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2018 January

Monthly Archives: January 2018

Taking a stand: Black athletes revive protest in the sports world

When political resistance erupted throughout the country after Trump’s election, professional athletes were hardly expected to be catalysts for social change, or even on the front lines of protest. Back in the 1960s individual athletes expressed dissent – U.S. sprinters John Carlos and Tommie Smith gave the All Power to the People salute from the 1968 Olympic podium in Mexico City. Heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali rejected the draft because of his opposition to the Vietnam War. They paid a heavy price.

Behind enemy lines: News briefs

The tragic news came to the Bay View from Taharka Omowale that Black Panther Political Prisoner Richard “Mafundi” Lake had joined the ancestors. Mafundi’s decades of schooling the youth in Alabama prisons makes him the progenitor of the Free Alabama Movement and the current, burgeoning prison abolition movement across the country. The Bay View invites you, if your life was touched by Mafundi, to write a brief tribute for publication.

Surviving the bomb

On Jan. 13, at 8:07 a.m., a ballistic missile alert went out to TV, radio and mobile phones in Hawaii; 38 minutes later, the alert was canceled. Authorities blamed the false alert on a button pushed in error during a shift change. During those 38 minutes, there was widespread panic. Many tried to find some sort of shelter. A few, realizing shelter would most likely not protect them, stayed out in the open. What would you do?

Kwame Shakur brutally assaulted by guards at Pendleton Correctional Facility, Indiana

On Saturday, Dec. 30, Kwame “Lil Beans” Shakur was brutally assaulted by correctional officers at Pendleton Correctional Facility in Pendleton, Indiana. For a full week prior to the attack, inmates in disciplinary segregation had been kept in their cells for 24 hours a day, in violation of policy and international standards of human rights. No form of recreation or bathing was allowed during that time and for at least a full week following the 31st. Shakur and a fellow inmate encouraged others on the block to voice their grievance against the guards. Retaliation followed.

In Florida prisons, will so-called street thugs find the courage to confront corporate thugs?

Though the so-called street thugz forgot about the struggle, it’s IWOC that didn’t forget! Corporate thugz will continue to keep their boots on the necks of the so-called street thugz as long as we don’t unite. So what we gonna do, so-called street thugs? Fight for our rights with the help of Gainesville IWOC or let the slavemaster’s children (prison guards) continue to shine a flashlight up our buttz? You like that? I don’t.

Black and white: The people who run America separate us for their benefit

With words that come from my heart, I’d like to tell you of myself, in hopes people may see and know that there are folks with soul and with heart all over. I am 46 years old. My mom was Cherokee and German, my Dad was Irish American and we lived in Dalton, Georgia. I am the youngest of nine kids. We lived in what is called Newtown. My mom and Dad were seen the same as a Black person with a fair-skinned person. I grew up as the only non-black American on my street till mom passed on Sept. 21, 1981.

2018 Black History Month Celebrations

Join the San Francisco African American Historical & Cultural Society for a series of events to celebrate Black History Month. The national theme, “African Americans in Times of War,” has been enhanced to include “A Resilient Spirit,” the story of African American people. Dr. Dawn Elissa Fisher, keynote speaker, chair of Department of Africana Studies, San Francisco State University, will kick off the Black History Month Celebration at City Hall Rotunda on Friday, Feb. 2, 2018, at 12 noon. The public is invited.

A historical perspective on the contemporary racial divide

Aug. 12, 2017, a myriad of white nationalist groups amalgamated in the city of Charlottesville to protest the removal of a Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee statue. This “unite the right” white nationalist rally was the largest gathering in over a decade, according to ABC News. David Duke, the former grand-wizard of the Ku Klux Klan who is also an avid supporter of Donald Trump, was one of the organizers. During this rally they were met with counter-protestors.

Showdown! Radiological data fraud at Hunters Point Shipyard 2018

Breaking news reports in the mainstream media this week supplant the humble role the SF Bay View has played for over two decades in alerting the San Francisco community to the ongoing threats to health, safety and the environment stemming from the botched radiological remediation that continues at the former Hunters Point Naval Shipyard. On Jan. 31, 2018, the US Navy has scheduled an Open House on Radiological Cleanup. Be there and be heard. It is time to take a stand against the final straw of criminal negligence, coverup and dangerous corruption that is driving the shipyard development like a diesel powered train on a track to nowhere!

DeWayne Ewing and the abomination of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act

In 2017, Federal District Court Judge Charles Breyer denied the habeas appeal of DeWayne Ewing, an innocent man, based on the timeliness of his appeal rather than on the facts of the case, because of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA), passed in 1996 – the Senate voted 91-8 – and signed by Bill Clinton. Part of the way Congress tried to make the death penalty “more effective” was to limit the ability of prisoners to appeal, especially to have multiple appeals.

Women’s March on the Pentagon: Confronting the bipartisan war machine

Cindy Sheehan: I’m beginning to organize a Women’s March on the Pentagon because since 2007, when Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats regained a majority in the House of Representatives, there has been an incomprehensible absence of protesting the USA’s wars and empire. After Obama took over as president, the antiwar movement all but died. Many of us think that one cannot separate the global emancipation of women or the destruction of our planet from the issue of war.

Confessed killer strangles cellmate to death – Texas prison staff tries to shirk liability

Odd as it seems, seeing prisoners left for dead or killed by guards is nothing new to me. The reason this may seem odd is that each death was during my seven-year stint in solitary confinement, and I was a prime witness or in earshot of a direct witness. It seems that the Ad-Seg Transitional Program (ASTP), where I am now, is no exception where the killing of prisoners is concerned, as I was recently in the proximity of another. And, of course, another cover-up.

White privilege ousts Black mayor

Tuesday night, Jan. 23, 2018, supporters of San Francisco acting Mayor London Breed walked around in a daze in City Hall’s opulent Board of Supervisors chambers, shocked to realize Breed had just been ousted as mayor. One supporter asked, “What is a caretaker mayor anyway?” Answer: The term “caretaker mayor” was invented by self-serving members of the Board of Supervisors vying to be the next mayor of San Francisco in the November 2011 election.

Dr. H. Geoffrey Watson: Water saves lives

Geoffrey Watson, M.D, diplomat, member of the American Board Of Internal Medicine, president and CEO of the James A. Watson Wellness Center, located at 5709 Market St., Oakland, is on a mission to promote a healthier lifestyle, increase weight loss and save the community money by educating the community on the benefits of drinking water. Dr. Watson states that 70 percent of a man’s body and 60 percent of a woman’s body consists of water.

TDCJ’s ad-seg program is for profit not for rehabilitation: From sensory deprivation to sensory...

After randomly being awakened in the early morning, boarded onto the TDCJ transportation bus, then shipped to the Ramsey Unit, a prisoner told me that the experience was like “being snatched from a dungeon and sent to a new wave slave plantation.” The statement he made is a reality that many prisoners housed in close custody units and solitary confinement cells throughout the state of Texas are experiencing, on a whim.

Florida warden retaliates for article publicizing prison abuses, slave labor and prisoner protest

This article was written on Jan. 18. The next day, the warden had Rashid moved to a freezing cold cell in retaliation. Rashid managed that day to send a message to the Abolitionist Law Center; supporters have not heard from him since. Readers are asked to call the office of Warden Barry Reddish, at 904-368-2500 or fsprison@mail.dc.state.fl.us to ask firmly and politely about the health and wellbeing of Kevin Johnson, No. 158039.

London Breed is free to be our mayor

Nobody did London Breed any favors at Tuesday’s board meeting. Not the supervisors who swept her out of the mayor’s office that had been given to her by the city charter and not Ron Conway and the big money boys whose overly aggressive support was the screen the supervisors hid their racism behind. So London heads into the June election owing nothing to anybody, only the people of San Francisco, including the most needy. We can win it and we will! Join us soon at the London Breed for Mayor campaign headquarters. Endorse London on her website, www.londonformayor.com, and contact her campaign by email at info@londonformayor.com and phone at 415-LONDON1.

Africans organize to end the widespread practice of Female Genital Mutilation

Feb. 6 is the international day for the abolition of all kinds of female genital mutilation and cutting. The practice of FGM/C in Africa and the Middle East is a thousand-year-old tradition consisting in cutting the clitoris of baby girls, teenagers and women with a razor blade or an ugly special knife. While the exact number of girls and women worldwide who have undergone FGM/C remains unknown, at least 200 million girls and women in 30 countries have been subjected to the practice.

LAPD’s 43-year vendetta for death of off-duty deputy sheriff

I have been unjustly persecuted and im­prisoned by law enforcement in Southern California for over 43 years now. This evil that has been continually perpetuated against me by members of the Los Angeles Police Department since 1974! I want to reveal to the public the years of persecution and false imprisonment I have been forced to endure by the certain LAPD detectives who had previously framed me for the murder of an off-duty deputy sheriff in Los Angeles.

Redistributing the pain 2018: Shut ‘em down!

Many try to separate anti-imperialism from our Prison Abolition Movement. They avoid talking about capitalism and how it relates to “legalized” slavery or mass incarceration in the United States. I won’t be making that mistake. The capitalist oppressor who operates and oversees the prison industrial slave complex is only “moved” by profits or, more accurately stated, the lack of profits!