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Sympathy for the prisoners on hunger strike in the Security Housing Unit at Pelican Bay State Prison is limited due to the widely held impression that these men — and indeed most supermax prisoners — are the “worst of the worst.” According to conventional wisdom, in order to land in the most secure units in the prison system, these men must have committed terrible crimes in the first place ...

Reaching at least 6,600 prisoners across 13 prisons, this massive and inspiring act of solidarity and people power across prison-manufactured and exacerbated racial and geographic lines has dumb-founded the CDCR (California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation).

We sat together: elders, youth, workers, students and folks. We were on our way to a low-paid job, an overpriced university, a pre-gentrified home and a public school. There were laughter and shouts, murmurs and silence. Then suddenly, there were nine heavily armed police officers and fare inspectors walking through the crowded 14 Mission Muni line. One stopped in front of me and my son.

In the face of the U.S. power structure’s continuing attempts to force communities of color to hide in our own hoods, a 19-year-old Afrikan youth, Kenneth Harding, was shot to death Saturday over not having a transfer for a $2 light rail ride. As he lay dying in a pool of his own blood, reaching out for help, raising himself up and crying out in agony, only to be surrounded and circled by police who were armed to the teeth with assault rifles and other tools of war ...

At least 400 prisoners at Pelican Bay continue to refuse food and thousands more around the state are striking in solidarity, making it the largest hunger strike in the history of the embattled California prison system. “We are urging our state representatives and Gov. Brown to step in and force the CDCR to recognize the prisoners’ demands,” says Manuel La Fontaine.

Richard Johnson, a prisoner who recently suffered a heart attack due to a blocked artery in his heart, is among the hunger strikers at Pelican Bay. Since the beginning of the strike, he has been taken off three of his daily meds; medical staff say they may be adverse to his health when taken on an empty stomach. He has been submitting a series of articles throughout his time on strike to educate potential supporters about the prison experience.

Kevin Cooper has been locked down on death row in San Quentin for the past 26 years. He was convicted of the 1983 murder of the Ryen family, although no reliable evidence showed him to be guilty. On the contrary, the case has overwhelming evidence suggesting that he is in fact an innocent man.

I am writing because it is a matter of life and death and I am afraid. I have been on a mediation team for the last couple of weeks on behalf of the prisoners in Pelican Bay State Prison and the talks have broken down. Prisoners in Pelican Bay have not eaten in 18 days. I am afraid that the only one who can stop people from dying at this time is the governor.

Shot dead in his car on July 15, 2011, a mere 30 and a half months after Oscar’s BART police assassination, Johntue Caldwell, godfather of Oscar Grant’s daughter, Tatiana, was one of the terrorized Black youth on the Fruitvale BART platform with Oscar on Jan. 1, 2009. He leaves behind two young sons.

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 March 18, President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and his family returned home from a seven-year forced exile in South Africa – an exile brought about by the violent U.S.-orchestrated coup in 2004. Up until the last minute, the U.S. government tried to stop the return, with President Obama going so far as to place a last-minute call to President Zuma of South Africa.

Wealth and power win every time over poverty and vulnerability. Just look no further than the “sudden turn of events” in the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case.

For the Pelican Bay Hunger Strike to be successful, every available resource must be brought into play. Starting IMMEDIATELY, prisoners can start the process of improving their conditions of existence by implementing a peaceful work strike in every prison in the state.

How long does it take for a man on hunger strike to starve to death? The answer depends on what kind of physical shape that man was in to begin with. In 1981, it took the 10 Irish Republican hunger strikers – who were drinking water – from 46 to 73 days to die in Britain's Maze Prison outside Belfast. Will it come to this is California? Based on the response so far from the state, it appears that it could.

The 64th Cannes International Film Festival kicked into high gear with a galaxy of stars, writers, directors, producers, distributors and folks from all walks of life celebrating the film industry. African and Caribbean cinema industries were well represented.

NATO and hyperbolic press accounts have introduced a kind of race hatred that the Libyan people have been trying hard to erase. Approximately 50 percent of Libya looks like me. Innocent, darker skinned Libyans have been targeted, tortured, harassed and killed.

In the Louisiana bayou, a descendent of slaves was born into the Pratt clan, whose entire community suffered under racial apartheid. Since Pratt was a strong and thoughtful boy, his community encouraged him to shoulder the task of working to help defend the downtrodden who surrounded him.

I got a letter today from Yogi Bear, Hugo Antonio Lyons Pinell. As most of you know, Yogi has been tortured in the Pelican Bay SHU since 1990 and in other California gulags since the early 1970s. He began his incarceration in 1964 at age 19. He has joined the hunger strike and writes ...

On July 3, 2011, at 9:45 p.m., a 45-year-old scruffy looking man of European descent — only identified eight days later through his driver’s license picture as Charles Blair Hill, described ad nauseam by the corporate press as a “wobbly drunk” and a “crazy hippy” — met a violent fate on a San Francisco Civic Center BART platform at the hands of two BART thugs in blue, one white and one Asian.

With the Pelican Bay prison hunger strike entering its third week, mediators reported Thursday that the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) has responded to pressure from strikers and outside supporters, beginning initial negotiations with strike leaders in the prison’s Security Housing Unit, along with an outside mediation team. Some of the strikers’ health has deteriorated to near-fatal levels. Many fear that time is running out.