News & Views

Sen. Mark Leno's Senate Bill 792 would give clean parkland at Candlestick Point to Lennar and replace it with toxic land. Lennar, the "toxic dust developer," plans to build 10,000 luxury condos at the Hunters Point Shipyard. This toxic trade bill is now in the California Assembly, so calls opposing SB 792 should be made immediately to Fiona Ma, (916) 319-2012, and Tom Ammiano, (916) 319-2013.

Kathy Hughes, the owner of Radio One, which many in the Black community deem the Black Clear Channel, has issued a clarion call to Black people saying that Conyers' bill will kill Black radio. But the question remains: Is Black radio now in jeopardy or has true Black radio that is accountable to the community been dead for decades?

Ever since the police murder of Lovelle Mixon, after he allegedly murdered four Oakland police officers in East Oakland on March 21, the SF Bay View newspaper website, sfbayview.com, hundreds of messages have been written in the comment sections at the end of the articles by people who are undercover cyber police and people with strong pro-police sentiments, with some coming right out and saying they are members of police departments.

I surveyed a bunch of high-school-aged teens between 15 and 17 to find out what are the new drugs they're using to get high. As a teen I struggled with some drug addiction, but many of the new drugs teens are getting high off of are crazy and can lead to brain damage and even death. I put together a list of the top five drugs that teens are doing in the year 2009. It's time to put a stop to this .

It's Memorial Day, and I was just harassed and detained with unnecessary force right in front of my house on Pine Street by a Sgt. D. Ming, serial number 8493, for about an hour. He called four additional squad cars to back him up.

Marcel Diallo is a legend in Oakland for having put in over a decade of cultural work with the Black Dot Artist Collective, and now he is the main architect of a Black cultural district, the Village Bottoms Cultural District in the Lower Bottoms of West Oakland, near the old Army base.

Signs reading "Justice for Oscar Grant," "Abolish the Three Strikes Law" and "Demandamos Justicia Ya!" floated above a sea of ralliers of different ages, religious beliefs, genders and ethnicities. From Bakersfield up to Sacramento, activists, teachers and family members came together to rally against laws that have failed to serve the betterment of their communities.

As an African-American farmer, I am calling on the first African-American president of the United States to lead us quickly away from this deepening crisis. Demand, President Obama, that Congress and your own administration begin without delay the process of reforming our farm and food policies. Start now by correcting the omission in your economic stimulus and recovery act that prevented significant spending on creating new and sustainable jobs for the poor in our urban centers as well as rural farm communities.

On New Year's morning BART police officer Johannes Mehserle fired his gun at point blank range into Oscar Grant's back, killing him as he lay face down on the train platform, hands behind him. A preliminary hearing is now underway to determine whether Mehserle will be charged with murder or whether the charges against him will be lowered.

Shark is a 27-year-old father of five Secwepemc children, from the Ohlone and Chumash nations. He is currently being held for ransom in the Kamloops Regional Correctional Center (KRCC), facing charges stemming from protecting Secwepemc mountains, Skwelkwek'welt.

"Our success here to secure justice for Oscar Grant will no doubt be that line in the sand that will say to all police officers, ‘If you kill or break the law, you will go to jail,'" wrote Oscar Grant's Uncle Bobby, Cephus Johnson, in a message of thanks to supporters. Watch Davey D's video on the week's events. Oscar Grant's family asks supporters to return to the courthouse next week.

During the first 200 years of the theft of indigenous people's land, destruction of resources and death of peoples and communities known as European colonization in the U.S., the missionary ideals and practices of Christian charity were replaced by the capitalist and patriarchal pattern of philanthropy.

Survivors of Hurricane Katrina are finally getting their day in court. In a trial lasting most of a month that went to the judge Thursday, May 14, in New Orleans, a group of residents is holding the Army Corps of Engineers responsible for the flooding that occurred in the wake of Katrina.

In spite of the disrespect shown by what Attorney General Eric Holder has correctly called "a nation of cowards [in] race related issues," our movement prevailed. The Durban Declaration and Program of Action, or DDPA, was reaffirmed!

Young Congolese journalist Chouchou Namegabe brought the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to tears when she testified May 13 that the rapes of a half million women and girls in the Congo are "meant to remove the people from their mineral-rich land." Watch the video and read the transcript.

"The alarming thing about phasing out is that the district is closing schools that have just opened," said Jayeesha Dutta, a co-director at Oakland-based Youth in Focus. "If this is a reform tool, we're never going to make progress."

Build the new civil rights movement to stop police brutality. Rally Monday, May 18, 8 a.m., at the Rene C. Davidson Courthouse, 12th Street and Oak, near the Oakland City Center and the 12th Street BART Station.

Harry Young, an 82-year-old Black farmer from Owensboro, Kentucky, was arrested and released on $50,000 bond in connection with allegations of threatening U.S. Department of Agriculture employees - terroristic threatening. It all stems from a contested foreclosure and sale of his family farm in 2005.

Haitian Americans demand that the Obama administration stop the threatened deportation of some 30,000 Haitians back to their strife and storm battered country and that Haitian migrants be granted Temporary Protected Status.

Two days before the United Nations Durban Review Conference (DRC) officially convened, anti-racist demonstrators from every continent and nearly every struggle in the world filled the streets of downtown Geneva. Most were unaware that for nearly two years, hundreds of militant pro-Israeli activists and the Israeli Foreign Ministry had been coordinating their plans to sabotage the DRC.