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2015 February

Monthly Archives: February 2015

Wanda’s Picks for February 2015

Given the trajectory of 2014 regarding Black lives, perhaps February would be a great time to reflect on what bell hooks calls “the love ethic,” a principle Dr. King embodied and preached. Langston Hughes would have been 116 on Feb. 1 (his mother, Carrie Langston, was born Jan. 22, 1873). Albert Woodfox will be 68 on Feb. 19. Hopefully he will be eating cake under some sunny sky, a freed man by then.

West Oakland unites to keep Black families in their homes!

A Black West Oakland family is set to be forcefully thrown out of their home in days by NationStar Bank. Annette Miller and her family have lived in their home for the last 60 years and are among the oldest Black homeowners in a quickly gentrifying West Oakland. “They’ve foreclosed on a lot of people around here.” Neighbors have pledged to fight back to keep this home in the hands of the Miller family.

The war on Billie Holiday: The Bureau of Narcotics’ strange obsession

Jazz was the opposite of everything Harry Anslinger, the first commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, believed in. It is improvised, and relaxed, and free-form. It follows its own rhythm. Anslinger looked out over a scene filled with men like Charlie Parker, Louis Armstrong and Thelonious Monk, and he longed to see them all behind bars. In the end he scaled down his focus until it settled like a laser on a single target – Billie Holiday.

Repealing the lifetime ban on CalFresh and CalWORKs for people with drug felony convictions...

Last year, Legal Services for Prisoners with Children and All of Us Or None joined the Western Center for Law and Poverty and a broad-based coalition of 140 organizations to repeal the lifetime ban on CalFresh and CalWORKs for people with drug-related felony convictions. Effective April 1, 2015, no person will be deemed ineligible for either CalFresh or CalWORKs aid because they have a prior federal or state felony drug conviction.

Third Street Stroll …

HELLO! BACK AT YOU in the year 2015; which promises to be busy – especially in Bayview Hunters Point, which will increase its population with opening of new housing, a phase of ALICE GRIFFITH, in the spring; later this year DR. GEORGE DAVIS SENIOR CAMPUS, on Third and Carroll; AND DEMOLITION of Candlestick Park Stadium, IN PROGRESS, to begin building a new community.

Mission Statement of the Free Speech Society

The Free Speech Society is a movement that is dedicated towards protecting and defending the First Amendment rights of imprisoned activists. As imprisoned activists, we are embedded reporters for the people. We are the eyes and ears for the people – for the taxpayers – articulating the human atrocities that plague the prison industrial slave complex with impunity in your name.

Grandfatherhood: A second chance to get it right

Now that I am a grandfather, I’m realizing the joy and opportunity it gives me to just love and be loved. My grands live in Southern California, so I don’t get to see them as often as I’d like, but when I do, I make the most of it. We as grandparents can be an incredible source of comfort and support for our grandchildren that they cannot find anywhere else in their lives.

From Selma to San Francisco, BlackLivesMatter from 1963 to 2015

Students of the Revolutionary Youth Media Education class at Deecolonize Academy haven been learning, writing and living police terror and resistance as children of Black, Brown and poor parents. On Jan. 19, all of the youth skolaz at Deecolonize Academy and adult poverty skolaz at POOR Magazine began the day marching for MLK, for Black lives and for all of us, followed up by a trip to see the movie “Selma” and ended with a die-in outside the movie theatre in SF.

Shipyard workers demand environmental justice

A cleanup worker at the decommissioned Hunters Point Naval Shipyard in southeast San Francisco is facing a rare life threatening cancer he believes is caused by his exposure to known toxins at the federal Superfund site. Diagnosed with a Peripheral T Cell Lymphoma, an aggressive high grade lymphoid malignancy with a five year survival rate of 32 percent, the worker has retained the high powered New York law firm Weitz & Luxenberg.

Prisons, gangs, witchhunts and white supremacy

There is a trick that the California prison administration pulls on African Americans in prison. It is to charge them with gang activity if they refer to “George Jackson” or any of his writings or ideas or to the “Republic of New Afrika” or the politics of New Afrikans. Thousands of people, mostly Black and Brown, have been held in solitary confinement for years and even decades, because “gang activity” constitutes a “security threat to the prison,” according to the Administration.

Meet Dr. Brown, head of the African American Studies Department at Merritt College

Dr. Siri Brown is a professor at Merritt College in Oakland and head of its African American Studies Department. She is an academic who understands her role in the classroom, giving young people a knowledge of self and opening fertile minds to the social realities that are oppressing their people as well. She has been an example for present day and future academics for over a decade on how to teach history in a living way.

Third World Resistance: Reclaiming the radical Dr. King to protest police and prisons

Dr. King devoted his life to struggle. The end of his career was characterized by a devout rejection of militarism, economic inequality, racism and imperialism. Yet state sponsored commemorations on MLK Day have consistently left out this narrative. In our first post-Ferguson MLK weekend, people around the country mobilized to honor Dr. King’s legacy the way he would have wanted it – through massive demonstrations, direct actions and shutdowns.