Category Archives: west oakland

Kill Your Television?

A couple more wheat pastes… These two were directly next to each other in West Oakland, but I’m not clear if they were produced by the same artist, or are supposed to relate to each other in some way. Maybe you’re supposed to practice a little mindful meditation after you’ve turned off the tube.

Whatever the case, they’re both pretty interesting…

television statistics, kill your television, television violence

Here is the text again (reformatted by me for ease of reading)…

  • 99 percent of American households possess at least one television.
  • There are 2.24 TV sets in the average U.S. household.
  • 66 percent of U.S. homes contain three or more TV sets.
  • The average TV is on for 6 hours, 47 minutes per day.
  • 66 percent of Americans watch television while eating.
  • The American population watches 250 billion hours worth of TV annually.
  • The value of that time assuming a wage of $5/hour: $1.25 trillion.
  • 56 percent of Americans pay for cable.
  • 49 percent of Americans say they watch too much television.
  • The average American child watches 1,680 minutes of TV per week.
  • 70 percent of day care centers utilize the television in their facilities.
  • 54 percent of children ages 4-6 chose watching television instead of spending time with their parents.
  • The average American youth spends 1500 hours watching television annually.
  • The average American youth spends 900 hours in school annually.
  • U.S. children are exposed to 8000 acts of violence on the television by the time they finish elementary school.
  • The number of violent acts seen on television by the age of 18: 200,000.
  • 79 percent of Americans believe TV violence helps precipitate real life mayhem.
  • 20,000 thirty-second commercials are seen by the average child.
  • The average 65 year old views 2 million or more commercials.
  • 53.8 percent of news stories are devoted to advertising crime, disaster, and war.
  • ?? percent is devoted to public service announcements.

A few comments…

When I was a kid I watched a lot of television. Too much television.  My family was probably quite representative of some of these statistics.  I watched Spiderman cartoons before school in the morning.  I watched Scooby Doo, The Brady Bunch, Bugs Bunny, and The Little Rascals after school.  We watched the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite every night during dinner, our plates perched on TV trays positioned in front of the living room couch.  We watched prime time TV most evenings.  I remember Wednesdays were Eight is Enough.  Fridays were The Love Boat and Fantasy Island.  Lame, I know. 

But it wasn’t all lame. There were some great shows, and certainly some that exposed me to characters and experiences I would know little about, living in white-middle-class suburbia – like The Jeffersons, Welcome Back Kotter, Good Times, and The White Shadow.  I loved these shows.

And television wasn’t nearly as violent as it is today.  The most violent shows I can think of were Starsky & Hutch and Charlie’s Angels, both rather tame by today’s standards. You could even argue the Angels were empowering for us young girls – to see those women kickin’ ass, takin’ names, and always baggin’ the bad guys. 

Could we have been spending our time more productively? Certainly.

But at this point in my life (and actually for most of my adulthood), I watch fewer than 5 hours of television a week… sometimes none at all.  Not bad for a kid raised on the boob tube.

I suppose you could argue that I’ll never know what untapped potential in myself was squelched due to an overdose of 70’s sitcoms.  But I’m ok with that.  In spite of it all, I think I turned out pretty well. 

I’m not saying I don’t agree with the larger message of the piece. I agree we’d all be a lot better off if folks spent a bit more time engaging in more interactive pursuits. I’m just sayin’, it’s not all bad.

buddha, doghead buddha, west oakland wheat paste

And now… I think I’ll get off this computer and do a little yoga…

Namaste.

SSS

Some short posts this week… busy busy busy.

People loved the first one of these, found just across the border in Berkeley (Time’ll Tell). This one’s just across the border too, in Emeryville though, and mostly gone now. I shot it awhile ago, but sadly only after somebody already ripped a chunk of it off.

What do you think it said?

broke, sss, time'll tell, giant buffalo wheatpaste

A giant wheatpaste cut to shape, it seems to be a reproduction done in a few large pieces from a smaller, quite detailed drawing. Pretty cool, eh?

Hoping to fine one in Oaktown-proper one of these days… (hint hint)

“Fight or be slaves!”

Ok, let’s see…. we left off talking about the Pullman Porters of West Oakland.  These men were part of the first wave of African Americans migrating to California in search of better opportunities.  C. L. Dellums was one of these men.

“C.L. Dellums’ father was born in slavery, just two and a half months before Juneteenth (June 19), 1865, the date emancipation belatedly came to Corsicana, Texas. C.L. left Texas for California determined to become a lawyer, declaring that ‘I don’t plan to wear these overalls for the rest of my life.’ But in the 1920s there were few decent jobs for African Americans, and Dellums went to work as a Pullman railroad porter as a last resort, reading constantly to learn about the world and ideas.” [‘Fight or be slaves!’ by Albert Lannon]

He was exemplary of the first generation of blacks in the Bay Area who found their options more limited than they had imagined. Though the porter jobs provided many with steady work and income, the conditions were not ideal…  wages were low and employees of the Pullman Company were dependent upon tips from white customers to supplement their income.  They were also required to pay for food, uniforms, and lodging out of their wages, and also were uncompensated for additional work time spent in preparatory and clean-up duties.

As a result of these conditions, the porters organized themselves into the first African American labor union in the United States – The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.  First organized in 1925 by a group of 500 porters in Harlem, after years of having organizing efforts squelched by the company, they not only launched their campaign in secret, but also chose A. Philip Randolph, “an outsider beyond the reach of the Company, to lead it. The union chose a dramatic motto that summed up porters’ resentment over their working conditions and their sense of their place in history: ‘Fight or Be Slaves'”.

Randolph realized the need for a West Coast counterpart in organizing the Pullman Porters and chose C. L. Dellums, designating him Vice President of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters in 1928, at which time he was promptly fired from the Pullman Company.  It took more than a decade for them to have any real negotiating success, but in 1937 the Brotherhood finally won a contract with the Pullman Company.  “It was the first economic agreement ever signed between African Americans and a white institution. It sent the message of unionism to the black community nationally.” [‘Fight or be slaves!’ by Albert Lannon]

Uncle of former congressman and current Oakland City Mayor Ron Dellums, C.L. became a major figure in Oakland’s African American Community, personally exemplifying the possibility of black empowerment.  He went on to serve as western regional director of the NAACP, and later was also instrumental in the organization of the 1941 March on Washington.  After his death, the new Amtrak station at Jack London Square was dedicated in his honor, a statue of Dellums adorning the entrance.

His nephew Ron Dellums is exemplary of the greater opportunities available to the second generation of African Americans in the Bay Area… thanks to the tireless efforts and sacrifices of those who came before them.  I’ll try to get more of this history up in the next few days, but again, I’ll just mention that most of this information was provided free of charge on Oakland’s city walking tour “New Era / New Politics” which will be offered one more time later this month… February 27th at 10am (meet on steps of AAMLO).

Elements of Power ~ Voices of Change

oakland mural, oakland mural art, ghosttown mural art

I love this mural, despite its dilapidated state. Painted 10 years ago by folks from Laney College, the East Bay Institute of Urban Arts, and Pat McElroy on the corner of 31st and MLK, it’s definitely showing its years, not to mention the heap of dump-destined-junk dumped in front of it. I thought about going back to snap another shot without the pile of junk, but then decided it was more authentic to just show you how I saw it when I first came across it.

This is typical in West Oakland, and the symbolism does not escape me.

Here you have symbols of power and change for people of color – activists, political leaders, artists, musicians, migrant workers, athletes, and more – all stitched together into a positive tapestry of, dare I say, “hope”, and some thoughtless person obscures it with a bunch of trash they’re too lazy or cheap to dispose of properly. It makes me mad. Trash gets dumped here daily, and I don’t just mean kids throwing their candy wrappers on the sidewalk as they walk home from school (which also happens). I mean large trucks advertising dumping & hauling, who likely charge folks to take their trash away, and then come dump it in my neighborhood so they don’t have to pay the city dump fees. Argh. The city still ends up paying for it, through blight clean up crews, and even more so, reduced property taxes.

It sometimes feels like a losing battle… which reminds me of this essay I read yesterday. It’s a breakup letter to the city of Oakland, from a resident who, after many years of struggling to make this city a better place, has given up. She’s movin’ to the country. Check it out… Ode to Oakland.

I’m not there… yet.

mural artists in oakland, laney college mural

Directed by: Edythe Boone and Meera Desai (if that name rings a bell it’s because she was also involved in the Martin Luther King Jr. mural I covered when I first started this blog – To Ignore Evil…)