Monthly Archives: July 2016

On Saturday, July 9, Socialist Alternative and Movement4Bernie held the first of a series of forums titled “Beyond Bernie: We Need a United Party for the 99%.” Socialist Alternative is a nationwide membership organization which initially endorsed Bernie Sanders but has now endorsed Green Party candidate Dr. Jill Stein in all 50 states and Washington, D.C.

July 11, 2016, Pittsburgh, Penn. – A settlement has been reached in the case of Shoatz v. Wetzel, which challenged the 22-year solitary confinement of Abolitionist Law Center client and political prisoner Russell Maroon Shoatz. This brings an end to litigation begun in 2013. In February 2014, following an international campaign on behalf of Shoatz, he was released from solitary confinement.

Every time an innocent Black American is killed by police, the media works overtime to search through his background for any hint of disobedience. But no one ever investigates the police, until now, revealing that slain Dallas police officer Lorne Ahrens was a proud, open white supremacist. Micah Johnson didn't know that, but, firing indiscriminately, he managed to hit a Nazi. The system is working as it was always intended.

The PS Imberakuri party is deeply concerned and hereby openly denounces the court’s ruling in the case of its Secretary of Mobilization Mr. Jean Baptiste Icyitonderwa, in which he had appealed his six-year sentence on charges stemming from sending a letter to the prime minister expressing concerns on how student loans for students in universities and institutions of higher learning were awarded.

In three days, Iris Canada turns 100. Did you expect to live this long? Did you imagine bearing witness to the Black community’s dwindling to 3 percent of the population of San Francisco? In your dreams, did you think that your building would be sold and that you would have to endure an Ellis Act eviction whose sole aim was to extricate you from your home? Iris, with a voice so soft – tell me.

International peace activist Cynthia McKinney brought a very important point to me recently when she asked me to think about the fact that every time Black people reach a moral high ground over the police, something tragic happens to the police. It drives home the subliminal point that other ethnicities should be sympathetic to police who are paid to control these Black animals, who, untrained or barely trained and armed, can kill multiple elite, trained officers. Consider the cases of Larry Davis in New York and Lovelle Mixon in Oakland.

Eugene E. White opened the first Black-owned art gallery in San Francisco in 1963, and he still runs it in the Fillmore over 50 years later. His work depicts realistic experiences and expressions of Black people. On Sunday, July 10, San Francisco celebrates Eugene E. White Day, honoring the renowned and revered local artist, educator and entrepreneur, at the African American Art and Culture Complex, 762 Fulton St., from noon to 5 p.m.

The Democratic National Convention will take place in Philadelphia from July 25 to July 28. City authorities readily issued permits for four marches during the convention, but the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign had to file a complaint in federal court, with the help of the ACLU, to get a permit for their march, the March for Our Lives. KPFA’s Ann Garrison spoke to campaign organizer and former Green Party vice presidential candidate Cheri Honkala.

From 1983 to 1993, I taught Bible to teenaged felons housed at San Francisco Juvenile Hall. Teaching teenaged felons with lives on hold due to youthful anger, ignorance and mistakes was a challenge but also a lot of fun. However, what made me good at what I did was in part due to a stabbing I witnessed away from the facility and a special moment I missed out on when Muhammad Ali came up to the SF Juvenile Hall.

Philando Castile was killed by a police officer during a traffic stop for a broken tail light. Lavish Reynolds, his girlfriend, broadcast the aftermath of the fatal police shooting live on Facebook in an extraordinary video, in which she narrates the events while still inside the car next to her dying boyfriend as the police officer continues to point the gun at her and her daughter.

Alton Sterling, a 37-year-old Black man, was standing in the parking lot selling CDs as he had for years when two white cops arrived on Tuesday night. By Wednesday morning he was dead and protesters were in the city’s streets. Calls erupted from Congress and the NAACP for an independent investigation into the shooting, which the Justice Department announced within hours. District Attorney Hillar C. Moore III said the “officers feel they were completely justified” in the shooting. Alton was the 558th person killed by police in the U.S. this year.

Almost two years ago, Sept. 29, 2014, the New Jersey Appellate Court ordered the New Jersey Parole Board to “expeditiously set conditions” for my parole. The Parole Board appealed the order on grounds that I had not undergone a hearing before the full Parole Board prior to securing the order for release. The New Jersey Supreme court reversed the Appellate Court’s order and remanded the case to the full Parole Board for completion of the administrative process.

Beginning with thanks to people who inspire him, Jesse Williams launched into this riveting acceptance speech June 27 for BET’s Humanitarian Award: “Now, this award, this is not for me. This is for the real organizers all over the country. The activists, the civil rights attorneys, the struggling parents, the families, the teachers, the students that are realizing that a system built to divide and impoverish and destroy us cannot stand if we do. All right?"

The Leimert Park Village Book Fair is held in the well preserved and nationally known Los Angeles Black artistic and cultural neighborhood Leimert Park, home to legendary filmmaker and owner of the Kaos Network Ben Caldwell and the Black bookstore Eso Won Books. Cynthia Exum and her crew have been organizing the Leimert Park Village Book Fair for a decade, which is no small feat. So I sat down with her to discuss this monumental accomplishment.

Community activist, retired civil service employee and U.S. Navy veteran, we have lost a great man. Michael went on to live with the Lord. His memory and legacy of helping others and claiming their self-worth is immeasurable. For those of us for­tunate enough to know Mike, failure was not an option. He never gave up on life, people or family! Michael will forever be missed by those of us he leaves behind.

In one voice, rising from the cells of long term solitary confinement, echoed in the dormitories and cell blocks from Virginia to Oregon, we prisoners across the United States vow to finally end slavery in 2016. On Sept. 9 of 2016, we will begin an action to shut down prisons all across this country. We will not only demand the end to prison slavery, we will end it ourselves by ceasing to be slaves.

In the wake of Muhammed Ali’s transition come the voices of praise and adulation heaped on the man for his political stance and courage for holding to his convictions in 1967, that brought him face-to-face with a racist U.S. regime. But the voices are silent in the face of Jasmine Abdullah Richards’ reality in 2016, against an identical racist regime to the one who persecuted Ali.

International Longshore and Warehouse Union members both active and retired are mourning the loss of Josh Williams, founder and captain emeritus of the legendary ILWU Local 10 Drill Team. Brother Williams, who became a member of the union in 1959, organized the Drill Team fifty years ago. The Drill Team participated in one of the first United Farm Workers marches led by Cesar Chavez in 1966. Josh has been retired approximately 20 years as a longshoreman.

Senior White House officials, city leaders, educators, community residents and inmates gathered inside the All Faith Chapel at the Atlanta federal prison on May 9 to hear a debate team of three inmates with lengthy custodial sentences challenge a team of three Morehouse College undergraduates. The highly anticipated event was themed The Great Debate and Reentry Forum: Everyone Deserves a Fair and Second Chance.

African American soldiers have fought in American wars since the Revolution, but in 1869 Congress established four all-Black regiments within the U.S. Army: the 9th and 10th Cavalry and the 24th and 25th Infantry. These regiments were located all over the country and did everything from fighting campaigns against Native tribes to pursuing bandits, improving our roads, and scouting and mapping frontier land.