Local News & Views

Prisoners of Conscience Committee Chairman Fred Hampton Jr. will be hitting Northern Cali Nov. 7-13 to talk about the 40th anniversary of the assassination of his father, Deputy Chairman Fred Hampton of the Illinois Black Panther Party, and Defense Captain Mark Clark. Come out to support Chairman Fred, Block Report Radio and the SF Bay View!

The Afghanistan war is due for a recycling, but it may not go the way the U.S. has planned. Begun under dubious circumstances, more as a demonstration war to set the stage for the real drama of Iraq, Afghanistan has almost always been more useful as a proxy war fought by others, rather than a direct war fought by Americans.

The family of Gregory Johnson Jr. is still actively searching for answers concerning his death in the basement of Sigma Chi Fraternity House on the San Jose State University campus on Nov. 22, 2008. Pictures of a jagged scar on the back of Gregory’s scull that indicate a blunt force injury and the fact that a paramedic pronounced Gregory dead rather than taking him to the hospital are just some of the revelations Denise and Gregory Johnson Sr. are questioning.

I’m in desperate need for someone in the community to donate a reliable car to my family. I’m a single mother with three children. My 3-year-old son, Jabree, has acute lymphoblastic leukemia and I need transportation to go back and forth from the hospital. Jabree can't ride the bus because of his fragile immune system.

The Oakland Housing Authority recently released a “Public Notice of Project Selection for Participation in the Project-Based Voucher Program” that may have set in motion a frenzy of greed by nonprofit housing developers wanting to maximize their profits.

Audrey Hudson stands out among Flyaway Productions’ 10 Women Campaign honorees as the only literal bridge builder, and the Bay View wanted you to meet this outstanding woman who’s blazing the trail for other women to follow her into the male-dominated field of construction work. A journeyman with Pile Drivers Local 34, Audrey first joined the union in 1999. She's won many accolades, even from her male co-workers, serving as pile driver steward for the San Francisco Oakland Bay Bridge Self Anchored Suspension Project. She also won a commendation from Congress.

In 2006, using this poster, Bayview Hunters Point activists gathered over 33,000 signatures in 90 days on our refendum petition. But City Hall tossed it. Now that the California Supreme Court has reinstated a similar Pleasanton referendum petition, can BVHP find lawyers to take ours back to court ... and win back our community?

The Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals overturned a conviction obtained by San Mateo County Chief Deputy District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe and published its reason – racially discriminatory jury selection – stating: “overwhelming evidence indicating that the prosecutor [Wagstaffe] ... acted with discriminatory intent when he struck M.C. [an African-American juror].”

October 22nd, National Day of Protest to Stop Police Brutality, Repression and the Criminalization of a Generation, is much more than just a traditional, methodical way to combat police terrorism. We are demanding no more injustice to be served to us by a just-us system. No batons swung at us. No tear gas or water hoses sprayed on us. No dogs turned on us. No guns fired at us. Just like the ‘60s era, our struggle continues in the 21st century. Our once-silenced voices and visible stances are the exchange of fire that guns us down each day.

Recently, a white KPFA supporter asked me do I really think that KPFA as a station is racist and deserves to be categorized as apartheid radio? The answer was yes, because still in 2009 KPFA does not have a Black show that speaks to the issues of the Black community in the U.S. KPFA does have shows for the white community, like The Morning Show, Democracy Now and Against the Grain, and for other communities, like the Asians with APEX Express, the Latinos with La Onda and La Raza Chronicles, disabled people with Pushing Limits and so on, but Black people living in the United States are supposed to beg other programmers to air what is important to our community.

Youth need to be inspired, encouraged, organized and unleashed to stand up against and resist the conditions they face, including degradation, dehumanization and outright murder they face at the hands of the police. October 22nd is the National Day of Protest to STOP Police Brutality, Repression and the Criminalization of a Generation. It is the day to begin to stand up and resist the outrage of police brutality and police murder. FIGHT BACK! WEAR BLACK!

Using footage from local policing activity in Oakland, intimate interviews with marginalized residents who have been imprisoned or impacted by the imprisonment of close family members, "Oakland Lockdown" brings to light the trauma, destruction and frustration experienced by those who remain repetitively wreaked by the economic, psychological, social and moral stigmatization of criminalization.

Outraged Bayview residents armed with signs that read “Bayview Not for Sale,” “Parks for the People,” and “Governor, Veto SB 792 – Save Candlestick Park” entered Sen. Mark Leno’s San Francisco district office on Friday, Oct. 9, and erected a cardboard condominium tower topped with a sign that read “Leno: Do you miss your office? We’ll sure miss our park.”

Did you know that in his eye-opening investigation, filmmaker Aron Ranen revealed that “Koreans have come to control virtually every aspect of the multi-billion dollar black hair care industry, from manufacturing to distribution to retail sales, while simultaneously employing tactics to put African-American merchants and wholesalers out of business?”

To make KPFA's powerful signal work for us, the Black community is putting its faith in Adam Hudson, who is running for KPFA Local Station Board in an election that ends next week – ballots must be received at KPFA by midnight Thursday, Oct. 15. Call the Bay View at (415) 671-0789 if you need more info. Be sure to vote!

The videotaped police murder of Oscar Grant is still on the minds of many in the Bay Area who watched it on television New Year’s night. Nine months later, a date of Oct. 6 has been set for Johannes Mehserle, the police trigger-man, to plead his case on why his defense team thinks that they need a change of venue for his murder trial. The hearing is at the Alameda County Courthouse, 1225 Fallon St., in Oakland. The press conference starts at 11:30 a.m. and the hearing begins at 1 p.m. We hope to see as many people as possible there.

Once again we are asking for your help with a phone and fax campaign to demand that California Attorney General Jerry Brown drop the charges against Francisco Torres, the last of the San Francisco 8 still facing prosecution. Brown knows there is no case against him. He needs to get the message from people all over the country that we will not give up this just demand.

Dear Lisa Jackson, your immediate attention is needed to help our community combat horrific toxic exposure from the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard. Your immediate attention is desired by a community historically under environmentally racist assault perpetrated by the United States Navy, the San Francisco Department of Public Health, the Mayor’s Office, the Redevelopment Agency and the developer, Lennar.

The San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC) predicts a 16-inch mid-century sea level rise, covering Bay Area coastal lands and eventually swamping downtown San Francisco up to Market Street. The primary global warming gas is carbon dioxide. Methane gas, heavily implicated in global warming, has been emitted for years from the Bayview Hunters Point Naval Shipyard. Sea level rise will release methane gas from wetlands and landfill, of which much of Hunters Point is composed.

“I am my father’s daughter,” said former Georgia Congressperson Cynthia McKinney to a standing-room-only crowd on a warm Sunday in August. She was at the theater below POOR Magazine’s offices in the Redstone Building speaking as part of a benefit tour organized by POCC Block Report Radio in support of the Bay View newspaper.