This is my favorite icon. It used to be displayed in the vestibule at my church, St. Augustine Catholic Church (Oakland, CA). I have literally spent years (intermittently) searching the Internet for this image so I can post it. I love this icon because of its biblical source, and because it reminds all of us of the Universal nature of Christianity. This icon is beautiful as art, and compelling as catechetical object.
One of the things that a liberator does is speak truth to power. That I found this icon close to the anniversary of the assination of Chauncey Bailey makes it doubly meaningful to me. Chauncey Bailey (1949-2007), was a reporter and editor at the Oakland Post at the time of his murder. Read more about the journalist Chauncey Bailey and his murder here. Catholic reporter remembered on anniversary of murder. In the aftermath of his death, Mr. Bailey’s professional colleagues and local journalism students out of remorse, guilt, and the late-coming recognition of a great story took up his cause and have been investigating his murder and the unseemly business enterprise at the heart of his death in the form of the Chauncey Bailey Project. Tribute organization works story in memoriam.
Mr. Bailey was definitely speaking truth to corrupt power in the days before his death. The Oakland business/organized crime enterprise that was Your Black Muslim Bakery was a powerful force in black culture, politics and economics for years. One of the disturbing aspects of Mr. Bailey’s murder and aftermath is how deep the criminality of Your Black Muslim Bakery, how wide their influence in the African-American political class, and the neglect of their criminality by the more powerful news media outlets of the San Francisco/Oakland Bay Area.
In fact, it is this neglect of Your Black Muslim Bakery by the San Francisco Chronicle, Oakland Tribune, KQED TV and radio, KPFA radio, East Bay Express, or San Francisco Bay Guardian that probably lead indirectly to Mr. Bailey’s death. Let me explain. Mr. Bailey as editor of the decidedly downscale Oakland Post had decided that Your Black Muslim Bakery’s reign of criminality, corruption, and terror should be exposed. He began investigating and publishing charges of statutory rape, corruption, felonious rape, financial misconduct with government grant funds, that had been hinted at for nearly a decade. The Bey family (father and son) had been agate type in family court matters, police blotters, or tangential names in the rise of local politicians. The local news media should had taken their responsibilities of public service seriously and spent as much time and effort on this story as they did on Barry Bonds (yes I am talking about SF Chroniclereporters Fainaru-Wada & Williams) or personal rivalries and jealousies in the SF City Hall. Where were you Matier & Ross? If Chronicle Managing Executive Editor Phil Brownstein or the supposedly muckrakers of the SF Weekly, East Bay Express, San Francisco Bay Guardian cabal had a real journalist’s hearts or at the very least an eye on circulation then their self interested desire to chase the most compelling and “juicy” stories to ground would have compelled them to followed the money and records of Your Black Muslim Bakery business and real estate empires. The messy domestic lives of Yusef Bey father and son alone should have had somebody with a little more juice than the single editor of a free ethnic weekly newspaper following this story. And in doing so, the lone personage of Mr. Bailey would not have been such an isolated and easy (but ultimately foolhardy) murder target for the associates of Your Black Muslim Bakery. Even to this day, the Chronicle dishonors one of its own by folding their coverage of the murder of Mr. Bailey into their tardy, superficial, and slightly hysterical coverage of the epidemic of murders related to gangs and/or drug traffic in Oakland over the last few years. Click here for SF Chronicle/SFgate.com series “Oakland: A Plague of Killing.”
To reiterate what I said at the beginning of this blog post, a revolutionary and martyr speaks truth to power in the hopes that the truth will liberate his/her people. The truth will set you free, and it will sometimes get you crucified.
RIP Chauncey Bailey.
Pax Christi
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