News & Views

Craft labor unions since 1865 have been ambivalent about their racial policies. They were inclusive for a time. But in the 1900s through 1970 craft unions became virulently anti-Black. Because of public pressure and court actions, craft unions' discrimination has become subtler. In coalition with large white contractors, they control training and work in the construction industry.

Since President Barack Obama signed his stimulus package into law in February, the U.S. Department of Transportation has handed out more than $150 million in contracts to companies for street, highway and bridge construction. New statistics released by the Transportation Equity Network (TEN) show that from that pot of money not a single dollar had been allocated to any African-American owned business.

The exact moment in time has arrived to pull down the veil of the corrupt, ethics depleted political status quo being perpetuated at City Hall via Supervisor Sophenia Maxwell, who represents District 10. Her controllers do not want to see her moved from that seat one second before January 2011. They have a well established relationship and flow with Ms. Maxwell right where she is. Putting the sledge hammer of RECALL to that coup will speak volumes to that power structure.

Meet former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney and see a screening of 'Operation Small Axe' Wednesday, Jan. 13, 7 p.m., Black Dot Café, 1195 Pine St. West Oakland. Come and support Minister of Information JR and Holly Works, who still face charges from the Oakland Rebellions that secured the indictment of Johannes Mehserle, the triggerman who executed Oscar Grant.

Tuesday, Jan. 5, at 4 p.m. in City Hall Room 416 is the FINAL hearing on the Candlestick Point-Hunters Point Shipyard EIR, a very callous, negligent and dangerous document that identifies numerous life threatening and potentially disastrous impacts to human health and the environment - most dangerous of all the potential construction activities at a federal Superfund site listed as one of the most toxic properties in the nation!

At the close of 2008 and throughout 2009, Americans watched our federal government reward the reckless multinational financial sector with trillions of dollars for causing the worst hardship since the Great Depression. San Franciscans and Californians joined in the agony but few understood that both San Francisco and California have come up with their own bailout for one of the major players in the meltdown, the South Florida based Lennar Corp.

The plan to sell off Berkeley’s 75 public housing units is harmful to Berkeley’s poor, elderly and disabled population that fail to qualify for the Section 8 program or meet the minimum income requirements to reside in so-called affordable housing units owned and operated by local nonprofit housing developers.

Loans handed out to struggling small businesses as part of President Barack Obama’s stimulus package have largely shut out minority businesses – especially those owned by Blacks and Latinos. Overall, white-owned businesses received over $130 million in loans through the program, while Hispanic-owned businesses got $4 million and Black-owned businesses less than $2 million.

An organizing meeting has been scheduled for Jan. 3 at 5 p.m. at Chuco’s Justice Center in Inglewood for people interested in monitoring the trial of Johannes Mehserle, the former Bay Area Rapid Transit police officer who shot Oscar Grant, an unarmed 22-year-old Black man, in the back on an Oakland BART platform on Jan. 1, 2009. Mehserle is the first police officer in California ever to be charged with murder.

When I heard about the revolutionary resistance of our South African brothers and sisters in Abahlai baseMjondolo (The Shack Dwellers Union) in South Africa, who successfully overturned the Slums Act, which would have given South African police the ability to legally demolish, destroy and evict poor people from their shacks without notice, I cried.

Egyptian security forces were attacking protesters in Tahrir Square, at the core of downtown Cairo, after they sat down in the middle of a busy Cairo street, protesting the imprisonment of the people of Gaza. Others were literally barricaded inside their hotel, the entrance surrounded by steel riot barriers. It is pandemonium.

Knowing what we do about Israel, we find it insulting to see the Israeli flag flying above the Belize flag. This is offensive to Belize and Belizeans; in Israel it is illegal for Palestinians to fly their flag. We seriously doubt that anyone could fly any flag above the Israeli flag in Israel.

Universities all over the state of California have erupted into protest over the raising of student fees. In the Bay Area, rebellions have been going down at UC Berkeley and at San Francisco State University regularly; students actually have brought their feelings right to the front door of the chancellor’s house.

Since last year, former presidential candidate and Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, the most progressive person to ever be a member of Congress or a presidential candidate, has been on a roll internationally - traveling through different parts of Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Europe telling the truth about what is happening with the regular everyday people who live in the United States.

Historic Wesley United Methodist Church, the second oldest African American church in New Orleans, the eighth oldest in the United States and a symbol of the struggle for emancipation and human rights in the state of Louisiana, is in jeopardy. Unless those who are trying to save it acquire financial support soon, the church may be torn down due to hurricane damage and replaced with a parking lot.

The Black Panther Party educated people, fed children, provided health care and resisted armed police aggression and other forms of government sanctioned aggression. Two of the martyrs of this movement were Chairman Fred Hampton and Defense Captain Mark Clark of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party, who were both assassinated by the government on Dec. 4, 1969.

Communities from up and down the West Coast that had planned to converge in San Francisco to demonstrate our immense energy and BE THE CHANGE this administration needs to do what is right have been denied a previously approved permit to gather – why? on the grounds that the rally will be too large. Is this a re-run of the rise and fall of the Poor People’s Campaign’s Resurrection City on the Washington Mall in 1968?

Since the inception of BART, this transportation system has excluded Black contractors, Black construction workers and Black riders. Charlie Walker drove a truck into a San Francisco BART excavation site before we could get contracts.

Despite years and months of intense advocacy and organizing, whole nations and masses of people are facing increased possibilities of drowning, burning and/or starving to extinction. All the progressive forces we have met – inside and outside of the governments – have told us how determined they are to continue our generation’s mandate to reclaim the power from the selfish polluters who threaten the survival of all of us.

Freeway Ricky Ross was one of the biggest publicly known fundraisers for the U.S. government’s proxy wars against the people of Latin America, specifically in the countries of Nicaragua and El Salvador. He didn’t do it selling candy like school children do; he did it selling thousands of kilos of crack cocaine in the Los Angeles area. After serving over 20 years behind enemy lines, he met with me in Chicago at Mosque Maryam, where he was the featured speaker two weeks ago.