Monthly Archives: January 2014

On Jan. 15, 2014, approximately 25 prisoners in Administrative Detention at Menard Correctional Center went on hunger strike. The hunger strikers have been told the prison administration is working on obtaining a preliminary injunction to force feed them. They expect to continue the hunger strike even if they are force fed. “We need as much outside support as possible,” the prisoners say. Please call or email: Gov. Pat Quinn, Warden Rick Harrington, Illinois Department of Corrections Director Salvador Godinez.

Dr. King led a movement that issued a stirring call for justice. Lyndon Johnson used his remarkable skills to drive an unprecedented response to that call. The prophet and the president were both remarkable leaders. We may not look on their like again. But even so, one thing is still clear: When we build the demand for change, leaders will arise to offer the response.

As a Black woman, to hear Ron Thomas declare, “What this means is that all of us need to be very afraid now … Police officers everywhere can beat us, kill us, do whatever they want because it was proven here today they can get away with it,” I automatically want to ask him where has he been?

The first in a series of empowerment workshops, “Full Court Press to Success,” will be held on Saturday, Feb. 8, 4-5:30 p.m. at the Bayview Opera House. The workshop features the new documentary film, “I Just Wanna Ball,” by Robert “Fleetwood” Bowden about the McClymonds High School Lady Warriors championship team of 2013.

In the spirit of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the weekend commemorating his work in the Civil Rights Movement, Western Regional Advocacy Project (WRAP) member organizations are creating model legislation for California and Oregon Homeless Bills of Rights. Groups across California and Oregon will be holding events and rallies throughout MLK weekend.

It has been four years since an earthquake devastated the small country of Haiti. More than three years have elapsed since a U.N. peacekeeping unit from Nepal introduced cholera to Haiti. Despite telling CNN otherwise, the U.N. is not taking steps to ensure its peacekeepers do not carry cholera from country to country.

Last Tuesday, Jan. 7, a crowd of supporters gathered in the bitter cold in New Orleans’ Lafayette Square outside the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals to show their support for Angola 3 inmate Albert Woodfox. Woodfox has been held in solitary confinement – or what the state of Louisiana calls “Closed Cell Restriction” – for 42 years. By most estimates, 42 years is the longest any prisoner has been held in isolation.

In classic Fox form, the interview with me would not be about the case or about the appointment of Adegbile. In the end, the point of the segment was for Fox to call Mumia “a thrice-convicted cop killer” as many times as possible, and to associate that with Debo Adegbile so as to strategically energize a right-wing agenda against the gains of the civil rights movement – following the same pattern as in their successful campaign to decommission Van Jones.

The following information is based on numerous letters from prisoners in the High Security Unit at Menard Correctional Center in Illinois written in December 2013. These prisoners expect to go on hunger strike on Jan. 15, 2014, due to their placement and retention in severe isolation, under inhumane living conditions, without notice, reasons or hearing. This will be a peaceful protest. Retaliation can be expected.

Named after the author of the classic “Miseducation of the Negro” and the founder of Black History Week, which later graduated into Black History Month, this bowl is a competition, where contestants are on teams that try to be the fastest to answer questions deriving from Black history. We are taking a minute with the founder of the Dr. Carter G. Woodson Black History Bowl, Yafeu Tyhimba, so that he can discuss the competition’s history and future.

I searched frantically for you at the end ... Of the Apollo’s Sekou Sundiata celebration; ... I jumped over a chair, just missing you, at ... The Harlem Stage tribute to Abbey Lincoln; ... Finally, caught you at the Schomburg’s ... Langston Hughes Auditorium, at the ... Fidel-Malcolm Meeting book talk ... Forgave you for slipping ... On Iceberg Slim, and ... Told you, “I LOVE YOU …”

Community Empowerment Programs Incorporated will be working extensively with Leroy F. Moore Jr., founder of Krip Hop Nation, on programs that empower people with disabilities in arts, self-advocacy and music. The partnership will start working on its first annual activism, music and arts event facilitated by African American leaders hosted in Albany, N.Y., and a location to be determined in New York City shortly thereafter.

Mabior Garang de Mabior, a member of the opposition negotiating team and son of South Sudan’s liberation hero, John Garang, says that the problem at the heart of the conflict is forging a national identity that supersedes tribal identity and a national government that uses the country’s great oil wealth to advance the needs of the people.

“Unfathomable City: A New Orleans Atlas” by Rebecca Solnit and Rebecca Snedeker (2013) is part visionary road map, part post-traumatic Katrina therapy, and part poetic love ode/lament to our city. One chapter addresses systems of containment – levees and prisons. In Angola, jailhouse lawyers organized voting blocks of outside allies to push for prison reform and to have decades-long solitary confinement declared cruel and unusual punishment.

Amiri Baraka was a giant to those who know him. And now that he is physically gone, his legend will only grow. The FBI once identified him as “the person who will probably emerge as the leader of the pan-African movement in the United States.” Even those who critiqued him considered him to be brilliant, even referring to him as the Malcolm X of literature and spoken word. He often said bluntly and yet humbly that “Malcolm X was my leader.” Amiri Baraka put into practice what Malcolm taught him about cultural revolution.

Leroy Stansfield’s Go Baby Productions has been organizing some of the biggest local comedy shows in the Bay Area over the last few years. I met this local entrepreneur while I was doing the Block Report on KPFA. I sat down to talk to the head comedian in charge, Mr. Leroy Stansfield himself, about his history as a comedian, the history of his company, and his thoughts on the Bay Area comedy scene. Check him out in his own words.

Fifty years ago this week, President Lyndon Johnson, lamenting that too many Americans “live on the outskirts of hope,” declared an “unconditional war on poverty in America.” This will not be “a short or easy struggle,” he stated, “no single weapon or strategy will suffice, but we will not rest until that war is won. The richest nation on earth can afford to win it. We cannot afford to lose it.”

The scene should hugely embarrass all Israelis and supporters of Israel: tens of thousands of African immigrants demonstrating, demanding to be treated as human beings within a state that claimed to be created as a safe haven for immigrants. The lie is exposed for all to see. African refugees are striving to receive attention from the international community in hopes that it might help push Israelis to provide them the opportunity to live in peace within Israel.

Gov. Brown’s 2014-15 budget will contract 5,633 new prison beds in state while funding the expansion of four new prisons and allocating $500 million for more jail construction. Advocates celebrate a series of parole reform victories outlined in the proposed budget while pointing out that lifting some of their extreme limitations could easily prevent Gov. Brown’s costly prison expansion plans.

Today, for the first time, the United States Departments of Education and Justice jointly released guidance that outlines civil rights obligations regarding school discipline that schools and districts throughout the country must follow affirming that “racial discrimination in school discipline is a real problem.” The guidance was included in a resource package with guiding principles and a resource guide from the Department of Education.