Friday, March 29, 2024
Advertisement
2015 April

Monthly Archives: April 2015

Prison refuses Mumia medical care as his 61st birthday is celebrated worldwide – update:...

Political prisoner and revolutionary journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal has been the victim of criminal neglect by the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections for months, and his life is in grave danger. He is weak, in the infirmary, and continues to need a wheelchair to come out to visits. Mumia needs all of us to help now! Sign the petition to help save – and free – Mumia. Also, we need to keep up the pressure with phone calls. No execution by medical neglect! Save Mumia’s life!

A slow death for Mumia Abu-Jamal and thousands of prisoners in America

The majority of U.S. prisoners are African American and Latino males in their childbearing years, imprisoned in a system that regularly violates their fundamental human rights and ravages their health. Mumia would want us to use his suffering to demonstrate that those relegated to the lowest strata of our society – imprisoned Black, Brown and poor – suffer not only their sentences but illness and death by neglect.

The San Francisco Black Film Festival is back, second weekend in June!

The San Francisco Black Film Festival is one of the premiere events for the shrinking Black community in the Bay Area, annually. This year, the two headlining movies are “AMERICA Is Still the Place” and “Njinga – Queen of Angola.” I interviewed the San Francisco Black Film Festival director Kali O’Ray about what is happening this year at the festival. Check him out in his own words, telling us the history of the festival and what’s going on this year.

Open letter to Pennsylvania governor and corrections head urges independent medical care for Mumia...

Internationally renowned political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal is seriously ill. We call on Governor Wolf and Secretary Wetzel to promptly authorize the independent doctors Mr. Abu-Jamal has chosen to coordinate his diagnosis and treatment plan, and to involve the specialists needed to address his many medical challenges. Given the extensive evidence of Mr. Abu-Jamal’s innocence and that his very life is in danger while in the prison system, we call for his immediate release from prison.

Apple lifts ban on construction workers with felony convictions, must do more – two...

We commend Apple for taking prompt action to change a facially discriminatory policy. The Cupertino campus project, expected to yield thousands of construction jobs, can still provide a unique opportunity for Apple to support the local economy and provide work for an underserved population. It is not too late for Apple to right a wrong, prove its commitment to inclusion, and become a leader on fair hiring practices.

Uganda’s Museveni to seek re-election in his 30th year in office

Three presidents in the Great Lakes Region of Africa, Burundi’s Nkurunziza, DR Congo’s Kabila and Rwanda’s Kagame, are all doing their best to stay in office beyond constitutional term limits. Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, however, doesn’t have to overcome term limits because Uganda’s Parliament abolished them in 2005. He has already announced that he will run again in 2016, his 30th year in office.

South African shack dwellers condemn xenophobia: ‘Our African brothers and sisters are being openly...

For some time now we have been working very closely with the Congolese Solidarity Campaign. We have been working to build a politic from below that accepts each person as a person and each comrade as a comrade without regard to where they were born or what language they speak. In this struggle we have faced constant attack from the state, the ruling party and others.

Less than one lifetime: Eyewitness to nuclear development, from Hunters Point to Chernobyl and...

While sorting through papers, correspondence, news clippings, records etc., I realized that nuclear bomb and nuclear power development has occurred within my lifetime. It was July 16, 1945, when Trinity, the first atomic bomb, was detonated at Alamogordo nuclear site in New Mexico, followed by the uranium bomb dropped on Hiroshima and the hydrogen bomb on Nagasaki in August.

Wadiya Jamal: Help my husband get free! Mumia is dying in there!

On Thursday, April 9, 2015, I visited my husband, Mumia Abu-Jamal, at SCI Mahanoy. I saw the photos taken of Mumia during the visit on Monday, April 6, but I still wasn’t prepared for how Mumia looked. Seeing him in the prison visiting room, he was worse. I felt my husband is about to die. He was shivering so hard, I put my arms around him and my head to his chest to hear his heart and to bring some warmth to his body because he said he was freezing. We need to keep up the pressure. Let the warden and state corrections secretary know we insist that Mumia have medical specialists of his own choosing examine and treat him.

San Francisco Mayor’s Office plans to sell public housing to private investors, leaving thousands...

Join us at 9 a.m. Tuesday, April 14, in the front of City Hall for an emergency press conference and then join poor youth and elders who will be impacted by the lie of RAD as we visit the Board of Supervisors to plead with them to NOT vote to sell off public housing to the RAD program.

California: For rich people only?

Thousands of families, elders and babies across the state are under attack by the concerted forces of gentrification and removal by the white-supremacist nation that would like to remove us all. From police terror to the acts of elder and child abuse caused by eviction to the endless building of prisons and militarizing of these colonizer created borders leaves us all asking who is this shiny state being built for?

ACLU: America’s obsession with locking up Black men led directly to death of Walter...

If America hadn’t become a nation that excessively incarcerates Black men for minor, nonviolent offenses, Walter Scott’s funeral would not be happening because he’d likely still be alive. That’s the conclusion drawn by Ezekiel Edwards, director of the ACLU’s Criminal Law Reform Project.

With no more cotton to pick, what will America do with 40 million Black...

Our American economy was built on the backs of Black slaves who were initially brought to America to work in the cotton, tobacco and sugar cane fields. America’s dilemma today is what to do with 40 million Black American descendants of those slaves who were shipped, as commodities, to American shores 400 years ago for their economic value yet whose heirs today are deemed of no value to America’s economic mission.

Visitor decries racism at Pelican Bay in open letter to warden

What decade is this? It is unthinkable that your staff would be allowed to threaten Mr. Crawford for having a friendship with two white women. Does this threaten the officers, make them insecure? There have been centuries of racist and patriarchal violence such as this and I refuse to stand by while my friend Mr. Crawford is subjected to more of the same.

Struggle without sacrifice is useless

Our 45-year protracted “civil war” between Damus (Bloods) and Kiwes (Crips) has probably claimed thousands of lives, if not millions, and it probably will claim a lot more lives if we don’t begin to change this vortex of violence that has plagued us as a people internally. The unifying of our strengths is basic to our people’s survival.

Prisoner Human Rights Movement fights on many fronts to reclaim our lives and freedom

We must carry out our prison struggle. We stand in solidarity with all oppressed prisoners, men and women. The Prisoners Human Rights Movement is needed to reclaim our lives and freedom, end all state and federal abuses of prisoners and stop the mass incarceration of humans, especially the poor.

Witness who recorded shooting of Walter Scott speaks out: Cop had control before he...

The bystander who recorded a South Carolina officer fatally shooting an unarmed Black man eight times said the cop had control of the situation before he pulled out his gun. “I remember the police had control of the situation,” Feidin Santana said during the interview. “You can hear the sound of a Taser ... I believe [Scott] was just trying to get away from the Taser.” Update: Watch a powerful video of the reunion between Santana and Walter Scott's family.

A Ugandan doctor describes the real ‘Ebola Hot Zone’

In a recently published open letter to 60 Minutes, the CBS TV news magazine, former New York Times Africa correspondent Howard French expressed concern about the program’s “frequent and recurring misrepresentation of the African continent.” Dr. Edmund Lubega says, “As Africans, it would be good if we could organize ourselves and try to find means by which we can share and broadcast our stories in our own way, in our own words.”

White cop charged with murder for shooting Black man in South Carolina

A white South Carolina police officer was arrested and charged with murder Tuesday after video showed him fatally shooting a fleeing, unarmed Black man in the back. North Charleston Police Officer Michael T. Slager, 33, can be seen shooting 50-year-old Walter Scott after a confrontation on Saturday. Slager chases Scott and shoots at him eight times in the video recorded by a passerby

Quest for Democracy Day 2015: Formerly incarcerated people will press legislators to allow them...

To formerly incarcerated people, their families, friends, allies and comrades, join us for a day of grassroots legislative visits at the California State Capitol on Monday, April 27. We need to speak out when our suffering outlasts our jail or prison sentences. Bills are being considered that directly relate to our capacity to thrive as human beings. Buses will roll out of both Northern and Southern California. Join us.