Tuesday, March 19, 2024
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Tags Gwendolyn Westbrook

Tag: Gwendolyn Westbrook

Community gathering and conversation on how to stop the violence in...

The SF Black communities are coming together to demand that those they elect be more proactive in helping to create what’s necessary, with community-centered leadership, to build strength, safety, health and wellbeing within SF Black communities, with a focus on the roots and impact of increasing violence.

Yolanda Jones: Celebrating a Black Queen and a BOSS!

Huge love, Herculean accomplishments and eternal light burning bright in the Bayview Hunters Point Community and beyond as beloved Black Queen Yolanda Jones transitions to the Ancestors spreading her human spirit and ‘We gonna do this!’ along her journey into the Universe. Rest in peace Yolanda Jones.

New documentary exposes COVID crisis at private SF prison

Under contract with San Francisco, the historic Compton’s Cafeteria, now signed as 111 Taylor St. Apartments, has been operating as a private prison aka halfway house run by the multi-billion-dollar multinational corporation GEO Group, which like the ICE detention centers GEO runs, has been infested with COVID-19 due to deliberate indifference to the wellbeing of those under their thumb.

District Attorney Chesa Boudin announces Community Liaisons program

It’s winter and yet DA Chesa Boudin is making lemonade for the people from the lemons we’ve been puckering on for too long by immediately launching the new Community Liaisons program, a team for each district highlighting more emphasis on the voices of residents in the historically biased prosecutorial environment.

The United Council for Human Services and the Curtis Family: Serving...

Light, hope, COVID-19 testing and new winter coats to warm cold community members are the Christmas version during a brutal pandemic of the ongoing love shared by Gwendolyn Westbrook, Mother Brown’s, the Curtis Family C-Notes and so many others from both in and outside the Bayview neighborhood.

City’s dynamic ‘First Family of Song’ brings tunes to COVID-19 testing...

Today at 1:30 p.m. at 49 Kiska Road in San Francisco’s Bayview Hunter Point, the acclaimed Curtis Family Cnotes will team up with Mother Brown’s Dining Room in a unique partnership providing free food and song to support the city’s COVID-19 testing and prevention efforts.

Mother Brown’s serves up respect on the day of gratitude

While mainstream media wasn’t/isn’t looking – ever – Dr. Willie Ratcliff joined in love and gratitude at Mother Brown’s celebrating the Bayview community and Thanksgiving with the best homemade, healthy food laced with the usual warmth and good tidings to feed the spirit and body.

Bayview community rallies voters for an important election

Voting in the Bayview community is being encouraged and supported with education, registration and myriad other day-to-day needs by SF Bay View Assistant Editor Malik Washington, Managing Editor Nube Brown, Mother Brown’s, Gwendolyn Westbrook of UCHS and so many others to lift Black voices for Black rights.

Black Votes Matter!

SF Bay View Editor, Mary Ratcliff, guides new Assistant and Managing Editors, Malik Washington and Nube Brown, and they have hit the ground running. Malik and Nube highlight the power and urgency of our vote, our Black vote, and their combined commitment to activate uplift, voice and change for people harmed by oppression.

Community seizes MLK Park as immediate COVID relief for unhoused neighbors

“Thanks to you guys, I got to eat today. I didn’t know where I was going to sleep tonight. The park is comfortable and quiet, and we don’t have no drama. It’s peaceful. This community right here, we’re great. I feel real safe.”

More police, criminalization and gang suppression will not end homelessness in...

“The End of Policing,” a new book by Alex Vitale, examines the histories and failures of policing policies and provides examples of alternatives that successfully divest from dependence on police while strengthening the community. Vitale’s chapters on criminalizing homelessness and gang suppression in particular can be a useful tool in revealing ineffective policies in effect today in San Francisco. Join the San Francisco No Injunctions Coalition on July 12, City Attorney Dennis Herrera’s last planned court hearing to remove names from the city’s gang injunctions.

Beds 4 Bayview

Last month, community members, local environmental justice activists, human rights organizers, housing activists and neighbors got together and had a meeting. We shared a lot of information: falsified soil samplings at the Shipyard, the personal histories of environmental cancers, continual denial of resources allocated to District 10, HUD deficiencies, disparaging life expectancy rates, alternatives to policing, the obstacles to shelter beds, solidarity vs. charity and so much more.

Making a case for beds in the Bayview

It’s Friday afternoon at the drop-in center known as Mother Brown’s on the corner of Jennings Street and Van Dyke Avenue. Despite the iron-gated door fronting the entrance, people drop in freely to check their mail, take a shower, do laundry or chill out in the reception area. For a nominal fee, Mother Brown’s rents out lockers. Gwendolyn Westbrook, the director of the United Council of Human Services – the official name of Mother Brown’s – as well as staff, describe the place as a community center. Client Johnny Scott likens Mother Brown’s to a family. “This here is a place where people get along,” he says.

In search of human rights: Is homelessness a crime punishable by...

The Concerned Network of Women partnered with the United Council of Human Services, governed by Gwendolyn Westbrook and Dr. Betty McGee, to issue hand warmers and hot chili to homeless people. On New Year’s Eve, we visited the homeless living under the Cesar Chavez Freeway exit. While under the freeway, we witnessed an eviction notice dated Dec. 29, 2016. Evicting the homeless serves little purpose, other than further implying that homeless people have no human and/or civil rights. Here is one solution: Bring services to the encampment, not locks and chains.

Third Street Stroll – and beyond

NO PEACE UNTIL JUSTICE IS SERVED OVER THE POLICE KILLING OF 26-year-old MARIO WOODS, a HUMAN BEING, MASSACRED BY five SF POLICE officers on DEC 2, in the Bayview, on THIRD STREET, between Fitzgerald and Hollister, across from CORNERSTONE BAPTIST CHURCH, at Third and Paul, where funeral services were held days later. SHOCKING to see a video, aired on TV, taken at the scene, of the killing!!! HORRIBLE – UNTHINKABLE!!!

Morongo Band of Mission Indians gives over 900 Thanksgiving turkeys to...

Five San Francisco groups that help provide Thanksgiving dinners to the homeless and less fortunate received more than 900 free turkeys this week from the Morongo Band of Mission Indians near Palm Springs. The turkeys will help feed nearly 14,000 people across San Francisco. Statewide, Morongo donated another 13,000 turkeys this month to mark the 30th anniversary of the tribe’s Thanksgiving Outreach program.

Third Street Stroll …

The evening of Friday, Feb. 20, honored to be the keynote speaker at the San Francisco African American Historical and Cultural Society’s Black History Exhibit Opening and Reception. 2015 celebrates the Society’s 60th anniversary, that embraced the theme, “A Century of Black Life, History and Culture: 1915-2015.” BILL HOSKINS, Executive Director and Curator, AL WILLIAMS, President and Chair, Black History Committee.

Morongo gives 1,000 Thanksgiving turkeys to aid needy in San Francisco

The Morongo Band of Mission Indians near Palm Springs continues its tradition of giving as it provides another 11,000 turkeys statewide to help those in need. Five San Francisco groups that help provide the homeless and the less fortunate with a hot meal on Thanksgiving received 1,000 turkeys Friday donated by Morongo. The 1,000 turkeys will help feed an estimated 20,000 people in San Francisco.

Beds for Bayview: Your voices count

As the CEO of United Council of Human Services, I am calling for full support of the homeless beds facility, which will benefit many working-class residents and other homeless citizens of Bayview Hunters Point. A homeless bed facility is essential in the neighborhood with the City’s second largest concentration of homelessness. We need your support in making the 100-bed facility a reality.

Time to come in now!

Mother Brown was the name many of the homeless people gave Barbara Brown back in the day when food was scarce and shelters remote. Barbara Brown passed away in 2006. She left a legacy in Bayview Hunters Point that began with the use of her own money to feed the hungry out of her car. This small deed evolved into a full service kitchen.