Monthly Archives: August 2014

An urgent call from Haiti Action Committee - On Aug. 13, the Haitian government summoned former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to court on corruption charges. This summons is part of a chilling pattern of repression aimed at destroying Aristide’s political party, Fanmi Lavalas, as the country approaches new legislative elections. We denounce it in the strongest possible terms.

Since the killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown by Ferguson police in Missouri last weekend, the people of Ferguson have been subjected to a military-style crackdown by a squadron of local police departments dressed like combat soldiers. This has prompted residents to liken the conditions on the ground in Ferguson to the Israeli military occupation of Palestine. And who can blame them?

TaLea Monet, aka Ms. Incredible, is an MC based in Frisco’s Hunters Point with skills and a very distinct voice. She recently dropped her debut album titled “Birth of a New Breed,” featuring her two beautiful children on the front cover. I wanted to sit down with this hometown shero and talk about her history and her latest musical offering to the people. Hear’s Ms. Incredible in her own words ...

On May 1, 2014, we, California inmates who have been in solitary confinement for long periods of time, co-signed a letter addressed to the California Senate and Assembly expressing our grave concerns with Sen. Hancock’s SB 892. We wish to follow up on our previous letter, as SB 892 has now been approved by the Senate and is being considered in the Assembly.

While the country is still reeling from the news and aftermath of the fatal shooting by police of unarmed Ferguson, Mo., teen Michael Brown, KTLA is reporting that a 25-year-old mentally challenged man was shot and killed in Los Angeles while lying on the ground. His family says he was complying with officers. He was also unarmed.

The SF Bay View newspaper is working to gather enough funds to send JR Valrey to the frontlines in Ferguson, Missouri, site of the biggest protests against police terrorism since Oakland rose up to demand justice for Oscar Grant. They started Saturday, when a police officer murdered unarmed Michael Brown, 18, for walking in the roadway with his friend. Most corporate media is working to distort the story and demonize the righteous anger of the people. Michael’s family and friends and the people of Ferguson need the Black press to tell their truth.

   

Mike Parker has withdrawn from the Richmond mayor’s race so as to avoid splitting the progressive vote between himself and City Councilor Tom Butt, resulting in a victory for City Councilor Nat Bates, the candidate backed by Chevron, the corporation that for so many years claimed Richmond as a classic company town. KPFA’s Ann Garrison filed this report.

On July 29, Congressional Progressive Caucus Co-Chair Keith Ellison did something unique for a member of Congress. He published an op-ed in the Washington Post calling for ending the economic blockade on 1.8 million Palestinians in Gaza, noting that most of the victims of the blockade were women and children. Let’s try to get other Members of Congress to #StandWithKeith in favor of ending the economic blockade on 1.8 million Palestinians in Gaza.

A local NAACP chapter has called for a federal investigation into the death of a Black teenager who was shot by police in a St. Louis suburb on Saturday, Aug. 9. Eighteen-year-old Michael Brown was shot and killed Saturday afternoon near his grandmother’s house by a Ferguson police officer. St. Louis County police have not given a reason for the shooting, which happened in a predominantly Black suburb a few miles north of downtown St. Louis. After the shooting, a confrontation between police and hundreds of neighborhood residents lasted several hours, with shouts of “kill the police.”

When I got an email about a recent assault on a Black female sociology instructor at Coastal Carolina Community College in Jacksonville, North Carolina, Professor Kimberly C. Williams, whose student brought a noose to her class, I thought her case was an isolated event. Little did I know that assault on Black women professors is cause for alarm, given the fact that two instances happened in the same month in the same year.

The editorial entitled “Israel, Palestine; Guatemala, Belize” covered many important issues. It highlighted the fact that the subject has not been given the attention it needs but failed to point out that most of the information we, in Belize, receive about Palestine and Israel comes from the United States propaganda machine that takes its cue from Israel, which has been pumping out lies for so long that many people assume they are true.

Theodore Paul Wafer, 55, of Dearborn Heights, Mich., was convicted of the murder of 19-year-old Renisha McBride on Thursday, Aug. 7, in downtown Detroit. The jury began deliberations a little before noon on Wednesday, Aug. 6. The Wayne County jury found Wafer guilty of second-degree murder, manslaughter and using a firearm in the commission of a felony in the Nov. 2, 2013, killing of McBride. Wafer was remanded into custody after the trial and will be sentenced Aug. 25 by Judge Dana Margaret Hathaway. He faces a maximum of life in prison.

On July 23, 2014, at the Butner Federal Medical Center, Imam Jamil had a bone marrow biopsy to determine the presence of myeloma cells. Yesterday, Kairi and I visited with him at Butner, and today he was told by the Butner medical staff that the biopsy results revealed “some myeloma cells.” More than likely he will be returned to Florence ADX until he has another episode.

Meres Sia Gabriel has been rhyming for decades around Oakland, but she just now released an EP titled “Sweet & Lovely” that will lead up to her much anticipated album. She invites you to an EP release performance on Friday, Aug. 22, 6:30-9:30, at The Golden Stair, 608 55th St., near Shattuck, in Oakland.

“Israel” is an up-to-date apartheid state. “Israel” is a wicked occupying force. “Israel” is a raw, primitive, viciously colonialist state, other “neo-colonialisms” notwithstanding. Whether in Gaza or the West Bank, Palestine is not supposed to defend itself against apartheid, occupation or colonialism in this basic logic of the white Western capitalist world, but it does – valiantly. Long live Palestine!

It’s common for all the members of a city council to vote unanimously to move forward with good will, no matter how long they have wrangled to reach a compromise that has majority support. That did not happen at the Richmond City Council this week, when the council approved Chevron’s complex oil refinery expansion permit. Mayor Gayle McLaughlin and Vice Mayor Jovanka Beckles abstained on the final midnight vote.

It is one thing when there is racial ambiguity based on systemic commodification of one’s people; it’s another when the questions stem from an omission or purposeful lie, which is the case when little Lacey Schwartz was born. Lacey, who is accepted into the clan, notices as did others her darker skin and curly hair, yet says nothing. Perhaps upper class Woodstock, New York, is a town without many Black people.

The internet, founded by the U.S. government, was made accessible to the masses in the mid ‘90s. It has revolutionized how people access information and how quickly they can get information on almost anything from sources internationally. Now there is a battle going on between grassroots people across the country, small media organizations and media activists against a major attack on that speedy access by giant telecom and media conglomerates.

The legendary photos of Malcolm X aka El Hajj Malik el Shabazz will forever be etched in the pages of American history. In one photo, a Japanese woman holds his head as his spirit left his body. This woman was a friend and comrade of El Hajj Malik el Shabazz; her name is Yuri Kochiyama. She lived an extraordinary life that was intertwined with the Black human rights struggle and the Black Power Movement.