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2020 August

Monthly Archives: August 2020

Federal Bureau of Prisons guilty of deliberate indifference in failing to protect healthy prisoners...

Mandatory quarantine is a requirement for all the prisoners who arrive here at USP Pollock and all prisoners who are preparing to leave – and that means me. I am soon to be released and on my way to San Francisco and transition into accepting the baton of editor of the San Francisco Bay View newspaper.

From COVID to California fire season 2020: A nurse’s perspective on protecting ourselves

It’s experiential. My 90-year-old grandfather had gotten sick during the COVID-19 pandemic, and my uncle. who is a nurse, gave the family new rules that we had to follow to keep us as safe as possible from the invisible biological killer. In the past, I took my uncle’s occupation for granted.

Fillmore: Harlem of the West

“Boom bop sha bam sha-diddle-lee bop!” “This music came down biblically!” said legendary pianist Earl “Fatha” Hines about jazz music. “It was a natural evolution of Black culture,” said all time great trumpet player Dizzy Gillespie, about Bebop.

San Francisco Supervisors must vigorously support justice in policing

Black San Franciscans are at ongoing and increasing risk of death by police, with little hope for justice, as a result of historical lack of support from the San Francisco Board of Supervisors (BOS) to address policing in San Francisco.

Ronnie Goodman, artist with ‘a visual voice’ on homelessness, 1960-2020

After a lifetime of creating art while homeless or incarcerated, on Aug. 7, Ronnie Lamont Goodman was found dead in his tent outside the Redstone Building in San Francisco’s Mission District, where he intermittently stayed and stored his drawings and illustrations. He was 60.

As public education disintegrates into distance learning for the foreseeable future, Oakland parents are...

The distance learning experiment is on. Black August 2020 will be the first school year in history when public education in the United States went completely digital. Parents are learning to monitor their youth for five to six hours a day while they complete assignments and learn lessons entirely on video screens, while local governments continue to unfold the new system.

Soledad covers up its attempted murders of 200 peaceful Black prisoners

Before Warden Craig Koenig ordered a 3 a.m. raid on peaceful Black prisoners at Soledad State Prison, there were no active cases of COVID-19 in the entire facility. Koenig has bragged about his prison being coronavirus-free, which is probably part of the reason that he allowed a transfer of new prisoners into the facility on Aug. 6.

Living for the oppressed

Although KB’s housed in the cell next to me, we hadn’t talked for about a week. He expressed frustration with me. Feeling years in segregation has affected my mind – negatively – in that I don’t seem interested to use my “wits” to get out: of segregation and ultimately prison. He goes for the “be a good boy and they’ll let you out” line. Had to correct him.

Black business networking site GlimmerofBliss.com created by young Bayview woman during shelter-in-place

The silver lining is always part of a disaster or tragedy – even the COVID-19 pandemic. Many have experienced this phenomenon with the emergence of innovation, new Black businesses, and new business leaders popping up as the silver lining of the 2020 shelter in place.

2020 hindsight brings corrupted radiation testing into focus at the EPA – Part 4

The EPA and their contractors declare no dangerous levels of plutonium were found in groundwater samples at the IEL despite “a great deal of uncertainty,” but then eyewitnesses to late night military dumping at the landfill come forward leading to a secret probe from the Department of Justice.

2020 hindsight brings corrupted radiation testing into focus at the EPA – Part 3

Questionable methodology enables the EPA to avoid observing levels of radioactivity that it prefers not to have to deal with at the IEL – despite flaws pointed out by the agency’s own Science Advisory Board – and Tetra Tech gets rehired despite numerous mistakes spotlighted by the Project on Government Oversight.

2020 hindsight brings corrupted radiation testing into focus at the EPA – Part 2

What happened at the Industrial Excess Landfill (IEL) in Ohio wasn’t unique. The handling of the controversial Superfund site in the ‘90s became a turning point in the EPA’s de-evolution from theoretical environmental protector to enabler of polluters, aka “regulatory capture.” Fatally flawed cleanups due to shoddy field work and substandard testing became cover-ups that could happen all over the country – such as at Hunters Point in San Francisco – while citizens were left to live with the toxic consequences.

2020 hindsight brings corrupted radiation testing into focus at the EPA – Part 1

Tetra Tech was part of a team of contractors hired by the EPA to clean up a toxic radioactive dump in Ohio but evidence suggests EPA implemented a cover-up instead of a cleanup, creating a playbook for institutionalizing corrupted science across the nation. When Tetra Tech got busted years later for fraud at another radioactive site, in San Francisco, the EPA’s failure to demand best scientific practices was exposed again with dire ramifications for public health.

Bayview Hunters Point can’t breathe

CANCELLED Due to Bad Air: PROTEST TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 11 AM If research suggests a direct link between air pollution and death from COVID-19, shouldn’t this league of kneeholders be held accountable for failing to address long-term environmental injustice in Bayview Hunters Point?

Uber and other gig employers threaten to shut down operations soon, pushing Yes on...

Corporate double-talk in the mainstream media is showing up as expected in this 2020 election year making it challenging, as usual, to decipher what a proposed law really means to accomplish. But we can usually tell if it is in the interest of blue collar Black people by who is backing it.

As fire season bears down on thirsty California, incarcerated crews prepare to battle flames

Most Californians are aware of the state’s dangerous wildfire season and the heroic bravery of CAL FIRE staff. Many more are unaware that these fires would cease to be contained and countless lives might be lost without the help of California’s incarcerated firefighters, who earn at most $5.12 a day. A new program promises real jobs with full pay when they’re released.

The Black Restaurant Week whirlwind comes to the Bay despite COVID

The new Voodoo Love is open, alive and persevering through the pandemic of “curve balls, fast balls and daggers. We are a tree by the water and our roots run deep,” said Eva Morris, the owner of Voodoo Love Restaurant, a Louisiana contemporary restaurant serving Creole classics in San Francisco.

Hardy Brown: When the Dems win, Gov. Newsom must pick an African American to...

U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris made history last week when she became the first Black woman to serve on a major party’s presidential ticket as the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee Joe Biden’s running mate. The nation and local news centered around the Sen. Harris choice, while California political insiders were having another conversation.

Should SFUSD-owned KALW be mandated to air more student and community voices during and...

Government mandate that children return to school via the internet has bred an experimental system called “distance learning.” The educational system, already ravaged by the COVID-19 shelter-in-place-order by Mayor London Breed on March 12, 2020, now faces new challenges with education via internet.

Oakland-based Black Organizing Project leads the community in kicking cops out of OUSD

The Black Organizing Project, a frontline organization in Oakland for over a decade, just led the people to victory in the fight to eliminate the Oakland Police Department from the public school system. In 2000, Oakland School Board president Dan Siegel was instrumental in the Oakland police entering the school district to police the students.