Monthly Archives: July 2017

  REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS FOR LANDSCAPE MAINTENANCE, STREETSCAPE MAINTENANCE, AND PROPERTY MANAGEMENT SERVICES FOR PARKS, STREETSCAPES AND SITE OFFICE BUILDING AT PHASE 1 OF THE...

In early June, a universal healthcare bill in the California Legislature  (SB 562), backed by enormous popular support, was heading to its first committee vote. It passed the committee and the full California Senate, but only because it didn’t include any description of funding. By June 30, the bill had been shelved in the Assembly for the year. It will be taken up again early next year. The major concern by both Democrats and Republicans? How will we pay for it?

On Thursday, July 27, the Planning Commission will be deciding whether or not the formerly homeless, low-income vets in 15 units in the Bayview will get to stay or be forced out to face an uncertain future. Housing Rights Committee, a local tenants’ rights organization that has been working with the tenants, is calling on the commission to reject the permits to demolish these units, which are rent controlled.

The regulations California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitiation (CDCR) promulgates to execute Prop 57’s provisions are applied too narrowly. I’m asking that legislators extend Prop 57’s 50 percent time credit to violent and serious offenders, apply the credits retroactively and include non-violent third strikers in the parole eligibility process. I’m also asking that community members contact their representatives in support of the same.

Protesters blocked three gates of the Kinder Morgan Richmond Terminal this morning, securing themselves to oil barrels and a 12-foot-long mock oil pipeline that reads “No Consent. No Pipeline.” The local activists are demanding that the company halt its new Trans Mountain pipeline in Canada. The controversial project would triple the capacity of an existing pipeline from Edmonton, Calgary, to Burnaby, British Columbia, to 890,000 barrels per day.

On July 6, 2016, Philando Castile was shot driving while Black outside of St. Paul, Minneapolis. Officer Jeronimo Yanez shot him five times. Philando’s murder was witnessed by his girlfriend and her 4-year-old daughter in the back seat. Fast forward to June 16, 2017. A Minneapolis jury acquits Officer Yanez of Philando’s murder. On July 15, 2017, barely a month later, Minneapolis police officer Mohammad Noor shoots Justine Damond, a White woman from Australia.

No topic is more important to President Donald Trump’s political agenda than immigration. And since July 1, 2015, he has used one case – the tragic death of Kathryn Steinle – as his sounding board to demonize immigrants, call for mass deportation, and demand an end to “sanctuary” policies which limit the role of local and state governments in enforcing immigration laws. And now, Trump is urging passage of legislation that would turn local police departments into a federal deportation force.

I am currently serving life without parole in the Missouri Department of Corrections. I have been incarcerated since the age of 15. I’m being held under an unconstitutional sentence along with 80-plus others who were sentenced to life without parole as juveniles (JLWOP). In June 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court found it unconstitutional to sentence a juvenile to life without parole, according to Miller v. State of Alabama (2012). We must be taken back in front of our respective courts and be resentenced.

As I’m watching the O.J. Simpson parole hearing, I can’t help but think of how life can take unexpected turns. Since 1994, we have watched a superstar – a man who was on top of the world – fall from grace in rapid fashion. We all know the story of his trial in the murders of his wife Nicole Simpson and Ronald Goldman. He was acquitted in that trial. About 10 years later, he wasn’t so lucky when the state of Nevada convicted him in a robbery case for which he was given a harsh 33-year sentence.

The people of Haiti need our solidarity in the face of the increasing violence of the fraudulently imposed government of Jovenel Moise. Last Thursday, July 14, 2017, in Petionville, Haiti, near Port-au-Prince, a young book vendor was shot to death by a police officer in front of horrified witnesses. The police used tear gas and batons against a crowd outraged by the murder and the quick, forcible removal of the body in a perceived attempt at a coverup. This is the latest of recent extra-judicial killings by the Haitian police and paramilitary forces.

Imagine spending 23 hours each day alone in a 6-by-9-foot space. Crowd into it a toilet-sink combo, rusty iron set of bunk beds and overhead lockers, layers of peeling paint in multiple colors, showing the years of neglect, black mold, roaches, rats, along with spiders and bugs I can’t even identify – then you’ll have some idea of what home looks like to many people here in Texas’ Eastham Unit.

The U.S. Green Party is holding its annual meeting in Newark, New Jersey, this weekend. Cheri Honkala, Philadelphia Green and founder of the Poor People’s Campaign for Economic Human Rights, addressed the gathering about election theft in Pennsylvania’s District 197, the poorest in the state. She needs to raise $7,000 to take her case to federal court. Since she swore to do so, her tires have been slashed, her life threatened, and she and her family have been evicted from public housing.

"I was unceremoniously packed off to the Florida Department of Corrections (FDC) on June 22, 2017. Florida, notorious for its own extremely abusive prisons, readily signed on to take up Texas’s slack. And being an openly corrupt system unaccustomed to concealing its dirt, FDC officials shot straight from the hip in expressing and carrying on efforts to repress and act out reprisals for my exposing and challenging prison abuses." Readers are urged to share this story widely and write to Rashid right away; mail equals support, and the more he gets, the safer he’ll be.

Ava DuVernay undertook the documentary “13th” in order to explore and bring attention to the Prison Industrial Complex. The film’s title refers to the 1865 amendment to the U.S. Constitution, in which slavery was abolished “except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.” The story told by “13th” thus goes back to the early chain-gangs of Black prisoners – men arrested for petty offenses under the post-Civil War Black Codes who were then contracted out to perform labor that they had previously performed as privately-owned slaves.

Gregory Matthew Hug, 31, of San Francisco, California, died May 26, 2017. Born March 28, 1986, in St. Charles, Missouri, he was adopted by Dianne and Leonard Hug when he was 6 years old. His birth name was Gregory Farlane. He graduated from Hermann High in the Class of 2004 and attended City College of San Francisco 2008-2009. Greg loved cats and was known as an animal lover. He was a proud member of the Juggalo community, the Gothic community and the Church of Bast.

 

Almost three months have passed since the stabbing death of Humboldt State University student David Josiah Lawson, and no one is currently in custody for his murder. The Arcata Police Department and other Arcata city officials held a press conference Friday, June 30, on HSU’s quad. The mother of Lawson was also in attendance along with Shelley Mack of Martin & Mack, a local civil rights firm in Arcata, California. Mack is serving as a liaison for Lawson family attorney Justin Sanders.

A swift salute to all of the supporters and those concerned with the ongoing fight to reform CDCR’s ASUs. As of June 19, the hunger strike has been suspended until further notice. It is unfortunate that we as prisoners must use this process in order to shine light on CDCR’s unwillingness to oversee its ASU conditions. CDCR allowed Folsom State Prison administration to retaliate, isolate and condone the poor conditions in its ASU. Now I’ve been transferred to even more extreme conditions.

“Prison Lives Matter” and “Amend the 13th: Abolish Legal Slavery in Amerika Movement” are seeking to get the people, i.e., family, friends, inmates and the outside movement, involved in the struggle to raise awareness and fight the cruel and inhuman treatment of prisoners, the daily violations of our human and civil rights, and the economic exploitation of our families. Rally Friday, Aug. 11, 11 a.m., outside the Indiana Department of Corrections headquarters.

Low-wage workers gathered in a town hall meeting in Bayview Hunters Point on June 29 to denounce the growing income inequality in the Bay Area and declare that if their wages did not increase they would be forced to leave their jobs. The workers, who came together in the Alex Pitcher Community Room in the Southeast Campus of City College, were meeting to discuss proposed amendments to the Minimum Compensation Ordinance.