Monthly Archives: January 2017

Greetings and solidarity to each other and all who participated in our initial hunger strike to end the arbitrary use of solitary confinement and inhumane treatment in Santa Clara County jails. We would like to extend our respect and appre­ciation to all who participated and sacrificed to provoke change. Although we came from diverse backgrounds – be it race, religion, color or creed – we set our differences aside and inter­locked arms, forming a formidable force through civil disobedience in solidarity.

They covered the streets like rain; women – in hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions. Millions marched in almost 700 cities in the U.S. and in world capitals. Millions against Trump. Millions against Trumpism. Who knew that it would be this vast? To paraphrase Trump, “It was huuuuuge!” They demonstrated by their incredible numbers that women are a force to be reckoned with.

Stephen D. Pahl of the Pahl & McCay law firm, who is also a founding organizer and vice chairman of Lighthouse Bank in Santa Cruz and an ex-officio member of the board of directors of the California Apartment Association (CAA), is directly involved in the assault against Richmond voters and the voters of Mountain View who voted to approve rent control and just cause eviction protections last November.

When FBI director James Comey dropped a propaganda bomb that blew up the 2016 presidential election and probably changed how the U.S. will be governed for some time to come, he wasn’t acting for the Russians. Comey wasn’t acting as an individual rogue actor either. He was acting in the tried and true tradition of the FBI as a political police agency that uses its authority – legally, illegally and effectively – to intrude into the political processes of our country. One hallmark of what we like to think of as our great democracy is the separation of the police and military from our political processes.

Coyote Acabo caught a felony assault case in July of 2015 during a Black Lives Matter protest while defending a comrade who was put in a chokehold by a white inebriated man enraged that his good time country music show was interrupted by a group of cacophonous, banner-bearing protesters. The Bay View met Coyote years ago when he was locked up in Nevada and sent us one of his brilliant commentaries on the evils of imprisonment. We rejoiced with him when he was released and ask readers to support him now as he’s locked up for doing the right thing. Donate what you can at https://rally.org/supportcoyoteacabo.

To honor the call for 120 hours of direct actions to uphold the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., local community organizers have been camping out in front of San Francisco’s City Hall until Jan. 20, 2017. Camp 120 is occupying space in front of City Hall to highlight the ineffectiveness and inaction of DA Gascón and Mayor Ed Lee regarding the heightened policing of Black and Brown residents by the San Francisco Police Department.

Mark your calendars! The first Black Family Day of 2017 takes places on Saturday, Jan. 21, 2017. This event will be at Willie L. Brown Jr. Middle School, 2055 Silver Ave. in the Bayview district. The goal of Black Family Day is to connect Black families to much needed resources and to capitalize on the leadership skills already present by giving them the skills needed to navigate public and private systems on behalf of their families. The focus of this event is reducing summer learning loss.

One of the most devastating U.S. interventions was the overthrow of the democratically elected leader of the Congo, Prime Minister Patrice Emery Lumumba, in 1960. That overthrow has been devastating for the Congolese people, because not only did the U.S. overthrow and assassinate the democratically elected leader, but they also imposed a dictatorship on the Congolese people for over three decades, and it has crushed and destroyed the country and the people.

We call upon ALL people to sign and ACT on the Call from RefuseFascism.org which appeared in the Jan. 4 edition of the New York Times and the following week in the Washington Post. Today the Fascist pig Trump, his pick for attorney general Jeff Sessions and the rest of those who make up the Trump-Pence regime – this whole legion of doom is shouting: “Law and Order!” as they threaten to force people to respect the police – respect their whole way of governing and ruling ... or else.

In 2001, Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., was the one and only member of Congress who voted to oppose authorizing the Bush administration to use military force in response to the 9/11 attack. She called the vote and the authorization a “rush to judgement” and warned it could lead to blank checks and endless war. Lee emerged as a resistance leader to George W. Bush’s agenda and now she’s stepping up to lead the resistance again, saying she will not be a part of normalizing “the most extreme fringes of the Republican Party.”

It is well known among staff and prisoners that if we file a grievance without any physical evidence, their failure to admit the allegations results in our claims being dismissed. Simply enough, they lie during any investigation. Outside pressure and exposure is one aspect that can counter this, which is what Rashid has been doing for years. Staff are now realizing this, too, and are retaliating to cause disruption and preserve their practices.

Here are some quotes I think are apropos for today’s political reality, which shows what a revolutionary thinker Dr. King was; even better, he practiced what he preached. “When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered.” “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”

 

Homeless people and their allies will be honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Poor People’s Campaign and Resurrection City on Tuesday, Jan. 17, 12:00-2:30 p.m., at Civic Center Plaza. They are gathering as part of Martin Luther King Day protests occurring across the West Coast, including Denver, Sacramento, Salinas, Oakland and Portland, to highlight increased criminalization of homeless people and to protect the rights of poor people, along with the Reclaim MLK Day 120 Hours of Action.

City College of San Francisco today announced that its accreditation was reaffirmed for seven years by the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges (ACCJC). “This is a great day for City College, for San Francisco and for the California community college system,” said Rafael Mandelman, president of the City College Board of Trustees. “So many people at the college have done such incredible work to achieve this result. San Franciscans should be very proud.” Before ACCJC threatened its accreditation, City College was renowned as the nation’s largest community college, with 95,000 students.

Dear Mr. President, On behalf of The Malcolm X Commemoration Committee, a memorial and humanitarian project dedicated to preserving the legacy of Malcolm X in New York City, we urgently, though respectfully, implore you to grant executive clemency to Dr. Mutulu Shakur, Veronza Bowers, Leonard Peltier, Oscar Lopez Rivera and posthumously to Marcus Garvey for both humanitarian reasons and in the interests of justice.

On Oct. 14, 2016, the last six convicts – the Folsom 6 – were brought to court in Folsom State Prison accused of ambushing several correctional officers on C Facility, Sept. 24, 2015, six weeks after Brother Hugo “Yogi” Pinell was ambushed by several white inmates on B-Yard with some corrupted correctional officers’ assistance. The judge could not fix his face to the camera as he read the decision that the charges were dismissed on all defendants on the basis of insufficient evidence.

Coming of age in the ‘60s was a trying time for young African American men whose taste of power made it hard to relinquish their dreams of equality and true democracy shortly thereafter in the ‘70s during the Reagan years with the war on Black people, disguised as a war on drugs. Nonetheless Glen Upshaw did not let fear mitigate or guide his behavior. A peacemaker or violence interrupter, his job is to de-escalate situations before they happen or restore peace and safety in situations where violence has taken place.

Scientists Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson, profiled in “Hidden Figures” (2016), exemplify what writer Margot Lee Shetterly calls “everyday courage,” a kind of imaginative power that filled these women – Black women, white women, invisible women – with a sense of pride and purpose even when deserved recognition went unstated. Director Theodore Melfi’s film is all the buzz.

A new independent study by The Commonwealth Fund found Covered California consumers are protecting themselves from rate changes and paying much less than the average price of plans by shopping for the best value. The study looked at the policies Covered California consumers purchased between 2014 and 2016 and found the average price paid in each year has been between 11 and 15 percent less than the average price of the plans offered.