Local News & Views

The U.S. Constitution requires that an accused person who lacks the means to hire a lawyer is provided one. Yet budget cuts are forcing public defenders to turn away defendants who have no other legal recourse.

The San Francisco Housing Authority is spending $5 million to create hundreds of jobs where many of us live. But Blacks will be excluded unless Black contractors can borrow from a loan fund so they can hire Black workers. Pack the Housing Commission meeting Thursday, May 14, 4 p.m., at 440 Turk St. to demand our fair share.

Sonoma State University has the whitest and likely the richest student population of any public university in the State of California. Research shows that the SSU administration has specifically sought to market the campus as a public ivy institution.

"It's a civil war, us against the authorities - if you get pulled over, you're so afraid for your life that you're going to react as someone would react in war. A random traffic stop is life or death now." - Mistah F.A.B., interviewed by Davey D

Dominique Crutchfield, 18, Thurgood Marshall Academic High School graduating senior, said: "I was about to get in a fight with this Asian kid, but then Peer Resources helped me. So I know it's a good program."

Patrick Gonzalez and Tony Pirone, we promise you a rapid promotion! Johannes Mehserle, not to worry, Buddy! We'll cover all your legal fees. We'll get you out of that slump with flying colors and added stripes on your bloody sleeve!

Many TV channels broadcast live the entire funeral for four Oakland police officers killed March 21, news anchors calling them "heroes" and "angels." Police funerals are intended to legitimize past and future police violence and tell the public to shut up. The spineless left complies - no mention of Oscar Grant ... or Lovelle Mixon.

The hip hop generation young warriors have to speak for themselves. The movement has always been built on the backs of young brothers and sisters who rose up from the street to defend and stand for justice for our people.

Chauncey Bailey was probably the best known Black journalist in the Bay Area, yet his own Black newspaper is ignored by every agency investigating his murder. Justice for this Black journalist cannot be achieved by silencing Black journalism. By interviewing only the mainstream media, Democracy Now is implying that the Black press and the Black community have nothing significant to say about the murder of the Black editor of a Black newspaper.

Is the Black community supposed to be celebrating the 60th anniversary of the founding of KPFA when our community is not deemed important enough to be given a public affairs show? "Shut up and keep dancing" is what KPFA's management team is telling the Black community.

Notwithstanding a blistering defeat at the polls and strong opposition from the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, Mayor Gavin Newsom has opened his Community Justice Center, diverting several million dollars from essential City services to incarcerate poor people for the sole act of being poor.

Most people of color know that the cops, and police departments as institutions, historically represent the street enforcement arm of white American racism. Indeed, the police were born out of the white slave patrols.

The Oakland Police Department suffered a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the foot when it further racialized the March 21 shootings by rescinding Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums' invitation to speak at the public funeral of the four officers who were gunned down.

In an email to the San Francisco Bay View, Laurence Pelosi verified that he was a Lennar senior executive in March of 2004 at the time San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, his cousin for whom he had served as mayoral campaign treasurer, had signed the Hunters Point Shipyard Conveyance Agreement at the behest of Laurence's Aunt Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.

"Biomonitoring is the next logical, critical step for us to take in addressing threats to public health." - Sen. Deborah Ortiz, D-Sacramento, author of the California Biomonitoring Program, SB689

Lennar, when will you stop stirring up all that radioactive asbestos in the Hunters Point Shipyard into the air that all the fine people of color in Bayview Hunters Point are obliged to breathe in order to live?

A time bomb is ticking, waiting to explode in communities of color across the nation. Law enforcement officers have become an occupation force. If we are to have peace, we first must place economic justice at the top of our agenda. The day Lovelle Mixon died, those close to him mentioned two explanations: He dreaded being sent back to prison yet he couldn't find a job.

Police are virtually an occupying military force in Black urban centers. Their presence will neither eliminate the plague of rampant crime nor address the underlying disease of extreme impoverishment.

The reason why so many people may have appeared gleeful at the killing by Lovelle Mixon of four Oakland cops is that the police have for so long looked at various communities as less than human.

Lovelle Mixon - the suspected shooter behind the deaths of four Oakland police officers on Saturday - has joined the pantheon of Black men who have conducted deadly rebellions: Denmark Vesey, Nat Turner, Huey Newton, Jonathan Jackson and Larry Davis.