News & Views

“We’re under domestic insurgency. If we don’t get it, it will get us.” – California Attorney General Jerry Brown, Anti-Gang Conference, Riverside, Calif., December 2007 “We’re mounting a coordinated, aggressive suppression strategy that targets the worst offenders and the most violent gangs. We’re converging local, state, federal and even international efforts … coming at them with everything we have.” – Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Feb. 8, 2007, press conference

The subprime mortgage crisis will cause African-Americans to experience wealth losses of between $71 billion and $122 billion over its duration.

Since 1963 West Papua, a land whose rich natural resources are being exploited by multi-national corporations, has been occupied by the Indonesian armed forces. The people of West Papua have been subjected to gross human rights violations including rape, torture, cultural genocide, murder and massacre.

Efforts to “dirty transfer” uncleaned shipyard parcels as proposed in the conceptual plan and the June 2008 ballot measure represent a direct violation of a city ordinance.

Despite Lennar’s claims that grading was completed in September in 2007, community air monitors continue to document elevations in asbestos levels.

The Common Ground Health Clinic arose in the New Orleans west bank community of Algiers above the apocalyptic flood waters in the fall of ‘05. The founders' visions, fueled by endorphins of kindness and adrenalin of desperation, were a beautiful thing to behold.

Now that we know how that negligence has endangered an upscale white neighborhood in Florida, will anyone in Hunters Point stand up in Lennar’s defense?

On Oct. 15, Daniel Landry, a long-time resident of the Fillmore’s Martin Luther King-Marcus Garvey Co-op, sent a letter to the co-op’s management agent, John Stewart Co., requesting information that, according to the co-op’s by-laws, all shareholders have a right to see. This information included minutes from board meetings and details of the contract that the King Garvey Co-op has with John Stewart Co. Little did he know the turmoil that would follow.

George D. Porter dedicated his career to the International Longshoremen’s Workers Union Local 34. He died in the care of his loving family on the morning of Feb. 19, 1992. His immediate cause of death was dehydration. His final cause of death was pulmonary asbestosis.

This is to let you know how thoroughly disgusted I was by the Board of Supervisors' vote today to plant three more fossil fuel power plants - natural gas turbine combustion power plants - in Bayview Hunters Point.

The disturbing trend of the public display of nooses that has gained momentum since the events in Jena, Louisiana, continues. The latest incident occurred on Tuesday, Nov. 5, at a worksite in San Jose, California.

On Wednesday, Oct. 31, a coalition of Black and Brown groups and individuals gathered at City Hall to express their opposition to San Francisco’s gang injunctions. Several themes emerged from those who addressed the crowd, including gentrification, racial profiling and the misuse of city money. During the course of the rally, it became clear that City Attorney Dennis Herrera, the political force behind the injunctions, has become an extremely unpopular figure in Bayview Hunters Point, the Mission and the Western Addition – neighborhoods in which the gang injunctions are now in place.

In Part 3 of this exclusive interview with Oakland Post Publisher Paul Cobb and Post Attorney Walter Riley, they discuss some of the tribulations that the newspaper was going through prior to the murder of Post Editor Chauncey Bailey, as well as what Paul told the police hours after Chauncey was murdered.

A group of journalists is determined to seek a fair retrial of death row prisoner, noted journalist and former Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal, and they point to evidence they say provides further proof of his innocence: photos from the crime scene that the jury never had the chance to see.

This the second part in a short series to give you the raw information regarding the investigation into who killed Oakland Post Editor Chauncey Bailey, the investigation into the Black Muslim Bakery and the whole controversy surrounding the Oakland Police Department's involvement in a cover-up.

Every week in the mainstream media there is a new episode in the saga surrounding the assassination of Oakland Post Editor Chauncey Bailey, which took place Aug. 2 in downtown Oakland. Hours after his murder, the police made the heavily publicized arrest of 19 suspects from Your Black Muslim Bakery.

In the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, the historically Black Fillmore district – since dubbed the “Western Addition” – underwent a massive phase of urban renewal in which block after block was literally razed to the ground to make way for redevelopment. The impact on the Black community was devastating.

The resolution does not compel any action but calls upon the city to halt construction, order health assessments and communicate these reports to the district and the public.

It would be a liability to accelerate the transfer of a federal Superfund site from the National Priority List with the data gaps that exist in the characterization of this property. The city admits it cannot clean up the Shipyard’s radiation-contaminated sites, which comprise the bulk of Parcels D and E. Parcel F, the Shipyard’s underwater region, has not been adequately studied.

On Friday, Sept. 21, 2007, Mayor Gavin Newsom claimed “the CDC and the California Department of Public Health agree with the San Francisco Department of Public Health that there was no significant health risk created by the grading activities at the shipyard.”