Monthly Archives: September 2016

William Shakespeare’s “Othello” rings with contemporary accuracy in the Marin Shakespeare Company’s production. Damieon Brown, who performed in Marin Shakespeare Company’s 2015 “Shakespeare at Solano” theater arts program at Solano State Prison, studied, pursued, auditioned and won the role of Othello, one of Shakespeare’s most complicated and enthralling characters. The show closes Sept. 25.

A few things we should all be thinking about: A young man named Justin Carr (his name was initially reported as Cantrell) was shot in the head Sept. 21, the second night’s demonstrations in Charlotte. The first accounts came from clergy and other eyewitnesses. This is what one of them penned on his Facebook page. “Been in Uptown Charlotte with the protesters since 7:30. It was peaceful. Then for some reason, riot cops showed up. And within 5 mins (no exaggeration) a dude lay bleeding on the ground. After the young man went down, it became chaos. The police started this though. Remember that. Don’t let the news lie to you. Don’t let CMPD lie.”

“We are determined to get justice for our children,” said Sala-Haquekyah Chandler as she and other mothers stood outside the San Francisco courthouse where the alleged murderer of her son and three other young African sons in a quadruple homicide Jan. 9, 2015, was being tried. Had it not been for the endless resistance, marching, speaking, praying and fighting on the part of the mothers and families of the four murdered boys, this case would not have gotten this far.

There is a well-documented history of the U.S. government supplying weapons and arms to both friends and foe for political purposes and for profit. In addition to publicly known global arms deals to U.S. political allies like Israel and Saudi Arabia, revelations about the rise of ISIS indicate that U.S. arms and military trainees have been a critical factor in the rise of the terror group. With the recent rise of violence in Chicago involving over 3,000 shooting victims in 2016 so far, it appears that another case of U.S. sponsored gun-smuggling and intentional destruction of inner-city communities may be at play.

I have been asked to write a SOLIDARITY statement to everyone about the Camp of the Sacred Stones on Standing Rock. Thank you for this great honor. I must admit it is very difficult for me to even begin this statement, as my eyes get so blurred from tears and my heart swells with pride as chills run up and down my neck and back. I’m so proud of all of you young people and others there.

Since 1994, Rwanda and the international community invested tremendous resources in acknowledging, documenting, remembering and bringing to justice the perpetrators of the genocide against Tutsi. Sadly, though well documented by the international community and known by the victims, there has never been an acknowledgement that the crimes committed against the Rwandan Hutu fully satisfy the definition of genocide according to the Genocide Convention of 1948.

In a society where peaceful resistance is purported to be the correct method of protest, we must ask ourselves why these thousands of prisoners, engaging in peaceful methods of protest, are being retaliated against and punished in the most brutal and inhumane ways? The answer is simple. The actions of these courageous prisoners – however peaceful – are not constitutionally protected.

“A Brilliant Genocide” tells the story of the Acholi Genocide that President Yoweri Museveni and his army committed against the Acholi people during their 20-year war and occupation of the Acholi homeland in northern Uganda, from 1986 to 2006. Museveni waged that war in the name of fighting Kony and claimed to be protecting the Acholi, not destroying them. RT will air “A Brilliant Genocide” on Oct. 1.

The Green Party campaign for presidential candidate Jill Stein and vice presidential candidate Ajamu Baraka has completed its 2016 ballot access drive. Stein-Baraka will be on the ballot in 45 states, including Washington, D.C., and they will be official write-in candidates in three more states. Ballots cast for official write-in candidates are counted, whereas unofficial write-in ballots are not. KPFA’s Ann Garrison spoke to Rick Lass, ballot access coordinator for the Stein-Baraka campaign.

In response to the escalating community outcry over the falsification of radioactive soil samples and concerns about reports of possible illegal dumping of radioactive soils by the U.S. Navy’s contractor Tetra Tech at the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard Superfund Site in Bayview Hunters Point, San Francisco, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, California Department of Toxic Substances Control and the U.S. Navy have agreed to put on hold any further transfers of Navy property at the Shipyard.

State and federal regulators asked the Navy to stop transferring land from the Hunters Point Shipyard to San Francisco’s control while investigators look into reports that contractor Tetra Tech misrepresented its work cleaning up the toxic Superfund site. In a Sept. 13 letter to Navy official Lawrence Lansdale, the Environmental Protection Agency’s Angeles Herrera and the California Department of Toxic Substances Control’s Janet Naito requested confirmation that the Navy will not propose any land transfers for the time being.

Since Sept. 13, 2016, when Warden Raybon released approximately 20 people from segregation, most of whom were there for violent incidents – only to see several stabbings take place, including one person critically injured and another losing an eye – a total of eight more officers have either quit or given notice. Now officers are expressing concern that ADOC commissioners are intentionally exacerbating violence at the expense of human life in efforts to push forward their plan to extort the public for $1.5 billion to build new prisons in next year’s legislative session.

Anyone relying on mainstream media wouldn’t know it, but the U.S. prison system is shaking up right now. No one knows how big the initial strike was yet, but the information is slowly leaking out between the cracks in the prisons’ machinery of obscurity and isolation. Over the weekend more than 50 protests erupted across the country and around the world in solidarity with the Sept. 9 nationwide prisoner work stoppage and protest.

Iris Canada, who just turned 100, was hospitalized early yesterday morning, just a day before the sheriff was set to evict her from the Page Street flat that she has called home for over half a century. She is in guarded condition. Ms. Canada, who made national headlines earlier this year with her fight to keep her home, was rushed to the hospital after seeing the sheriff’s notice warning her that she would be locked out of her place on Wednesday, Sept. 14. We are asking people to send emails urging that Iris be allowed to stay in her home.

Please join The National Day of Action to Exonerate and Free Imam Jamil Al-Amin on Friday, Sept. 16, 2016, hosted by the Oakland Islamic Community Center in association with Imam Jamil Action Network. The National Day of Action will comprise a series of nationwide initiatives designed to educate some and re-acquaint others on who Imam Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin is, where he is, and how he got where he is.

On Sunday, a small group of National Football League players risked their careers, their endorsements and their livelihoods. They did so through the simple act of refusal. They stood in the proudest tradition of athletes who have used their platforms for social change, and they have already felt a backlash that would ring familiar, almost note-for-note, to anyone acquainted with what that last generation had to endure.

On Friday, Sept. 9, activists chained themselves to the entrances to the Alameda County Fairgrounds to protest Urban Shield, the highly controversial SWAT training and weapons expo hosted annually by the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department. Twenty-three activists were arrested, cited and released. Over 500 community members from many cities across California, joined the Stop Urban Shield Coalition in a massive mobilization, march and rally.

Our Kunsi of Brave Heart, White Buffalo Calf Woman Society and Stone Boy Society, are calling on President Obama to intervene in the horrific incident at Standing Rock in which vicious dogs and pepper spray were used by Dakota Access Pipeline security to attack protectors of sacred sites near Cannon Ball, North Dakota, and to require the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and other federal agencies to live up to their trust responsibility and stop this pipeline immediately. Our children deserve a thorough environmental impact statement based on meaningful tribal consultation. We are not invisible and will not be erased.

Today and every day throughout this struggle against the Dakota Access Pipeline, I prayed in thanks to the spirit of my orphaned Taino-Boriken mama, the Ohlone relatives of this (Oak)land and so many of our ancestors from all four corners who I pray to every day, as word from Obama came through that he has finally listened to us all and suggested the halting of this corporate desecration called the Dakota Access Pipeline.

I had the true honor of attending a welcoming reception for Albert Woodfox, the last of the Angola 3, on Sept. 7 in San Francisco. Albert spent 43 years of his 44 years in prison in solitary confinement, mostly in Angola, Louisiana State Prison, a former slave plantation, actually still a slave plantation-prison. Not only did Albert look wonderful, with a big smile on his face, but he looked relaxed, happy and full of revolutionary optimism and resistance.