Monthly Archives: January 2019

Most UN Security Council (UNSC) meetings are so stuffy that they’re hard to watch without wishing someone would open a window, turn on the ventilator or take the august ambassadors off life support. Norman Finkelstein couldn’t have been more apt than when he called Secretary General Ban Ki-moon a “comatose puppet of the United States.” I went through an entire pot of strong coffee just listening to last week’s three-hour UNSC meeting about the Dec. 30 election in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The ambassadors spoke in code, without naming key players and perpetrators.

In 6259 (2019), WE acknowledge 400 years since the first known kidnapped African prisoners of war were enslaved in what became the “13 European colonies” and what i call the united capitalist prison terrorist states of america (ucptsa). According to several sources, these Africans were brought to and “sold” in what became the colony of “james-town, virginia” in August of 1619, on a European-English en$lavement ship called the “white lion.” Going forward, look for a number of special events, publications and art commemorating this 400-year event in the coming months.

On Friday, Jan. 18, 2019, teachers from Fremont High School, along with teachers all across Oakland Unified School District (OUSD), will be holding another “sick-out.” Just like the last sick-out, this will look like multiple teachers from multiple schools calling in “sick” on Friday morning. We the teachers demand that OUSD prioritize public education for all of our students in the district. Friday will be a small taste of what OUSD teachers on strike will look like at the end of this month or early next month, in February. Yes, OUSD teachers are strike ready!

On Dec. 10, 2018, dozens of people, mostly high school and college students, held a protest at the busy intersection of San Antonio Road and El Camino Avenue in Mountain View, California, to condemn the corruption, brutality and killings by the U.S.-backed regime of Jovenel Moise in Haiti. Protesters made and carried enlarged posters of unarmed Haitian students who have been killed by the Haitian police. The demands of the protest were straightforward: Stop the repression and killings of student activists in Haiti! Stop U.S. support for the corrupt regime of Jovenel Moise! Support the struggle of the Haitian people for education, human rights, and democracy!

I have been thinking a lot recently about restorative justice practices and violence – physical, psychological and emotional violence and the harm to persons, immediate and long term, as well as the harm to their associate families and communities. Not much attention is paid to the survivors of violence unless the violence is by the state, yet every day people are making choices which harm innocent people. Why is the activist community silent when it comes to advocacy for these silenced survivors?

On the front page of USA Today for Dec. 27, 2018, we saw a shocking headline: “Grave discovery unearths legacy of Black convict labor.” The unmarked graves of 95 “prison slaves” were found on a construction site in Sugar Land, Texas. These Black men, ages 14 to 70 years old, were our ancestors and the first victims of what we have come to know as prison slavery in Amerika! These contract convict laborers were subjected to this form of slavery because the 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution still allows slavery. Only the name has been changed. Slavery is still alive!

I’m thrilled to share that I will be joining 19 other activists and changemakers for the 2019 Roddenberry Fellowship! Jailhouse Lawyers Speak’s Right2Vote (R2V) Campaign is being recognized for the direct impact on civil rights in the United States. The Roddenberry Fellowship supports 20 activists, organizers, leaders and changemakers who are working to make the U.S. a more inclusive and equitable place to live. Fellows’ projects focus on one of four issues: Civil Rights, Immigration and Refugee Rights, LGBTQIA and Women’s Rights, Environmental Protection.

In 2018, the town of Paradise, and much more, burned to the ground. In California, large, devastating fires are being called the new normal. “The world’s leading climate scientists have warned there is only a dozen years for global warming to be kept to a maximum of 1.5C, beyond which even half a degree will significantly worsen the risks of drought, floods, extreme heat and poverty for hundreds of millions of people,” reports the Guardian. Twelve years! How will we respond?

The California Code of Regulations, Title 15, Section 3350 (b) (1) defines the standard of care that prisoners are entitled to: “Medically Necessary means health care services that are determined by the attending physician to be reasonable and necessary to protect life, prevent significant illness or disability, or alleviate severe pain, and are supported by health outcome data as being effective medical care.” However, since my arrival to CMF on Sept. 5, 2017, I have witnessed everything but the protection of life, as it relates to the prisoner class.

Over the past 14 years, Living Jazz has provided FREE music education to Oakland public elementary schools serving high percentages of low-income families (Title One) through the Living Jazz Children’s Project (LJCP). Over 4,500 second and third graders have now benefited from LJCP and, as a result, have had the life changing opportunity to perform as the opening act at “In the Name of Love,” Oakland’s only non-denominational musical tribute honoring Dr. King, one of the many programs Living Jazz has produced since 1984. This year’s MLK Musical Tribute will be on Sunday, Jan. 20, 7 p.m., at the Oakland Scottish Rite Center.

As San Francisco Public Utilities Commission officials focus on developing a new property at Evans Avenue and Third Street in the Bayview, its facility at 1800 Oakdale Ave. sits in virtual suspense, putting in jeopardy the hard-won benefits intended to compensate for expanding sewage treatment facilities in the neighborhood since the 1970s. The handsome building at 1800 Oakdale, opened in 1987, exists only because community leaders demanded it be built in exchange for the community’s reluctant agreement to the City’s plan to treat 80 percent of San Francisco’s sewage in its Blackest neighborhood.

I write this missive to you so that you will hear from me about how I feel and what I think going forward in this fight for my life. Like all of you, I am happy that we have finally “won” something from some entity in this state. But after learning what exactly outgoing Gov. Brown wrote in that executive order I am not as excited as I was at first, or should be.

Z Gallerie, the luxury home furnishing chain store, calls itself the style authority for the fashion-forward home. But when it comes to its Black employees working at its Berkeley store, they call it a work environment that’s home to discrimination and retaliation against them, if they complain or bring awareness of mistreatment to management. In a lawsuit filed against Z Gallerie by four African-American women who are former employees at the store, they claim they experienced racial discrimination in the form of lack of promotion, disparate treatment and unlawful termination.

As I write this, on Jan. 8, Congolese are on edge, fearing fraudulent presidential election results and state violence to suppress mass protest. In nearby Gabon, U.S. combat troops are poised to cross borders and invade to protect U.S. citizens and interests as needed. Are they there to make sure that Joseph Kabila, the president they installed and kept in power for 18 years, cedes power to former Exxon-Mobil executive Martin Fayula, their new horse to ride? That’s just my best guess.

Twenty years ago, the city of San Francisco moved thousands of its homeless and low-income residents into former military housing on Treasure Island, a small artificial land mass whose 55 years as a Navy base left it covered in toxic radiation. Today, construction on the island has it on track to becoming a bustling, upscale extension of the city. The problem is, some of those residents from 20 years ago are still there. So are thousands of others who have moved in since. So is the radiation.

Driving the environmental health movement in southeast San Francisco is a clear sense of urgency and duty to protect current and future generations from an avalanche of toxic chemicals linked to cardiopulmonary diseases, cancers, neurological and immune diseases, behavioral disorders, birth defects and infant mortality rates. The investigative team included myself and pioneering community scientist Raymond Tompkins. Offering academic leadership were San Francisco State University chemistry professor Dr. Peter Palmer and UCSF School of Medicine Clinical Professor of Pediatrics Carol Miller, MD. Dr. Kim Hooper of the State of California Toxic Laboratories assisted in submission of the proposal.

The little girl in the photograph is happy. The little girl sitting on Daddy’s lap knows she is loved, knows she is wanted. The same little girl is on the telephone four years later – desperate, terrified, traumatized, begging for help. The little girl is Sophia Grace Hope Merrill, Barry White’s daughter. When Sophia fell into San Mateo County’s child welfare system, Barry thought that maybe everything would be OK because she was placed under the care and supervision of his sister, Ka’misha Crittendon. Barry White was wrong.

In 2015, I participated in a re-entry program at the Women’s Prison in Raleigh, N.C. Prior to this, I had never set foot in a prison before, and I was so anxious on this day to meet the two mentees that were assigned to me. On Nov. 3, 2018, I encountered another first and that was to actually visit someone in prison. I was introduced to Veronza Bowers by a fellow inmate who told me that Veronza was a former Black Panther who had been serving 46 years in prison. I was immediately interested in connecting with this iconic figure in the Black Power Movement, as my late dad was also a former Black Panther. So, on Aug. 14, 2018, thus began my journey into a beautiful, lifetime connection.

On Oct. 4, 2015, at the McConnell Ad-Seg Unit located in Beeville, Texas, prisoner Jarvis Dugas, No. 1386881, was preparing for a visit with his mother. Dugas, who is known to his friends as “Homestead,” is a Black man who is mentally handicapped and physically dis­abled. He walks with a pronounced limp. Dugas’ mother, Regina Strange, is a former employee of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. She is all too familiar with the overt tactics of mistreatment, abuse and degradation associated with the corrupt prison agency and because she knows that, she regularly visits her son Jarvis.

By now some of you may have heard that my comrades and I have been attempting to convince the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (sic!) to approve a contact visit between Miguel Flores, an imprisoned artist housed here in Ad-Seg with me at the McConnell Unit and his mom, Paulina Gracia, who has an aggressive form of leukemia. Miguel’s mom has cancer, and the prognosis is not good. Normally, prisoners in segregation are not allowed contact visits. This is going to take a massive collective response. I believe in all of you, and I think that y’all believe in me, so let’s join together and make this happen!