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The news came as a shock from a phone call with my wife, a die-hard fan, who broke the news that Teena Marie, the best musical half of the Funkster, Rick “Super-Freak” James, had died.

The death-sentenced prisoners I visit are so desperate that they are going on hunger strike, essentially for the right to be on death row. After Lucasville, the state of Ohio decided that a maximum security prison was not secure enough. They built a supermax prison, OSP Youngstown.

“We don’t work with Indians,” SFHA had told Myron. He began his story with this, the first in a series of discriminatory statements made to him by SFHA. The injustice began in August of 2009, when the family was informed of that their Section 8 voucher had been approved; they’d been on the list for 11 years.

Four death-sentenced prisoners, wrongfully convicted of crimes following the 1993 prison rebellion in Lucasville, Ohio, started a hunger strike Jan. 3. They say they would rather die, if they must, on their own terms, rather than on a gurney by lethal injection. They want to strike a blow against confinement conditions so inhumane that they amount to torture.

Much of the world focuses on family and creating safe and loving environments for children during the holidays, but many of the world’s children suffer extreme deprivation and abuse of their human rights. Acholi children living in an internally displaced persons (IDP) camp in Kitgum, Northern Uganda, “think that a refugee camp is home.”

Over 100 family members, religious leaders and community supporters held a prayer vigil and speak-out on New Year’s Day in front of the Fruitvale BART station to commemorate the second anniversary of the BART police killing of Oscar Grant, a young Black man.

A spokesperson for the Scott Sisters, Nancy Lockhart, announced Wednesday, Jan. 5, that the Scott Sisters will be released from prison on Friday to start their lives on parole. On Dec. 29, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, possibly a Republican contender for the presidency in 2012, suspended indefinitely the life sentences of Jamie and Gladys Scott.

"Since the start of the Dec. 9 peaceful work stoppage and appeal for reform and respect for human rights, some inmates have been targeted and others have simply disappeared. We are urging the Department of Corrections and Governor-Elect Nathan Deal to act now to halt these unjust practices and treat these men like human beings,” said Ed Dubose, President of the NAACP of Georgia.

Four prisoners unjustly sentenced to death for the 1993 Lucasville, Ohio, prison uprising began a hunger strike on Monday, Jan. 3, to demand that they be placed on Death Row rather than be held in solitary confinement – and to initiate a campaign that will hopefully lead to executive clemency. Here, the first of the prisoners to begin the strike speaks out.

John Maxwell is one of those rare human beings, one of those rare souls, and one of those rare minds whose death leaves us naked. Bare. Smaller.

"Dec. 9, 2010, marks the first time in a long time that a group of Georgia prisoners were successful in demonstrating that they were – and are – absolutely positively tired of the slavery-like conditions of the state of Georgia," writes 18-year prisoner Eugene Thomas. Listen to a Block Report interview with Eugene by M.O.I. JR broadcast on KPFA’s Hard Knock Radio.

The critically acclaimed film “Precious” dealt with the touchy subject of family incest and how it affects people, from the instigator to the survivor. Within the Black community, incest – unwarranted or wanted sexual contact between an adult and a minor – is a subject that often is a secret tightly held within families.

Today we are going to be talking to Philadelphia Tribune writer and Temple University professor Linn Washington, who is going to give us an update on the case of Mumia Abu Jamal.

After three years of appeals and litigation, I’m pleased to announce that, beginning Jan. 1, 2011, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCr) will no longer be allowed to furnish prisoners food containing poisonous trans fats.

For Blacks in Greenwood, Mississippi, the notion that America has gotten beyond race isn’t popular today. Many are angry over the recent mysterious hanging death of Frederick Jermaine Carter.

Liberty Builders continues to fight for its right to reinstatement as the prime contractor for construction of the Bayview Branch Library. Liberty Builders is trusted by the people of Bayview Hunters Point, who have long been locked out of City construction work, to give them full and fair opportunity to build the library they love. Tell City Hall: "Our library, our jobs!" Tell Mayor Newsom how you feel about this and what you want – call (415) 554-6141, email gavin.newsom@sfgov.org or visit Room 200, City Hall.

Journalist JR Valrey, who was born in 1978, grew up mostly in Oakland, where the legend of the Black Panther Party was all around him. “A lot of the people around here are Panthers, or knew Panthers or are members of the Black Guerilla Family, which was an organization that Field Marshall George Jackson of the Black Panther Party founded. The revolution is very deep in Oakland. It’s not so cosmetic as it is other places. It’s not just about bandannas and t-shirts and concert throwing and posturing. I think it’s more grassroots here and more ingrained in the spirit of the people.”

Bayview Hunters Point is a community not exempt from poverty, violence, racism, police terrorism, gentrification, institutionalized ignorance, displacement and demonizing media coverage. With the Tough House Project, founder Jamal James Modica hopes to give this community a voice.

With the release of another 250,000 classified diplomatic cables from the U.S. State Department by the WikiLeaks website, Washington’s Africa policy has been further exposed for its imperialistic designs. These revelations point to the necessity of the anti-war and peace movements in the U.S. incorporating anti-interventionist and anti-imperialist demands with specific reference to the African continent into their political programs.

As the 20th year passes since the West waged war against the late Saddam Hussein and the state of war slips into greater violence in Iraq and Afghanistan, there is another war being waged today, one which gets little coverage on TV, radio and newspapers. This war has been essentially a class war – a war against the poor and working classes.