Monthly Archives: November 2017

On Friday, Nov. 24, the biggest retail shopping day of the year, also known as “Black Friday,” BlackOut for Human Rights will kick off its fourth annual #BlackOutBlackFriday campaign, urging people nationwide to take part in an economic boycott of major retailers and any corporations that violate human rights standards and/or profit off the pain and suffering of others. Launched in 2014, #BlackOutBlackFriday is a call-to-action encouraging individuals to refrain from shopping to protest social and economic injustice in the U.S. and instead engage in cultural activism.

Dev Mission is recruiting for the Spring 2018 Cohort Session # 3!  Spring program will start on Monday Feb 12th and will end on Friday May 11th,...

Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice seeks to hire a full time, English/Spanish bilingual and experienced community organizer and policy advocate to work with...

Two years after the historic settlement of Ashker v. Governor of California marked the end of indefinite solitary confinement in California, the Center for Constitutional Rights and co-counsel filed a motion to extend the terms of the settlement by one year, noting that substantial reforms are still needed and the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) continues to violate the constitutional rights of Ashker class members.

The Black Alliance for Just Immigration denounces the Department of Homeland Security’s inhumane decision to terminate Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for nearly 60,000 Haitian immigrants who are firmly rooted in the United States. On Nov. 20, DHS announced that it would terminate TPS for Haitian nationals effective July 22, 2019. TPS was first granted to Haitian immigrants in 2010 following a 7.0 magnitude earthquake that devastated the island, killing 230,000 residents and displacing nearly 3 million.

Soon the Supreme Court will decide whether to hear a case with the potential to end this nation’s abominably long and freakish experimentation with the death penalty. That’s right, drum roll, please. Because, if it grants certiorari in Hidalgo v. Arizona – a case Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe describes as emblematic of “the problems with our [country’s] current capital punishment regimes” – America’s broken and vile “machinery of death” can finally be trashed in the junkyard of our dark, wayward humanity. Implore the Supreme Court to wipe capital punishment’s bloody stain away. Forever.

A while back, people might have argued that this was a statement of journalistic exaggeration, a way to grab the reader’s attention by fear mongering, but today it is an unfortunate statement of fact when one looks around the region. While the intensity and unrelenting nature of this year’s hurricane season has captured a great deal of media attention, the way these storms have intersected with the region’s indebtedness, vulnerable, dependent economies and correspondingly weakened state capacity has not.

The Pennsylvania Department of Corrections sent a letter to Workers World Publishers on Oct. 13, informing us that the denial of Workers World issue 35, Aug. 31, into Pennsylvania prisons has been “overturned.” A previous DOC letter to Workers World Publishers on Sept. 11 stated: “The August 31 issue of Workers World newspaper has been denied to all inmates housed in Pennsylvania prisons.” Their reason: The issue contained articles that “call for people to join the fight against white supremacy.”

After spending over seven years in solitary confinement, I was finally given the opportunity to go back to the general population through a re-entry program in which we must re-enact scenarios that focus on putting one in a no-win situation where they’re accused of something someone else did, know who the culprit is, and are threatened with a disciplinary case. In situations like these, most of us will stand firm and not snitch, but from the looks of these classes they are designed to train us into snitching in efforts to avoid petty sanctions.

Monday, Nov. 13, was a day of extra-judicial killings of men and women estimated by community residents to total 14, plus a number of disappeared. Many are reported wounded by police gunfire and beatings with hammers. In addition, news reports mention 31 arbitrary arrests, and many children and adults were injured by the very potent tear gas used by the police. In the northern city of Cap-Haitien, marching students shouting, “Down with the army, long live education, long live schools!” were brutally attacked by the police using tear gas and batons.

On Nov. 8, a federal judge said that he will dismiss a lawsuit against San Francisco State University, several SFSU administrators and Professor Rabab Abdulhadi. The suit was filed in June by The Lawfare Project, the self-described “legal arm of the pro-Israel movement.” Lawfare accused defendants of “fostering a hostile environment for Jewish students” by tolerating the activism of Palestinian students and loud criticism of Israel’s policies. “I am pleased that the judge saw through the bunch of lies by The Lawfare Project,” Abdulhadi said.

Several inmates at Wabash Valley Correctional Facility have announced that they have begun a hunger strike to protest their deteriorating conditions. Their immediate demands include removal from camera monitored cells, relocation from abusive staff, and the cessation of tampering with food and the confiscation, reading and withholding of mail by administration. Charges are often brought as a form of reprisal, beginning with disciplinary reports filed by disgruntled or sadistic guards looking to punish inmates for refusing passive obedience to their oppression.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) propagates injustice as stark as slavery or South African apartheid. It’s a Western court that prosecutes Africans exclusively. In June 2011, the ICC indicted Libyan President Muammar al-Qaddafi and his son Saif al-Islam Qaddafi. Now, six years later, Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda has announced that she will investigate Burundian officials for crimes against humanity allegedly committed during the country’s past three years of civil unrest.

Berkeley’s police are collaborating with some very unsavory federal police agencies. In the process, our civil rights and civil liberties have been put in jeopardy. Which side is Berkeley on? Do we really want to be part of a national police network headed by “America’s top cop,” the arch-racist attorney general, Jeff Sessions? The City Council needs to decisively sever Berkeley from a militarized surveillance state that is spreading its tentacles everywhere.

As the smoke clears from the devastating fires north of San Francisco that burned roughly 200,000 acres, incinerated more than 7,000 houses and killed 42 people, San Francisco might notice the distant roar of its own disastrous inferno approaching. More than 15 San Francisco neighborhoods could burn to the ground due to a lack of water at the SF Fire Department’s disposal after a major earthquake. A plan to expand the city’s emergency firefighting network was stalled for years because of political interference and one city agency’s refusal to ask voters for all of the money that is needed to protect neighborhoods in the southern and western parts of the city.

“My entire family enthusiastically applauds, supports and genuinely appreciates the Bayview Hunters Point community’s powerful expressions of appreciation for our mother, Ruth Williams’, hard fought struggles to insure that the neediest of the needy have access to that building, the Ruth Williams Memorial Theater Bayview Opera House, at a very nominal charge,” writes Kevin Williams. “All of my family has pledged, along with dozens of other families rooted deepest in BVHP, to simultaneously rise up in protest against Black culture being hijacked by local government controls.“

Friends and supporters of Rwandan political prisoner Victoire Ingabire are still waiting for the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights to rule on her appeal. In 2010, Victoire attempted to run for president against military dictator Paul Kagame and went to prison instead. Many Rwandans describe their country as a tinderbox, an earthquake fault, or a smoldering volcano because of its brutal oligarchy, unresolved ethnic polarization, and repressed memories of violence and loss.

Parents and community members working to open a new school in Southeast San Francisco gathered for a naming ceremony at the Bayview Opera House earlier this month. With hopes of creating a school that embodies the core values of equity and leadership, they chose to name the school Mary L. Booker Leadership Academy (MLBLA). Mary L. Booker was one of Bayview Hunters Point’s greatest community leaders.

Healthcare is a human right! I’ve heard that phrase many times in my 20 years advocating for universal healthcare. Until now, few legislators in Sacramento have spoken those words. On Oct. 23 and 24, however, California Assembly members Jim Wood and Joaquin Arambula, co-chairs of the Assembly’s Select Committee on Healthcare, said, “Healthcare is a human right.” The other Democratic members of the committee, Autumn Burke, David Chiu and Laura Friedman, all agreed.

I frequently hear correctional officers make statements such as, “Inmate, get off my table,” “Inmate, get off my yard,” “Inmate, get off my bed” and so on. The idea that they own everything in the prison sounds like they have serious ownership issues, along with superiority complex and delusions. It could also be the reason they abuse prisoners so much. If correctional officers believe we are their property, they could justify abusive treatment of “their” property.