Local News & Views

The SFMTA board of directors will take a decisive vote April 17 at 1 p.m. in Room 400, City Hall, on a resolution supporting free Muni for the city’s youth. At its April 3 meeting, the MTA board split 3-3, with half of the directors supporting free transit for all youth and half supporting a program for qualifying low-income youth.

“All power to the people. It is US, the people. It's US, period. We're in the fight for our humanity. Are we really seeing each other? Are we hearing each other? There's no proving to them that we are worthy of being seen.”

As San Francisco grapples with a looming budget crisis, Public Defender Jeff Adachi is seeking $2 million in state reimbursement to the City for its defense of eight men charged in a 1971 homicide case involving a police officer. The city’s right to reimbursement is based on the fact that the California Attorney General took on the 36-year-old case after the San Francisco District Attorney’s office declined to prosecute.

Report after report reminds and warns the Black community that AIDS is not yet under control for the Black population. However, when I saw several new 6-foot-by-4-foot billboard ads in the Castro district of San Francisco this past week with the image of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. under the heading, “AIDS is a civil rights issue,” I first thought, “Well, that’s a stretch.”

"Our success here to secure justice for Oscar Grant will no doubt be that line in the sand that will say to all police officers, ‘If you kill or break the law, you will go to jail,'" wrote Oscar Grant's Uncle Bobby, Cephus Johnson, in a message of thanks to supporters. Watch Davey D's video on the week's events. Oscar Grant's family asks supporters to return to the courthouse next week.

The new Bayview Library must be built by the people it serves. No more exclusion of Blacks as with Third Street Light Rail. Bay View publisher Willie Ratcliff's company, Liberty Builders, is competing to build it with a team of top Black construction professionals committed to hiring from the community. Come to the Bay Area Black Builders meeting Saturday, April 10, 12 noon, at 1099 Sunnydale, Vis Valley, San Francisco.

Malcolm X, one of my heroes, believed that “[o]ur objective is complete freedom, justice and equality by any means necessary.” I am asking for your support in this election so that we can reach this objective together.

Trade unionists joined a rally and press conference on Dec. 24, 2015, on the steps of City Hall for Mario Woods, a young African American worker who was executed by San Francisco police on Dec. 2, 2015, in Bayview Hunters Point. Black San Franciscans are being driven out of San Francisco through gentrification and displacement and a decades-long job lockout, and some unionists are calling for labor action to stop these economic and police assaults.

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."

In its comments on the Candlestick Point-Hunters Point Shipyard Environmental Impact Report, POWER focused on the carcinogens and radiological contamination at the Shipyard; the dangers of liquefaction; climate change and sea level rise; transportation impacts from the proposed development; the connection of the development to the existing community; and the preservation of historic Ohlone sites.

Excitement filled the sanctuary as five generations sat in the audience waiting to hear a legend speak. Oakland’s Beebe Memorial Cathedral was packed from the main floor to the church balcony. The congregation jumped to their feet and clapped for over five minutes when the moderator said, “Tonight we will hear from Congressman John Lewis!”

The place was the historic Black Dot Café in West Oakland; the event, a "Town Bizness" town hall meeting hosted by the Prisoners of Conscience Committee (POCC) with the presence of Chairman Fred Hampton Jr.

A judicial decision handed down today effectively ends the San Francisco Housing Authority’s use of city-wide nuisance injunctions and dismisses all pending criminal cases against alleged violators, San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi and ACLU of Northern California Legal Director Alan Schlosser announced.

On May 12, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission approved not-to-exceed rates for CleanPowerSF, moving the City’s local renewable energy program one step closer to launch. The approval sets the stage for CleanPowerSF to deliver greener power to customers at lower rates than PG&E. California’s two operating community choice programs, in Marin and Sonoma counties, have already provided greener energy at lower rates to customers.

According to CalHR, the state’s human resources department, employment and advancement opportunities for women and minorities do not seem to be getting any better. In the most recent State Employee Census, compiled by CalHR and published in January 2015, one of the state’s largest agencies, the Board of Equalization, posted favorable numbers for African Americans and women.

This quintessential FUBU film “invites everyone in the audience to feel included in its diabolically socially competitive, naughty-clever games.”

Standing Up for Ours Tours will launch Sunday, June 26, 1-5 p.m., at Middlepoint and West Point in Hunters Point to listen to and support young people of color – plus poetry, food, entertainment and fun. “Hunters Point is home. It’s what’s made me and what nourished me," says Jamal Modica of Tough House Project.

The Community-Labor Coalition to Save the People’s Post Office rallied, marched and occupied the Civic Center Post Office in downtown San Francisco to stop threats of eliminating 220,000 living-wage jobs and closing 3,700 post offices, including four in San Francisco - most in poor neighborhoods and rural areas.

On Black Friday 2014, 14 Black activists chained themselves together on a BART transit platform “to prevent trains from moving at the West Oakland station, in response to the seemingly unending war against Black communities.” The 14, a majority of them women, faced criminal charges. Now, after a year-long campaign by the Black Friday14 and a broad coalition of allies, District Attorney Nancy O’Malley has dropped all the charges.

It has been years since large numbers of people marched to protest wars at home and abroad. I think people stopped coming out when they saw that our marches had little impact on spending priorities in Washington. Massive military spending and unchecked sales of arms to other countries have not produced peace. Instead, violence and terrorism increase around the world. March with us. More than 100 Bay Area organizations have endorsed the April 15 rally and march in Oakland.