
It has been 83 hours since I last chewed on anything. I stand with all my brothers still on hunger strike inside the SHUs at Pelican Bay and Corcoran and on the mainlines in Centinela and Folsom and all other prisoners throughout California and the nation in solidarity with the hunger strike.

Rwanda’s controversial policy to eradicate all thatched roofs in the country by the end of this month has led to forced evictions and left many without shelter.

Sylvia Darensburg, an African-American mother of three in East Oakland, experiences the reality of transit inequality. Sylvia relies on AC Transit to get to her job during the day and to college classes at night, each trip taking an hour or more each way.

Construction unions have historically fought affirmative action and excluded Black hiring, and they are still getting away with it. They huddle up to the good unions and pay off our elected officials with campaign donations.

A group of artists, the Sit/Lie Posse, has liberated six San Francisco billboards and 60 bus shelter ads to defeat Proposition L which would ban sitting on the sidewalk. “Symbolically we are asking: Who owns the city, who controls public space and what is the fate of San Francisco?”

Just as Hurricane Katrina revealed racial inequalities, the recovery has also been shaped by systemic racism. According to a recent survey of New Orleanians by the Kaiser Foundation, 42 percent of African Americans – versus just 16 percent of whites – said they still have not recovered from Katrina. Thirty-one percent of African-American residents – versus 8 percent of white respondents – said they had trouble paying for food or housing in the last year.

The bell tolls for the chains of the dictatorship. It is time for Rwandans to claim their inalienable rights, to refuse the abject feeling of being despised. Our response to sham elections is a non-violent resistance to challenge the legitimacy of the looming masquerade and its subsequent results.

Some members of the lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) community would rather divide than build bridges between communities. For instance, Charles Knipp, a racist and culturally insensitive White gay male, dons a Black face, becoming Shirley Q. Liquor and telling jokes that reinforce stereotypical images of Black women and Black culture.

From San Francisco’s Fillmore, Hayes Valley and Western Addition, Black people and other members of the community of the poor were removed. The removal was a new form of segregation and discrimination. The government unit that led the charge was the Redevelopment Agency. The sociological name for this removal was and is gentrification.

A time bomb is ticking, waiting to explode in communities of color across the nation. Law enforcement officers have become an occupation force. If we are to have peace, we first must place economic justice at the top of our agenda. The day Lovelle Mixon died, those close to him mentioned two explanations: He dreaded being sent back to prison yet he couldn’t find a job.