News & Views

On Wednesday, Aug. 20, 2008, between 1 and 2 p.m., Nadra Foster, a young Black woman programmer and single mother, was beaten to the ground by the Berkeley police, arrested, hog-tied and taken to jail, after the management of KPFA radio and the Pacifica Foundation had called the police on her, falsely accusing her of being "banned" from the station.

Almost 20 years ago, we declared this KPFA building a sanctuary against violence, a new home for peace and a network that was created nearly six decade ago to promote peace and understanding among all communities. And here we have the Pacifica patrones mimicking their corporate twins, using police power to sustain their political point of view.

A new KPFA policy essentially bans all listeners from the station except those that management deems "authorized" and it permits police to remove anyone not authorized. KPFA recently called the police on an unpaid staff person, Nadra Foster. The calling of police by any progressive organization or institution is a racist act by definition. If anyone should be banned from the station, it should be the present management, which needs to be replaced immediately.

We, the undersigned paid and unpaid KPFA staff, do not have confidence in the management of KPFA's Interim General Manager Lemlem Rijio. Rijio's actions during the past two years have caused the alienation of a large number of staff members, have created turmoil within the station and have resulted in her losing credibility with many staff members. Her shift of KPFA's culture away from one of collaboration and mutual support helped create the climate leading to the tragic and unnecessary police arrest of unpaid staff member Nadra Foster.

At 4 p.m. on her very last day of employment as the executive director of the Pacifica Foundation, Nicole Sawaya permanently appointed Lemlem Rijio as the general manager at KPFA-FM, a position Rijio has been occupying on an interim basis for two years. Rijio has been under fire as of late, with Berkeley police violently arresting a station programmer who had allegedly been banned in a dispute over copier usage. Seventy-four of 215 station staffers have signed a statement of no-confidence in her leadership.

The Army Times reports that the 3rd Infantry's 1st Brigade Combat Team is returning from Iraq to defend the Homeland as "an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks." But at the same time, the Bush administration may be seeking a justification to establish martial law and intervene militarily within the USA.

We're leading off the relaunch of SFBayView.com with an array of news and views about the foment at KPFA since police brutalized Nadra Foster, a 12-year unpaid programmer and Black single mom, inside the station after they were called by management and about KPFA's retaliation against Minister of Information and Bay View Associate Editor JR Valrey for covering it.

On Election Day, after you've voted and made sure your loved ones have voted, hit the streets and the phones to push the candidates and ballot measures you believe in into the winners' column. And don't stop after Nov. 4. That's when our organizing, our pushing, our demands will win liberty and justice for us and our precious children.

As I read the post about what happened to Nadra Foster, I broke out in a cold sweat and my heart started to beat faster and faster. I experienced painful flashbacks and felt that burn of tears welling up in my eyes. I knew this would happen again.

On the 10th anniversary of the lynching of James Byrd Jr. in Jasper, Texas, Brandon McClelland, a 24-year-old Black man in nearby Paris, Texas, was dragged to his death on Sept. 16 by two White men. On Oct. 5, parts of Brandon's skull were still on the ground and local officials were still denying this lynching was a hate crime.

Recently KPFA has been making headlines for a number of reasons, most notably the Aug. 20 police beat down of Black programmer of 12 years Nadra Foster after a member of the KPFA management team called the police on her with approval from Pacifica management after Foster was accused of using a KPFA telephone for a personal call. So whose job is it to report on issues such as these in the Black community in and around KPFA or nationally? A daily or weekly Black public affairs show.

If HUD grants the Oakland Housing Authority permission to dispose of 1,615 public housing units for a nominal sum or for as little as $1 per parcel, 1,554 low-income families will be displaced from Oakland's public housing. Those families include 3,885 poor people - mostly children, young mothers, the aged, disabled and infirm.

Assemblymember Sandré Swanson joined Mayor Ron Dellums, Congresswoman Barbara Lee and other officials at a public unveiling of the Oakland Green Jobs Corps program, which will provide "green-collar" skills training and jobs to young adults, many of whom face significant barriers to employment.

In early October, ethics reporting revealed that PG&E is the source of all but $100 of the entire $5.5 million spent so far to attack Prop H - the San Francisco Clean Energy Act. Prop H is a vital ballot measure that will switch us to 100 percent clean electricity in just three decades, and at the same or lower rates than PG&E.

Peace mom Cindy Sheehan, who has traveled the world speaking out for peace with justice, spoke to a full house of grassroots activists at the Oct. 2 Bayview Hunters Point Town Hall Meeting about her campaign to replace Nancy Pelosi in the U.S. Congress Nov. 4.

With Black youth on the front lines this election season, along with all youth plus older Blacks and other people of color, the struggle for real democracy can finally claim victory in the U.S. Masses of new voters have registered and are already lining up to vote wherever early voting is available, as it is here in the Bay Area.

Four tropical storms in a month killed between 500 and 1,000 Haitians and left hundreds of thousands homeless. Because preparedness under Aristide had been abandoned and the U.N. won't help, damage and suffering are much worse than necessary.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is the green heart of Africa. The country has the second largest rainforest in the world. It is resource rich but plagued with humanitarian crises resulting from the plundering of the DRC's mineral resources are severe.

Every single eligible citizen who is 18 years old on Election Day has the constitutional right to vote. A right that cannot be restricted because of tricks, wealth, property ownership, fiscal judgment, gender, national origin or race. That's the law, but ...

In the 19th Century, the robber barons simply walked into government buildings and capitals with satchels swollen with money. They literally bought off politicians to do their bidding. They do the same thing today, but with a little more finesse.