Tag: communities of color

The child’s destination was a friend’s house on a bright sunny day. The child had a toy. But Andy Lopez Cruz didn’t see his friend that day. Andy will not ever see any of his friends again. For within 10 seconds, the cops had rolled up behind him, reported him as suspicious, called for backup and shot him seven times. He was shot twice in the back before he hit the ground; he got a chance to scream “Stop” once and then he died.

The City of Richmond is working with a group called Mortgage Resolution Partners. This company looks at underwater mortgages and offers the current lenders – banks, mortgage companies – to take the property off their hands at its current lower value and then lower the mortgage payments for the family living in the house.

Streets Is Talking Radio is one of the dope internet radio shows that is based out of Oakland’s Youth Radio building. It was founded a few years back by Leon Dynastee to be a part of the Allday.fm lineup of radio shows that were being produced as part of a new network. It has been one of the more popular shows on the network considering that it has had to compete with the shows of such legends as Davey D and Sake 1.

Tuesday night, Sept. 10, the Richmond, California, City Council held a meeting packed with hundreds of community members who rallied to defend the Richmond CARES principal reduction plan that has inspired hope nationwide and a Wall Street-led campaign of threats, litigation and a deceptive election-style effort to sway public opinion. The City Council voted 4-3 to form a Joint Powers Authority to enact local principal reduction.

Paul Armentano is one of the many interesting professors at Oaksterdam University who is on the front lines of the re-legalization and de-criminalization of marijuana movement in the United States. He is a scientist and has been for about two decades an activist with the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, so he is definitely not new to this.

Chokwe Lumumba, a veteran of the Black Liberation and New African Independence movements, was elected mayor of Jackson on June 2, 2013. Jackson is the capital of Mississippi and is a city that is over 85 percent Black. If the election of Obama to the presidency of the United States constituted the alleged end of the Black Liberation Movement, the election of Chokwe Lumumba must then represent its resurrection.

It is hot enough in Corcoran, California, to melt people. That being said, it still wasn’t hot enough to keep upwards of 400 people from braving 103-degree weather to mobilize and rally at Corcoran State Prison in support of over 30,000 prisoners on hunger strike in California. The immediate goal is to stop the cruelty and torture that being held in isolation represents. The long-range objective is liberation.

In observance of World No Tobacco Day, African American anti-tobacco advocates in California and across the country are calling on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to ban menthol in cigarettes and other tobacco products. Advocates also are urging concerned groups and individuals to sign on to a historic citizen’s petition filed with the FDA in support of this national effort.

“We must leverage our athletic success for economic development in our community,” says Magic Johnson. Everett L. Glenn, president of the National Sports Authority, a division of ESP Education & Leadership Institute, is applying that principle to construction of the 49ers’ new stadium under construction in Santa Clara.

Perhaps you’ve heard or read the name Raheim Brown Jr. He’s the 20-year-old Black man who was beaten then shot and killed by Oakland School Police Department Sgt. Bhatt. What real justification can there be for officers – who were hired to secure a school dance on a school campus – to venture from their assigned duty posts and beat, shoot and kill innocent youth?

“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.

What a tragic image: A man and his son handcuffed and shackled together, yet musingly delighted about seeing a senior family member whom they are not going inside to visit. Rather, the two are to join in what is widely considered as America’s modern day form of slavery. The inhumanity represented in this artwork should be disturbing to anyone with a conscience – but few are moved.

Hundreds turned out for Oakland City Council's Public Safety Committee meeting on Jan. 15, 2013, to oppose paying $250,000 to bring “supercop” William Bratton and his "stop and frisk" and other zero tolerance police policies to Oakland. The bid for Bratton’s consult seems to be simply Oakland throwing good money after bad.

The 10th annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day report by UFE explains that the Great Recession took a greater portion of wealth from Black and Latino families than it did from White families. Today, the average net worth of White families is, respectively, more than six times higher and 5.7 times higher than the average Black and Latino families. Median wealth disparities are even greater.

Oakland’s mayor, chief of police, and city manager announced their intentions to contract with William Bratton as a consultant to the Oakland Police Department. Oakland has become the epicenter of anti-brutality campaigns, so those who want the brutality to continue are bringing in their big guns. Join the Justice for Alan Blueford Coalition and allies on Tuesday, Jan. 15, to tell the Oakland City Council that we reject Bill Bratton and his racist, fascist policies. Meet up at 5:00 for a rally with the meeting at 5:30.

A Dec. 4, 2012, ACLU letter to SF Mayor Ed Lee urged rejecting any SFPD proposal “to deploy tasers or other conductive energy devices”. The letter emphasizes that costly tasers would generate heavy legal fees from officer overuse and abuse, posing serious injury and death risks, especially to SFPD’s targeted populations: people in public mental health crisis and people of color.

Police Chief Greg Suhr scheduled six community forums in September and October to discuss tasers replacing guns in mental health crisis situations. When a citizen group kept showing up at hearings asking questions about hundreds of taser deaths and maimings and supporting SFPD Crisis Intervention Team training in verbal de-escalation, Chief Suhr cancelled the community forums.

The Bayview Hunters Point (BVHP) community was hopeful of your appointment almost a year ago by President Barack Obama and felt that finally there was to be deliberate dialogue, transparency, community engagement and participation in formulating solutions for environmental issues.

On Thursday, Dec. 3, while President Obama holds a national summit on jobs and unemployment, unemployed workers will picket at 11:30 a.m. in front of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office in the SF Federal Building, 90 7th St., calling for Congress to take immediate action to put people back to work.