Monthly Archives: September 2009

The right wing bullies at Fox News – Glenn Beck and his ilk – are going after a man known for years of progressive work in the Bay Area: Van Jones. Van’s real crime? He’s the triple threat: He’s Black, he’s effective and he is empowering the people in this country who have the least resources.

I am the best at basketball, I can jump high, I can shoot and I can run, I am fast, I am smart, I can do anything,My mommy told me so. I shoot the ball and it goes swoosh …And then I hear, “Pop, pop, pop,” tires screeching,

At his funeral service at St. Ignatius Church on the campus of the University of San Francisco this past Wednesday, Burl Toler was remembered as a humble, kind and upstanding man. Toler was that and more. He was a trailblazer in San Francisco athletics and education. Born in Memphis, Tennessee, May 9, 1928, Toler arrived in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1947, after a brief stint at Lemoyne College. His family decided living in California would be a good move for him and joined his Uncle Louis King, an Oakland based entrepreneur.

Welcome M-1 of dead prez to the Bay Area – East and West Oakland, San Francisco, Sacramento, Sonoma, San Jose, Santa Cruz – for seven days, Sept. 23-29, of sharing his recent experiences in Gaza, Cairo and Europe and comparing them with ghetto life in the U.S., benefiting the SF Bay View and Block Report Radio. Read his own words and hear a KPFA interview.

San Francisco – San Francisco Public Library, in its push to demolish two historic library branches and inappropriately to renovate at least two other historic branches, violated the public’s right to obtain public information and make public comment, according to San Francisco’s official open government watchdog group, the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force (SOTF).

As the contretemps surrounding Dr. Henry Louis Gates and the Cambridge Police Department recedes into the roiling news flood to become fodder for the late night comedians, we learn, if anything, that even a president has limits when it comes to a “teachable moment.” For, as any schoolteacher could have taught him, learning is a two-way street. When the student is closed to the lesson, ain’t nothing getting in. (And America ain’t trying to hear nothing about its racist present!)

Sister Linda Johnson has been a legendary educator in East Oakland since the ‘80s. At her school which is known as Umoja House, she has taught generations of students who have grown up to be productive members of their communities. As a community, we must make it a high priority to give our children the best education possible so that they can come back and help solve some of the problems that we have as a people.

On the first night of her Aug. 20-24 Triumph Tour, our sister Cynthia McKinney put a face on Gaza, Palestine, I don’t think many in the audience had seen before – I’m speaking of African Americans who are not usually the target population of such media focus. McKinney was speaking at Oakland’s landmark Grand Lake Theater, kicking off her Gaza Solidarity Triumph Tour, a series of fundraisers for the struggling SF Bay View newspaper.

The corporate media in the United States are ignoring valid news stories, based on university quality research. It appears that certain topics are simply forbidden inside the mainstream corporate media today. To openly cover these news stories would stir up questions regarding “inconvenient truths” that many in the U.S. power structure want to avoid.

Congresswoman Maxine Waters, D-Calif., wrapped up two days of hearings by the House Subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity, which she chairs, by focusing on the status and availability of affordable, quality public housing due to the near total demolition of the “Big Four” public housing developments in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. After the hearing, Congresswoman Waters, panelists and other guests participated in a bus tour of the Big Four sites – B.W. Cooper, C.J. Peete, Lafitte and St. Bernard – and visited the future site of a new public housing development in Iberville, which may be the next development to be demolished and redeveloped.

ask the question, “Did we cause the hurricane?” There is no one that can answer, yet there are those that state to me and my family – all Katrina survivors – “It has been four years. Everyone should have put that behind them and moved on.”

A single-payer system is so obviously needed, it should be too politically costly for our Democratic majority in the Congress and White House to do anything else. My Aunt Hazel went to the doctor to have a colonoscopy. Former Surgeon General Dr. David Satcher found that over 83,000 Blacks die unnecessary and premature deaths each year due to their treatment after they arrive in a doctor’s office.

From the age a child enters school until he leaves school, his two most paramount and time-consuming “worlds” are those of home and school. As a child ages, he will spend more time in his academic world than he will in his home world. It is crucial that a positive relationship exists between the two worlds, as they should not operate in a void, one separate from the other.

Renay Jackson is the literary son of the timeless writers who were the first popular street-lit legends, Donald Goines and Iceberg Slim. Renay Jackson’s stories of ghetto street life are based right here in the Bay Area’s Black experience. This extremely talented author is also a publisher of six titles who teaches people in Oakland about self-publishing in workshops at libraries in Oakland throughout the year. The home of independent rap music is also quickly becoming the home of self-published lit.

One of the ways City College is dealing with the cuts is a hiring freeze. No new instructors were hired to replace retirees, so nobody is available to teach the class. Griffin said the college is trying to shore up a $ 20,000,000 hole in City College’s budget.

Cynthia McKinney, former member of Congress and presidential candidate, supported her long time friend, Bay View associate editor and Minister of Information JR, at his last hearing. We need YOU to pack the courtroom for his TRIAL on Thursday, Sept. 3, 9 a.m., Courtroom 11, 1225 Fallon St., Oakland. Don't let the police silence their severest critic! Free JR!

The decision by the San Francisco Bay View to include coverage of “Black August” in its August 2009 edition was courageous and correct both from a legal and historical perspective. To have refrained from publishing its own editorial and articles from others on this subject would most certainly have strengthened the hand of reactionary state actors who have used prior restraint to curb “dangerous” speech since the days of British colonial rule.

Next month the most important item on my agenda is Maafa Commemoration Month to reflect on the legacy of slavery and how everyone benefited from this human rights travesty except those who did the work. We began Aug. 30 with a successful Maafa 2009: Hurricane Katrina Fundraiser and Reportback, thanks to all the poets and the visual artists who donated art for the silent auction and of course to Tess and Yeme, the proprietors of Shashamane Bar and Grill.

Despite objections by local Garifuna communities, Honduras’ de facto government is moving to take over the first and only Garifuna-managed hospital in the country, ousting its current staff. The facility – built by Dr. Luther Castillo, other Garifuna doctors, local architects and the communities themselves – is located in the remote coastal municipality of Iriona. [The Garifuna, descended from Africans who intermarried with native Arawak and Carib people, number about 600,000 on the Caribbean coast of Central America.]