Tag: City College of San Francisco

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!

City College is OPEN and ACCREDITED. These are the words posted by Interim Chancellor Thelma Scott-Skillman on the front page of the college website. With all the recent negative publicity surrounding City College over its threatened loss of accreditation, there is growing concern that it may discourage students from returning to the college.

As City College waits for its accreditation status to be decided this coming June 15, budget cuts continue to limit course sections, reduce available part-time instructors and eliminate student services. Depending on what the Accrediting Commission decides, City College might not offer programs and classes in the fall 2013 for the 1,200 Southeast campus students who depend on City College for basic education.

At the Bayview branch of the San Francisco Public Library a group of about 25 people, mostly African Americans, sat listening attentively to a San Francisco Unified School District human resources recruiter. The recruiter, Amy Chacon, was giving a presentation on what it’s like to work for SFUSD – and hoping to attract substitute teachers for SFUSD “hard to staff” school positions.

“Whose college? Our College!” The wave of thousands of people’s voices at City Hall rang in our collective ears. If we ever needed to put our bodies in the forefront of this fight, it is now. The fight to save City College comes to Bayview Hunters Point Wednesday, April 3, 6 p.m., Southeast Campus, 1800 Oakdale at Phelps, San Francisco – come learn and get involved.

The award winning play, “The Mountaintop,” looks at the everyday divinity of ordinary folks and places Martin King right there with them. His greatness is not a greatness which is inaccessible or isolated. In the Lorraine Motel that night, King listens and even agrees at some point with the young maid, Camae, a Malcolm X radical in an apron.

The revolution of militant Black theatre lost one of its giants last month on the 20th of February. John Henry Doyle passed into history. A group of John’s coworkers and friends are sponsoring a memorial celebration of his life with a reading of “Freedom Road,” poetry and song on Sunday, April 7, 2-5 p.m., at the original site of his theatre, the Potrero Hill Neighborhood House, 953 DeHaro St., San Francisco.

I would like to know the reasons why the Muni constantly stops trains on the T-Line at 23rd Street as if the rest of Third Street doesn’t exist. I pay for a monthly pass and I feel that I deserve to be treated with the same services as the Mission Bay area. It’s despicable how the Muni service treats the citizens in Bayview. This is obviously a classic combination of classism and racism.

With a banner reading “From the Mission District to the whole Bay Area – Stop Racist Police Brutality,” over 300 community members rallied against the most recent case of police violence in San Francisco. The event was prompted by a video that became widespread showing 18-year-old City College student Kevin Clark being brutalized by two San Francisco police officers.

CCSF, one of the nation’s most successful community colleges, is fighting for survival. A lifeline to immigrants, students of color and the poor, the school has been knocked to its knees by brutal austerity measures. Students, staff, faculty, and community are joining together in the fight to save CCSF from closure. You are invited to the launch of the campus-community coalition on Wednesday, Feb. 6, 6-8 p.m., at CCSF Mission Campus, Room 109, 1125 Valencia, between 22nd and 23rd streets, San Francisco.

Amerikkka and the conservative bigwigs want to PRIVATIZE the school so that they can choose who gets in, what classes will be offered, when this will all take place and how it is to come about. If they are able to do that, people like me – homeless, poor, poverty-stricken single mother – will not have a ghost of a chance to better ourselves. But that’s what they want: to keep you down and out.

As the largest community college in California, CCSF serves almost 100,000 students annually. The City is full of our former students. We touched their lives, and chances are a day doesn’t go by without a City College graduate touching yours. And now we need your help. Vote for Prop A on the local ballot and Prop 30 on the statewide ballot this November.

The community college system educates thousands of working-class and poor people across the state of California without saddling us with massive debt. City College of San Francisco alone educates over 90,000 students. This poor people college access is exactly why I believe that corporate interests are trying to squash the last hope for educational access across the country.

The San Francisco School Board is considering a strong local hiring and contracting policy that will give Blacks and all San Franciscans a chance to compete for a share of the $531 million in school construction funded by Proposition A – and give our children the economic security they need to succeed in school and in life.

There are many great programs for youth in the San Francisco Bay Area – among them, AileyCamp at Cal Performances, Destiny Arts, Oaktown Jazz Workshop, Dimensions Extensions and Oakland Public Conservatory of Music, founded by Angela Wellman.

Mayor Ed Lee is considering a New York City-style stop-and-frisk policy, where police search anyone they consider “suspicious.” Lee, the first Chinese American mayor of San Francisco, said, “I will be tagged – as the minority mayor of this city – for racial profiling.” He’s right – and that tag is entirely justified.

Shontrice Williamson and Adrienne Wilson graduated from San Francisco State University - Shontrice receiving her degree in Africana studies and Adrienne a master’s in public health. Both were also chosen to represent their fellow graduates at commencement by wearing the symbolic hood of their colleges. Only seven graduating students were selected for this honor.

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.

Malaika H Kambon has another chance to compete in the 2012 Amateur Athletics Union Tae Kwon Do National Championships! She medaled gold at the 2012 Amateur Athletic Union’s Pacific Coast State Qualifying Championships on May 12, 2012. This qualifies her to compete at the national level this year. Can you help her to get there?

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.