Last week, Gov. Brown released his May Budget Revise, which advocates who have been pushing for comprehensive prison population reduction reforms were anxious to see. We hoped that the minor reforms to good-time credits, medical parole and elder parole from the governor’s court-ordered population reduction plan would find their way into the revise.

However, last Tuesday’s revised budget shows, yet again, that Jerry Brown is not committed to any sustainable change in prison policy and has no real interest in even these modest measures.

California remains No. 1 in poverty and No. 1 in prison spending.

 
A quick summary of what is in the revise:

• Increase in corrections spending: This year’s plan shows a 1.9 percent increase in corrections spending, which is growing from $8.763 to $8.929 billion with an additional $2.272 billion in “special funds.”
• Reverse to realignment: The budget authorizes the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) to house people who have long-term sentences if the county agrees to accept an equivalent average daily population of short-term people and after they have served three years in county jail. It does encourage the use of split sentencing at the county level.
• Increase in probation funding: An increase of $72.1 million from the general fund goes to county probation departments that demonstrate success in reducing the number of adult probationers going to prison or jail for committing new crimes or violating the terms of probation.
• Increase in fire camps: An increase of $15.4 million reflects the participation of 3,800 new state prisoners in fire camps.
• Construction funding: Over $2 billion of total expenditures and $260 million for health care facilities improvement are budgeted for eight separate prisons.

To free up more space for men prisoners, CDCR moved all the women prisoners to the largest women’s prison, which is now at nearly double capacity, even though 4,500 women had been approved for release. These prisoners have been assigned to fire camp. – Photo: Maya Sugarman, LA Daily News

What stands out the most is the blatant refusal to heed a generation of painful real-life evidence that expanding prisons only expands the problem while the social safety net budget continues to remain stagnant. It is no surprise that California remains No. 1 in poverty and No. 1 in prison spending.

It is clear that Gov. Brown’s “plan” requires intervention from the Legislature if we want to see the implementation of any true population reduction strategies.

What stands out the most is the blatant refusal to heed a generation of painful real-life evidence that expanding prisons only expands the problem while the social safety net budget continues to remain stagnant.

 
Please take a moment now and join CURB’s list! In the coming weeks we will be letting our legislators know that we need real reform in this year’s budget to get our state out of poverty, our loved ones out of prison and end the overcrowding crisis in our prisons.

Diana Zuñiga is statewide coordinator for Californians United for a Responsible Budget.

KPFA Evening News May 18, 2013

KPFA Evening News Anchor: The mayoral contest in Jackson, the capital of Mississippi, is now widely reported to be very close as it heads for a conclusion on Tuesday, May 21. Jackson’s population is majority Black and Democratic, so Tuesday’s Democratic primary run-off, between Black Democrat Chokwe Lumumba and Black Democrat Jonathan Lee, will effectively determine who the city’s next mayor will be.

The Jackson Free Press reports, however, that donors to the Jonathon Lee campaign have also given $1.2 million to federal Republican campaigns since 2008. Lee is a businessman running for political office for the first time. Lumumba is a human rights attorney, renowned for winning Jamie and Gladys Scott’s release from prison, who has served on the Jackson City Council for the past four years.

KPFA’s Ann Garrison spoke to Bob Wing, a founding editor of Color Lines, who traveled from Durham, North Carolina, to work on the Chokwe Lumumba for Mayor campaign.

KPFA/Ann Garrison: Can you explain why you thought this campaign was so important that you traveled from Durham, North Carolina, to Jackson, Mississippi, to work on it?

Bob Wing: Yeah, there’s a couple main reasons. First of all, for much of the country, when they think of the South, they think of rednecks and red states, and they forget that the majority of Black people in the United States still live in the South. And that’s why I moved to Durham and that’s why the Jackson election is so important.

Mississippi is the state that has the highest percentage of Black people and Black voters. And it’s also often off the radar screen of much of the rest of the country.

While they’re looking at Obama and the drama in Washington, in many ways the main action going on in the country is a withering, literally withering attack that the Republicans have launched in the red and purple states like Mississippi and North Carolina, where they are dramatically altering the legal, political and social landscape, or at least attempting to in a very short time.

Chokwe Lumumba is, like Barack Obama, “a Christian brother with an African name,” but his opponent, Jonathan Lee, has used his name to suggest that he is non-American, perhaps not even Christian. Lee has also suggested that Chokwe Lumumba does not support Barack Obama. Lumumba himself has said that he and his supporters voted for Obama, but that he is an MLK-Fannie Lou Hamer Democrat.

KPFA: Having lost his family name during the Transatlantic Slave Trade, Chokwe Lumumba took the first name Chokwe, that of a West African tribe, and the last name Lumumba, which is of course the name of the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s first prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, who was assassinated in a Western backed coup. How does this play in the state of Mississippi?

Bob Wing: Well, it’s definitely something that he knows is an issue, and really his opponent is trying to use his name to paint Chokwe as a non-American, or some kind of other, or as a Muslim. And so Chokwe, he tends to introduce himself as Chokwe Lumumba, the Christian brother with an African name.

KPFA: OK. In a controversial television attack ad launched this week, the Lee campaign charged that Chokwe Lumumba is not a Christian, because he once said that the resurrection was not his thing. And Chokwe Lumumba responded that he’s always been a Christian and that he tries to live Christlike. Is a literal interpretation of the Bible really important in this part of the country where the Old Testament narrative, “Let my people go,” was transposed during the Civil Rights movement into the story of African Americans recovering from slavery and fighting Jim Crow segregation and voter suppression?

Bob Wing: Well, I don’t know that it is. I mean I think it’s important, or let’s put it this way, it’s a big plus if you’re a Christian. But for sure, Chokwe is in fact a Christian, and in a city that is overwhelmingly a Christian city – it’s about an 80-plus percent Black city, almost all of whom are Christians – it’s been an important thing for him to assert that he is a Christian.

KPFA: Could you explain why 2nd District Mississippi Congressman Bennie Thompson’s endorsement of Chokwe Lumumba is being reported to be so important?

Bob Wing: Well, I think that there’s two reasons: One is that a Congressional seat – you’ve got to remember that Misssissippi is a very small state; it has only about 2.5 million people. Jackson, the City of Jackson, has just under 200,000 people, so a Congressional seat takes up virtually all of Jackson, plus more people.

A congressional seat in the United States is approximately 750,000 to 800,000 people, so when you’re a congressman in Mississippi, you’re the congressman for a huge swath of the population. In the case of Bennie Thompson, he is the congressman for a good part of Black Mississippi, which is concentrated primarily in the Mississippi Delta and Jackson.

Chokwe Lumumba with his daughter Rukia and grandson Qadir

He has quite a bit of power, and he is very well known and widely admired, so his endorsement is definitely important.

KPFA: Anything else you’d like to say about this?

Bob Wing: Well, I guess the last thing I’d like to say, and it’s part of the answer to your first question, is I think that Chokwe also represents a very important new trend in the progressive movement in the United States, and that trend is that people are, especially on the left side of the progressive movement, the social justice movement, are really starting to understand the importance of elections as part of social justice organizing.

And Chokwe has been extremely successful at it, and it’s becoming really part of the culture of the progressive movement here in Jackson and in certain other parts of the country as well – Virginia, North Carolina and other places. And I think that’s a very important trend, which is another reason why I’m here.

KPFA: Bob Wing, thank you very much.

Bob Wing: Thank you.

KPFA: And that was Bob Wing, founding editor of Color Lines and Chokwe Lumumba campaign volunteer, speaking from Jackson, Mississippi.

For Pacifica, KPFA and AfrobeatRadio, I’m Ann Garrison

Oakland writer Ann Garrison writes for the San Francisco Bay View, Global Research, Colored Opinions, Black Star News and her own website, Ann Garrison, and produces for AfrobeatRadio on WBAI-NYC, KPFA Evening News and her own YouTube Channel, AnnieGetYourGang. She can be reached at ann@afrobeatradio.com. This story first appeared on her website. If you want to see Ann Garrison’s independent reporting continue, please contribute on her website at anngarrison.com.

The State Department of the United States recently released its Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2012, posing as the world judge of human rights again. As in previous years, the reports are full of carping and irresponsible remarks on the human rights situation in more than 190 countries and regions including China.

This photo with the following caption was used by China Daily to illustrate this report: “Kimani Gray protest on Church Avenue between East 55th Street and Nostrand Avenue in Brooklyn, New York, on March 13. In response to the shooting of a 16-year-old boy by police, protesters in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn had been holding nightly vigils and marches, and there have been frequent clashes with NYPD.” – Photo: Stephanie Keith, Polaris

The human rights situation in the U.S. in 2012 has deeply impressed people in the following aspects:

– Firearms-related crimes posed serious threat to the lives and personal security of citizens in the U.S. Some shootings left astonishing casualties, such as the school shooting in Oakland, the Century 16 theater shooting in Colorado and the school shooting in Connecticut.

– In the U.S., elections could not fully embody the real will of its citizens. Political contributions have, to a great extent, influenced the electoral procedures and policy direction. During the 2012 presidential election, the voter turnout was only 57.5 percent.

– In the U.S., citizens’ civil and political rights were further restricted by the government. The government expanded the scope of eavesdropping and censoring on personal telecommunications. The police often abused their power, resulting in increasing complaints and charges for infringement upon civil rights. The proportion of women in the U.S. who fell victim to domestic violence and sexual assault kept increasing.

– The U.S. has become one of the developed countries with the greatest income gaps. In 2011, the Gini index was 0.477 in the U.S. and about 9 million people were registered as unemployed, about 16.4 million children lived in poverty and, for the first time in history, public schools reported more than 1 million homeless children and youth.

Facts show that there are serious human rights problems in the U.S. which incur extensive criticism in the world.

 
 – There was serious sex, racial and religious discrimination in the U.S. Indigenous people suffered serious racial discrimination and their poverty rate doubled the national average. A movie produced by a U.S. director and aired online was deemed insulting to the Prophet Mohammed, sparking protests by Muslims worldwide.

– The U.S. seriously infringed upon human rights of other nations. In 2012, U.S. military operations in Yemen, Afghanistan and Pakistan caused massive civilian casualties. U.S. soldiers had also severely blasphemed against local residents’ religion by burning copies of the Muslim holy book, the Koran, and insulting bodies of the dead. There has been a huge rise in birth defects in Iraq since the war against Iraq with military actions in which American forces used metal contaminant-releasing white phosphorus shells and depleted uranium bombs.

– The U.S. was not able to effectively participate in international cooperation on human rights. To date, the U.S. remains a country which has not participated in or ratified a series of core U.N. conventions on human rights, such as the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

U.S.-led military operations bring forth ecological disasters to other countries

 
Military operations led by the United States have brought forth ecological disasters to other nations such as a huge rise in birth defects, says the report on the U.S. human rights record.

An article posted on the website of the Independent cited a study that reported a “staggering rise” in birth defects among Iraqi children conceived in the aftermath of the war, says the report, titled “the Human Rights Record of the United States in 2012,” which was released by China’s State Council Information Office.

The study found that in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, which saw two of the heaviest battles during the Iraq war, more than half of all babies surveyed were born with a birth defect between 2007 and 2010.

Before the war, the figure was more like one in 10. More than 45 percent of all pregnancies surveyed ended in miscarriage in the two years after 2004, up from the previous 10 percent, according to figures of the study cited by the report.

Military operations led by the United States have brought forth ecological disasters to other nations such as a huge rise in birth defects.

 
The report also quotes Steve Kretzmann, director of Oil Change International, as saying that the Iraq war was responsible for at least 141 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MMTCO2e) from March 2003 through December 2007. “The war emits more than 60 percent of all countries,” Kretzmann said.

U.S.-led wars cause massive civilian casualties

 
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, both started by the United States, have caused massive civilian casualties, says the report.

From 2001 to 2011, the U.S.-led “war on terror” killed between 14,000 and 110,000 per year, the report cites an article on the website of Stop the War Coalition as saying.

The U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) tallied at least 10,292 non-combatants killed from 2007 to July 2011.

The Iraq Body Count project records approximately 115,000 civilians killed in the cross-fire from 2003 to August 2011, according to the report.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, both started by the United States, have caused massive civilian casualties.

 
Beyond the two states under occupation, the “War on Terror” has spilled into a number of neighboring countries, including Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, killing a great many civilians there, it says.

In addition, a news report posted on BBC’s website pointed at recurrent U.S. drone attacks in the border regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan, according to the report. “Just one in 50 victims of America’s deadly drone strikes in Pakistan are terrorists – while the rest are innocent civilians,” the report quotes an article on the website of the Daily Mail as saying.

U.S. women victims of discrimination, poverty, sexual violence

 
Women in the United States are facing discrimination in employment and more vulnerable to poverty and violence, with some falling victim to sexual assault, says the report.

The U.S. remains one of a few countries in the world that have not ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, says the report.

Women made up about two-thirds of all workers in the U.S. who were paid minimum wage or less in 2011 and 61 percent of full-time minimum wage workers, the report says, citing the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

On average, women have to work as far as April 17 into 2012 to catch up with what men earned in 2011, it says.

Pregnant women and new mothers face the danger of being forced out of the workplace, according to the report.

A Houston mother was reportedly fired from her job at a collection agency after asking to bring a breast pump into the office so she’d have plenty of fresh breast milk for her newborn. A new Connecticut mom said her new employer asked her to resign after she told them she was pregnant.

The poverty rate for women in 2011 was 14.6 percent, compared to men’s 10.9 percent. Women are more likely to live in poverty and about 40 percent of women who head families live in poverty, the report cites the U.S. National Women’s Law Center (NWLC) as saying.

The U.S. remains one of a few countries in the world that have not ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.

 
Women are the victims of violence and sexual assaults. A national census of domestic violence agencies in September 2011 found that more than 67,000 victims were served in a single day, the report says.

According to the Report on Violence against Women, its Causes and Consequences, submitted by the Special Rapporteur to the U.N. General Assembly in 2012, most prison staff in the U.S. are not adequately trained to prevent or respond to inmate sexual assaults, and prison rape often goes unreported and untreated, says the report.

Women in the U.S. armed forces are the victims of widespread sexual abuse. Around 79 percent of women serving in the military reported experiences of sexual harassment. Military sexual trauma often leads to debilitating conditions such as post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and major depression, according to the report.

The report also warns of the health of women of color. A media report in June 2012 says the rate of HIV infection in heterosexual African American women in the poorest neighborhoods of Washington, D.C., nearly doubled the 6.3 percent infection rate of two years before.

Minority women in the U.S. are more likely to die during or soon after childbirth than white women, according to a report posted on the website of the Chicago Tribune on Aug. 3, 2012.

U.S. scores low on children’s rights protection

 
Children in the U.S. are not blessed with enough protection for their safety, freedom and right to education, says the report.

Citing the U.S. National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, the report says at least 100,000 children across the country are trafficked each year.

Child sexual abuse is a widespread public health problem. Research indicates that 20 percent of adult females and 5 to 15 percent of adult males experienced sexual abuse in childhood or adolescence, the report says.

In 2012, several religious figures were found to have sexually assaulted children. In July 2012, Roman Catholic monsignor William Lynn was sentenced to six years in prison for allowing a priest suspected of sexual misconduct with a minor to have continued contact with children. In September, a Roman Catholic bishop in Kansas City was found guilty of failing to tell authorities about child pornography that was produced by a priest under his supervision, according to the report.

Children in the U.S. are not blessed with enough protection for their safety, freedom and right to education.

 
The number of homeless children increased sharply in the U.S., and many children are stricken by poverty, the report says.

For the first time in history, public schools reported more than 1 million homeless children and youth. Only 52 percent of identified homeless students who took standardized tests were proficient in reading, and only 51 percent passed the math portion, the report cites the data released by the U.S. Department of Education on June 27, 2012, as saying.

Forty-four states reported school year-to-year increases in the number of homeless students, with 15 states reporting increases of 20 percent or more. The number of homeless children enrolled in public schools has increased 57 percent since the 2006-2007 school year, according to the report.

Racial discrimination remains rampant in U.S.: report

 
Racial discrimination in the United States sees no improvement, and non-whites do not enjoy equal political, economic and social rights, says the report.

Ethnic Americans’ rights to vote are limited; even some Asian-American voters were obstructed at voting stations during the presidential election in November 2012, according to the report.

As of 2010, more than 2 million African-Americans were stripped of their right to vote, says the report, citing media reports.

Racial discrimination is rampant in the field of law enforcement and justice, as police were reported to tend to be more lenient with whites, it says, adding that ethnic Americans are discriminated against in the job market, and their economic well-being worsens as a result.

Racial discrimination is rampant in the field of law enforcement and justice.

 
Religious discrimination is also rapidly on the rise, with an increase in insults and attacks against Muslims. In one case, a U.S. film director last year made a film that was insulting to the Prophet Muhammad and posted it online, which triggered waves of protests in the Muslim world.

Citing a recent poll released by American media, the report says 51 percent of Americans now express explicit anti-African-American attitudes, three percentage points higher than in 2008.

Besides, the rights of illegal immigrants are violated. Deaths often occur in immigration detention centers.

Some United Nation human rights experts and South Florida Haitian rights advocates call for the U.S. to suspend all deportations to Haiti, as it may constitute a human rights violation and may threaten the lives of Haitians, according to the report.

Ethnic Americans in poverty due to discrimination

 
Ethnic Americans’ economic well-being has worsened as a result of being discriminated against in the job market, said the report.

The Human Rights Record of the United States in 2012 was released by China’s State Council Information Office in response to the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2012 issued by the U.S. State Department.

The median household income for African-Americans was $32,229 in 2011, less than 60 percent of that of non-Hispanic whites, the report says, citing U.S. Census Bureau statistics.

The poverty rate for African-Americans stood at 27.6 percent in 2011, almost three times that of non-Hispanic whites.

Employment discrimination is the main reason behind income disparity and poverty, reads the report, an annual move of the Chinese government to counter the U.S. assessment belittling China’s human rights condition.

Statistics from the U.S. Department of Labor show the unemployment rate of whites was 7.0 percent in October 2012, while the rate for African-Americans and Hispanics was 14.3 percent and 10 percent, respectively, in that month, according to the report.

The average period of unemployment for ethnic minorities is also notably longer than that for whites, it says.

Employment discrimination is the main reason behind income disparity and poverty.

 
According to data from the Labor Department, over half of African-Americans and non-Hispanic Blacks in New York City who were old enough to work had no jobs in 2012, and it takes them almost a full year on average to find another job, the report says.

Wealth gap growing in U.S.

 
The gap between the rich and poor has been growing in the U.S. over the years, says the report.

America’s Gini index was 0.477 in 2011 and income inequality increased by 1.6 percent between 2010 and 2011, indicating a widened rich-poor gap, the report says.

Between 2010 and 2011, the share of aggregate income increased 1.6 percent for the quintile with the highest household income, and increased 4.9 percent for the top five percent households, it said, citing U.S. official figures.

During the same period, the aggregate share of income declined for the middle quintile, and the changes in the shares of aggregate income for the lowest two quintiles were not statistically significant, it added.

America’s poverty rate in 2011 was 15 percent, with 46.2 million people in poverty, according to U.S. Census Bureau data released in September 2012.

Furthermore, the report says there were 21 homeless people per 10,000 people in the general population, and nearly four in 10 homeless people were unsheltered.

U.S. election marked by political donations

 
Elections in the United States are like “money wars,” with trends of the country’s policies deeply influenced by political donations, says the report.

In the 2012 election, the Obama campaign and the Democratic camp raised $1.06 billion, and the Romney campaign and the Republican camp raised a total of $954 million, the report says. Both groups receive funding from business giants.

An opinion poll showed that nearly 90 percent of Americans believe the 2012 election was marked by too many political donations from business circles, which will mean the increased influence of the rich over the country’s policy-making, the report says.

“America’s political system is sinking into serious crisis as it is under manipulation of interest groups and their sponsors,” the report says, citing a Harvard professor.

“American politics are corroding the people, making them increasingly dependent on interest groups,” the professor is quoted as saying.

Abuse of suspects, jail inmates common in U.S.

 
Abuse of suspects and jail inmates is a common occurrence in the United States, says the report.

A litany of lawsuits was brought against the New York City Police Department, with police officers charged with violating civil rights in law enforcement, the report says.

Citing a May 2012 report by CNN, the document adds that some 9.6 percent of the prisoners in American state prisons are sexually victimized during confinement, more than double the rate cited in a report on the subject in 2008.

U.S. government steps up surveillance of citizens

 
The U.S. government continues to step up surveillance of ordinary Americans, seriously violating the freedom of citizens, says the report.

The U.S. Congress approved a bill in 2012 that authorizes warrantless wiretapping and electronic communications monitoring by the government, a move that violates people’s rights to privacy, the report says.

Documents released by the American Civil Liberties Union in September 2012, reveal that federal law enforcement agencies are increasingly monitoring American’s electronic communications.

The U.S. government continues to step up surveillance of ordinary Americans, seriously violating the freedom of citizens.

 
Between 2009 and 2011, the U.S. Justice Department’s combined number of original orders for “pen registers” and “trap and trace devices” used to spy on phones increased by 60 percent, from 23,535 in 2009 to 37,616 in 2011, the report says.

The National Security Agency collects purely domestic communications of Americans in a “significant and systematic” way, intercepting and storing 1.7 billion emails, phone calls and other types of communications, it adds.

Firearms-related crimes pose serious threat to U.S. citizens

 
The United States was haunted by serious violent crimes in 2012 with frequent occurrence of firearms-related criminal cases and with some shootings leaving astonishing casualties, says China’s report on the U.S. human rights record.

According to statistics released by the FBI in September 2012, an estimated 1,203,564 violent crimes occurred in the U.S. in 2011, about 386.3 violent crimes per 100,000 inhabitants, says the report.

Aggravated assaults accounted for 62.4 percent of violent crimes reported to law enforcement. And firearms were used in 67.7 percent of the nation’s murders, 41.3 percent of robberies, and 21.2 percent in all crimes in the U.S., the report quotes FBI figures as saying.

Figures from USA Today’s website showed that the violent crime rate went up 17 percent in 2011, the report says.

Statistics from the website of the Congressional Research Service showed that an estimated 14,612 people fell victim to murder in 2011 and 9,903 of them were firearms-related murder victims, according to the report.

U.S. people’s lives, personal security not duly protected

 
The lives and personal security of United States citizens, who were haunted by serious violent crimes, were not duly protected, says the report.

The U.S. government has done little on gun control. Americans are the most heavily armed people in the world per capita, according to the report.

It quotes CNN as saying that there were an estimated 270 million guns in the hands of civilians in the U.S. and more than 100,000 people are shot by guns each year.

The lives and personal security of United States citizens, who were haunted by serious violent crimes, were not duly protected.

 
In 2008 and 2010, landmark Supreme Court rulings on two firearms-related cases dramatically diminished the authority of state and local governments to limit gun ownership, according to the report.

Roughly half of the 50 U.S. states have adopted laws allowing gun owners to carry their guns openly in most public places. And many states have “stand your ground” laws that allow people to kill if they come under threat, even, in some cases, if they can escape the threat without violence, the report says.

The foregoing are the report’s foreword and highlights, which appear in Global Times, where the full text is also available.

The inclusion of Assata Shakur, a former member of the Black Liberation Army, on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted Terrorists list last month – marking 29 years since her liberation from a New Jersey maximum security prison in 1979 by members of the Black Liberation Army – while aimed at Cuba’s leadership should also be interpreted as a shot across the bow of any internal revolutionary movement or revolutionary activists in the United States who dare challenge empire’s march across the planet.

“I am a 20th century escaped slave,” wrote Assata Shakur. “Because of government persecution, I was left with no other choice than to flee from the political repression, racism and violence that dominate the U.S. government’s policy towards people of color. I was convicted by – I don’t even want to call it a trial; it was lynching, by an all-white jury. I had nothing but contempt for the system of justice under which I was tried.”

As a young woman she joined the Black Panther Party in the late 1960s and participated in its community service programs such as the free breakfast program for poor Black youth as well as other programs aimed at ending drug addiction amongst women. She embraced the Panther’s 10 Point Program that demanded Black people have complete control over their/our communities, free from a corrupt government’s interference and free from police forces that occupy Black communities as if they were enemy territory.

She watched in horror and then rage as the FBI, in concert with local law enforcement agencies, responded to the Panthers’ revolutionary program with state sponsored terrorism by framing, falsely arresting, imprisoning, wiretapping and even murdering Black Panther members across the country in a state sponsored counter intelligence program that specifically targeted the Panthers community activism.

This counter intelligence program was called COINTELPRO and we know it existed and we know that it targeted the Panthers’ community activism because we have the FBI’s own documents targeting the Panthers’ community work. In one memo, J. Edgar Hoover, the late director of the FBI, chastises a FBI agent who questioned why the FBI should be disrupting and harassing Panther members involved in legal community work that is widely supported by the Black community. In a scathing response, Hoover states to the FBI special agent in charge in San Francisco May 27,1969:

“You state that the Bureau under the Counter Intelligence Program should not attack programs of community interest such as the Black Panther Party Breakfast for Children. You state this is because many prominent humanitarians, both white and Black, are interested in the program as well as churches which are actively supporting it.

“You have obviously missed the point … You must recognize that one of our primary aims in counterintelligence as it concerns the [Black Panther] Party is to keep this group isolated from the moderate Black and white community which may support it. This is most emphatically pointed out in their Breakfast for Children Program, where they are actively soliciting and receiving support from uniformed white and moderate blacks.”

This is the environment of state repression Assata Shakur existed in as a young woman who joined the Panthers to address the needs of her community that the government wasn’t addressing. Within the two-year period of Assata Shakur’s membership in the Panthers, over 28 Panthers were killed around the country in suspicious confrontations with police and hundreds if not thousands were arrested on false charges.

Assata Shakur is no terrorist; she is a freedom fighter and dedicated activist who emerged from the Black community.

 
Faced with this repression, Assata Shakur did what any sane person would do when faced with death or false imprisonment by a government bent on destroying, by any means necessary, the movement she belonged to. She was forced to go underground and helped build the Black Liberation Army (BLA), an armed revolutionary movement committed to defending itself and the Black community against an all out war declared on militant Black revolutionary activists and movements. The creation of the BLA was the logical and natural response by activists who faced a government onslaught of repression and assassination. In Assata Shakur’s own words:

“The Black Liberation Army is not an organization: It goes beyond that. It is a concept, a people’s movement, an idea. The idea of a Black Liberation Army emerged from conditions in Black communities: conditions of poverty, indecent housing, massive unemployment, poor medical care and inferior education.

“The idea came about because Black people are not free or equal in this country. Because 90 percent of the men and women in this country’s prisons are Black and Third World. Because 10-year-old children are shot down in our streets. Because dope has saturated our communities, preying on the disillusionment and frustration of our children.

“The concept of the BLA arose because of the political, social and economic oppression of Black people in this country. And where there is oppression, there will be resistance,” writes Assata Shakur in “Assata Shakur: An Autobiography.”

So, we can dispense with the nonsense of Assata Shakur being a terrorist! If anyone is a terrorist, it is the agents who were responsible for a campaign of assassinations, false imprisonment, illegal wiretaps and a host of other illegal acts that emerged from COINTELPRO. Assata Shakur is a freedom fighter!

Next, let’s make it clear that Assata Shakur is no fugitive from the law or justice, because in order to be a fugitive one has to be in flight or violation of a government and criminal justice system that possesses legitimacy. The charges, conviction and sentence Assata Shakur was subjected to were the results of the illegal COINTELPRO campaign the FBI launched against members of the Black Panther Party and other militant revolutionary Black movements.

“And where there is oppression, there will be resistance.”

 
So excessive were the illegal violations of COINTELPRO, the United States Senate was forced to convene a Senate hearing (Church Commission) in 1975 to rein in and expose the FBI’s illegal conduct and secret campaign against the Black Liberation Movement. If it is a fact that Assata Shakur was the victim of the FBI’s illegal COINTELPRO tactics based on her membership and activism in the Black Panther Party, the United States government possesses absolutely no legitimacy to declare Assata Shakur a fugitive nor attempt to apprehend her!

The real reason the government wants Assata Shakur has nothing to do with her unjustified conviction for allegedly murdering a New Jersey state trooper and everything to do with the government not letting go of the fact that after Assata Shakur was sentenced to spend the rest of her life in prison in 1975, in 1979 her comrades in the Black Liberation Army broke into the prison, liberated her and successfully spirited her off to Cuba where she was granted political asylum by the Cuban government.

Assata Shakur represents a symbol of militant Black resistance that challenged and humiliated the United States government for its repressive and indifferent policies towards the Black community. Assata Shakur is uncompromising in her beliefs and continues to represent and carry the legacy of the Black Liberation Movement.

We can dispense with the nonsense of Assata Shakur being a terrorist! Assata Shakur is a freedom fighter!

 
Her freedom keeps alive the memory of her imprisoned and martyred comrades from the Black Liberation Army. It must drive the FBI and New Jersey law enforcement crazy that she is beyond the grasp of Imperial America, yet only 90 miles from its borders in revolutionary Cuba.

For those of us who embrace the legacy of the Black Liberation Movement, this latest move against our sister Assata Shakur is a potent reminder that, because there is no longer a militant Black underground that can inflict consequences, the FBI can add Assata to the FBI’s Top 10 Most Wanted Terrorists List and the state of New Jersey can double its “bounty” on Assata’s head to $2 million without repercussions. This is something for us to ponder.

And lest someone should think the BLA is passé or a relic from another era, just read over Assata’s above statement on the conditions that gave birth to the BLA and you’ll see that we are confronted with the same conditions today – even with a Black president. It should also be hoped that Assata’s inclusion on the FBI’s Top 10 Most Wanted Terrorist List draws attention back to Assata Shakur’s case and galvanizes opposition to the government’s attempt to capture her.

Robert Saleem Holbrook and family 2009

Assata Shakur on the other hand will be all right, Assata descends from a long line of Black women who have stood up to and confronted state repression. Her example and actions stand in the company of Harriet Tubman, Ida B. Wells, Rosa Parks, Maya Angelou, Kathleen Cleaver, Angela Davis and other Black women who have stood the storm of racism and oppression in White America.

In addition, Assata Shakur draws on the legacy and example of our enslaved ancestors who escaped the plantation and took to the mountains and swamps of the New World as maroons, dodging and fighting slave hunters and U.S. federal marshals paid by white slave owners to hunt them down and deliver them in chains back to the plantation.

Assata ain’t coming back to the plantation and we should do everything possible to ensure that she doesn’t. For if Malcolm X was, in the words of the late Ossie Davis, “our Black Prince, a shining example of Manhood,” then Assata Shakur is our “Black Queen, a shining example of Black Womanhood.”

Send our brother some love and light: Robert Saleem Holbrook, BL-5140, SCI Coal, 1 Kelley Dr., Coal Township, PA 17866, www.freesalim.net.

by Mary Ratcliff

During a visit to the offices of the historic Black newspaper the Los Angeles Sentinel, Malcolm Shabazz paused to contemplate a portrait of his grandfather, Malcolm X. – Photo: LA Sentinel

Like his grandfather’s, the smile of young Malcolm Shabazz not only lit up the room but set a fire of fervent hope in your heart and soul. When he met you, he gave you his undivided attention, no matter how much or how little you had to say, and made you feel part of the legacy he bore proudly but painfully as the first male heir of the great El Hajj Malik El Shabazz.

Malcolm Shabazz, 28, died tragically in Mexico on Thursday. His funeral will be held in Oakland later this coming week. The Bay Area has much love for young Malcolm, as this is where he began to become an outstanding speaker, known as El Hajj Malcolm El Shabazz for his stirring accounts of his pilgrimage to Mecca. The Bay View was honored to sponsor him on speaking tours arranged by Bay View associate editor and the People’s Minister of Information JR, his close comrade over the past several years.

Young Malcolm not only attended the African Migrants Conference in Tripoli, Libya, in January 2011 with Minister of Information JR with Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney’s delegation but was invited to address a plenary session. He was the only speaker besides Qaddafi who was given a standing ovation. – Photo: Minister of Information JR

That mission should not have led to his death, and I can’t help but wonder whether the fear of a “Black messiah” by the powers that be in the U.S., which put young Malcolm, like his grandfather, in their cross hairs, could have been involved. The five goals of Cointelpro issued March 4, 1968, by J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI, labeled “COUNTERINTELLIGENCE PROGRAM: BLACK NATIONALIST – HATE GROUPS, RACIAL INTELLIGENCE,” are:

“1. Prevent the COALITION of militant black nationalist groups. In unity there is strength …

“2. Prevent the RISE OF A ‘MESSIAH’ who could unify, and electrify, the militant black nationalist movement. Malcolm X might have been such a ‘messiah;’ he is the martyr of the movement today. …

“3. Prevent VIOLENCE on the part of black nationalist groups. …

“4. Prevent militant black nationalist groups and leaders from gaining RESPECTABILITY, by discrediting them …

“5. A final goal should be to prevent the long-range GROWTH of militant black organizations, especially among youth. …”

Could young Malcolm now be a “martyr of the movement”? With Assata Shakur placed on the Most Wanted Terrorists list and the doubling to $2 million of the bounty on her head, this has been a tough week for Black revolutionaries.

Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi warmly welcomed Malcolm to the conference. – Photo: Minister of Information JR

“‘I sincerely appreciate the care and concern of the People over my well-being after Press TV’s report of the most recent events which have transpired regarding the FBI’s harassment of me.’ …

“‘The agents of this division – and in collaboration with others – have visited several residences of which I was known by them to frequent.’

Malcolm, JR and Ra’shida met many African leaders at the conference, including Samia Nkrumah, daughter of Ghana’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah, a member of Parliament, the first woman to chair a major political party and one of the most popular African women leaders. – Photo: Minister of Information JR

“‘These are the homes of long-time friends and very close supporters. Yet, when federal agents begin knocking on someone’s door on multiple occasions to snoop and ask questions, whether one is guilty of an offense or not, it’s enough to coerce people into distancing themselves from you.’

“‘This cheap tactic employed by the FBI is a means of agitation and harassment. They seek to neutralize my networking abilities.

“‘They have visited locations in California, Chicago, Miami and most aggressively in New York.’ …

“‘It wasn’t even until my mother informed me that they had been contacting her that I truly became agitated.’

On Hajj in Mecca, the grandson of Malcolm X was welcomed with open arms and given a tour of the city and access to official people and places. Here he is with Sheikh Faisal Ghazawi, Imam of the Mosque Haramain (center). The Holy Kabaa in Makkah (Mecca) is in the background.

“‘They expressed concern’ in his ‘international travels.’

“‘I have lived and studied in Damascus, Syria, for over a year, and now the U.S. is instigating conflict within the very same region.’

“‘I went on ex-Congresswoman and former presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney’s delegation along with Dr. Randy Short to Libya and met with Leader Muammar Qaddafi one week prior to NATO intervention, and I was most recently getting ready to travel to Tehran, Iran, to be a participant of the International Fajr Film Festival and give a lecture addressing the issues of Hollywood and violence.

Yuri Kochiyama, a renowned leader in the Asian and other communities of color in the Bay Area, had been a strong supporter of Malcolm X in Harlem. She submitted a letter from his grandson, Malcolm Shabazz, to the Bay View for publication in the mid-2000s. That letter, written from prison, sparked a correspondence between Malcolm and JR Valrey, leading eventually to this meeting of the three of them in November of 2010.

Though Cointelpro no longer officially exists, heavy investment of taxpayer resources into preventing the rise of a Black Messiah continues. Did government agents know young Malcolm was in Mexico? You decide.

It’s your decision too whether to swallow all the garbage in the mainstream media right now in a Cointelpro-style effort to discredit and demonize Malcolm. Yes, he had a lot of trouble with “the law” in his short life, but that does not define him as a man and that’s not why the FBI watched and harassed him.

“Did CIA kill Malcolm X’s grandson?“ asks Dr. Kevin Barrett today on Press TV. “Make no mistake,” he writes, “Malcolm Shabazz, like his grandfather, posed a serious, ‘actionable’ long-term threat to the powers-that-be.

M1 of the rap group dead prez, Hajj Malcolm Shabazz, film director Samm Styles, and the host, Minister of Information JR, spoke on a panel at the People’s Human Rights and Hip Hop Film Fest in San Francisco on Feb. 12, 2011. – Photo: Minister of Information JR

“I do not know whether the usual suspects – the ‘asteroids’ who assassinate the enemies of empire on behalf of the CIA, the World Bank and related entities, according to author John Perkins – killed Malcolm Shabazz. But I am 100 percent certain that they were thinking about it. …

Hajj Malcolm Shabazz, a loving father, spoke often to school children. Here he is at Masjid Al-Islam School in Washington, D.C.

“And now, Malcolm Shabazz – who was forging an updated version of the same anti-empire alliance – is murdered in Mexico. Coincidence? Maybe. …

“Whatever happened to Malcolm Shabazz, it is abundantly obvious that the intelligence agency assets infiltrating US mainstream media are conducting a scripted posthumous character assassination designed to obscure Malcolm’s role as an up-and-coming activist and long-term threat to the Empire.”

JR interviews Malcolm for the Block Report on KPFA Dec. 3, 2011.

“The imperial propagandists at the New York Times, Huffington Post and similar outlets are working overtime smearing Malcolm Shabazz. This apparently pre-orchestrated smear smells like an intelligence operation. It is strong circumstantial evidence that Malcolm Shabazz was yet another political assassination victim.

Less than a month after the police murder of 19-year-old Kenneth Harding in July 2011 a block from the Bay View office, JR and Malcolm traveled to visit and interview his mother, Denika Chatman, and brother, Ondrell Harding, in Seattle. – Photo: Minister of Information JR

The Shabazz family issued this official statement today: “We are deeply saddened by the passing of our beloved El Hajj Malcolm El Shabazz. To all who knew him, he offered kindness, encouragement and hope for a better tomorrow. Although his bright light and boundless potential are gone from this life, we are grateful that he now rests in peace in the arms of his grandparents and the safety of God. We will miss him.

On his Twitter page, Malcolm posted this photo replicating a famous picture of his grandfather. He described himself there as “Grandson, name-sake and first male heir of the greatest revolutionary leader of the 20th century.”

My own comfort comes from imagining the meeting between Malcolm and his grandfather.

Bay View editor Mary Ratcliff can be reached at editor@sfbayview.com or (415) 671-0789.

Read the words of Malcolm Shabazz

So that you may come to know him for yourself, following are a few of the stories we’ve posted at SFBayView.com by and about Hajj Malcolm El Shabazz:

This portrait of a thoughtful Malcolm Shabazz was taken at the potluck in Oakland to kick off Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney’s Bike4Peace cross-country bicycle ride, on July 23, 2010. – Photo: Kamau Amen-Ra

Live from Saudi Arabia: an interview with El Hajj Malcolm Shabazz

Mumia, the media and more: Davey D, MOI JR and Malcolm Shabazz on Hard Knock Radio

Malcolm Shabazz on the three chapters missing from ‘The Autobiography of Malcolm X’

The legacy of El Hajj Malik El Shabazz lives! an interview wit’ his grandson Malcolm Shabazz In this extremely revealing interview, Malcolm addresses such difficult topics as the fire that killed his grandmother, his time in prison and who killed his grandfather.

Cynthia McKinney’s fundraiser tour for the SF Bay View was a huge success up and down California, hitting San Diego, Los Angeles, Oakland and Santa Rosa. The tour, which was titled “Latin America, Africa, and Obama,” coincided with the release of McKinney’s second book, “Ain’t Nothing Like Freedom,” an autobiography about her years as a six-term Congress member from Georgia.

Cynthia McKinney, like Paul Robeson, has been largely silenced by the powers that be. Though she is invited to speak all over the world, here at home in the U.S., her truth telling is considered too dangerous and she is rarely quoted or heard in the mainstream media. With her California tour – and her upcoming East Coast tour – she is “breaking the blockade.” Here she is at Laney College on April 24. – Photo: Darnisha Wright

McKinney talked extensively about Obama’s domestic policies including his willingness to cut social security and his foreign policies, including the U.S. military’s use of drones and depleted uranium ammunition in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Somalia and their effect on the population of these nations.

McKinney described the work of the late great Muammar Qaddafi, who was assassinated by U.S. and NATO backed forces in 2011, and the revolutionary government he created, called the Libyan Jamahariya. Most people listening in the audience had heard very little about the accomplishments of the bloodless Libyan revolution in 1969 that transformed Africa’s poorest occupants and by 2011 made them the richest on the continent per capita due to his nationalization of the nation’s oil wealth.

Due to Cynthia McKinney being harassed and searched at the Atlanta airport for 45 minutes, she was over an hour late to her speaking engagement at the WorldBeat Cultural Center in San Diego to kick off the tour. About 40-50 people waited to hear her talk about politics and to get both of her books. Her first book, “The Illegal War in Libya,” released last fall, sold out after only the second event. Shout out to Makeda of the WorldBeat and Mario of One Hundred Strong for helping to organize this event.

On Cynthia’s second and third stops, in Ingelwood and Los Angeles, she cordially facilitated political discussions, opening up for questions after about 20 minutes of speaking. She talked about knowing how to speak French, but acknowleged that today, Spanish is the language of the revolution, alluding to the recent revolutionary actions of Ecuador, Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia and other countries.

A high point of Cynthia McKinney’s California tour came on April 23 at the Kaos Network on Leimert Boulevard in Los Angeles when Kathleen Cleaver came with the Freeman brothers, Ronald and Elder. They are standing on either side of Kathleen, Elder Freeman between Kathleen and Cynthia. Kathleen had come to California to raise money for Elder Freeman to travel to Cuba for cancer treatment, and her mission was accomplished. With the Panthers and KPFK broadcaster Dedan Kimathi, along with Minister of Information JR, host and organizer of the tour, it was a gathering of veterans of the struggle. – Photo: Minister of Information JR

At Chuco’s Justice Center in Inglewood, Black Panther legends the Freeman Brothers and Kathleen Cleaver were in the audience supporting the freedom fighting peace activist. At Ben Caldwell’s Kaos Network, a whole ‘nother group of activists came out to be informed. Shout out to Akua Agusi and Billion of the Ujima Council for helping to organize the LA wing of the tour.

While in Los Angeles, Cynthia was interviewed in the early morning on April 22 by Dominique DiPrima of Stevie Wonder’s KJLH radio station. She also was interviewed by Eric Mann of KPFK about her political views.

On her fourth stop, Oakland came out in numbers to Laney College to hear the words of Cynthia McKinney in an event organized by the Laney College Black Student Union. The hundred plus seat lecture hall was almost filled to capacity with people eager to listen to her presentation. Bay View publisher Willie Ratcliff introduced Cynthia. Black Panthers Arthur League and Elder and Ronald Freeman were also in the house right alongside former San Quentin 6 member Johnny Spain, who participated in the discussion, adding stats about mass incarceration.

The last stop on the tour was Santa Rosa’s Arlene Francis Center, which was attended by approximately 70 people. McKinney was brought to Santa Rosa by the San Jose-based Mexican activist construction firm Rumec.

After Brianna Brooks, 20, told Cynthia McKinney prior to the event in the beautiful Arlene Francis Center in Santa Rosa that she is an inspiration, Cynthia invited her to take the mic and share a few words. Then Cynthia said that when she retires, Brianna should be ready to take her place. – Photo: Minister of Information JR

Ben Saari of KTWF radio was in the audience recording the audio and community TV broadcaster Elaine Holtz had a film crew there videotaping. A number of people from Sonoma helped organize this event including Carole Hyams, Peter Phillips and Morris Turner.

The “Latin America, Africa, Obama” tour was so successful that we are gearing up to bring it to the East Coast in late June or early July. Before the last event, Cynthia ran out of the 80 or so books that we brought on the tour, so we had to take the names of people who wanted to buy autographed copies to be shipped to them.

A day after the tour ended, Cynthia McKinney, our tireless voice of conscience, flew to Addis Ababa to address the treatment of Palestinians she observed on her several efforts to break the blockade by sea and land.

Cynthia McKinney is definitely a people’s champ in much the same way as El Hajj Malik Shabazz and MLK. She carries their torch in our time and is now leading an international struggle for Black and poor people’s human rights. She needs and deserves your support – just like the SF Bay View newspaper and Block Report Radio, who brought you this tour.

Block Report Radio interviews Cynthia McKinney

This interview, recorded just before the tour began, was broadcast on KPFA April 22 by Greg Bridges on his show, Transitions on Traditions.

Minister of Information JR Valrey of Block Report Radio: Our next guest is six time congresswoman and 2008 Green Party candidate and international peace activist, the one and only Honorable Cynthia McKinney. How are you?

Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney: I’m doing great, JR. How are you doing?

M.O.I. JR: I’m good. I know we are only days away from your upcoming California tour, where you’ll be helping the San Francisco Bay View newspaper to raise money for its very much needed services to the community. But you will also be profiling your new book, “Ain’t Nothing Like Freedom.” Can you tell the people a little bit about what’s going on at this tour that will stop on April 24 at Laney College and will also go to the Arlene Francis Center in Santa Rosa on April 25. Can you tell the people a little about what you’ll be talking about?

CM: Well, of course. I’ll be talking about the contents of both of the books. The Libya book came out while the bombing was still going on in Libya. I took a group of journalists there so that we could tell the truth about what was happening on the ground rather than what the propagandizing media were saying to the world about what was being done in Libya.

And then the other book, the newest book, is “Ain’t Nothing Like Freedom,” and that book basically is about my time in Congress and what I felt as I was doing certain things on certain issues. I talk a lot about the World Conference Against Racism and the difference that we were able to make because we cared enough to challenge the Bush administration’s decision to boycott the conference. And we contrasted that to what happened recently under the Obama administration, where a similar decision was made, but the members of Congress chose to go along with the Obama administration.

Bay View publisher Willie Ratcliff, sponsor of Cynthia McKinney’s California tour, introduces her at Laney College. – Photo: Darnisha Wright

And I’ll be talking not only about my experiences but how I felt, because at the end of the day I have feelings just like everybody else. And so even though maybe I am a public person, I’m not supposed to have feelings? But my mother and my father’s hearts were broken by the treatment that I received. My mom still shudders at the idea of me going out in public and having to be viewed through the prism of the local news, because she knows they have a special interest and they are just not going to get it right; and I’ll end up looking like a caricature of myself.

I would like people to come out so they can experience me as a person – not as a product, not as a politician, not as a public persona – but me as an average American person just trying to make a difference.

M.O.I. JR: No doubt about that, and we support you. Can you tell the people a little about the content of your NATO book, or your book that deals with Libya?

CM: Well, we were fortunate enough to have people who contributed to the book who were there in Libya as the bombing took place, so we have that perspective. We also had the perspective of people who either lived in Libya or visited Libya prior to the bombing, and they gave that perspective. And then we had people who had an interest in Libya, had never been there but recognized the importance of this move by NATO, representing the White world supported by segments of people of color, so they had a particular view to present as well, and that was all there.

And I talk about what NATO represents. I just finished doing an interview where I was asked about apartheid in Israel, and it brings to mind the nature of global apartheid that continues to exist. I’ve had the opportunity to travel all over Europe, and I’ve seen Africans in Europe. Now the Europeans have gone into Africa and they have just completely decimated the continent to the best of their ability by stripping it of its resources, beginning with the stripping of its human resources during the transatlantic slave trade.

The numbers are staggering when you think about 100 million people being stripped out of a continent. It’s staggering to think about, to see this kind of destruction. So when Africans say, OK, you’ve made my home an intolerable place to live so I’m going to go to your home and live. Then that’s when you can see the apartheid inside the European countries. Through my travels, I have come to view this global apartheid.

Cynthia McKinney’s presentations and Q&As stimulated discussions after every event on her California tour. This is at the Arlene Francis Center in Santa Rosa. – Photo: Morris Turner

Actually, NATO is an anachronism now. It was created to thwart the drive of the Soviet Union into Western Europe, and now we see NATO all over the world. It’s in Afghanistan, it was in Libya; it’s gone from Western Europe to Africa and Asia. And why is that?

What are the policies that are being protected by this military onslaught against people of color? Clearly the interests that are being protected are not the interests of the people in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya and other interests. We have to look at this, and I kind of just stumbled on this as a result of my travels and the glaring inequalities – glaring apartheid-like status of people of color in European countries – and then the sort of obverse of that in the countries that are populated by people of color. So I’m just putting voice to that now.

M.O.I. JR: You recently traveled to Caracas, Venezuela, and attended the funeral of the late great freedom fighter and president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez. Can you tell the people a little about that experience as well as the counter-revolution that the United States has been trying to implement? You know, what’s going on on the ground in Caracas and in Venezuela?

CM: Well, first of all I have to state that I have always had a sense of solidarity with the peoples of Latin America, but that sense of solidarity was never really fully expressed. I have to say a word of thanks to my professor – I’m doing work on my Ph.D. and I am making great progress and great strides, and at the proper time I intend to invite everybody to come to my graduation – but it was one of my professors who suggested that I spread my wings and expand my territory beyond that which I knew. I do not speak Spanish; I do speak French, and so as a result of the similarities of the romance languages I am able to understand a bit of Spanish although I can’t speak it.

So I decided to get into some research on the U.S. policies, for example, with the Puerto Rican independence movement and the counter-intelligence program that operated against the Puerto Rican independentistas. From there my interest and my solidarity has grown such that I am now doing papers on Venezuela and Hugo Chavez.

Venezuela is in the midst of having elections after having lost its charismatic and transformative leader, so there is a lot of public sentiment that Nicolas Maduro will win the election. Now there’s some – I think a replay of what happened in Iran is under consideration – because of course the efforts of the United States government, which is against the values and the policies of the Bolivarian Revolution, are to thwart the victory of Nicholas Maduro and to taint the election process.

Those who stayed to talk with Cynthia after the event at Laney gathered for a group photo. – Photo: Darnisha Wright

M.O.I. JR: Right. How do you feel about what was going on in the streets? Did you see the people calling Hugo Chavez a dictator like you do on mainstream news in the United States, or did you see the people supporting the Bolivarian Revolution as I saw in a lot of the alternative press that was also covering his passing?

CM: Well, there were millions of people in the streets; in fact, there were so many people who were at the military academy where he lay in state that I couldn’t even get close. The second time I went – I just came back maybe a week and a half to two weeks ago – I was there with an international delegation and they had to close the place off. We originally were scheduled to go in the morning, and we couldn’t go because there was still a crush of people there.

I saw people wailing in the streets. People were crying, people were angry, people were defiant, people were accusatory. I saw a full range of emotions there. And the interesting thing is I really have to question a person who puts the values and interests of another country ahead of their own country. We see that happening here in the United States as well. Those of us who hold fast say that there ought to be primacy of the rule of law and the protection of the Bill of Rights ought to be extended to every U.S. citizen. Yet we have people who stake their loyalty out for other countries and then follow what’s determined to be the interests of the other countries.

That is what the case is in Venezuela: You have a very small population of people who look to the United States for leadership and guidance. If this means that their fellow Venezuelan citizen has to suffer, then so be it, because they tie their identity so closely to that of the United States that they forget about the interests of their fellow Venezuelans, and I find that peculiar and sad.

M.O.I. JR: For those who are just tuning in, you are listening to the voice of international peace activist Cynthia McKinney right here on the Block Report. Ms. Cynthia McKinney, can you compare Hugo Chavez – Venezuela under Hugo Chavez – to Qaddafi’s Libya? What exactly were the two leaders about and what were their countries about under their leadership, as well as what is the similarity in how they were attacked and removed? Some say that Hugo Chavez was assassinated; we know that Qaddafi definitely was assassinated. Can you talk a little bit about the attacks on them and their countries by the United States as well as the similarity of their accomplishments?

CM: That’s a very interesting point that you bring out. I remember it was in 2002 when the world learned about the kidnapping of Chavez because the Irish journalists just happened to be there and produced the documentary, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.” What was it that Chavez was doing that was similar to what Qaddafi was doing?

Tim Killings, past president of the Laney College Black Student Union, and Niyesha, newly elected BSU president, organized the Laney College event on Cynthia McKinney’s tour. Organizer of the entire tour was Minister of Information JR, center. Job well done! – Photo: Darnisha Wright

And so Aristide began to turn the Haitian state around to invest in the Haitian people. When I was there, there was an effort to address the abysmal statistics on adult literacy, on sanitation – just the things we take for granted. I was there not too long ago where people were celebrating the fact that they had their first road coming into the town. For these kinds of investments, the administration in Haiti was derided. It accepted thousands of doctors from Cuba and petrodollars from Venezuela to build those roads and to uplift the people.

We saw what happened with President Aristide: He was kidnapped and kicked out. And the same thing happened to Hugo Chavez. Now what is it that he was doing? He was investing in the Venezuelan people for literacy. In fact, it’s so amazing: I just got back, as I said, and the people brag about reading. Can you imagine people bragging in the United States about reading? It doesn’t happen.

Hugo Chavez was investing in the Venezuelan people for literacy and the people brag about reading. Can you imagine people bragging in the United States about reading?

People brag in Venezuela about reading. They love their Constitution, they vote the Constitution, and so they love their Constitution. And they read and they read and they read because Hugo Chavez told them to read – to become a reading society. There are tens of thousands of Cuban doctors there. The petrodollars are being used to build schools and provide health care. Every neighborhood has a community garden where they have organic food. So their quality of life was being raised for the average Venezuelan in the Bolivarian Revolution.

And they read and they read and they read because Hugo Chavez told them to read – to become a reading society.

And now remember that Dick Cheney said that it was the American quality of life that justified the United States going across the world to 60 countries and declaring war on 60 countries. Dick Cheney said that this was a fight that was worth it because it was about the American quality of life. So is your quality of life better today than it was before the war on terror? For the average American citizen, it’s not.

The quality of life was measurably better for the average Venezuelan, the average Haitian, the average Libyan. The statistics from the United Nations indicate that Libya had the highest standard of living on the entire African continent. Not any longer. The subsidized education, subsidized housing, actually free education, free health care, subsidized food, free farming utensils if you wanted to start a farm.

Every so often there was a debt jubilee: People would charge up their credit cards buying Western things, and so there was a jubilee on that and people would be relieved of that debt. When was the last time that happened here?

The statistics from the United Nations indicate that Libya had the highest standard of living on the entire African continent.

You know, what we are experiencing, particularly in Latin America now, is a different vision for a different way of living and a different way of being, a different way of being human, and it’s about our humanity to each other, it’s how we treat each other, how we live with Mother Earth, how we live with each other. I met a U.S. citizen when I was there this last time in Venezuela, and she chose to leave the U.S. – a Black woman chose to leave the U.S. – and live in Venezuela. She’s been there for seven years now.

She said to me something that I still to this day reflect on and find very interesting. She said to me, “Cynthia technically I’m poor, but I have health care, I’m a teacher – I teach English and so I provide education for people – I have all the food that I need to eat, and so I question how they could call me poor.” And she went on to say that she found the materialism and the focus on consumption in the United States appalling and it just reached the point that she had to leave, so she left.

Every so often there was a debt jubilee: People would charge up their credit cards buying Western things, and so there was a jubilee on that and people would be relieved of that debt. When was the last time that happened here?

She said that there were seven other U.S. people who left with her. They were all men, and they all eventually returned to the United States. She said she recently reached out to all of them; to a person, every one of them is sorry that they returned to the U.S., because now they understand that quality of life doesn’t mean how many cars you have parked in your driveway and how big a driveway you have and how many houses you accumulate and what the square footage of your house is. That’s not an indication of your quality of life.

I think back to the King of Bhutan (a kingdom in the Eastern Himalayas), who said that the indicators for success for Bhutan were now going to be an indication of happiness: gross national happiness instead of gross national product. It’s all in the way we look at how we are supposed to relate to each other and to relate to earth. Mother Earth is not a commodity. Mother Earth is what sustains and gives us life.

M.O.I. JR: For those of you just tuning in, you are listening to the voice of the international peace activist Cynthia McKinney, who is on her way to the Bay Area. Wednesday, April 24, she will be speaking at the Laney College Forum at 6 p.m. And the next night, Thursday, April 25, she will be speaking at the Arlene Francis Center in Santa Rosa at 7 p.m. Ms. Cynthia McKinney, how can people stay in touch with you if they would like to hear more about what you’re talking about and they’re not able to make it to the tour?

CM: Well, I hope everyone will come to the tour. At least come see me, give me a hug, give me a high five, because it’s hard really to go on. There’s a friend of mine who says people don’t understand how hard it is to be Cynthia McKinney, so I’m going to unveil myself. I’m just going to be a regular ordinary person and I’d like to experience regular ordinary folks who want to talk about real things.

We can talk about politics, but let’s talk about life and love and living and happiness and wellness. Let’s talk about some other things. But if people can’t come, we can interact now, because I’m learning a little bit more about Facebook – at Cynthia McKinney official. If you go to the regular Cynthia McKinney page – there’s about three or four of them – don’t do that. Go to the one that says “official,” because that’s the one that I operate. I don’t even know who operates the other ones.

M.O.I. JR: As well as they can buy the two new books.

CM: Oh yes, of course; they can buy the books. Clarity Press makes them available online, or you can send someone to buy them in person and I’ll sign them.

Editor’s note: Both books were available on the tour until they sold out. The Bay View is special ordering more, which Cynthia will autograph. Email editor@sfbayivew.com or call (415) 671-0789 to order one or both books.

The People’s Minister of Information JR is associate editor of the Bay View, author of “Block Reportin’“ and filmmaker of “Operation Small Axe” and “Block Reportin’ 101,” available, along with many more interviews, at www.blockreportradio.com. He also hosts two weekly shows on KPFA 94.1 FM and kpfa.org: The Morning Mix every Wednesday, 8-9 a.m., and The Block Report every other Friday night-Saturday morning, midnight-2 a.m. He can be reached at blockreportradio@gmail.com.

The federal government is at it again! They have placed the legendary Black Panther leader, Assata Shakur, on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorist list. Yes, you read correctly: terrorist. Shakur has been living in political exile in Cuba since 1984 after her escape from the Clinton Correctional Facility for Women in 1979, where she served six years.

Assata Shakur

“She provides anti-U.S. government speeches espousing the Black Liberation Army message of revolution and terrorism,” said FBI special agent Aaron Ford.

The FBI defines terrorism as “the unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a Government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.”

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) defines terrorism as “premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents.”

From either of these definitions, I don’t see how Assata Shakur fits into this category. She has been out of the country physically for decades. The FBI uses special agent Aaron Ford in the press conference as a puppet to garner support for the extradition and capture of Shakur. In his remarks he makes no mention of violence that she has promoted against the U.S. since living in Cuba. Furthermore, she is still an American citizen who is entitled to free speech. If she wants to challenge the government’s domestic policies, so be it.

The federal government is at it again! They have placed the legendary Black Panther leader, Assata Shakur, on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorist list. Yes, you read correctly: terrorist.

Black liberation messages promote the mental and physical liberation of Black people. In the FBI’s perspective, is anyone who promotes self-thought and the questioning of authority a terrorist? Well, perhaps just Black and Brown people!

What is the significance of this move? First, Shakur is the first woman to be placed on the FBI Most Wanted Terrorist list. Second, Cuba doesn’t have an extradition policy with the U.S. to remove American citizens back to America. Increasing the reward amount from $1 to $2 million, the FBI is baiting citizens and others to aid in the man-hunt.

“[The FBI] targeted anyone who supported the struggle for civil rights that they considered dangerous,” said Shakur’s long-time attorney, Lennox Hinds, in an interview on Democracy Now May 3, 2013.

The FBI’s counterintelligence program, COINTELPRO, was started by J. Edgar Hoover in 1956. Its sole purpose in dealing with Black Nationalist groups, which they labeled “hate groups” was to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit or otherwise neutralize the activities of black nationalists, hate-type organizations and groupings, their leadership, spokesmen, members, and supporters, and to counter their propensity for violence and civil disorder. The activities of all such groups of intelligence interest to this Bureau must be followed on a continuous basis so we will be in a position to promptly take advantage of all opportunities for counterintelligence and to inspire action in instances where circumstances warrant.”

It’s probably not coincidental that this placement on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorist lists came on the 40th anniversary of the shoot-out with New Jersey State Troopers.

The FBI is claiming Shakur is anti-government. Here we are in America with Republican Party members in Congress touting on a daily basis that we need less government control and interference. What is the difference? I’ll let you be the judge.

Black liberation messages promote the mental and physical liberation of Black people. In the FBI’s perspective, is anyone who promotes self-thought and the questioning of authority a terrorist? Well, perhaps just Black and Brown people!

FBI COINTELPRO archived documents further state that “consideration should be given to techniques to preclude violence-prone or rabble-rouser leaders of hate groups from spreading their philosophy publically or through mass communication media.”

Therefore it is safe to say, the FBI purposely made up propaganda against Black movements in order to instill fear into the public about the organization and to discredit the organization to the public and within its own ranks. This wasn’t just for the Black Panther Party; SNCC and SCLC were also closely watched along with many other organizations working for liberation and civil rights.

In New Jersey, where Assata Shakur was arrested in 1973, this billboard appeared on the night of May 2, 2013, in time for the FBI’s announcement that Shakur is now one of America’s “most wanted terrorists.”

“Now, that is the forensic evidence. There is not one scintilla of evidence placing a gun in her hand. No arsenic residue was found on her clothing or on her hands. So, the allegation by the state police that she took an officer’s gun and shot him, executed him in cold blood, is not only false, but it is designed to inflame.”

Clearly the New Jersey State Police and the FBI feel that it is okay to change history and forensic evidence to fit their stories.

According to the FBI press release, “Chesimard and her accomplices opened fire on the troopers. One officer was wounded, and his partner – Trooper Foerster – was shot and killed at point-blank range.”

“Really, it seems to me that this act incorporates or reflects the very logic of terrorism,” said Angela Davis on Democracy Now. “I can’t help but think that it’s designed to frighten people who are involved in struggles today.”

Davis couldn’t have said it more clearly. Today’s movements, domestic and worldwide, that American citizens support, such as Occupy, movements against the re-occurring police brutality against Black people, economic injustice etc., have drawn frighteningly harsh government reaction.

Davis continued, “Well, see, there’s always this slippage between what should be protected free speech – that is to say, the advocacy of revolution, the advocacy of radical change – and what the FBI represents as terrorism. You know, certainly, Assata continues to advocate radical transformation of this country, as many of us do.”

All American citizens’ constitutional rights are in jeopardy if we believe and accept the FBI’s assertion that for speaking out about the U.S. government Assata Shakur is a terrorist.

“I am an ex-political prisoner, and I have been living in exile in Cuba since 1984,” writes Shakur on her website, www.assatashakur.org. “I have been a political activist most of my life, and although the U.S. government has done everything in its power to criminalize me, I am not a criminal, nor have I ever been one.”

All American citizens’ constitutional rights are in jeopardy if we believe and accept the FBI’s assertion that for speaking out about the U.S. government Assata Shakur is a terrorist.

Laura Savage is a graduating senior in journalism at San Francisco State University and is interning with the SF Bay View this semester. She can be reached at lsavage26@gmail.com.

“Eyes of the Rainbow,” directed by Gloria Rolando, is the classic film on the life of Assata Shakur. To comply with Assata’s wishes expressed below and to make this beautiful film easily available, we are posting it here in six parts.

“Like most poor people in the United States, I have no voice. The Black press and the progressive media, as well as Black civil rights organizations, have historically played an essential role in the struggle for social justice. We should continue and expand that tradition. We should create media outlets that help to educate our people and our children, and not annihilate their minds. I am only one woman. I own no TV stations or radio stations or newspapers. But I believe that people need to be educated as to what is going on and to understand the connection between the news media and the instruments of repression in America. All I have are my voice, my spirit and the will to tell the truth. But I sincerely ask those of you in the Black media, those of you in the progressive media and those of you who believe in truth and freedom to publish my story.” – Assata Shakur, www.assatashakur.org

African and African American women face an infant and maternal mortality crisis in America! Infants and maternal mortality rates in these communities are twice as high as the rates for white women in the U.S.

The African Women’s Development Fund USA (AWDF USA) has launched an awareness campaign, Saving Our Future, to educate community members and organize the leadership in hopes of changing the pattern. The campaign, funded by the California Endowment and the Kendra E. Burroughs Memorial Fund, grew from a series of community dialogues in 2012, where community partners from all over the Bay Area participated in panel discussions to make people aware.

It is now in its public phase, where information is being spread to the greater public as a means to lower African American and African infant mortality rates.

Saving Our Future is a two-year multi-media campaign and community dialogue that kicks off at the annual Soul Stroll, an event hosted by the African American Community Health Advisory Committee, on May 18 in San Mateo at Coyote Point Park.

AACHAC’s vision is “to eliminate health disparities through innovative models of health education and services across generations and diverse communities.”

“The AACHAC has been a partner in Saving Our Future for some time now as we’ve geared up the campaign,” says Nancy Deyo, senior advisor of communications for AWDF USA. “We felt that the Soul Stroll for the African American and African immigrant communities, among other communities, was the perfect venue for us to launch (this campaign) because it brings together 3,000 people in the Bay Area who have an objective about how to improve their overall health.”

There will be a booth at Soul Stroll to hand out information about how to have a healthy birth.

“This is really the first step that we’re taking in this new public awareness campaign to try and get the community to join up with us in combating this problem,” said Deyo.

Participants can sign a petition and pledge to join efforts and show they are committed and interested in spreading information to others and contacting public officials to show support for the campaign.

African and African American women face an infant and maternal mortality crisis in America! Infants and maternal mortality rates in these communities are twice as high as the rates for white women in the U.S.

In an April 17 press release for Saving Our Future, the AWDF USA wrote: “African-American and now second-generation African immigrant women of all backgrounds have the country’s highest infant mortality rate – more than two times the infant mortality rate of white women. And African-American women die in childbirth at four times the national average.”

A preview of the campaign’s 30-minute cable show previews Jackie Copeland-Carson, AWDF USA executive director, speaking with other health care and community leaders about Black infant and maternal mortality rates and what it’s going to take to change the cycle. The entire show will be aired on Channel 30 in early May for the Palo Alto area and later streamed on the Midpeninsula Community Media Center website for all to access. Currently, there are short video clips available on YouTube that individuals can watch.

“This is not just about coming in when a woman is pregnant, but supporting women’s health throughout their lives,” says Dr. Amani Nuru-Jeter, associate professor for the Community Health and Epidemiology School of Public Health at U.C. Berkeley.

Data shows that African immigrants come to the U.S. having the same infant and maternal mortality rates as white women, but their daughters – raised in America – have twice as high mortality rates over just one generation. More alarming is that Black women with high income and education levels still have worse birth rates than white women who haven’t completed high school.

Clearly there is more to the issue than access to health care and income.

“This is not just about coming in when a woman is pregnant, but supporting women’s health throughout their lives,” says Dr. Amani Nuru-Jeter, associate professor for the Community Health and Epidemiology School of Public Health at U.C. Berkeley.

“There is belief that racism, stress, lack of social support, environmental causes may be a factor,” said Deyo. “These are complex issues that need to be addressed, not just prenatally, but through a woman’s lifetime. It is an opportunity for the health care community to help women put together life plans, so by the time she becomes pregnant she already has a plan to have a healthy birth.”

According to Copeland-Carson in the video, the AWDF USA is sponsoring Saving Our Future to “bring our communities together to first become aware of this challenge and then take joint social action together and provide mutual support to do something about it.”

The show references a PBS special, “Unnatural Causes,” that focuses on the disproportionate infant mortality rates among Black women – regardless of economic status – and questions what the root causes might be.

“There is belief that racism, stress, lack of social support, environmental causes may be a factor,” said Deyo.

“AWDF USA was created 12 years ago by Africa’s first women’s foundation,” said Copeland-Carson. “It was created to address the challenges facing women on the African continent and women of African descent in the United States. Our vision, our mission is to become America’s trusted partner for giving to African and African American women’s issues.”

“We’re really trying to focus on the overall health of our community,” said Bernestine Benton, coordinator for the Prenatal Advantage Black Infant Health Project.

The Prenatal Advantage Black Infant Health Project (BIH) seeks “to reduce the infant mortality, low birth weight and Sudden Infant Death (SIDS) rates in the African-American community. Our goals also include increasing first trimester prenatal care visits by African-American women and fostering the continuity of health care services before and after pregnancy.”

According to Deyo, goals of the campaign include 1) greater public awareness about the problem, 2) improvement in the Black infant and maternal mortality rates, 3) participation of community and public leadership – community organizations, elected officials, public health officials – and support for what needs to be done to change the birth outcomes.

Laura Savage is a graduating senior in journalism at San Francisco State University and is interning with the SF Bay View this semester. She can be reached at lsavage26@gmail.com. 

Wearing the California Innocence Project’s XONR8 hoodie, high school football star Brian Banks signs with the Atlanta Falcons less than a year after his exoneration and release from prison, where he’d served five years. When he was arrested, he’d been expecting to attend USC on a football scholarship. – Photo: Atlanta Falcons

The California Innocence Project director, along with attorneys Alissa Bjerkhoel and Michael Semanchik, will walk 600 miles from San Diego to Sacramento to protest the incarceration of their innocent clients, bring attention to the cause of wrongful convictions, and present clemency petitions for 12 clients, “The California 12,” to Gov. Jerry Brown.

Brooks and the California Innocence Project made international news last May with the exoneration of football player Brian Banks, whose story was recently featured on 60 Minutes. Banks, other exonerees, family members and supporters of the project’s clients, California Western students and staff, and activists are expected to join the march for portions of the 55-day walk across the state.

Brian Banks wept in court May 24, 2012, when he was exonerated after five years in prison on a kidnap and rape charge when he was only 16. – Photo: Brittany Murray, San Jose Mercury News

About the California 12

At a cost to the state of around $8.5 million, the California 12 have been wrongfully incarcerated for a combined 190 years. One of the 12, William Richards, remains in prison despite having his conviction reversed in 2009 after the California Innocence Project presented DNA evidence of his innocence due to an appeal by the prosecutor. Through the Innocence March, organizers hope to raise awareness about wrongful convictions and the incarceration of innocent people, and to secure clemency for the California 12.

More rallies will be held along the march route:

• April 30 Rally Day in Oceanside with California Innocence Project Exoneree Adam Riojas
• May 3 Rally Day in Laguna Beach
• May 8 Rally Day in Santa Monica
• May 16 Rally Day in Santa Barbara
• May 25 Rally Day in San Luis Obispo
• June 3 Rally Day in Monterey
• June 6 Rally Day in Santa Cruz
• June 9 Rally Day in Santa Clara
• June 13 Rally Day in Berkeley
• June 20 Final Walk to State Capitol and Presentation of Petitions to Governor Brown

About the California Innocence Project

Founded in 1999, the California Innocence Project is a California Western School of Law clinical program dedicated to the release of wrongfully convicted inmates and providing an outstanding educational experience for students enrolled in the clinic. The California Innocence Project reviews approximately 2,000 claims from inmates each year and has earned the exoneration of nine wrongfully convicted clients since its inception.

California Western School of Law is the independent, ABA/AALS-accredited San Diego law school that advances multi-dimensional lawyering by educating lawyers-to-be as creative problem solvers and principled advocates who frame the practice of law as a helping, collaborative profession.

by Cynthia McKinney

April 29, 2013, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia – It is fitting that on the same day as this headline appeared, “Pro-Israeli US lawmakers urge bombing Syria air bases, arming militants, invasion,” I delivered the following remarks to the United Nations International Meeting on the Question of Palestine:

Former six-term member of Congress and 2008 Green Party presidential candidate testifies at the United Nations International Meeting on the Question of Palestine in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on April 29. – Photos: Yosuke Kobayashi

Sadly, what we in the U.S. call “special interests” are able to buy public policy by way of campaign contributions and misleading media campaigns. These “special interests” are aided and abetted in the U.S. by a concentrated media that has no obligation according to U.S. court decisions to tell the public the truth. In other words, U.S. media have won in U.S. court the right to knowingly lie to the people they ostensibly serve. I will briefly delve into this unusual and anti-”democratic” state of affairs now controlling in the U.S. once again before I conclude my remarks.

2. After my tenure in Congress, I became involved in international human rights activism. During Israel’s Operation Cast Lead (which was its war against Hamas and others), I joined with a group of human rights activists who tried to deliver medical supplies to the people of Gaza; the Israeli military stopped us. While in international waters, an Israeli Defense Forces warship rammed the pleasure boat that I was on with the other volunteers, and totally destroyed our boat. Neither the medical supplies nor we volunteers reached Gaza.

3. Approximately six months later, we, the volunteers from the first thwarted effort, reassembled in order to make another attempt to reach Gaza by sea, traveling through international waters, with the hopes of entering into Palestine by way of Gaza’s territorial waters. By this time, Operation Cast Lead had ended, President Barack Obama had been sworn in, and he had appealed publicly for an easing of the Israeli blockade of Gaza.

Gazans had made an appeal for school supplies for the children still reeling from the trauma of three weeks of what the United Nations called “one of the most violent episodes in the recent history of the Palestinian territory.” So, some of us answered that call with school supplies for the children and building supplies for the adults so that Gaza could rebuild from the devastation after Operation Cast Lead.

On this effort to answer a humanitarian call for help, I, along with 20 other volunteers, was kidnapped by the Israeli military while in international waters, our boat was seized, we were taken by an extremely circuitous route to Israel, where we never intended to go, and I was incarcerated in an Israeli prison for seven days.

Sadly, what I witnessed while in Israeli prison pointed to Israel as an apartheid state and the gross mistreatment of, particularly, Ethiopian women who had been lured to the “Holy Land” for job opportunities that vaporized because they were not of the correct religion. In addition to that, my observation at the time was that Ethiopian Jews are used as an important pillar – even enforcer, ironically – of Israeli apartheid. I can expand on this aspect of my observations later if there are specific questions or requests for more information from this body or from individuals in attendance at this conference.

4. Needless to say, for a second time, I was prevented from entering Gaza. Upon hearing of my ordeal, Member of Parliament George Galloway, who was in Cairo leading “Viva Palestina USA,” contacted me and invited me to come to Cairo and enter Gaza by land, which I did. Upon entering Gaza, I was able to see the destruction inflicted on the people by Israel’s Operation Cast Lead. I scooped up a bit of the soil and put it in this container.

McKinney holds a container of soil from Gaza that she collected shortly after Israel’s bombing during Operation Cast Lead. “Sadly, as noted in the Goldstone Report and admitted by the Israeli Defense Forces,” she testified, “this Gaza soil is probably contaminated with whatever remains of the chemicals that were used by the Israelis against the people of Gaza: chemicals ranging from white phosphorus to inert metals” and may also be laced with depleted uranium. – Photos: Yosuke Kobayashi

The United Nations Division for Palestinian Rights is also aware that civilian targets were bombed and totally destroyed. I visited a few of those targets.

5. One stop on my private tour of the destruction in Gaza was the American International School and amid the rubble I spotted a bright yellow something that I couldn’t quite make out what it was. So, I climbed through the jutted shards of concrete and exposed rebar to retrieve the object. This is that object: an English language children’s art book stamped with the initials of the American International School in Gaza, “AISG.” I was standing in what was left of the school’s library.

6. Another stop on my tour of the effects of Israel’s Operation Cast Lead was a neighborhood school, not nearly as big and grand as the American School. There, I could see the path of one missile that blew a hole clear through several walls of the school. There were markings on the chalkboard, including the Star of David. I saw several cans of peanuts on the floor. This is one of them. It is written in Hebrew. The Israeli soldiers blew up the school and then sat down in its ruins and enjoyed peanuts and drew religious and political markings on the chalkboard.

7. Both boats that I was on were seized by the Israelis and destroyed by them. The humanitarian aid on the boats did not reach Gaza and only token aid was delivered by the land convoy to the Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza, the bulk of it stranded in Egypt, not allowed into Gaza by the Egyptians or the Israelis.

8. What is amazing is not only that this happens over and over again, but that Israeli leaders who commit war crimes and crimes against humanity leave office and are never held accountable for their policies, as was done by victims of Augusto Pinochet and as is being done currently by the International Criminal Court. Another aspect of this impunity is that Israel continues to receive U.S. weapons and technology which it uses against civilians in contravention of U.S. law. As these weapons are used or become outdated, the U.S. replenishes Israel’s weapons stock every year.

9. One measure of this impunity is brought to bear by the pro-Israel Lobby that operates in the political sphere of the U.S. I am a former member of Congress because pro-Israel sympathizers known as the “pro-Israel lobby” ensured my ouster from Congress and that of many other members of Congress who dared to try and draw attention to U.S. law, Israel’s human rights violations, Israel’s misuse of U.S. weapons, or any other inconvenient facts that were better buried and left unknown.

10. What many of you might not know, because these things just aren’t discussed as widely as they should be, is that many of those members of Congress who were put out of office by the pro-Israel lobby were the stolen children of Africa, descendants of Africans trafficked in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. I will call the names of a few and tell you where you can find information about them as they tell their own stories:

• Gus Savage, member of Congress from Chicago, Illinois, was targeted for defeat by the pro-Israel lobby because he dared to engage in foreign relations within the purview of a member of Congress on the African Continent, in Egypt, among other places. He recounted his ordeal on the floor of the House of Representatives and revealed the secrets of the pro-Israel lobby on the Congressional Record where students and others interested in this topic can find his words today: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/F?r101:20:./temp/~r101lw459S:e0.

• Earl Hilliard, member of Congress from Birmingham, Alabama, was the first Black member of Congress to serve the people of Alabama since the U.S. Civil War’s Reconstruction Era. He was ejected from the Congress by the pro-Israel Lobby because he, like Gus Savage, traveled to Africa and in particular to Libya. He also traveled to Lebanon and learned of new weapons for that time that had been used there by Israel. For this transgression, Earl Hilliard had to go. He is interviewed in a Dutch documentary that is available on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJ6WLB9oRUk), where he describes the vicious campaign that was run against him by the pro-Israel Lobby.

• And then, there’s me. Just this month, I published a book entitled, “Ain’t Nothing Like Freedom” (http://www.claritypress.com/McKinneyII.html), in which I describe just a few of the tactics that were used against me by the pro-Israel lobby to destroy my career in Congress.

• These three political “take-downs” were very publicly done in order to send a message to others who might also be inclined to speak up out of moral conviction, as Savage, Hilliard and I did.

• This weeding out also occurs on the local level with state and local elected officials like my father and others targeted for defeat because of the potential threat to the interests of the pro-Israel lobby that they pose.

• In addition, on a public and private level, targeted individuals have to endure soft repression that makes life difficult. All of this needs to be put on the record if one is to fully understand the power of the pro-Israel lobby and the pall that it casts on the political process in the U.S. and, from what I have been told, also in Europe.

• Finally, the political landscape for Blacks in the U.S. is negatively affected by this weeding out process, because their strongest and most outspoken authentic leaders are vulnerable to the challenges from candidates who are well funded by outside “special interests.”

11. In light of this, I would like to put this thought to you: Can you even imagine what U.S. policy would be like at the United Nations if the will of the people were carried out without the interference of the pro-Israel lobby? The Durban World Conference Against Racism was a watershed that could be revisited time and time again with U.S. support and participation, except that powerful lobbies want otherwise.

I know, it’s hard to imagine things differently. But it is not hard for me and that is one vision that keeps me going: U.S. policy made in the image of the values of the people of the U.S. At a conference whose theme is African solidarity with the Palestinian people, I thought it was important to mention not only how the pro-Israel lobby skews politics in the U.S. against the Palestinians, but also against African descendants inside the U.S.

12. I focus on this important aspect of policymaking by focusing on who gets to make the policy because I believe that this is one key reason why Palestinians are forced to suffer while, at best, platitudes and delay serve as the effective policies of the U.S. and European countries.

13. The short version of this tragic story is that pro-Israel forces inside the U.S. are willing to use their money to buy political influence and protection for Israel across the political spectrum while the same cannot be said of pro-peace, pro-justice forces. I liken the situation to game day when one team shows up in beautiful new uniforms with all of the latest and best equipment, primed and ready to execute its strategy in the game of play, while the other team doesn’t even show up on the pitch.

I believe that one remaining untested justice frontier is the political battleground in U.S. and European capitals. It is inside these essential capitals that pro-Israel lobbies have become comfortable operating with very little opposition from the other side.

14. I am tired of losing when, I believe, we really do not have to lose. I fundamentally believe that the people of this world are good and want peace. I have spoken to Afghanis and Pakistanis, to Yemenis and to Somalis, Palestinians and Americans, and I find them to be peace-loving peoples.

15. So, how do we move from where we are to where we need to be? That is the fundamental question. I focus on the political because the political creates the legal. And the political creates impunity.

16. Just in my personal experiences, I have outlined breaches of international humanitarian law, international human rights law, international law and U.S. law by the occupying power: Israel.

17. I served as a juror on the Bertrand Russell Tribunal on Palestine that recently concluded its sessions with a finding that both the U.S. and Europe are guilty of contributing to the atmosphere of impunity with which apartheid Israel carries out its policies against Palestinians and anyone who stands in its way.

18. I also recently served as an official observer as the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission received testimony from Palestinians on their treatment inside Israel as well as in the Occupied Territories.

19. Through my service with both of these organizations, I have met many courageous Palestinians and Israelis who want to live peacefully with each other and who put their lives and their livelihoods on the line every day for peace and the rule of law. I do believe that much of the suffering could be alleviated if we would put sufficient energy and resources behind putting out in public view how the pro-Israel lobby misdirects U.S. and European policies and prevents pro-peace and justice politicians from ever having the opportunity to put those values, along with our basic human dignity, permanently on the table for public debate.

20. Finally, I am not Palestinian. I am not Arab. I am not Muslim. But I am human. And that is enough for me to acknowledge the dignity of others who are oppressed and to epitomize what this conference is all about: African solidarity with the Palestinian people for the achievement of its inalienable rights, including the sovereignty and independence of the state of Palestine.

21. Thank you.

For news from, by and about Cynthia McKinney, former Georgia congresswoman and Green Party presidential candidate, subscribe to her Updates at http://lists.allthingscynthiamckinney.com/listinfo.cgi/updates-allthingscynthiamckinney.com. She can be reached at Cynthia@runcynthiarun.org.

The Metro Transportation Authority pledged significant African American participation during the construction phase of the Metro Crenshaw-LAX Transit Corridor and also signed a project labor agreement to ensure that Blacks receive adequate employment representation, but contractors have drastically under-performed in the hiring of African Americans in the first phase of the Crenshaw Advanced Utilities Relocation PLA for Targeted Worker Attainment.

A Black heavy equipment operator works on the preliminary phase of the Crenshaw Rail Project on Crenshaw Boulevard. The project is expected to generate 18,000 jobs. – Photo: U.S. Department of Transportation

The executive order on the Crenshaw Advanced Utilities Relocation summary showed an appallingly low percentage of Blacks working. The report indicated that no Blacks were hired during the month of December 2012 when the bids went out and that only 2.65 percent of the workforce was Black in the month of January 2013.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and local Black community activists were outraged, and the mayor demanded a more aggressive campaign to ensure Black participation and increase employment among African Americans as part of advanced utility relocation activities for the Crenshaw-LAX Transit Corridor Project.

After the mayor mandated the promoting of African American hiring during the construction phase, the number of Blacks hired in the month of February nearly doubled the percentage of the previous two months to 5.81 for February and escalated again in March to report its greatest gains yet, reaching almost 8 percent.

“Finally, I think we are moving in the right direction because more African Americans are now included in the work force,” said Mayor Villaraigosa. “However, I am not satisfied and will not be until I see that African Americans who live in this community are employed and reflected in the bottom line.

“I believe that it is only appropriate that residents of this community be active participants and work on this rail system being built. I want to see the number of people hired that represents the population of the community. They deserve it and I demand it. My legacy as mayor of the City of Los Angeles rides on it, and my commitment to Leimert Park and the entire Crenshaw community will not waiver.”

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa holds a press conference during a tour of construction of the new Crenshaw light rail line as Congresswoman Maxine Waters stands beside him. The project also includes a new transit vehicle maintenance and storage facility. – Photo: U.S. Department of Transportation

The new Metro Rail extension will offer an alternative transportation option to congested roadways and provide significant environmental benefits, economic development and employment opportunities throughout Los Angeles County. Riders will be able to make easy connections within the entire Metro Rail system, municipal bus lines and other regional transportation services.

The project’s purpose is to improve public transit service and mobility in the Crenshaw Corridor between Wilshire and El Segundo boulevards. The overall goal of the proposed project is to improve mobility in the corridor by connecting with existing lines such as the Metro Green Line and the Expo Line.

The majority of the funding for the project came from Measure R, the half-cent sales tax initiative approved by Los Angeles County voters in November 2008.

Kenneth Miller is assistant managing editor of The Los Angeles Sentinel, the largest paid African American owned newspaper in the West. He can be reached via generalinfo@lasentinel.net.

Darrell Evans works on Liberty Builders’ only public works contract in 15 years, a small subcontract in 2010. Blacks have been locked out of construction in San Francisco since a noose was hung on Liberty Builders’ jobsite at SFO in 1998. – Photo: Francisco Da Costa

AGC filed the appeal after summary judgment was granted in U.S. District Court in 2011. The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area, Bingham McCutchen LLP, ACLU-NC and Equal Justice Society represent the Coalition for Economic Equity and the San Diego Chapter of the NAACP in the case, two groups that intervened to ensure that the perspectives of DBEs themselves would be represented in the litigation.

“We are gratified that the appeals court has held that Caltrans’ DBE outreach program is clearly within constitutional bounds. In fact, the program is much more cautious than it could be given the extent of discrimination in the transportation contracting industry,” said Oren Sellstrom, legal director at the Lawyers’ Committee. “As we argued in the Ninth Circuit, without a remedy, small businesses owned by women and minorities would continue to be locked out from fair competition for federally funded contracts. Caltrans’ equal opportunity program gives these businesses a fair shot at competing, which strengthens the economy as a whole,” added Sujal Shah, one of intervenors’ co-counsel from Bingham McCutchen LLP.

“The program is much more cautious than it could be given the extent of discrimination in the transportation contracting industry,” said Oren Sellstrom, legal director at the Lawyers’ Committee.

Jory Steele, an attorney from the ACLU-NC and another member of the legal team, stated: “As the court found, throughout years of litigation, AGC was unable to produce any evidence that any of its members has ever been harmed by the DBE program. That is because the DBE program is simply an outreach program that is designed to ensure minority- and women-owned businesses are aware of subcontracting opportunities.”

Allison Elgart, co-counsel from EJS, added that the court found that this type of outreach is necessary to break down “good ol’ boy” networks that particularly disadvantage minority-owned firms.

Caltrans’ Disadvantaged Business Enterprise program establishes a framework for ensuring fair participation in federally funded public works projects in California. In 2006, Caltrans suspended the program’s race- and gender-conscious outreach elements after a federal appeals court ruled that states had to document the existence of discrimination in the awarding of contracts. As a result, women- and minority-owned business participation on Caltrans’ federally funded projects plummeted – from nearly 11 percent in 2005 to just over 2 percent in 2008.

Caltrans has a duty under federal law to ensure that taxpayer dollars are not funneled into an exclusionary contracting system.

In 2007, an extensive disparity study commissioned by Caltrans documented discrimination against small businesses owned by women and minorities in federally funded contracts. Caltrans then sought approval from the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) to reinstate the suspended elements as a necessary remedy to such discrimination. DOT granted its approval in August 2008, noting that Caltrans has a duty under federal law to ensure that taxpayer dollars are not funneled into an exclusionary contracting system. In June 2009, Caltrans’ procedures were challenged in the aforementioned lawsuit by the Associated General Contractors of San Diego. In 2011, Caltrans’ Disadvantaged Business Enterprise program was upheld by the U.S. District Court.

The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area, founded in 1968, has a long-standing commitment to African-Americans. Working with hundreds of pro bono attorneys, LCCR provides free legal assistance and representation on civil legal matters. The Equal Justice Society works to fully restore the constitutional protections of the 14th Amendment by replacing the intent standard with a disparate impact standard that addresses contemporary forms of racism. The ACLU of Northern California works to preserve and guarantee the protections of the Constitution’s Bill of Rights.

While whites make up the majority of the 5.4 million people in the U.S. with Alzheimer’s and other dementias, research shows that African Americans are at a higher risk – approximately two times that of whites – to develop Alzheimer’s. Alzheimer’s is the sixth leading cause of death for Americans in general, but according to UC Davis’ Alzheimer’s Disease Center, it is the fourth leading cause of death for African Americans 65 or older.

This is why the Alzheimer’s Association is partnering up with the UC Davis Alzheimer’s Disease Center and the Alameda County Area Agency on Aging to offer an African American Caregiving and Wellness Forum, “A Family Approach to Wellness,” to help the Bay Area community learn more about Alzheimer’s disease and how it is disproportionately affecting the African American community.

Research shows that African Americans are at a higher risk – approximately two times that of whites – to develop Alzheimer’s.

One of the key topics of the event will be the depression-dementia connection. According to Dr. Ladson Hinton, professor and director of Geriatric Psychiatry at the UC Davis Alzheimer’s Disease Center, there is a strong connection between depression and Alzheimer’s disease.

“Depression may be a risk factor for memory loss and it can cause symptoms of dementia,” said Dr. Hinton. “It’s a common symptom in persons with Alzheimer’s.”

However, the dementia-depression connection is not limited to people with dementia – caregivers are at risk for depression as well.

“Depression and stress may put caregivers at increased risk for memory loss; it’s also common in caregivers,” said Dr. Hinton, who will go into more detail about depression and dementia at the forum.

One of the key topics of the event will be the depression-dementia connection. According to Dr. Ladson Hinton, professor and director of Geriatric Psychiatry at the UC Davis Alzheimer’s Disease Center, there is a strong connection between depression and Alzheimer’s disease.

In addition to this topic, the forum offers information about Alzheimer’s basics, caregiver advice and support and a discussion about the correlation between Alzheimer’s and other diseases prevalent in the African American community, such as diabetes and heart disease. Attendees will learn how to grow caregiver relationships, plan for the financial impact of future care needs, reduce stress and gain mindfulness.

According to Alzheimer’s Association Outreach Specialist Craig Wingate, “This conference will help our community understand risk factors for Alzheimer’s, provide practical caregiving tips and offer individuals the opportunity to get help and support.”

The forum will be held at the North Oakland Senior Center on Saturday, April 20, from 9:00 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. To register for this free event, call (800) 272-3900 or visit http://forum.kintera.org/2013AfricanAmerican. For more information, email Craig at cwingate@alz.org or Gwen at gmgates@usdavis.edu. Learn more about Alzheimer’s at alz.org.

At the gated entrance to the Retreat at Twin Lakes subdivision in Sanford, Florida, where 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was murdered, stands an ominous Neighborhood Watch sign.

Trayvon Martin

According to the Orlando Sentinel and news station Fox 35, Sybrina Fulton and Tracy Martin settled out of court with the HOA for a sum assumed to be more than $1 million. The official settlement paperwork that was filed in Seminole County, Fla., by the HOA’s attorney, Robert R. Slaten Jr., blacked out the final amount.

In the settlement, the HOA stated that it was not admitting wrongdoing or liability in Martin’s death. The HOA most likely wants to avoid any further legal proceedings.

George Zimmerman, Trayvon Martin’s vigilante murderer, shown here with his attorney, Mark O'Mara, still faces the prospect of a civil suit by Trayvon’s parents. – Photo: Joe Burbank, Orlando Sentinel/AP

The Chicago Tribune is reporting, “Under the terms of the settlement, Trayvon’s parents, Sybrina Fulton and Tracy Martin, and his estate agreed to set aside their wrongful-death claim and claims for pain and suffering, loss of earnings and expenses.”

The settlement with Retreat at Twin Lakes does not clear Zimmerman of possible future claims.

Fulton and Martin’s attorney, Benjamin Crump, stated he planned to file against Zimmerman in the future.

Laura Savage is a graduating senior in journalism at San Francisco State University and is interning with the SF Bay View this semester. She can be reached at lsavage26@gmail.com.

With her husband, Ralph Poynter, on one side and Pam Africa, leading advocate for Mumia Abu Jamal on the other, Lynne Stewart leads one of the many marches and rallies held prior to her incarceration.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu sent this cri de coeur: “It is devastating, totally unbelievable. Is this in a democracy, the only superpower? I am sad. I will sign. Praying God’s blessings on yr efforts.” – Desmond Tutu

Pete Seeger declared: “Lynn Stewart should be outa jail!” on a postcard signed “old Pete Seeger” accompanied by a drawing of his banjo.

To add your signature to the petition and learn more about her case, go to LynneStewart.org.

Petition to free Lynne Stewart: Save her life! Release her now!

Lynne Stewart has devoted her life to the oppressed – a constant advocate for the countless many deprived in the United States of their freedom and their rights.

Unjustly charged and convicted for the “crime” of providing her client with a fearless defense, the prosecution of Lynne Stewart is an assault upon the basic freedoms of us all.

After years of post-conviction freedom, her bail was revoked arbitrarily and her imprisonment ordered, precluding surgery she had scheduled in a major New York hospital.

The sinister meaning of the relentless persecution of Lynne Stewart is unmistakably clear. Given her age and precarious health, the 10-year sentence she is serving is a virtual death sentence.

Lynne Stewart has devoted her life to the oppressed – a constant advocate for the countless many deprived in the United States of their freedom and their rights.

Since her imprisonment in the federal prison in Carswell, Texas, her urgent need for surgery was delayed 18 months – so long, that the operating physician pronounced the condition as “the worst he had seen.”

Now, breast cancer, which had been in remission prior to her imprisonment, has reached Stage Four. It has appeared in her lymph nodes, on her shoulder, in her bones and her lungs.

Her daughter, a physician, has sounded the alarm: “Under the best of circumstances, Lynne would be in a battle of the most serious consequences with dangerous odds. With cancer and cancer treatment, the complications can be as debilitating and as dangerous as the cancer itself.”

Lynne Stewart and her husband Ralph Poynter are reunited briefly in prison on New Year’s Day 2012.

It can take weeks to see a medical provider in prison conditions. It can take weeks to report physical changes and learn the results of treatment; and when held in the hospital, Lynne has been shackled wrist and ankle to the bed.

This medieval “shackling” has little to do with any appropriate prison control. She is obviously not an escape risk.

We demand abolition of this practice for all prisoners, let alone those facing surgery and the urgent necessity of care and recovery.

It amounts to cruel and unusual punishment, in violation of human rights.

There is an immediate remedy available for Lynne Stewart. Under the 1984 Sentencing Act, after a prisoner request, the Bureau of Prisons can file a motion with the court to reduce sentences “for extraordinary and compelling reasons.” Life threatening illness is foremost among these and Lynne Stewart meets every rational and humane criterion for compassionate release.

To misconstrue the gravamen of this compassionate release by conditioning such upon being at death’s door – released, if at all, solely to die – is a cruel mockery converting a prison sentence, wholly undeserved, into a death sentence.

The New York Times, in an editorial on Feb. 12, has excoriated the Bureau of Prisons for their restrictive crippling of this program. In a 20-year period, the Bureau released a scant 492 persons – an average of 24 a year out of a population that exceeds 220,000.

We cry out against the bureaucratic murder of Lynne Stewart.

We demand Lynne Stewart’s immediate release to receive urgent medical care in a supportive environment indispensable to the prospect of her survival and call upon the Bureau of Prisons to act immediately.

To add your signature to the petition and learn more about her case, go to LynneStewart.org.

If Lynne’s original sentence of 28 months had not been unreasonably, punitively increased to 10 years, she would be home now – where her medical care would be by her choice and where those who love her best would care for her. Her isolation from this loving care would end.

Prevent this cruelty to Lynne Stewart, whose lifelong commitment to justice is now a struggle for her life.

Free Lynne Stewart Now!

Ralph Poynter and Family

Message from Lynne

Your outpouring of support has lifted Lynne’s spirits as she undergoes the ravaging effects of chemotherapy. On March 20, she sent this message to each and every one of you from her seven-person cell in the Federal Medical Center, Carswell, Texas:

“I want you, individually, to know how gratified and happy it makes me to have your support. It is uplifting, to say the least, and after a lifetime of organizing it proves once again that the People can rise.

“The acknowledgement of the life-political, and solutions brought about by group unity and support, is important to all of us. Equally, so is the courage to sign on to a demand for a person whom the government has branded with the ‘T’ word – Terrorist. Understanding that the attack on me is a subterfuge for an attack on all lawyers who advocate without fear of government displeasure, with intellectual honesty guided by their knowledge and their client’s desire for his or her case, I hope our effort can be a crack in the American bastion. Thank you.” – Lynne

Drawing by Kevin “Rashid” Johnson, a fellow prisoner now in Oregon

Now Lynne Stewart needs our urgent help or she may die in prison. Our determination can compel the Bureau of Prisons to file the motion for compassionate release that will free Lynne Stewart.

Check out the Justice for Lynne Stewart website, www.lynnestewart.org, to view the signatories (up to March 31, 2013), comments from signers, the postcard from Pete Seeger and much more.

Now Lynne Stewart needs our urgent help or she may die in prison.

Remind your friends to sign the petition and to disseminate it to others. Ask each person to get five people to sign, and each of those five to ask five people of their own. In five stages, you will have reached another 3,000 people! Sign the petition at www.change.org/petitions/petition-to-free-lynne-stewart-save-her-life-release-her-now-2.

Let the struggle spread far and wide!

Lynne’s letter to Archbishop Tutu in response to his support

My dear honorable Desmond Tutu:

I hardly know how to address you, for while we have never met face to face we are bonded as only those who fight for the rights and justice of humanity can be. As my husband and I are activists of many years and struggles, we can claim this lovely unity with you harking back to Nelson Mandela at Robbin Island, the original ANC and before. While I know you are still engaged in helping South Africa reach the highest level of the expectations of freedom, I am most pleased and amazed that you have taken the time to support my efforts against the U.S. prison system.

I have now been in jail as a political prisoner since 2009, but only recently been diagnosed with fatal cancer. The “mechanism” in the U.S. law that allows “compassionate release” is so infrequently utilized that the New York Times wrote an editorial criticizing the system.

Anytime the key to the jailhouse is placed in the hands of uncaring bureaucrats, freedom is at stake. Having been informed that their “rule” is that one must have death in the room, a prognosis of a year or less to be considered, once again forces me to don my armor and do battle – not just for me but for all the millions of prisoners who do not receive the consideration that they deserve. It is a fight to demand that each person is treated with individual care and attention.

It is with great joy that I see you joining me and this renews my hope and belief that the worldwide network of good caring people exists and can be made manifest. Thanks. Lynne Stewart

Dick Gregory to fast until Lynne Stewart is freed

Dick Gregory issued a declaration April 4, on the anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., that “I shall refuse all solid food until Lynne Stewart is freed and receives medical treatment in the care of her family and with physicians of her choice, without which she will die. …

“In 2002, Lynne Stewart was targeted by then-President George Bush and Attorney General John Ashcroft for providing a vigorous defense of her client, the blind Egyptian cleric Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman. She was charged with conspiracy to provide material support to a terrorist activity after she exercised both her and her client’s First Amendment rights by presenting a press release to a Reuters journalist. She did nothing more than other attorneys, such as her co-counsel former Attorney General Ramsey Clark, have done on behalf of their clients.

“The reason for the prosecution and persecution of Lynne Stewart is evident to us all. It was designed to intimidate the entire legal community so that few would dare to defend political clients whom the state demonizes and none would provide a vigorous defense. It also was designed to narrow the meaning of our cherished First Amendment right to free speech, which the people of this country struggled to have added to the Constitution as the Bill of Rights.

“The prosecution and imprisonment of Lynne Stewart is an ominous threat to the freedom, rights and dignity of each and every American. It is the agenda of a police state,” Gregory eloquently states.

Letter from Dick Gregory to the federal Bureau of Prisons director and to the warden of the Federal Medical Center, Carswell

Charles E. Samuels Jr., Director
Federal Bureau of Prisons
320 First St., NW
Washington, DC 20534

Dear Director Samuels,

I am writing urgently to ask you to make an immediate request of the Bureau of Prisons to file a motion with Judge Koeltl for compassionate release of Lynne Stewart, 53504-054.

Judge Koeltl acknowledged on the record that Lynne Stewart has devoted her life to representing the poor, disadvantaged and oppressed, declaring: “Ms. Stewart has performed a public service not only to her clients but to the nation.”

Lynne Stewart’s humanity has provided a moral compass for all of us who have fought for justice. It is only fitting that the humanity that she has manifested to so many should be extended to her.

Now her breast cancer, in remission when she was sent to prison, despite the fact that her legal rights were not exhausted, is in Stage Four, having metastasized to her lymph nodes, shoulder, bones and lungs.

Her physicians have made clear that to surmount her grave illness and to cope with the collateral impact of treatment, it is imperative for Lynne Stewart to have the emotional support essential to survival in daily conjunction with that coordinated treatment from her medical team impossible in her prison setting.

Lynne Stewart’s humanity has provided a moral compass for all of us who have fought for justice. It is only fitting that the humanity that she has manifested to so many should be extended to her.

In compliance with the 1984 Sentencing Act, I call upon you to urge upon the court the immediate release of Lynne Stewart.

We, too, will be judged for generations to come by our adherence to legal standards rooted in compassion and decency.

I am attaching the international petition setting forth the reasons for her compassionate release that I endorse in the strongest terms.

Yours sincerely, Dick Gregory

Ralph Poynter and his family can be reached at ralph.poynter@yahoo.com. He asks that readers write letters of encouragement to Lynne: Lynne Stewart, 53504-054, Federal Medical Center Carswell, P.O. Box 27137, Ft. Worth, TX 76127.

A death sentence for defending her client: Lynne Stewart

by Mumia Abu-Jamal

Lynne Stewart, a brilliant, gung-ho trial attorney has a stellar history that many attorneys would kill for; a defense attorney who truly fights for her clients – and, far more often than not, brings them home.

She has battled some of the biggest cases in New York history, beating quite a few – and beating the government as well.

After her representation of Egyptian cleric Omar Abdel-Rahman for daring to speak out publicly in his defense and delivering a message of his thoughts to the public, she was charged with conspiracy, providing material support to terrorists, convicted, sentenced to (after an appeal) 10 years in federal prison and disbarred.

Lynne, 73, is a breast cancer survivor, and recently the cancer has returned. Her treatment, in federal custody, is, to say the least, far from optimal.

Those 10 years – increased by order of the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals from 28 months – may prove a death sentence for a courageous, principled and brilliant defense lawyer who has been a bane to the state since she first walked into a courtroom.

Andrew J. Napolitano, former judge and conservative Fox TV contributor, has called the Stewart conviction a “perverse” victory for the Justice Department and “a travesty of justice: designed to intimidate all lawyers from vigorously advocating for their clients.”

To find out how you can help win justice for Lynne Stewart, go to www.LynneStewart.org.

© Copyright 2013 Mumia Abu-Jamal. Read Mumia’s latest book, “The Classroom and the Cell: Conversations on Black Life in America,” co-authored by Columbia University professor Marc Lamont Hill, available from Third World Press, TWPBooks.com. Keep updated at www.freemumia.com. For Mumia’s commentaries, visit www.prisonradio.org. For recent interviews with Mumia, visit www.blockreportradio.com. Encourage the media to publish and broadcast Mumia’s commentaries and interviews. Send our brotha some love and light: Mumia Abu-Jamal, AM 8335, SCI-Mahanoy, 301 Morea Road, Frackville, PA 17932.

TriceEdneyWire.com – It is a story that has unfolded all too often. The owner of a small business finds it simply impossible to pull through the torturous economy. The doors shut or the website shuts down and another business venture comes to a close.

Without incubation and support, the nation’s small businesses – including Black-owned businesses which are doubly vulnerable due to a history of racism and discrimination – would go under at alarming rates. In short, they need an advocate.

This is the reason that when the leaders of the National Bankers Association, an organization of 37 mostly Black-owned banks, began pondering prospective recipients of their annual “Beyond the Call of Duty Award,” its president says they did not have to look very far. No question, it was Marie Johns, deputy administrator of the U. S. Small Business Administration, he said.

U.S. Small Business Administration Deputy Administrator Marie Johns

In prepared remarks, he said, “Ms. Johns has developed a reputation for being a good listener. She not only listened to community bankers and small business owners, she acted,” he said. In fact, Grant says, Johns has served so well in the position that he believes she should be promoted to the top of the agency. “I think she would be an excellent candidate to be SBA administrator,” he said in an interview, noting that the agency has even greater potential.

An article by Claudio E. Cabrera, originally posted last fall on business website The Street.com and re-published this month on BlackEnterprise.com, is headlined, “Minority Businesses a Big Driver in the U.S. Small Business Economy.”

The article reports that “the number of black-owned businesses rose a noteworthy 60.5 percent to 1.9 million from 2002 to 2007, more than triple the 18 percent rate for businesses established nationally, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Survey of Business Owners.”

It continues, “During the most recent period for which there is Census data, black-owned businesses generated $137.5 billion in receipts, up 55.1 percent.”

But the down side is this: Most of the highly prosperous Black-owned businesses are concentrated in certain states. New York, Georgia and Florida and cities like New York, Chicago, Houston and Detroit have the largest concentration of the nation’s Black-owned businesses, the article reports, based on Census calculations. Also, “of the 1.9 million black-owned businesses, little more than 100,000 had paid employees” and only “14,000 of those businesses had receipts of $1 million or more.”

Johns agrees that as Black and other minority businesses grow, the economy grows.

“In 2013, minority-owned small businesses are one of the fastest-growing segments of our economy and an engine of opportunity for millions of hard-working men and women in our communities,” Johns said in a prepared statement issued after last week’s award. “Empowering these businesses, and embracing an inclusive view of entrepreneurship, is essential to our long-term economic growth and global competitiveness.”

She also agrees with Grant that more must be done. “We must ensure that more people across the country have access to the capital, technical assistance and support networks they need to help them start businesses, create jobs and grow our economy.”

Presenting Marie Johns, deputy administrator of the SBA, with the National Bankers Association’s Beyond the Call of Duty Award are Doyle Mitchell, president of Industrial Bank and chairman of the National Bankers Association, Ron Busby, president of the U.S. Black Chamber of Commerce, and Michael Grant, president of the National Bankers Association.

In her statement, Johns ticked off a list of services available to strengthen small businesses and “undeserved communities.” They include the Small Loan Advantage (SLA) program and Community Advantage lenders, she listed.

In fiscal year 2013 alone, she reported, the SLA Program “has already surpassed total SLA loans and approved SLA dollars in FY 2012 and 2011 combined, with more than 1,000 loans approved for a total of nearly $150,000,000 since the start of the fiscal year.”

Deputy administrator Johns is already a presidential appointee, nominated by President Obama on Dec. 17, 2009, and confirmed by unanimous consent in the Senate. Her bio on sba.gov boasts more than $30 billion in lending to more than 60,000 small businesses across the country.

“That is the most capital going to small businesses in the history of the SBA,” it states. She doesn’t have to convince Grant: “At a White House news briefing three years ago, President Barack Obama announced a number of new initiatives designed to streamline SBA guidelines and render the agency more user-friendly. Working in tandem with the administration, Ms. Johns used her business savvy and exceptional executive skills to bring a more modern and less cumbersome SBA to community banks and small businesses, in general, and minority banks and minority-owned business enterprises in particular.”

Trice Edney News Wire – provocative, empowering, unapologetically Black – provides news stories, investigative reports and opinion columns to more than 1,000 newspapers, radio stations and websites around the nation and can be reached at fatima@nationalnewsreleases.com.

Jalil Muntaqim

On Aug. 25, 1967, J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI, initiated a counter intelligence program (COINTELPRO), which reads on page 3: “You are also cautioned that the nature of this new endeavor is such that under no circumstances should the existence of this program be made known outside the Bureau, and appropriate within-office security should be afforded to sensitive operations and techniques considered under the program.”

As a result of Cointelpro, as many as 33 Black Panthers during that time were targeted for killing. The most noted were Fred Hampton and Mark Clark in Chicago. The point is the U.S. government has been involved in secret killing of U.S. citizens for decades, and many citizens who dissented and fought back to this day languish in prison. The Cointelpro practices have since been legalized under the auspices of the Patriot Act, whereby the purpose of Cointelpro as originally initiated is no longer unconstitutional.

After assassinating him in his bed as he slept, the FBI, assisted by Chicago police, dragged 21-year-old Black Panther leader Fred Hampton by his wrist to the doorway, on Dec. 4, 1969.

Given the reality that drones are now being operated inside the U.S., coupled with the legalization of “neutralizing” U.S. citizens deemed “terrorists” and by virtue of the Patriot Act and the broader 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, along with the most recent U.S. attorney general, Eric Holder, suggesting drone strikes inside U.S. territories is a possibility, it would be expected progressives across the country would be alarmed.

This is especially true when considering the FBI’s March 9, 1960, Cointelpro memorandum that specifically stated: “Negro youths and moderates must be made to understand that if they succumb to revolutionary teachings, they will be dead revolutionaries.”

Sen. Rand Paul’s filibuster should have been supported by the progressive wing of the Democratic Party in the Senate and progressive folks across the country. I urge all progressives to further investigate the allegations made here, and aggressively oppose the use of surveillance-spy drones and targeted killing of U.S. citizens.

Demand from your state and federal elected officials the enactment of “no drone fly zones” in each state and that local elected officials pass resolutions and proclamations in support of “no drone fly zones” in each respective city.

I am one of 25 incarcerated victims of Cointrelpro and have been in prison over 40 years.

Many readers will remember Jalil when he spent two years in San Francisco County Jail as one of the San Francisco 8 and the sacrifice he made to free them all, except for himself and Herman Bell, who had to return to prison in New York State, where they have been held for decades on Cointelpro charges. He is the author of “We Are Our Own Liberators: Selected Prison Writings” (Arissa Media Group, 2010). Send our brother some love and light: Anthony “Jalil” Bottom, 77A-4283, Attica Correctional Facility, P.O. Box 149, Attica NY 14011.

Solar power has replaced nuclear power at Rancho Seco, its cooling towers still standing as a reminder of the mistaken decision to build a nuclear reactor rather than safer sources of electrical power.

Mangano and Sherman conclude that further research is warranted to determine if there is a cause-and-effect relationship between the elimination of radioactive emissions from nuclear power plants and significant long-term declines in human cancers.

At the heart of the article is the Rancho Seco nuclear reactor project in Sacramento County, an area with a relatively large 2010 population of more than 1.4 million. Rancho Seco has been closed for over 23 years, providing a long period to examine post-shutdown local health patterns. The closest operating nuclear plant is Diablo Canyon, over 200 miles to the south. Mangano and Sherman examined official California Cancer Registry data on cancer incidence for Sacramento County versus the entire state, using the last two years of reactor operation, 1988-1989, as a baseline for analysis.

The Mangano-Sherman study will resonate far beyond California. The 104 aging U.S. reactors at 65 plants affect many Americans. According to the 2010 U.S. Census, over 18 million Americans live within 20 miles of a nuclear power plant, and over 116 million live within 50 miles. Major populations live nearby other idled reactors: Los Angeles (San Onofre 1), New York City (Indian Point 1 and Shoreham), Chicago (Dresden 1 and Zion), San Diego (San Onofre 1), Portland (Trojan), New Haven (Millstone 1 and Connecticut Yankee), Providence (Millstone 1), and Harrisburg (Three Mile Island 2).

Author Joseph Mangano said: “This article is the first of its kind: No other peer-reviewed journal article has examined long-term changes in health status near closed nuclear plants. The need here for more knowledge is great, given how many reactors are near major population centers. San Onofre, in Southern California, has 8.4 million persons living within 50 miles. Indian Point, in southern New York, has 17.2 million within 50 miles. We need more information about the long-term impact of low-level radiation from both idled and currently operating reactors.”

Author Janette Sherman said: “The potential effects of locating new reactors should be measured not only in terms of health, but also in terms of cost. For example, the 4,319 fewer cancers than expected in Sacramento County during the first 20 years after the Rancho Seco closure translates into many millions saved in direct medical costs, reduction of productivity lost, and additional savings associated with the value of a human life.

“With large numbers such as these, and with the future of this source of power a matter of great public concern, reports like this one must be followed by similar efforts to attain better understanding of potential improvements in public health after reactors are shutdown.”

Other key findings in the article include the following:

• Declines in Sacramento County cancer were observed for both men and women. The change was four times greater in women than in men, so it was statistically significant only for women. Among the four types of cancer with a significantly decreased standardized incidence ratio (SIR) were cancers of the female breast and thyroid. These malignancies were found to have the highest excess relative risk among Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors from 1958 to 1987.

• From 1988-1989 to 1990-1994, the Sacramento County child cancer rate for age 0-19 fell from 17.92 to 15.49 cases per 100,000 population, a drop of 13.6 percent, while the state rate remained virtually unchanged. Over the next two five year periods, the county rate continued to decline before rising in 2005-2009 – to a level still lower than in the late 1980s. Children age 0-2 and 2-16 years have been estimated to be 10 and 3 times more sensitive to radiation exposure, respectively, than adults. The developing fetus undergoes rapid cell proliferation, self-programmed cell death (apoptosis) and cell re-arrangement. The developing infant is similarly susceptible to cellular and metabolic damage. Unrepaired damage becomes magnified with time.

The Mangano-Sherman long-term findings are mirrored in earlier studies covering shorter periods of time. Examination of the short-term local health status changes in young persons immediately after shutdown of eight U.S. nuclear plants between 1987 and 1997 compared infant mortality for the two years before shutdown (including shutdown year) with the two years following. Rates in each of the eight areas decreased more rapidly than in the U.S. as a whole; the total decline for the eight areas was -17.4 percent vs. -6.4 percent nationally. The three areas for which cancer incidence was available showed a decrease of -25.0 percent in children age 0-4 vs. a rise of 0.5 percent for the entire U.S.

“Seeing an improvement in health outcomes after a known hazardous factor is stopped is not new,” observes Dr. Sherman. “Examples include the recent decrease in breast cancer since the use of HRT (Hormone Replacement Therapy) was stopped; the decrease in lung cancer with the decrease in smoking; and, of course, the historic reference to John Snow in London when he removed the handle from the Broad Street well and stopped the spread of cholera by cutting off its source in 1854.”

About the authors

Epidemiologist Joseph Mangano, M.P.H. M.B.A., is the executive director of the Radiation and Public Health Project. He is the author or co-author of 30 peer-reviewed medical journal articles and letters and author of the books “Low Level Radiation and Immune System Disease: An Atomic Era Legacy” (1998), “Radioactive Baby Teeth: The Cancer Link” (2008) and “Mad Science: The Nuclear Power Experiment” (2012).

Janette Sherman, M.D., is an internist and toxicologist and the author or co-author of many scientific publications. She is author of the books “Chemical Exposure and Disease: Diagnostic and Investigative Techniques” (1994) and “Life’s Delicate Balance: Causes and Prevention of Breast Cancer” (2008).

This press conference on the release of the study, featuring Mangano and Sherman and other experts, was recorded on March 28.

Just in time for Easter Sunday, television news stations are reporting that the “Gang of Eight” has reached a deal on immigration reform. This Gang of Eight, of course, is comprised of Republican and Democratic senators. The idea is to be a bipartisan committee that works together to solve America’s immigration issues.

According to an ABC News article, the so-called deal for a “W-Visa” is geared toward low-skilled labor and aims to grant 20,000 visas by August 2015. Eventually that number would increase to as many as 200,000 per year, but won’t go below the initial 20,000. Only 15,000 construction visas would be available each year.

What hasn’t been figured out is how all this will work, what applying for citizenship will require and how to deter immigrants entering the country illegally.

“I believe we will be able to agree on a legislative proposal that modernizes our legal immigration system, improves border security and enforcement and allows those here illegally to earn the chance to one day apply for permanent residency contingent upon certain triggers being met,” said Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida in an issued statement.

The problem with this type of reform is that it assumes that every new immigrant is low-skilled. There are visas for science and technology workers, the H1B visa. What about immigrants who don’t fit into either of these categories? What do they do?

The children of immigrants already in the country will be covered by the DREAM Act if and when it’s passed. Now Congress, especially the Republicans, is trying to put immigration reform on the fast track. And it’s conveniently following a devastating election loss where 71 percent of Latino voters voted for President Obama and Democrats.

What hasn’t been figured out is how all this will work, what applying for citizenship will require and how to deter immigrants entering the country illegally.

Anyone who takes a good listen or read of the reports should see a flaw. What about the hundreds of thousands of immigrants who are already in this country, waiting for visas that they’ve already applied for, paid for and are waiting to be approved? What about them? When do they get visas?

The backlog of visa applications is at the year 1996. 1996! The federal government is working on applications from 17 years ago.

It is simply inefficient! America is the most powerful country in the world and we can’t even get applications processed. Either there is a need for more workers to process the visas or the government has no intention of granting them. The latter makes more sense, not because it is justified but because that is the only logical reason for why the process is taking so long.

What about the hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants already in this country, waiting for visas that they’ve already applied for, paid for and are waiting to be approved? What about them? When do they get visas?

Immigrants contribute to our society by working – either in jobs that average Americans traditionally haven’t desired or by opening businesses. They pay taxes and therefore are making our economy stronger. They are being unfairly punished by the long wait. The slow process is bad for the economy because many are too scared to work for fear of being deported.

How is only allowing low-skilled immigrant labor in the country fair? I can’t help but feel that this is specifically geared to limiting Latinos from entering the country, hence the uproar about border security.

Protestors gathered on the west lawn of the U.S. Capitol on March 20 to urge Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform that includes Black migrants. Bertha Lewis, president of The Black Institute, said: “Today, we rally to encourage our Black immigrants to come out of the shadows and fight for their place at the table. Today, we lobby Congress to take action to ensure that their voices are heard.” – Photo: Don Baxter, Media Images International

You may hear American citizens saying that immigrants waiting for legal status are taking citizens’ jobs. You may hear that immigrants take up social services, as in food stamps and welfare benefits. You may even believe that immigrants don’t pay taxes. You may believe that immigrants want a free ride and don’t deserve to be in America.

That is a scare tactic meant to “divide and conquer”!

If you believe these lies, let me remind us all that we, Blacks, were once treated inhumanely like immigrants are now. Yes, we still are victims of prejudice and racism. Which is good enough reason for us to be in solidarity with the immigrant population, whether Latino, Asian, African, European, whomever.

We know what it is like to not be wanted in this country. We know what it is like to only be valued as cheap or free labor. We know what it’s like to be used and then discarded by mainstream America.

Since we know how these injustices feel, we are undoubtedly responsible for standing in solidarity with our immigrant brothers and sisters. It is not a coincidence that Republicans feel inclined and pressured to pass immigration after losing the presidency in November. They know that this country is quickly becoming a Latino majority and they don’t want to lose their power.

Blacks in America must support fair, comprehensive immigration because it is just, because it is our time to stand for equality, just as we had help during the Civil Rights era – and continue to need help – just as they used scare tactics around jobs and social services and safety when we gained freedom and when we demanded equality.

We know what it is like to not be wanted in this country. We know what it is like to only be valued as cheap or free labor. We know what it’s like to be used and then discarded by mainstream America.

We need a better immigration package on the table from Congress. Just as Blacks are capable of more than low-skilled labor, immigrant Brown peoples of every background are too. And immigration policy should reflect that.

Laura Savage is a graduating senior in journalism at San Francisco State University and is interning with the SF Bay View this semester. She can be reached at lsavage26@gmail.com.

by The People’s Minister of Information JR

All five Pacifica stations are still on the air, but for how long?

The Pacifica radio network, founded along with KPFA in Berkeley in 1949 by Lew Hill, a formerly imprisoned anti-war activist, grew to comprise five stations nationwide, adding KPFK in Los Angeles, WBAI in New York, KPFT in Houston and WPFW in Washington, D.C. Together they reach a potential audience of 45 million people. Pacifica invented public radio; since the beginning, Pacifica stations have been sponsored by listeners, with no corporate sponsorship or underwriting and thus no censorship.

But the network faces many dire issues that its listeners need to know and that WBAI programmer Don Debar can knowledgeably talk about. Check out what Pacifica has not been telling its listener supporters …

M.O.I. JR: What is the history of WBAI? How did you get started with WBAI? When?

The strong signals of Pacifica’s five stations have a potential audience of 45 million people. This is KPFA’s 59,000 watt transmitter.

As I became active in various struggles in my community, I began to have contact with a number of producers at BAI, particularly Errol Maitland, Sharan Harper and Bernard White. This grew into a relationship, beginning in about 2002, where I became a regular contributor to the morning program Wakeup Call, producing a weekly segment covering the communities in the region north of NYC, as well as coverage of various special events, such as the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York.

Ultimately, by 2007, I became the morning news headlines editor for Wakeup Call, traveled the country in 2008 covering the presidential campaign of Cynthia McKinney and the Democratic and Republican national conventions, and began to produce regular special events coverage for Wakeup Call.

M.O.I. JR: What is the history behind WBAI’s financial troubles with Pacifica?

Don Debar: The basis of the financial problems that have faced WBAI was the 15-year lease that Pacifica, under then executive director Pat Scott (who tried to make Pacifica more mainstream – ed.) signed with Larry Silverstein in 1997 that ultimately led to annual rent of more than $375,000 a year for their studio and offices at 120 Wall St.

KPFK tower

M.O.I. JR: How did Hurricane Sandy affect WBAI? How did it affect the network as a whole?

Don Debar: Although WBAI suffered service and studio access interruption as a result of Sandy, the role of this in the station’s much larger set of problems has been greatly exaggerated by management. For example, WBAI did not have to suddenly move last year as a consequence of Sandy. Rather, the term of the lease ended Dec. 31, 2012, Pacifica was many months in arrears – and this was a chronic problem for the entire time since the current management took over – and the landlord decided to kick them out.

The date of the lease’s end was known since it was first entered into in 1997; it was specified in the lease. The eviction crisis was a result of management failing to make provisions for new space until they were being evicted. Had Nia Bediako not made arrangements with CUNY (City University of New York) for the temporary space currently housing the station, WBAI would have been homeless. Again, this had nothing to do with Sandy and everything to do with gross mismanagement.

WBAI tower atop the Empire State Building – Photo: Doc Searles

The notorious “three-day notice” that was waved around by Grace Aaron, Steve Brown and Mitchel Cohen is not notice of a pending eviction but, rather, that the rent is in arrears and unless arrangements are made in the three-day period to correct it, an eviction proceeding – which lasts several months in New York City – might be commenced.

M.O.I. JR: What is going on with Pacifica’s 501(c)(3) status? Is it illegal for Pacifica to be collecting funds for programming?

Don Debar: Pacifica’s corporate charter is based in California. It came to light earlier this year that Pacifica’s management had failed to file the required documents with the California authorities and, as a consequence, its corporate charter was suspended. As of March 19, 2013, the date of the most recent data posted at the California Secretary of State’s website, it remains suspended. Under California law, the corporation is no longer authorized to conduct business, appear in court to prosecute or defend litigation, or perform any other operations other than prepare and file the required documents for reinstatement.

Update: Pacifica is back on active status with the California Secretary of State as of March 22.

According to the IRS, when a 501(c)(3) entity has its charter suspended or revoked, its status as a 501(c)(3) entity is also suspended. In order to reinstate its status with IRS, the corporation has to be revived under the appropriate state process, and evidence of this, along with an official statement from the state authorities detailing the term of the suspension, must be filed with an application for reinstatement of 501(c)(3) status.

KPFT tower

Again, this has yet to be accomplished as of March 19, 2013, and it is unclear how IRS will treat this.

M.O.I. JR: Why is Pacifica in court in New York?

Don Debar: Aside from being evicted from their offices and studios at 120 Wall St. earlier this year, WBAI is in the process of being evicted from the transmission tower on the Empire State Building. Here, too, there has been a chronic arrearage in rent, and the landlord decided they’d had enough and began eviction proceedings.

Without the tower, WBAI is off the air and at grave danger of losing its license to broadcast. Mimi Rosenberg, a Legal Aid attorney who produced the program Building Bridges, secured legal counsel – at no cost – to attempt to resolve the matter, after management had brought the station within days of eviction. The matter is pending.

M.O.I. JR: With what is happening with Pacifica as a whole, as well as the issues with WBAI, WPFW and KPFA, where do you see Pacifica in 10 years?

WPFW tower

In fact, Pacifica even lost its name. While its charter was suspended, another corporation was formed in California using the name Pacifica Foundation Inc., resulting in Pacifica having to change its name to Pacifica Foundation Radio in order to proceed with its attempt to revive the corporation. Without good management, I do not think Pacifica will exist by the end of the year.

M.O.I. JR: How could people keep up with info dealing with Pacifica?

Don Debar: We are beginning to open a discussion on internet radio station Community Progressive Radio, which airs at www.CPRmetro.org, and invite producers and others interested in saving Pacifica to participate. Thus far, there are several former Pacifica producers who have regular programs on CPRmetro, including myself and Bernard White, the purged program director from WBAI, as well as several current Pacifica producers.

Since management has been keeping all of these problems secret until they reach the stage of crisis, we will have to inform ourselves and each other if Pacifica is to survive their mismanagement.

The People’s Minister of Information JR is associate editor of the Bay View, author of “Block Reportin’” and filmmaker of “Operation Small Axe” and “Block Reportin’ 101,” available, along with many more interviews, at www.blockreportradio.com. He also hosts two weekly shows on KPFA 94.1 FM and kpfa.org: The Morning Mix every Wednesday, 8-9 a.m., and The Block Report every other Friday night-Saturday morning, midnight-2 a.m. He can be reached at blockreportradio@gmail.com.