News & Views

Police violence is raged against the people with impunity, ‘like a pack of wolves.’

Roger Allen left this life with tears stinging the eyes and hearts of almost no one outside of his family and close circle of friends, since the so oft lost Black lives seem to be no longer notable “news.”

Monday, Nov. 13, was a day of extra-judicial killings of men and women estimated by community residents to total 14, plus a number of disappeared. Many are reported wounded by police gunfire and beatings with hammers. In addition, news reports mention 31 arbitrary arrests, and many children and adults were injured by the very potent tear gas used by the police. In the northern city of Cap-Haitien, marching students shouting, “Down with the army, long live education, long live schools!” were brutally attacked by the police using tear gas and batons.

When police stopped a teenager stepping off the T-train yesterday to show his transfer as proof he’d paid his fare – $2 at most – he ran from them. They shot him as many as 10 times in the back and neck, according to witnesses. For many long minutes, as a crowd watched in horror, the boy, who had fallen to the sidewalk a block away, lay in a quickly growing pool of blood writhing in pain and trying to lift himself up as the cops trained their guns on him and threatened bystanders. Come to the press conference and speakout Monday, July 18, noon, at Third & Oakdale, San Francisco.

On Wednesday, Feb. 10, 2015, in the Dominican Republic, supposedly a paradise of European development, a Haitian man named Henry Claude Jean, known as “Tulile,” a humble shoe shine worker, was found hanging in a park in Santiago, his hands and feet bound. In Haiti, the U.S.-installed Martelly dictatorship and its controlled opposition remain silent about this atrocious lynching.

We cannot expect to receive any reports except those that justify, excuse or minimize the killing of Oscar Grant by BART police at 2 a.m. New Year's Day.

My senior colleagues have stepped into a toxic land! It is a land contaminated by chemicals and radioactive materials but, more importantly, a land full of distrust, ignorance and injustice. I respect their courage to step in, and I hope they manage to persuade the community that their work is inclusive, reliable and helpful for making them feel safe. At the end, I join Mayor Breed and repeat her words: “This community deserves transparency and accountability.”

On Jan. 22, 20-year-old Raheim Brown was shot and killed by the Oakland Unified School District’s police force outside Skyline High School. Calling the killing an “assassination,” Raheim's mother, Lori Davis, was horrified by the excessive use of force.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office collaborated with the government of Rwandan military dictator Paul Kagame to produce “witnesses,” who have nothing to lose because they will leave this country before they can be charged with perjury, and who have everything to gain back home in Rwanda by falsely accusing Mr. Teganya.

“Kagame did not stop the genocide, because at the same time that ethnic Tutsis were being killed in Hutu-controlled zones, his Tutsi troops were killing with equal zeal and organization. And in every zone that Kagame’s army entered and controlled, they killed Hutus massively.” - Judi Rever

Parents are people. We are imperfect. We make mistakes. We struggle. And, sometimes, in the heat of the moment we say and do things we do not mean. For Donna Levey, her mistake was calling San Francisco Child Protective Services, or CPS, for support when her family was in crisis. If only she had known that that phone call would come to represent the point of no return. If only she had known that CPS would catapult their family crisis into a life-altering nightmare.

More of the same abusive policies will rob our communities of effective solutions.

Demanding an end to institutional anti-Black racism by the Israel government, hundreds of Jewish citizens of Ethiopian heritage marched through the streets of downtown Tel Aviv on July 3, renewing demonstrations that had galvanized the community a year earlier. The mostly young Ethiopian-Israeli protesters called for abusive police officers to be jailed and blocked a main street in front of the headquarters of the Ministry of Defense.

The next screening of the Black Riders documentary, ‘Let Um Hear Ya Coming,’ is Thursday, Oct. 3, 6:30 p.m., at La Pena Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck Ave., Berkeley. The event also features the Conscious Roots Music Showcase, with performances by E Da Ref, Askari Mwari, Jah Wave, Fly Benzo and Ms. Incredible, Audiomatic, DJ 8 and DJ Cuba.

Rwandan President Paul Kagame will speak at the University of Hartford, Connecticut’s Maurice Greenberg Center for Judaic Studies to mark the launch of its “Genocide and Holocaust Education Initiative,” despite scholars, journalists and protestors all over the world, and nearly 20 years of U.N. reports accusing Kagame himself of genocide and mass atrocities in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Pentagon brass say they’re anxious that US adversaries Russia, China, North Korea and Iran may take advantage of our pandemic-crippled armed forces in their hemisphere, but they can kiss my ass. I still don’t have an N-95 mask, a coronavirus test or a stimulus check, so how’m I supposed to worry that a Chinese aircraft carrier steamed through a strait in the East China Sea?

Over $1 billion has been spent by the federal government since 2004 to clean up and remediate one of the most highly toxic and radioactive sites in the U.S., the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard in San Francisco. This Superfund site was home for decades, 1946-1969, to the Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory, and large Navy warships were towed there from the Pacific, where they had been placed close to nuclear tests.

“Police are some of our best customers,” stated Diamond, 29, as we sat and talked. Diamond is one of the many names she goes by while working as a prostitute now in cities throughout the Bay Area. With the recent Bay Area police sex scandal, involving the sexual exploitation of Celeste Guap, much of it when she was a minor, it is important for victims of sexual violence to speak out! Here is Diamond’s story.

San Francisco is a city full of Black history, which can be seen in the day to day lives of ordinary people, according to world renowned actor Danny Glover, who was the keynote speaker for the one year anniversary ceremony for the Bayview Access Point.

Immediately following the “earthquake” that hit Haiti on Jan. 12, 2010, I started seeing reports that the earthquake was not a random occurrence or happenstance. These were the same rumblings I heard following Hurricane Katrina. After the devastation of Katrina I started seeing reports about HAARP, High Frequency Active Auroral Research.