Monthly Archives: October 2016

Big Mouth Productions is presenting a cultural event for everyone in the community to come together and have a pleasurable time. A recent First Tuesdays Spoken Word event I attended was filled with an abundance of positive energy and great people. The event takes place this evening and every first Tuesday of the month at 7:30 p.m. at the Radio Africa Kitchen restaurant, located on the corner of Third and Oakdale in the heart of Bayview Hunters Point.

Despite scant media coverage, the largest prison strike in history is entering its third week. Retaliation is rampant, both against the organizers in prison and against the Bay View for spreading the word. The Free Alabama Movement that started the prison-strikes-to-end-slavery campaign is defeating a violent divide-and-conquer scheme to turn prisoner against prisoner with a Peace Summit, reminiscent of the Agreement to End Hostilities in California, which this month is entering its fifth year of keeping the peace.

The El Cajon police shooting of Alfred Olango is one of the most recent police shootings of an unarmed Black man to make national and international headlines and inspire Black Lives Matter protests. Olango and his family fled war and persecution by the government of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, who has ruled Uganda with an iron fist since 1986. KPFA’s Ann Garrison filed this report.

He overcame a childhood of hunger in war-torn parts of Africa and came to America with the dream of opening a restaurant with his family. That dream ended with the death of Alfred Olango, 38, who was killed on Tuesday in El Cajon, California, when two officers responding to a report of a mentally ill man shot Olango after they said he pulled an unidentified object from his pants pocket and appeared to move into a “shooting stance.”

Could Mumia Abu-Jamal, one of the 20th century’s most high profile political prisoners, a powerful and renowned author and a former Black Panther, have hope of being released after 34 years in prison, 30 of those years on death row? Could Mumia, unlike the anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti or the Communists Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were executed by the state, finally see the light of day after decades in prison like former Black Panthers Geronimo Pratt, the Angola 3 and Eddie Conway?

I’m incarcerated in 850 Bryant, CJ4 of the San Francisco County Jail, and my health is failing. Due to the lack of sunlight, like a plant I’m withering away. I’m having kidney problems, and I’ve had to have two spinal surgeries since I’ve been here, in three and a half years. I’m mentioning this because I’m only 35 years old! And also because the medical care provider that is contracted here is severely incompetent. They have a history of letting inmates here die.