Chauncey Bailey, editor of the Oakland Post and a former reporter for the Oakland Tribune, was assassinated on a downtown street in broad daylight in Oakland, California, Thursday, August 2, 2007. Bailey was a long-time distinguished journalist, who had also written for the Detroit News, UPI, and the Hartford Courant.
Devaughdre Broussard, 19, has been arrested for the murder. Police says he has confessed to the shotgun murder, saying he killed Bailey because of stories he was writing about an institution known as Your Black Muslim Bakery where Broussard was a handyman. The suspect's ties to a black nationalist institution has prompted agonizing soul-searching about Oakland's radical black tradition, but Don't hold your breath waiting for ideologues to change. The reaction so far has been either total indifference or a predictable "spin" based on the ideological predispositions of the commentator.
The silence about this shocking event from the know-it-all "liberals" is deafening (pity Brother Chauncey didn't manage did get himself hit by a shotgun blast in Jerusalem, Beirut, or Moscow, maybe then, somebody around here would give a damn).
Over the weekend the Washington Post and the San Francisco Chronicle had articles about some long-awaited soul-searching among some African-American activists about the sick direction Black activism has taken in recent years. Some of you will recognize some of the points I've been making in Green circles for several years.
Washington Post, Friday, August 10, 2007.
For Some in Oakland, Editor's Death Shows Subversion of Black Activism
by Karl Vick
It was not just the brutality that stunned the city. To some, the suspect's ties to a black Muslim bakery held a darker significance, a symbol that Oakland's radical black movement -- a history that spawned such national figures as Huey Newton and Angela Davis -- had over the years gone awry, and that the violence that infused parts of that tradition had been tolerated too long.
"This community has a radical tradition, including the Black Panthers, the West Coast Black Arts Movement, the establishment of black studies," said Marvin X, a militant-turned-writer, standing in the doorway of a downtown photocopy shop. "Look at where we are now. We've gotten off course from our tradition. Radicalism has been aborted to criminality."
Bailey, 57, editor of the Oakland Post, a black weekly newspaper, was shot Aug. 2 on his way to work. His alleged killer, 19, was a foot soldier in a local institution, Your Black Muslim Bakery, an ambitious social welfare project that court records show was deteriorating into a criminal enterprise. Police allege that he was angry that Bailey was preparing to write critically about the bakery.
Bailey's death has shaken Oakland's black elite. Bailey was a member of their fraternity and, like them, had promoted Oakland's transition from 1970s crucible of black power to African American establishment showcase.
"This was sort of the Oakland version of a fatwa," said Ishmael Reed, the poet and author of two books on Oakland. "This will wake up the African American elite, because they could be next. They feel very vulnerable now, after hundreds of people have been killed in the streets."
. . .
San Francisco Chronicle, Sunday, August 12, 2007
Bean pies, power, sex and death at Oakland's Your Black Muslim Bakery
by Matthai Chakko Kuruvila
Yusuf Bey believed fish sandwiches and bean pies would lift up marginalized black people in Oakland.
For more than three decades, his bakery was both pulpit and profit center, providing the money to start other nearby businesses, such as a hair salon and school, to bear witness to black self-empowerment.
But the block of stores on San Pablo Avenue has withered since Bey's death four years ago. The final blow came this month, when police raided Your Black Muslim Bakery, smashing its windows and putting its leaders in jail.
Even its food - once touted as "pure" and sold in places such as Whole Foods, Rainbow Grocery, the Oakland Coliseum and the Oakland International Airport - was labeled unsanitary. And last week, a judge ordered all bakery assets to be liquidated as part of its bankruptcy.
The empire's heir, 21-year-old Yusuf Bey IV, sits in jail facing charges of assault with a deadly weapon. Bey IV, his brother Joshua Bey and a bakery employee also have been charged with kidnapping and torture. And a 19-year-old bakery handyman has been charged with the assassination of a symbol of African American self-sufficiency - Chauncey Bailey, the black editor of a black-owned weekly newspaper serving the black community.
. . .
The elder Bey's political influence in Oakland was significant, as he curried favor with white, black and Latino politicians. He even ran for mayor in 1994, receiving 5 percent of the vote.
The bakery received a $1.2 million advance from the city in 1996 to start a job-training program for health care workers. Money was used to lease a Cadillac, but the school was never opened and the loan was apparently never repaid.
Even as the bakery was going through bankruptcy, Mayor Ron Dellums and Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, gave it letters of support. (They both declined to be interviewed for this story. Lee issued a statement Friday disavowing her earlier support for the enterprise.) Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, D-Oakland, wrote a letter to Bey in August 2002 that said "the leadership you provide should be an inspiration to all concerned over the city's future," according to an East Bay Express article.
At about the same time as Perata's letter arrived, authorities were investigating Bey for alleged sexual abuse of girls.
"It's like this dirty little secret that no one wants to admit to," said Lewis, whose stepdaughters bore children after Bey allegedly raped them. "A lot of people befriended him because of this perception of power."
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Old Dirt About Elaine Brown and the Black Panthers
There is one more thing that needs to be mentioned. While surfing around the net I downloaded an old article from Salon by David Horowitz about Elaine Brown's dubious activities with the Black Panther Party in Oakland in the 1970s. Especially in the aftermath of the murder of Chauncey Bailey, you better believe this will not be the last time you will read about this.
Posted by Salon, December 13, 1999
Who killed Betty Van Patter?
by David Horowitz
Twenty-five years ago Monday, my friend Betty Van Patter disappeared from a tavern on University Avenue called the Berkeley Square and was never seen alive again.
Six months earlier, I had recruited Betty to keep the books of the Educational Opportunities Corp., an entity I had created to run a school for the children of the Black Panther Party. By the time the police fished her battered body out of San Francisco Bay in January 1975, I knew that her killers were the Panthers themselves.
At the time, the Panthers were still being defended by writers like Murray Kempton and Garry Wills in the pages of the New York Times, and by then-Gov. Jerry Brown of California. The governor was even a confidant of Elaine Brown, who had hired Betty and whom Huey Newton had appointed to stand in for him as the Panther leader while he was in "exile" in Cuba.
At the time of Betty's death, Elaine was running for Oakland City Council and had just secured a $250,000 grant from the Nixon administration under a federal juvenile delinquency program. J. Anthony Kline, the consigliore to whom she had been able to turn when the party's enforcers got in trouble with the law, was about to be appointed to Gov. Brown's cabinet. (Today Kline is a justice on the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.)
Why Did the Oakland Democratic Establishment Support Your Black Muslim Bakery?
The "spin" you read in the media and on the web is totally predictable based on the ideological predisposition of the commentator.
Conservatives: rage against "politically correct" liberals coddling Islamic extremists and "hate whitey" Black militants, therefore America must be "more conservative."
Liberals: hand-wringing about "good intentions" based on Black "empowerment" and "self-help" gone bad, therefore we need more hand-wringing and more reflection about how "on the one hand" it's like this and "on the other hand" it's like that.
Black Nationalist:"White people" don't care about Brotha Chauncey (like they cared about Danny Pearl), and will use this as an excuse to escalate the "war" on Africans in America, therefore African-Americans like me must be "more Nationalist" and "more militant."
When evidence and events contradict the firmly held beliefs of True Believers, the inconvenient facts simply bounce off. Nobody ever admits error or changes their minds.