By Godfrey Lee

Marin City’s Walk-A-Thon 2021, which took place on Sunday morning, Nov. 14, 2021, was an enjoyable experience for the several hundred people who walked from Rocky Graham Park down the Mill Valley-Sausalito path toward Tamalpais High School, and back to the park.

The people started gathering around 9 a.m., greeting each other warmly — some dancing to the music. Most people got their printed t-shirts and number signs from the PlayMarin tent booth.

The program began with a talk from Paul Austin, the founder and executive director of Play Marin, who is working on developing youth sports activities in Marin City. Austin wants to include as many sports as possible in the program.

Terri Green, who directs the Marin City Climate Resilience and Health Justice, described the walk as the “March for Life.”

She spoke about the issues she sees as detrimental to the health and well-being of Marin City residents and pointed out that there is only one entrance and exit into Marin City: under the freeway.

This would not be sufficient if Marin City residents need to evacuate in the event of a major emergency, and so another entrance and exit is needed.

She wrote in her flyer that “80 years of walking in contaminated waters is INHUMANE!” and pointed out that the pond next to the Gateway Shopping Center and flood waters that enter Marin City are contaminated, much of the polluted water coming from the rain running off the freeway.

Green encouraged the audience to help solve these problems by contacting their public officials.

People started on the walk at about 11 a.m. Several booths were set up along the route to serve the walkers with snacks and information. The tent booths included F45, Orangetheory Fitness in Mill Valley, Studio 30 in Mill Valley, and Lululemon.

For more information on PlayMarin, go to www.playmarin.org or call Paul Austin at (415) 944-7141. Information on the Marin City Climate Resilience and Health Justice can be found on Facebook, and by calling (415) 324-7080.

From top and left: Paul Austin photographing Terri Green speaking. Paul Austin and Terri Green. PlayMarin.org tent booth. Walkers on the trail. Booth at the end of the walk. Studio Thirty. Lululemon. F45. Orangetheory Fitness (Photos by Godfrey Lee)

By Daktari Shari, PsyD & Theo Aytchan Williams

SambaFunk! will present JOY 11, MoniCarnival, a funkraiser, celebration and party on Saturday, Dec. 11, 2021, on the island located at 809 50th Ave. in Oakland. This year’s event is family friendly, starting at 2:00 p.m. with youth-specific programming.

Called MoniCarnival in memory of our beloved sister and founding member Monica Hastings-Smith, JOY 11 will feature live performances, DJs, vegan food, a youth zone, and a community bateria-style jam in a comfortable, indoor-outdoor space convenient for social-distancing.

Monica was an Oakland native born on Jan. 22, 1965. After a year-long battle with cancer, she took flight to the realm of the ‘Ancestars’ at the tender age of 56. Also raised in Oakland, Monica served as an artist, activist, educator, mother, mentor, trailblazer, guiding light, and contributor to local and far-reaching creative communities of and throughout the Afro-Diaspora.

A graduate of Bishop O’Dowd and the University of California, Berkeley, she was a member of Delta Sigma Theta sorority and a co-founder of the Soul of Oakland. Monica participated in, partnered and collaborated with countless community organizations and schools including but not limited to Fogo Na Roupa, SambaFunk!, BoomShake, Manzanita SEED, and Urban Promise Academy.

SambaFunk!’s 11th Annual JOY Party, MoniCarnival will be a day party with live performances by Everyday Party, a musical duo Monica co-founded with Iwalani Venerable (@thesunflowerlioness) that offers music for young audiences; the soulful sounds of Kah Liberation (@kahliberationofficial); and the SambaFunk! performance ensemble including dancers, FunkTyme bateria and Funkternal band playing some longtime favorites also penned by Monica.

MoniCarnival will open with native son DJ Henroc spinning world rhythms and culminating with world-renowned Soul House DJ Patrick Wilson immersing the attendees in deep, soulful house music, inviting us all to take flight under the stars. Rounding out the evening will be a moving and grooving Community Drum Jam for Monica’s many percussion and drum friends to join together in harmony. All drummers are invited.

JOY 11, MoniCarnival also serves as the official launch for the 2022 Carnival season. “This is our biggest fundraising event of the year and largest family event since the COVID lockdown,” said SambaFunk! Artistic Director Theo Aytchan Williams. “I’m personally asking all supporters and well-wishers of SambaFunk! to show their support with their attendance and make a generous donation. Our goal is to raise $25,000.”

A portion of the proceeds from JOY 11, MoniCarnival will be donated to the Oakland Public Conservatory of Music, which offers affordable music lessons and learning experiences centered around African American musical culture to youth and adults of all ages.

Pandemic protocols will be observed with onsite PPE and sanitizing stations. Masks are required.

To purchase tickets and make donations for JOY 11, Monicarnival, please visit: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/joy-11-monicarnival-funkraiser-day-party-tickets-204311028787.

For additional details, contact us at sambafunky@gmail.com, visit our SambaFunk.com website, or give us a call at 510-451-6100.

By Emil Guillermo

I grew up in the Bay Area and attended “Days on the Green” at the Coliseum. But I started going to rock concerts in earnest when I was a teenager in Houston. I had taken a gap year from college and was the all-night DJ on the biggest rock station in town. Whenever I saw “festival seating” on a ticket, I knew it was more than just a warning, but an invitation to disaster.

Festival seating is when the entire venue becomes a mosh pit. It’s a concert where there are no assigned seats, making it a Darwinian every-person-for-himself, go-at-your-own-risk event. The nightmarish, mad rush that occurred at NRG Park at Travis Scott’s hip-hop Astroworld on November 5 was a foreseen possibility, especially since the artist’s encouraging a crowd surge is part of his act.

In Houston, the crowd was so packed, witnesses described how they couldn’t move. Then someone would fall, and the domino pile would begin.

For some, it became an “I can’t breathe moment.”

Eight people were killed including Danish Baig, 27, born near Dallas, an Asian American Pakistani and a district manager for AT&T, who went with his fiancé to the show.

He didn’t expect to die in the crush of people as he tried to save his fiancé from being trampled.

“She was stomped on, hit, punched, horrendous things were happening to her that I don’t want to mention,” said Basil Mirza Baig, Baig’s brother, who was also at the concert. “My brother was trying to save her, and he did, he saved her, and it cost him his life.”

At this time no precise cause of death is given. But the family said it was from cardiac arrest suffered from the crush of people.

The fiancé survived. But Mirza, speaking at Baig’s funeral on Sunday wants answers.

“My brother was laying on the ground. They were chanting to stop the event. Nobody stopped the event,” Mirza said in an interview with Dallas news station WFAA. “In this horrendous event, people that were in it (who) took part in this event, Travis Scott’s team, the NRG team, everybody who was associated with this should be held accountable for the lives that were lost today. We’re grieving. We’re in pain.”

Mirza wants answers, not a Tweet, but real answers from Scott.

“He could stop a show for his shoe, but he couldn’t stop the show for people?” Mirza asked. Reports say Scott performed for at least another 30 minutes after an emergency had been declared. “It was upsetting and sad seeing people thrown left and right, stop, girls, guys, everybody, little kids,” Mirza described the scene. “This is not how you do it. You go to a concert to have fun. You don’t go to a concert to die.”

Already more than a dozen civil suits have been filed against the concert promoters, which includes Live Nation and Scott himself. This is not the first time for Scott, who has faced criminal charges related to inciting concert crowds in Arkansas in 2018 (guilty, disorderly conduct), and Chicago in 2015 (guilty, misdemeanor reckless conduct).

Live Nation, too, should have known better. When the word “festival” is on the ticket, there are no seats, forcing crowds to compete for a stage view, and then a fun night becomes Darwinian, the survival of the fittest.

That’s not entertainment.