IN JIMI HENDRIX PARK, which is the former Coleman School parking lot and planned future land re-annex of the the African American Heritage Museum and Cultural Center. Since 1985!
Author: africanamericanheritagemuseumandculturalcenter
Born November 23, 1985
ALL CHARGES DROPPED. EARL RESUMES PAINTING.
On Friday the 13th of January, before the Martin Luther King Jr holiday weekend, the Prosecutor for the City of Seattle dropped all charges against Earl Debnam for painting while sitting on the African American Heritage Museum & Cultural Center’s property — but “without prejudice”, which means that the Prosecutor may resume charging Earl at any time up to the statute of limitations.
This outcome was not the result of negotiations. Earl is grateful for the renewed attention on his and Omari’s struggle for a real world class African American Heritage Museum & Cultural Center. Earl was looking forward to submitting evidence at trial and to demanding records from the City through the trial discovery process.
Was the city trying to keep Earl’s and the AAHMCC’s evidence from being circulated widely? Or is the City concerned about this amazingly embarrassing body cam video of Earl’s arrest getting out?
Below are the exhibits that Earl had submitted to his attorney to be introduced into evidence before the City Prosecutor indicated that the City would be dropping all charges. Note the evidence below that the NAAM Scam continues to outright lie on its webpage to this day!
For what it’s worth, Earl’s Public Defender predicted that all charges would be dropped as soon as he saw the body cam footage. On the video multiple SPD officers insist that Earl Debnam is Omari Tahir, even as Earl repeatedly states his name and points to his name on the list of Board of Directors for the REAL African American Heritage Museum & Cultural Center, founded in 1985 and which lives on to this day.
Even after the cops’ own superior officer arrived to the scene and said, “That’s not Omari”— officers pulled up a photo of Omari online and continued insisting that Earl is actually Omari!!
Clearly the City didn’t have a case and was wasting taxpayer dollars to try to harass Earl into silence and for the AAHMCC to give up their rightful claims to the Colman School building.
Here, let’s go through Earl’s evidence together.
Exhibits A & B: These photos are from the police report of Earl’s arrest on June 3, 2022 which shows the front and back sides of a magnified and laminated copy of the African American Heritage Museum and Cultural Center’s 2021 annual report filed with and stamped by the Washington State Secretary of State, which he was holding when SPD arrested him outside the Colman School building, currently occupied by the Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle and the Northwest African American Museum or NAAM Scam.
Exhibit C. Screenshot from NAAM’s website honoring Earl Debnam by name in the legacy of the NAAM
Exhibit D. Screenshot from NAAM’s website discussing the relationship between the AAHMCC, the ULMS and NAAM
Exhibit E. Signed Purchase & Sale Agreement between AAHMCC and the Seattle School District No 1 dated 1-16-1998
Exhibit F. AAHMCC’s proof of availability of funds dated 10-20-1999
Notice how the NAAM Scam still falsely claims on their website that the African American Heritage Museum & Cultural Center was founded as a non-profit organization in 1993, but the official stamped report from the WA State Secretary of State in Exhibit A shows that the AAHMCC has been formally registered since 1985.
The NAAM Scam goes on to claim that the “Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle .. takes [over] the project” of the African American Heritage Museum & Cultural Center, but as you can see, the African American Heritage Museum & Cultural Center is still alive and well and registered to a Board of Directors that includes Omari Tahir, Earl Debnam, Wyking Garrett, Gabriel Prawl and others.
How shameless of NAAM to name Earl and Omari on their website as part of the legacy of winning the Colman School building, but then contract with Allied Security Services and make agreements with the SPD to arrest them on site, endangering the lives of our Black elders.
To this date, the Seattle School Board has never engaged in a formal process for terminating the signed Purchase & Sale Agreement with the AAHMCC.
The fact is that the AAHMCC beat the City and the settler courts at their own game. They won. The Washington State Secretary of State says that Omari is the President of the organization that had a signed purchase and sale agreement with the Seattle School District.
But the establishment united behind the Black bourgeoisie to steal the Colman School right out from under the feet of the activists who occupied the building without water and electricity for 13 long years, and the courts refuse to consider the evidence of this ongoing wrongdoing.
Our elders are getting old. Will they anoint respected movement leaders with the fearless revolutionary spirit to continue this struggle? Will the longest occupation of a public building in US history really end with the building triple mortgaged and defaulted by the corrupt Urban League? Time will tell. One thing is for sure: Earl is not done painting yet. Come visit Earl outside the Colman School building where he enjoys painting on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and sometimes Saturdays.
This post series is drawn from a July 2022 report documenting the condition of AAHM&CC artworks recovered and documented on April 10, 2022 at Public Storage on MLK.
On March 6, 2022, workers hired by the Urban League dismantled the African American Heritage Museum and Cultural Center (AAHM&CC) installations in the courtyard of the Colman School building at 2300 South Massachusetts Street. They cut into the modular shed housing the art studio and art storage. Many artworks in the shed were relocated to a locker at a Public Storage facility on Martin Luther King Jr Way S at I-5. Some artworks were not brought to shed and are lost.
Our volunteers examined the artworks upon recovery. They recorded written condition notes, and performed photo documentation using smartphone cameras.
Storage conditions upon recovery
Art shed artworks and other objects were jammed together in a small storage locker. Small paintings, objects and works on paper were scattered in black plastic bags or clear plastic. Moisture was present in some bags, which promoted mold growth. Stacked crates with hoses on top were tipped onto large paintings on canvas, causing distortion and other damage.
1 – Storage of paintings on discovery
2 – Ongoing mechanical damage to paintings
Damage to 2021 painting by artist in residence Earl Debnam
3 – Earl Debnam in his AAHM&CC studio, June 2021
Many paintings by artist in residence Earl Debnam were damaged during their seizure and storage. Volunteers inventoried and documented Debnam’s works created during the 2020-2022 AAHM&CC occupation, allowing comparison with their current condition. This is the condition of one of these paintings after its recovery.
4 – 2021 painting by Earl Debnam before damage
5 – Damaged painting with several scratches to paint layers circled
This oil painting was stored in direct contact with heavy objects and hoses during storage. The paint surface is now disrupted by long scratches. The canvas now has significant planar distortion, which can be seen more easily on the unpainted reverse side of the canvas. There is also mold damage on the reverse. The planar distortion may reverse on its own as the canvas rests, however the other condition issues require conservation treatment.
5 – Reverse side of painting before damage
6 – Reverse side of damaged painting with several areas of planar distortion circled
Thank you to all of the community members who came out to support Earl on Monday. Thanks to community support, no conditions were placed on Earl ahead of trial.
The judge even acknowledged that “there’s clearly more to this case” then was found in the police report, an acknowledgment that is being interpreted as recognition that Earl’s arrest was clearly political.
He’s still charged with 1st degree criminal trespass even though he didn’t go inside the building, damage the premises in any way, or harm anyone. That’s right, he’s charged with 1st degree criminal trespass simply for sitting in his wheelchair and painting outside of the Northwest African American Museum (NAAM) building where he’s celebrated for his role, alongside fellow elder Omari Tahir and others, in winning the Colman School building for the community.
The NAAM Scam’s own website names Earl as a community hero, …
even-naam-credits-earl-debnam-the-man-they-are-pressing-charges-against-as-one-of-the-true-founders.Download
… while they have him arrested for painting outside of the building they celebrate him for helping to win. Earl, Omari and others lived inside the Colman School for years without water or electricity as its very first artist-in-residence — from 1985 until 1998 when the activists were raided and dispossessed by an SPD SWAT team — enduring so much so that the building might become a world renowned African American Heritage Museum & Cultural Center, complete with an instrument library and programming to develop the talent and skills of young community artists and keep youth off of the streets.
NAAM Scam and the Urban League colluded with the Gates Family, Norm Rice, the City of Seattle and the FBI to steal the Colman School from the activists whose vision, dedication and sacrifice over the course of 13 years won them a signed purchase and sale agreement with the Seattle School Board for the property. The Seattle School Board publicly accepted their down payment for the building at a public meeting documented by the Seattle Times, only to later return it.
The first director of the NAAM Scam is a proud FBI agent Carver Gayton (whose son is the policy advisor for King County Councilmember Girmay Zahilay). Bill Gates’ mother Mimi Gates and former Seattle Mayor Norm Rice are both founding and current board members of NAAM.
Elders Earl and Baba Omari, supported by a younger generation of revolutionary black activists and their native, brown and white accomplices, began reoccupying the premises outside of the Colman School on Juneteenth 2020 in the wake of the George Floyd Uprising. It is long overdue that the City and the Urban League correct past injustices and pass the building on debt-free with a programming budget to the new generation of grassroots black activists and their accomplices who are the rightful inheritors of our courageous elders’ legacy of revolution and resistance to create a real African American Heritage Museum & Cultural Center for today’s youth.
Come support Earl and the African American Heritage Museum & Cultural Center at Earl’s next hearing on Oct 19, 10:30 am, Seattle Superior Court, Courtroom 1002
On the afternoon of June 3rd, 2022, 74-year-old black elder and renowned artist Earl Debnam was arrested while painting outside of the building where he served as artist-in-residence of the African American Heritage Museum & Cultural Center from 1985-1998 in the longest occupation of a public building in US History.
The City Attorney is pressing charges against our elder for 1st degree criminal trespass!
He has a hearing scheduled in Seattle Municipal Court
September 19, 2022 at 9am
Courtroom 903
You can support by writing to the City Attorney, posting on social media, sending words of encouragement to Earl, and showing up to his hearing on Monday September 19th.
More About the Arrest:
Documents from the arrest indicate that NAAM is contracting with apartheid mercenaries!
The Northwest African American Museum founded with intervention by the FBI and backed by the Gates Foundation and the City of Seattle appears to have contracted with Allied Security Services, the same private security firm that is not only patrolling Seattle Police HQ, the downtown courts, and City Hall, but is also providing security for foreign oil corporations in Iraq, has a share of ownership in training the Israeli police and is involved in the transportation and deportation of immigrants from the UK to the US. Last year, Allied Universal acquired the notorious G4S.
A worker with Allied Security identified themself as patrolling the “Northwest African American Museum” in a 911 call when they called the police to remove Earl from the premises.
From the police report:
“W/CH works for Allied Security and was conducting her rounds and checking on the African Museum. She walked over to the fenced area securing the main entrance and saw the entry gate unlocked and opened. It appeared that someone had removed a padlock that had been in place the night prior. She observed a male sitting in a wheelchair at the main doorway. She contacted him and he identified him self as Debman, Earl C. 12/23/1947. She advised him that he was not allowed to be on the property and that he needed to leave. S/Debman refused and stated that he had rights to the property and would not leave. W/CH could not convince him to leave and called 911.
“Officers were aware that S/ Debman was a member of a Omari Garretts s activist group which has ongoing court issues with the African Museum / Urban League Village. There is a valid and served King County Motion for Summary Judgement and Issuing Writ Restitution (order # 21-2-04082-5). The order prohibits members of the activist group from coming within 2000 ft of the property.
“Officers contacted S/ Debnam, Earl C. 12/23/1947 who was sitting at the front entrance. He presented a large laminated letter listing Omari Garrett, along with his name and others. The letter claimed that he had right to the property.”
It’s going down!
For the third year in a row, the AAHM&CC is proud to endorse, support and join the Africatown Community Land Trust, King County Equity Now, and many other progressive Black organizations of HISTORIC AFRICATOWN’S CENTRAL AREA in this authentic celebration of JUNETEENTH 2022!, occurring right here in our rightful historic building’s former parking lot, presently known as Jimi Hendrix Park!
This Saturday and Sunday, June 18-19. Don’t miss it!
The power of the people will never stop!
The actual speeches of Malcolm X (May 19, 1921 – February 21, 1965) are significantly different than the imaginary movie script speeches Denzel Washington spoke into Spike Lee’s camera for the 1992 entertainment film.
It could be said (and are saying it), that the fiction version of Malcolm X begins that movie acting more hostile toward white people than real-life Malcolm ever acted, and ends the movie being more conciliatory toward them than real-life Malcolm ever was.
The AAHM&CC urges you to listen to these essential speeches, so you can compare and contrast the real and the fiction versions for yourself, drawing your own conclusions.
“Our Problems Are Your Problems”
Ballot Or Bullet, Cleveland OH version, April 3, 1964
MALCOLM X SPEAKS (full pdf of the book)
Update: Elder Omari Tahir gives interview with Converge Media, March 7th, 2022, after Urban League & Cops raid us yet again.
The garden had been planted over the last several months through civil initiative by the people of Historic Africatown’s Central Area, especially @BlackStarFarmers. It was planted on the land which was once the parking lot of the Coleman Elementary School, which many generations of African American families attended over the latter half of the Twentieth Century.
Many such new community gardens have been established throughout the city over the past year and a half, in the course of the struggle by all peoples to preserve health, nutrition, mental wellness, meaning, and connection to the soil while surviving the Covid Pandemic.
The reason, of course, that this particular garden was demolished today is because it was Black.
The garden was established in solidarity with the African American Heritage Museum & Cultural Center, Baba Omari Tahir, Baba Earl Debnam, and the spirits of the late Michael Greenwood and ISAIAH EDWARDS.
It was a highly productive garden, as can be attested by any of the thousands of people who witnessed its prominent public unveiling this past Juneteenth – at the birthday of the ongoing re-liberation of the east yard of Coleman School building. Coleman’s parking lot (which is now Jimi Hendrix), was supposed to have been only temporarily held by the Parks Department during the conversion of the former Coleman School building into the African American Heritage Museum & Cultural Center (AAHM&CC). It was then supposed to have been returned to the Museum once construction was finished.
Instead, the Museum was stolen by the Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle and placed under the leadership of the FBI.
The Parks Department kept the parking lot parcel, converted it into a dog-walking park, and named it “Jimi Hendrix”. This arrangement was very popular among affluent white settlers to the Central Area until last summer’s empire-wide popular democratic uprising against lynchings, when significant crowds of actual Black people began to, in fact, regularly use Jimi Hendrix Park and frequently assemble in it.
This, of course, caused some of the white settlers to complain about so many Black people still being alive and visible in broad daylight — a full two decades into the Twenty-First Century.
So, the Parks department promptly tried to appease those settlers by turning off Jimi Hendrix Park’s electricity supply (which forces all African American events in the park to bring our own generators and fossil fuel to power them, since the clean hydroelectric power is apparently for whites only).
When called about this, the City openly boasted that they had turned off the power in response to “un-permitted events”, and also that they would “not issue any event permits”. This is, of course, directly parallel to the Israeli apartheid policy of refusing to issue home-building permits to Palestinian families, and then arbitrarily demolishing Palestinian homes for “not having a permit”.
The desolation of this community garden is also, of course, a warm-up exercise in the City and County’s ongoing preparation to once again order more storm troopers to attack and tear down the AAHM&CC, as they did this past May 8th, and as they did on June 4th of 1998.
Here is a short video of the aftermath of the garden’s desolation today.
The AAHM&CC finds it significant that former DOJ Weed & Seed Director (now Mayor) Jenny Durkan’s demolition of this Black community garden occurred just 22 days after the principled resignation of Professor Cornel West from Harvard University — an institution which had refused to grant tenure to Dr. West because he consistently points out the similarities between the apartheid suffered by Palestinians and apartheid suffered by Black people.
It is unfortunate that, on April 29th, while he was still under the whip of his Harvard overseers, Dr. West’s name and online presence were used by team Urban League to provide unearned credibility to their fake museum “NAAM” Scam organization (the one who’s founding director was openly and proudly a Boeing executive and FBI agent).
The AAHM&CC has publicly declared our museum site an Aphartheid Free Zone in solidarity with the people of Palestine who are under such brutal attack and demolition at this very moment. We challenge all other museums and educational institutions which claim to be of, by, for and/or about Black people to do the same, especially the one calling itself “the NAAM” (which is illegally occupying our building on behalf of major global corporations while claiming to be a tenant of the Urban League).
We will be pleasantly surprised if the “NAAM” makes any statement in solidarity with Palestine against Israeli apartheid.
We believe the reason they will not do so is that their sponsor, the Urban League, is openly in political alliance with multiple pro-apartheid organizations, including, notably, the “ADL“.
The Urban League’s lawsuit to evict AAHM&CC Co-Founder Omari Tahir (and “all other tresspassers”) from his own property at the Coleman building is being litigated by the giant global lawfirm PerkinsCoie, which has both a seat on the Urban League Of Metropolitan Seattle’s Board and a page on its own website devoted specifically to its Israeli clientele.
Furthermore, the Urban League Of Metropolitan Seattle’s Board also includes a senior leader of the Ben Bridge Jewelers Company, which openly brags on its website about doing business with both Israel and the infamous DeBeers blood diamond cartel — who are probably more famously associated with classical “apartheid” in Africa than any other family on Earth.
These are the reasons why the NAAM’s policy-response to the George Floyd uprising was to host a press conference which called for the Seattle Police Department to be doubled in size! That press conference was held July 13th, 2020, in the very same Jimi Hendrix Park where, exactly one year and nine days later, that same Police Department would oversee the brutal destruction of this Black Community Garden.
These are also the reasons why the Urban League employs the kind of property management firm whose unstable employee shoots and murders innocent young Black women in the parking lot.
If you were wondering, now you know.
-The AAHM&CC
PS: Here is the full length video of the City’s violent attack upon the garden.
AS OF SATURDAY, JUNE 19TH, 2021, BABA OMARI TAHIR’S RE-OCCUPATION TO LIBERATE THE AFRICAN AMERICAN HERITAGE MUSEUM’S BUILDING FROM IMPERIALISM’S NEO-COLONIAL APARTHEID HAS BEEN ONGOING FOR A FULL YEAR!
IN SOLIDARITY WITH AAHM&CC, BABA OMARI, BABA EARL DEBNAM, AND THE SPIRIT OF THE LATE MICHAEL GREENWOOD AND ISAIAH EDWARDS, THE PEOPLE OF HISTORIC AFRICATOWN HAVE RECLAIMED THE FULL EASTERN COURTYARD OF THE AAHM&CC PROPERTY, FROM THE MAIN BUILDING’S FRONT DOOR TO THE EAST BOUNDARY OF JIMI HENDRIX PARK (WHICH WAS ONCE COLEMAN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL’S PARKING LOT)!
THE CELEBRATION OF THIS MAGNIFICENT JUNETEENTH ANNIVERSARY WAS, ONCE AGAIN A TREMENDOUS SUCCESS!
AS ALWAYS, LET THE RECORD SPEAK FOR ITSELF!
The African American Heritage Museum & Cultural Center 