Daily Archives: December 1, 2012

An increase in gun violence and homicides in the Oceanview, Merced Heights and Ingleside neighborhoods has residents and community organizations calling on the city to reinstate the defunct police substation at 103 Broad Street. Re-establishing the police substation was proposed as the best option to curb violence.

As a people who should be championing the cause of the tired, the poor and the huddled masses yearning to breathe free, we need to first find humane solutions to our social ills. Isolation, incarceration and, yes, LWOP sentences are barbaric and sit in the realm of the lesser of two evils. And that’s why California still has the cruel instruments of death as its solutions.

I have known the artist and teacher Naru from the streets of Oakland for over a decade, and within that time he has never ceased to amaze me with the creative necessity of his community projects to our community. His most recent and probably most important work to date, in my opinion, is Hip Learning, which is a Hip Hop based curriculum on human anatomy for elementary school youth.

San Francisco teachers and staff of the Martin Luther King Middle School rallied in front of the San Francisco Hall of Justice on Nov. 27 to demand that San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón investigate and prosecute MLK Principal Natalie Eberhard and SFUSD Associate Superintendent Jeannie Pon, who is in charge of middle schools.

Ultimately, this is a peaceful movement to assert our humanity. Differences in race, sets and associations matter not. Each of us is ultimately responsible for maintaining and preserving our own self-respect. We hope that as comrades you will help lift each other up as you come to realize that the same oppressor oppresses us all!