[NYTr] The saga of Oakland's Your Black Muslim Bakery

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

sent by Steven Robinson (activ-l) - Aug 13, 2007

[Note the connections between Yousuf Bey's cult, which had no
affiliation with the Nation of Islam btw, and the Alameda County
Democratic Party machine, particularly Congresswoman Barbara Lee and
Oakland Mayor - and former Congressman - Ron Dellums. -SR]

San Francisco Chronicle - Aug 12, 2007
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/08/12/MNQMRGR7U.DTL

Bean pies, power, sex and death at Oakland's Your Black Muslim Bakery

by Matthai Chakko Kuruvila
Religion Writer

Yusuf Bey believed fish sandwiches and bean pies would lift up
marginalized black people in Oakland.

For more than three decades, his bakery was both pulpit and profit
center, providing the money to start other nearby businesses, such as a
hair salon and school, to bear witness to black self-empowerment.

But the block of stores on San Pablo Avenue has withered since Bey's
death four years ago. The final blow came this month, when police
raided Your Black Muslim Bakery, smashing its windows and putting its
leaders in jail.

Even its food - once touted as "pure" and sold in places such as Whole
Foods, Rainbow Grocery, the Oakland Coliseum and the Oakland
International Airport - was labeled unsanitary. And last week, a judge
ordered all bakery assets to be liquidated as part of its bankruptcy.

The empire's heir, 21-year-old Yusuf Bey IV, sits in jail facing
charges of assault with a deadly weapon. Bey IV, his brother Joshua Bey
and a bakery employee also have been charged with kidnapping and
torture. And a 19-year-old bakery handyman has been charged with the
assassination of a symbol of African American self-sufficiency -
Chauncey Bailey, the black editor of a black-owned weekly newspaper
serving the black community.

The Bey family and its alleged victims put forth two widely divergent
views to define the legacy of Yusuf Bey and his bakery: He was either a
model of black pride who made broken lives whole or an urban criminal
leader whose associates terrorized those who couldn't fight back.

Two of Bey's remaining sons say the bakery's rise and fall speaks to the
power of their father, whose life and death roughly paralleled the
store's fortunes.

Their father was a charismatic and powerful force, they say, who used a
bakery to pull together an economic gospel, relationships with
influential politicians, employees culled from society's margins, and a
family of about eight wives and 40 children.

"It was his dream, and it was his reality," said Yusuf Bey Jr., 45, the
oldest biological son, who runs his own auto detailing business in Los
Angeles. "When he died, it was too much for me and for any of my
brothers to take over. ... We dropped the ball on that collectively as
a family."

Bey Jr. told The Chronicle that his half brother, Bey IV, had nothing
to do with his father's legacy.

"(Bey IV) chose to do evil instead of good," said Bey Jr., who has not
been involved in the day-to-day bakery business for decades. "I don't
understand how you could have the father I did and turn out the way he
did."

But many of those who describe themselves as victims of bakery
employees and the Bey family say the alleged crimes started with the
father.

Tarika Lewis will testify. No one listened to Lewis when she spoke out
in the 1970s, when she worked at the bakery and said she saw the elder
Bey beating women. No one - not police, not community leaders, not Child
Protective Services - intervened in 1981, when Lewis said she told them
Bey had raped underage girls.

The alleged victims were Lewis' stepdaughters, who had been placed in
Bey's custody by her ex-husband. In 2002, prosecutors said they had DNA
evidence to prove that Bey fathered five children with four victims
under the age of 14, two of whom gave birth when they were 13. Two were
Lewis' stepdaughters. Bey died of colon cancer at age 67 before he was
to go to trial on charges involving one of the victims.

"I'm just sick over this whole thing," Lewis, 57, told The Chronicle.
"This could all have been nipped in the bud decades ago."

Until last week, Your Black Muslim Bakery was the Bay Area's most
visible Black Muslim institution, although it had no ties to the Nation
of Islam, whose original adherents were called Black Muslims. Both the
bakery and the Nation of Islam claim their spiritual origins rest in
one man, Elijah Muhammad.

Muhammad preached that the messiah was a man named Wallace Fard
Muhammad, who was in Detroit in the 1930s. Elijah Muhammad preached a
theology of racial separatism from white people, who had dehumanized
black people through centuries of slavery. These beliefs dramatically
differ from Islam as it is practiced by a billion Muslims around the
world.

Elijah Muhammad listed 12 steps for black people to end dependence on
whites. They included: "Make your neighborhood a decent place to live,"
"build an economic system around yourself," and "protect your women."

Yusuf Bey took Elijah Muhammad's teachings and writings, and turned them
into largely secular mantras for his bakery, which was incorporated as a
for-profit business in 1968. Bey felt like institutional religion
itself got in the way of black unity, and once called religion "the
biggest problem in the world."

Bey, a trained cosmetologist who started his entrepreneurship with hair
salons, used the recipes of his father, a cook, and Elijah Muhammad's
book "How to Eat to Live" to start his bakery. Bey lined up contracts
to sell his preservative-free pies and goods at many venues.

But the core of the business was showing that the most underprivileged,
disenfranchised black people "could be independent and successful
people if given the chance," said Bey Jr., speaking of the poor, drug
addicts and ex-convicts.

"The foundation was built off of people that the community, nation and
the public gave up on - the people on the bottom, not the people who
went to university and got educated," said Bey Jr., who has lived in
Los Angeles for the last two decades.

Despite the name, and Bey's personal beliefs, the bakery had no worship
component. But on Sunday afternoons at 3 p.m., Bey would teach
self-empowerment, where he would cite the Bible alongside a translation
of the Quran as well as secular books.

He also had a public forum, True Solutions, a show that ran for 25
years on a black-owned cable TV channel. But sometimes Bey's rhetoric
would get in the way of the business.

In 1993, Bey said on the show that he didn't want gay teachers because
they might influence his children to be gay, and he claimed that
homosexuals are beheaded in the Middle East. Two dozen natural foods
stores stopped carrying the bakery's products.

But some say there was a far more malevolent force at play below the
surface of the bakery business.

In 1994, members of the bakery allegedly beat an Oakland man with a
police officer's heavy-duty flashlight and threatened to kill the white
police officers who came to investigate.

Few of those victimized came forward to police. Chris Thompson, a
reporter for the East Bay Express who meticulously detailed many of the
misdeeds of the family in 2002, received personal threats, had a brick
thrown through his office window and was routinely followed.

The Chronicle tried to talk to several alleged victims, but almost no
one wanted their name used - for good reason, said the mother of one
man who was severely beaten.

Before the Aug. 3 police raid, associates of the bakery did "all sorts
of things, but nothing has happened to them," she said. "They still
didn't stop, did they? They got worse, as a matter of fact."

The elder Bey's political influence in Oakland was significant, as he
curried favor with white, black and Latino politicians. He even ran for
mayor in 1994, receiving 5 percent of the vote.

The bakery received a $1.2 million advance from the city in 1996 to
start a job-training program for health care workers. Money was used to
lease a Cadillac, but the school was never opened and the loan was
apparently never repaid.

Even as the bakery was going through bankruptcy, Mayor Ron Dellums and
Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, gave it letters of support. (They both
declined to be interviewed for this story. Lee issued a statement
Friday disavowing her earlier support for the enterprise.) Senate
President Pro Tem Don Perata, D-Oakland, wrote a letter to Bey in
August 2002 that said "the leadership you provide should be an
inspiration to all concerned over the city's future," according to an
East Bay Express article.

At about the same time as Perata's letter arrived, authorities were
investigating Bey for alleged sexual abuse of girls.

"It's like this dirty little secret that no one wants to admit to," said
Lewis, whose stepdaughters bore children after Bey allegedly raped
them. "A lot of people befriended him because of this perception of
power."

But the enterprise and those associated with it began to spiral out of
control after the founder's death.

Waajid Aljawwaad, a "spiritually adopted son" of Bey who was the bakery
accountant, was supposed to shepherd the business. But Aljawwaad, 51,
disappeared in February 2004. His badly decomposed body was found six
months later.

John Bey, another son, was ambushed in June 2005 as he left his home.
He has since gone into hiding.

Antar Bey, 23, the next successor, was killed at a gas station in
October 2005. Police speculated that it might have been an
assassination. A Bey family attorney had said there were many power
struggles within the family after the father's death. Police also noted
that Antar Bey's slaying came after two incidents in which he was shot
at but not harmed.

Soon after the killings and shootings, none of which has been solved,
Bey IV took over the bakery business.

Saleem Bey, one of several "spiritually adopted sons" of Yusuf Bey,
said the positive message his father had preached became drowned out by
a string of illicit activities committed by Bey IV. The association
with ex-cons, which once had been a way to lift people up, dragged the
family down, said Saleem Bey, who is also Yusuf Bey's son-in-law.

In 2005, Yusuf Bey IV and several men affiliated with the bakery were
arrested and accused of vandalizing two Oakland liquor stores and
threatening the owners for selling alcohol to African Americans.

Assistant Police Chief Howard Jordan said Bey IV had recently flaunted a
sense of invincibility and challenged police despite a warrant for his
arrest in a 2006 case in which he allegedly tried to run over a bouncer
outside a San Francisco strip club, where Bey IV had been thrown out.
Bey IV has been arrested and prosecuted at least four other times in
Alameda County. Lorna Brown, attorney for Bey IV in the cases involving
the liquor stores and strip-club bouncer, described her client as
dedicated to the business but apparently overwhelmed.

She said that he was convicted of one crime in Vallejo involving a false
driver's license and credit information about a year and a half ago but
that in the two years she's known him, she has seen no evidence of the
criminal conduct he's now being accused of.

"I didn't see any of the behavior that has been alleged," she said
Saturday. "It was my impression that he was doing his best to keep the
business afloat."

Bey IV was arrested in January on a charge of shoplifting several boxes
of condoms from a Walgreens in Oakland's Temescal district. While being
cited for petty theft, he declared to an officer: "We have the best
lawyers. That's why I'm not in jail."

He was released on bail before his arrest on Aug. 3.

"They are hiding behind the aura that was built up by the bakery," said
Saleem Bey. "It's like a chicken with its head cut off. It doesn't know
it's dead and keeps running around."