Daily Archives: July 21, 2011

Folks we talked to in the Bayview vehemently refute the accounts given by the police who claim 19-year-old Kenneth Harding shot at them. Why so distrustful of “San Francisco’s finest”? Since the recent SRO scandal, SFPD has lost credibility with the public. Many who staunchly support the police while overlooking these recent scandals suggest that because Harding had a criminal past he deserved to be shot. That’s wrong on all angles. Come to the community vigil Friday at 6 p.m. at Mendell Plaza, Third and Palou.

Another young, unarmed Black man, Kenneth Harding, has been gunned down in broad daylight. He was shot numerous times in the back as he fled, his empty hands held in the air. His crime had been a simple train fare evasion for which San Francisco police executed him in the street.

Sympathy for the prisoners on hunger strike in the Security Housing Unit at Pelican Bay State Prison is limited due to the widely held impression that these men — and indeed most supermax prisoners — are the “worst of the worst.” According to conventional wisdom, in order to land in the most secure units in the prison system, these men must have committed terrible crimes in the first place ...