News & Views
Why the Y? Being at the YMCA feels like home
The Y encourages people to recognize their value as individuals, have a sense of belonging and to become the best version of themselves.
Bouncing back from trauma
Bounce Back Generation (BBG) is an organization making an impact in the lives of youth based in the Potrero Hill and Bayview Hunters Point communities.
Investing in journalism: Why civic infrastructure is key to California’s future
Visibility is only the first step. True empowerment requires a watchdog. These reporters hold officials accountable on the local impact of state housing policies and health care accessibility.
Herbal tea over pharmaceutical dope
The Bay Area's Tea Man, Gibran McDonaldWhat is Ayurvedic Medicine? The purpose of Ayurveda is to give health to the sick and strength to the strong.
From the desk of the Editor in Chief
For 50 years, the San Francisco Bay View has stood as a voice for Black liberation, telling the stories too often ignored or silenced. Through financial hardship, political pressure, and decades of frontline reporting on police violence, political prisoners, and struggles for justice, the paper has never stopped publishing. Now, as it enters its next chapter, the Bay View is asking the community to help ensure that independent Black journalism not only survives, but grows. Through the 50 x 50 Campaign, every contribution helps strengthen a platform dedicated to informing, organizing, and amplifying the voices of Black communities for generations to come.
The San Francisco Black Film Festival: Third generation director Cree Ray...
As the third-generation director of the San Francisco Black Film Festival, Cree Ray is carrying more than a family legacy — she is helping preserve a vital piece of Black Bay Area culture in a region where Black communities continue to be displaced and diminished. In this conversation, Ray reflects on inheriting the vision of her grandmother, Ave Montague, and her father, Kali O’Ray, while charting a future that embraces new filmmakers, emerging technologies and the next generation of storytellers. More than a film festival, she argues, SFBFF remains a gathering place where culture, community and ownership of Black stories can be protected, nurtured and passed forward.
Dear Karmelo
This open letter to Karmelo Anthony, reflects on race, justice and the unequal ways Americans experience the legal system. Part personal message and part social commentary, the piece examines the public reaction to Anthony’s case while questioning who receives empathy, who receives grace, and how those differences continue to shape outcomes in America.
Behind Enemy Lines
Who are the real experts on prisons?
After spending nearly 31 years behind prison walls, including time in solitary confinement, Uhuru Rowe argues that the people best equipped to explain the realities of incarceration are not academics or policy experts, but those who survived it firsthand. In this powerful reflection, Rowe challenges readers to reconsider who gets recognized as an authority on the prison industrial complex, drawing on decades of lived experience to expose the violence, isolation and dehumanization that statistics alone can never fully capture. His message is simple: if society is serious about prison abolition and justice, it must center the voices of those who have endured the system from the inside.
The 20-year battle to free Jeff ‘Ace’ Walker from wrongful conviction
Jeffery “Ace” Walker is representing himself in court, during this phase of his 20 year battle. Navigating the legal system while being captive within the legal system, is a daunting and complex task. Ace is grateful for the continued support of community members being present during the many phases of his journey.
Kwame Beans Shakur: Contradictions on organizing in post-neo-colonial north amerikkka
We are not in an underdeveloped third world nation whose people are born keenly aware of Our oppression and captive status. Our colonial experience is unique and has been altered and mastered over 400+ years into its own slave science.
Mumia Abu-Jamal: Innocent and framed! Free Mumia, NOW!
The injustice to Mumia Abu-Jamal is not the action of one rogue cop or prosecutor or judge, but a concerted effort to silence an unbending, outspoken political opponent of this racist, repressive, exploitive, murderous capitalist system.
Alabama’s Black Sea: Limestone’s B-Yard
The HBO original documentary “The Alabama Solution,” which premiered at Sundance and debuted on HBO Oct. 10, 2025, uses prisoners’ footage “leaked” out of Alabama prisons.
Culture Currents
The cultural renaissance of Black SF is underway at Ruth Williams...
Our primary audience is the Bayview Hunters Point community, but we serve the entire city. We center Black and Brown artists, youth and families. Programming ranges from live music, theater and cultural festivals to workforce development, artist residencies, film screenings and community forums. It’s intentionally multi-use — art, culture and civic engagement all under one roof.
The San Francisco Black Film Festival: Third generation director Cree Ray...
As the third-generation director of the San Francisco Black Film Festival, Cree Ray is carrying more than a family legacy — she is helping preserve a vital piece of Black Bay Area culture in a region where Black communities continue to be displaced and diminished. In this conversation, Ray reflects on inheriting the vision of her grandmother, Ave Montague, and her father, Kali O’Ray, while charting a future that embraces new filmmakers, emerging technologies and the next generation of storytellers. More than a film festival, she argues, SFBFF remains a gathering place where culture, community and ownership of Black stories can be protected, nurtured and passed forward.
Juju’s Burlesque Show is coming to Oakland June 10
“Burlesque is the art of seduction, storytelling, confidence and performance. True burlesque is theater. It’s dance. It’s glamour. It’s comedy, sensuality, character work, music, fashion, and personal expression all living in the same space." - Jujuana Williams
Oakland Carnival is Saturday, June 6, at Mosswood Park
Every summer, thousands gather to celebrate culture, community and resistance through music, dance, food and pageantry at Oakland Carnaval. More than a festival, organizers say Carnaval is a living expression of African cultural survival across the Americas, tracing its roots from ancient Africa to the Caribbean, Brazil and beyond. In this conversation, longtime Carnaval leader Theo Aytchan Williams reflects on the history of the celebration, Oakland’s unique contribution to the tradition, and why creating spaces for Black joy, wellness and cultural pride remains a revolutionary act in the Town.
Boots Riley’s ‘I Love Boosters’ is the must-see film of the...
The film centers around humanizing the lives of boosters, people who steal clothes from corporate stores to resell at a discount on the streets, in contrast to US media's normalization of humanizing corporate and government war criminals and environmental and ecological terrorists.
Bay View Archives
Welcome to the Bay View Archives! With a $20,000 grant from The San Francisco Foundation, we can finally formalize and publicize our trove of Black journalism from 1976 to 2008.
July 2019 marks 11 years from the date of the final weekly print edition of the Bay View News July 2, 2008. For our first archival series, we will be pulling articles focused on historical examples of Bay Area communities’ activism toward self-preservation and against the inaction of a rapidly gentrifying city. July 2008 was a perfect example of such movements. From the Quesada Kids Community Fruit Stand to the protests against the illegal eviction from Oakland’s California Hotel, Black activist communities in the Bay worked to create alternative modes of living and acting, forming environments centered around mutual empowerment and advocacy.
Air district votes to fine Lennar
“How can you trust a criminal to preside over their own trial? We already know that the people who are supposed to be watching out for the health and safety of the community are paid contractors with the Lennar Corp."
‘Master Developer’ is plantation mentality
We won’t stir up toxic dust as Lennar has that measurably poisons our children. We know the Shipyard is still not fit for human habitation. We’re not stupid.
Big victory for California Hotel tenants
“The tenants prevailed. There was no one from Oakland Community Housing appearing in court today to oppose the tenants’ needs or Judge Richard Keller’s ruling. This is a big victory for the people.”