Yearly Archives: 2011

We were placed on Hell-Row for “concentrated torture.” Yes, we were placed in ice cold cells and given nothing. The cold blowers were deliberately turned on to intensify our suffering in Ad-Seg in order to try and get us to eat. Each and every one of us refused to eat.

Locked inside the belly of the beast, a system built by men to hold men, this system was meant to rehabilitate, but it has failed miserably! The justice system has failed, the prison system has failed, the government has failed.

Since the lethal shooting of 20-year-old Raheim Brown in January by an on-duty Oakland Unified School District police sergeant, some community activists and residents have questioned the role of the police on school grounds. Some parents are even calling for the dismantling of the district’s school police force.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo is in political crisis. After an unfair, fraudulent and violent election, the National Electoral Commission, stacked with supporters of incumbent President Joseph Kabila, has announced Kabila is the winner. Leading challenger Étienne Tshisekedi has declared himself the winner.

Battle lines have formed as the West Coast Occupy movements, from San Diego to Alaska, organize for blockades of West Coast ports to support the struggle of the ILWU in Longview, Wash. against EGT of the grain cartel, of port truckers fighting for the right to organize and of Long Beach against SSA, owned by Goldman Sachs.

Filled to the rafters with music posters, pictures of musicians, and racks of vinyl, Creative Music has everything you're looking for. Owners Joe and Elba Lambert are retiring, closing the store Dec. 31. Stop by for great bargains and warm fellowship 11:30 a.m.-7 p.m. Tuesday through Friday, 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturday.

With the tough economic times affecting many families in the San Francisco Bay Area, especially in Bay View Hunters Point, Gotelli Speed Shop has teamed up with drag racer Mike Henry and his Racing 4 Life program for a “Christmas Toy Drive.”

The conditions inside San Quentin’s West Block are inhumane and uninhabitable. They are in cells with no power. A lot of the toilets don’t flush. The men are trying to clean the feces off the walls themselves. There is ankle deep standing water in the showers and black mold on the walls.

On Friday I walked the BART connector project. I found one worker who was a descendant of slaves on this $1 billion project. The minority contractors, who tend to employ members of their own tribe, have contracts whose value is less than 1/2 of 1 percent.

The “peacekeepers” are the fastest-growing branch of the U.N., with a budget of U.S. $8 billion and over 110,000 troops serving 15 operations. Ten percent of this budget is spent on Haiti – a small country that is not at war – to train foreign troops for future warfare against their own civilians.

From the very first day of my incarceration, I was placed in security housing for no justifiable reason. Now, nearly 17 years later, without reprieve, I find myself still in a security housing unit in the absence of a single serious rule infraction.

The works of Ronnie Goodman and Jason Rivers are on exhibit in CAP’s temporary gallery space at the Luggage Store Gallery, 1009 Market St. at Sixth Street in San Francisco through Friday, Dec. 9. Meet Ronnie Goodman, acclaimed printmaker and muralist and the artist who drew “J-Cat and Bootzilla,” the great comic strip in the Bay View during most of the '90s.

If the International Criminal Court and ICC Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo were committed to international justice, they would issue an arrest warrant for sitting Congolese President Joseph Kabila. But the Western powers that control the ICC have been expected to do whatever it takes to keep Kabila in power.

As pressure builds for the Dec. 12 West Coast port shutdown, the capitalist owners and their media have begun a battle of ideas to blunt this powerful threat to their profits and control. But ILWU member Clarence Thomas says: "We don’t cross community picket lines. These ports are the people’s ports. Ports belong to the people of the Pacific Coast."

Support Fly Benzo twice on Friday, Jan. 6: 1) Pack the courtroom for the first day of his trial on Friday, Jan. 6, 9 a.m., at 850 Bryant in Department 22; 2) Party with Fly at his ‘Conscious Minds at Work Reggae, Arts and Hip-Hop Mixer & Fundraiser’ on Friday, Jan. 6, 7 p.m., at Twin Space Continuum, 2111 Mission St., Third Floor #300, San Francisco. To learn more, see "Police critic Fly Benzo keeps catching hell since police murder of Kenneth Harding" at https://sfbayviewnews.wpenginepowered.com/2011/police-critic-fly-benzo-keeps-catching-hell-since-police-murder-of-kenneth-harding/

On Nov. 25, Hancock State Prison in Sparta, Georgia, erupted into a full scale riot, as prisoners ran off the guards in several of the cell houses (euphemistically called dormitories, as though this was a college campus) in protest over abuses by guards and grievances unresolved by administrators.

The key factor thus far in failing to harness the mass support of the people is the lack of broad-based, articulable demands around which the uncommitted people who may support our message but not our movement can be educated, organized and mobilized to join the movement and transform not only the nature and structure of U.S. society, but the WORLD.

They had machetes and guns and all kinds of weapons and they ordered us to dig our own graves. Two young men came and negotiated for us; they wouldn’t give up until the militia just got tired of negotiating and left us alone and let us go. I was 14. I felt like I was going to get chopped up into pieces. I felt like I was going to be one of those people screaming for help with no hope of getting help. But good people came to our rescue. The truth will be turned on its head by having Paul Kagame, a genocide perpetrator, speak about genocide denial and genocide prevention.

Kagame jails and kills people in Rwanda and is sending his agents to pursue people in Europe and here in the U.S. for the crime of simply saying that not only Tutsis but also Hutus died in 1994. One young man who is now under attack as a “bad” survivor is Claude Gatebuke.

Sobonfu Somé, West African healer, says that when people die and become ancestors, they get smarter and often try to repair any damage they may have made while in this physical form. Ancestors want to be busy making our lives better. She said we can call on them to intercede on our behalf when we are troubled.