Tag: Afrikan

From a very young age, I was taught by my father who my grandfather was and what he did for our people. He made sure I knew the history of our local and national leaders.

A common denominator among individuals who commit suicide is a traumatic event and/or long-term torment which can result in psychosis. If left untreated, it can lead to suicidal thoughts with the intent to end the internal distress and anguish. This same diagnostic assessment is equally applicable to mass suicide.

From our perspective at POOR Magazine, we believe that as poor, indigenous, landless peoples, we need to create our own self-determined futures. With our meager resources – ‘cause POOR is in fact po’ – we held this event to make sure that this silenced community is really truly listened to by whomever wins this District 5 election.

The day is Buy Black Wednesday. I am setting foot in the Pan Afrikan Market Place called Little Nubia, modeled after Harlem in its “hey day,” old Timbuktu and Black Wall Street. So there are over 600 Black businesses in a 10-square-block area. Red, black and green is everywhere. Flags from every Afrikan nation flutter in the summer breeze.

On Tuesday, May 15, the bereaved family members of Alan Dwayne Blueford eloquently addressed those members of the Oakland City Council who were present, seeking justice in a case that is looking suspiciously like a criminal assassination of the 18-year-old student in his senior year at Skyline High School. He was due to graduate in June.

I call on New Afrikans in the “belly of the beast” to help keep the Black liberation torch burning by donating or making a $5 pledge each month for a year and educate your families and friends about the Bay View newspaper and its mission. We need Bay View’s support and Bay View needs our support in return. Let the voice of the oppressed be heard.

DeBray “Fly Benzo” Carpenter. He was busted on Oct. 18, 2011, by two of SFPD’s finest, John Norment and Joshua Fry, for (gasp!) participating in a community organized rally while playing a boom box in Mendell Plaza in the heart of Bayview Hunters Point. For speaking out against police brutality, especially the SFPD murder of Kenneth Harding last July, he was brutally arrested, tried and now is barred from Mendell Plaza by order of Judge Jerome T. Benson.

Prisoners in at least six Georgia prisons went on strike Dec. 9. On Friday, Dec. 17, a strong, positive, fiercely determined and highly spirited march and two rallies took place in downtown Oakland despite the driving rain in support of those prisoners, whose strike has become the largest in U.S. history.

Shannette Slaughter’s former Black bookstore, Alkebulan Books, is legendary in the Bay Area because of the assistance it has given thousands to educate themselves in a society where the television shows we watch and the music we listen to tries to direct our attention to strict consumerism, where we buy a whole bunch of stuff that we don’t need and we have no concern for the plight of our people. They call it “programming”; we call it “mind-control.”