Yearly Archives: 2011

There’s six of us here that started an indefinite hunger strike on Aug. 1, 2011, in solidarity with our brothers in California and to stop the inhumane treatment. A letter was sent to the Governor’s Office and Commissioner’s Office with a list of demands, such as provide adequate food, health care, access to families and out-of-cell recreation, stop police and staff brutality and many other requests.

Malcolm X, one of my heroes, believed that “[o]ur objective is complete freedom, justice and equality by any means necessary.” I am asking for your support in this election so that we can reach this objective together.

It pains my heart to say that my great grandmother, Mrs. Elouise Westbrook, passed on Sept. 13, 2011, in the comfort of her own home in the city she loved, San Francisco. Even though she was never an elected politician, she was a force to be reckoned with in the political world. She had a voice that made people stop and listen.

The numbers of strikers began dropping this week from the 12,000 refusing food a few days ago, after the CDCR intensified retaliation against them, such as air conditioning the small concrete cells at 50 degrees. The hunger strike representatives at Pelican Bay were moved to Administrative Segregation, while at least one inmate on strike who was denied medications has suffered a heart attack. Readers are urged to pressure Gov. Jerry Brown to tell CDCR to meet the prisoners’ five core demands and cease all retaliation against the hunger strikers. Call (916) 445-2841.

I am trying my best to help myself, but I am greatly suffering from traumatic psychological emotional breakdowns. Sometimes I have to stop doing everything and sing to myself for an hour or I break down and start crying or I start eating when I do not want to eat. I do not have anyone to help me do my suit and I wrote you this letter asking if you can get one of the smart people you have there to help me.

I am a poor African-American mother of four. Finally some people are speaking up to these legalized gangsters and bank pimps. Those folks are speaking for me and all poor people who don’t even know if we can pay for the rising cost of food, much less dream of getting a loan or a mortgage from these terrible corporate thieves.

According to neighborhood witnesses, white Oakland police officers chased an African American man appearing to be about 20 years old from the corner, up 99th and south on Cherry Street toward 100th Avenue. Before he reached the corner house, he tossed a bag and put his hands in the air. Once his hands were in the air, the police shot and killed him.

Who is Fresh & Easy for? They don’t take coupons, personal checks or WIC and like their “Whole Paycheck” counterparts, they don’t hire union employees – or many employees at all, as they have the new self-pay check-out stands.

The Fukushima disaster has thrown up the first opportunity in decades to bring justice to thousands of unskilled workers who risk radioactive contamination to keep Japan’s nuclear power plants running.

We prisoners held in Pelican Bay State Prison Security Housing Unit seek support from all hip hop celebrities, fans and supporters to assist us in shutting down all solitary confinement units that hold New Afrikan prisoners and other races in solitary confinement indefinitely.

October is Maafa Commemoration Month. The term Maafa refers to the Black Holocaust, that period when African people were stolen and traded in the greatest, most widespread cooperative economic venture to date, which resulted in the displacement of human beings as commodities. The Kiswahili term Maafa extends that definition of loss and trauma, that is, PTSD or post-traumatic slave syndrome – the flashbacks, both conscious and unconscious, reoccurring instances of the atrocities 150 years after the end of slavery which have direct association to the brutality of chattel slavery.

KPFA, 94.1 FM or kpfa.org, is a community station that needs and deserves your support. I am a broadcaster on KPFA with two weekly shows: The Morning Mix on Wednesdays from 8-9 a.m., which deals with community politics, and the Block Report every Friday from midnight to 2 a.m., where we play mostly music and do cultural interviews. Please donate during Wednesday’s Morning Mix, because your donation is your vote to keep the show on the air.

The highly popular sewing class offered at the Southeast Community Facility, or “Sewing Club” as most locals refer to the class, is back by popular demand. Space is still available and residents are encouraged to drop in for the class. There are no requirements but to show up; however, if you have a project you would like help with – even a simple hem – bring it to the class.

As the renewed prisoner hunger strike enters its second week, the federal receiver’s office reports that at least 12,000 prisoners were participating during the first week. Family members of striking SHU prisoners reported that their visits this weekend were denied by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, which is threatening participants with disciplinary action and banning two lawyers who represent the strikers. “Historically, prison officials have used extreme measures, including physical violence to break strikes,” says Dorsey Nunn, a member of the mediation team working on behalf of the strikers.

It’s become standard procedure for real estate companies and their eviction attorneys to “move quickly to take the homes from these homeowners, harassing and scaring them, using guerrilla tactics like threatening to get the sheriff to remove them in four hours. But if we all stay together,” Delia Aguilar, an organizer with the Bay Area Moratorium (BAM), said, “we can defeat them and keep our homes.”

The truth must now be told. Paul Kagame, then overall commander of the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA), was personally responsible for shooting down the plane carrying President Juvenal Habyarimana home from a peace summit. His assassination triggered the Rwandan Genocide.

I want to start with the recent attempt by the Children’s Museum of Oakland to prevent Palestinian kids from showing their art. You wrote a very moving piece on your website. It was very personal. Could you just briefly outline what you wrote and your response to this censorship?

In Rwanda, which has received over $1 billion in U.S. foreign aid in the past 10 years, Mrs. Victoire Ingabire made every attempt to participate in the political process that Rwandan President Paul Kagame insists is democratic, but instead she now stands in the dock in Rwanda’s capital Kigali, facing charges that could keep her behind bars for 30 years to life.

Faculty members at Carnegie Mellon University's Marianna Brown Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences have signed a petition questioning the university's partnership with Rwanda's president, Paul Kagame, as they plan to open a branch campus in Kigali in 2012. The petition cites charges that his government has committed gross human rights violations in Rwanda and in the Congo. It also cites increased repression of the press and political freedoms.

The Supreme Court ordered California to release 33,000 prisoners due to unhealthy conditions and prison overcrowding in the Plata vs. Brown prisoner lawsuit. The high court showed it was serious by demanding the release of 10,000 of these prisoners by a December 2011 deadline.