Monthly Archives: September 2015

I was in the San Quentin Adjustment Center (SHU) for four years in the early to mid-1980s. We called it AC. San Quentin was all holes except one block. AC was the deepest hole in San Quentin. It is a short, three-floor, windowed building with two rows of roomy, single-bed cells on each floor, facing the windows. I was there when the first group of Death Row inmates was moved in as overflow. The AC of today is a far cry from that bygone era.

“Who gets treated for hepatitis C?” is a medical decision for infectious disease specialists, not a question of “ethics, costs or access” for well-meaning executives. “Who pays?” depends on measuring the real social costs of failing to treat a national epidemic and cannot be measured by the limited considerations of private entities and public agencies in a single state, or even several states.

The current campaign to elect a sheriff for the City and County of San Francisco can and must become San Francisco’s “eyes wide open” opportunity to review what it can do to identify and promulgate a new path for the City on how it will create quantifiable change in the San Francisco County Jail and Youth Detention Center’s disproportionate incarceration of African American and Hispanic men, women and youth. Vote for John Robinson for Sheriff on Nov. 3, 2015!

We are coming up on three years since the End of All Hostilities with all races has been implemented. I’ve been seeing people from all walks of life and groups observing the Agreement to End Hostilities. What CDC could not do in 20-30 years, these brave men in the Short Corridor prison collectives accomplished in just a short period of three years. Yet CDC continues to label them “worst of the worst.” That’s complete bullsh-t!

One of the most interesting musical formations of an African aesthetic that I have come across has to be the Black Spirituals. Influenced by Punk, Free Jazz, Reggae and other genres, this improvisation-based group is receiving top billin’ at the upcoming Matatu Festival of Stories this week. On Wednesday, Sept. 23, they’ll perform at the Starline Social Club in the historic spot at 645 Grand Ave., Oakland.

Chef Bryant Terry is teaming up with the Matatu Festival of Stories and is offering an opening night dinner – with spoken word artists Saul Williams and Donte Clark, along with visual artist Mahader Tesfai – on Tuesday, Sept. 22, from 7 to 10 p.m. at Miss Ollie’s, 901 Washington St. in Oakland. Check out Chef Bryant Terry, one of Oakland’s frontline soldiers in the food justice and healthy soul food movement, in his own words.

Donte Clark, otherwise known on the streets of his hometown of Richmond as Tay, is the subject of a new film called “Romeo is Bleeding,” along with a sista by the name of Harmony. They set out to collectively transform “Romeo and Juliet” into a theater piece depicting the Richmond streets of today. This masterfully told cinematic story will be screening at the Matatu Festival of Stories on Thursday, Sept. 24, 7 p.m., at 645 W. Grand Ave. in Oakland.

International journalist and freedom fighter correspondent Gerald Perriera speaks on world politics four years after the assassination of Qaddafi and two years after Chavez, covering Libya, Eritrea, Ivory Coast, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Venezuela, Guyana, Mali, Niger, France, the U.S. and more. “Libya is a failed state,” Perriera observes, since Qaddafi’s Jamahiriya was destroyed, with several factions and many militias “all doing their own thing.” Some 3 million Libyans who supported Qaddafi now live in exile. Libyans throughout the country demonstrated against the death sentence for Qaddafi’s son, Saif.

Gordon Roger Alexander Buchanan Parks (1912 – 2006), pre-eminent photographer, musician, activist, filmmaker and writer, would have been 103 years old this year. This is not as outlandish a figure as it might seem, given that there have recently been a flood of centenarians living well into the turn of the next century. But did you know that he was born dead? Watch the wonderful documentary, “Half Past Autumn: The Life and work of Gordon Parks,” to find out more!

The hunger strike victory – settlement of the class action suit against solitary confinement – is fantastic, but now, more hard work confronts them all. They will continue to be in a relentless fight to prevent COs from destroying the unity and continued political determination of the vision for prison reform in California. There will come a time in which the prisoners will need to essentially rebrand, identify and complete what they started – the five demands.

Senator and Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., introduced legislation on Thursday, Sept. 17, that promises to ban government contracts for privately run prisons and jails within three years. Implementing such a plan would be an ambitious effort, as it would give authorities more than 100,000 additional inmates to manage – the number held in private facilities as of 2013. The bill’s immigration provisions are similarly bold.

I am shocked and I denounce your description of the late president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, as a “dead communist dictator.” I've expressed support for your call to build a grassroots movement to take on the power of the billionaires and their corporations – what you’ve referred to as a “political revolution.” You’ve said that this is what your campaign is about. It was precisely such a stance that got Hugo Chavez elected and re-elected president of Venezuela.

We were saddened by the news that Yogi was murdered during an alleged “prison riot” at a Sacramento maximum security prison, after Yogi’s release from decades in solitary confinement in the California prison system. Our prison movement grieves at the loss of one of its most respected and beloved foot soldiers within the belly of this fascist beast in our mutual struggles against the common enemy of the human species.

Eritrean born and Oakland raised visual artist Mahader Tesfai has been making a considerable amount of noise around the Town lately, first with his 80 piece installation at the Omi Gallery in downtown Oakland, then by becoming the artistic director of the Matatu Festival of Stories, which is happening next week. Mahader sat down wit’ me exclusively to talk about Black African art in the Tech Era coming out of Oakland.

Just prior to the visit of Pope Francis to Cuba on Sept. 19, the Cuban government has announced the release of 3,522 people being held in the country’s jails. This humanitarian gesture will include prisoners who are over 60 years of age, younger than 20, those with chronic illnesses, women and those who are close to their release dates. Why couldn’t Obama follow the Cuban example before Pope Francis continues on his tour to the U.S. on Sept. 22?

Terrible pictures arrive onto social media of refugees from Syria and elsewhere, washed up on the shores of Europe. One in particular is particularly ghastly – the body of young Aylan Kurdi. He was only 3. He was from the Syrian town of Kobane, now made famous as the frontline of the battle between ISIS and the Kurdish militias (largely the YPG and PKK). Aylan Kurdi’s body lay in a fetal position. Few dry eyes could turn away from that photograph.

Mumia’s attorneys have filed a lawsuit charging the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections with medical neglect. On Sept. 5, prison staff boxed up all Mumia’s personal effects from his cell while he was in the prison infirmary trying to recover from the prison’s medical malfeasance and neglect that nearly killed him. A retaliatory transfer to some other prison would be a new blow against Mumia’s health, and would steep him and his family in greater fear and uncertainty.

Haitian activist lawyer Ezili Danto speaks on the current state of Dominican apartheid and the denationalization of Haitians within its borders. “The Dominican Republic is the Israel of the Caribbean,” Danto says, noting that they sided with the Confederacy during the U.S. Civil War. “Haiti is a sanctuary for freedom, a sanctuary in a world where, when the Africans liberated the island, it was the only place on Planet Earth where slavery of Black people did not exist.”

Child Protective Services has repeatedly used an endless litany of flimsy excuses to perpetrate traumatic thefts of Liz’ four children, all the while judging, blaming and shaming a low-income mother who, against all odds and multiple child abductions, with incredible courage, has kept her family together and raised four independent, intelligent and peaceful children. She is currently in court again and fears she may lose to adoption her two youngest sons forever because of their health problems caused by toxins on Treasure Island.

The San Francisco Alliance of Black School Educators (SFABSE) is sponsoring the Second Annual “Black Family Cradle to College and Career Resource Fair” Saturday, Sept. 19, at San Francisco Unified School District’s Mission High School. Attendees can look forward to workshops on Early Education, STEM (Science Technology Engineering Mathematics), Discipline and Criminal Justice, College and Career, and Parent-Guardian Involvement.