Daily Archives: August 13, 2009

On the first of January this year, 2009, Oscar Grant was murdered by a BART police officer. This crime gained national media attention and united a community as people from various walks of life came together to demonstrate, voice their righteous indignation and demand justice. People protested, marched, rallied and attended numerous community meetings. Thirty days later, on Jan. 30, my son was shot 17 times and his friend was murdered. There were no marches. There were no rallies. There were no protests.

It’s been 33 years, but Ed Donaldson can still see the anxious look on his mother’s face when she was told she had to move. It was 1976, and Donaldson was only 10 – the youngest of three children – when the family received word from the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency that they were being kicked out of their Hunters Point apartment.

AIDS is an epidemic that we hardly talk about in the Black community, and that is a dangerous thing when we are dropping like flies from it all over the world. To all of the readers, I would say adults but adults aren't the only ones having sex, think about the last time that you had unprotected sex with someone. BAM! You could have have contracted HIV that fast. If that would have happened, you traded in your health and life for an hour of fun? How intelligent is that? And be clear although I'm writing this for the readers, I am at the same time talking to myself so I am not coming from no holier-than thou pulpit.

More and more, “progressive” San Francisco is proving its reputation for being a cold, hostile city for African Americans – gay or straight. Former Mayor Willie Brown wrote in his autobiography about San Francisco’s City Hall attack on the City’s African American politicians. San Francisco’s African American population – especially middle-class – has dwindled more than any other major city in the country. Now an article about a study by the San Francisco Department of Public Health (SFDPH) exposes the negative attitude of San Francisco’s gay community towards African American same-gender-loving (SGL) men.