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Taser community forums raise unanswered questions
March 30, 2013
Police Chief Greg Suhr and the SF Police Commission finally scheduled and held the required community forums, where Suhr and Comdrs. Richard Corriea and Mikail Ali described the Electronic Control Weapon (ECW) proposal and invited community input. This updated story includes a report on the Tenderloin community forum, organized by residents. All testimony was anti-taser.
Medical neglect and pepper spray bring death to mentally ill man in SCI Albion’s dark hole
March 29, 2013
Amid rumors that SCI (State Correctional Institution) Albion has been authorized to establish a brutal and bloody regime in its solitary confinement hole, prison guards murdered Stony Schaeffer (DW8560) in his cell using chemical munitions – Oleoresin Capsicum (O.C. or pepper) spray – and electro-shock weapons. Stony, 44, had been in the hole for the past eight years straight.
Gov. Brown tries to justify unconstitutional prison overcrowding, backslides on Corrections budget
January 11, 2013
The state of California filed another response to the federal court order to reduce dangerous overcrowding in California’s prisons, urging the court to end the 137.5 percent population cap. Gov. Brown’s 2013-14 budget echoes comments earlier this week that the administration has deserted plans to shrink California’s over-sized prison population, ignoring clear messages from voters.
Stop retaliation, racism and bullying by principal of Martin Luther King Middle School
December 1, 2012
San Francisco teachers and staff of the Martin Luther King Middle School rallied in front of the San Francisco Hall of Justice on Nov. 27 to demand that San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón investigate and prosecute MLK Principal Natalie Eberhard and SFUSD Associate Superintendent Jeannie Pon, who is in charge of middle schools.
Sandy aftermath: Humanitarian crisis in Coney Island projects
November 13, 2012
The situation in public housing projects in Coney Island, Brooklyn remains a “humanitarian crisis” in which the government and the Red Cross have been nearly completely absent, according to Eric Moed, a volunteer aid worker with Occupy Sandy. The projects in Coney Island remain without power and often without water and necessities in the wake of Hurricane Sandy.
A police lynching happens every 36 hours
July 18, 2012
The history of racist violence, of lynchings, of state violence, or a complicit media and systemic injustice remain a reality despite our purportedly post-racial moment. In the first six months of 2012, the police, security guards and vigilantes have killed 120 African Americans, one every 36 hours. The media, political “leaders” and citizens alike ignore and justify these killings by blaming the victims.
Obama could end Congo’s human catastrophe
June 7, 2012
The Congo conflict and human catastrophe has continued despite a 2003 peace treaty. It entered a new phase with the Rwandan backed CNDP rebellion in the Kivu Provinces in April 2012. Ugandan reporter, television producer and broadcaster Paul Ndiho told KPFA that everyone knows who is doing what in Congo, but that regional and international powers are unwilling to stop it.
Lawsuit challenges solitary confinement at California prison
June 2, 2012
The Center for Constitutional Rights filed a federal lawsuit Thursday on behalf of prisoners at Pelican Bay State Prison who have spent between 10 and 28 years in solitary confinement. The legal action is part of a larger movement to reform inhumane conditions in California prisons’ Security Housing Units (SHUs) dramatized by a 2011 hunger strike by thousands of prisoners.
The ghosts of empire are returning to haunt Britain – and the U.S.
September 3, 2011
In a few weeks, a group of quiet, dignified elderly men and women will arrive in London to explain how the forces of the British state crushed their testicles or breasts with pliers. It was part of a deliberate policy of breaking a civilian population who we regarded as “baboons,” “barbarians” and “terrorists.”
Congo: Let’s be frank about Dodd-Frank
August 19, 2011
Dodd-Frank and its proponents penalize the people of eastern Congo but do little to curtail the militias and their backers. Congress should confront the real causes of the conflict, which are failed leadership and corruption in Congo’s capital, Kinshasa, and predatory policies of Rwanda and Uganda, which destabilize eastern Congo while benefiting from the mineral trade.
SFPD tightens its chokehold on Bayview Hunters Point since killing Kenneth Harding
August 9, 2011
The latest target of a San Francisco police wave of terror is Kilo G. Perry, videographer, freedom fighter, peacemaker and educator and the disabled single father of a 3-year-old boy. Ever since the July 16 killing of Kenneth Wade Harding Jr., 19, at Third and Oakdale by the SFPD thugs in blue, our Bayview Hunters Point community has been threatened, harassed and terrorized by the police more than in recent memory – some say more than in 45 years since the September 1966 rebellion.
In Haiti, reliving Duvalier, waiting for Aristide
February 5, 2011
The return of Jean Claude Duvalier, “Baby Doc,” to Haiti as a free man was excruciating to veterans of the struggle that overthrew the 30-year dictatorship. The traumatizing symbolism of Duvalier’s return at Haiti’s weakest hour is an insult to the dead and an assault on the living.
Shirley Sherrod and the dark history of Baker County
August 6, 2010
It was cowardly and wrong for the U.S. government to force Ms. Sherrod to resign without hearing her side, without understanding the whole story, without showing the slightest interest in fairness or due process. Here was Baker County rearing its ugly history all over again, 70 years later.
Freedom fighters support Gray-Haired Witnesses Fast for Justice! Funds to bring Scott Sisters’ family urgently needed!
June 19, 2010
All out to Washington, D.C., Monday, June 21, for the the Gray-Haired Witnesses Fast for Justice: 10 a.m. Department of Justice, 12 noon White House press conference, 1-9 p.m. Lafayette Square Park! We need your support in bringing national attention to the case of the Scott Sisters and all other women who have been incarcerated wrongly and egregiously over-sentenced, punishing and destroying our families and children.
Jamie Scott’s son, 18, fights to free the Scott Sisters in Mississippi
August 7, 2009
Now 18, Terrance Scott tells Minister of Information JR in this gripping interview: “Seeing what they did to my mother, it put a rage inside me.” Terrance is the son of Jamie Scott of the Scott Sisters of Mississippi, who have served 15 years of double life terms for a robbery they didn’t commit that netted $11.