Special to the Berkeley Post
Berkeley’s Black Repertory Group (BBRG), the only Black-owned-and-operated theater in the East Bay, is pushing for the City of Berkeley to provide the financial backing for the theater that is required by local law.
At issue is whether the City of Berkeley will contribute legally required funding to support Black theater, similar to what the city does for other performing arts and cultural institutions in the city or whether it will continue to promote gentrification and forced displacement through longtime practices that undermine this historic venue.
Founded in 1964, the theater is located at 3201 Adeline St. in Berkeley, a cultural arts center that houses the Birel L. Vaughn Theater.
“We not asking for handouts. The city should just pay what it legally owes us and also stop using city officials to harass us,” said a member of the board of the Black Rep.
Former Councilmember Cheryl Davila forcefully argues that Berkeley officials are undermining the theater as part of the city’s continued gentrification and ongoing elimination of local institutions and neighborhoods of African Americans and other People of Color.
“The City of Berkeley has continued the colonization as reflected in disparities documented in the Health Status Report, the Center for Police Equity (CPE) Report and Mason Tillman Report,” Davila said.
“The Tillman report revealed bids are awarded to white men only,” she continued. “The CPE report demonstrated the bias in policing and the Health Status Report, health disparities due to racism. The (city) has not fairly distributed funding or support for organizations that are located within the red lines.
“Redline disinvestment has been the practice in the Black, indigenous, or People of Color (BIPOC) institutions in the City of Berkeley. It’s crystal clear, the city, which has invested in Caucasian institutions, outside the red lines, providing emergency and other funding passed on the consent calendar with no opposition, nor illegal break-ins for building inspections, or harassment, unlike the Black Repertory Group,” she said.
“Now, these same redlined communities are recognized as “prime” real estate, so the fines, inspections, and eviction process began some time ago and continues to eliminate “Blacks” from our communities. The attempts to confiscate the historical institutions that were never given the full support to live and thrive in a city (that upholds) a façade of being “progressive.”
Dr. Omowale Fowles, a former Berkeley health commissioner, said: “Today, in the 21st century post-Jim Crow America, a so-called ‘progressive’ Berkeley City Council has continued to perpetuate the unfair, unjust and inequitable funding practice that drove the Black Repertory Theater out of the South!
“Berkeley has not lived up to its contractual agreements to provide an annual baseline of economic support for the BBRG, nor has the city responded, in a timely manner, if at all, to BBRG’s requests for consistent maintenance sanitation, and renovations interventions,” said Fowles.
However, the Berkeley City Council has managed to award several other theaters in Berkeley tens of thousands of dollars to enable their theaters to stay alive and thrive, specifically, the Berkeley Repertory Theater in downtown and the Shotgun Players’ Theater is South Berkeley, he said.
“Such malevolent behaviors (are what we have come to expect) from a government entity that prides itself on its quasi-liberal and progressive beliefs particularly toward the arts music heritage of Berkeley,” he said.
Lady AfiTiombe A. Kambon, a longtime Berkeleyan elder who is an oral historian and actor, traced the roots of the Black Rep to historic resistance to violent racism and the KKK.
“The Berkeley Black Repertory Group Theater (BBRG) escaped Vicksburg, Mississippi, from the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) for holding artistic storytelling events for Black people in the 1940s. The Black Rep fled from hatred and the threat of lynching to a city known to practice humanity and democracy,” she said.
“Now, the theater continues to be under attack from city officials and Neighborhood Watch organized to eliminate the Black community,” Kambon said.
The Berkeley Equity Summit Alliance urges all Citizens throughout the City of Berkeley and beyond to support the Black Repertory Group and ensure that the City of Berkeley treats all the theaters equally and equitably distributing services and funding.
For more information, reach out to tiombe47@gmail.com or Dallascowboy52@yahoo.com
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