Monthly Archives: June 2020

San Luis Obispo – From February through April 2020, prisoners with valid subscriptions to the San Francisco Bay View newspaper were denied their monthly publications by the mailroom supervisor and her sergeant. However, a California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation memorandum, dated May 8, 2020, sent to “Wardens/Mailrooms,” subject: “Response to Institutional Request for Approval of Temporarily Withheld Publications,” was denied by Acting Deputy Director Charles W. Callahan.

I was sitting here in my 4-and-a-half-by-10-foot prison cell on San Quentin’s death row when suddenly I saw “breaking news” flash across the TV screen. To my horror, the image that followed was that of a white Minneapolis police officer named Derek Chauvin driving his knee into the back of the neck of a Black man named George Floyd.

The Bay View is serializing the introduction to “Annotated Tears, Vol. 2,” by Talib Williams, who is currently incarcerated in Soledad, California, and has written the history of that storied place. In the spirit of Sankofa, we learn the past to build the future. Part 2 begins with the continuation of a letter written by George Jackson to his lawyer, Kay Stender, from his book, “Soledad Brother.”

n May 24, 2020, a crowd of onlookers witnessed the slow death by asphyxiation of a handcuffed Black man in Minneapolis. This was a public lynching.

Mayor London Breed announced May 22 that San Francisco’s summer camps and summer programs can reopen on June 15 with limited capacity and modifications to prevent the spread of COVID-19. The Department of Public Health (DPH) issued a Health Order for summer camps and programs consistent with the statewide guidelines.

Some minority-owned small businesses applied for the Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) by the initial March 31, 2020, deadline and again thereafter. The EIDL program was intended to provide working capital to small businesses – apparently not exclusively – with funding of up to $2 million, including an immediate $10,000 advance within a few days after applications were submitted to the Small Business Administration (SBA).

Today, San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin and Supervisor Shamann Walton announced a resolution motivated by the murder of George Floyd to protect the public and particularly people of color from police misconduct. The resolution urges the San Francisco Civil Service Commission to prohibit the San Francisco Police Department and San Francisco Sheriff’s Department from hiring officers with a known history of serious police misconduct. Supervisors Hillary Ronen, Aaron Peskin, Matt Haney, Dean Preston, Sandra Lee Fewer and Norman Yee are cosponsors of the resolution.

Karega is an intelligent and principled brother of extraordinary patience, diplomacy and reasoning ability. He and his wife Felecia have come up with a new book called “SOL Affirmations.” Now that we are in the season of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is absolutely necessary that we become more aware of our mental health and start to learn the tools and techniques that we could use to deal with stress.

Sacred prayers to everyone sacrificing and organizing to serve those who have lost their jobs, sources of income and housing. And, to those who have tested positive for the covid-19 virus, suffered from other illnesses, had loved ones become ill or, worse, suffered the ultimate tragedy of death from the corporate-state violence of impoverishment, torturous military-police and white racist terrorism. Asé.

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer: While you’ve been busy reopening the state for business, via your Michigan Safe Start plan, the COVID-19 pandemic is exploding like a biological time-bomb in Michigan’s aging and overcrowded prisons, with a 50 percent infection rate among state prisoners confirmed by recent news broadcasts. Your current plan to expedite the parole of state prisoners who are past their earliest release dates will, at best, only release a thousand prisoners, more or less.

Shortly after the flood in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina, local residents risked their lives launching small boats to rescue people stranded on top of their roofs. This ad hoc group, which included many skilled Cajun boat pilots, became known as the Cajun Navy, a volunteer group who have saved thousands of people in other disasters including Hurricanes Florence, Harvey, Irma and Michael.

The country is mourning after a Minneapolis police officer murdered George Floyd, an unarmed Black man accused of a nonviolent offense. Our country is plagued by police use of excessive force and violence, especially against communities of color.

Happy Juneteenth or Black People’s Liberation Day, June 19, 1865! Stay strong folks and be safe. Fists up to the youth who are leaders in this Movement for Racial Justice and their parents who raised them righteous.