Yearly Archives: 2017

In light of increasing monumental weather events, I ask the following question: Can the U.S. military do some good in helping address some of the effects of climate chaos? Yes, I know it’s very strange for me to be considering this, being one who has for so long advocated against giving one single penny to the murderous, fascist and corrupt shock force of U.S. imperialism on this continent and abroad. But, after all, isn’t the U.S. military one of the major instigators of this dangerous temperature rise on our planet?

In response to a pair of major statewide developments in the fight to abolish money bail, San Francisco public defenders will file challenges in every criminal case in which bail is set. San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi announced today that his office has filed 282 challenges in current felonies and misdemeanors since Oct. 10, representing 14 times the amount typically filed in the same period. Each challenge results in a hearing in which a judge must consider the defendant’s financial circumstances and alternatives to incarceration rather than simply relying on a pre-set dollar amount.

We pour libations for Fats Domino, New Orleans musical legend, who died Oct. 24. He was 89. The Architect of Rock n’ Roll was the child of Haitian Kreyòl plantation workers and the grandson of an enslaved African. And we also pour libations for Dennis Banks, co-founder of the American Indian Movement (AIM), who made his transition Oct. 30. He was 80. Congratulations to Drs. Vera and Wade Nobles on their 50th wedding anniversary this month.

On Oct. 20, 2017, The Labor Compliance Managers, pictured here with participating trainees who helped facilitate the event, worked in partnership with HUD to coordinate an educational forum hosted at the SFPUC’s Contractors Assistance Center. Because of people like Dr. Espanola Jackson, today San Francisco has a local hire mandate that was approved in December of 2010, as well as other City policies that strive to bring equity and inclusion to under-represented communities throughout San Francisco, including Bayview Hunters Point.

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Gentrification is the process in which neighborhoods where people of color have lived for years become desirable, especially from the viewpoint of the white gentrifier. This process frequently begins, but most often ends in the displacement of long-time residents. It seems contradictory that white hipsters who support progressive movements, liberation and climate justice are the very people who contribute to the elimination of marginalized communities.

Last year the African Union resisted Western pressure to intervene militarily in Burundi. On Oct. 26, Burundi officially completed its withdrawal from the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC) without being indicted. Western powers, NGOs and press have accused Burundi of human rights abuse within its own borders but not of invading another country. I asked Canadian lawyer David Paul Jacobs, an expert in international law, to contextualize this distinction.

Activists, business owners and community members argued that victims of the War on Drugs should be given consideration as the city of San Francisco develops licensing policy for its fledgling recreational marijuana industry at a community forum on Oct. 21. The forum, which was held at the historic Bayview Opera House Ruth Williams Memorial Theater and called by San Francisco Supervisor Malia Cohen, was designed to engage community members in discussion regarding the cannabis industry.

I am writing regarding an Oct. 3, 2017, so-called suicide of a 22-year-old brother, Tabadrick Campbell. He was from Ft. Myers, Florida, where he is also known as TB. Everybody who knew him personally, in here and in the streets, will tell you that suicide was nowhere one of TB’s thoughts, tendencies or actions. He was damn sure not suicidal with only about 11 months left to go home to his family. Now he’s dead and they’re talking about suicide. Tell that lie to somebody else.

Residents and community organization leaders in the Fillmore District are banding together to ensure that the community benefits package promised to them by the San Francisco Mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development actually materializes with the forthcoming sale of the Fillmore Heritage Center. The New Community Leadership Foundation will host a rally on Thursday, Nov. 2 at 12 noon outside of the Fillmore Heritage Center at 1330 Fillmore St. to formally announce the creation of the Fillmore Heritage Center Oversight Board and solicit applications.

Khlood cannot imagine life without her son, cannot accept losing this child forever and knows her son is hurting even more. Imagine being a boy who is loved like no boy has ever been loved before and then suddenly losing that love forever. Nothing can ever replace a mother’s love. If this child is not allowed to reunite with his mother, he will always be empty inside. The 1997 creation of incentivized adoption, which severely limited the amount of time parents have to reunify with children, has been the biggest desecration to the American family since slavery.

For most of the 23 years Romarilyn Ralston spent in a California prison, she made 37 cents an hour, unable to afford crafty birthday cards for her two sons, let alone the financial support she desperately wanted to give them. Ralston did clerical and recreational work at the California Institution for Women in Chino, while voluntarily training women who have recently made national headlines for being on the front lines of the state’s biggest wildfires.

What I loved this year was all the celebratory dancing from just before our ancestors crossed into the unknown territory to landing on these shores and celebrating life and the possibility of freedom, which remained physically just beyond reach for centuries. In small steps as we regained agency over ourselves, even if our bodies then and now continue to be exploited, liberation was a bit sweeter.

Thursday, Sept. 28, 2017, marked the death of the 1,044th person that we know of killed by Tasers in North America, the most recent in Oakland after a man, Marcellus Toney, tried to flee a multi-vehicle accident. This unnecessary death reveals the primary reason why San Franciscans have consistently rejected Tasers for the SFPD. Yet on Nov. 3, the San Francisco Police Commission voted and approved  a renewed proposal to arm the SFPD with these weapons. This begs the question: Who are the proponents of Tasers?

Oct. 20, 2017, marks the sixth anniversary of the martyrdom of Muammar Qaddafi, revolutionary Pan-Africanist and champion of the Global South. This day also marks the sixth anniversary of the historic battle of Sirte, where Qaddafi, along with a heroic army, including his son, Mutassim Billal Qaddafi, and veteran freedom fighter Abu-Bakr Yunis Jabr, fought until their convoy was bombed by French fighter planes. Wounded and demobilized, they were captured by Qatari scavengers and executed by Al-Qaeda operatives.

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Oct. 14 marked the seventh anniversary of Rwandan political prisoner Victoire Ingabire’s arrest shortly after she attempted to run for president against Rwanda’s military dictator, President Paul Kagame. The Brussels-based International Women’s Network for Democracy and Peace commemorates Oct. 14 as Ingabire Day, a day of solidarity with Victoire Ingabire and all political prisoners. I asked Claude Gatebuke, Rwandan genocide survivor and founder of the African Great Lakes Action Network, to explain Victoire Ingabire’s message.

A clinician actually fighting for America’s ultimate underdogs – as his academic “focus” – immediately grabbed my attention. Dr. Jonathan Lassiter, PhD, a clinical psychologist and an assistant professor of psychology at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania, visited San Francisco this past summer, as he was enrolled in the Visiting Professors’ Program at the Center for AIDS Prevention Studies at UCSF. He’s a polymath, a critical thinker and notably a healer.

I recently attended the first Caribbean Peace Conference in Bridgetown, Barbados, Oct. 6-7, 2017. The theme of the Conference was “Resisting Nuclear and Environmental Disaster: Building Peace in the Caribbean.” Attendees included representatives from Cuba, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Martinique, Guadeloupe, Haiti, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, St. Lucia, Venezuela and Barbados. The purpose of this conference was to consolidate a serious Caribbean Peace Movement equipped with a concrete agenda and guiding philosophy.