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Seeing no evil in the Congo
August 19, 2011
Do you have a smart phone? A laptop? Then you play a role in the violence that occurs in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Cell phones, laptops and other electronics don’t work very well without the mineral, coltan. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, poor farmers are gathered by armed gangs and enslaved to dig coltan out of the ground.
War on Libya is war on Africa
June 4, 2011
Gerald Perreira has lived and worked in Libya as an organizer and journalist and has been giving regular reports to Block Report Radio and the San Francisco Bay View newspaper. It is important to develop our own media and experts who can speak from an African perspective.
East Oakland Summit on Human Trafficking at Allen Temple Baptist Church
April 14, 2011
Saturday, April 9, the Allen Temple Community Room was overflowing with individuals interested in the crisis on Oakland streets, especially a street many had to cross that morning upon arrival, International Boulevard with its sex trafficking of mostly Black and Brown girls.
Lynn Nottage’s ‘Ruined,’ directed by Liesl Tommy, at Berkeley Rep through April 10
March 16, 2011
It is not often one sees a play written and directed by Black women, the director, Liesl Tommy, from Cape Town, South Africa. Only a fine writer like Lynn Nottage could take such tragedy and make us smile and laugh between the tears.
A rose growing from concrete: an interview wit’ poet Jazz Hudson
February 12, 2011
Jazz Hudson is one of the new up and coming poets out of the Bay who has been making a name for herself at poetry readings – one of the most loquacious and passionate young sistas to come out of the concrete jungle of Oakland in a long time.
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.
Standing on the side of the Black Panthers, not the police
January 3, 2011
Journalist JR Valrey, who was born in 1978, grew up mostly in Oakland, where the legend of the Black Panther Party was all around him. “A lot of the people around here are Panthers, or knew Panthers or are members of the Black Guerilla Family, which was an organization that Field Marshall George Jackson of the Black Panther Party founded. The revolution is very deep in Oakland. It’s not so cosmetic as it is other places. It’s not just about bandannas and t-shirts and concert throwing and posturing. I think it’s more grassroots here and more ingrained in the spirit of the people.”
‘When we say democracy, we have to mean what we say’
November 15, 2010
Nicolas Rossier conducted an exclusive interview with former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in forced exile in Johannesburg. Aristide concludes: “We are poor – worse than poor because we are living in abject poverty and misery. But based on that collective dignity rooted in our forefathers, I do believe we have to continue fighting in a peaceful way for our self-determination, and if we do that, history will pay tribute to our generation.” Rally for democracy in Haiti and Aristide’s return Wednesday, Nov. 17, 5 p.m., Montgomery & Market, San Francisco.
Why are these men in jail?
November 12, 2010
Dewayne Ewing and Kevin Barnes have been in jail for years despite the lack of any evidence that connects them to a 1994 rape. Help free them by coming to their hearing on the results of DNA testing: Tuesday, Nov. 30, 2 p.m, Department 11, Alameda County Superior Court, 1225 Fallon St., Oakland.
No justice for victims raped in custody
October 25, 2010
A juvenile counselor in New York rapes a teenaged girl while escorting her from a holding area to the courtroom and receives probation. She serves a year for “filing a false police report,” upon telling police she did not know who had jumped and cut her on the way to school.
Wanda in Haiti: Pain, protest, planning for the future
September 3, 2010
There was high unemployment for Haitians, those educated with skills and the unskilled as well, prior to the earthquake. For a government official to tell a BAI representative that withholding food was a way to motivate lazy people looking for a handout to get to work is a gross misread of the problem.
Congo Week: an interview wit’ Kambale Musavuli, spokesman for Friends of the Congo
October 20, 2009
Coltan is a mineral necessary for making electronic things work – like cellphones, ipods, PS3s and laptops. Over 6 million Congolese have been murdered to assure that the corporations and governments involved have a corner on the market for the minerals that the Congo produces. This is “Break the Silence” Congo Week. Check out the events and get involved!
California’s mean streak, from Native annihilation to Oscar and Lovelle: Ishmael Reed on history
September 7, 2009
Ishmael Reed is one of the most read writers of his generation, along with Toni Morrison and Amiri Baraka, living in America. In 1962, Reed co-founded “East Village Other,” a well known underground publication at the time, and was a member of the Umbra Writers Workshop, which helped to give rise to the Black Arts Movement. He has published nine novels, four collections of poetry, six plays, four collections of essays and a libretto. He currently lives in Oakland, and I approached him one day while he was visiting KPFA’s studios to ask him what he thought about the state of affairs between the police and Oakland’s Black community, with the backdrop of the police murder of Oscar Grant and, in a separate incident, the police murder of Lovelle Mixon, after Mixon allegedly killed four Oakland police officers.
Letter to Hillary Clinton from Congolese elected officials
August 30, 2009
One is hard pressed to find media accounts of what the Congolese people want or how they believe that the United States could best play a constructive role in ending the suffering in the Congo. Considering that the United States has played a significant historical role in the stifling of the democratic aspirations of the Congolese people and the backing of the 1996 and 1998 invasions of the Congo by its allies, Rwanda and Uganda, which unleashed what the United Nations say is the deadliest conflict in the world since World War II, it is important to hear directly from the Congolese people regarding U.S. engagement in the Congo.
A school to fight hopelessness and hunger
May 7, 2009
“This is a Congolese sister, not the U.N., who is building a school with her own money and donors, to give back to her country,” says Kambale Musavuli, spokesman and student coordinator for Friends of the Congo, paying tribute to Noella Coursaris Musunka.
U.S. and Rwanda to blame for Congo’s human catastrophe
November 14, 2008
I know no honest, informed Congo watchers who doubt that Gen. Laurent Nkunda and his ruthless militia are tools of the U.S. and its African proxy, Rwanda, in the imperial resource war now raging in Eastern Congo.
