Local News & Views

“The tenants prevailed. There was no one from Oakland Community Housing appearing in court today to oppose the tenants’ needs or Judge Richard Keller’s ruling. This is a big victory for the people.”

With the landslide victory of Barack Obama, there are segments of our society who feel racism is a thing of the past. Thankfully, we have tyrants in positions of power like Palo Alto Police Chief Lynne Johnson to keep everything in proper perspective.

On Nov. 10, KPFA General Manager Lemlem Rijio announced through email that Lois Withers, KPFA's business manager, was resigning. Lois is the white woman who called the police on Black programmer Nadra Foster, falsely accusing her of being banned, on Aug. 20.

Everything about Chauncey Bailey's life and work spoke of his devotion to the Black community. Yet the Chauncey Bailey Project appears to have veered far off the course that Chauncey was taking.

We, the undersigned, stand in solidarity with student, activist and poet Lamont (Dee) Allen, who was singled out and arrested while participating in the July 30 counter-demonstration against the Minuteman Project. Allen's only "crime" is having the courage, as a Black man, to stand up against an aspiring lynch mob.

The Chauncey Bailey Project was never about honoring and continuing the work of the late journalist Chauncey Wendell Bailey Jr. and answering questions regarding his death, as it claims on its website. The project and the Oakland police seem to have more of a lynch mob mentality in their investigation.

With Black youth on the front lines this election season, along with all youth plus older Blacks and other people of color, the struggle for real democracy can finally claim victory in the U.S. Masses of new voters have registered and are already lining up to vote wherever early voting is available, as it is here in the Bay Area.

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.

I believe healthcare, housing and education are basic human rights, not privileges. Nancy Pelosi, my opponent, can come up with $850 billion when her buddies need it; now, my buddies, THE PEOPLE, need a bailout!

In a huge victory for the tenants of the California Hotel, Alameda County Superior Court Judge Richard Keller ruled to keep in place a temporary restraining order against Oakland Community Housing Inc. (OCHI), stopping the corrupt nonprofit housing developer from evicting the tenants or shutting off the utilities at the historic hotel.

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.

San Francisco has the worst achievement gap in the state of California. With a record high homicide rate, too many young people have been directly affected by violent crime in this city. We need a candidate who can carry out the district's new strategic plan to close the achievement gap.

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.

Peace mom Cindy Sheehan, who has traveled the world speaking out for peace with justice, spoke to a full house of grassroots activists at the Oct. 2 Bayview Hunters Point Town Hall Meeting about her campaign to replace Nancy Pelosi in the U.S. Congress Nov. 4.

In early October, ethics reporting revealed that PG&E is the source of all but $100 of the entire $5.5 million spent so far to attack Prop H - the San Francisco Clean Energy Act. Prop H is a vital ballot measure that will switch us to 100 percent clean electricity in just three decades, and at the same or lower rates than PG&E.

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.

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.

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.

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.