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Supreme Court hears Voting Rights Act challenge: The legal fight to protect white power
March 15, 2013
Scalia has made it clear why this case is before the Court – it’s about race and white “race entitlement.” The Voting Rights Act was passed because no group is going to “apportion themselves out of power.” If the Court rules in favor of Shelby County in the face of its racist record, it will be doing nothing more than validating white power and racism.
Hugo Chávez knew that his revolution depended on women
March 14, 2013
The funeral of President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela took place on International Women’s Day – a fitting day of departure. Chávez was not the first movement leader who went on to head the government, to have understood women’s centrality to creating the new society they were striving to build. Presidents of Tanzania and Haiti have also benefited from making women central to progress.
‘There is no turning back’: We salute a great freedom fighter – Comandante Hugo Chavez Frias
March 13, 2013
Revolutionaries throughout the Americas and the Caribbean owe a great debt to Hugo Chavez. His selfless struggle for the advancement of the masses of poor and oppressed occupied him 24/7. It was with sheer determination and a lifetime of struggle that this great champion of the oppressed, Comandante Hugo Chavez, led a revolution that provides us with a working example of what he termed “21st century socialism,” where people of all ethnicities have a place under the sun.
Mayor Lee announces support for fully funding GoSolarSF program
March 13, 2013
San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee has made the announcement that clean energy and green job advocates in the Bay Area and beyond have waited nearly 12 months to hear: He supports full funding for the landmark GoSolarSF incentive program, which has helped over 2,000 homeowners, tenants, businesses and nonprofits install solar panels since 2008.
Fukushima two years later: Basic guide
March 11, 2013
March 11 will make the second anniversary of the triple catastrophes that occurred in Japan: the earthquake, the tsunami and the nuclear meltdowns at Fukushima. Over the last two years people are asking whether the Fukushima nuclear disaster is worse than what occurred in 1986 in Chernobyl.
Zionism, Rwanda and American universities
March 11, 2013
Rwandan President Paul Kagame will speak at the University of Hartford, Connecticut’s Maurice Greenberg Center for Judaic Studies to mark the launch of its “Genocide and Holocaust Education Initiative,” despite scholars, journalists and protestors all over the world, and nearly 20 years of U.N. reports accusing Kagame himself of genocide and mass atrocities in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Recently introduced legislation threatens right of neighborhood groups to challenge inappropriate development and bad land use
March 10, 2013
The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) requires state and local agencies to analyze and publicly disclose the environmental impacts of proposed projects and to adopt all feasible measures to mitigate those impacts. Appeal under CEQA is one of the most important tools that neighborhood groups and individuals may use to influence changes in their neighborhoods.
Court misses white racial entitlement
March 9, 2013
In oral arguments before the Supreme Court on the Voting Rights Act, Justice Antonin Scalia slandered the act as a “racial entitlement,” arguing, “whenever a society adopts racial entitlements, it is very difficult to get out of them through the normal political processes.” The justice proved once more that he is not a neutral arbiter of the Constitution but a right-wing activist with an agenda to enforce.
Crime, criminalization and gun control: Oakland leads the way in crime hysteria
March 8, 2013
Oakland may seem like a local anomaly with its big increase in homicides in 2011-12 and the anti-crime hysteria which now engulfs it. But Oakland is just a prime example of the intertwining of crime and criminalization under capitalism, in which the ruling class divides working people one from another and targets particular groups for victimization.
RUMEC, fighting corporate oppression, ignorance and poverty through construction
March 6, 2013
RUMEC has been at the forefront of the new labor movement. We would like to unify our people through construction, religion, art, music and education. We seek the liberation from outside forces that foment ignorance, oppression and poverty. We aspire to escalate into an established position of recognition and respect as an independent, all inclusive institution that represents our striving people.
Muni’s shameful racism: T-Train stops short of BVHP
March 5, 2013
I would like to know the reasons why the Muni constantly stops trains on the T-Line at 23rd Street as if the rest of Third Street doesn’t exist. I pay for a monthly pass and I feel that I deserve to be treated with the same services as the Mission Bay area. It’s despicable how the Muni service treats the citizens in Bayview. This is obviously a classic combination of classism and racism.
Gang rape: The South African death of Thandiswa Qubuda
March 5, 2013
Grahamstown Unemployed People’s Union spokesperson Ayanda Kota had much more to say about this tragedy and its post-apartheid South African context than we were able to report on the KPFA Evening News on Sunday, March 3, 2013. He said that the Black Consciousness Movement founded by Steve Biko, with his call for the restoration of humanity shattered by apartheid, offers the best hope of healing.
A quiet revolution: ‘Not Meant to Live Like This: Weathering the storm of our lives in New Orleans’
March 4, 2013
One morning after Mass at the Poor Claire Monastery, Maria Victoire, a volunteer with the Fourth World Movement, broached the idea of a collaborative book written by extremely poor New Orleaneans scattered to the winds after Hurricane Katrina. She was asking my opinion as an author about what to do with the 50 or so interviews she had conducted and how to get them published as a book.
‘Mugabe: Hero or Villain’: an interview wit’ filmmaker Roy Agyemang
March 3, 2013
Roy Agyemang is a Ghanaian filmmaker from London who recently made the documentary film “Mugabe: Hero or Villain?” an in-depth look at Robert Mugabe, president of Zimbabwe. It recently screened at the Pan African Film Fest and won an award, and it will be screening in the Bay opening night at the Oakland International Film Fest at 6 p.m. on Thursday, April 4, at the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland.
Congo peace treaty or roadmap to balkanization?
March 3, 2013
Is the peace treaty for the undeclared war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, signed Feb. 24, really a roadmap for the division of mineral rich eastern Congo into separate countries, or even free trade zones, for the convenience of Western mining companies? Congolese mining researcher Jean Didier Lozango says the borders of the DRC must remain intact.
The sequester and the Tea Party plot
March 2, 2013
Tea Party Republicans are crowing about the “sequestration” cuts beginning March 1. “This will be the first significant Tea Party victory in that we got what we set out to do in changing Washington,” says Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R-Kansas. Sequestration is only the start. What they set out to do was not simply change Washington but eviscerate the U.S. government.
Yee introduces bill to aid young parents in foster care system
March 1, 2013
On Feb. 22, Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco-San Mateo, chair of the Senate Committee on Human Services, introduced legislation to assist pregnant teens and young parents in the foster care system. Legislation helps ensure access to child care, offers support to pregnant foster youth, and provides reproductive health education.
How the media tried to assassinate Chris Dorner
March 1, 2013
Christopher Jordan Dorner is dead, but his words and actions will continue to impact the Los Angeles area and beyond for quite some time. The former U.S. Navy lieutenant and Los Angeles police officer who is alleged to have shot and killed four people early in February was the subject of the largest manhunt in Southern California history.
Berkeley coalition demands access to information about death in police custody
February 28, 2013
Xavier Christopher Moore died Feb. 12 during a situation we believe was instigated by the Berkeley Police Department, at her apartment on the fifth floor of 2116 Allston Way, the Gaia Building. The BPD’s press release of Feb. 13 says that they responded to “a disturbance call” at Moore’s apartment. Media reports have said this call was related to mental health.
San Francisco launches Free Muni for Youth Pilot Program
February 28, 2013
Low and moderate income youth in San Francisco age 5 to 17 will be able to ride Muni for free as of March 1, when the SFMTA will begin a 16-month pilot program. Thousands of youth, parents and community members have organized for more than two years to secure the free transit passes, which enable young people to get to school, jobs and after-school activities.