Opinion

OP-ED: We Will Not Sell the Soul of Our City

Published

11 years ago

November 6, 2015

San Franciscans are celebrating Aaron Peskin’s victory in the District 3 Supervisor’s race, in San Francisco, and they have spoken clearly and loudly.

We will NOT sell our souls nor the future of our city to the disdainful and repulsive campaign waged by Peskin’s opponent Julie Christensen and Mayor Ed Lee, who appointed her in January 2015.

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Her campaign junk mails were disingenuous and distorted Peskin’s legislative and community advocacy records.

One junk mail even had the audacity to use the “race baiting card” strategy of employing a racist anti-Chinese graffiti, “No More Chinese,” and declaring, “Do You Want Justice?”

The junk mails and campaign attacked Peskin personally, rather than addressed the main issues confronting San Francisco, such as, how to prevent further evictions of people from their homes and how to create more affordable housing in San Francisco.

Billionaires pumped a lot of cash into the campaign to try to defeat Peskin.

Julie Christensen, Mayor Lee and their deep-pocketed financial backers were surely deluded to think that this election and the soul of San Francisco were for sale. They only insulted the intelligence of the people of the City of St. Francis.

Other San Franciscans and I look forward to Supervisor Peskin providing new leadership at City Hall. San Francisco needs his leadership, integrity and commitment to working for what is best for the people of the city.

Peskin’s victory means the Board of Supervisors will not have to bow down anymore.

On election night, Aaron Peskin, his volunteers and supporters holding blue and yellow “Peskin for Supervisor” signs, and I stood on the corner of Columbus Avenue and Union Street in North Beach, while San Franciscans drove by honking their horns.

Among us were Carl Nolte, a highly respected journalist, State Senator Mark Leno and former Supervisor Sophie Maxwell, who represented the predominantly African American Bayview and Hunters Point District.

It is a new day at City Hall – let the principles of democratic governance return to our city.

Anh Le is a writer and independent journalist.

Oakland Post

Posts by Oakland Post

Arts and Culture

COMMENTARY: Black Music is the Sound of Black Freedom: Let Us Reclaim Both This Juneteenth

Black Music Month started when Black Music Association members Ed Wright, Kenny Gamble and his wife, journalist and radio host Dyanna Williams were able to persuade President Jimmy Carter to establish the observation on June 7, 1979.

Published

3 days ago

June 9, 2026

Oakland Post

Robert Johnson (1911-1938) is thought of as the godfather of blues music, especially Delta blues. The 29 songs recorded by him during his short life have been of massive inspiration to guitarists and musicians over the last 80 years. Public domain photo.

By Wanda Ravernell

Black Music Month and Juneteenth are inextricably linked – Black music is the sound of our freedom.

From the plaintive moans of the enslaved Africans’ ‘sorrow songs,’ to the fields of Civil War battle where Black soldiers picked up abandoned bugles, to the upright piano played in juke joints on Saturday night and churches come Sunday morning, our ancestors’ innovation in the face of want, fear, degradation, and hopelessness has yielded genres of music imitated ’round the world.

In 2000, Congress made it official. In 2009, Pres. Barack Obama changed the name to African American Music Heritage Month and in 2023, Pres. Joe Biden changed it back to Black Music Month, two years after he declared Juneteenth a national holiday, the result of a movement led by Opal Lee.

Our ancestors battle for freedom over these last 400 years and the music that allowed them expression of their humanity deserved to be honored.

But we may be losing sight of the value of their sacrifices.

‘Sing a Song Full of the Faith That the Dark past Has Taught Us…’

Along with the long-known exploitation of Black musicians whose recordings were stolen by record companies, the commercialization of Juneteenth feels like another kind of theft.

I had never heard of Juneteenth until I moved to the Bay Area from my hometown of Philadelphia. I didn’t know it was one of many freedom festivals celebrated by descendants of enslaved people in the United States.

Emancipation Day was Jan. 1 in Pennsylvania, April 16 in Wash., D.C., May 20 in Florida, and Aug. 8 in Kentucky. But Juneteenth, June 19, has the most renown, known in Texas as the ‘colored peoples’ Fourth of July.’

It was marked by parades, beauty pageants, rodeos, backyard barbecues and church picnics.

Yes, church.

The formerly enslaved began the day praying in thanks for their freedom just as they had prayed for Jubilee – the day of freedom – when they had chains on their feet and hands. They ‘testified’ about their past suffering and how they had managed to overcome.

And they sang.

Although, we will not hold it this year, Omnira Institute’s Juneteenth Ritual of Remembrance recalled this part of Juneteenth with prayers in the languages of the African captives. In the middle of the ceremony, a soloist would lead us in singing “Many Thousand Gone” while we took turns reciting portions of the Emancipation Proclamation, the news of freedom that took more than two years to reach Texas – two months after the Civil War ended.

“Many Thousand Gone” was famously recorded by Black luminary Paul Robeson in 1947:

“No more auction block for me,

No more, no more

No more auction black for me

Many thousand gone.”

Other verses refer to the ‘pint of salt’ and the ‘driver’s lash,’ the realities of enslavement that they had survived.

‘Sing a Song Full of the Hope That the Present has Brought Us’

All of the genres of African American music have at their root songs like that, the essence being, as Stevie Wonder, wrote, “the joy inside our pain.” So Black music is not just music. It is our story, our history, our very strength.

During the Civil Rights Movement, which peaked 100 years after slavery ended, the people testified that it was the freedom songs – based on spirituals – that gave them the heart to march, face attack dogs, fire hoses, beatings, and shootouts with vigilantes.

The music reminded them that power was in the people. That music, our music, can do so again. We don’t have to accept the commodification of the products of our culture.

The power of those songs is showing a resurgence across the South as we battle again for the right to self-determination through the ballot box.

Those songs are the voices of our ancestors, voices forged in their blood, their sweat, their tears, joy and, above all, faith. Those songs, those prayers live in our blood and our very breath.

This Juneteenth, let us reclaim those holy voices expressed in Black music for ourselves. It is our birthright. It can neither be bought nor sold. No more. Never again.

Wanda Ravernell is the executive director of Omnira Institute, sponsor for 18 years of the Juneteenth Ritual of Remembrance and Oakland’s 11^th Annual Black-Eyed Pea Festival, which will take place on Sept. 12.