Denise Sullivan

Author, Journalist, Culture Worker

September 15, 2020 • 10:56 am 0

Four Little Girls and Two Songs

On September 15, 1963, four Birmingham, Alabama girls, Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley, lost their lives during the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church.  In 2011, a marker was finally dedicated in their names at the site of the vicious, racially motivated, murderous attack.

Just three months after the murder of Medgar Evers in Jackson, Mississippi, and two weeks after the March on Washington and Dr. King’s momentum-building “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963, the Alabama tragedy became the pivotal event in the Civil Rights Movement. Singer Nina Simone wrote “Mississippi Goddam” in immediate response to hearing the news: “I shut myself up in a room and that song happened,” she said of the song that begins, “Alabama’s got me so upset.” From that moment forward, Simone was committed to writing and performing material that would jolt people awake or into action.  It remains her most enduring work.

Joan Baez had of course walked alongside Dr. King at the marches in the South all along; her tribute was a recording of “Birmingham Sunday” by her brother-in-law, the writer Richard Fariña.  Each girl was remembered by name in the verses, set to the tune of a beautiful folk melody. Fifty-plus years on, both songs remain painful reminders of the brutalities waged by so-called humanity, here and yonder, year in and year out, against women, girls and Black lives.

Filed under: anti-capitalist, anti-war, Arts and Culture, Origin of Song, Protest Songs, racism, , , , , , , , , ,

June 7, 2020 • 6:09 pm 0

Writers making change in the pandemic age

This week, and what a week it was, I’m pleased to introduce you to several writers living and working in San Francisco, all of them striving

Poet and activist Thea Matthews in the Mission District on Wednesday, June 3, 2020. (Kevin N. Hume/S.F. Examiner)

toward a more just and equitable society in their own unique ways.  First, poet and activist Thea Matthews is a San Francisco born and raised writer, celebrating the publication of her first poetry collection for a local press. She’s also deeply involved and on the frontlines of the Movement 4 Black Lives. Read more about where she’s been and where she’s going in this week’s San Francisco Examiner column, SFLives.

Also publishing today, a story I was reporting on and off for about five months on the Writers Grotto, a community of authors who found they needed to recreate their organization so that it would be more inviting to writers of color. You can read the full story in today’s San Francisco Chronicle Datebook  (and one day, I promise to a write story about the process of reporting it).

I love my work, seeking out the stories on the lives of the people and places that show San Francisco at its best. What a privilege it is to be trusted to tell these stories and deliver them to you, especially in these times. As ever, I thank you for taking the time to read and I bid the best to you and your families as the pandemic runs its course. May the moral arc of the universe continue its bend toward justice.

Filed under: anti-capitalist, anti-war, Arts and Culture, Black Power,, Books, Poetry, racism, San Francisco News, ,

December 1, 2018 • 11:08 am 0

Two California Women in Conversation

Getting to meet inspiring, creative and intelligent people is probably my favorite part of the job as an independent journalist, editor and curator (aside from doing the writing, of course…). Over the past couple of years, I’ve had the pleasure of working with two extraordinary women, Kim Shuck, a poet/educator/beadworker and Lynell George, a journalist/essayist/photographer. Somewhere along the way and between individual conversations with both of them, I had the idea to get the pair together to talk about the things we seem to talk about most: The changing cityscapes of Los Angeles and San Francisco. Being born Californian and staying here has given Lynell and Kim a deep understanding of the place. I hope you’ll explore their insights and their work, and I invite you to read the conversation, published this month in Boom California, by the University of California Press.

(photo of Kim Shuck by Doug Salin; photo of Lynell George by Al Quattrocchi)

Filed under: Arts and Culture, Book news, Books, California, gentrification, Poetry, racism, San Francisco News, Women's issues, , , , ,

September 20, 2018 • 7:19 pm 0

Take Down The Statues

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All around the country, bronze statues are coming down, thanks to a movement started in the South in 2015 following the church shooting in Charleston. A city, a whole region, holding on to a vision of the past that was not very honorable in the first place is no way to acknowledge true history or let the generations of people who were harmed by that history heal; instead these megaton renderings glorify injustice and beget more violence. A nation in the middle of a prolonged racial crisis can no longer continue to inflict harm on its citizens and yet, these statues are a daily reminder of how twisted, inaccurate, and dated our history has become.  It’s time for a change.

The movement to unpack and teach a more accurate version of our state’s history has finally reached the far west, where we of course are supposed to understand and know better (yet by and large, I’m sad to report, there are those who still don’t get it).  Here in San Francisco last week, Native American activists and their allies achieved a victory that was 30 years in the making:  The rendering of a piece called Early Days depicting a Spanish conquistador and a Franciscan missionary lording over a Plains Indian (who by the way, was not from this region), was finally removed at the break of dawn following a contentious hearing process. I talked about statuary and other civic concerns with San Francisco’s poet laureate, Kim Shuck, a member of the Cherokee nation as well as a Polish American and a native to San Francisco.  She’s an educator with a masters in fine art and knows well the precedents for public art display; as a Native American, a person of conscience, and a mother, she was personally aggrieved by the sight of the statue as she moved in and out of the public library, her primary place of work as our city’s poet laureate.  And we talked more in-depth about the battle to topple the statue and about her San Francisco life.  I hope you’ll read on and link to this week’s edition of my San Francisco Examiner column, S.F. Lives: READ NOW

Filed under: Arts and Culture, California, Poetry, racism, Tales of the Gentrification City, , , , , , , , ,

January 12, 2018 • 1:26 pm 0

The Last Holiday: On Stevie Wonder, Gil Scott-Heron and the MLK Observance They Turned From Dream to Reality

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It was a long road to the third Monday in January when all 50 states observe the birth of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the day named in his honor.  Largely owed for making the dream of a King holiday a reality is Stevie Wonder, who back in 1980, wrote the pointed song, “Happy Birthday,” then launched a 41-city U.S. tour (and invited Gil Scott- Heron along) to promote the idea which was first mooted by Rep. John Conyers in 1968. The musical efforts were ultimately the key in collecting the millions of citizen signatures that had a direct impact on Congress passing the law signed by President Ronald Reagan in 1983, declaring a day for MLK. Observed for the first time in 1986, some states were late to the party, however, by the turn of the 21st Century, all were united in some form of remembrance of the civil rights giant. “Happy Birthday,” which served as the Wonder-campaign theme (and is now the “official” King holiday tune) is  the last track on Hotter Than July. The album also features “Master Blaster,” Wonder’s tribute to Bob Marley (he’d been scheduled for the tour until he fell too ill to participate). Stepping into the breach was Scott-Heron whose 2011, posthumously published memoir The Last Holiday, details his own journey with music and activism, and helps retrace the long and winding road Wonder took to bring home the last US federal holiday, with the help of a song.


The Hotter Than July tour brought Gil and Stevie to Oakland, where they played in the name of King, along with Rodney Franklin and Carlos Santana. In a weird turn of events, the concert on December 8, 1980, coincided with the shocking night John Lennon was killed. The musicians and crew learned of the tragedy from a backstage television; the job fell to Wonder,  with Scott-Heron and the other musicians at his side, to deliver the news to the arena of assembled music fans. “For the next five minutes he spoke spontaneously about his friendship with John Lennon:  how they’d met, when and where, what they had enjoyed together, and what kind of man he’d felt Lennon was,” wrote Scott-Heron.  “That last one was key, because it drew a line between what had happened in New York that day and what had happened on that motel balcony in Memphis, Tennessee, a dozen years before.  And it drew a circle around the kind of men who stood up for both peace and change.”  This year marks the 50th remembrance of Dr. King’s assassination on April 4. Scott-Heron devotes the final pages of The Last Holiday  to a remembrance of how the murder of Lennon fueled the final drive to push for a federal observance of an official MLK Day.

The politics of right and wrong make everything complicated

To a generation who’s never had a leader assassinated

But suddenly it feels like ’68 and as far back as it seems

One man says “Imagine” and the other says “I have a dream”

Filed under: anti-war, Arts and Culture, Black Power,, Civil Rights, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Georgia, income disparity, racism, , , , ,

June 23, 2017 • 11:45 am 0

Mumia Abu-Jamal & Matters Of Black Life

I have composed my thoughts about the new book, Have Black Lives Ever Mattered? by political prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal. Read the piece by clicking through to Down With Tyranny!

Abu-Jamal’s collection of essays, published by City Lights Books, covers the extrajudicial killings of Black Americans since the late ’90s to the present. The writings are an attempt to examine how the country arrived at its new stage of intolerance and what can be done from here. As told from the perspective of a writer who has spent the last 30 plus years behind bars, and most of those years on Death Row, the analysis proves to have been prescient in its wisdom and precise in its depiction of the US problem with white supremacy and law enforcement’s impunity when it comes to taking Black lives. I hope you’ll let me know what you think.

 

Filed under: anti-war, Books, income disparity, police, racism, , , , ,

October 14, 2016 • 8:13 pm 0

Bob Dylan: Nobel Laureate

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The Thursday morning announcement that Bob Dylan has won the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature, seems to have struck a raw nerve among (mostly) male novelists and some crabby millennials on social media who were intent on disputing the 75-year-old American songwriter’s worthiness of the honor. We pay no attention to them other than to say, they are entirely wrong: Dylan is a writer the likes of which we will never again see in our lifetimes. That we lived in his time and were able to see him perform his written work just happens to have been our good luck and privilege, an idea suggested by the writer Paul Williams and one I believe should be kept close at hand when the inevitable bashing and clashing continues.

The Nobel committee called Dylan’s work “poetry for the ear,” celebrating him for “having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition;” authors Joyce Carole Oates and Mary Karr weighed in with a series of favorable tweets as did the great Salman Rushdie who offered comparisons to Orpheus and Faiz.

Meanwhile author Gary Shteyngart (Absurdistan) used his twisted sarcasm to tweet, “books are kinda gross.” Irvine Welch (Trainspotting) was a little more coarse, and Hari Kunzru (My Revolutions) wins for angriest. That Dylan is a songwriter, and an innately American one, touring during his country’s likeliest darkest hours yet was not enough to stop the novelists’ outbursts: All three were born outside of the USA and are well read here, though none among them have written anything that can remotely compare to the beauty of “Mr. Tambourine Man” and “Visions of Johanna” nor anything as compelling as “Masters of War,” “Ballad of a Thin Man,” “It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)” or “Subterranean Homesick Blues.” Their lyricism has not been likened to that of Keats, Blake, and Shakespeare, like Dylan’s work has been. Of course this is barely scratching the surface of a long list of Dylan-writings, including songs, poems, memoirs and screenplays, and possible reasons for other writers’ grievances. One is tempted to simply list the titles and produce evidence of the full bodied depth and freshness to the work that stretches out following the ’60s and into the ’70s, ’80s and beyond, whether it be the collaborative Desire or high watermarks Infidels and Oh Mercy, or late work like “Not Dark Yet” from Time Out of Mind and “Mississippi” and “Sugar Baby” from the 21st Century magnum opus, Love and Theft, released on September 11, 2001.

Read the entire article at Down With Tyranny!

Filed under: anti-war, Arts and Culture, Bob Dylan, Poetry, Protest Songs, racism,

October 12, 2016 • 6:25 pm 0

Postmodern Times Requiem

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Poet Janice Mirikitani, GLIDE co-founder and housing activist, at State of the City Forum on Gentrification Issues, curated and moderated throughout 2014-15 by Denise Sullivan at Modern Times Bookstore Collective

How does a revolutionary bookstore and its personnel survive in the new Gilded Age?  A rhetorical question perhaps, but often asked, discussed, debated, and ultimately decided at 2919 24th Street in San Francisco, Modern Times Bookstore Collective. After 45 years of selling incendiary books to the loving people, the bookstore will close its doors next month.

You say you’re sad? We are too. You hope another independent radical bookstore will take its place. How can it?

Modern Times is where the brave, the broken, the bleeding hearts go to be repaired and refreshed, to be fed by literature and conversation, made (mostly) by Marxists,  Radical Queers, revolutionary sweetheart poets, and organized minds, the kind who protect Black Lives and Sacred Waters; your housing advocates, labor unionists, People’s politicians, Green partiers, anti-ablist, anti-ageist, anti-capitalist, anarchist cooks, militant vegans, and hopeful activists. And then there were the passersby who knew–there was a bathroom inside.

It was dirty in there: Waged that  war once or twice and lost it. I heard the staff of another neighborhood bookstore, never mind its name, speak ill of our sacred, safe, Spanish-speaking (ok, poor-Spanish-speaking), space. It hurt, but why reply and dignify ignorance: We were too busy anyway, blasting the surveillance state, police terror, environmental crisis, and the racist, sexist, bully nation.

We’ve been beat up, we’ve been thrown out, but we’re not down. We’re coming up, coming out, over the wall, across the bridge, under the freeway, on the block, in the chamber, in the jail cell, special housing unit, death row, and we’re gonna be alright. Because we don’t stop, you don’t stop, and there is no. sleep. ’til recall. Just know, even when the power gets cut, and the nights grow long and cold, Modern Times still sees you, and the little light that shines from your heart.

Written on October 11, 2016, barely revised, and read live that night at the Mission Bookstores/ Litquake Benefit, accompanied by Victor Krummenacher on guitar. Long live Modern Times Bookstore Collective.

Filed under: anti-war, Arts and Culture, Book news, California, Never Forget, Now Playing, Protest Songs, racism, San Francisco News,

May 12, 2016 • 8:49 pm 0

Don’t Call It A Comeback: Frisco 5 Still Hungry

frisco_5_hunger_for_justice_san_franciscoFive days after ending their hunger strike, on Thursday morning the Frisco 5  minus Maria Cristina Gutierrez, returned to the Mission Police Station at the corner of Valencia and 17th Streets in San Francisco to report back on their health and intentions to build a movement for police reform, and one demand, the same as it ever was: Fire SFPD Chief Greg Suhr. Against a backdrop of almost daily revelations regarding the toxicity of the department, and one day after four members of the Board of Supervisors, led by State Senate candidate Jane Kim  called for a national search to replace the chief, the Frisco 5 (Gutierrez, Edwin Lindo, Ike Pinkston, and two hip hop artists, Ilyich “Equipto” Sato and Sellassie Blackwell) remain steadfast in their resolve to keep the pressure on Mayor Ed Lee until the day Suhr is fired.

“People are tired and fed up.  We’re not blind,” said Equipto of the political maneuvering behind closed doors at City Hall. In previous discussions with the Frisco 5 and other community organizations, the Supervisors maintained they had no stake in police matters, that it in fact would be a breach of law to intervene.  However following this week’s Board meeting at which Mayor Lee was in attendance and Frisco 5 supporters voiced loudly their demand to “Fire Chief Suhr,” the Supervisors began to wake up: They started by challenging the Mayor’s position on maintaining an expensive, heavy law enforcement presence at City Hall following last week’s shutdown of the building by citizens.

“Thirty-three people were arrested; they are using violent tactics on us,” said Frisco 5’s Edwin Lindo at Thursday’s press conference. He and the community that supports police reform have a particular distaste for this week’s solution proposed by Lee: He’s suggesting $17.5 million be invested in retraining, the creation of community programs, and the building of a supposedly less-lethal arsenal of tasers and net-guns; detractors say the money could otherwise be allocated to help displaced, homeless, and other persons in need as a result of the Lee administration’s poor civic leadership.

Whether it was the community groundswell, the absurdity of Lee’s proposal, the outcome of the blue ribbon panel that found the department lacks transparency and accountability, or the weight of their own conscience, by Wednesday, Supervisor Kim was followed by her fellow Supervisors David Campos, John Avalos, and Eric Mar in the call for police reform from the top down. Equipto said his mother, Maria Cristina Gutierrez, who could not attend the news conference due to a decline in her health following the hunger strike, was particularly disappointed in how slow-acting the Supervisors were in understanding their role in challenging police misconduct; her health was the consequence of their inaction and indeed the health of all the hunger strikers was compromised. As Ike Pinkston put it, “The mayor doesn’t give a rat’s ass.  It’s obvious.”

“Ed Lee should be packing his office right now,” said Edwin Lindo, who also offered congratulations to the student hunger strikers at SF State who fought to retain their ethnic studies program and won, ending their nine-day hunger strike and earning nearly half a million dollars for their department this week.

“Everyone said, ‘You can’t do this,'” said Sellassie of the Frisco 5’s intent to launch a hunger strike on April 21. “We did…It think Chief Suhr’s days are over.”

 

Filed under: Civil Rights, gentrification, Hip Hop, police, racism, San Francisco News, Tales of the Gentrification City

April 29, 2016 • 8:54 am 0

Dear (White) Liberal San Franciscan,

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The last sign of any jazz in San Francisco’s Fillmore District is this banner, hoisted in 2014.

I regret to inform, you missed it: The final day of celebration for the St. John Coltrane African Orthodox Church on Fillmore Street was Sunday. Aside from its usual meditation on “A Love Supreme” and a service to deliver the wisdom in its creator’s words, there was even a bit of time that day reserved to remember Prince, a kindred spirit and sound messenger of love who transitioned last Thursday. But really, there is no need to cry for the Coltrane Church: Going strong for nearly 50 years, it will continue to thrive in one incarnation or another, in accordance to its creed proclaiming life everlasting. Armed with a faith that knows no bounds, no building is going to hold down Archbishop Franzo King and his congregation. He and his musically gifted family of ordained ministers will remain in the light of Coltrane consciousness and on the move for truth and justice. However, if you’d still like to grieve our losses, please consider the sorry state of San Francisco, and our complicity in the soul murder of the city the Church calls home.

Read entire thing here:

Filed under: Arts and Culture, column, Jazz, racism, San Francisco News, , , ,

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