Tag: conflict of interest

The injustice continues with Ahimsa Porter Sumchai’s ongoing exposure of the relentless suffering and death attacking the residents of Bayview Hunters Point – the result of the U.S. Navy’s poisoning the land with no cleanup or accountability, handing it off to profiteering developers, years of government and corporate corruption and greed, and crimes against humanity, culminating in three federal Superfund sites now confirmed.

DDDDC ingredients for Hunters Point Bayview horror story mystery cake: Navy paid Tetra Tech subsidiary hundreds of millions of dollars for botched cleanup – busted for fraudulent radiation testing – scapegoat the fraud on “rogue employees” – another subsidiary of Tetra Tech previously accused of similar shenanigans at the Industrial Excess Landfill in Ohio – “We now know what they [the EPA] did to us and how they did it.” Bake at 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit for at least one decade.

For over three decades, thousands of organizations and hundreds of thousands of individuals around the globe have mobilized to save Mumia Abu-Jamal from execution, to overturn his conviction, to demand his freedom. Without these international mobilizations, crucially including the organized labor movement, we would not have saved Mumia from two warrants of execution and compelled the state to concede defeat in trying to execute him.

We, as concerned law students at the University of San Francisco, are outraged at the officers of the San Francisco Police Department who shot and killed Mario Woods without justification. This use of unnecessary lethal force, and subsequent denial of fault by the San Francisco Police Department, epitomizes the failure of American policing that has become the spotlight of protest in communities around the country.

Keith Cook delivered this speech on Dec. 5 at “Cops vs. Free Speech,” a public forum organized by the Labor Action Committee to Free Mumia: Thank you for inviting me again to be a part of this essential, timely discussion that we should be having across our nation. Free speech – for most of us who are activists, what does the Fraternal Order of Police, commonly known as the FOP, have to do with it?

Tracy Rosenberg is the executive director of Media Alliance, an action and resource organization in Oakland advocating just, accountable and diverse media. She has been a listener representative on the KPFA Local Station Board since 2007 and a member of the Pacifica National Board of Directors since 2010. We asked her to comment on the situation from her perch as an insider. Here’s what we talked about.

Like President Clinton in his first run for president, Oakland’s city auditor developed her creds in the conservative community by creating a Sista Souljah moment. She publicly spanked two Black City Council members. These council members, Desley Brooks and Larry Reid, were trying desperately to level the economic playing field in Oakland. They were trying to integrate the money.

"They are trying to find any way possible to evict us." “I’m under pressure to accept a Section 8 voucher, which I do not want because I will have to pay more for rent than I do currently, and I’m only getting unemployment at the moment." "There is nothing wrong with my home. It may need to be painted, but I can live around that, and there is no reason to force me out of my home. I want to stay and raise my kids."

By the 1980s, the largest population of African Americans in the state of California owned homes, property and businesses in the Bayview Hunters Point district of San Francisco. Now, the BVHP Redevelopment Project threatens to deprive them of their land, historical legacy and culture, fulfilling the United Nations definition of a government sponsored genocidal campaign.

According to documents recently released online by the Office of the City Manager in Berkeley, the Berkeley Housing Authority (BHA) may receive kickbacks from a local non-profit housing developer in a scheme to privatize, revitalize and sell off its public housing. The scheme involves a vice president of consultant ICF International. Berkeley’s public housing residents oppose the sale of their housing and invite the public to join them Saturday mornings from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. at Intercity Services, 3269 Adeline St., Berkeley.