mallet in her hands and sang.

“We are drumming for peace,” she said as she recalled meeting a soldier in Iraq from Ireland with a drum. “We all have drums in our culture. (These) songs are my prayers…and I added dance is my worship. The grandmothers are supporting this drumming for peace movement which will happen again this October in Washington. She invited all of us to stand and raise our vibrations, to get up and stand for something.

“The revolution starts within,” Climbing PoeTree said in the poem before Jennifer Jones came on.

A Secret for Next Sunday: A New Play by Charles Johnson

Secret for next Sunday: A New Play By Charles Johnson
Playwright Charles Johnson said he is interested in race as a theme in his work. “A Secret for Next Sunday,” is certainly that. Set in Chicago during a time where youth were unaware of the racial strife that brought many African Americans to northern cities, it’s a disrespect elders like Jim decides to address after a drug lord takes his parking space one time too many.

The playwright, an Alabama native, told me after the play that some of the instances in the play reflect his experiences growing up in the south. Enrolled in the white school before integration, he recalled being beat up a lot. Johnson remembered the white only and colored only signs and Martin Luther King Jr. who spoke at his school. He said the mule trains for the poor people’s march rolled by his house. Later on, his family moved to California, something that is also reflected in the play, which was workshopped at MET last year.

The two couples Jim and Mattie and Bessie and McCoy have know each other from childhood. The men came north together where they met their future wives, whom they thought were northern girls. When the play opens it’s been 34 years of friendship and marriage, Jim’s hearing is not what is was, and Mattie is not able to cut the rug like she used to, but she goes to church, sings in the choir and in love with Jim despite her complaints.

I found it interesting that the two, Jim and Mattie had areas of their lives where secrets lay after all the years they’d been together. Jim’s philandering also surprised me, and his lies to his wife when she asked him to attend church would come back to haunt him. A lot was haunting Jim by the time the play concluded. Those memories are reenacted on another stage inside Jim’s mind, an area of his subconscious the audience is privy too.
Jim and McCoy, as younger men, had had to confront their own bigotry when Jim found out that his little sister, Katherine was in love with a white man. The script is not predictable, yet there are times when thinks that’s the direction it’s going in. This ambiguity allows for plenty of surprises.

What I like most about the play is the relationship between the two men and the women, not to mention the couples. McCoy really loves his friend, and accepts him, faults and all. Their relationship reminds me of the one between Pinetop and Maceo in the film Honeydripper. There is even a deep dark secret the men, especially Jim, need to resolve just like Pinetop does in the film.

Dress warmly, the theatre has no heat and if it’s cold outside, it’s really cold inside. Lewis Campbell, the director celebrated his 75 birthday that evening with the cast. Actress Nathalie Bennett was great as “Katherine,” Jim’s sister, whose white boyfriend “Jerry,” played by actor Andrew H. Cushman, ignored the obvious signs. Pay attention to the Emmit Till reflections, they foreshadow the scenes in Jim’s mind. He can’t change what he did, but he certainly can learn from it. In the end, I wonder if Mattie knew what kind of man she’d married—what he was capable of? I also wonder if incident which haunts Jim and drives Katherine mad is plausible or a figment of the playwright’s imagination.

The play runs Friday-Saturday, March 7-8 at 8 p.m. and Sunday, March 9, at 7 p.m. at The Next Stage, a Multi Ethnic Theatre, 1620 Gough Street (near Bush), in San Francisco. Tickets are $20 at the door with gnerous discounts at www.wehavemet.org. Call (415) 333-6389. Last weekend I ran into Adele and jack Foley, poets and friends of the director.

California Prison Culture

Saturday morning I finally got to visit the Criminal: Art and Criminal Justice in America exhibit at San Francisco State's Fine Arts Gallery. There was also a symposium: California Prison Culture: Art, Issues and Dialogue. I stayed for a few hours, walked through the exhibition, listened to Angela Y. Davis give the keynote, then got in the car and ran over to the 509 Gallery on Ellis to see the Haitian artist’s mixed media exhibit, before heading over to San Pablo to a divorcee party, not really, it was a house blessing, the blessing –-the divorce. The 509 Gallery was really nice, especially the outdoor gallery which included large murals on the surrounding buildings covering the height and breath of a few. There was also a community garden, a living camera under construction, trees, a stage and a pond for fish. Darryl, gallery curator and artist showed me around. Inside the Haitian art was cinema verite along with large paintings, sacred figures like the snake or dambala on bottles and candles.

After the sister circle in San Pablo I went to my friend Tomye's birthday party. The evening before I'd gone to see a play at the Multi-Ethnic Theatre at The Next Stage, “A Secret for Next Sunday.” Written by Charles Johnson, no not the author of Middle Passage, it starred a good friend, Judith Sims as Mattie. It wasn’t the story of two old guys about to die—what’s the name of that movie? No one was rich. But it was the story of two old guys with a secret one couldn’t let go.

“Criminal” is not a large exhibit but it certainly is an emotional one, I didn’t allow myself to participate in. I stayed objective, although the plates with last meals etched into the designs –the shear multitude of the display and then to hear the audio –a woman’s voice reading off the inmates name and what he ate, was a bit much. They were such pretty ceramic plates too, the blue design. Then there was the architectural mapping of cell design—spread out in the center of the gallery the walls were flat and we could walk through the design. “The House that Herman Build,” was playing in an adjoining gallery, while one could hear audio of Robert H. King in the background. One also heard lions roaring…the gallery director told me not to worry, there were no lions loose. (The SF Zoo is nearby.) Artist Richard Kamler's "The Sound of Lions Roaring... Revisited" (with sound by Blaise Smith) referenced the artist’s 1992 broadcast of lions roaring to protest the execution of an inmate at San Quentin. He was cited by the coast guard for disturbing the peace an article posted states. There was another audio installation accompanying a cartoon depiction of the OJ Simpson verdict. There were painting of inmates in sexual positions. Painted in a lighthearted style the seriousness of alternative life styles and the potential for injury and exploitation was masked, yet present at the same time. Rigo 23’s rendition of Tookie Williams covered a wall, while on the other end, William Pope L.’s “Setting the Table,” depicted 19 photos of alleged terrorists circulated to media. The artist printed the prisoner’s faces on bologna and then hung them up to dry. Dread Scott’s Lockdown is another interesting work. His portraits of the men on lockdown and their stories offers another perspective on the complex prison discussion created here. Another work I really found provocative was Sandow Birk’s paintings of the landscape surrounding San Quentin, minus the prison. It is so beautiful, too beautiful to have such a horrible blight like a maximum state prison in its midst. Like the lives behind the walls, it’s such wasted potential. Imagine if the men were free to meditate along the ocean path, garden and live in nature –true rehabilitation might be possible, even desired.

Angela Davis in her talk referenced the recent Pew report about prisons: one in every 99.1 adults is locked up, 1 in every 9 African American men ages 20-34. She spoke of the privatization of prisons, especially those in Hawaii where real estate is too expensive to build there so prisoners are shipped to the mainland to special prisons just for them. "Criminal" closes March 15. Visit www.gallery.sfsu.edu or call (415) 338-6535. The Fine Arts Gallery at San Francisco State University, 1600 Holloway Avenue, has free admission.

Photos: SFSU exhibit. Pictured is Robert H. King with Angela Y. Davis, both were presenters at the conference this weekend. Robert H. King's voice is heard in the exhibit referencing Angola State Prison where two of the Angola 3, Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace remain behind bars and in solitary confinement, 35 years now. King was released in 2001 after serving 29 years in solitary confinement, 31 years in total. His case was dismissed, but he had to plea to a lesser charge so he wouldn't sue the state of Louisiana for false imprisonment.

The Art of Living Black

The Art of Living Black Open Studios Week 1
Last Sunday, March 2, I went by Mills College for TAOLB open studios art tour. There I saw Adekunle Kabir Adejare whose textiles and fine line ink drawings were marvelous to behold. Duane Conliffe’s photographs of people, landscapes and fruit were wonderful to see. I recalled visiting his home studio a few years ago one rainy Sunday. This afternoon was sunny and warm and pleasant. There were refreshments for guests and a pleasant ambiance hovering over the gathering. Lorraine Bonner, who’d sent me a card had new work, one was a bust with a maze traveling from the groin to the heart, while on the back of the bust there was a maze starting from the top. The lines were black on one side and white on the other. The color had something to do with embracing all of ourselves, both the light and the lesser understood or scary aspects of ourselves, because all of it is a part of the healing journey home –home, the heart. Her table was covered with clay and stone carvings and sculptures, one was a head face with a picture of Lorraine inside the scull. Her baby photo illuminated by light—

My feet then took me over to Atiba Sylvia Thomas’ table. Well first I saw Sonia Mañjon, the wonderful director of the Center for Art and Public Life, who is leaving us this June for a position elsewhere. I introduced her to Jeanette Madden whose work always leaves the canvas, this time in smaller pieces with jeweled straps almost like purse handles, they were so pretty. Inside each frame was a painting, a simple sketch or a combination— next to Jeanette was Nannette’s Entermusblues Blue People. She has a Tina Turner and a Marvin Gaye, you want to hang in your room and watch them sing. The paintings sing. It’s the loudest and quietest concert you ever heard. But she also had this really cute painting of this little boy on the toilet. It was so cute.

When I walked in, I’d greeted Latisha Baker, whose paintings on wood, her brush fire, I think you’ve probably heard me speak of before. Well she had some of her larger and smaller pieces on display. She also had some more colorful and traditional portraits displayed in her booth. Sister Ajuan Mance, an associate professor at Mills had these really cool folks, some mixed media and others semi-caricatures of black men

Back to Atiba. Okay so I tell my friend, if you want to get me a present you can by me one of her piece and he says, “I don’t have a lot of money, but pick out something.” I was like, wow, right now? He said, “Yes.” So I looked at a few pieces and settled on “God will take care of it.” It’s made from rusted tools and a red cowries. The figure is balancing on one marble, the other is on her head; the arms are a nail and the body is a tool. The red cowry covers the stomach. It is balanced, yet the balance is precarious because one foot is on a marble and the head, if it tips might drop the marble. It is a perfect metaphor— for life and love and happiness. As we left the exhibit, we went by Ebony’s booth where Nelson Mandela and Bob Marley were calling us. King had said just earlier morning that when he was in South Africa he stayed in a hotel Mandela frequented and they put in him the former president’s old room. So, I wasn’t surprised when the artist looked up and said, “Has anyone ever said, you look like Mandela?” Ebony Iman Dallas’ people are from East Africa and is studying at the California College of the Arts, where TaSin, my daughter graduated in 2004. (Yes, I have to give my daughter a plug. Visit her at www.tasinsabir.com.)

This weekend is an opportunity to visit other artists on Week 2 of TAOLB tour, March 8 and 9 in Lafayette, Martinez, Richmond, and San Pablo. I’m going to go by Karen and Malik’s place “The Blue Room,” 1814 Gaynor Avenue, Richmond, (510) 931-8639. I might drive out to Vallejo to Ethnic Notions, 318 Georgia Street, (707) 647-7335, for SaLongo Lee and two other artists, but I’m not sure. I want to go by the Richmond Art Center, 2540 Barrett Ave., Richmond, for the TAOLB show and also for Emory Douglas’ show. If you haven’t seen either, TAOLB closes March 14. Visit www.taolb.org and call (510) 620-6772. There are many satellite exhibits throughout town in San Francisco, San Pablo, and Oakland. Many close March 14 or have already closed. The exhibit at the San Francisco African American Art and Culture Complex is through March 31, San Pablo Gallery in San Pablo and Stoneridge Galley in Oakland are through March 30, and the Women’s Cancer Resource Gallery, renamed to honor the late Rae Louise Hayward, is up through March 14, www.wcrc.org You can also visit www.therac.org