Daily Archives: January 31, 2018

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.

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.

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?

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.