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Prop 36: Justice denied, now what?
January 9, 2013
While addressing the news about California’s voters overwhelmingly supporting the Three Strikes Reform Act, Prop 36, one district attorney stated that there are about 250 people from Kern County who are eligible for resentencing under Prop 36. And it is her job to make sure that none of them are released. That sentiment is shared by other district attorneys and judges throughout the state.
Legislative Analyst Office predicts Corrections won’t meet budget reductions
November 15, 2012
Californians demand further reductions in prison spending to restore social services. A post-election poll by Californians for Safety and Justice determined that 62 percent of voters believe too much state funding goes to California’s prison system, and 86 percent agree that more resources should be dedicated to preventing crime rather than funding prisons and jails.
Three Strikes is cruel and unusual: an interview wit’ ‘Cruel and Unusual’ director Sam Banning
November 10, 2012
On Nov. 6, a majority of the voters in California voted to amend the Three Strikes Law. In Cali alone, according to the film “Cruel and Unusual,” there are over 4,000 people locked up doing life under Three Strikes for nonviolent offenses. The Documentary Film Fest is featuring “Cruel and Unusual” on Nov. 11, 12 and 15 in San Francisco and Berkeley.
Voters lighten Three Strikes while increasing revenues for education
November 7, 2012
Yesterday’s election results show Californians calling for additional cuts to the prison population and corrections budget while approving new taxes to save programs like education, welfare, childcare and healthcare. Voters resoundingly passed Proposition 36 by a 69 percent to 31 percent margin. Proposition 30 was passed by voters 54 percent to 46 percent.
Proposition 36 on the Three Strikes Law: a poverty skolar’s report
November 5, 2012
The reform of the Three Strikes Law with Proposition 36 will take a tool away from the police and DAs that has been used to oppress low-income and people of color communities. Any respite from the oppression of racism and capitalism on poor folks is worth voting for. So I say yes on Proposition 36.
It is a matter of innocence, not economics
October 1, 2012
Please DON’T vote in favor of “The SAFE California Act” to end California’s death penalty. Your vote for this act would throw away the key for all the innocent men and women on death row and, instead, sentence all prisoners on death row to spend the rest of their lives in prison without the possibility of parole and without effective legal representation.
Yes on Prop 36
August 11, 2012
The Three-Strikes law has significantly contributed to the increase in California’s prison population. Nearly two thirds of the second or third strikers have been incarcerated for nonviolent crimes. With only 7% of California’s population, Blacks comprise 45% of the Third Strikers. Vote Yes on Prop 36, the Three Strikes Reform Act of 2012, this November!
The hunger strike was a success
August 29, 2011
The prisoncrats, as expected, seek to downplay and minimalize the success of the mass hunger strike that began on July 1, 2011, by its typical damage control tactic of spoon-feeding their spin to their Sacramento Bee stoogie who, like most of the public, believe their misleading and inaccurate assertions.
Real talk on three strikes
August 27, 2011
For many years, the “three strikes” law has rained havoc and waste over the state of California, plunging its state debt increasingly deeper each and every year, which the taxpayers are paying for without any real justification.
‘Communities rising’ across California to end mass incarceration and the 40-year war on drugs
June 18, 2011
CURB is sending a strong message from different parts of the state to Gov. Brown and the state legislature, calling for the state to take active steps to end its participation in the 40-year-old “war on drugs” and to prioritize vital social services over prison spending.
Michelle Alexander on California’s ‘cruel and unusual’ prisons
June 14, 2011
On May 23, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a 5-4 decision ordering California to release tens of thousands of inmates from its overcrowded prisons on the grounds that their living conditions – including lethally inadequate healthcare – were so intolerable as to be “cruel and unusual punishment.”
The new Jim Crow: How the war on drugs gave birth to a permanent American undercaste
March 25, 2010
Among many startling findings by legal scholar Michelle Alexander, former director of the ACLU’s Racial Justice Project here in the Bay Area, is this: There are more African Americans under correctional control today – in prison or jail, on probation or parole – than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began.
WBOK purchased by Danny Bakewell, champion of Black economic self-determination
June 4, 2009
WBOK has come back strong from the severe damage inflicted on its studio, offices, transmitter site and broadcast tower by the flooding in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Now broadcasting over a powerful signal, the station adopted a Black talk format – “Real Talk for Real Times” – on Nov. 1, 2007, after it was purchased and upgraded by Danny Bakewell Sr. on behalf of the Bakewell family.
An infamous legend is born and a community is under siege
March 24, 2009
Lovelle Mixon – the suspected shooter behind the deaths of four Oakland police officers on Saturday – has joined the pantheon of Black men who have conducted deadly rebellions: Denmark Vesey, Nat Turner, Huey Newton, Jonathan Jackson and Larry Davis.
Caravan for Justice puts Sacramento on notice
March 2, 2009
On Feb. 19, hundreds of people who have been attending town hall meetings in nine cities in and around the Bay Area – motivated by the BART police execution of Oscar Grant III and other critical threats to our communities – made the first of many Caravan for Justice trips to Sacramento.