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2010 September
Monthly Archives: September 2010
Just pay up
For decades, Black farmers dealt with devastating discrimination from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Because of it, many lost their land. It cost them dearly, and it took the government years to admit it. The Senate needs to appropriate the funds for Pigford II, lest the shame grow even deeper.
Marilyn Buck on September 11, 2001: ‘Incommunicado’
“This poem by Marilyn Buck was written in the wake of 9/11 when Marilyn and other political prisoners on mainlines were put into lockup (solitary confinement) in prisons across the country. It’s very moving and so pertinent and timely.” – Kiilu Nyasha, friend and supporter of Marilyn Buck and all political prisoners
Texas oil companies are attacking our communities with Prop. 23
Two big Texas oil companies are spending piles of money to kill California’s fast-growing clean energy economy and the hundreds of thousands of jobs that economy has already created. Big Oil is claiming to want to protect us and save jobs in our communities.
Review: ‘A Day Late in Oakland’
I recently watched the Zachary Stauffer documentary “A Day Late in Oakland,” which is about the murder of Oakland Post Editor Chauncey Bailey in August of 2007. It is truly a look into the mind of white power media spin-doctors.
Congo Genocide: Kagame threatens to withdraw ‘peacekeepers’ over U.N. report
An explosive 545-page U.N. report leaked by the French newspaper Le Monde accuses the Rwandan Patriotic Army of Rwandan President and General Paul Kagame of the massacres of Rwandan Hutu refugees and Congolese Hutus in what some are already calling “the Congo Genocide.”
Kagame sworn in after U.N. report of guilt in Congo genocide
Rwandan President Paul Kagame was sworn in to serve another seven-year term on Sept. 6, 2010, 11 days after the explosive Aug. 26 leak of a U.N. report documenting genocide committed by his army in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Willie Brown Academy, BVHP’s only middle school, to close
SFUSD announced, “Willie Brown Jr. Academic College Preparatory School is closing by the end of school year 2010-2011 in order to rebuild a state of the art facility.” Parent Daphina Marshall commented, “I don’t see where they are going to get the funds to rebuild.”
Republican candidates ignore the Black vote while the Democrats continue to take it for...
Very little if any advertising has been done in Black newspapers or with Black radio stations in an attempt to reach Black voters via the Black media. The Black press connects Blacks around the world. Their power and influence is unmatched, unchallenged and unquestioned.
Good Americans: The dark side of the Pullman Porters Union
As we celebrate the 85th anniversary of the founding of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, America's first African America labor union, let us not forget that African American rail workers were instrumental in organizing not only the sleeping and chair car porters, but the dining car workers as well.
On the fifth anniversary of Katrina, displacement continues
Just as Hurricane Katrina revealed racial inequalities, the recovery has also been shaped by systemic racism. According to a recent survey of New Orleanians by the Kaiser Foundation, 42 percent of African Americans – versus just 16 percent of whites – said they still have not recovered from Katrina. Thirty-one percent of African-American residents – versus 8 percent of white respondents – said they had trouble paying for food or housing in the last year.
Communities of color are ‘canaries in the coal mine’ of economic crisis
Foreclosures have drained $350 billion in assets from communities of color and Small Business Administration lending to minority-owned businesses has cratered, contributing to a growing racial wealth gap. For every dollar of wealth owned by a white family, an African American or Latino family owns just 16 cents.
After Katrina, New Orleans cops were told they could shoot looters
In the chaotic days after Hurricane Katrina, an order circulated among New Orleans police authorizing officers to shoot looters. “We have authority by martial law to shoot looters,” Capt. James Scott told a few dozen officers. Warren Riley, then the department’s second-in-command, said to “take the city back and shoot looters.”
Rwanda: How to circumvent twin evils of majority dominance and minority autocracy
Before the recently leaked damning U.N. report, many believed the apex of Rwandan self-destruction was the 1994 genocide, but fresh investigations indicate the Rwanda Patriotic Front-led government also committed genocide against the Hutu in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Court: No proof Black August incites prison violence
I’m writing to update you on the continuing attempt to deny us Afrikan descendants here at Pelican Bay solitary confinement SHU control units the exercise of the human birthright to read, write, study, learn and celebrate our African heritage, history and culture.
The stolen life of Jimon Clark
Jimon Clark, a young bright Black male, 13 years old, was executed on the mean streets of East Oakland on Wednesday, Aug. 25, 2010. His execution was a one-day news story. His young life was so much more. We need police who are trusted by the East Oakland community.
Demand work for Black contractors and their crews
My sorrow is for what’s happening to the Black contractors and their crews in the Bay Area trying to get bonding but being rejected by the bonding companies. The Black and Brown vote is too large for us to keep on being set aside and ignored.
Finally a step in the right direction
Walking clean and sober can be very lonely for a parolee whose comfort zone is hanging out with addicts and traveling the road of drugs and criminality. I for one will admit that I perhaps know less about free society than I do about prison life.
Wanda in Haiti: Pain, protest, planning for the future
There was high unemployment for Haitians, those educated with skills and the unskilled as well, prior to the earthquake. For a government official to tell a BAI representative that withholding food was a way to motivate lazy people looking for a handout to get to work is a gross misread of the problem.
Where has the love of San Francisco gone?
With this campaign we have to fight to plug the mass leak of people systemically pressed into nearly abject poverty. It is like watching the death of the spirit of a city that the world depends upon to be the one place where right is right and fair is fair.
Born too small … Born too soon
Many scientists are looking at the role caesarian sections and early induction of labor is having on the rising incidence of preterm births in our country. Recent evidence suggests that infant mortality in Black women is linked to a low incidence of breast feeding.