Monthly Archives: March 2021

To writer Sumiko Saulson, who still has their humanity intact, and to the Innocence Project, the story and path of Pervis Payne appears clear – he has been wrongly convicted and sentenced to be executed, although new DNA testing has not revealed his DNA on the weapon and he has intellectual disability. In the U.S. it is illegal for the state to execute Pervis under these conditions, but the state is going ahead anyway – because they want to, and who is going to stop them?

Wealth and Disparities in the Black Community founder Phelicia Jones and Sistahs4JustUs have been, and will continue to be, a lifeline with focused effort to the community of Bayview Hunters Point providing crucial aid and necessities during the COVID-19 crises and beyond in dedicated humanity to care for those disproportionately left out.

The richness and wholeness of spoken and written stories from one who can share from the connected personal places brings expanded value and substance to our own realities in the receiving of such wealth. Our own Fred Jordan bestows such a gift with his personal and enthusiastically explored window through history.

In the legislative dead air between the failed SB 562 in 2017 and the introduction of AB 1400 in 2021, there has been no healthcare legislation out of Sacramento. Barry Hermanson describes the David and Goliath aspects of the magnitude of the fight against the big pharma capitalist grip on our healthcare system and what is necessary to humanely provide healthcare for each and every person in California.

Join the rally on Sunday, March 7, 12-2 p.m., at 111 Taylor in San Francisco. This is a fight about racism, mass incarceration, private prisons, safety from the COVID-19 pandemic, and the defense of the people’s media.

Huge love, Herculean accomplishments and eternal light burning bright in the Bayview Hunters Point Community and beyond as beloved Black Queen Yolanda Jones transitions to the Ancestors spreading her human spirit and ‘We gonna do this!’ along her journey into the Universe. Rest in peace Yolanda Jones.

Transitioning to the Ancestors, San Francisco’s first Black Police Chief, civil rights and police accountability advocate, teacher, expert witness, family man and friend, Earl Sanders leaves a legacy of courage, respectability, accountability and authenticity – and deep convictions like “wrong is wrong” no matter who you are. Rest in Peace, Earl Sanders.

The other truth during the celebratory events of Women’s Herstory Month, are the stories like this one that describe the inhumane conditions women incarcerated in our prisons must suffer through living with physical and mental abuse including deliberate indifference of risk to life from uninhabitable “living” conditions. More community action to hold the prison industry profiteers accountable for crimes against humanity is critical.

In humanity lies the delicious element of creativity and imagination and bestselling author, Sumiko Saulson, embodies the gifts of writing as do her comrades here, uplifted for their unique talents, including incarcerated writers behind the bars of the neo-slavery system.

As housing authorities continue their racist and classist policies, public housing residents are closing ranks and realizing their power lies in supporting each other while demanding their rights in solidarity with the help of organizations like United Front Against Displacement.

“Where is the humanity in that?” asks Nube Brown who pulls the lens in tight on the inhumane policies of the Prison Industrial Slave Complex perpetrated on all human beings suffering prison atrocities of torture, dehumanization, exploitation, extraction, starvation, death by health neglect and physical abuse, while making billions off the backs of those they hold captive.

As described by Jay Rene Shakur, the crucial element necessary to reclaim dignity and social well-being as human beings, is the heart of humanity, and humanism itself. Yet humanism today seems obscured, lost, hidden, withdrawn or morphed, leaving the front lines and leadership disadvantaged in the fight for our humanity.

ACA 3: The California Abolition Act, introduced by Assemblymember Sydney Kamlager-Dove and written in collaboration with imprisoned humanitarian activist Samuel Brown and his wife Jamilia Land, is the bold, essential next step in ending, what Kamlager-Dove calls ‘modern day slavery’ in California by striking the conditional language from the California State Constitution.

National Freedom Movement (NFM) is mobilizing action with leadership from the incarcerated community to undo the policies created to keep the prisons full for capitalist control by deflating the state and federal rates of parole granting as a result of the “tough on crime” and “war on drugs” era.

“Operation Akili” in summer of 2020 was another violent, racist and deadly display of the white supremacist, capitalist CDCr assaults on caged Black lives, this time at California Correctional Training Facility – the first lawsuit has been filed and hearing scheduled in June 2021.

A testament to the human spirit and revolutionary resilience, this story is shared in two enlightening elements – Susie Day’s tender interview with K’Sisay Sadiki, daughter of Black Panther Kamau Sadiki, and Day’s illuminating commentary about Kamau Sadiki, the BPP and COINTELPRO, and the system’s attempts to crush the vital, wholeheartedly participatory lives of deeply-bonded father and daughter, committed to themselves, each other and the people.

From the revolutionary heart comes the art for change. Ioki (Aoki) Pink Butler speaks her poem, written dedicated to the memories of Armias Ashegdon “Nipsey Hussle” and George Floyd.

Britney Gulley eloquently describes the prison we each one of us inhabits to whatever degree we allow, as we alone and in community are the masters of the prison we choose to call home.

Digging deeper into our present reality, Oscar Blayton defines the path of the white leadership from the time of the Civil War and why they fought, to President Lyndon B Johnson’s signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the purpose behind that, to the treasonous assault on The U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 by the forces of burning white rage, which embers were ignited by the Civil War.

A year of deep study by the Committee on Revision of the Penal Code revealed glaringly widespread problems rooted in deep racial inequity and culminated in a final report with 10 substantial recommendations for reform; in tandem with the report, Senate Bills SB 81 and SB 82 are now working their way through the Senate, introduced by Senator Nancy Skinner and Assemblymember Sydney Kamlager.