End of an Epoch ~ Memories of Saafir and Oakland

Losing Saafir is the end of an Oakland era. His roots are West Oakland. He represented a time when Dr. Bey was teaching & leading and the streets of Oakland were safer for women & children because there were Soldiers on post. The era of stopping at the Your Black Muslim Bakery cart in the Oakland International Airport for a Bean Pie on your way in and out of The Town.

When there were still vestiges of the Revolutionary ties to the Black Panther Party for young folks in Oakland. Graffiti was political then too — and MERG1 had a lot of Graf ties — when Mike DREAM Francisco & his TDK crew were sometimes know as Those Damn Kids … but they’d create a huge mural with the stark reminder — TAX DOLLARS KILL. I was PROUD to move to Oakland in the early 90s and when I visited in the late 1980s, you could feel the PRIDE of Oakland-Americans in their communities. Saafir and the Mahmoud family always represented that pride in my eyes. When you see them, you see Oakland. The Real Oakland.

Besides the personal sense of loss and grief that I feel, that’s what I sense about Saafir leaving this Earth — that he was one of the last Soldiers of that era and that him being here he was embodying that feeling of Oakland pride — he carried that with him all around the world. I hope and pray that his untimely passing, in this way similar to that of DOOM’s, will lead to a renaissance for the young people of Oakland and youth all over the world to revisit his early music, so they can hear and feel that FEELING that Oakland had in the late 80s and early 90s.

Often the news media or people wanting to distill Oakland down to a slick and negative catchphrase called it the City of Dope or City of Coke, they pointed at pimps & prostitutes as the only commerce Oakland had to offer but the city was in fact a rich port for commerce all over the world. A city that valued Elders, women and children. A city where, during times I was wary of walking on certain blocks in my OWN hometown of Los Angeles, I felt perfectly safe in Oakland where there were Muslim foot soldiers everywhere offering to help an elderly woman across the street or helping me carry my groceries when they saw me struggling with my bags. Where there was safety in numbers.

Not because it was a peaceful utopia, but where tomfoolery and fuck shit was at a minimum because the presence of families full of soldiers was felt, they were at the ready, always coming in Peace, but prepared for War.

Down and Gone…

Walasia “MJ” Shabazz