Compare the response in Hunters Point when San Francisco Police Chief Greg Suhr attempted to hold a townhall on July 20, 2011, four days after police murdered Kenneth Harding, 19 (video below)

Chris Moreland, who cried “Justice!” at the Oakland townhall, is now in jail on $100,000 bail for battery of an officer, clearly a trumped up charge; arraignment Friday, 2 p.m., Wiley Manual Courthouse; support march 7 p.m., 19th and Telegraph

by Davey D

Alan Blueford, 18, was preparing to graduate from high school when he was murdered by police for running from them on May 6 in East Oakland.

Here in Oakland, California, the shooting death of Alan Dwayne Blueford is one such killing. Oakland police have been very shady with the stories they put forth to the public. It seems like a deliberate attempt to muddy the waters, cast seeds of doubt and cover up their own mistakes.

Initially police said they were in a shoot-out and Blueford shot the officer in the stomach. Later the police said Blueford shot the officer in the leg. Next the police said that it was possible the officer was shot in the leg by another officer in a case of friendly fire. Finally it came out that the officer shot himself. He shot himself in the foot.

Many believe the officer shot himself after he killed Blueford and saw the young man was unarmed. The police then doubled back and said a gun was recovered; the community has yet to see any evidence of fingerprints, gun residue etc. Many have concluded it was the officer planting a gun near the scene.

This would not be unusual in a city that in the past 10 years has had to shell out over $58 million for wrongful death shootings and police brutality incidents. This would not be far-fetched in a city that was home to a rogue group of cops known as the Oakland Riders, who were found to routinely plant drugs and guns on suspects. One of the Riders is a still a fugitive at large.

Adding to all this was the fact that Blueford was left on the ground for four hours to die while the officer, who lied and then finally admitted to shooting himself, was treated.

The public still does not know the name of the officer, thanks to California’s Police Officers Bill of Rights, which prevents the public from knowing the names of officers involved in brutality incidents. Community investigators have revealed the officer who murdered Blueford is Miguel Masso, a former military man who lives in Los Banos, which is more than 100 miles outside of Oakland.

Alan Blueford’s family and community activists held a 3 p.m. rally in front of the Alameda County DA’s office, 1225 Fallon St., Oakland, on Wednesday, May 23, 3:00 p.m., to make these demands: Release the cop’s name, take him off paid leave, charge him with murder and fire him. Some of Alan’s supporters proceeded from the rally to the townhall called by Mayor Jean Quan and Police Chief Howard Jordan, but the family chose not to go.

In an attempt to do more damage control, OPD held a town hall meeting on Wednesday, May 23, at Acts Full Gospel Church. Folks showed up only to discover the police chief would only answer questions that were pre-written. This annoyed folks to no end. Then he seemed ill prepared or unable to answer basic questions. He also hawked what many saw as blatant lies. This led to more than half the room turning their backs on the chief and throwing up fists.

The chief cut the meeting short and left the building with angry residents in tow. They got at him and let him know that there needs to be accountability and the community would not stand for his lies. The chief was definitely embarrassed.

Later that night we learned Oakland police came after one of the community members shown in the video holding a bullhorn, Chris M. They claimed he assaulted an officer at the church. If that was the case, when and where did that happen and why not arrest him on the spot?

Here’s a video of last night’s townhall meeting and dispersal.

Listen to Davey D on Hard Knock Radio Monday-Friday at 4 p.m. and his Morning Mix show every Tuesday at 8 a.m. on KPFA 94.1 FM or kpfa.org. He can be reached at mrdaveyd@aol.com. Visit his website, daveyd.com, and his blog, Davey D’s Hip Hop Corner, where this story first appeared.

After murdering high school senior Alan Blueford, Oakland police have been trying to do damage control. Initially they claimed Blueford was involved in a shoot-out and shot the officer. We now know the officer shot himself after killing Blueford. The officer’s name was not released to the public due to California law. The police held a townhall meeting at Acts Full Gospel church to try and calm down angry residents. As Chief Howard Jordan rattled off lie after lie, folks turned their backs to him. They were not feeling what amounted to a dog and pony show. OPD cut the townhall short as folks surrounded the police and demanded justice for Alan Blueford. We caught up with Oscar Grant’s uncle, Cephus Johnson, aka Uncle Bobby to get his assessment of what took place. – Video: Davey D

Compare the response of the people of Hunters Point when San Francisco Police Chief Greg Suhr, who had been captain of their precinct before being appointed chief, attempted to hold a townhall meeting on July 20, 2011, four days after police murdered Kenneth Harding, 19, when he ran from them after they pulled him off the T-train light rail car for his lack of a transfer to prove he’d paid his $2 fare. – Video: El Tecolote

Taking it to the streets: Justice for Alan Blueford! Release Chris Moreland!

Dady Chery, Editor, Haiti Chery

The townhall meeting did not go as anticipated. The plan had been for Oaklanders to sit in the Acts Full Gospel Church and, like so many devotees, politely listen to the lying monotone of the police chief about the recent killing of another Black youth, then write their questions for triage and more monotonous answers: the rage cleanly severed from voice and heart.

There is such a thing as an appropriate reaction to profound injury. First, the attendees began to turn their backs on the lies: a reaction as old as time (video above by Davey D). Animals in zoos do this when they dislike a visitor. Birds and even butterflies resolutely turn their tails to insults.

The attendees began to turn their backs on the lies: a reaction as old as time. Animals in zoos do this when they dislike a visitor. Birds and even butterflies resolutely turn their tails to insults.

The spell was broken. People had regained themselves. Next, the fists began to rise, and the questions started to flow, unwritten. A bullhorn called “Justice!” and got the response “For Alan Blueford!”

Source: https://twitter.com/Anon4justice/status/205844630389010432/photo/1

“Justice!”

“For Alan Blueford!”

Chris Moreland, the man who cried “Justice!” into the bullhorn, is himself now in jail: targeted for arrest by police on the evening of May 23 on trumped up charges including battery of a police officer. How? With sound waves from a bullhorn?

Bail has been set at an outrageous $100 K. To free Chris, it is necessary to raise $10 K by Friday, May 25. Please donate here.

Chris will be arraigned Friday, 2 p.m., at Wiley Manual Courthouse. An emergency march has been planned to support him Friday at 7 p.m. at 19th and Telegraph.

Whatever the police might do to distract the population from the real issues, the Occupy protests in Oakland and elsewhere in the U.S. are about more than the occasional incidence of police brutality. The protests call for dismantling a system of social inequity that requires such a show of arbitrary violence that city police departments in the U.S. behave like a foreign occupation force toward Black youths.

Dady Chery grew up at the heart of an extended working-class family in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. She emigrated to New York when she was 14 and since then has traveled throughout the world, living in Europe and several North American cities. She writes in English, French and her native Créole and holds a doctorate. She can be reached at dc@dadychery.org. This story first appeared on her blog, Haiti Chery.

A beautiful tribute to Alan Blueford and his family – Video: Myron Potier

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by Malaika Kambon

“Oro en paz, fierro en guerra” (“Gold in peace, iron in war”) – Motto of the San Francisco Police Department

Alan Blueford’s mother Jeralynn testified passionately at the May 15 Oakland City Council meeting. – Photo: Malaika Kambon

The video re-play of the Oakland City Council meeting for that evening shows members of the family, arm in arm, giving each other much needed support as they spoke before a standing-room-only public audience with hundreds more outside of the doors of the council chambers, addressing the issues of the cold blooded assassination of their child. They testified about the lies and criminalization of him that the police had told family members and stated on television and radio and posted online on the police website, and they described the OPD’s callous disregard for their grief and need for information as they tried to piece together precisely what had happened to their child and how.

Mayor Jean Quan’s council seat was noticeably vacant. – Photo: Malaika Kambon

It didn’t seem to matter. The Oakland City Council was interested only in addressing – behind closed doors – what to do about how police handle informing relatives of officer-involved shooting victims. Alan’s parents had been told to “go sit down” and wait in the police station lobby for over two hours, with no information about their son, while the police purported to be “continuing their investigation” of an alleged “shoot-out” between an allegedly “unidentified” Black person and OPD officers.

Jeralynn and Adam Blueford said they raced to Oakland police headquarters in the early hours of May 6 after their son’s friend called to inform them that their son, Alan Blueford, had been shot and killed by a police officer.

Alan Blueford, 18, would have graduated in June.

Councilwoman Desley Brooks called repeatedly for someone to “find police Chief Howard Jordan” to facilitate a “discussion of police protocol for dealing with victim’s families,” but why does this issue overshadow the issue of another OPD slaying of an innocent Afrikan youth?

The OCC mindset bodes ill for any true investigation of this matter. Yet another pointless “internal investigation” will scream cover-up and “discussion of police protocol” will become nothing more than an administrative sound bite in the form of a report, while the deeper issue of an out of control department of killer cops goes untouched.

Note the similarities between five specific cases, in three separate cities, not more than three years apart, all of which included the police or vigilante murders of very young African men who were doing nothing that could even remotely be construed as criminal behavior.

And then, note the similarities between the assassins – and the consistent fact that all of the killers are free and white and that their criminal actions are protected under cover of law, no matter the evidence brought against them.

Miguel Masso, OPD

The three young Afrikan men were doing nothing more than awaiting the arrival of female friends to get a ride to go watch a televised professional boxing match.

This is not criminal activity. But the targeting of these young men for assault with deadly force was at the least inappropriate and quite probably a hate crime.

George Zimmerman, insurance underwriter cum vigilante

Thus far, Florida Republican Gov. Rick Scott’s administration is defending its decision to keep Zimmerman’s gun permit active. The argument that “short of a permit holder being convicted of a felony, the state does not have the authority to revoke a permit” is especially specious. Zimmerman is an armed and dangerous loose cannon. Yet he is free, has killed and is under no known court orders of supervision.

Were the situation not so serious, this would be comical, particularly since the FBI says it now seeks to charge George Zimmerman with a hate crime. By definition, the FBI and its history of counterintelligence programs of hatred against Afrikan people (COINTELPRO) makes this an extreme case of the pot literally calling the kettle black. The FBI, a federal organization built upon hatred, charging a hater with – ahem – hating!

Johannes Mehserle, ex-BART cop

His attorney, Michael Rain, successfully lobbied the state of California to have his client’s trial moved out of Oakland to Los Angeles.

Rain also got the gun enhancement charge, which would have added 10 years to Mehserle’s sentence, dismissed by “convincing” Judge Robert Perry to believe that his client truly confused his Taser for his gun, even though Oscar Grant photographed Mehserle holstering his Taser, drawing his gun and firing what turned out to be the fatal shot.

After the deals were made, Mehserle dried his eyes and showed no remorse whatever for the murder. He and his appellate attorney Dylan Schaffer are now attempting to have his 2010 involuntary manslaughter conviction overturned on the grounds that the ruling “sets a precedent that makes it difficult for police officers to do their jobs.”

Oakland Schools Police Sgt. Barhin Bhatt holds shut the gate to Fremont High School during a March 4, 2011, protest. – Photo: KALW

While Mehserle didn’t clean up quite as handily as did Zimmerman and Masso, note the similarities of the three murderers: While the police departments and mainstream media criminalized the slain Afrikan victims, the assassins completely altered their public image photographs and demeanor, hoping that taking geeky, boy next door photos, donning suits and ties, crying – while lying – in court, and making public apologies to grieving families will divert the public from focusing on the heinous crimes they and their respective departments have committed and continue to commit against a global Afrikan community.

Every member of the large and close knit family of Alan Dwayne Blueford who could spoke truth to power at the Oakland City Council meeting on May 15 in support of justice for their slain loved one, who was gunned down on May 6 by one of the OPD’s paid killers behind the badge, Miguel Masso. – Photo: Malaika Kambon

Note the further similarities between the Oscar Grant, Trayvon Martin, Kenneth Harding, Raheim Brown and Alan Blueford shootings:

• All except Kenneth Harding were shot in the small hours of the morning.
• All were denied critical medical treatment.
• All were posthumously criminalized both by the police and by a mainstream press that wouldn’t have mentioned the shootings at all if the Afrikan communities of the world hadn’t taken to the streets in rebellion.
• All were unarmed; all shots were fired by police or an armed vigilante civilian.
• All were either fleeing from police or “co-operating” with police directives, despite racial epithets being spewed by police and/or police escalation of legal activities to justify their subsequent use of deadly force.
• None was threatening police.
• None was over 22 years old.

This is George Zimmerman’s gun, a Sig Sauer. The .40 caliber of this model is the standard issue gun for the SFPD. All police officers carry other weapons and often carry a backup weapon as well. SFPD’s Weapons Training Video can be seen at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbZCPkf4_WY.

Trayvon Martin’s body had been left in the morgue for three days before his parents were notified; Kenneth Harding was forced to bleed out and die in public surrounded by heavily armed cops; Raheim Brown was shot multiple times to the head and chest while sitting in a car after a Skyline High School dance; Alan Blueford was shot three times in the back, his ID was stolen and his body was left on the street for over four hours – no telling how long he fought for life – and his parents were delayed at the police station without being told exactly what happened to their child and then fed a tissue of lies. Yet the allegedly clumsy cop was rushed to Highland Hospital post haste from the crime scene after shooting himself in the foot.

Meanwhile police departments purchase new SUVs and lethal toys such as the LRAD, used supposedly for the first time in the U.S. at the G20 summit in Pittsburgh. Now the OPD has acquired one. See “Is Oakland Police Itching to use its LRAD Weapon…Is That Why We Keep Hearing About Riots?“

Not only that, but 35 percent of Oakland’s budget goes to the police in the form of retirement benefits, cost of living increases and a recent proposal for $276,842 to be used to retrofit 149 police vehicles.

One particularly interesting entry appears on pages viii and ix of the Oakland 2009-11 Proposed Policy Budget: “In March 2009, to avoid a year-end deficit of over $8 million (stemming mainly from overspending in Police), 5.0 FTE vacant positions were frozen to save $0.2 million, fees were raised to generate $0.01 million, $0.45 million in police expenses were authorized for transfer to other funds, and a $0.5 million insurance claim was submitted to seek reimbursement for unanticipated police costs following the recent BART police shooting. In addition, $4.2 million in project costs have been deferred to the next year.”

The retrofit, the war toys and the new SUVs are an alleged response to increased criminal activity of Oakland’s Afrikan citizenry that does not exist, while killer cops and armed “citizen” vigilantes roam free to kill with impunity and justify their actions with “officer protection” claims, “stand your ground laws” that apparently apply only to vigilantes, and with the incredible hubris to claim a need to safeguard cities in which the population runs from them if given a chance.

Haiti Emergency Relief Fund and Haiti Action Committee co-founders attorney Walter Riley and Pierre Labossiere, with Aja Minor of the Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI), spoke at Tuesday’s City Council meeting in support of the Haitian Family Reunification Parole Program. Councilwoman Desley Brooks’ resolution urges President Obama to help Haiti recover, save lives and “end a double standard.” – Photo: Malaika Kambon

With the U.S./U.N. military occupation worsening conditions in Haiti, a petition for a Haitian Family Reunification Parole Program has been sent to Obama, such that Haitians, like hundreds of thousands of Cuban, Indochinese and Kosovar refugees, can be paroled to the U.S. and a program like that for Cubans can be established for Haitians. Such a resolution was on the Oakland City Council agenda for discussion on May 15, File 11-0396.

Adam and Jeralynn Blueford – shown here with SF8 and Black Panther veteran Richard Brown – and most of the family came to the annual Malcolm X Jazz and Arts Festival on May 19 in Oakland’s San Antonio Park. Jeralynn spoke to a crowd that had peaked at 10,000 people that day. She rocked the house and vowed that her son’s death would not be forgotten nor in vain. – Photo: Malaika Kambon

Atrocities such as these are always committed against peoples of color globally and predominantly against Afrikan people. We therefore must seriously connect what is happening on a larger and more realistic scale. Otherwise corrupt governments will continue to feed as we bleed.

A BAMN member passed out fliers at the May 15 Oakland City Council meeting seeking justice for Alan Blueford. – Photo: Malaika Kambon

Suggested reading: Dr. Jeffrey S. Adler’s “‘The Killer Behind the Badge’: Race and Police Homicide in New Orleans, 1925-1945.”

Malaika H. Kambon is a freelance photojournalist and the 2011 winner of the Bay Area Black Journalists Association Luci S. Williams Houston Scholarship in Photojournalism. She also won the AAU state and national championship in Tae Kwon Do from 2007-2010. She can be reached at kambonrb@pacbell.net.

On Saturday afternoon, May 12, at the Eastmont Mall Oakland police substation, the family of Alan Blueford speaks at a rally supporting justice for their son, murdered by OPD early in the morning of Saturday, May 6, 2012, near the intersection of 92nd and Birch Street in East Oakland. – Video: Earl Black

Family members and supporters marched on May 12 from 92nd and Birch, where Alan was gunned down and left for over four hours to bleed to death, to the Eastmont Mall police substation, chanting all the way. – Video: Earl Black

On Saturday afternoon, May 12, in front of the Eastmont Mall police substation, Alan Blueford’s cousin Tanisha Bradford addressed the lies the police presented to the family and expressed, along with other family members, anger and outrage, not only over the death of their beloved, but also because of the way the police continued to excuse their own criminal behavior in obvious and blatant disregard for the family’s feelings and rights. – Video: Earl Black

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Brittany Crawford

Upon her passing, Brittany’s organs were donated, and her generous gifts saved the lives of four people. Her parents, Keith and Lenore Crawford, were led to start a foundation, “Give Life, Save Life,” a non-profit organization. The foundation will focus on education and awareness of organ procurement and creating a database of African American donors.

Minority populations are disadvantaged in organ transplantation in several ways. Three key factors prevent African Americans from receiving kidneys at rates equal to whites. First, African Americans exhibit higher rates of diseases that cause kidney failure, like hypertension and diabetes. Five percent of people on wait lists died in 2008 and, more specifically, 4.6 percent of people on kidney wait lists perished. Second, the African-American population has a high prevalence of type B blood, which is more rare in the general population (and a problem because blood type matching is necessary for a successful transplant). Third, race-linked poverty and socioeconomic issues make it much harder to navigate the organ transplant system.

The foundation will hold workshops, screenings and scholarships in the African-American community.

The launch date for the foundation will be on Sept. 15, 2012, which would have been Brittany’s 21st birthday.

For more information, email givelifesavelife@gmail.com. Coming soon: givelifesavelife.org.

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by Toni Renee Battle

Then SNCC leader, now Congressman John Lewis led the first Selma-to-Montgomery march for voting rights on March 7, 1965, when 600 marchers were attacked by police in riot gear, who fractured Lewis’ skull on a day remembered as Bloody Sunday. Before going to the hospital, Lewis appeared before television cameras demanding intervention by President Johnson, who, eight days later, appeared before a joint session of Congress to demand passage of the Voting Rights Act. It was passed Aug. 3, 1965.

Applause broke out and necks craned to see over church hats and fans wagging throughout the burgundy pews. The legend entered the sanctuary and climbed the stairs to the pulpit. The congregation jumped to their feet and clapped for over five minutes. The moderator stated, “No introductions are needed. Ladies and gentlemen, with great honor tonight we are in the presence of greatness. Tonight we will hear from Congressman John Lewis!” Her announcement was met with more thunderous applause.

The city of Oakland was all abuzz about the Barbara Lee and Elihu Harris Lecture Series, which was featuring Congressman John Lewis of Georgia’s 5^th District in conjunction with the Martin Luther King Jr. Freedom Center. The lecture series discussion title was: “Where Do We Go From Here? Chaos or Community; Find a Way to Get in the Way!”

Congressman John Lewis was enthusiastically introduced by former Oakland Mayor Elihu Harris and Congresswoman Barbara Lee of California’s 9^th District. Harris spoke to the crowd about why social justice was still so important in the 21^st century and how despite some historical gains there is still work to be done. He shared a story about trying to get state legislative support in California to make Martin Luther King’s birthday a holiday in the early 1980s.

Harris said a state legislator told him, with good intentions of course, “I’d like to support it (the King Holiday). But if we have a holiday for a nigger, the next thing you know, they’ll want one for a Mexican.” The audience gasped, some nodding their heads in understanding. Harris continued, “Some people still feel that way today and smile in your face. This is why the social justice fight is still significant today!”

Following Harris, Congresswoman Barbara Lee was met with applause and “Amens!” As she took the floor, she paid homage to Congressman Lewis for paving the way for her and others. She stated, “We’ve come a long way, but we have a long way to go! We owe you a debt of gratitude … to pick up the baton and fight the good fight.”

Congressman John Lewis speaks April 21 at Beebe Memorial Church in Oakland. – Photo: Toni Battle

Congressman Lewis commented on the status of Civil Rights today: “Here today we are too quiet! Find a way to get into trouble if we are going to create a real America! For more than 50 years I’ve been getting in trouble and I plan to get in some more trouble!” Speaking of the sacrifices he and others in the movement made, he said, “Through our actions we reformed and liberated a society!”

As he continued to take those gathered on the journey of struggle, loss and triumph, he urged: “We have to vote like we’ve never voted before.” He said, “Over and over again throughout this country, I am asked, ‘Is President Obama the fulfillment of the Martin Luther King Jr. dream?’ I say, ‘No, he is the down payment. Too many are still being left behind – Blacks, Latinos, Asians, Native Americans, gay and straight. Don’t get weary! Don’t get tired! Maybe our forefathers came in different ships, but we all in the same boat now. We must continue until no one is left out or left behind and respect the dignity of every human being.”

As the legend held his fist in the air, the crowd erupted in applause and stood to their feet.

Many San Francisco residents were in attendance. Bayview Hunters Point resident and Southeast Commissioner Bobbrie Brown said: “What a blessing! I lived through segregation and to hear the power of Congressman Lewis’ words was truly amazing.”

Another long term Bayview Hunters Point resident, Carol Tatum, stated: “I loved his story about Bloody Sunday. I just took a Civil Rights tour in March of this year in Alabama, and the guide spoke of the sheriff wearing the ‘Never’ button Congressman Lewis spoke of. What an honor to hear him speak tonight!”

Toni Renee Battle is a consultant, journalist, educator, speaker and a lifelong Bayview Hunters Point resident. She is a small business owner of “Embrace Diversity … Embrace Success” Consulting Services and also founder of The Legacy Project, an educational program which emphasizes the teachings of Black and Native American culture, traditions and histories for youth from seventh through 12^th grades. She may be reached at tonirbattle@yahoo.com.   

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Davey D begins his Morning Mix show, broadcast 8-9 a.m. on May 15, with powerful testimony on the police murder of Alan Blueford by his cousin Tanisha, his mother and Jack Bryson of the Oscar Grant Committee. (Show begins after the news digest, at about five minutes in.)

Video by TomVeeTV

Alan Blueford's Facebook profile picture

On Saturday, May 12, 3 p.m., protesters marched from 9200 Birch St., where OPD left Alan to bleed to death for four hours, to the Eastmont Mall Police Sub-Station, 2652 73rd Ave., Oakland, chanting “Jail killer cops!” and “No justice, no peace, no racist police!” See the videos by Earl Black below of the march and rally.

All who demand justice for Alan Blueford will Occupy the Oakland City Council in City Hall, Oscar Grant Plaza, 14th & Broadway, at 6 p.m. Tuesday, May 15.

Statement by the Blueford family

Alan DeWayne Blueford was an 18-year-old senior at Skyline High School, preparing to graduate in June. He was the youngest son of Adam Blueford Sr. and Jeralynn Brown Blueford.

During the early morning hours of May 6, 2012, Alan was murdered by an officer – whose name has yet to be released – with the Oakland Police Department. His family is now seeking justice for his death.

Here is what we know:

• At or about midnight, May 6, Alan and two friends were standing on the corner of 90th and Birch Street waiting for “some girls in a white Chevy,” Alan told his father during a phone call.

• After the phone call, police officers approached Alan and his friends, with guns drawn. The police officers were called to respond to another incident, but decided to stop Alan and his friends when they saw them because they “believed the young men had a concealed weapon.”

• Alan ran down Birch Street from the police officers.

• Approximately two blocks down Birch Street on the 9200 block the officer chasing Alan murdered him by shooting him three times. The officer also shot himself.

• Although Alan had his brown wallet with his ID, Oakland Police Department never called to tell his parents he was shot and killed.

• Alan’s two friends were detained for over six hours. After their release, one of the young men had the traumatic task of calling Alan’s parents and telling them Alan was shot and killed by an Oakland police officer.

• Initial reports put out by OPD, stated that “a suspect” (Alan) and a police officer exchanged gun fire and the officer was shot in the stomach by the suspect and the suspect was shot by the officer. Both were said to have been rushed to Highland Hospital where Alan died and the police officer was expected to recover. OPD also included in their reports witness statements who said they saw Alan shooting. OPD reported that they retrieved Alan’s firearm at the scene.

• Later OPD changed their story to state that the officer was shot in the leg and an investigation was in process to determine whether the officer was wounded by “friendly fire.” Only one of the officers chased Alan.

• What we now know is that Alan Blueford never shot the police officer, at the police officer, or anyone else. OPD changed their story yet again, admitting and confirming that THE OFFICER SHOT HIMSELF.

• We also know that Alan was never rushed to Highland Hospital. Only the police officer. Alan’s body lay in the streets for approximately 4 hours.

• Alan was shot multiple times by the police officer.

• The family has reason to believe that Alan never had a firearm.

• The family has reason to believe that Alan never caused the officer to be threatened. Alan’s body can be described as a shorter stature – approximately 5 feet 6 ½ inches – and thin build, 140 pounds.

When Alan’s family learned of the claimed circumstances surrounding Alan’s death, we all knew that the facts were not true! Additionally, because they never called to confirm his death, we were sadly left with hope that the unnamed “suspect” was not Alan. He was a joy to many people. We are suffering a great loss.

Now OPD claims that the “victim” – no longer suspect – was a convicted felon on probation. His family will simply respond by saying felony probation does not describe Alan’s character. To describe Alan, you have to share that he 1) was a Christian; 2) worked with the disabled children at Skyline, one of whom described “Al” as his “best friend”; 3) began his mornings at Skyline High School by praying with his godmother and supervisor; 4) passed out candy at his grandmother’s every Halloween; and 5) was well known by his family and friends as a respectful young man.

But even more important is the fact that when the police officers decided not to respond to the call, but rather to bother Alan and his friends, all they knew is that they were three African-American young men. That’s why Alan was murdered.

Alan’s family is seeking justice for his death. We are determined to have this “incident” thoroughly investigated and all wrongful parties prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. We ask that all of you support us by calling District 7 City Councilman Larry Reid, at (510) 238-7007.

As we embark upon this long journey, we rely on the grace and mercy of our Father God, through faith in the blood of Jesus Christ. We find peace in scripture, specifically Genesis 50:20 (NIV): “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant if for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.”

Hammer demands justice for his friend, Alan Blueford

Video by missmollie33

Hammer was one of the people who spoke yesterday in front of the Oakland Police Department headquarters on Seventh Street. Hammer knew Alan Blueford, who was a close friend of his children. Hammer’s words are beautiful, strong, loving and true.

There is still an ongoing investigation, but one thing is clear: OPD is up to their old corrupt tricks. They claimed Alan Blueford shot at them, yet Alan’s family has now been told that there were four shots fired – three were fired into Alan’s back, and the fourth was the cop shooting himself/herself in the foot.

Alan Blueford was unarmed when he was running away from the cops. The identity of the cop has not been released and the cop is on paid administrative leave at this point pending an Internal Affairs investigation.

Protest march for Alan Blueford, killed by Oakland Police during a pedestrian stop

Protesters marched from 9200 Birch St., where OPD left Alan to bleed to death for four hours, to the Eastmont Mall Police Sub-Station, chanting “Jail killer cops!” and “No justice, no peace, no racist police!”

Videos by Earl Black

Alan Blueford’s cousin speaks on the facts in the Oakland police murder of Alan and the police cover-up. The rally was held Saturday afternoon, May 12, in front of the Eastmont Mall Police Sub-Station. She addresses the lies the police presented to the family and, along with other family members, expresses their anger and outrage, not only over the death of their beloved, but also because of the way the police continued to excuse their own criminal behavior in obvious and blatant disregard for the family’s feelings and rights.

This report was updated May 13.

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• Kenneth Harding, Raheim Brown, Oscar Grant: Can you believe the police?

by Savannah Kilner and Michelle Williams

Michelle Williams

Michelle’s mother was told by doctors and social workers at Kaiser she would need 24-hour care. She relied on In-Home Support Services (IHSS), her brother and Michelle, who came to her home to help whenever she could.

But on Feb. 27, 2012, while caring for her mom, expecting respite care and assistance and looking for a good facility for her mom to be placed in, a Kaiser social worker threatened to get Adult Protective Services involved. That’s when Michelle realized she was under duress.

In a climate of proposed cuts to an already slashed social services budget, Michelle was forced to take care of her mother. This was a difficult and tedious job, as her mother is paralyzed and is totally dependent on others.

IHSS could provide care only eight hours a day Monday through Saturday, leaving the rest to Michelle. The situation was very challenging, as Michelle is unemployed due to her own personal physical disabilities.

If Michelle was not caring for her mother 16 hours a day and all of Sunday, APS – like CPS (Child Protective Services, an arm of the police – could charge her with neglect or abandonment. “I feel like I am under house arrest. At this time I have no other family to help out. If I leave, APS gets involved … This has emotionally, physically and mentally drained me. I feel imprisoned in my mother’s home.”

Michelle was being surveilled by Kaiser social workers and county workers and had to seek other counsel. “They don’t sit down and explain the logistics of the medical industry. They use classism, racism, ageism and ableism to bank on people not understanding, not caring, not knowing our rights … First, like some commodity, they wanted to institutionalize her. Now I can’t get help.” Michelle was under extreme duress. “It’s breaking me down,” she said. “I’m physically in a lot of pain. It’s affecting my disabilities and I fear losing my own home.”

Michelle fought Kaiser and the county and demanded that emergency respite care be provided for her mother. After many trials, she is now back in her own home.

Budgets created by capitalist colonial governments have never been set up to serve poor people’s needs. So when we talk about reform, social services are still part of a system that kills us. And yet, many of us rely on the few social services that are out there. Over the last couple years especially, the attack on social services in California and the inflation of the prison-building budget have accelerated in a frightening way.

Recent cuts to In-Home Support Services (IHSS) have impacted hundreds of thousands of families in California. IHSS allows poor elders and people with disabilities to stay in their homes and communities with their families and children.

Last Thursday, Gov. Jerry Brown proposed reducing state spending on the IHSS program by $210 million – over $420 million if federal matching funds are lost. This would eliminate In-Home Supportive Services for about 245,000 elders and people with disabilities and mental health needs. According to the state, over 440,000 people are receiving IHSS services.

Gov. Jerry Brown proposes to eliminate In-Home Supportive Services for about 245,000 elders and people with disabilities and mental health needs, putting them at risk for institutionalization.

In 2009, Gov. Schwarzenegger began an all-out attack on IHSS. He cut the program and implemented background checks, barring formerly incarcerated people from employment. IHSS has historically been a way for poor people to make some money caretaking for their extended families and neighbors – providing employment to folks who may not be able to find it elsewhere and supporting families staying together in their homes.

Since about three years ago, applicants are required to undergo fingerprinting and background checks at their own cost. Anyone with certain “job-related” felonies is immediately banned – Schwarzenneger expanded that list of convictions from four to 50. The new application says: “If you ever had a felony or serious misdemeanor conviction, you are ineligible to be a caregiver,” which is inaccurate and makes many people with any record think they are ineligible.

The program was by no means perfect – IHSS workers only make $8-$12 an hour in California. Michelle never intended to be a paid IHSS worker, but it was one way for family members to remain caretakers and for elders and people with disabilities to stay in their homes.

Jerry Brown continues the dismantling of IHSS in Schwarzenegger’s wake, which puts poor families and families of color at risk for criminalization via APS. It also puts about 250,000 elders and people with disabilities living in California at risk for institutionalization.

Elders and people with disabilities, family members and IHSS unions and workers are fighting the further cuts to the IHSS program. Budget genocide systematically withholds basic necessities from poor and people of color communities as it beefs up prisons and policing and the criminalization of poverty.

How can we create true models of interdependence and caretaking that do not rely on the state and that value the beauty and brilliance of intergenerational family and community? POOR’s Homefulness Project is one attempt to answer this question.

Read more about issues of poverty and race written by the people who face them daily at POOR Magazine/POOR News Network, www.poormagazine.org.

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City’s jobs legislation is already working and can work even better

by Ruben Santana

San Francisco’s local hiring law is successfully increasing diversity and opportunity for local residents on City-funded construction. Local community contractors such as Rubecon and Liberty Builders can work with the City to expand upon these early success stories as local hiring requirements under the law increase this year.

Last month, Mayor Ed Lee and Supervisor John Avalos announced that although the local hiring policy required only 20 percent local participation on construction in its first year, local residents performed 34 percent of all the job hours on covered projects. The legislation increased the diversity of the City’s construction workforce and boosted opportunities for local workers of color and women.

We have even seen local working families on the verge of departing San Francisco during this time of economic crisis stay in the city by securing employment through the new local hiring law.

There is no better time to promote inclusion of San Francisco’s communities on public works projects. Look around the city and one can view at least 16 cranes that have gone up around town with even more work breaking ground this year.

Thanks to this law, some longtime blue-collar workers who have been squeezed out of San Francisco have even moved back to the city for the chance to go back to work.

What is most exciting is that more youth are becoming interested in blue-collar careers and enjoying the quality of life that high-paying union construction jobs provide. To meet this demand, the City has invested in programs such as CityBuild and our community-based organizations that are at the ready to prepare them to excel in a union construction apprenticeship.

When I started out as a carpenter, these programs were not in place and there was less support for local workers starting out in the trades. My experience began during a period of longstanding barriers for workers of color and women and I had to work even harder to prove myself. Today, I am glad to see future potential workers benefit from my experience in supporting a local hiring policy that guarantees opportunities for a new generation of local craftsmen and craftswomen.

Our local hiring law is a continuation of the process of breaking down barriers to maintaining a blue-collar middle class in San Francisco.

The next step in making local hiring work as its employment requirements increase is to identify and support the unique role that local community contractors play. The City can help increase these early local hiring success stories by partnering with local contractors who actively recruit and employ local residents.

The Local Business Enterprise (LBE) ordinance alone does not accomplish that, as we have seen how non-local firms are sometimes able to hang a shingle in San Francisco, make minimal payroll and property tax contributions to the local economy, and claim the bidding preferences designed to promote and expand truly San Francisco-based contractors. The City should target opportunities for LBEs that also have a strong track record of consistently employing local residents.

The first year of local hiring has been more successful than most people imagined. To expand upon its success, we need to continue cultivating our local contractor community base and engaging the unique experiences of those of us who have been fortunate to make the transition from worker to business owner, giving back to the community by regularly employing San Franciscans to help rebuild this great city.

Ruben Santana is the owner of Rubecon Builders, Inc., a union general contractor based in Bayview Hunters Point with over 100 years of combined experience in the construction industry. Rubecon regularly employs in excess of 50 percent local workers on construction jobs and is a committed supporter of San Francisco’s Local Hiring Policy for Construction.

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by Malaika Kambon

Fly Benzo, known for his mentoring of youth, holds Nailah Amari Bey, one of his staunchest supporters. – Photo: Malaika Kambon

Nowhere is this fight more in evidence than in the Bayview Hunters Point community in California and in all parts north, south, east and west in Haiti. The battle rages and is being waged against the same enemy.

And in true revolutionary fashion, in both locales, Africans are fighting back against nearly insurmountable odds – with attitude, courage, dignity and absolute fearlessness.

Consider the case of DeBray “Fly Benzo” Carpenter. He was busted on Oct. 18, 2011, by two of SFPD’s finest, John Norment and Joshua Fry, for (gasp!) participating in a community organized rally while playing a boom box in a (dare I say) “unauthorized” location – said location being a gy-normous plug attached to a tree in Mendell Plaza in the heart of the vibrant, predominantly Afrikan Bayview Hunters Point community.

Then, when said SFPD officers, following their practice of repeatedly harassing Fly, began to videotape him being arrested for playing a boom box, Fly decided that it was fitting that he record them, the SFPD, while they wasted taxpayer’s hard earned coin by harassing Black people playing music on community land.

All 64 available seats in the courtroom were filled with Debray “Fly Benzo” Carpenter’s supporters with dozens more in the hallway outside on April 20 for the first session of his sentencing hearing. Fly was unjustly convicted for exercising his First Amendment right to record the police and organize for justice after the SFPD murder of Kenneth Wade Harding Jr. on July 16, 2011. – Photo: Malaika Kambon

So, comes now the brutal assault of DeBray Carpenter, in which he is arrested by the SFPD’s Norment, Fry and four or five others of their ilk, who are in fact armed and who are trespassing upon the land that Fly’s parents practically built. He is also injured, hospitalized, jailed and charged with feloniously resisting arrest, assaulting a police officer, and videotaping police officers and thus interfering with them in the performance of their sworn duties – of harassing the community.

After all, they hang out in Mendell Plaza on their bicycles all day, four to six deep, every day. Explained Officer Fry at Fly’s trial, “It’s our job to be there so people feel safe.”

Now, the tree and the plaza in which it sits is so centrally located that it is half a block from the internationally renowned San Francisco Bay View newspaper building, half a block from the century old Bayview Opera House and the very public Joseph Lee gymnasium and half a block from where 19-year-old Kenneth Wade Harding Jr. was brutally murdered on July 16, 2011, for being too poor to pay the $2 light rail fare on the new T-train line that banned Black people from building it – but that passes right through the heart of the Bayview Black community, taking millions of dollars of our hard earned money while claiming to meet our transportation needs.

Fly knows this. Being an astute young man and the product of three generations of proud and fearless community organizers – from his parents Claude Carpenter and Barbara Banks, leading contractors training and hiring community workers for decades, to his grandparents and their predecessors – he knows the injustices that exist.

Barbara Banks, mother of Debray “Fly Benzo” Carpenter and a contractor and community leader in her own right, is always there standing firm, side by side with her son. Here she reviews some legal documents at the initial April 20 session of his sentencing hearing. – Photo: Malaika Kambon

And then, in typical kangaroo court fashion, after a trial by a jury not of his peers, Fly is convicted of three misdemeanor counts of resisting arrest, assault upon a police officer, and that ever present interfering with said officers’ dubious duties by videotaping them in their illicit performance.

Fly’s attorney, Severa Keith, fought valiantly for acquittal on all charges. In a message to Bay View readers after the trial, she wrote:

“While the outcome could have been much worse, we wanted better. DeBray was convicted by a jury that did not have the opportunity to hear the entire story. The judge refused to allow any evidence related to DeBray’s prior interactions with these officers, which included incidents of racist acts, threatening acts, taunting and evidence that their superiors had told them to video record Mr. Carpenter.

“Evidence of DeBray’s history of community activism was also excluded. All this was excluded on the basis that it would tend to ‘confuse the issues’ in the trial. Evidence was limited to the events of Oct. 18, 2011.

“The exclusion of this important and relevant history between DeBray and the officers who arrested him was shocking to me and made an already uphill battle a mountain. It is clear from watching the video of DeBray’s arrest that the incident did not start on that day; there was a history there, and the jury did not hear it.

“Rather than confuse the issues, the history of Officer Fry’s and Norment’s outrageous conduct actually illuminates and clarifies what happened on Oct. 18. Their bias, motives and personal animosity towards DeBray were not allowed in the trial.

“The effect of the exclusion of this evidence, which was going to be presented by four willing and brave witnesses, who were willing to speak up about the officers’ conduct, even though they feared retribution, became clear during the trial. During DeBray’s testimony, several jurors asked the question of whether he had had past contacts with these officers. Their questions went unanswered.”

Orwellian? Yep. Illegal? Yep. Happen before? Of course! Jack boots in your cheerios? You bet.

Elders confer outside the courtroom at Fly Benzo’s sentencing April 27: Claude Carpenter, father of DeBray “Fly Benzo” Carpenter, videographer and Oscar Grant Committee activist Earl Black and Bay View publisher Willie Ratcliff. Claude had spoken to the court April 20 on behalf of his son, correcting the misinformation in the record introduced by the prosecution. – Photo: Malaika Kambon

So here’s the re-mix, the part where the people step up and fight back more strongly.

Fly Benzo is alive, and we, the true people, would like him to stay that way. We object to one of our favorite sons being snatched, stolen and harassed.

Supported 100 percent by community, friends and family Fly, being an intelligent young man, has increased his writing and speaking out, for he realizes that not only have his First Amendment rights as guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution been violated, but he is now subject to enslavement via that same constitution’s illegal 13th Amendment as well.

“There have been many cases in which video evidence has contradicted an officer’s testimony and either an officer was convicted of wrongdoing or a suspect’s charges have been overturned or dismissed. With this great lack of integrity and accountability of the very ones who are paid to uphold the law, it is imperative, in the interest of justice, that civilians’ right to record police be preserved rather than criminalized,” wrote Fly in “The First Amendment Right to Record the Police.”

Thus, in a tremendous outpouring of worldwide love and community support, it seems as though half of Hunters Point, if not all of it at some point passed by Mendell Plaza, at Third and Palou on Wednesday, April 18, 2012, when 30-50 people held a press conference to emphasize that the freedom of one of its own, DeBray “Fly Benzo” Carpenter, was of the utmost importance.

And on April 20, even though Fly was not sentenced as scheduled, 80-100 people packed the courtroom and the adjoining hallways at the Hall of (in)Justice as influential members of the community spoke in court on Fly’s behalf. This is indicative of the fact that his status as a peacemaker, negotiator and mentor in the lives of many Bay Area youth and as a community, entrepreneurial and student leader and as a staunch advocate for the civil rights of dispossessed Afrikan and other communities of color is well known and documented.

So when DeBray Carpenter was sentenced on April 27, half the room was again filled with his supporters, with more on the way, and hundreds more awaited news of the outcome via blog post, email and social networking.

The community gathered around DeBray “Fly Benzo” Carpenter at an April 18 pre-sentencing press conference and rally in Mendell Plaza, where Fly was brutalized and arrested Oct. 18, 2011, for recording the police and where Kenneth Harding had been murdered by SFPD on July 16, 2011. On April 27, Fly was sentenced to stay away from the plaza, the heart of the community. From left in the back row are Archbishop Franzo King of St. John Coltrane Church, Lisa “Tiny” Gray-Garcia of POOR Magazine, Kenneth Harding’s mother Denika Chatman, Mesha Irizarry of the Idriss Stelley Foundation, Larry Felson of the October 22nd Coalition, DeBray “Fly Benzo” Carpenter, Fly’s attorney Severa Keith, journalist Alex Schmaus, videographer Kilo G Perry, Kenneth Harding’s uncle Marco Scott, Sharena Thomas, Fly’s cousin Kelley, writer TaLea Monet and her baby daughter; in front are activists Rebbeca Ruiz-Lichter and Kitty Lui. – Photo: Malaika Kambon

The court issued numerous fines and conditions that are in direct violation of his right to community activism via peaceable assembly, as guaranteed by the First Amendment. In fact, his sentence includes a “stay away” order from Mendell Plaza, the town square at the heart of Bayview Hunters Point that was a top priority community demand for decades and, since it was finally built, a place used more effectively for feeding, entertaining, educating and unifying the community by Fly Benzo than by anyone else.

Fly cannot go to court and protest the stay away order until June 8, over a month after sentencing. And in an attempt to humiliate him, the very officers who assaulted him demanded that he apologize to them for their obstruction of his lawful citizen’s right to videotape police officers performing their duties in a public space!

The following are the court ordered shackles imposed upon DeBray Carpenter as a consequence of his conviction on three misdemeanors, including “use of a cell phone to harass and intimidate officers in the performance of their duties”:

• Three years’ probation
• A jail suspended sentence of six months for each of the three misdemeanor counts of resisting arrest, placing a (cell) phone in the face of police officers, thus preventing the performance of their duties, and assault while being arrested. Counts 1 and 3 are to be served concurrently and count 2 served consecutively, so he’s under the threat of one year’s jail time if probation is violated.
• A stay away order, prohibiting DeBray Carpenter from being on Third Street between Oakdale and Quesada, i.e. Mendell Plaza and the next block south, unless passing by in a vehicle.
• Random warrantless searches and seizures of his person, property and home, to which he must consent
• A ban on weapon possession, which is a superfluous condition, since Mr. Carpenter was unarmed at the time of his arrest
• One hundred hours of community service, to be performed on weekends
• The completion of anger management classes
• An order to obey all laws and to remain at arm’s length from all officers
• Maintenance of full time school attendance and/or employment
• Participation in San Francisco’s SWAP street and sidewalk sweeping program
• Payment of nearly $1,000 in court fines and fees, including the civil liability fines to be imposed if probation conditions are violated.

Anybody who thinks this isn’t a pre-planned noose around this man’s neck, raise your hand!

This is the box where it all started, an electrical outlet attached to a palm tree in Mendell Plaza. On Oct. 18, 2011, SFPD pulled the plug on the boom box where music was playing and people were gathering in support of community investigation into the murder of Kenneth Wade Harding, Jr. Now the box is locked, a signal, like Fly Benzo’s stay away order, that SFPD, not the people, are in charge of Mendell Plaza. – Photo: Malaika Kambon

So are cell phones, cameras and camcorders now deemed lethal weapons? And is the use of them to record illicit police activity now deemed a criminal act?

Is this how the courts intend to overturn our rights as demonstrated to us by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale when the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, born of the Deacons for Defense in the South, began teaching the African community to watch and record the police terrorizing our communities?

And what if, while the stay away order is in effect, some sadistic “Officer Friendly” decides to force Mr. Carpenter to sweep the wrong sidewalk? And then busts him for doing so?

Can the Orwellian jackboots of 1984 come any closer to DeBray Carpenter and his family in 2012 without causing loss of life? I think not. Do you hear the jackboots coming? Do you hear the clinking of the chains? And did you notice that the noose is always made in America?

By virtue of standing up to authority, Fly Benzo has become a hero to many, and while many alleged activists and politicians are motivated only by greed and personal gain, Fly Benzo remains of and for the people.

Therefore, the shouts of “He’s Not Guilty! He’s Not Guilty!” “Free Fly Benzo,” show a fierce outpouring of community strength, love and commitment to fight for the freedom of one of its own as expressed by multitudes from the outset of his assault by SFPD. His wrongful conviction on Feb. 22 is a violation of his First Amendment rights.

TaLea Monet, Fly Benzo and comrades contemplate the sentence just handed down April 27. If Fly is free, then why is Mendell Plaza a no Fly zone? – Photo: Malaika Kambon

The April 27 court sentencing was the culmination of months in which Fly and the Bayview Hunters Point community took the battle for his freedom from the streets into the courts, which are just another kind of battlefield, albeit one with a pre-stacked deck.

For the reality is that DeBray has been repeatedly harassed for over a year by the SFPD for his activism as a freedom fighter analyzing the meaning and application of First Amendment rights in the context of struggle, building connections between his school and the Hunters Point community via the Black Star Liner Coalition he founded, feeding and empowering the people of his community, and demanding accountability for the murder of Kenneth Wade Harding Jr., while helping to debunk the media misinformation that sought to criminalize Kenneth Harding and seeks to criminalize all young Afrikan men.

The 22-year-old veteran community organizer has been accomplishing all of this while maintaining a 4.0 grade point average at City College of San Francisco and mentoring youth at POOR News Network.

So now, DeBray Carpenter faces three years of probation, during which time the state of California may violate him and send him to jail on the flimsiest of excuses. That’s 1,095 days and nights, until the year of his 25th birthday, with a noose hanging over his head.

And a particularly disturbing corollary to these months of proceedings is that merely being charged with a felony, despite being acquitted of all felonies, means that Mr. Carpenter is bound by law to submit DNA test results to the court to become part of a permanent state, local and federal criminal database and record against him!

That, along with the “stay away” order, is like giving Fly a felony conviction, sub rosa with the implication of drug involvement. This is outrageous and constitutes racial profiling and tracking and provides yet another way for law enforcement to escalate its harassment of him.

Mendell Plaza is the drumbeat and heart of BVHP. Community members meet to discuss events, share food and clothing, hear music and current news. Occasionally, it is also a hair salon! Here the son of Salahaquyya is getting his hair done by Sister Paige. Sala has a TV show. – Photo: Malaika Kambon

But the world now knows that the struggle continues in the heart of Bayview Hunters Point. They know that Fly Benzo’s fight is also against involuntary servitude, i.e. the re-enslavement of Afrikan people that is supported by the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

This amendment states: “Section 1: Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. Section 2: Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.” The re-enslaving clause is highlighted.

Fly Benzo’s fight against trumped up charges is a fight for the abolition of the prison industrial complex and its practice of the forced servitude (read: enslavement) of Afrikan men and women on its plantations, as dictated by an unjust government in the 21st century.

We, as the new abolitionists, know this, for we know that the commonly held belief that Afrikan enslavement ended in 1863 is fallacious. Michelle Alexander’s book, “The New Jim Crow,” and the PBS documentary “Slavery by Any Other Name” bears this out.

We know that the enslavement of Afrikan men and women continues to this day, well into the 21st century, via forced imprisonment, and is legal, as is borne out by the 13th Amendment of the U.S. constitution, a law passed by the U.S. Senate on April 8, 1864, by the House of Representatives on Jan. 31, 1865, and officially adopted on Dec. 6, 1865 – a law which is still on the books without change on this day in April 2012, 147 years later, in what U.S. President Barack Hussein Obama proclaims to be a “post-racial “ America.

Fear of Afrikan people gathering together dates from slavery and prompts today’s stay away order keeping Fly Benzo out of Mendell Plaza for exercising his First Amendment rights to free speech and assembly. – Photo: Malaika Kambon

This is a modern day form of delayed convict leasing, the system that was begun after the U.S. Civil War to provide prisoner labor to private parties, such as plantation owners and corporations like Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Co. Corruption, lack of accountability and racial violence resulted in “one of the harshest and most exploitative labor systems known in American history,” according to a source quoted by Wikipedia.

For dramatic insight into the 19th century convict leasing system see the entire PBS documentary “Slavery By Another Name, at http://video.pbs.org/video/2176766758/.

Fast forward to the 21st century.

Revolutionary journalist and prison abolitionist Kiilu Nyasha writes in “Slavery on the new plantation”: “Private companies operate 264 correctional facilities housing some 99,000 adult prisoners,” as opposed to the five private prisons and 2,000 prisoners of 1995, and California is touted as its “new frontier” by the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA).

“Employers (read: slavers) don’t have to pay health or unemployment insurance, vacation time, sick leave or overtime. They can hire, fire or reassign inmates as they so desire, and can pay the workers as little as 21 cents an hour. The inmates cannot respond with a strike, file a grievance, or threaten to leave and get a better job,” Nyasha writes.

Twenty-first century private companies including Microsoft and Wal-Mart now contract prison labor, replacing the 19th century convict leasing system – but not replacing the 19th century 13th Amendment, making the enslavement of African men and women legal.

And according to Michelle Alexander, author of “The New Jim Crow,” more Black people are enslaved behind bars today than were enslaved on the plantations in 1850, before the Emancipation Proclamation was signed.

These are the punitive measures that Fly Benzo faces for “standing his ground” and exercising his First Amendment right to record the police. Trumped up charges, a trial by a jury not of his peers, witnessing vital evidence being disallowed by an ultra-conservative retired judge – just as in actual physical chattel enslavement, these punitive measures are meant to dissuade, intimidate and silence others from following in his footsteps.

At the Free Fly Benzo press conference and rally on April 18 were many of the people who are leading Bayview Hunters Point and the Black community generally to a new era of power, peace and prosperity: Mike Brown of Inner City Youth, Kenneth Harding’s mother Denika Chatman, Kilo G Perry of Cameras Not Guns, Fly Benzo and Kenneth Harding’s uncle Marco Scott. – Photo: Malaika Kambon

In the battle for freedom fought between 1791 and 1804, Haiti defeated the greatest military might of that era: France twice in the form of Napoleon Bonaparte and his brother-in-law Gen. Victor-Emmanuel Leclerc; England, Spain and America via then Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson’s gift of $40,000 in foreign aid to Napoleon. Napoleon’s dream of preserving the “Jewel of the Antilles” by keeping its people – Afrikan Haitians – enslaved failed.

But Haitians did not stop with freeing themselves. Haitians fought for Afrikan freedom in the U.S., fought with Simon Bolivar to free South America, sent soldiers to fight with Mexican revolutionaries, fought side by side with Ernesto “Che” Guevara to free Cuba from the brutal Bautista regime, and provided a safe haven for all who fled enslavement.

Today Haiti still battles the same Euro-American corruption and greed that saw France extort $22 billion from Haitian coffers for her audacity in freeing herself from chattel enslavement.

Just as DeBray Carpenter is subjected to the “business as usual” imposition of having to pay nearly $1,000 in fines and $95,000 bail (read: ransom) into San Francisco’s prison coffers for the dubious distinction of being placed on probation for standing up for his First Amendment rights.

It is the same battle, many fronts, from Hunters Point to Haiti.

Taken as a whole, the continued global targeting of Afrikan people in general and youth in particular, is more than a violation of their civil rights. It is a violation of the human rights of Afrikans in the world and a violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the American Convention on Human Rights. Unlike Haiti, however, the U.S. Constitution legalizes enslavement, and criminalizes Afrikans who protest, while refusing to legitimize their right to do so.

Oh irony: that this targeting is not illegal according to the U.S. constitution, by virtue of its 13th amendment!

Yet in the face of escalating violence, Fly Benzo and others like him are courageously standing up and challenging the injustices written into the U.S. Constitution, as well as the ways in which we are attacked that are antithetical to rights supposedly guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.

We, the organizers and defenders of our communities from Hunters Point to Haiti, fight with dignity the viciousness of paramilitary invasion into our communities, fight the deliberate misinformation of mainstream media by speaking truth to power, and fight with our minds and with cameras, not guns. For this we risk being murdered and/or being forced into enslavement.

But unity is being forged and battle is being waged. Despite the targeted killings of our people, attacks upon our media and occupations of our communities, Afrikan people continue to resist and stand up against 21st century attempts at our global re-enslavement.

There is a growing community awareness that is positive and supportive of its freedom fighters, an awareness that knows that DeBray “Fly Benzo” Carpenter is not guilty! We salute our young community leaders such as he. We need them and must nurture and protect them from terrorists in blue.

Mr. Carpenter will be appealing his case on the battlefield of the courts. He and his family will continue to organize in the community and on college campuses.

As he reminded us through his rap, “My folks in Afrika need food; instead they’re sending them bombs.” He makes the vital connections and the struggle continues.

All power to the people!

Malaika H. Kambon is a freelance photojournalist and the 2011 winner of the Bay Area Black Journalists Association Luci S. Williams Houston Scholarship in Photojournalism. She also won the AAU state and national championship in Tae Kwon Do from 2007-2010. She can be reached at kambonrb@pacbell.net.

You can help by donating at a WePay page created to raise funds for DeBray “Fly Benzo” Carpenter, who was arrested, hospitalized and persecuted for copwatching, in order to help pay bail and court fees as well as for his appeal. Go to https://www.wepay.com/donations/freeflybenzo–debray-fly-benzo-carpenter-defense-fund.

On Friday, April 20, Fly Benzo spoke at a Redstone Building racism conference about racism, discrimination, the police setting him up on a bogus charge and Trayvon Martin. My good camera’s battery tanked and I couldn’t leave Fly’s wonderful address and his rap music unrecorded. – Carol Harvey, videographer

A press conference and rally to Free Fly Benzo! was held in Mendell Plaza April 18, two days before his pre-sentencing hearing. Listen to the outpouring of love for a young freedom fighter in this video by Occupy CCSF.

On Oct. 18, 2011, police who have been stalking Fly Benzo ever since he began protesting the SFPD murder of Kenneth Harding on July 16, 2011, viciously beat him when he video-recorded them in response to their video-recording of him. On Feb. 22, 2012, Fly was convicted of three misdemeanors for assaulting the police. Both the police murder of Kenneth Harding and the police beating of Fly Benzo occurred in Mendell Plaza, the heart of Bayview Hunters Point at Third Street and Palou. Though Fly and his supporters are relieved that Judge Jerome Benson did not deprive him of all his liberties by handing him the maximum sentence of three years in jail, his sentence does deprive him of the liberty of Mendell Plaza, the town square of Bayview Hunters Point, where Fly has long been the most effective organizer. The plaza is now a no Fly zone and a no free speech zone.

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• City College student ‘Fly Benzo’ put on trial after heated confrontation with SFPD
• Guest Amoeblogger JR Valrey presents ‘The Black Experience Study Guide: My top 7 books, movies and albums for Black History Month’
• Protesting police murder of Alan Blueford and war on Afrikans
• The mass incarceration of the Black community: an interview with Michelle Alexander, author of ‘The New Jim Crow’

Pack the courtroom Friday, April 27, 9 a.m., Department 27 or 29 at 850 Bryant, San Francisco

by Earl Black

Fly Benzo, known for his mentoring of youth, holds Nailah Amari Bey, one of his staunchest supporters. – Photo: Malaika Kambon

We should not just sit by doing business as usual while his freedom is about to end. We have an opportunity here to make a difference. We must mourn and seek justice for our dead, but we should just as strongly fight for the freedom of our living.

We need to own that courtroom. Occupy Oakland can do it: “Occupy Fly’s hearing.” Hundreds of people will make a difference.

This case is about Fly taking a stand. He is not a “defendant”; Fly is putting the SFPD on trial. The right to videotape police is on trial here. This case has immense educational value for all of us.

We need to own that courtroom. Fly is putting the SFPD on trial. The right to videotape police is on trial here.

“Occupy Fly’s hearing” and everybody video the police, not in the courtroom but in the hallways and outside. Occupy Oakland is organized. We can do this. “Occupy Fly’s hearing.” Bring your phones, cameras and camcorders and use them. Post this everywhere!

Standing up for righteousness: Interview with Claude Carpenter

Earl Black: Claude Carpenter talks about a life of “standing up for righteousness” and what that means for him, his wife and his son, Fly Benzo (DeBray Carpenter). As happened to his father before him, Fly Benzo faces jail time for standing up for rightousness against the police, against state repression and against housing and employment discrimination in his community of Bayview Hunters Point, San Francisco.

At least 80 people from all over the Northern California Bay Area packed the courtroom April 20 in support of Debray “Fly Benzo” Carpenter, unjustly convicted for exercising his First Amendment right to photograph the police and organize for justice after the SFPD murder of Kenneth Wade Harding Jr. on July 16, 2011. – Photo: Malaika Kambon

Whenever you are willing to stand up and tell the truth, you’re going to find a whole lot of opposition because some people just don’t want to be exposed for where they’re coming from, [especially] when you choose to stand up for righteousness like Fly Benzo is doing.

Myself, his mom, the types of examples we set as being business people but yet we come from the ghetto; we come from the projects. We just had a chance to upgrade our economic standards by standing up for our rights and not just accepting things for the way they are.

Barbara Banks, mother of Debray “Fly Benzo” Carpenter and a contractor and community leader in her own right, is always there standing firm, side by side with her son. Here she reviews some legal documents at the initial April 20 session of his sentencing hearing. – Photo: Malaika Kambon

And what enables him to do this is his intelligence. He’s a very intelligent young man. I’d say he’s a chip off the old block. His mom is a very intelligent African American woman; his father is a very intelligent African American man. And DeBray is a chip off the old block.

I never thought that he would turn out to be a political activist, but I am so proud that my son chooses to stand up – and I stand up alongside him. Every opportunity he gets he stands up for me and his mom, and that is one of the most beautiful things that you can experience as a father: your son standing up for our people you know, where you can just step back.

You know, when he stands up, I step back and I let him do the talking because we have to prepare our young people to assume the torch, to be able to take over and continue to stand up for what they believe. And this is what my son does; this is what Fly Benzo does.

I experienced it myself. I experienced being taken to a jury trial just for standing up for righteousness, so I know what it’s like for my son.

Photographer-videographer Earl Banks completes an interview with DeBray Carpenter’s father, Claude Carpenter, who spoke to the court on behalf of his son, clearing the record of misinformation introduced by the prosecution. – Photo: Malaika Kambon

We have to come out in force. We have to be at his sentencing hearing Friday. We have to stand up with him to let him know that he is not standing alone.

There’s people who believe in what he’s standing for that’s willing to stand up with him, so what we have to do, we have to come out in force. We have to be at his sentencing hearing when he comes back for sentencing [on Friday, April 27, 9 a.m., at 850 Bryant in Department 27 or 29], and we have to come out in numbers to let them know you just can’t make an example out of Fly because he’s standing up for what he believes.

And if we believe in Fly, we have to stand up by his side to where he’s not alone. It’s difficult to see your son when you know how decent a person he is being subjected as a political prisoner, because that’s what he is, someone that’s willing to stand up for what he believes.

They haven’t discouraged Fly, but we have to stand up with him to let him know that he is not standing alone.

Bay Area writer, photographer, videographer and activist Earl Black can be reached at ephilipblack@netscape.net. Transcription by Adrian McKinney.

On Oct. 18, 2011, police who have been stalking Fly Benzo ever since he began protesting the SFPD murder of Kenneth Harding on July 16, 2011, viciously beat him when he video-recorded them in response to their video-recording of him. On Feb. 22, 2012, Fly was convicted of three misdemeanors for assaulting the police. He faces up to three years in jail at his sentencing Friday, April 27, 9 a.m., in Department 27 or 29, 850 Bryant, San Francisco. Pack the courtroom!

Related Posts

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• Police critic Fly Benzo keeps catching hell since police murder of Kenneth Harding
• Threats or payback?
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Local participation on taxpayer-funded construction up 70 percent since city abandoned “good faith efforts” in favor of community hiring requirements

On March 27, Mayor Ed Lee and Supervisor John Avalos released the long-awaited report on the results of the first year of San Francisco’s landmark Local Hiring Policy for Construction. The verdict is that the law is successfully boosting employment for city residents.

Local Hire sponsor Supervisor John Avalos braved strong opposition to its passage and celebrates its success. – Photo: Joshua Arce

The San Francisco Chronicle points out that prior to the December 2010 adoption of the local hiring legislation crafted by Supervisor Avalos and a coalition of community and labor advocates, the City included, on average, only 20 percent local residents on taxpayer-funded construction. Local hiring reform advocates pointed to a failed decades-old law that required that contractors make no more than a “good faith effort” to hire locally. The City’s new local hiring policy was quickly embraced last year by former civil rights attorney Mayor Lee, who made successful implementation of the law a priority of his administration.

One year after the law went into effect on March 25, 2011, local resident participation on the same construction projects has jumped to 34 percent, an increase of 70 percent above “good faith” levels. Moreover, the new local hiring policy has increased racial and gender diversity on public works projects.

Yesterday, at the site of the rebuild of Cayuga Playground in the Excelsior District, community and labor leaders joined the Mayor, Supervisor Avalos, City Administrator Naomi Kelly, Workforce Development director Rhonda Simmons, Department of Public Works Director Mohammed Nuru, Public Utilities Commissioner Vince Courtney, Public Utilities Commission Assistant General Manager Harlan Kelly, Human Rights Director Theresa Sparks and newly-appointed CityBuild Director Patrick Mulligan – himself a working carpenter who secured his first job as a local hire in the Western Addition – to highlight the success stories of the first year of local hiring.

The current class of CityBuild hopefuls, eager to join other community apprentices who have recently joined unions such as the Operating Engineers and Sprinkler Fitters to pursue their construction career as a local hire, were on hand to show the City the faces of local hire.

“In the first anniversary of our historic Local Hire law, we are proving that we can rebuild our City’s infrastructure and ensure our public investments are creating local jobs for San Franciscans,” said Mayor Lee. “As our economy recovers, we must continue implementing the next steps of our Local Hire law to ensure that City investments in rebuilding our roads, parks and sewers keep putting City residents back to work.”

The supporters who pushed for the passage of Local Hire on many fronts are happy to see the increase in San Franciscans working on San Francisco-funded construction. – Photo: Joshua Arce

David De La Torre, secretary-treasurer of Laborers Union Local 261, one of the City’s key partners in CityBuild and local hiring, thanked Mayor Ed Lee for his leadership and commitment to providing job placement opportunities to San Francisco residents. “It’s not just a job, it is a career – and that’s how they should think of this. And that’s what [the CityBuild Academy] provides, the skillset. I come from the rank and file. I wish they’d had a class, an academy, like this when I was out there. It does give you a heads-up, a competitive advantage,” said De La Torre.

Community advocacy nonprofit Brightline Defense recently published “Putting Local Hire to Work,” a report on the long path to local hiring reform in San Francisco. Brightline, on hand to celebrate yesterday’s news alongside Chinese for Affirmative Action, the A. Philip Randolph Institute, Mission Hiring Hall, Young Community Developers and Sustainable Futures, noted that costs on all covered projects are, on average, nearly 7 percent below city engineer’s estimates.

“It’s still early, but these are clear signs that we can use the City’s local hiring policy to get more local workers onto public projects and break cycles of poverty in our most disadvantaged communities while continuing to save taxpayer money on construction,” said Brightline executive director Joshua Arce. “Our local hiring law is a new model for how community groups and organized labor can work together to rebuild cities.”

Joshua Arce, executive director of Brightline Defense Project, can be reached at josh@brightlinedefense.org. Brightline is a non-profit civil rights advocacy organization dedicated to protecting and empowering communities. Brightline’s efforts have included campaigns to shut down dirty fossil fuel power plants in Southeast San Francisco, promote local renewable energy, and develop local hiring policies and community workforce agreements to increase blue-collar and green-collar employment opportunities for residents of economically disadvantaged neighborhoods and environmental justice communities. Learn more at www.brightlinedefense.org.

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• America’s Cup clouded by local hiring, financing concerns
• Controversial anti-local hiring bill abandoned
• Local hiring victory party in San Francisco

by Carol Harvey

Editor’s note: Please sign the petition to save Archbishop King’s home: John G. Stumpf: SAVE ARCHBISHOP FRANZO KING’s HOME IN SF BAYVIEW.

I first met Archbishop Franzo Wayne King and felt his warm wit and humor on a sunny Saturday, Feb. 25, 2012, at the top of Russian Hill. Occupy Bernal performed a street theater auction of bankster Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf’s top floor condo at 1090 Chestnut overlooking Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay.

The 150-strong rabble’s fanciful bids for Stumpf’s foreclosed condo included a tree stump, five corrupt judges, Jean Quan, Ed Lee and The American Dream. Peppered among these bids, the archbishop tossed “a bag of peanuts,” “one pigfoot,” “a jail cell,” “one American nightmare” and “a one-way ticket to hell.” His final offering was “five security guards” – a nod to the burly dudes standing five-strong across the highrise entrance.

A tiny head poked from a top floor window. This Stumpf servant or granny peered far below upon the archbishop as he told the gathered riffraff:

“I’m Franzo King. I’m the archbishop of the St. John Will-I-Am Coltrane African Orthodox Church. Mr. Stumpf, your Stumpfing is over. No more Stumpfing on the poor. You have used machines to falsify court documents through robosigning rather than properly serving legally required notices to tenants and homeowners.”

Robosigning was just one crosshair in a meshwork of crimes pulled off by Wells Fargo and the other big banks.

Imagine Stumpf two months before semi-confessing his heist sitting down the hall from his indentured looky-loo in his ornate living room high above the riffraff. Around Nov. 18, 2011, DiversityInc’s CEO, Luke Visconti, apparently shot a YouTube video entitled “DiversityInc Interview With John Stumpf, Wells Fargo.”

“We’re all aware of the sub-prime crisis,” begins Visconti. “Wells Fargo was recently fined $85 million for practices related to subprime lending. Given the subprime crisis disproportionately affecting Black, Latino and/or women heads of household, why was Wells Fargo fined? How is Wells Fargo working to improve financial literacy in the Black and Latino communities?”

“It’s a fair question.” John Stumpf, freshly shaved, stuffed pinkly into his white shirt, appears tense as if he has eaten a plateful of rotten eggs. Describing his own “humble” beginnings, Stumpf explores Well’s Fargo’s “deep commitment to diversity.”

Despite Stumpf’s 2011 insistence on his diversity sensitivity, by March 28, 2012, three months later, he managed to throw at least five of his African American neighbors from their homes of 40 years, Dexter Cato and his four children from the Bayview and from Noe Valley, Kathryn Galves and her elderly sister. Cato had just lost his wife. Galves suffers high blood pressure multi-organ damage. Stress could kill her.

Archbishop Franzo King, an outstanding activist and diplomat on other critical community issues for years, has stepped out as a major spokesman on the foreclosure crisis. Here he speaks at the March 20 rally for a foreclosure moratorium resolution that was passed by the Board of Supervisors unanimously on April 10. – Photo: Christopher D. Cook

The local, national and world community knows, loves and respects Archbishop King’s work using sound to bring people to “the preexisting wisdom of God.” During my visit to St. John Coltrane Church at 1286 Fillmore on March 25, 2012, travelers from England and Washington state joined in prayer set to Coltrane’s African American classical music performed by the archbishop on saxophone and dedicated to spreading Coltrane consciousness.

After experiencing a live 1965 Coltrane performance, Archbishop and Rev. Mother Marina King began their mission in 1971. Hearing John William Coltrane’s music that night recreated the archbishop’s familiar childhood awareness of God’s presence. “We knew Coltrane’s music was an anointed sound that leapt down from the throne of Heaven out of the very mind of God and incarnated in one John Will-I-Am Coltrane. We beheld his beauty as the anointed of God.”

The name John means “the gift of God,” the Archbishop told me. God told Moses He was “I-Am.” “The I-Am [in Coltrane’s middle name, William] talks about the presence of God with the people. So instead of saying William, we say, ‘the Will of God manifested in the person of John Will-I-Am Coltrane.’”

Grace Martinez of ACCE, Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, has worked closely with the archbishop and other foreclosure fighters, who meet regularly at Vivian Richardson’s Bayview home. “If anything, the fight around foreclosures instills a sense of community and brings people together,” she said. “What other scenario would they be together in to feel that sense of camaraderie?

“The fight around foreclosures instills a sense of community and brings people together,” says Grace Martinez of ACCE.

“People love Archbishop [King]. He’s so fond of Vivian and Josephine. During the Christmas break, they chose not to meet. Archbishop sees Vivian at Walgreen’s, stops and goes, ‘I’ve missed you!’ And it’s like, it’s only been 10 days! People who live from block to block who have maybe engaged superficially, or not really, have built this sense of community around a common goal.”

For roughly 15 years, from the 1980s through the late 1990s, as late as 2007 – World Savings, Countrywide, many mortgage companies and banks inflated the housing bubble by selling toxic mortgage loans. Now this huge pool of mortgages is coming due, culminating in today’s foreclosure crisis.

“Whether or not the homeowner needed a loan, these financial institutions sold loans like a product ‘package.’ Many, like Archbishop King, who kept their mortgage payments current, were sold pick-a-payment loans through San Francisco’s World Savings Bank” – bought out by Wachovia, bought out by Wells Fargo, stated Grace, “like a shark eating a shark eating a shark.”

In 2005, a real estate agent in the African American community whom Archbishop King knew and believed to be reputable approached him saying, “People of color don’t really know how to invest.”

Grace reports the agent suggested to Archbishop King that if he took out the risky pick-a-pay option ARM (Adjustable Rate Mortgage) loan, “it will reduce your payments, fix your credit and you are essentially living on a gold mine because you have so much equity in your house. And this house is worth more than what you paid for it.”

Pick-a-pay loan payments begin small at only 1 or 2 percent. But the bank defers the interest, which varies on adjustable rate mortgages, to the back of the loan. It adds the rest of the interest to the principle at 5 to 9 percent. “Disgustingly,” said Grace Martinez, “I’ve seen interest rates go up to 18.9 percent.”

The agent would provide two, three or four options for your payment method with little explanation, or you were guaranteed you could refinance in a couple of years.

“These loans were presented to a lot of people in the community to refinance or to purchase the property,” stated Grace. The agenda of Wells Fargo and other big predator banks “was very premeditated,” she said, intentionally flooding communities with these loan products.

Wells Fargo has a long history of subprime lending. Grace explains that “in many reports by different groups, there is evidence that [Wells Fargo was] offering higher interest subprime loans to people of color. Those percentages by city were a lot higher than someone who was white and had the same income and credit score.”

A California Reinvestment Coalition report, stated Grace, presented evidence these banks went directly to churches and pastors in communities of color who did not understand these loan products. Banks gave donations to the churches if pastors pushed the products.

The archbishop’s case represents the bank’s underhanded method of flooding communities of color throughout the United States. The manipulative, low-information way banks sold subprimes exposed their predatory nature.

Two years passed. Archbishop King tried to refinance the loan. The brokerage firm had moved; the agent had disappeared. “With all of the fraud in the laws, I thought, like, ‘Wow! He did me.’”

The archbishop’s case represents the bank’s underhanded method of flooding communities of color throughout the United States. The manipulative, low-information way banks sold subprimes exposed their predatory nature.

He went to the San Francisco Housing Development Corp. HUD-certified counselor Ed Donaldson sent him to Kamala Harris’ new Fraud Division.

“There was never any intention to refinance. The good will of [the loan] was the question.”

At the DA’s office, he found a hand-generated document on which his signature had been forged. Someone had written “Franco” instead of his actual name, which is “Franzo.”

Grace Martinez believes the loan’s fraudulence was the agent’s lack of clarification of the loan’s nature and false promises about its potential. They looked to a man who didn’t need a loan, sold that loan on what the money could do, and walked away knowing the payments would skyrocket in two years.

Banks and mortgage companies phoned and knocked on the doors of Bayview residents day and night and sent masses of mail soliciting these loans.

Eventually, the DA dropped Archbishop King’s case. Grace’s assessment: too hard to prove fraud.

In 2007, the archbishop’s debt ballooned. He used loan money to pay off the loan.

“The kind of loan I had [monthly payments] went from $1,200 to $1,600 to $2,800.”

“I saw the future coming.” His stated income had “a shelf life.” His ill mother contributed to the household until she passed on Martin Luther King’s birthday 2011. Wells Fargo refused their modification request.

For two years, they depleted their “little savings,” now gone.

Says Grace, “You pay until you can pay no more. Many homeowners face losing electricity and food.”

In 2009, at NACA’s [Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America] Cow Palace foreclosure event where thousands slept over, the Kings couldn’t get a modification because they were current. “You don’t qualify until you’re at least two months behind.

“I’m looking up, and I’m another $30,000 to $40,000 dollars in arrears, only paying the interest.

In late 2008 or early 2009, he first approached Wells Fargo for the modification he never received.

Last year, 2011, they fell behind.

When the crisis hit banks, foreclosure departments hired huge staffs to manage the explosion. This created a level of incompetence gumming the works today.

States Grace, “You request a loan modification. If they respond and you are still current, they say you need to fall behind or “We didn’t get all the paperwork” or “Send the paperwork again.” This drags on for months.

She thinks it’s a combination of lying and incompetence – lack of a system to deal with the number of foreclosure cases and high turnover of staff within the bank.

Wells Fargo’s modification and foreclosure departments live in different cities or states. While the homeowner applies for mortgage modification, the lender pursues foreclosure. In this dual tracking system, the right hand knows not what the left is doing.

While the homeowner applies for mortgage modification, the lender pursues foreclosure.

On Archbishop King’s behalf, Occupy Bernal approached Supervisor David Campos, who sat down with Wells Fargo. The bank postponed the archbishop’s original sale date, Dec. 13, 2011. His case has apparently escalated to the CEO’s and vice president’s offices. They have barely responded.

He calls Wells Fargo each week. Yesterday he actually talked to someone. The bank employee repeated, “We still have a sale date next week. It’s still under consideration.”

“Last year John Stumpf made $19.6 million,” says Grace. “The Los Angeles Times wrote he’s just a farm boy who worked his way up the ranks.”

On March 18, 2012, L.A. Times’ Nathaniel Popper quoted Stumpf reprising the Visconti video: “We grew up on this 120-acre dairy and poultry farm. I’ve said many times, we were poor in some of the world values, but we were rich in some of the values that really are important, like personal responsibility, teamwork, respect for each other, helping out.”

Grace observes, “In 2010, these CEOs collectively made $160 billion in bonuses. Enough to pull everyone in California out of foreclosure times four. They profit off the suffering of others.

“Their lack of compassion or desire to work with people makes me think they’re sociopaths unable to see beyond their personal financial growth.”

Says Archbishop King: “I’m more concerned about my neighbor or his grandmother who labored in the shipyard to get these houses – living clean, doing right and being honest, hardworking people on the principles they brought from the South. Now some sucker is going to come up and hit them in the back of the head and leave them in the graveyard for dead.”

But, states the archbishop firmly, “These perpetrators, these bank guys, they didn’t just come after individuals; they came after Black institutions as well.

Says Archbishop King: “I’m more concerned about my neighbor or his grandmother who labored in the shipyard to get these houses – living clean, doing right and being honest, hardworking people on the principles they brought from the South. Now some sucker is going to come up and hit them in the back of the head and leave them in the graveyard for dead.”

“I think the Lord pulled me in it so I could speak for people who can’t speak for themselves.

“I love to beat the drums way early in the morning, about 3 or 4 o’clock. I don’t want the ‘master’ sleeping. I want him to know that the people in the village are upset. I don’t want him to rest. If this is an opportunity to keep the slave drivers from resting at night, then I’m glad to be about that.”

As I was finishing this article, Archbishop King reported that a person from Wells Fargo’s executive office named Jamie, claiming to be “an executive member of Wells Fargo Bank” told him his sale date was moved to Monday, May 7, 2012.

“I asked her, ‘How did that happen?’ She said, ‘Just talking.’ I don’t know what that means – me talking or her talking or whatever.

“She said she really wanted me to have a good weekend and a good Easter. She told me that in a week, I should hear something about my application.”

And have you?

“No. But they said that last time.”

Wells Fargo has failed to give the archbishop documented proof they own his house. He wants the bank “to show me the wet ink – that they, in fact, do own the property. That I, in fact, owe somebody something.” Until they do, “I don’t feel like I owe any money to them.”

Through the San Francisco Interfaith Alliance with Occupy, he found C.J. Holmes, housing policy analyst for Homeowners for Justice.

At Assessor-Recorder Phil Ting’s office together, C.J. checked the paperwork for his September foreclosure. “These people did not even have the authority to proclaim default of foreclosure for you,” she exclaimed. “They don’t get the deed of security until October.’”

Through his own research, Archbishop King found irregularities with his case. On the front end, there is the agent’s forgery. On the back end, the owner of his deed of security is in question.

Phil Ting’s Aequitas Compliance Solutions report shows many people, “This information is missing. We don’t have it, and we need it.”

“Banks need to show proof of ownership of these loans and their legal right for foreclosure. If they are not able to do that, then they can’t foreclose,” he stated.

Additionally, “I think that there are thousands of others that need principle reduction, not just a modification,” from the banks.

Therefore, his focus is on a foreclosure moratorium by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, along with state Attorney General Kamala Harris’ foreclosure legislation. He’s not satisfied with the state’s attorney’s paltry fine levied on banks for their fraud and theft.

“I’m concerned that there are thousands of people who were illegally foreclosed and evicted from their homes by a bank that had no authority or right to do that. I’m not comfortable with giving somebody $2,000 after you’ve wrecked their dream.”

Because the archbishop is in negotiations with Wells Fargo, his situation is being updated constantly. His perseverance is having an effect. On April 19, he received notification that his sale date has been extended yet again – this time to Thursday, June 21, 2012.

He feels homeowners need to know that individuals and whole communities working together have power to bring movement within banks. People should never give up, but take bold initiative to save their homes.

“A dare to fight is a dare to win!” he declares. “All praise be to God to whom all praise is due.”

Carol Harvey is a San Francisco political journalist specializing in human rights and civil rights. She can be reached at carolharveysf@yahoo.com.

Related Posts

• Stop Wells Fargo from foreclosing, evicting Kathryn Galves
• Foreclosure fighters and occupiers
• Bay Area unites to fight foreclosures, as Supervisor Avalos calls for foreclosure moratorium in San Francisco
• Help Dexter Cato and family reoccupy their home Friday
• Don’t you dare foreclose on my 91-year-old mother

Pack the courtroom for his sentencing Friday, April 20, 9 a.m., in Department 27 at the Hall of Injustice, 850 Bryant St., San Francisco

by Alex Schmaus

Press conference: Why do we say ‘Free Fly Benzo’?

This video frame shows SFPD’s brutal assault on Fly Benzo last Oct. 18, yet he was convicted of assaulting the police. – Video frame: TryntaGetIt

Fly Benzo has faced repeated harassment from SFPD for his activism. He is well known for speaking out about the death of Kenneth Harding at the hands of the police. Twenty-four hours after publicly criticizing the SFPD on public access television last July, Benzo was approached by police and arrested. Benzo was released from jail almost four days later with no charges filed.

Unemployment, predatory lenders and police repression are pushing Black people out of San Francisco. We need to defend young leaders like Fly Benzo from unjust incarceration if we are to defend the right of all Black people to live in the city.

The murder of Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Fla., like the murder of Kenneth Harding and the campaign of repression against Fly Benzo in San Francisco, expose both how deep racism runs in the United States and how many people are willing to resist.

Let’s push now for justice for Kenneth Harding and Trayvon Martin and freedom for Fly Benzo!

As Benzo wrote recently: “Live ya life like a KING, don’t be the Enemy’s pawn / My folks in Africa need food, instead they sendin ‘em bombs / Don’t be blind to what’s goin on right in front of ya face / And put ya fist up in the air and middle finger to the jakes / Cause sleepin’ on the movement’ll be ya biggest mistake / That’s why you still gone see me ridin ‘til my sentencin date!”

Trial of a resistance leader

Dozens of supporters mobilized to sit in court with Benzo during his trial. At the end, although he was convicted of three misdemeanors, he was acquitted on a felony charge of resisting arrest, and the jury failed to reach a verdict on a felony charge of obstructing police with the use of threats or violence. “While the outcome could have been much worse, we wanted better,” said Benzo’s lawyer, Severa Keith.

The charges stem from Benzo’s arrest on Oct. 18 of last year during a confrontation between a group of Bayview Hunters Point residents and San Francisco Police Officers Joshua Fry and John Norment. Bayview Hunters Point is the last largely Black neighborhood in San Francisco and one of the poorest communities in the Bay Area.

In Mendell Plaza, where Kenneth Harding was murdered by SFPD last year on July 16 and where Fly Benzo, one of his most vocal advocates, was arrested Oct. 18, community leaders Benzo and Kilo G Perry prepare to begin the Justice 4 Kenneth Harding March – in the pouring rain – on Jan. 22, 2012.

Police pulled the plug on the sound while Benzo was performing at a neighborhood demonstration against police violence the day before as well. But according to Keith, “The judge refused to allow any evidence related to [Benzo’s] prior interactions with these officers, which included incidents of racist acts, threatening acts, taunting and evidence that their superiors had told them to video record him.”

Keith said she was “shocked” that such evidence was excluded. She said she is planning an appeal of the verdict. “It is clear from watching the video of [Benzo’s] arrest that the incident did not start on that day,” said Keith. “There was a history there, and the jury did not hear it.”

As Benzo said: “The court system cannot be trusted. There were no Black people on the jury. I was judged by my race and the way I wear my hair. Slavery and racism are alive and well.”

Benzo is known for speaking out about the July 16, 2011, death of 19-year-old Kenneth Harding, who was shot at 10 times by the SFPD as he ran away from officers through Mendell Plaza. Bullets pierced Harding’s leg and neck and entered his brain, killing him. Police now claim that Harding died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

The cops were chasing Harding from a Muni transit platform for not having a transfer as proof he’d paid the $2 fare. At the time, Benzo told a local television station, “Regardless of if they found a gun or not, it’s the fact they chased him from the T-train over a [$2] transfer.”

Twenty-four hours after publicly criticizing the SFPD again, this time on public-access television, Benzo was approached by police and arrested July 23, 2011, near the intersection of Oakdale Avenue and Lane Street. Benzo was released from jail almost four days later with no charges filed.

Despite the hardship of $95,000 bail and time in court, Benzo is working to progress at City College. “I’m working on a paper about African heritage for my English class,” he said. “I’m not doing so well, but the teacher said it’s amazing I’ve been able to do what I have.”

Alexander Schmaus is a staff writer at The Guardsman, the student newspaper of City College of San Francisco, where DeBray “Fly Benzo” Carpenter is a straight-A student. Alex can be reached at alexschmaus@gmail.com or facebook.com/alex.schmaus. This story first appeared on Socialist Worker.

Related Posts

• City College student ‘Fly Benzo’ put on trial after heated confrontation with SFPD
• Open letter to Mayor Lee about violence in Bayview Hunters Point
• Fly Benzo is free, so why is Mendell Plaza a no Fly zone?
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• Right outside this stadium, police are killing our children

As the yellow school buses phase out, MTA officials tackle our responsibility to make sure young people can get to school – Tuesday, April 17, 1 p.m., in Room 400, City Hall

by Jaron Browne, POWER

San Francisco – The SFMTA board of directors will take a decisive vote April 17 on a resolution supporting free Muni for the city’s youth. At its April 3 meeting, the MTA board split 3-3, with half of the directors supporting free transit for all youth and half supporting a program for qualifying low-income youth. A broad-based coalition of youth, families and bus riders are advocating for free Muni for all youth.

“As the MTA board celebrates Muni’s 100th anniversary, I hope it will consider the legacy it will leave the youth of the city in the next 100 years,” said Leah LaCroix, president of the San Francisco Youth Commission.

“We can create a new generation of public transit riders that will sustain the system into the future, and help middle-income families that are struggling with the cost of living in San Francisco,” said Supervisor David Campos.

Cuts in school transportation and skyrocketing youth pass costs have led to the proposal for free Muni for youth. The San Francisco Unified School District has announced that it will cut the bus service by 43 percent over the next two years, slashing its fleet from 44 buses to 25 by 2013. Over the past two years, the MTA board has increased the price of youth passes by 110 percent.

On April 3, the MTA board directed staff to prepare a report about the budget implications of both proposals to help it make a decision today. Community organizations have raised concerns about budget trade-offs outlined in the staff report.

“The MTA staff has presented the board with a false choice between youth fares and bus maintenance,” said Jane Martin, organizer with POWER. “Our coalition research has shown that there is more than enough money available to both fund free Muni for all youth and make the investments the MTA has planned to keep the system running,”

The total cost of the free youth passes amounts to less than 1 percent of the MTA’s overall budget. Community advocates and members of the Board of Supervisors have identified funding for the youth program from a combination of local and regional funds earmarked to encourage new transit riders and support the needs of low-income communities. The coalition has also identified millions of dollars in savings for the MTA through management efficiencies: decreasing work orders, curbing overtime and better managing capital projects.

Youth and community organizations are continuing to advocate for free transit for all youth, but also acknowledge that, at the very least, making transit free for low-income families is progress.

“Should the political will to make transit free for all youth not be present now, then providing Muni to low-income youth would still be a huge victory for our city,” said Angelina Yu with the Chinatown organization Adopt-an-Alleyway. “To make it work, we must determine an income eligibility threshold that will not exclude working families and develop an application process that will not be overly burdensome on parents or exclude undocumented immigrants. Students have a responsibility to get to school and we need to meet our responsibility to get them there.”

More than 7,400 youth and parents from across the city have signed petitions supporting the proposal to make public transit free for all San Francisco youth. The Board of Supervisors, the San Francisco Youth Commission and the Board of Education have also passed resolutions in support of the initiative.

Agencies and community groups backing the free Fast Pass for youth include the SFUSD, People Organized to Win Employment Rights (POWER), Adopt-an-Alleyway in Chinatown, Jamestown Community Center, SRO Families Collaborative, MORE Public Transit Coalition, Urban Habitat, San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, Sierra Club, Senior Action Network, California Parent Teacher Association San Francisco Chapter Board, San Francisco Organizing Project, Harvey Milk Democratic Club, Japanese Community Youth Council, Bernal Heights Neighborhood Center, Gray Panthers, Thrive House, Mo’ Magic, Mission Beacon, Western Addition Beacon, Vietnamese Youth Development Center, Coleman Advocates for Youth and Families, Filipino Community Center, Chinese Progressive Association, South of Market Community Action Network, Potrero Hill Democratic Club, and Lavender Youth Recreation and Information Center

A vote in favor of free youth passes from the SFMTA board will allow the agency to seek approval for funds from the San Francisco County Transportation Authority (SFCTA). The SFCTA is comprised of the 11 members of the Board of Supervisors.

Jaron Browne, lead organizer for POWER (People Organized to Win Employment Rights), can be reached at jb@unite-to-fight.org or (415) 864-8372.

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Resolution supports California Homeowner Bill of Rights and principal reductions

by Raquel Redondiez

Supervisor John Avalos is backed by foreclosure fighters Vivian Richardson, Ross Rhodes and Kathryn Galves at the rally prior to the April 2 hearing on the foreclosure moratorium. – Photo: Occupy Bernal

“The foreclosure crisis has already devastated so many lives. This resolution is an important step to support solutions to prevent millions of Americans from losing their homes. And, while we are eager to see state and federal reforms enacted to provide much needed reprieve, we must do what we can TODAY to stop preventable foreclosures,” said Supervisor Avalos, who represents District 11, one of San Francisco’s areas hardest hit by foreclosures.

“Every day, families, seniors and children wake up with the fear of losing their homes through foreclosures. I look forward to working with Mayor Ed Lee to use the full weight of the City in urging banks, especially our City banking partners, Wells Fargo, Bank of America and Union Bank, to stop foreclosure activities until currently proposed state and federal measures to protect homeowner and tenant rights are in full effect,” added Avalos.

In a recent decision by the Louisiana Bankruptcy Court, Judge Elizabeth Magner chastised Wells Fargo by ordering the bank to pay a New Orleans man $3.1 million in punitive damages after five years of litigation over allegations of mortgage-servicing misconduct. As she explained in her decision, “Wells Fargo has taken advantage of borrowers who rely on it to accurately apply payments and calculate the amounts owed. But perhaps more disturbing is Wells Fargo’s refusal to voluntarily correct its errors.

The resolution expresses support for the California Homeowner Bill of Rights, which are five legislative measures introduced at the California Legislature designed to provide basic standards of fairness and transparency in mortgage processing, community tools to prevent blight, tenant protections, enhanced law enforcement to defend homeowner rights and a special grand jury to investigate foreclosure crime. The resolution also supports Attorney General Kamala D. Harris’ call for a suspension of foreclosures on loans controlled by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and a broad demand for the Federal Housing Finance Agency to provide principal reductions to keep families in their homes.

In addition, Avalos’ measure urges the mayor to direct the City’s lobbyist in Sacramento to advocate for the passage of these measures, urges all city and county officials and departments to work proactively to ensure that San Francisco residents do not fall victim to unlawful foreclosure practices.

Raquel Redondiez can be reached at amihan33@gmail.com.

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by Noah Frigault and Zoe Polk

Coinciding with the 40th anniversary of the War on Drugs, on Thursday, April 12, 2012, at 5:30 p.m. in Room 250 of City Hall, the San Francisco Human Rights Commission (HRC) will join the national conversation on drug enforcement policies and practices in the United States by hosting a public hearing entitled “The Human Rights Impact of the War on Drugs.” Taking place at San Francisco City Hall, this public hearing will focus on the impact the War on Drugs has had in San Francisco and document testimony from affected community members, criminal justice experts, direct service providers and community-based organizations on this critical issue.

Last year, on April 14, 2011, the Human Rights Commission voted unanimously to join the Reentry Council of San Francisco and send a letter to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and the mayor urging them to develop and enact legislation to prohibit discrimination in San Francisco against people with prior arrests and/or convictions – many of whom are low-income people of color targeted in their communities by discriminatory police practices.

For example, in California, African Americans are 10 times more likely than whites to be imprisoned for possession of marijuana, despite similar drug use rates across color lines. In 2006, African Americans were arrested in San Francisco for drug offenses at five times the rate of African Americans statewide and at 16 times the rate of other races in the City. Young African American women ages 10-29 were 12 to 21 times more likely to be arrested for drug felonies. When compared to women of other races in their age groups, African American women ages 18-69 were 25 to 30 times more likely to be arrested for drugs.

In 2006, African Americans were arrested in San Francisco for drug offenses at five times the rate of African Americans statewide and at 16 times the rate of other races in the City.

The hearing will examine the lifetime impact of drug conviction on employment, housing opportunities, education, family, community and access to health programs. As the result of a felony conviction, people are ineligible to vote while they are in prison, ineligible for public housing and food stamps for the rest of their lives, unable to receive federal financial aid for college, and subject to legalized discrimination in employment, housing, and parental rights, among other impairments.

“This hearing is a part of our continuing effort to conduct education and outreach on the ‘Unfinished Agenda’ report and the discrimination against people with criminal records and its disproportionate impact on the African American and Latino communities,” said Commissioner Sheryl Evans Davis. “We’re finding a lot of people want more accurate information, particularly about drug arrests and convictions. Through this hearing and the report that will follow, we hope to parse out concerns, myths, biases and facts about the criminalization of drugs.”

According to Executive Director Theresa Sparks, “Across the country, religious leaders, community organizations, public safety experts, Republicans and Democrats are examining how effective the War on Drugs has been. People are asking questions about the impact it has had on families, crime, neighborhoods and civil rights. We hope to explore those impacts in this hearing.”

The HRC has invited speakers from the American Civil Liberties Union, the Youth Commission, All of Us or None, the S.F. Drug Users’ Union, the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights and the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, among others, to attend and give testimony. In addition, the HRC is actively seeking community members to share their stories and recommendations in public comment.

During public comment, anyone who shows up and fills out a comment card will be given two minutes to air their views to all present, including all of the Human Rights Commissioners and influential community leaders the HRC has invited to attend. If you’re not able to make it to the hearing, consider submitting written testimony. This testimony will be used after the hearing in preparation for a report the HRC will present with recommendations to the City. Written Testimony Forms are available upon request and will be available at the hearing.

The hearing will be held at 5:30 p.m. on April 12, in Room 250 of City Hall. For more information, as well as an opportunity to submit written testimony online, visit www.facebook.com/HRChearing.

Noah Frigault, a student at Hastings College of the Law and an intern at HRC, can be reached at noah.frigault@sfgov.org. Zoe Polk, a supervisor at HRC, can be reached at zoe.polk@sfgov.org.

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by Kevin Weston

Minister of Information JR Valrey, host of Block Report Radio, broadcast on KPFA during Wednesday drive time, 8-9 a.m., is at the controls.

That’s drive time for me; while I’m dropping my daughter off, I tune in. JR Valrey does a solid job delivering Black sounds through the 94.1 FM signal.

I don’t listen to the radio often; I’m not a big radio dude since podcasts, Sirius, Pandora, MP3s and iPods. Black thought and talk and Black sounds – aural communication guided by the history, struggles, current crisis, triumphs of African-American people in the United States and African people in the global diaspora – is almost nowhere to be found. So if I can find it, I check for it.

I grew up listening to KDIA, KSOL, KPOO – all at the time Black-owned stations – for most of my childhood in Oakland in the ‘70s and early ‘80s.

I took them for granted then. Now, other than KPOO, the venerable old war horse of Bay Area Black radio, still cranking on Divisadero Street in San Francisco to this day, Black sounds, other than pop music, are almost non-existent anywhere on the broadcast airwaves.

In the Bay Area, you have a couple of options of significance: the resilient and steadily relevant Alive and Free/Street Soldiers Radio on 106.1 KMEL, the Clear Channel-owned Hip Hop and R&B station Sunday nights from 8-10 p.m., and Block Report Radio on the Morning Mix.

JR Valrey introduces Angela Davis to apprentices and programmers at KPFA before interviewing her in March 2009. – Photo: Adalia

I want my $150 back, KPFA.

In a media landscape where the dominant images and sounds associated with African peoples are negative, distorted, confused and suspect, losing the Morning Mix/Block Report Radio would be a blow to our community in Northern California.

The first guest on what may be JR’s last show, Black linguist Dr. Ernie A. Smith, is the kind of Black scholar that you’d never know existed leaving it up to the mainstream and alternative media. The interview with Valrey focused first on the history of Ebonics – ebony and phonics or Black sounds – and the information was revelatory. Smith revealed the African origin of language itself and debunked the old colonial European notion of pidgin and creole.

Dr. Smith then gave an articulate and thorough breakdown of the politics behind the 1996 Ebonics controversy in Oakland, but also put that in the context of the mis-education of African American children in Oakland then and now. Valrey’s questions carefully guided Smith and the listener through the white noise of the flash-in-the-pan story, fixated on the sensational, to a clearer truth.

Kevin Weston and Bay View publisher Willie Ratcliff strategize on the future of the ethnic press at an event in the early days of New American Media, then New California Media, around 1996. The Bay View was a founding member of NAM, which now advocates for 2,000 ethnic news organizations nationwide.

Supposedly the cancellation of the Morning Mix/Block Report Radio isn’t a done deal. I plan on calling the station and letting them know what it should do. Save the Morning Mix/Block Report Radio, KPFA, or it’s a problem. You won’t get any more bread from me – and you will get talked about.

If you’d like to help the Block Report stay on the air, contact

• Andrew Leslie Phillips, interim General Manager, andrew@kpfa.org, (510) 848-6767, ext. 203
• Carrie Core, interim Program Director, carrie@kpfa.org, (510) 848-6767, ext. 209

Kevin Weston, a regular contributor to the Bay View in the ‘90s, has long been the editor of New America Media and YO! Youth Outlook Multimedia. He can be reached at kweston@newamericamedia.org.

Block Report Radio on KPFA’s Morning Mix broadcast March 28, 2012 (click to listen)

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by Scott Braley

Editor’s note: The Bay View agrees with Scott Braley on opposing the recall of Tracy Rosenberg, board member of KPFA 94.1 FM radio and of the Pacifica network KPFA founded 65 years ago. We’re posting this commentary in support of Tracy and also because Scott’s observations are important to the controversy over the morning program lineup that will be debated Wednesday, March 28, 2 p.m., at a staff meeting to be held in the station, located at 1929 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, Berkeley. A memo to the staff from interim General Manager Andrew Phillips follows this commentary.

The last major controversy over programming was largely resolved following a large, spirited and friendly rally on Nov. 11, 2010, that brought many warring factions together. The shows under the gun then were Hard Knock Radio, Flashpoints and Full Circle. Here, Minister of Information JR, who had no show then, is at the mic, and Anita Johnson, host with Davey D of Hard Knock Radio, holds the bullhorn. – Photo: Lisa Dettmer

This is not about personality clashes, and this is not the left shooting itself in the foot. This is about two completely different views of what KPFA should be.

KPFA Worker/Save KPFA believes that the station should be run by the paid staff, with some input from longterm unpaid programmers. They believe that the Local Station Board (LSB) which includes elected members from paid staff, unpaid staff and the community, should be an advisory body only. This is their clear position, with which I do not agree.

The loosely affiliated “community view,” which Tracy Rosenberg represents, and which I agree with, wants a station that is directly responsible to the listeners and the greater community, as well as the paid and unpaid staff. Tracy is being attacked because she has been a tireless advocate for new communities and new voices on the air.

Along with a lot of you, I tried to get KPFA out of its worn-out rut, so we fought for a Local Station Board where all the stakeholders had representation in deciding what the station should be and how it should be run.

Before the Mary Francis Berry takeover attempt in 1999, the station was run, in practice, by the paid staff, with longterm unpaid programmers having some influence in decisions. Pacifica stations (WBAI in New York City, WPFW in Washington, D.C., KPFT in Houston and KPFK in Los Angeles) generally were run by the various paid staffs and longterm programmers.

In both cases there was an unspoken, or possibly spoken, agreement that if longterm programmers and staff didn’t rock anyone else’s boat, they could keep control of their airtime and their jobs – essentially, forever. And in fact, many programs have been on the air for decades. There have periodically been attempts to revive the Program Council, in which stakeholders from the community, paid staff and unpaid staff devise some agreed upon basis for evaluating programs, decide whether they should continue, or if that airtime should be opened up to new programs and, if so, what should the new programs be?

The Program Council and the evaluations have been constantly dragged down and dismembered. Why? Well, partly because it is always difficult to get anything decided at KPFA, but mainly because if there were real evaluations, it would be very hard to argue that a program which had been on the air for two or three decades should keep its airtime when there are so few programs for the Black community, for analysis of political trends in Asia, for new forms of music, for the Occupy/Decolonize Movement, for any number of younger people who yearn to get on the air.

It would be very hard to argue that a program which had been on the air for two or three decades should keep its airtime when there are so few programs for the Black community, for analysis of political trends in Asia, for new forms of music, for the Occupy/Decolonize Movement, for any number of younger people who yearn to get on the air.

I’m not saying that any of this is monolithic. Some paid staff are not part of “KPFA Worker.” And lots of unpaid programmers do not line up with any tendency. I am not saying that individuals on any side of this argument are terrible people – or perfect people. I like many, heck, I like most, of the programs and programmers who have been on-air for decades. Some of them do great work. But what I personally like, as a 65-year-old white progressive, is not a viable demographic to build either the left or the New California.

KPFA is a community station. Or should be. Personal friendships or love of a certain program should not be the deciding factor about how KPFA is run. The attempt to recall Tracy Rosenberg is based in the desire for everything to continue as it has for decades: Decisions will be made by the people who owe their paychecks and their airtime to each other – much of the paid staff and some of the longterm unpaid programmers.

If Tracy is recalled, we will not have a “community” station. We will have a “listener-supported” station. There is a big difference. And in an era of increasing militarism and repression, I think we need a station that is responsible to the community, as well as to its staff, paid and unpaid.

In an era of increasing militarism and repression, I think we need a station that is responsible to the community, as well as to its staff, paid and unpaid.

Join with Joy Moore, David Barsamian, Mary Berg, Dennis Bernstein, Tanya Brannan, Bonnie Falkner, Maria Gilardin, Noelle Hanrahan, Jack Heyman, Mesha Irizarry, Barbara Lubin, Adam David Miller, Miguel Molina, Robbie Osman, Michael Parenti, Andrea Pritchett, Mary Ratcliff, Art Sato, Carol Spooner, Dave Welsh, Joe Wanzala and many others. Please vote NO on the recall of Tracy Rosenberg. She has been a tireless (unpaid) worker for democracy and community radio.

Go to stopthekpfarecall.org for more information, and feel free to email me to discuss this, at scottb@igc.org.

Proposed changes in KPFA morning programming

by Andrew Leslie Phillips, general manager (interim), KPFA Pacifica Radio 94.1FM

Note: These issues will be discussed at two staff meetings this Wednesday, March 28, at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m., and your input is welcome.

KPFA is an exceptionally powerful radio station transmitter at 59,000 watts. Its 304-foot transmitter is located at 1,500 feet on Grizzley Peak in the Berkeley Hills. Its influence is potentially enormous, as its signal reaches both Northern and Central California. But its power cannot be realized unless many more people of color and young people listen regularly.

Mornings 6-10 a.m. in the winter fund drive came up shorter than usual this year. Al Jazeera (6-7 a.m.) has been receiving very little support for some time now and Democracy Now (7-8 and 9-10 a.m.) has not been as strong as in the past.

The Morning Mix (8-9 a.m.) has been improving and brings new community connections and diversity to the morning but the format comprising five different hosts is not usually a formula which works in a strip. On one hand the Morning Mix is authentic community radio and those who stepped up to contribute have done very well under difficult circumstances: new voices, new communities, new opportunities for unpaid staff. But we have not been able to build audience numbers and income sufficient to meet the expectations of the overall morning drive time slot.*

With all of the above in mind, I am proposing substantial changes to the weekday morning line-up. We are considering dropping Al Jazeera, which will open an hour in the morning. We are considering moving Democracy Now to 6 a.m., which opens 7 a.m. for a new morning segment.

I suggested the News Department move some resources to the morning where the largest potential audience is. I believe if we make this change, the wider audience will acknowledge we are trying to reach a successful compromise to enable KPFA to move forward and hopefully increase our morning drive revenue stream.

There are two proposals:

1) News Department produce hour 7-8 a.m., to help develop a new KPFA morning program. The Morning Mix remain at 8 a.m.

2) News Department produce hour 7-8 a.m., to help develop a new KPFA morning program. Mitch Jeserich and Letters and Politics move to 8 a.m., which opens the hour at 10 a.m., where Letters currently is.

• 6-7 a.m.: Democracy Now
• 7-8 a.m.: KPFA Morning News Program produced out of KPFA News Department
• 8-9 a.m.: Letters and Politics with Mitch Jeserich
• 9-10 a.m.: Democracy Now
• 10-11 a.m.: Against the Grain three days, plus Project Censored
• 11-Noon: Morning Music
• Noon-1 p.m.: Talk Back with unpaid staff hosts

In terms of the kind of morning news program, a combination of latest overnight headlines, Al Jazeera segments as appropriate, current previous day news freshened with live updates. One host doing phoners with news makers, mostly local. It should have time checks and weather – perhaps three 7-minute segments, perhaps 4, maybe one live guest but not the whole show. Of course, it would be flexible within form. Like the evening news, there could be rotating hosts. There should be time for promos: 2 minutes. This would apply to Morning Mix too.

This is a summary of what has been discussed so far. These issues will be discussed at two staff meetings this Wednesday, March 28, at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m., and your input is welcome.

Andrew Leslie Phillips, general manager (interim) or KPFA Pacifica Radio 94.1FM, can be reached at andrew@kpfa.org or (510) 848-6767, ext. 203. To listen to KPFA, tune your radio to 94.1FM or go to www.kpfa.org.

*One Morning Mix host, Minister of Information JR Valrey on Wednesdays, consistently met or exceeded his fundraising goal. He also increased listenership, especially from communities of color, more substantially and more quickly than any host in memory.

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by Carol Harvey

The Occupy the Auctions and Evictions Campaign has put out an urgent action alert to the public to help stop Wells Fargo’s eviction of 63-year-old African American foreclosure and eviction fighter Kathryn Galves, her elderly sister and their dog from her San Francisco Noe Valley home at 1164 Church St.

On Tuesday, March 20, Supervisor John Avalos held a press conference on City Hall steps where he and his colleagues, Supervisors Campos, Chiu, Kim, Mar and Olague called for suspension of all San Francisco foreclosures. Before the press conference, Kathryn told this reporter, “I am on the sheriff’s calendar for tomorrow.”

Speaking to supporters and housing activists, she repeated Wells Fargo’s intention to evict her the following day, Wednesday, March 21.

To Kathryn’s great relief, however, Occupy Bernal’s Stardust stepped in, telling the crowd they had obtained a one-week postponement of Kathryn’s eviction to Wednesday, March 28. To Kathryn, this postponement felt like a stay of execution.

Wells Fargo’s previous City Hall auction sale of $1,081,000 failed to turn up a buyer for her very valuable home. But more than its financial worth, this widow’s residence, which she has owned for 40 years, is crucial for her continuing health and safety – even her life.

Kathryn Galves stands firm at the front door of her home of 40 years, determined to fight eviction by Wells Fargo.

Kathryn’s eviction threat is making her ill

Kathy has multiple medical problems. Her out-of-control blood pressure has led to progressive multi-organ shutdown – “problems with my kidney, my heart, my lungs, pulmonary edema, fluid retention in my body.” For several years, she has worked with her doctors to find a blood pressure medication to stop spikes as high as 245/71. “Now it’s 40/81,” she told me, “but my doctor still wants it to go lower because the closer to normal the better chance of my organs not getting more damaged.”

Back-to-back eviction and medical deadlines put Kathy under the vice-like stress that endangers most foreclosure victims’ health. On March 28, her postponement date, she also has an appointment with a urologist for her kidney problems.

The anxiety she feels for herself, her elderly sister and their dog is worsened by the threat of losing computer connections and a C-PAP machine for her sleep apnea.

Background information

Kathryn’s entire income is from her fixed annuity and her sisters’ live-in caretaking.

A military widow, Kathryn purchased her home in 1972. In the intervening years, its increased value prompted her to invest in out-of-state property with a Section 8 (subsidized housing) tenant whose defaulted payments lost her money on this investment.

Supervisor John Avalos held a press conference Tuesday, March 20, on the City Hall steps where foreclosure auctions are held to announce his introduction of a foreclosure moratorium. – Photo: Carol Harvey

As recently as December 2011, Kathryn had found a neighborhood business man willing to purchase her home and allow her, her sister and their dog to remain as renters. “There was a real estate investor in my neighborhood that wanted to buy my house from the bank. The bank is not cooperating.”

Despite many requests by both Kathy and her prospective buyer, Wells Fargo has consistently refused to be present to bargain about selling the home to the buyer.

When the sheriff’s deputies made a pre-eviction visit, they directed Kathy to the Eviction Defense Collaborative, where she promptly went for help. She learned of Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) at Avalos’ March 20 foreclosure suspension press conference, where she spoke and garnered much-needed community support.

According to ACCE’s Erin Franey, she and Grace Martinez, community organizers, will meet with Kathy tomorrow, March 23, Friday, to decide how ACCE can become involved and discuss next steps to save the home.

You can help Kathryn Galves, her sister and their dog keep their home

Please go to either or both of these websites: http://occupytheauctions.org/wordpress/ and/or http://occupyevictions.org/wordpress/. There you will find this action alert:

Thomas French, Occupy Bernal's first Foreclosure Fighter, came to Supervisor Avalos' press conference and participates in all Occupy Bernal's many anti-foreclosure actions. - Photo: Carol Harvey

“Subject: URGENT: Postpone eviction of Kathryn Galves, 1164 Church St., San Francisco, Loan No. 0044722973”

“Please immediately direct the San Francisco Sheriff to postpone the eviction scheduled for Kathryn Galves and family at 1164 Church St. in San Francisco. Kathryn has Wells Fargo mortgage loan no. 0044722973 and has found a cooperative buyer for the property who is willing to retain her and her sister as tenants. Please set up a meeting right away with the Wells representative empowered to negotiate a sale of the home, Kathryn, and the prospective buyer.”

Contact information:

• Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf, call (866) 878-5865 and email john.g.stumpf@wellsfargo.com
• Wells Fargo Assistant Vice President for Communications Ruben Pulido, call (415) 852-1279 and email ruben.pulido@wellsfargo.com
• Wells Fargo Director of California Governmental Relations Alfredo Pedroza, call (415) 396-0829 and email alfredo.pedroza@wellsfargo.com
• Wells Fargo Board of Directors, email boardcommunications@wellsfargo.com

Planned events to help Kathy:

• Sign up at http://occupytheauctions.org/wordpress/?p=588 for a shift of eviction defense on Wednesday, March 28, at the home of Kathryn Galves at 1164 Church St. near 24th Street in San Francisco.
• Join and invite your friends to the Facebook event for this eviction defense March 28 at 5:30 a.m.: https://www.facebook.com/events/199695646806610.
• Join and invite your friends to the Occupy Wells Fargo Noe Valley protest from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday, March 24. Download and distribute the protest flyer, at https://www.facebook.com/events/151817174941259.

Carol Harvey is a San Francisco writer and videographer whose work is published by many Bay Area periodicals. Email her at carolharveysf@yahoo.com.

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Rally to support Avalos’ resolution Tuesday, March 20, 12 noon, on City Hall steps, Van Ness side, where foreclosure sales are held

Read below about foreclosure fighters Dexter Cato in Bayview Hunters Point, Nell Myhand in Oakland and Rosie Alvarado in Antioch

by Raquel Rodriguez

San Francisco – Supervisor John Avalos is joined by his colleagues, Supervisors David Campos and Christina Olague, and a coalition of community organizations and homeowners fighting foreclosures to demand suspension of foreclosure activities in the City and County of San Francisco until such time as state and federal measures are in place to protect homeowners from unfair and unlawful actions by banks and mortgage companies.

Supervisor John Avalos decried the foreclosure crisis at an Occupy SF rally Oct. 12, 2011, that temporarily shut down Wells Fargo Bank. In addition to his call for a foreclosure moratorium, he proposes a municipal bank for San Francisco that could underwrite loans and mortgages for local businesses and homeowners, helping the city survive economic collapse. – Photo: Christopher Cook

“We have already lost so much due to the unconscionable predatory lending practices and foreclosure fast-tracking of the banks and mortgage industry. We have to do everything in our power to stop any more foreclosure activities until such time that state and federal reforms are in place,” said District 11 Supervisor John Avalos, who represents neighborhoods with some of the highest numbers of foreclosures in the city.

The resolution also supports Attorney General Kamala D. Harris’ call for a suspension of foreclosures of loans controlled by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and broad demand for the Federal Housing Finance Agency to provide principal reductions to keep families in their homes.

“We have already lost so much due to the unconscionable predatory lending practices and foreclosure fast-tracking of the banks and mortgage industry. We have to do everything in our power to stop any more foreclosure activities,” said District 11 Supervisor John Avalos.

Avalos’s measure urges the mayor to direct the city’s lobbyist in Sacramento to advocate for the passage of these measures and urges all city officials and departments to work proactively to ensure that San Francisco residents do not fall victim to unlawful foreclosure practices and calls on banks, especially Wells Fargo, to suspend foreclosure activities until such time that state and federal measures are in place to protect homeowners from unfair and unlawful practices.

Foreclosure victims such as Monica Kenney will be speaking. Monica lost her job in 2010. She reached out to Wells Fargo, her lender, to seek a modification or assistance. In June of 2011 they offered her a forbearance agreement only to sell her home at public auction to Fannie Mae the following day. Monica is still in her home, and Fannie Mae has rescinded the sale back to Wells Fargo. Wells Fargo has been slow to resolve her case and communicate with Monica.

Fighting foreclosure in San Francisco’s Bayview Hunters Point

by Dave Welsh

San Francisco – Dexter Cato – dock worker, union carpenter, born and raised in the historically African-American neighborhood of Bayview Hunters Point – is fighting eviction, and the community is “reclaiming” his Bayview home.

Dexter Cato, now a leading foreclosure fighter, was one of the impassioned speakers outside the Russian Hill top floor condo of Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf on Feb. 25. “Mr. Stumpf,” he cried out, “We ain’t taking it no more. You have targeted low income neighborhoods and minority groups.” Again March 14 in the pouring rain, Dexter roused the crowd outside the downtown San Francisco office of Lloyd Dean, CEO of Dignity Health and a Wells Fargo board member. On March 16, a large crowd of neighbors and supporters rallied to reclaim Dexter Cato’s home, where he is a widowed father of four children. – Photo: Bill Carpenter

Members of Cato’s union, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), signed up on a clipboard and took shifts for a “people’s occupation” of his house. Eight ILWU members stood on the upstairs porch and led the crowd chanting: “Nationalize the banks! Nationalize the banks!”

A neighbor spoke out: “They’re foreclosing on my home too. It’s happening up and down this street. Wells Fargo and the other banks are terrorizing this community.”

“Why isn’t the government intervening to help these people?” asked Alex Haile, another neighbor. “It’s because the banks run the government, that’s why. This is not a people’s government. This is the capitalists’ government, and they don’t give a damn about a worker losing his home.”

“Wells Fargo and the other banks are terrorizing this community.” “The banks run the government, and they don’t give a damn about a worker losing his home.”

Mesha Monge-Irizarry, whose only son was shot at close range and murdered by police in a San Francisco movie theater, spoke out from Cato’s porch: “This neighborhood was built with the sweat and blood of Black people, who came here to work in the Hunters Point Shipyard. Now their descendants are fighting to save their family homes – to keep from being forced out of their own community by these criminal banks. Power to the hood!”

The action was organized by the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE), successor to the ACORN organization in this state, which issued a statement: “Dexter Cato, ACCE Foreclosure Fighter and ILWU member, and his family were victims of Wells Fargo’s ‘dual tracking’ program. That’s when one part of the bank says they want to work with you while a separate department continues to foreclosure on your house.

“In 2009, after Dexter and his wife, Christina (a city bus driver) had applied for a modification, his wife tragically passed away in a traffic accident. Still grieving, he is now the only supporter of their four children.” According to ACCE, the bank offered him a modification, and he sent in a payment for that modification. However, the bank foreclosed anyway, sold his home at public auction, and had the sheriff post a notice to vacate on his door.

Call for a moratorium on all foreclosures

“We are demanding that Dexter Cato and families throughout San Francisco get affordable modifications and that all banks … apply a widespread MORATORIUM on all foreclosures,” the ACCE statement continued.

“Until then, for every home Wells and big banks take, ACCE Foreclosure Fighters, unions, clergy and the community are going to defend and take it back. If the banks refuse to do a moratorium on foreclosure, we will do our own until our demands are met.

“Right now, neighbors, unions and supporters are re-claiming his home. They are committing to continue to take back homes until banks, like Wells Fargo, work with borrowers and apply a widespread moratorium on all foreclosures,” ACCE concluded.

How you can help

Please contact Rubin Pulido at Wells Fargo, at rubin.pulido@wellsfargo.com or (415) 852-1279, and demand that he rescind the sale and eviction of Dexter Cato, 1401 Quesada Ave., San Francisco.

Sign the petition to Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf: http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/o/6267/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=5661

Militant Oaklanders thwart foreclosure sale

Oakland – The bank and real estate company thought they were going to auction off Nell Myhand’s home at noon on March 8, but Nell and about a hundred of her friends had other ideas.

Nell Myhand (with clipboard) is backed by a throng of fellow foreclosure fighters demanding an end to lenders’ land grabs. Next to her, holding the bullhorn, is Maria Poblet of Causa Justa: Just Cause. They were too much for the foreclosure auctioneer, and so far, Nell is still in her home. – Photo: Judith Scherr

“We have to fight tooth and nail for our homes,” said Maria Poblet, executive director of Causa Justa:Just Cause, a Bay Area social justice organization. “For the banks like Wells Fargo, it’s just an investment. But for us, these are our homes.

“For the banks like Wells Fargo, it’s just an investment. But for us, these are our homes.”

“Women’s rights and housing rights, these are not separate things,” she said. “The majority of foreclosures are on women-led households. But they’re picking a fight with women that they will not win.”

The Latino community and Occupy Oakland turned out in force for the action. They chanted: “No, no, no way – Ain’t gonna be no sale today” and “No se vende.”

A sign said: “These are hard-working people’s homes: We will not allow them to be sold.” People jeered at the sheriff’s deputies: “Why aren’t you out investigating all this mortgage fraud?”

Homeowner ‘occupies’ her own home to forestall eviction

A day later, 40 miles away from Oakland in the foreclosure hotbed of Antioch, a real estate broker named Rick Fuller counted on seizing the home of Rosie Alvarado at 4421 Pampas Circle on behalf of investors. It was part of a foreclosure action that Alvarado says was full of irregularities.

But she is also a leader of a homeowners group called the Bay Area Moratorium, which is fighting the foreclosure epidemic and calling for a two-year moratorium on all foreclosure actions so people can stay in their homes.

So Rosie and about 20 of her friends “occupied” her home in direct defiance of the foreclosure machine that has stolen so many thousands of people’s homes in this region. When the real estate broker drove up to the house in his SUV, he was turned away by a group of angry homeowners, shaking their fists at him.

Resistance to the foreclosure mills is growing and spreading, as people discover the power of collective action. On Feb. 29, a crowd from the Bay Area Moratorium met in Sacramento to present a toughly-worded “Notice and Complaint of Violation of Civil Rights” to Kamala Harris, the state attorney general – signed by over 70 homeowners including Rosie Alvarado and Delia Pedroza-Aguilar, co-founder of the Moratorium group.

The complaint said: “National banks, debt collectors, law firms and investors are parties that have conspired … against homeowners with their willful disregard of applicable law and willful collusion upon the court to evict and cheat homeowners out of their homes through a fraudulent foreclosure ….

“This claim of ownership to our homes and land without a judicial trial by jury … without access to an appeals process, constitutes an unfair final judgment by a court, represents a taking of property without due process, and is in violation of the Fifth and 14th Amendments to our federal Constitution,” the complaint continued.

“The national banks, law firms and investors have until now abusively used the organs and institutions of the government in their fraudulent quests to obtain court orders … knowing that judges would … rule in their favor and grant them, through fraud, illegal writ of possession to our private lands and properties.”

The homeowners’ complaint demanded that Attorney General Harris and county sheriffs cease and desist from enforcing fraudulent evictions and foreclosures, citing “the defrauding banks’ improper securitization of promissory notes”; “utilization of ‘robosigners’ – essentially a forgery”; and the banks’ “inability to provide unaltered, original/wet ink signature copy on the note.”

Postscript

One of the protesters at Dexter Cato’s house on March 16 was Rosie Alvarado, who a week earlier had “occupied” her own home with 20 friends to forestall her own fraudulent eviction. However, this week was another story. While she and foreclosure fighter Delia Pedroza-Aguilar were in San Francisco helping to “reclaim” Cato’s house, 50 miles away armed police broke into Alvarado’s home in Antioch and ordered her family members out of the house. Alvarado plans to file a complaint with the district attorney.

“I’m so sorry about what those bastards did in Antioch,” said Mary Ratcliff, editor of the San Francisco Bay View newspaper, “but so grateful Rosie and Delia were able to drive the 50 miles to support Dexter Cato in the Bayview … in the pouring, driving rain!”

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Dexter Cato was one of the impassioned speakers outside the Russian Hill top floor condo of Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf on Feb. 25. “Mr. Stumpf,” he cried out, “We ain’t taking it no more. You have targeted low income neighborhoods and minority groups.” Again today in the pouring rain, Dexter roused the crowd outside the downtown San Francisco office of Lloyd Dean, CEO of Dignity Health and a Wells Fargo board member. Protesters clad in hospital gowns spoke in front of a 12-foot poster saying, “Foreclosures make us sick.” – Photo: Bill Carpenter

Dexter Cato was born and raised in Bayview Hunters Point. His family continues to live in the home that he grew up in, next door to the home where he and his wife raised four kids. His father was a postal worker for over 38 years and his mother was a manager for Woolworths for 28 years. They have both passed away.

Dexter has been working since his was 15 years old. He has worked as a florist delivery driver, a carpenter and a longshoreman. He has been an active union member of Local 22, Local 10 and Local 91.

In 2000, Dexter and his mother bought the home next door to their family home. He had every intention of raising his family in the neighborhood.

In 2008, Dexter was the survivor of a work incident where his friend and co-worker fell to his death. Dexter took time off work to grieve.

Dexter and his wife refinanced in 2008 with Option One. The initial rate was 6.15 percent and it would cap out at 14.15 percent.

During this time, Dexter’s wife Christina, a Muni driver and SEIU 1021 union member, handled the finances. As the loan continued to increase, they submitted a request for a modification.

In 2009, because of a traffic accident, Dexter’s wife passed away, leaving Dexter and his four children – at the time, 10-year-old twins, a 14-year-old and a 21-year-old – with reduced income and at a loss with their finances.

Dexter, grieving, attempted to modify the loan. When the bank – by this point, Wells Fargo – began to claim missing paperwork, Dexter hired a lawyer who claimed that he would stop the foreclosure and get a modification. At one point, Dexter was paying $4,000 a month to this lawyer for the modification.

On April, 2, 2010, after being denied a loan modification and still under the impression that his lawyer was helping him, Dexter Cato was given a sale date for the price of $532,743. The lawyer claimed that he had stopped it.

On Oct. 25, 2010, Wells Fargo sold the home back to itself for $260,000. Dexter Cato wasn’t aware this had happened.

In October of 2011, Dexter Cato and his children received an unlawful detainer notice. Dexter, distraught, quickly moved his family out. On Feb. 29, Wells Fargo served the final eviction notice to his empty house.

However, Dexter Cato and his children want their home back. They want the home that his wife and their mother helped create.

Dexter doesn’t just see this fight as a fight for himself, but a fight for the community, stating, “An injury to one is an injury to all!”

Solidarity wins: Bayview Hunters Point residents are taking back their homes

by Grace Martinez, ACCE

Many of you have helped keep Bayview residents like Vivian Richardson and Carolyn Gage in their homes. And, most recently, several of you got up at 6 a.m. to help defend Monica Kenney’s home from eviction.

However, the banks continue to foreclosure on families and destroy our neighborhoods. This week and the next few weeks are critical to the fight against Wells Fargo and all banks.

This Friday, we are continuing the campaign against Wells Fargo and all banks in our neighborhood by taking back our homes!

Every home Wells and big banks take, ACCE (Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment) Foreclosure Fighters, unions, clergy and the community are going to defend and take back. If the banks refuse to declare a moratorium on foreclosures, we will declare our own until the banks work with families for fair and affordable solutions.

Join us this Friday, March 16, at 10 a.m. at 1335 Quesada at the home of Carolyn Gage, ACCE Foreclosure Fighter, who took back her home last November, for a rally and march to defend our homes.

For more information or to get involved in the fight and in planning more takebacks, call Grace Martinez of ACCE at (415) 377-6872 or email at gmartinez@calorganize.org.

Dexter Cato was a major speaker on Feb. 25. – Video: Carol Harvey

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