Tag: Bayview Opera House

In an effort to ensure every student starts school with the tools to succeed, the San Francisco Public Defender’s BMAGIC program will provide backpacks stuffed with school supplies to more than 3,000 youth in the Bayview on Saturday, Aug. 16. The BVHP Annual Back to School Celebration will be held from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the recently renovated Youngblood Coleman Park, 1398 Hudson Ave.

GOOD NEWS! Especially for VISITACION VALLEY and SUNNYDALE residents - the opening of GROCERY OUTLET Supermarket, located at old Bayshore and Sunnydale, across from the car wash. The T-Third Street Muni line ends at Sunnydale platform. May 1, the bargain market opened to much enthusiasm. Heard nothing but RAVE reviews. The store is independently owned by DEREK AND GINA NAVARRO, who live in Visitacion Valley.

HAPPY NEW YEAR! Life continues for some, while many did not make it into 2014. Loved ones lost: MADIBA! MADIBA! BELOVED former South Africa President NELSON MANDELA; GRADY WILKINS, music director of the legendary WHISPERS; SUCCESSFUL Bayview business man MR. DAVE GARRISON; TWO San Francisco ICONS – the FAMOUS HAT LADY, RUTH GARLAND DEWSON and Legendary FILLMORE Master TAILOR and golfer CLYDE HOLLIE.

HO! HO! HO! The holiday season is upon us! Times are good. Folks crowding the malls, spending cash or charging their purchases; some buying on the layaway plan! Where are WE shopping? Are dollars channeled BACK to BLACK businesses on THIRD Street!??? Tough question! I travel through the corridor every day, not impressed at the options where I can spend my money.

Beloved Willie B. Kennedy, former San Francisco supervisor, was laid to rest on Friday, July 12, after a momentous Homegoing Service at her church of many years, Jones Memorial United Methodist, located in the heart of San Francisco’s Fillmore Western Addition. Pastor Staci Current officiated. Kennedy passed June 28. During her 89 years, the lady lived an illustrious life!

San Franciscans working from 2004 to 2013 to keep tasers out of SFPD officers’ hands as they “talk down” people in public crisis are today celebrating SFPD Chief Greg Suhr’s Wednesday, April 10, decision to drop his “less lethal” taser proposal for San Francisco cops. Idriss Stelley Foundation Program Director Jeremy Miller affirmed: “The Police Commission should be commended for engaging this issue seriously in a manner that befits their political responsibility. Tasers torture and kill. They are unaccountable weapons for unaccountable officers. But it was the people of San Francisco who forced Suhr’s hand.”

Police Chief Greg Suhr and the SF Police Commission finally scheduled and held the required community forums, where Suhr and Comdrs. Richard Corriea and Mikail Ali described the Electronic Control Weapon (ECW) proposal and invited community input. This updated story includes a report on the Tenderloin community forum, organized by residents. All testimony was anti-taser.

The 23rd African American Celebration through Poetry is Saturday, Feb. 2, 2013, 1-4 p.m. at the West Oakland Branch Library, 1801 Adeline St., in Oakland, (510) 238-7352. All are welcome and if anyone didn’t hear of the event in time to be a part of the featured program, we do have an open mic at the end of the program.

This year, on the 150 anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, we all need to heed the words of Sister Jayne Cortez: “And if we don’t fight / if we don’t resist / if we don’t organize and unify and / get the power to control our own lives / Then we will wear / the exaggerated look of captivity ...” And don't miss Wanda's excellent, no holds barred reviews of “Django Unchained,” “Lincoln and “Red Hook Summer,” plus Dr. King birthday events listing and much more

San Francisco Trolley Dances, now in its ninth year, is an annual outdoor festival linking dance, public transit and San Francisco’s neighborhoods. This year, the free, site-specific event comes to Bayview Hunters Point. Trolley Dances director and curator Kim Epifano and Campo Santo founder and director Sean San José told Allison Frost about Trolley Dances and what makes this year’s show a must-see.

With the storm approaching New Orleans, I spoke to Dwight Henry, co-star in the film, “Beasts of a Southern Wild,” currently in Bay Area theaters. I spoke to three men who are riding the storm out: Parnell Herbert, Angola 3 activist and playwright, Mwalimu Johnson, community organizer and prison abolitionist, and Malik Rahim, former Black Panther.

I would like to wish all the fathers a blessed and happy Fathers’ Day 2012. It is a hard time to be a parent of a youngster, not to mention an adolescent or youth. The challenges are great, in direct proportion to the rewards. I’d like to congratulate the young fathers who are stepping up and participating in their children’s lives, especially when society equates parenting with one’s largess or paycheck.

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.

Pack the courtroom -- Dept. 12 at 850 Bryant -- at 1:30pm today for the arraignment on bogus charges of DeBray Carpenter, better known as Fly Benzo, resistance leader in Bayview Hunters Point. Public Defender Jeff Adachi has assured he will be well represented, but he needs and deserves a crowd of supporters too. Fly is the keynote speaker Saturday at the October 22nd rally to stop police brutality. The mayor is in charge of the police department. Hold Mayor Ed Lee accountable for this attempt to silence a community leader. Call him at (415) 554-6141. Free Fly Benzo!

The Hunters Point Rebellion, touched off Sept. 27, 1966, 45 years ago today, by the police murder of Matthew Johnson, 16, was put down after only 128 hours with massive force. The repression left scars that make it hard for people who lived through the rebellion to talk about it 45 years later. The Bay View encourages those who remember to share your story so that what should be a proud chapter in Black history of defying injustice is never forgotten. Those who remember the 1966 rebellion are encouraged to email their recollections to the Bay View at editor@sfbayviewnews.wpenginepowered.com.

The MAGIC Program’s Back-to-School Celebration and Backpack Giveaway, the largest of its kind in San Francisco, will kick off the academic year Saturday, Aug. 13, by distributing health information, school uniforms and 3,200 new backpacks stuffed with school supplies to kids and teens.

The latest target of a San Francisco police wave of terror is Kilo G. Perry, videographer, freedom fighter, peacemaker and educator and the disabled single father of a 3-year-old boy. Ever since the July 16 killing of Kenneth Wade Harding Jr., 19, at Third and Oakdale by the SFPD thugs in blue, our Bayview Hunters Point community has been threatened, harassed and terrorized by the police more than in recent memory – some say more than in 45 years since the September 1966 rebellion.

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 ...

Celebrate the arts with two fantastic events at the Bayview Opera House.

Black History Month was very exciting at the Bayview Opera House, featuring such major local talents as Mastamind filmmaker Kevin Epps with two screenings, musicians Unidentified Flying Objects with Doc Smith and BVOH drum instructor Akinyele with his Troublemakers Union, Mary Booker’s Actors Workshop and the Providence Church Gospel Choir.