Tag: coronavirus

Fourteen years ago, the Bill and Melinda Gates and Rockefeller Foundations launched the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) with the stated goal of doubling productivity and incomes by 2020 for 30 million small-scale farming households while reducing food insecurity by half in 20 countries. Just published, “False Promises: The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA),” concludes that the number of Africans suffering extreme hunger has increased by 30 percent in the 13 countries that AGRA eventually focused on.

San Quentin Warden Ron Broomfield announced the prison is cancelling all phone calls, in the name of protecting everyone inside from spread of the virus. Maybe it is more to keep any information about what is really going on there out of the hands of families, friends and the MEDIA!

San Francisco – San Francisco County jail has seen a 40 percent increase in positive COVID-19 cases since June 18, 2020. This surge prompted a broad coalition of prominent entities to send a joint letter to the San Francisco Superior Court, urging it “in the strongest possible terms” to restore the zero bail policy in San Francisco to help reduce the jail population during the ongoing pandemic.

Prisoners and staff at federal low-security prisons FCI Elkton in Ohio and FCI Oakdale in Louisiana are being ravaged by COVID-19. At both locations, prisoners have brought federal suits pleading to be released to home confinement in order to escape the spread of the deadly coronavirus.

“I for one believe that if you give people a thorough understanding of what confronts them and the basic causes that produce it, they’ll create their own program, and when the people create a program, you get action.” – El Hajj Malik Shabazz aka Malcolm X

Oakland – More than 10,000 people have signed a petition asking Gov. Gavin Newsom to release prisoners to stop the COVID-19 infections racing through San Quentin and other state prisons.

As new issues in our community continue to mount as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic quarantine, education of Black youth is taking center stage. In Black communities locally and across the nation, there were already learning gaps, achievement gaps, a digital divide, and a lack of knowledge of self that Black youth as a body were already struggling to overcome before this forced pivot to online school.

Preventive medicine is the best medicine, especially in a capitalist country where the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed long encrusted health disparities that have been in place for centuries. Presently, people have had their ability to move around freely curtailed by the COVID-19 pandemic quarantine’s shelter-in-place policy.

San Francisco – Disproportionately Black homeless residents may face massive police enforcement due to a settlement reached between the City of San Francisco and UC Hastings College of Law, which compels the City to “employ enforcement measures” for those who do not accept shelter placements or safe sleeping sites – yet provides less than 10 percent of homeless residents with such offers.

The coronavirus pandemic and quarantine has created a massive mental health challenge to an already terribly inadequate mental health system that has been teetering on collapse in the Black community since mental health became a science in this country.

Sacred prayers to everyone sacrificing and organizing to serve those who have lost their jobs, sources of income and housing. And, to those who have tested positive for the covid-19 virus, suffered from other illnesses, had loved ones become ill or, worse, suffered the ultimate tragedy of death from the corporate-state violence of impoverishment, torturous military-police and white racist terrorism. Asé.

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer: While you’ve been busy reopening the state for business, via your Michigan Safe Start plan, the COVID-19 pandemic is exploding like a biological time-bomb in Michigan’s aging and overcrowded prisons, with a 50 percent infection rate among state prisoners confirmed by recent news broadcasts. Your current plan to expedite the parole of state prisoners who are past their earliest release dates will, at best, only release a thousand prisoners, more or less.

Shortly after the flood in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina, local residents risked their lives launching small boats to rescue people stranded on top of their roofs. This ad hoc group, which included many skilled Cajun boat pilots, became known as the Cajun Navy, a volunteer group who have saved thousands of people in other disasters including Hurricanes Florence, Harvey, Irma and Michael.

For those in positions of power in this state who, for whatever reasons, choose to ignore public calls and demands for change, know that united grassroot forces will seize every opportunity to SHOUT OUT LOUD that reforms are a dire necessity.

In an exciting turn of events, the Bayview Community Cooperative (BCC) is proud to launch its free Bounty Bag giveaway. During this pandemic, getting groceries, especially fresh produce, has been difficult for many.

New Orleans – Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. first marched with striking Memphis sanitation workers on March 28, 1968. They were demanding better working conditions and the respect and dignity due them. Their signs proclaimed, “I Am a Man.”

It is not an option for the much anticipated “Black Woman Is God” exhibit to be canceled; it is scheduled for Oct. 21, 2020 and is one of the premiere annual events of the Black Bay Area.

Sunnydale and Visitacion Valley testing will take place this Monday and Tuesday, June 1 and 2, 2020, from 9:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. at Herz Playground, 1701 Visitacion Ave.

The essentials of writing and publishing have not changed under COVID-19, just the promotions aspects such as in-person appearances. Book signings, conventions and readings are postponed, online or done via the mail. Yet the work of writing continues.

Jalil Muntaqim, world renowned for peace and justice initiatives over 49 years in prison, fights for his life, his parole-eligible sentence threatening to become a death sentence. On April 27, Judge Schick granted his release. But New York Attorney General Letitia James appealed the judge’s decision, preventing Jalil’s release.