Tag: SNAP

Candice Elder, founder and executive director of the East Oakland Collective, is a force to reckon with in Oakland when the issue of homelessness is brought up. During this quarantine season, her comrades as well as herself have successfully organized a moratorium on the police sweeping of homeless encampments in Oakland, which was passed unanimously by the City Council.

This is our hood, Bayview Hunters Point, once known as the fiercest in the Bay, the Black heartland of San Francisco. In a city that was 17 percent Black a few years ago, is the population really down to 3 percent? Where are they, our neighbors who are afraid to be counted in the Census? WE NEED YOU TO BE COUNTED!

A bipartisan group of U.S. senators and representatives yesterday introduced bicameral legislation, modeled on reforms that have taken hold in the states, to ensure that job seekers who have a conviction record in their past are not unfairly shut out from employment because of the stigma of a record, but rather are considered on their qualifications just like any other applicant.

Coyote Acabo caught a felony assault case in July of 2015 during a Black Lives Matter protest while defending a comrade who was put in a chokehold by a white inebriated man enraged that his good time country music show was interrupted by a group of cacophonous, banner-bearing protesters. The Bay View met Coyote years ago when he was locked up in Nevada and sent us one of his brilliant commentaries on the evils of imprisonment. We rejoiced with him when he was released and ask readers to support him now as he’s locked up for doing the right thing. Donate what you can at https://rally.org/supportcoyoteacabo.

Throughout her life, Congresswoman Chisholm broke many barriers while tirelessly advocating for the most vulnerable in our nation and our world. The Presidential Medal of Freedom is a fitting tribute to her lifetime of work and advocacy. In 1969, Congresswoman Chisholm became the first African American woman to serve in Congress. She was the first major-party African American candidate and first Democratic woman candidate for the U.S. presidency. Shirley Chisholm had guts.

In 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. came to Stanford University to deliver the first iteration of his speech, “The Other America.” Dr. King called attention to the disparate “two Americas” in which whites and Blacks lived – one filled with potential and prosperity and the other filled with “blasted hopes and shattered dreams.” When Dr. King gave this speech in 1967, the Civil Rights Movement was at a turning point.

Final passage of the $956 billion farm bill received bipartisan support in the Senate on Feb. 4, and soon after President Barack Obama signed the bill into law. Passage of the bill includes massive cuts to the food stamp program – Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP – that will affect around 47 million people living in poverty all across the nation.

Give us your tired, your poor, your hungry, huddled masses ... and we’ll make sure they stay that way. That’s the message that members of Congress – Republicans and Democrats alike – are sending with their proposals to cut funding and add new restrictions for the Supplementary Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP – better known as the food stamp program.