Monthly Archives: June 2019

I felt that Teddy wasn’t recognized and remembered as well as he should be and that there was an extraordinary tale here not just of a musical talent, but also of tremendous triumph over adversity – his story feels almost Shakespearean.

The San Francisco Black Film Festival’s 21st anniversary season runs June 13-16, kicking off with a media preview, briefing and tribute to the late Jeff Adachi, San Francisco Public Defender and filmmaker, on June 12, 4-6 p.m. Kali O’Ray and Katera Crossley, SFBFF Festival co-directors want to honor a friend to the festival, whose work, “America Needs a Racial Facial,” debuted in 2016.

Today, significant numbers of prisons – where Brown and Black inmates from urban areas are incarcerated – are located in rural, predominantly white census tracts. And for years, these Brown and Black bodies have been used to inflate the census figures in order to enhance the political power of those rural white areas.

In 1969, the legendary African American activist Bayard Rustin wrote, “The Negro can never be socially and politically free until he is economically secure.” Rustin could have been describing the civil rights unionism of ILWU Local 10.

Here’s my take on Bay View, the HBCUs and any other Black establishments needing financial help: We, Black America, have way too many Black athletes, entertainers, entrepreneurs etc. for Black establishments to be underfunded.

The Congolese are under occupation by Rwanda. Congo’s immense mineral resources have been plundered by Rwandan and Ugandan troops, then smuggled or sold to Western and transnational corporations.

These medical emergencies occur many times a day, causing stress and frustration with all prisoners. They affect our physical and mental wellbeing. It is dehumanizing. We have to wait to be allowed to walk to a medical area that treats prisoners for minor medical problems without using the emergency code for help, "man down."

Warehousing prisoners in a single cell for 22-24 hours a day for years with no release in the foreseeable future is, according to the U.S. Supreme Court and the Department of Justice, the precise definition of Solitary Confinement, which is deemed cruel and unusual punishment.

Now that we’re supposedly free, Blacks have become the majority of the U.S. prison population. And that is because the free labor of Black slaves built this country into a profitable, prosperous enterprise for whites who are trying to keep it that way.

"I think that women have always been in the vanguard of change and that is because we have been forced to make a way out of no way for a very, very long time and when you bring people together who have been forced to make a way out of no way, suddenly not only do they start sharing tips and ideas with each other about how to keep making a way out of no way, but then we start to question why isn’t there a way."

Janet Holloway Africa and Janine Phillips Africa have been released from state custody after 40 years of incarceration. The sisters have been battling for their freedom after being consistently denied parole despite their stellar record and community service endeavors while behind bars.

“Although the San Mateo District Attorney’s Office and the Sheriff’s Department are unwilling to hold the deputies accountable for racially profiling, stalking, repeatedly tasing and pepper-spraying Chinedu Okobi to death, I will!”

Is this how San Francisco treats the last 3 percent of the population that is African American? Is this how the City demonstrates their accountability for neglecting the property and supporting the racist impact of urban renewal?

A life sentence should not be a death sentence. Forty‐eight years is long enough. After all this time, Jalil Muntaqim belongs with his family and his community.

California Treasurer Fiona Ma has appointed two prominent African American transportation experts, Mr. Frederick Jordan of San Francisco and Dr. Beverly A. Scott of Albany, to the California High-Speed Rail Authority Peer Review Group, an eight-member body that evaluates the California High Speed Rail Authority’s funding plans and renders its independent judgment on their feasibility and reasonableness.