Yearly Archives: 2018

A 1968 book-length report, titled “A Study of the Manpower Implications of Small Business Financing: A Survey of 149 Minority and 202 Anglo-Owned Small Businesses in Oakland, California,” was sent to the Bay View by its author, Joseph Debro, prior to his death in November 2013, and his family has kindly permitted the Bay View to publish it. The survey it’s based on was conducted by the Oakland Small Business Development Center, which Debro headed. This is Part 19 of the report.

The lockdown of 47,000 prisoners in all 25 Pennsylvania prisons began Aug. 29, 2018, and lasted for 12 days. Department of Corrections (DOC) Secretary John Wetzel backed by Gov. Tom Wolf said the lockdown was an emergency measure to protect prison guards. They claimed there was widespread illness of guards from physical contact with synthetic drugs. This is false. The lockdown looks like it was a planned pre-emptive action so that the National Prison Strike didn’t spread to Pennsylvania prisons. The “drug emergency” was a pretext to isolate, repress and control prisoners.

Golden State Warriors star Kevin Durant and Mayor London Breed are partnering to increase access to high-quality basketball facilities and open spaces in neighborhoods that need them most, in this case youth and their families in Bayview Hunters Point. The Oct. 23 grand re-opening of the basketball court at the Hunters Point Youth Park, which was completely transformed over a four-week period, is a gift from the Kevin Durant Charity Foundation, Good Tidings Foundation, Alaska Airlines and the San Francisco Foundation, the first of its kind led by KDCF in San Francisco.

Today Sen. Bernie Sanders endorsed Jovanka Beckles for Assembly District 15 following a weekend rally in Berkeley. “While in Berkeley, I had the chance to meet with Jovanka Beckles, and I was impressed by her commitment to progressive values. In the state Assembly, she will fight for Medicare for all, a living wage for all California workers, environmental justice and criminal justice reform. I’m proud to support Jovanka Beckles in the 15th Assembly district.”

The new Kevin Hart movie, “Night School,” was about so many things, but like a good artist, as my poverty skola-teacher Mama Dee used to say, Kevin Hart didn’t pound on the table. Through subtle and sketch comedy, pranks, relationship issues, innuendo and character development, he showed an often unseen part of Mans Skoo (as I call it), which is an ableist, racist, classist institution known as Special Education, which so many of us who live with so-called “learning disabilities” know way too much about.

Palestinians confined in Israel’s brutal prisons issued a statement of solidarity on Aug. 20 with the National Prison Strike in the U.S. Members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine expressed the utmost support for their sisters and brothers jailed in this country’s horrific system of mass incarceration who courageously launched a nationally coordinated protest against their imprisonment and the oppressive conditions they face. For bravely carrying out this act of international solidarity and other acts of defiance, Israeli prison officials retaliated against imprisoned PFLP leaders on Aug. 29.

I met Gloria Berry a month ago as she was walking door to door campaigning in the Dogpatch for San Francisco Supervisor District 10 with Majeid Crawford, a resident of the Fillmore. I struck up a conversation with Gloria and Majeid regarding social justice and environmental justice, how they work together hand in hand and how we can achieve them by electing Gloria on Nov. 6. Housing the homeless is a high priority for Gloria, as are economic and environmental justice. Mighty House can help achieve all those goals.

The incidents described in this piece give context to the historical and contemporary art of abuse, inflicted on prisoners from the torturous isolation chambers of the Eastern State Penitentiary during the 1820s to the 1971 Attica rebellion and beyond. The documentation of the past and present grieved events of prison-controlled torture blaze a paper trail that shows abuse by guards is a lot deeper than being inadvertent or isolated events.

If only I’d known on that day, as I taped onto the front door of apartment 11 on 575 Berk Ave. in the Monterey Pines Apartments in Richmond, California, a flyer that read, “Fight CPS and COURT CORRUPTION. Recall Judges Rebecca Hardie, Lois Haight, and Jill Fannin” – if only I’d known that behind that door would be the scene of a gruesome and senseless murder just three months later.

I answered the call Aug. 21, 2018, and put together a hunger strike team. My name was released on the local WTOL News as one of the protesters with the Nation of Islam, who showed their support by hitting the parking lot entrance with banners to protest mass incarceration and prison slavery. A plot to kill me and poison my food by an officer was exposed. But I’m hard to kill. Can’t stop, won’t stop.

President Donald Trump’s comments regarding the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi aptly reflect the true nature of the power brokers that he represents. Instead of the usual “Empire-speak” statements, hypocritically condemning Khashoggi’s murder, followed by a pep talk on the values of “democracy” and “freedom of speech,” Trump is basically saying, as the leader of one rogue state to another, that was the “worst cover up ever,” boys, and heads should roll.

A copy of this historic document in its original form was sent to Bay View arts editor Wanda Sabir by Kumasi, a Los Angeles-based prison movement scholar and central leader of the Black August Organizing Committee who was a close comrade to George Jackson. Kumasi was reminded of this Manifesto when he learned of the National Prison Strike that began in Black August 2018 and believed Bay View readers would value the opportunity to witness prison movement evolution.

After 16-plus years of a plightful but solid struggle, I was finally released from Pelikan Bay State Prison’s Security Housing Unit (SHU) on Sept. 28, 2018. Good things happen to good people, so I’m simply saying that good, including prosperity, will continue to flow through the Bay View newspaper community. We are forever in your debt. Those of us who recognize a true friend and advocate of the Prisoner Lives Matter movement, we recognize you.

San Francisco is a rich city! This election gives voters, including those of us on the “poor side of town,” the rare opportunity to spend some of that wealth on ourselves, the people who need it most. TODAY, on Nov. 6, 2018, we can vote for local Proposition C to house the homeless – put on the ballot by homeless people – and we can vote for state Prop 10 to control sky-rocketing rents to protect ourselves from the threat of homelessness. Here in District 10, we can relive the glory days when BVHP was a force for City Hall to contend with and the oldtimers told us to “VOTE 100%” -- meaning we should all vote, and on critical issues we should vote as a block.

For decades the Black community has been heavily targeted by the war on drugs, which resulted in the disenfranchisement of many families of color and the destruction of Black communities nationwide. Now the same drugs are making white business owners billions of dollars for engaging in the same practices that Black “entrepreneurs” were incarcerated for at astronomical rates. NEW is offering free clinics throughout the week of Oct. 20-27 to assist with the legal and economic barriers affecting those disenfranchised by the War on Drugs.

The email excerpted within included an ungrammatical apostrophe in “mofo’s” which I corrected to “mofos.” The mofos that Stratfor’s Bayless Parsley refers to are members of Rwandan President Paul Kagame’s government, military and intelligence services, not ordinary Rwandan citizens suffering under his dictatorship. For those unfamiliar with the events he recounts, I’ve included explanation and elaboration in italics.

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TDCJ has me classified as a “High Profile Inmate,” but no one here has actually told me why I have been placed on high profile status. The only reasons I’ve been given is “you have lawsuits.” However, this supports my argument that the prison agency TDCJ has been retaliating against me for accessing the courts. Last year I won a civil lawsuit when I challenged TDCJ’s unconstitutional beard and religious headgear policy. While I was litigating that suit I was not subjected to this humiliating treatment. So why now?

Daniel Hirsch, president of the nonprofit Committee to Bridge the Gap and former director of the Program on Environmental and Nuclear Policy at the University of California Santa Cruz, spoke with the press in advance of a community presentation at Hunters Point Shipyard. Many Shipyard residents have been frustrated with what they feel are less than forthcoming answers from the Navy and regulatory agencies regarding the radioactive contamination at the Shipyard.

On Tuesday, Aug. 21, the first day of the historic National Prison Strike, Democracy Now interviewed Amani Sawari. The segment began with an excellent interview with Cole Dorsey of IWOC and then suddenly the bright, brilliant, radiant face of 23-year-old Amani filled the screen and a voice of eloquence, inspiration and power filled the room. All it took was host Amy Goodman saying she’s a journalist, and, involuntarily, spontaneously, I pointed at the screen and shouted, “There’s the new Bay View editor!” Amani and I have been talking ever since, and she came to visit Oct. 8-12. What fun we had.