Tag: Kenneth Harding

You are listening to the Minister of Information JR on Hard Knock Radio. Today we are talking to Denika Chatman, mother of Kenneth Harding, who was murdered July 16 in Hunters Point over a $2 transfer for Muni. Denika, how are you?

Minutes after the outrageous police killing of 19-year-old Kenneth Harding a stone’s throw from my home and office, I joined the crowd and for two hours listened to the witnesses, shared the anger and echoed the calls for unity. Let us demand the right to “own and operate and control the economy of our community,” as Brother Malcolm advised. Now – right now – is the time for us to prove that it’s not the police, it’s not the prison guards or the big developers who have the power to impoverish and enslave us and drive us off our land. The ultimate power belongs to the people, and we will use it.

On the heels of the San Francisco Police Department killing of alleged bus-fare-evader Kenneth Harding, KPFA devoted the entire morning program – the Morning Mix – on Wednesday, July 20, to police terrorism aka “excessive use of force.”

Generally, what happened to Harding happens in colonized spaces to colonized subjects, from Hunters Point to Baghdad. The victims are people of color. Five centuries of colonially-constructed rationales have served the purpose of minimizing the value of racialized subjects.

What is that feeling of sickness grumbling deep in my abdomen? Did I drink too much coffee? Is the caffeine inducing some nervous, sea-sickness-like feeling? No, that’s not it. It’s the fear. These people have gotten to me; scared the living wits out of me.

On Saturday, July 16, a 19-year-old young man, Kenneth Harding, from Seattle, Wash., came to San Francisco at the wrong time. He rode a transit vehicle to Bayview Hunters Point’s Palou station only to exit and have an encounter with two police officers about paying his $2 fare.

Kenny was a real happy person. He had a beautiful spirit. He loved his mom. He was really into music and underground rap and really liked most of the local Bay Area underground artists – people from Hunters Point and Fillmore. Now that the police in San Francisco have killed Kenny, we’re going through a lot with the police in Seattle. They brought out the SWAT team to my home for nothing. The police said that my son was a piece of trash and that he got what he deserved. I don’t think nobody deserves to be killed in the fashion that my son was.

“The police in our community occupy our area, our community, as a foreign troop occupies territory. And the police are in our community not to promote our welfare or our security or our safety, but they are there to contain us, to brutalize us and murder us,” said Huey P. Newton, co-founder and minister of defense of the Black Panther Party. Hunters Point has stood up to the Lennar Corp. and the City about the shipyard. It is time to expand that movement to include police terrorism, put new energy into it, and claim our right to live and not be wantonly killed.

In September 1966, after police killed 16-year-old Matthew Johnson, I stood in the Bayview Opera House as police bullets from Third Street ripped through the building, hitting my childhood friend. This is how the 1966 Hunters Point riots began. Forty-five years later, blood has been spilled by police bullets just feet from where young Mr. Johnson died. Welcome the family of Kenneth Harding on Tuesday, July 26, 6:30 p.m., at the Center for Self Improvement, 5048 Third St. at Revere, San Francisco.

Folks we talked to in the Bayview vehemently refute the accounts given by the police who claim 19-year-old Kenneth Harding shot at them. Why so distrustful of “San Francisco’s finest”? Since the recent SRO scandal, SFPD has lost credibility with the public. Many who staunchly support the police while overlooking these recent scandals suggest that because Harding had a criminal past he deserved to be shot. That’s wrong on all angles. Come to the community vigil Friday at 6 p.m. at Mendell Plaza, Third and Palou.

Another young, unarmed Black man, Kenneth Harding, has been gunned down in broad daylight. He was shot numerous times in the back as he fled, his empty hands held in the air. His crime had been a simple train fare evasion for which San Francisco police executed him in the street.

We sat together: elders, youth, workers, students and folks. We were on our way to a low-paid job, an overpriced university, a pre-gentrified home and a public school. There were laughter and shouts, murmurs and silence. Then suddenly, there were nine heavily armed police officers and fare inspectors walking through the crowded 14 Mission Muni line. One stopped in front of me and my son.

In the face of the U.S. power structure’s continuing attempts to force communities of color to hide in our own hoods, a 19-year-old Afrikan youth, Kenneth Harding, was shot to death Saturday over not having a transfer for a $2 light rail ride. As he lay dying in a pool of his own blood, reaching out for help, raising himself up and crying out in agony, only to be surrounded and circled by police who were armed to the teeth with assault rifles and other tools of war ...