Local News & Views

The two officers who shot Stephon Clark, an unarmed Black man, last March will walk free. ources at the DA’s Office said officials knew they were not pressing charges since last summer but were buying time for the public’s agitation to subside.

Fifty years ago, students at San Francisco State embarked on a campus strike that lasted five months – the longest student strike in U.S. history. Led by the Black Student Union and Third World Liberation Front, the strike was a high point of student struggle in the revolutionary year of 1968. It was met by ferocious repression, but the strikers persevered and won the first College of Ethnic Studies in the U.S. As part of Socialist Worker’s series on the history of 1968, current San Francisco State University Professor Jason Ferreira – the chair of the Race and Resistance Studies department in the College of Ethnic Studies and author of a forthcoming book on the student strike and the movements that produced it – talked to Julien Ball and Melanie West about the story of the struggle and the importance of its legacy for today.

My name is Felita Sample. My mysterious illnesses and my daughter LaKrista’s strange afflictions developed after we moved from San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood to Treasure Island. Imagine never-ending nausea and daily dizziness. You can’t tolerate the thought of food. You override this loathing and force yourself to eat. You soon find that anything edible, including water, triggers dry heaves that wrack your chest and abdomen.

Civil rights attorneys John Burris and Adante Pointer filed a legal claim against the Sacramento Sheriff’s Department on behalf of the 14-year-old boy who was brutally assaulted by Sacramento Sheriff Deputy Brian Fowell. Deputy Fowell is contracted out to the City of Rancho Cordova as a police officer.

Six years ago, on Jan. 1, 2009, Oscar Grant III, 22, was shot and later died of bullet wounds received when Johannes Mehserle, then a BART police officer, fired his gun at point blank range into Grant’s back – after Grant and his friends had been taunted with racial epithets and assaulted by Mehserle and other BART officers on the scene, while Mehserle’s partner, Tony Pirone, held Grant down with both hands and a knee on his head and neck.

The city seems to be able to find shelter when it wants to – in this case, it wants to keep people from camping at public places like the highly visible Lake Merritt. So, by camping at the lake, people might quickly motivate the city to find shelter.

An Oakland BART police officer shot an unarmed Black man, Oscar Grant, while he lay face down on the ground and was fully cooperating. Protest Wednesday, Jan. 7, 3-7pm, Fruitvale BART, Oakland.

Police violence is raged against the people with impunity, ‘like a pack of wolves.’

Roger Allen left this life with tears stinging the eyes and hearts of almost no one outside of his family and close circle of friends, since the so oft lost Black lives seem to be no longer notable “news.”

When police stopped a teenager stepping off the T-train yesterday to show his transfer as proof he’d paid his fare – $2 at most – he ran from them. They shot him as many as 10 times in the back and neck, according to witnesses. For many long minutes, as a crowd watched in horror, the boy, who had fallen to the sidewalk a block away, lay in a quickly growing pool of blood writhing in pain and trying to lift himself up as the cops trained their guns on him and threatened bystanders. Come to the press conference and speakout Monday, July 18, noon, at Third & Oakdale, San Francisco.

We cannot expect to receive any reports except those that justify, excuse or minimize the killing of Oscar Grant by BART police at 2 a.m. New Year's Day.

My senior colleagues have stepped into a toxic land! It is a land contaminated by chemicals and radioactive materials but, more importantly, a land full of distrust, ignorance and injustice. I respect their courage to step in, and I hope they manage to persuade the community that their work is inclusive, reliable and helpful for making them feel safe. At the end, I join Mayor Breed and repeat her words: “This community deserves transparency and accountability.”

On Jan. 22, 20-year-old Raheim Brown was shot and killed by the Oakland Unified School District’s police force outside Skyline High School. Calling the killing an “assassination,” Raheim's mother, Lori Davis, was horrified by the excessive use of force.

Parents are people. We are imperfect. We make mistakes. We struggle. And, sometimes, in the heat of the moment we say and do things we do not mean. For Donna Levey, her mistake was calling San Francisco Child Protective Services, or CPS, for support when her family was in crisis. If only she had known that that phone call would come to represent the point of no return. If only she had known that CPS would catapult their family crisis into a life-altering nightmare.

More of the same abusive policies will rob our communities of effective solutions.

The next screening of the Black Riders documentary, ‘Let Um Hear Ya Coming,’ is Thursday, Oct. 3, 6:30 p.m., at La Pena Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck Ave., Berkeley. The event also features the Conscious Roots Music Showcase, with performances by E Da Ref, Askari Mwari, Jah Wave, Fly Benzo and Ms. Incredible, Audiomatic, DJ 8 and DJ Cuba.

Over $1 billion has been spent by the federal government since 2004 to clean up and remediate one of the most highly toxic and radioactive sites in the U.S., the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard in San Francisco. This Superfund site was home for decades, 1946-1969, to the Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory, and large Navy warships were towed there from the Pacific, where they had been placed close to nuclear tests.

“Police are some of our best customers,” stated Diamond, 29, as we sat and talked. Diamond is one of the many names she goes by while working as a prostitute now in cities throughout the Bay Area. With the recent Bay Area police sex scandal, involving the sexual exploitation of Celeste Guap, much of it when she was a minor, it is important for victims of sexual violence to speak out! Here is Diamond’s story.

San Francisco is a city full of Black history, which can be seen in the day to day lives of ordinary people, according to world renowned actor Danny Glover, who was the keynote speaker for the one year anniversary ceremony for the Bayview Access Point.

Alarmingly low CA Reading Report Card scores in Bay Area schools triggers the creating of a task force by State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond.