Local News & Views

On Sept. 1, we learned that Liberty Builders, owned by Bay View publisher Willie Ratcliff, will build the new Bayview Library. That's a great breakthrough for Liberty Builders, the Bay View and the entire community and a step toward heeding the advice of Malcolm X: "We should own and operate and control the economy of our community." Keep an eye on www.sfbayview.com. In about a month, we should know when the jobs will begin and how you can benefit.

Action is being taken to give some relief to those seeking some place safe to recreate “Home Sweet Home.” Prop C reads: “Shall the City amend its Charter to: create a Housing Trust Fund that supports affordable housing for low-income and moderate-income households; and change the affordable housing requirements imposed on some private residential developments?”

On June 5, 2018, the party started at San Francisco’s Delancey Street for San Francisco Board of Supervisors President London Breed and her campaign for mayor. During the celebration, her 600-plus energetic supporters who attended understood from election vote monitors stationed around the facility that she was leading second place Mark Leno by a percentage point. The following day, Wednesday morning, saw that lead evaporate. At this time London Breed, her supporters and the citizens of San Francisco are still awaiting the election outcome.

The U.S.is in a frenzy behind the coronavirus pandemic and TV and media want us to believe that the federal, state and local governments are doing everything possible to curb the spike in infection numbers. If California was a country, it would be fifth in infections, following only the U.S., Brazil, India and Russia. As California approaches the 4 million mark we surpass New York as the nation’s hotbed of infection.

A lifetime spent focused on her own survival and that of so many others in the world of viruses called poverty, police terror, incarceration, racism, classism and isolation in this stolen land, Lisa ‘Tiny’ Gray-Garcia describes navigating the additional onslaught of COVID-19, and then cancer on top of her own COVID-19 infection, testing her very core to trust in this new challenge to survival.

Proposition H offers an opportunity for San Francisco to obtain up to 51 percent of its power from renewable sources by 2017 and 100 percent by 2040. The storm of anti-Prop H mailers and television ads bombarding us is funded by PG&E from the money you pay for your steadily rising electric bills.

The question Bayview residents should be asking themselves is what’s more important, pensions or schools? After-school programs for kids or pensions? Parks or pensions? Health services for seniors or pensions? Join Jeff Adachi and the SF Bay View newspaper in voting YES on Prop B.

In justification of BART’s shutdown of mobile phone service on Aug. 11, the agency began to disingenuously claim that demonstrations against BART’s police brutality were a threat to passenger safety, even though no one has ever been hurt during a BART protest.

The Addition, formerly Yoshi’s, closed its doors, 77 people lost their jobs and many will wind up on unemployment. Gussie’s, the Black soul food restaurant diagonally across the street, left a couple of months ago. Rassellas Jazz Club up the street on Fillmore is gone. Will the Fillmore, once rivaled only by Harlem with its 31 restaurants and jazz clubs, die? The City did this! The question is: Did the City do enough to rectify its mistakes?

Lots of people are up in arms asserting you are unpatriotic if you refuse to stand for the Star Spangled Banner. We see this playing out with Colin Kaepernick. People like to romanticize about how it’s an expression of pride for this beloved country. How many of y’all patriots know we only sing one verse to that song? How many of y’all know the other verses are about hunting down slaves? The song is about recapturing slaves who tried to run away and even fought against their masters to escape bondage during the War of 1812. But Colin needs to stand and sing that song? Yeah, right.

On Sunday, Sept. 4, 2016, San Francisco’s historic Third Baptist Church was the place for all to see and hear San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick – or so said the word that had spread like wildfire the previous day. The church was packed and the media attended in droves, but Kaepernick had to cancel. Still, The remarks of John Burris and Willie Brown especially, recorded here in their entirety, made attending the service well worthwhile.

San Francisco may no longer be one of the nation’s top-ranked cities for income disparity, but a study released last week by the Brookings Institution painted a stark picture of the job landscape for Black San Franciscans, as compared to the city as a whole. While San Francisco has the ninth-highest general employment rate in the country (79 percent), it also has the highest employment disparity between Blacks and whites in the country.

Police, called when Richard Everett was reported to have a knife in the Tenderloin, shot him five times, unprovoked.

On Thursday, Sept. 3, at their weekly town hall meeting, the leaders of SLAM (Stop Lennar Action Movement) reminded the audience of the kind of power they have in the battle to save Bayview Hunters Point. Minister Christopher Muhammad, Archbishop Franzo King and Francisco Da Costa shared the latest news of SLAM’s progress and urged the audience to understand that by staying focused and vigilant and not letting anything turn them around, they will win the war.

SFUSD announced, “Willie Brown Jr. Academic College Preparatory School is closing by the end of school year 2010-2011 in order to rebuild a state of the art facility.” Parent Daphina Marshall commented, “I don’t see where they are going to get the funds to rebuild.”

Early Tuesday morning, the 18th day of the Lakeview Elementary Sit-In and 12th day of the People’s School, the OUSD police and other police forces raided the encampment and school. The People's School will continue, and a community-labor alliance and picket sanctioned by the Alameda Labor Council will block the move-in of administrative offices at Lakeview.

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.

If you are HIV positive but do not yet have AIDS, you are probably eligible for Medi-Cal. California is under court order to provide it.

No Justice No BART announced that on Thursday, March 5, we will shut down the Fruitvale BART Station during the evening rush hours as part of a campaign of protest actions targeting BART in order to advance community demands in the wake of the police murder of Oscar Grant.

Privatizing parks is not popular in San Francisco. As opposition and media attention mount, state Sen. Mark Leno wants to rush his Senate Bill 792 through the legislature. We urge the Assembly and the Senate to hold the bill until the San Francisco Board of Supervisors has voted on a resolution opposing SB 792 that is currently one vote short of a majority.