Monthly Archives: December 2012

Taiwo Kujichagulia-Seitu's theatrical piece centers around the story of Harriet Tubman rescuing her brothers from slavery during Christmas-time. “Go Tell It!” paints a picture of what is was like for men who lived through slavery their whole lives getting word from their runaway sister Black Moses, that she was coming to put them on the Underground Railroad to freedom in the North.

Over the last 16 years, more than 6 million lives have been lost in Congo – and the major perpetrators of those atrocities have been U.S. allies Rwanda and Uganda. The majority of victims have been children under the age of 5. Subsequent U.S. administrations have provided aid to the Rwandan and Ugandan regimes. The U.S. remains one of the top two donors of aid to Rwanda today.

Many discussions are taking place on the nature of the indefinite solitary confinement program in the U.S. prisons and whether or not it constitutes torture. The debate on what to do about the program itself is being held at every level of social organization, from the U.S. Senate to the United Nations, from the California Legislature to the short corridors of Pelican Bay and Corcoran SHUs.

The National Legal Aid and Defender Association (NLADA) has selected San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi as its 2012 Reginald Heber Smith Award winner. “The Reggie” celebrates the outstanding achievements and dedicated services of an attorney for contributions made while employed by an organization providing civil legal services or indigent defense services.

We received your appeal calling for urgent support of the Center for Constitutional Rights. The appeal, regrettably, omits mention of Lynne Stewart, who is serving currently 10 years in a federal prison for her role in defending Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman as co-counsel for the defense with former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and renowned civil liberties counsel Abdeen Jabara.

Once again, a family is left grief stricken after the police are called regarding a mental health emergency. On Saturday, Oct. 8, 2012, Fremont police officers shot and killed DeJuan Eaton, age 37. When police are called in to deal with mental health situations, all too often the outcome is the loss of a loved one. Use of deadly force is not an acceptable resolution.

Associated Professionals and Contractors of California (APAC) is celebrating the historic inclusion of small, minority and disadvantaged business enterprise goals by the California High-Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA) with a Small Business Opportunity Conference to be held Wednesday, Dec. 5 at the Empress of China, 838 Grant Ave., San Francisco, from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Is it fair that your child can make one mistake and spend the rest of his or her life paying for it? Help the youth gain our freedom so we can promote peace in society. We have been refined and formed into a new image. We are no longer who we were, but we have now grown to who we were made to be. Help us; help the youth out there, which in turn will help our future.

Shaka Camera of Oakland, a leather worker for over 43 years, specializes in hand stitched and hand tooled leather bags embellished with beads, shells, silver and bronze acquired from his multiple trips to Africa. Shaka will show his work at the 42nd annual KPFA Crafts Fair on Saturday and Sunday, Dec. 8 and 9, at the Concourse in San Francisco.

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!