Monthly Archives: June 2018

“We are surrounded by Black cops,” said Leroy Moore, with POOR Magazine and Krip Hop Nation, about the 15 Black cops who surrounded us houseless and formerly houseless mamas, uncles, children and elders from the Poor People’s March when we walked humbly into the Washington, D.C., office of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to demand our housing back. “We are here to meet with Ben Carson,” we all said.

Since the beginning of 2018, four people in ADOC custody – three in solitary confinement and one on death row – have died by suicide. The suicide rate in Alabama prisons is one of the highest in the country. In June 2017, U.S. District Judge Myron H. Thompson declared the mental health system in Alabama prisons “horrendously inadequate,” an unconstitutional failure that led to what Thompson called a “skyrocketing suicide rate” among prisoners.

Sickle cell disease (SCD) is an inherited blood disorder that can cause pain, anemia, infection and other serious health problems. As young people living with sickle cell disease (SCD) age, their health care needs change. This World Sickle Cell Day, observed each year on June 19, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are providing special support to young adults living with SCD.

On behalf of our many members and constituents in Bayview Hunters Point, we thank you for holding a hearing in response to Tetra Tech’s fraud at the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard Superfund site. During the hearing, the Board of Supervisors sent a loud and clear message to the Navy, its contractors, state and federal regulatory agencies, and the San Francisco Department of Public Health. Now it is imperative that we do everything in our collective power to ensure the Hunters Point Superfund site remediation is comprehensive, transparent and trustworthy.

Thanking God for reparations, we heartily congratulate San Francisco Mayor London Breed, offering her our support and our love. Rejoice, Black San Francisco, in this historic victory! Let us work hard with London to rebuild the Black community and make it thrive again. Like it or not, we live in a chaotic world, but out of chaos come opportunities. Black talent, energy and ingenuity can make San Francisco the most exciting city in the world and restore its soul.

 

President Donald Trump and Chairman Kim Jong-un’s summit meeting is a historic and bold step toward achieving peace in the Korean Peninsula. Their agreement to work toward denuclearization by North Korea, as well as the other goals to achieve piece, such as guaranteeing security to North Korea, are welcome progress.

San Francisco is home to the former Hunters Point Shipyard. Once called “the world’s greatest shipping yard,” it was declared a federal Superfund site in 1989, defined by USEPA as “one of the nation’s most contaminated lands.” Contaminated by radioactive and toxic waste from decades of military and industrial use, including toxic metals, PCBs, radionuclides, pesticides and volatile organic compounds. Numerous studies document Southeast SF is burdened by adverse health impacts due to cumulative exposures to toxic air pollution, carcinogens and industrial waste.

It was a historic day in April when a team of young people completed their training to take on the job of saving their hood in Cleveland, Ohio. Four young adults ranging from 19-29 became the first civilian gunshot response team in Ohio history. Not to mention they are African American and from the projects. Breniesha Lightfoot, DeAndre “Boss Hog” Glover and Belton Sanders, along with local activist and Washington, D.C., native Suncere Ali Shakur, make up the Wolfpack Gunshot Response Team of Cleveland. Our job is to stop the bleeding from wounds for the first 5-10 minutes until EMS arrives.

As the San Francisco Department of Elections continued its meticulous count of outstanding ballots over the weekend, a critical ninth report on Sunday showed Board of Supervisors President London Breed widening her lead over Mark Leno in San Francisco’s mayoral race. And with about 25,000 votes left to count from the historically high-turnout election, unofficial results reveal Breed’s dominance.

The crisis of deep child poverty persists in California, which recently surpassed the United Kingdom as the fifth largest economy in the world. One in five California children was poor in 2016, and one in 12 children lived in deep poverty. In a high cost-of-living state where the monthly fair market rent for a 2-bedroom apartment is $1,608, many families lack the resources to cover rent and all their children’s basic needs.

Proposition I on San Francisco’s June 5, 2018, ballot: “Establish a Declaration of Policy of: ‘Thou Shall Not Covet’ to Make It Clear to All Owners of Professional Sports Teams that the City and County of San Francisco Will Not Endorse or Condone the Relocation of Any Team With an Extensive History in Another Location.” The 81,000 votes of support of Proposition I were proof that this was no “frivolous” ballot measure. But the 110,000 votes that opposed it only made me philosophical: I’m deflated but not defeated. A setback is really a step forward for those who are determined.

There we were – the unhoused, the evicted, the displaced, the disabled, Black, Brown, Indigenous, poor white, youth and elders on one accord, all colors, all nations, all cultures, all ages, all abilities. The 2018 Poor Peoples March on Washington was originally launched by impacted poor, houseless and formerly unhoused people from the Poor Peoples Economic Human Rights Campaign 15 years ago. Poor folks walked in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Poor Peoples March on Washington in 1968.

Syria has long dominated international headlines while the big powers discuss the possibility of dividing it into smaller, more homogeneous states along ethnic or religious lines. The Democratic Republic of Congo is rarely if ever at the top of the Western headlines, but heads of state and so-called experts have long made similar proposals to carve out new, smaller, more homogeneous nations in Congo’s resource-rich eastern provinces. I spoke with Congolese scholar and activist Boniface Musavuli about the plans.

On June 5, 2018, the party started at San Francisco’s Delancey Street for San Francisco Board of Supervisors President London Breed and her campaign for mayor. During the celebration, her 600-plus energetic supporters who attended understood from election vote monitors stationed around the facility that she was leading second place Mark Leno by a percentage point. The following day, Wednesday morning, saw that lead evaporate. At this time London Breed, her supporters and the citizens of San Francisco are still awaiting the election outcome.

On behalf of thousands of victims including residents, deceased family members and unborn children, renowned civil rights attorney Charles Bonner filed a $27 billion lawsuit on May Day for damages arising from threats of cancer and other incurable illnesses relating to the documented fraud by U.S. Navy contractor Tetra Tech in assuring that the radiated land at the Hunters Point Shipyard had been cleaned. Learn more and JOIN THE LAWSUIT at the townhall meeting on Saturday, June 9, 1-3 p.m., at the Joseph Lee Rec Center, 1395 Mendell St. in Bayview Hunters Point.

by Genoa Barrow, California Black Media Whether or not temperatures will hit triple digits remains to be seen, but Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E)...

The March for Family Rights was a CPS and Family Court protest on May 8, 2018, in Walnut Creek, California. A diverse group of over 200 attendees rallied, marched, protested and then celebrated. On Thursday, June 28, 2018, we will hold another March for Family Rights to raise awareness of corruption and injustice in our child welfare system and in our courts and to further demand the removals of bad judges.

I am speaking to how I personally feel about the disparity in justice for the rich and the poor, the people who have friends and family that are willing to fight and those who don’t and who are left with no voice. I have been all alone in my fight for freedom some 30 or so years. I have no family who speaks out, I was too young to have friends and the few that I do have now are ones that I have met since my incarceration.

Third Street at Jerrold Street is bustling with a new farmers market that launched May 5. Sponsored by the Merchants of Butchertown and Economic Development on Third (EDoT), the market is open from 9 a.m. until 1 p.m. every Saturday at 1605 Jerrold (All Good Pizza). Bringing more fresh food options into Bayview Hunters Point was the goal of the market. Two local farms are anchoring the market with plans to add more as the growing season becomes abundant.