Local News & Views

Currently, the OHA contracts with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to provide public housing to low-income households in Oakland and is reimbursed by HUD at around $500 per unit on a monthly basis. But under the new Section 8 model being promoted to end public housing, the OHA and their affiliates may be reimbursed by HUD for as much as $900 to $1,000 for the same rental units if the plan works out to their way of thinking. Unfortunately for the poor, this scheme results in the loss of Oakland’s desperately needed public housing units, and in the future public housing will be one less option for the homeless needing a place to call home.

Anyone who has ever met long time Bayview resident Shirley Jones knows that she is a woman who embraces life. At a vibrant 70 years young, Jones has decided that she will no longer be complacent about her personal health issues and that “life ain’t over yet.” In fact she has decided that she has quite a lot of living to do. “I want to be healthier and be around to fully enjoy my eight grandchildren and two great-grands,” she says with conviction.

Throughout history, students have played a crucial role in furthering social change. During the Vietnam War, there was a nationwide youth rebellion in the U.S. against America’s imperialist war in Southeast Asia and the ensuing atrocities. On university campuses across America, from the University of California, Berkeley, to Columbia University, students organized sit-ins, teach-ins and rallies, printed flyers and occupied campus buildings to protest against the injustices occurring at home and abroad. These protests were not only a sign of moral outrage; they were also strategically designed to end the involvement of American universities in perpetuating the atrocities in Vietnam and other social ills.

Lack of capacity and lack of wealth often result from our deceptive practices with each other. More often they result from the acts of malice perpetrated by powerful predators who profit from our community dysfunction. These predators come with names that are disarming. They are often religious church names. They are always controlled by the rapacious and the greedy.

Right after the chattel slavery era, the great Marcus Mosiah Garvey taught our people all over the world the importance of providing for ourselves as well as the importance of being able to employ our own community. Today Garvey would be proud of ATL transplants Yasser and Vahid, two young adults who brought the Soul Food Co-op (grocery store) to West Oakland's Village Bottoms Cultural District. We finally have a place, in the hood, where you could send your children to the store to get real fresh fruits and vegetables, without them having to see cigarette and alcohol ads.

SB 792 is a license for Lennar to dump worthless, dangerous, highly toxic and radioactive land on the public, in exchange for clean, desirable Candlestick parkland that graces the Black and working class community of Bayview Hunters Point. Labor must not be deceived into becoming an unwitting and involuntary participant in a major crime.

In this critical KPFA election, the Bay View recommends the Independents for Community Radio slate (www.IndyRadio2009.com), especially two young candidates who were well received when they spoke at our Grand Lake Theater event during Cynthia McKinney's Triumph Tour plus incumbents Henry Norr, Sasha Futran and Akio Tanaka. We also support labor journalist Steve Zeltzer (www.VoicesforJusticeRadio.org).

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.

To this day, no testing of children living and learning near the Shipyard has occurred. Bayview Hunters Point deserves better. Children, elderly, working class and low income residents shouldn’t have to suffer from a neighbor who cares more about profit than people. As a community, we demand that our children be tested for exposure to toxics present in the dirt at the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard, and for a temporary stoppage of work until the damage done to the community can be assessed.

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.

I am the best at basketball, I can jump high, I can shoot and I can run, I am fast, I am smart, I can do anything,My mommy told me so. I shoot the ball and it goes swoosh …And then I hear, “Pop, pop, pop,” tires screeching,

At his funeral service at St. Ignatius Church on the campus of the University of San Francisco this past Wednesday, Burl Toler was remembered as a humble, kind and upstanding man. Toler was that and more. He was a trailblazer in San Francisco athletics and education. Born in Memphis, Tennessee, May 9, 1928, Toler arrived in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1947, after a brief stint at Lemoyne College. His family decided living in California would be a good move for him and joined his Uncle Louis King, an Oakland based entrepreneur.

On the first night of her Aug. 20-24 Triumph Tour, our sister Cynthia McKinney put a face on Gaza, Palestine, I don’t think many in the audience had seen before – I’m speaking of African Americans who are not usually the target population of such media focus. McKinney was speaking at Oakland’s landmark Grand Lake Theater, kicking off her Gaza Solidarity Triumph Tour, a series of fundraisers for the struggling SF Bay View newspaper.

One of the ways City College is dealing with the cuts is a hiring freeze. No new instructors were hired to replace retirees, so nobody is available to teach the class. Griffin said the college is trying to shore up a $ 20,000,000 hole in City College’s budget.

“On Sunday, the 15th of July, about noon, we were at Hunters Point and they put on us what we now know was the atomic bomb.” – Capt. Charles B. McVay III, U.S. Navy commanding officer, USS Indianapolis (from the Operational Archives Branch, Naval Historical Center)

Very few things in life make me feel the way I feel when I come in contact with the work of a dope visual artist. It is amazing to me how, from a thought and a few strokes of the hand, a whole new world can be created that has crossed the dimension of the artist’s mind to exist in tangible reality. What is even more striking to me is an artist with a social or political agenda that refuses to make art for art’s sake.

A powerful component of 2008 presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney’s five-day San Francisco Bay View newspaper fundraising tour, Aug. 20-24, is the developing bond between Ms. McKinney and a group of young adults in Oakland and the San Francisco Bay Area. Several representatives of these young adults spent every waking and sleeping minute with Cynthia.

In their fight against the push to privatize their state park, Bayview Hunters Point activists are fighting the privatization of California as hard as anyone I know. They’re fighting for all of us, so I hope that other Californians who don’t want to see the whole state on the auction block will contact their Assembly representatives and ask them to vote against Senate Bill 792.

The MAGIC Back-to-School Celebration and Backpack Giveaway, the largest of its kind in San Francisco, will kick off the academic year by distributing 5,000 new backpacks stuffed with school supplies to kids and teens tomorrow, Aug. 22, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., at two locations: Bayview Opera House, 4705 Third St., and the Ella Hill Hutch Community Center, 1050 McAllister St.

San Franciscans have a right to be outraged about SB 792, sponsored by state Sen. Mark Leno. SB 792 unnecessarily gives away a valuable California State Park in exchange for high-rise condominiums. If San Franciscans allow parkland that was set aside in trust for Californians to enjoy to be transferred to private developers, we risk opening a Pandora’s box that allows development to go unfettered in state parks already threatened by budget cuts.