Art

23rd Avenue art space members rally to buy their own building

On the corner of 23rd Avenue and International Boulevard in East Oakland, there’s a colorful mural painted on the side of a building with the phrase “CULTURE IS A WEAPON” written in bold letters. In the center of the mural is an image of a raised fist in front of flames, surrounded by portraits of Black Panther party members, musicians, farmworkers and indigenous people. While the mural is surrounded by fences on all sides, its size and color make it…

Ta-Nehisi Coates speaks at ‘Black Panther’ screening in Oakland

On Tuesday, author Ta-Nehisi Coates spoke at a screening of Marvel’s Black Panther in front of 250 high school students at Oakland’s Grand Lake. The action film, which stars a nearly all-black black cast and imagines an Afrofuturist world untouched by white supremacy and colonialism, had a record-breaking opening weekend.

Open mic highlights experiences of women of color

In Berkeley, the La Peña Cultural Center and the UC Berkeley Womxn of Color Initiative hosted an open mic night on January 26 called “Empowering Women of Color Open Mic.”  The event opened a three-show series intended to provide a safe space for women of color to express themselves.