Local News & Views

It has often been said that prevention is the best medicine. But there are many obstacles in life which prevent this age-old truism from being put into practice – ignorance, laziness and something of an entirely different order – budget cuts.

Carpenters, community members, union organizers and human rights activists packed Hearing Room 263 at City Hall on Feb. 28 to testify to the Board of Supervisors in support of a lawsuit that 27 Black and Latino carpenters have filed against AIMCO (American Investment and Management Co.) for acts of sabotage, race-baiting and extortion at construction sites in Bayview Hunters Point. AIMCO was granted $73 million in revenue bond financing by the city to repair four subsidized housing complexes in Hunters Point – Bayview, Shoreview, All Hallows and LaSalle – even after the city had to sue the corporation in 2003 for damages it refused to repair.

“What Mayor Newsom, Lennar and its surrogates wanted me to do was leave the community exposed, and they hoped that this whole issue of their poisoning our babies and community would go with me.”

Efforts to “dirty transfer” uncleaned shipyard parcels as proposed in the conceptual plan and the June 2008 ballot measure represent a direct violation of a city ordinance.

Despite Lennar’s claims that grading was completed in September in 2007, community air monitors continue to document elevations in asbestos levels.

Now that we know how that negligence has endangered an upscale white neighborhood in Florida, will anyone in Hunters Point stand up in Lennar’s defense?

On Oct. 15, Daniel Landry, a long-time resident of the Fillmore’s Martin Luther King-Marcus Garvey Co-op, sent a letter to the co-op’s management agent, John Stewart Co., requesting information that, according to the co-op’s by-laws, all shareholders have a right to see. This information included minutes from board meetings and details of the contract that the King Garvey Co-op has with John Stewart Co. Little did he know the turmoil that would follow.

George D. Porter dedicated his career to the International Longshoremen’s Workers Union Local 34. He died in the care of his loving family on the morning of Feb. 19, 1992. His immediate cause of death was dehydration. His final cause of death was pulmonary asbestosis.

This is to let you know how thoroughly disgusted I was by the Board of Supervisors' vote today to plant three more fossil fuel power plants - natural gas turbine combustion power plants - in Bayview Hunters Point.

The disturbing trend of the public display of nooses that has gained momentum since the events in Jena, Louisiana, continues. The latest incident occurred on Tuesday, Nov. 5, at a worksite in San Jose, California.

On Wednesday, Oct. 31, a coalition of Black and Brown groups and individuals gathered at City Hall to express their opposition to San Francisco’s gang injunctions. Several themes emerged from those who addressed the crowd, including gentrification, racial profiling and the misuse of city money. During the course of the rally, it became clear that City Attorney Dennis Herrera, the political force behind the injunctions, has become an extremely unpopular figure in Bayview Hunters Point, the Mission and the Western Addition – neighborhoods in which the gang injunctions are now in place.

In Part 3 of this exclusive interview with Oakland Post Publisher Paul Cobb and Post Attorney Walter Riley, they discuss some of the tribulations that the newspaper was going through prior to the murder of Post Editor Chauncey Bailey, as well as what Paul told the police hours after Chauncey was murdered.

This the second part in a short series to give you the raw information regarding the investigation into who killed Oakland Post Editor Chauncey Bailey, the investigation into the Black Muslim Bakery and the whole controversy surrounding the Oakland Police Department's involvement in a cover-up.

Every week in the mainstream media there is a new episode in the saga surrounding the assassination of Oakland Post Editor Chauncey Bailey, which took place Aug. 2 in downtown Oakland. Hours after his murder, the police made the heavily publicized arrest of 19 suspects from Your Black Muslim Bakery.

In the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, the historically Black Fillmore district – since dubbed the “Western Addition” – underwent a massive phase of urban renewal in which block after block was literally razed to the ground to make way for redevelopment. The impact on the Black community was devastating.

The resolution does not compel any action but calls upon the city to halt construction, order health assessments and communicate these reports to the district and the public.

It would be a liability to accelerate the transfer of a federal Superfund site from the National Priority List with the data gaps that exist in the characterization of this property. The city admits it cannot clean up the Shipyard’s radiation-contaminated sites, which comprise the bulk of Parcels D and E. Parcel F, the Shipyard’s underwater region, has not been adequately studied.

On Friday, Sept. 21, 2007, Mayor Gavin Newsom claimed “the CDC and the California Department of Public Health agree with the San Francisco Department of Public Health that there was no significant health risk created by the grading activities at the shipyard.”

“The police say to us all the time that they can’t do their jobs because we won’t talk and tell on someone. Well, we ARE telling on PG&E … so now we tell them it’s your turn. Do your job! Do it now!”

On Sept. 18, at the Civic Center Courthouse, two judges presided over hearings to determine if gang injunctions proposed earlier this summer by City Attorney Dennis Herrera would go into effect. The injunctions target two communities of color – the Mission and Fillmore districts – where, according to city officials, gang activity has created such a public nuisance that implementing injunctions has become necessary to restore the peace.