Wanda's Picks Radio Show, Friday, Sept. 15, 2017

This is a black arts and culture site. We will be exploring the African Diaspora via the writing, performance, both musical and theatrical (film and stage), as well as the visual arts of Africans in the Diaspora and those influenced by these aesthetic forms of expression. I am interested in the political and social ramifications of art on society, specifically movements supported by these artists and their forebearers. It is my claim that the artists are the true revolutionaries, their work honest and filled with raw unedited passion. They are our true heroes. Ashay!

Dr. Lynn Morrow, Heritage Keeper

8:00 AM – We are joined by 2017 Heritage Keepers Honorees: Dr. Bisola Marignay, Educator, Writer, and Leader, Self-Healing with Negro Spirituals Workshops and Dr. Lynne Morrow, Educator and Choral Director, The Pacific Edge Voices and Oakland Symphony Chorus and Friends of the Negro Spirituals co-founder, Ms. Lyvonne Chrisman. The award ceremony (a free event) is Sat., Sept. 16,1-4 p.m. at the San Francisco Main Library (Koret Auditorium), 100 Larkin Street.

Professor Stephen Best, Ph.D.

8:30 AM --  Professor Stephen Best of UC Berkeley's EnglishDepartment, who was instrumental in developing the James Baldwin film series at BAMPFA wich started Sept. 14 and continues through Nov. 16.
Stephen Best is an Associate Professor of English at UC-Berkeley. Professor Best is an alumni of Williams College (B.A., 1989) and the University of Pennsylvania (M.A., 1992; Ph.D., 1997). He is the author ofThe Fugitive's Properties: Law and the Poetics of Possession (University of Chicago, 2004), a study of property, poetics, and legal hermeneutics in nineteenth-century American literary and legal culture. Currently, he is working on a new project on rumor, promiscuous speech, and slavery's archive.


Professor Best is a member of the editorial board of the journal Representations. Recently, he co-convened a research group with Saidiya Hartman at the University of California's Humanities Research Institute on "Redress in Law, Literature, and Social Thought" (funded through the Mellon Foundation). His work has been supported by the Mellon Foundation, the Hellman Foundation, the Humanities Research Institute (University of California), and the Ford Foundation.

Pete Nicks, dir., The Force

9:00 AM -- Peter Nicks, The Force, his new film which goes deep inside an embattled urban police department struggling to rebuild trust in one of America's most violent cities at a power-keg moment in American policing. The Force opens today, Sept. 15, at a variety of Bay Area venues. The big Oakland opening is tonight at the Grand Lake theatre. Other locations the film is screening are: Landmark Embarcadero in SF, Landmark CA in Berkeley and the Smith-San Rafael in San Rafael. Visit The Force on Facebook at the website: theforcefilm.org
The Force Official Trailer

Dr. Shakti Butler, dir., Healing Justice

9:30 AM --  Shakti Butler is a multiracial African-American woman (African, Arawak Indian, and Russian-Jewish) whose work as a creative and visionary bridge builder has challenged and inspired learning for over two decades. She is the producer and director of groundbreaking documentaries including The Way Home, Mirrors of Privilege: Making Whiteness Visible, and Light in the Shadows, Cracking the Codes: The System of Racial Inequity uses story, theater and music to illuminate the larger frame of structural/systemic racial inequity. She joins us to talk about her latest film: . Healing Justice with a world premiere Sat., Sept. 16, at the First Congregational Church of Christ, 2501 Harrison Street in Oakland.