Daily Archives: August 31, 2009

“On Sunday, the 15th of July, about noon, we were at Hunters Point and they put on us what we now know was the atomic bomb.” – Capt. Charles B. McVay III, U.S. Navy commanding officer, USS Indianapolis (from the Operational Archives Branch, Naval Historical Center)

Sadly, over the years, we have lost many of our friends and family members as a direct result of practices and policies that demean and devalue lives within prison walls. This mentality allows atrocities to occur far from the public’s watchful eye. We are sure that if the citizens of this country knew what occurs – not in some distant foreign country – but within our own borders, there would surely be a call for immediate reform.

Very few things in life make me feel the way I feel when I come in contact with the work of a dope visual artist. It is amazing to me how, from a thought and a few strokes of the hand, a whole new world can be created that has crossed the dimension of the artist’s mind to exist in tangible reality. What is even more striking to me is an artist with a social or political agenda that refuses to make art for art’s sake.

On Aug. 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina took the lives of more than 1,836 people, displaced more than 1 million residents, and damaged more than 200,000 Gulf Coast homes in a 90,000 square mile area. The damage caused by the flooding, storm surge and high winds destroyed schools, hospitals, roads, community centers, bridges, parks and forestlands. In the end, the Gulf Coast suffered more than $100 billion in damage, making Katrina the costliest and most deadly hurricane in the history of the United States.

A powerful component of 2008 presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney’s five-day San Francisco Bay View newspaper fundraising tour, Aug. 20-24, is the developing bond between Ms. McKinney and a group of young adults in Oakland and the San Francisco Bay Area. Several representatives of these young adults spent every waking and sleeping minute with Cynthia.