Local News & Views

Over the last year, there have been hundreds of stories in the local and national media accusing young men from Your Black Muslim Bakery of the murder of Oakland Post Editor Chauncey Bailey. Yet with all that coverage, we have not heard Yusuf Bey IV himself, successor to the Bakery's founder, address these accusations.

The Cindy Sheehan campaign to replace Nancy Pelosi in Congress is offering a new vision for San Francisco and the nation. Cindy believes in peace, accountability, freedom and well being for all. She believes that war should be a last resort for defense and not the handy policy tool that it is currently being used as. She believes that healthcare is a basic right in a democratic society and should not be based on ability to pay.

Blacks were very instrumental in San Francisco's founding, but today in San Francisco you run the risk of losing the entire Black population. It is not only appropriate to call a hearing, there should be emergency hearings because this is an emergency situation. Minister Christopher Muhammad explains that one of the reasons for this emergency is the land grab and poisoning of the Black community by the Lennar Corp.

At a press conference in Oakland, Tandenico Jones, a member of LIFETIME, declared: "The governor and the Legislature need to come to agreement that doesn't just cut services to balance the budget. Our economy is so bad right now; costs for everything have gone up. If the services I depend on are cut, all the efforts I've made to move my family forward will slip away."

As a member of first the advisory board and later the governing Local Station Board at KPFA through 2006, I witnessed events that I believe gave rise to what the writers of yesterday's Berkeley Daily Planet commentary call a threat of "civil war," and I contribute these words to the struggle for a just peace. KPFA managers are apparently oblivious to the everyday police war on Black people that I believe KPFA is obligated by its mission to cover.

One of the officers has his knee on her groin. Another one is pressing her arms against her chest and his full body weight is top of her. Nadra and the officers are rolling and struggling on the ground. Nadra is still screaming for help.

It is a sad commentary when the management of KPFA Radio, a nonprofit dedicated to social justice in my hometown of Berkeley, Calif., calls the police on a staff member who volunteers her time, donating talent and skill to bring the mission of that organization to bear.

The officers were waiting, loaded firearms dangling from their waists, steel filled chests puffed out, glassy stares behind helmets. She was one woman alone. She was a reporter doing her job. She was attacked by the police for no reason at all. Her only crime was being a media producer in a hostile location.

I was outraged to hear that my "daughter," Nadra Foster, was attacked, brutalized, hogtied, arrested and charged with trespassing, resisting arrest, assaults on police, and other charges, with bail set at $81,500!

On Wednesday, Aug. 20, 2008, between 1 and 2 p.m., Nadra Foster, a young Black woman programmer and single mother, was beaten to the ground by the Berkeley police, arrested, hog-tied and taken to jail, after the management of KPFA radio and the Pacifica Foundation had called the police on her, falsely accusing her of being "banned" from the station.

Almost 20 years ago, we declared this KPFA building a sanctuary against violence, a new home for peace and a network that was created nearly six decade ago to promote peace and understanding among all communities. And here we have the Pacifica patrones mimicking their corporate twins, using police power to sustain their political point of view.

A new KPFA policy essentially bans all listeners from the station except those that management deems "authorized" and it permits police to remove anyone not authorized. KPFA recently called the police on an unpaid staff person, Nadra Foster. The calling of police by any progressive organization or institution is a racist act by definition. If anyone should be banned from the station, it should be the present management, which needs to be replaced immediately.

We, the undersigned paid and unpaid KPFA staff, do not have confidence in the management of KPFA's Interim General Manager Lemlem Rijio. Rijio's actions during the past two years have caused the alienation of a large number of staff members, have created turmoil within the station and have resulted in her losing credibility with many staff members. Her shift of KPFA's culture away from one of collaboration and mutual support helped create the climate leading to the tragic and unnecessary police arrest of unpaid staff member Nadra Foster.

At 4 p.m. on her very last day of employment as the executive director of the Pacifica Foundation, Nicole Sawaya permanently appointed Lemlem Rijio as the general manager at KPFA-FM, a position Rijio has been occupying on an interim basis for two years. Rijio has been under fire as of late, with Berkeley police violently arresting a station programmer who had allegedly been banned in a dispute over copier usage. Seventy-four of 215 station staffers have signed a statement of no-confidence in her leadership.

We're leading off the relaunch of SFBayView.com with an array of news and views about the foment at KPFA since police brutalized Nadra Foster, a 12-year unpaid programmer and Black single mom, inside the station after they were called by management and about KPFA's retaliation against Minister of Information and Bay View Associate Editor JR Valrey for covering it.

On Election Day, after you've voted and made sure your loved ones have voted, hit the streets and the phones to push the candidates and ballot measures you believe in into the winners' column. And don't stop after Nov. 4. That's when our organizing, our pushing, our demands will win liberty and justice for us and our precious children.

As I read the post about what happened to Nadra Foster, I broke out in a cold sweat and my heart started to beat faster and faster. I experienced painful flashbacks and felt that burn of tears welling up in my eyes. I knew this would happen again.

Recently KPFA has been making headlines for a number of reasons, most notably the Aug. 20 police beat down of Black programmer of 12 years Nadra Foster after a member of the KPFA management team called the police on her with approval from Pacifica management after Foster was accused of using a KPFA telephone for a personal call. So whose job is it to report on issues such as these in the Black community in and around KPFA or nationally? A daily or weekly Black public affairs show.

If HUD grants the Oakland Housing Authority permission to dispose of 1,615 public housing units for a nominal sum or for as little as $1 per parcel, 1,554 low-income families will be displaced from Oakland's public housing. Those families include 3,885 poor people - mostly children, young mothers, the aged, disabled and infirm.

Assemblymember Sandré Swanson joined Mayor Ron Dellums, Congresswoman Barbara Lee and other officials at a public unveiling of the Oakland Green Jobs Corps program, which will provide "green-collar" skills training and jobs to young adults, many of whom face significant barriers to employment.