Monthly Archives: February 2017

Former Black Panther Jalil Muntaqim was transferred from Attica Correctional Facility to Southport Correctional Facility, a notorious supermax prison just south of Elmira, New York, in early January. “This is clearly a punitive transfer,” Anne Lamb told the Militant Jan. 11. “It also means he’s much farther away from his legal advisers in Buffalo.” Lamb is a spokesperson for the Jericho Movement, a group that Muntaqim helped found, which works to win amnesty for political prisoners.

I went to San Francisco’s 2017 Dr. King Day celebration riding the same wave that hounded every other participant. As I suspected, a tragic election caused crowd levels to swell significantly compared to a year ago. I’d say at least three times the number of 2016 attendees walked in this year’s march. One ugly cloud loomed: the transfer of federal powers – which finally did arrive four days later – had crept oh so dreadfully near.

The purpose of this press release is to notify prisoners, community organizers and all those who care of the upcoming Millions for Prisoners Human Rights March in Washington, D.C., scheduled for Aug. 19, 2017. This is a national effort to bring world attention to the 13th Amendment enslavement clause, its ramifications, and to solidify organizing efforts to amend it. In essence this is an abolitionist movement to abolish legalized enslavement.

“Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.” – Frederick Douglass. These words of Frederick Douglass embody the very essence and life’s passion of the late William Marx “Bill” Mandel. The best way to remember and honor Bill Mandel is to emulate him!

Since long before the mainstream media was willing to acknowledge the reality of mass incarceration, systemic racism and economic inequality, the San Francisco Bay View National Black Newspaper has been challenging the dominant narrative by amplifying the voices of people on the margins of society, particularly Black people, poor people and prisoners. Now, more than ever, independent media like the Bay View is in danger as the Trump administration has declared “war with the news media.” In order for the Bay View to continue speaking truth to the abusers of power, we need your financial contribution.

A 1968 book-length report, titled “A Study of the Manpower Implications of Small Business Financing: A Survey of 149 Minority and 202 Anglo-Owned Small Businesses in Oakland, California,” was sent to the Bay View by its author, Joseph Debro, prior to his death in November 2013, and his family has kindly permitted the Bay View to publish it. The Bay View is publishing the report as a series. This is Part 15 of the report.

by Raymond Nat Turner Abracadabra Open sesame Om Presto Poof! Twisting useless, endless parades of powdered wigs, wars, battles, bills, laws, names, dates, great men, generals, captains of industry, presidents Bore us to tears...

On Sept. 9, 2016, prisoners participated in the largest prisoner work stoppage in the history of the country. Prisoners in at least four facilities in Michigan joined in the work stoppage, including Kinross Correctional Facility. The next morning, after retaliatory actions from staff, Kinross prisoners held a peaceful demonstration in the yard. Since then, hundreds have faced harsh, unjust retaliation. Harold “HH” Gonzales was a spokesperson for the prisoners at the demonstration at Kinross and wrote this account.

On Jan. 19, 2017, U.S. Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx approved a waiver of U.S. Department of Transportation regulations to allow the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) to provide group-specific race-conscious DBE contract goals for firms owned and controlled by women and African Americans. This was in response to the lack of participation of women and African Americans on SFMTA projects.

If President Trump’s $1 trillion plan materializes in some shape, form or fashion, highly capable Black contractors will be virtually shut out of public sector contracting as they were during George W. Bush and Barack Obama’s administrations. Qualified Black-owned businesses received a disproportionate sliver of federal stimulus contracts, creating a rising chorus of demands for President Barack Obama’s administration to be more inclusive and more closely track who receives government-financed work, which they did not.

“It’s a poison that contaminates and has wounded America for centuries, it’s called racism and the healing process will never begin until the U.S. government does right by the descendants of slaves brought here from Africa,” says Robert “Fleetwood” Bowden, director of the powerful new documentary film “Gimmie Mines Reparations.” He’ll be screening it at the Bayview Library, 5075 3rd St., at 6:30pm on Wednesday, Feb. 22, for a Black History Celebration. You're invited and urged to bring family and friends to this free event.

Fascism has been thrust into the mainstream political vocabulary of the United States since the election of President Donald Trump on a platform grounded in xenophobia, corporate dominance and right wing white nationalism. If the growing resistance movement to Trump’s fascism is to realize its potential for societal transformation, it must draw from the deep well of Black anti-fascist resistance.

I can hardly believe that 47 years have gone by since the Aug. 7,1970, Marin Courthouse Slave Rebellion. Ruchell is now 77 years old. It’s a sin and a shame the fascist state has practically taken this brother’s whole life. And he has never seriously injured anyone. Quite the opposite, Ruchell has been responsible, through his jailhouse lawyering, for the release of countless prisoners over the five-plus decades he’s been incarcerated. Here’s his story, written years ago and updated.

 

Five years ago the Post Office began a series of moves aimed at the step-by-step privatization of the U.S. Postal Service, the country’s largest unionized employer. One such move was a 2013 program to farm out postal window services to so-called “postal counters” at 500-plus Staples office supply stores. The American Postal Workers Union confidently swung into action, with an ambitious campaign to beat back the Staples challenge.

In 1971 President Nixon declared war on cancer. Clearly, we have lost that war, because cancer is fast overtaking heart disease as the number one cause of death in America. Hopefully, we are finally coming to understand that to successfully respond to cancer requires changing the environment in our body so that millions of misbehaving cancer cells cannot thrive. Our emphasis should be on safe and reliable things we all can do to make our body a place where cancer is not welcome.

I want to tell on my own behalf what’s going on behind these walls of GDOC (Georgia Department of Corrections). If possible, can somebody come and visit this prison and take a step into one of these cells? It’s sad. GDOC have the outside world thinking we’re just being punished, but the world doesn’t know that we’re being tortured and treated as stray dogs. If you look at the first “Planet of the Apes,” that’s exactly how we’re being treated. All I ask if that we get treated fairly.

In California, childcare for infants costs as much as tuition in the University of California (UC) system, according to new data from the Lucile Packard Foundation for Children’s Health. In 2014, parents of infants in California spent an average of more than $13,300 on childcare. That year, UC tuition and fees were just over $13,200. At the national level, all eyes are on college affordability. But the lack of affordable early childhood options has even more dire long-term consequences.

The Coalition to Restore Public Trust and the Contra Costa Coalition for Racial Justice call for the immediate resignation of District Attorney Mark Peterson. Elected in 2010, DA Peterson has violated the public trust. According to charges pending before the California Fair Political Practices Commission, over a five-year period, DA Peterson used more than $66,000 of campaign contribution money for his personal expenses.