Monthly Archives: September 2014

This month, I’m challenging all fathers of school age children to visit their classrooms at least one time during the school year. There is nothing that makes a child feel more appreciated and proud than having a parent come to school for positive reasons. Moms usually fill this role; let’s change that up this year. You don’t need any special skills, and most teachers will welcome you with open arms.

The November election pits a grassroots initiative protecting Golden Gate Park against a SF Recreation and Park Department park power grab. The Rec. and Park Department has been pushing to demolish the natural grass fields at the Beach Chalet soccer fields in western Golden Gate Park to make way for a seven-acre artificial-turf soccer field containing toxic tire waste and 150,000 watts of stadium lighting on 60-foot-tall poles.

Gingi Allen is a doula in the Bay Area, an expert in the science and art of becoming a mother. For all of the people who want to consider new ways of looking at giving birth other than your ordinary hospital, this is a woman who can help you. I wanted to sit down with her to talk about this very important subject that really doesn’t get enough attention. Check her out in her own words.

I spent a week in Harlem for the Centennial Celebration of the Hon. Marcus Mosiah Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association-African Communities League (UNIA-ACL), an organization that looked at Africans separated through the institutions of slavery and colonialism, both global systems of exploitation of people, goods and environments.

Every two years, Block Report Radio and the SF Bay View newspaper get together to sponsor Black Media Appreciation Night, a night when we honor the very best in Black media from around the Bay Area. BMAN 2014 is Saturday, Sept. 13, 7 p.m., at the African American Art and Culture Complex (AAACC), 762 Fulton, San Francisco. Tickets at EventBrite (click the banner above). Headliners are pianist Kev Choice, comedian Donald E. Lacy, and Phavia Kujichagulia and Ma'at. Read on for the full list of honorees ... and more.

Often when citizens of this nation think of “state repression,” images of Egypt, North Korea, Apartheid Palestine or Nazi Germany immediately spring to mind. U.S. state controlled media has become practiced at flooding our airwaves and attitudes with images of violent retali­ation and systematic repression of dissent in other nations as a means to obfuscate the U.S. state’s engagement in identical activity in its own society.

I thought of my son who was at the Homefulness Revolutionary Youth Summer Camp and the soon to open DEECOLONIZE Academy school launching in September and felt so much gratitude for conscious programs and revolutionary schools like this. They exist so that our children can grow up aware with a revolutionary state of mind. The world needs what Homefulness is so graciously and unapologetically offering.

“Motown the Musical” is a wonderful story of a man’s ability to take a dream and, with the support of first his family and secondly his community – in this case, artists in Detroit, Michigan – see the vision through to its fruition. Berry Gordy Jr. decided to open his own music company, Motown, a company that put Black music on the map and provided the bridge between mainstream white America and the parallel nation Black people occupied, but not for long.

Leaving Pelican Bay SHU was exhilarating – with at the same time a feeling of melancholy. I hardly looked back as I was departing, but I was never displaced from the stark reminder of what I personally experienced and what others continue to endure. Considering the horrific circumstances of the SHU, it is not an easy adjustment.

I’m still decompressing from being warehoused inside that pathological incubator, Skeleton Bay, for over 25 years while slowly making adjustments to this new environment. My journey out of Pelican Bay caused relief on one hand and on the other hand a profound sense of emptiness in leaving behind relationships born out of shared respect, fortitude, self-respect and strength in surviving the crippling effects of prolonged isolation and sensory deprivation.

Congratulations to William Rhodes on a successful trip to South Africa, where he took a quilt created by his students at Dr. Charles Drew Elementary School in San Francisco to honor the legacy of an international hero, President Nelson Mandela, and returned with art panels from workshops conducted with youth in various townships and regions from Cape Town to Johannesburg.

In these times, we must demand something from the culture. Over the years, the mainstream culture has forced the pop culture to use unthinkable maneuvers to try to destroy Tupac’s essence and the success of his legacy. From objective observation, the mainstream culture hasn’t been successful. Thus far, Tupac and his legacy, with the help of his fans and family, have defeated their strategy.

On Aug. 29, the California Assembly approved AB 885 by Assemblymember Tom Ammiano, passing a milestone measure to limit trial misconduct by prosecutors. The bill would allow judges to inform a jury when a district attorney has been found to have intentionally withheld significant evidence. The bill’s next step is to go to Gov. Jerry Brown’s desk.

I have recently been the target of attacks from the Chevron-run Richmond Standard and BAPAC, a conservative Black organization that historically sides with corporate and developer interests over the best interests of the people. As an elected official who accepts no corporate contributions, I serve and am beholden only to the people of Richmond.

On Aug. 9, police in Ferguson, St. Louis County, Missouri, murdered Michael Brown, 18, as he put his hands in the air to let his friend escape. Then the police aimed their full U.S. military-strength force at all the youth of Ferguson who dared to demand justice. With the world watching and their hands in the air, identifying the police as the source of the violence, night after night, young people waded INTO the tear gas and stood unflinching with guns in their faces. Oscar Grant’s Uncle Bobby, Cephus Johnson, calls them the most fearless youth of our generation. And they vow not to stop until killer cop Darren Wilson is brought to justice.

NO JUSTICE! NO PEACE! That’s the feeling in Ferguson, Missouri, about three miles from St. Louis, majority Black city, 67 percent Black population, only three Black policemen on the force of 53. Once again another mother sheds tears over the loss of a son. Nationwide, shocking news heard from Ferguson that caused anger. Like so many times throughout Black communities, another young Black man is killed!