Yearly Archives: 2016

Most Amerikans don’t know of Amerika’s sordid practices and its continued implications in the treatment of Mumia and its millions of others imprisoned. It is by design that they don’t, which is why officials determinedly persecute and aim to kill critical messengers like Mumia. This is why he has been under attack for decades, and why we cannot allow them to now succeed in murdering him by medical neglect.

Asians4BlackLives, a Bay Area group of Asian community organizers, held a community intervention in front of Ed Lee’s house to demand that he stand with the Black Lives Matter Movement. At 6 a.m., activists woke the mayor with drums and gongs. Five activists chained themselves to a table in front of his house, calling on him to honor Martin Luther King Jr.’s radical legacy by coming to the table to join them in standing with Black Lives Matter, by terminating Police Chief Suhr and all officers involved in the murders of Mario Woods, Amilcar Lopez and Alex Nieto.

On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Monday, Jan. 18, a 10:30 a.m. press conference will be held by renowned civil rights attorney with his client Gwendolyn Woods, mother of Mario Woods, whose firing-squad-style execution by SFPD on Dec. 2 was recorded by several bystanders and relayed around the world. Mario was murdered in his own neighborhood, the gentrification pressured and police occupied Bayview Hunters Point, San Francisco’s last Black community.

The argument over atrocities committed in Bujumbura, the capital of the East African nation of Burundi, continues. Who is responsible and why is it happening? Western policymakers, press and some Burundian opposition figures accuse the government of President Pierre Nkurunziza and call for an intervention by African Union troops that Burundi has said it will respond to as invaders. KPFA’s Ann Garrison has more.

On Sunday, Jan. 3, 2016, in Denver, at approximately 2:20 pm Houston father, activist, radio station owner and musician Zin aka Anthony Mills, 42, and Jonathan Nichols, 29, lost their lives in a four-car collision. Akua Holt, a good friend and radio comrade of Zin, worked with him on KPFT and in the community. I talked to her about the power of our productive and constructive brother who lost his life far too soon.

Stop evicting the Black community from San Francisco! Stand in solidarity with Pastor Dorn and the Black community; support the pastors’ press conference, Sunday, Jan. 17, 5 p.m., at Emmanuel Church of God in Christ, 1649 Hayes St., between Central and Lyon, parallel to Fell Street, San Francisco.

Black Lives Matter – from Haiti to the Bay: Join the Haiti Action Committee pre-MLK March protest in solidarity with the fighting people of Haiti on Monday, Jan. 18, 10 a.m., at the Oakland Federal Building, 1301 Clay St. (12th Street BART), featuring drummers and a report from Haiti by Pierre Labossiere; then join the Martin Luther King March at 11 a.m. in Oscar Grant Plaza.

The National Lawyers Guild San Francisco Bay Area Chapter (NLGSF) condemns the killing of Mario Woods by San Francisco police and opposes Chief Suhr’s proposal to provide officers with tasers as a supposed solution to deadly police shootings. Instead, city leaders must prioritize the use of non-weaponized crisis intervention teams, stepped-up police accountability mechanisms, and aggressive solutions to the displacement of working-class communities of color.

As Bay Area attorneys on both the plaintiff and defense side of the Bar, we were deeply disturbed by the video of the killing of Mario Woods by San Francisco police officers on Dec. 2, 2015. Mr. Woods does not appear to have been a threat to the lives of the officers. We ask that you take concrete steps to hold the appropriate parties accountable for the death of Mr. Woods and to minimize the chances of another such killing in our city. Especially troubling has been the response of Police Chief Greg Suhr.

I’ve transferred to the general population! After my CCI counselor read off my whole history to the committee, from my felony arrest to every incident I was involved in through my incarceration, Warden Davey began to explain that after nine years and seven months he was releasing me from the SHU and lowering my custody level because I haven’t received any rule violation write-ups for quite some time.

On Dec. 14, 30 residents of the Midtown Park Apartments in the Fillmore-Western Addition, along with dozens of community supporters, picketed the San Francisco offices of Mercy Housing to demand Mercy’s removal as its property manager. Midtown tenants also formally announced the filing of a legal writ challenging a recent ruling by the San Francisco Rent Board that Midtown does not qualify for rent control.

To those of us who were alive and sentient, the name Huey P. Newton evokes an era of mass resistance, of Black popular protest and of the rise of revolutionary organizations across the land. To those of subsequent eras – youth in their 20s – the name is largely unknown, as is the name of its greatest creation: the Black Panther Party. It is up to the oppressed of every generation to plumb the depths of history and to excavate the ore of understanding, to teach us not what happened yesterday, but to teach us why today is like it is, so that we may learn ideas to change it.

After 12 years of diligent advocacy, local environmental and community groups today cheered the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission’s (SFPUC’s) launch of the CleanPowerSF community choice energy program. CleanPowerSF will have a cleaner energy mix and lower rates than those of Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) and begins service to customers on May 1, 2016.

Covered California is reminding consumers that time is running out to avoid the increased tax penalty for those who do not have health insurance in 2016, and the exchange is encouraging Californians without coverage to explore their options and sign up to avoid a big tax bill. The deadline to sign up for a health insurance plan that starts on Feb. 1 is Friday, Jan. 15. Open enrollment runs through Jan. 31, and anyone signing up between Jan. 16 and Jan. 31 will have their health care coverage start on March 1.

The examples Hugo Pinnell and George Jackson gave as revolutionary leadership transformed my life and that of many others who became aspiring revolutionaries. So when we received word from outside comrades that in August – always August it seems – on Aug. 12, 2015, Comrade Hugo was stabbed and killed while on a canteen line in New Folsom Prison yard, the world stood still for us. Comrade Harold Brown sacrificed many of his years in prison trying to overturn restrictive policies that isolated prisoners in solitary confinement.

Paul Kagame, the leader of Rwanda, has killed more than five times as many people as Idi Amin. He invaded Rwanda in 1990 and carried out a war of conquest there that ended sometime in 1994. He invaded the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1996 and went in and out of that country for years, killing what the U.N. itself admitted was probably more than 4 million people. The U.S. not only failed to stop it, we actually supported the mass killing. Paul Kagame is a double genocidist, and one could argue too that Bill Clinton was a partner in this. Bill Clinton is arguably a genocidist.

The EPA dismissed 90 percent of claims it received alleging environmental discrimination and never issued a finding of environmental discrimination in its 22-year history of investigating civil rights complaints despite repeated national studies showing that communities of color face a disproportionate burden of environmental pollution. Protest the EPA’s environmental racism at an EPA hearing Wednesday, Jan. 20, 9:30 a.m. to noon, at the Oakland Marriott City Center, 1001 Broadway, Oakland.

Seventy-five percent of the membership of Peoples Temple was African American, and the majority of those who died in Jonestown were African American women. The Jonestown victims have been demonized and marginalized – stripped of agency and, in many respects, humanity. The settlement was envisioned – and promoted – as a kind of “Promised Land,” a racial utopia and antidote to the white supremacist violence and dehumanization Black people experienced in the U.S.

On Jan. 29, Latina wordsmith Raw G, with a full band, will be rockin’ the Bay Area, San Jose and Los Angeles with Mexican rap legend Pato Machete and Mexican Cumbia legend Celso Pina. With the Cali being the melting pot that it is, this show should be an interesting mix of music and culture. Check out Raw G in company at the shows, as well as with these words.

Among the crowd of 150 activists were four young people holding a sign that simply read, “Last 3 Percent.” The words refer not directly to police violence but to the broader problem of the mass exodus of African Americans from San Francisco. Thousands have left their city of birth not because of any personal preference but because of political decisions and economic policies, many set into motion several decades ago.