Tag: COVID-19

When community members fight, they win, and sometimes after they win they must continue to fight for what they won. Clarissa Doutherd of Parent Voices Action explains how the community in it’s need urged the Alameda County BOS to begin collecting the taxes now as directed by the 67 percent voter-approved Measure C in March 2020.

Ashley Gjovik exposes the influence of a powerful corporation against the need for accountability and public safety on her journey to save her life. The challenges she encounters are ongoing for many people in the Bay Area, and they may not even know it yet. Her single victory has been the fight itself, which has lead her to become a devoted and zealous environmental justice advocate.

As the penal systems continues to use all efforts to maintain its power over Black, Brown and poor people, weaponizing all available opportunities like the COVID-19 pandemic, civil rights attorney Yolanda Huang exposes the audacity of the San Francisco County Sheriff’s Department and the City and County of San Francisco to appeal a magistrate judge’s order to provide fresh air and sunlight to prisoners.

“Operation Akili” in summer of 2020 was another violent, racist and deadly display of the white supremacist, capitalist CDCr assaults on caged Black lives, this time at California Correctional Training Facility – the first lawsuit has been filed and hearing scheduled in June 2021.

A testament to the human spirit and revolutionary resilience, this story is shared in two enlightening elements – Susie Day’s tender interview with K’Sisay Sadiki, daughter of Black Panther Kamau Sadiki, and Day’s illuminating commentary about Kamau Sadiki, the BPP and COINTELPRO, and the system’s attempts to crush the vital, wholeheartedly participatory lives of deeply-bonded father and daughter, committed to themselves, each other and the people.

LaTroya Hester, without judgement or solicitation, honors the skepticism and lack of trust for many Black and Brown people about receiving COVID-19 vaccinations. Here, she provides opportunities for people to dive deeper into the process and people who created the vaccines, a number of whom are Black people who played important leading roles. At the very least, more in-depth information is available.

Unconscionable, inhumane, violently genocidal is the reality this story by Victoria Law for Truthout informs with reports by women incarcerated at FMC Carswell about what clearly is deliberate indifference to deadly conditions putting residents’ lives in danger, validating the consideration so stated: ‘If they can’t take care of us, release us.’

Love, creativity and determination direct renewed and expanded energy into communities hit hardest by ongoing calamity avalanches like Bay View Hunters Point. The leadership baton at Mission Neighborhood Centers is passing from retiring Santiago “Sam” Ruiz to new non-profit veteran Richard M. Ybarra.

With stories so deeply compelling and told at great risk of retaliation, another of our caged community members describes the deliberate indifference to the safety of prisoners during COVID-19 in CSP-Solano prison, with no protocol, no common sense, no humanity, no recourse. Taxpayer dollars support this shame.

Hope and purpose illuminates the work that The Adachi Project and Keith “Malik” Washington are doing to lift the burden of pain and suffering from the shoulders of those marginalized, dehumanized and oppressed, to expose the injustices of modern slavery being perpetrated on the people by the racist, capitalist oppressor and GEO Group.

The appetite of capitalism demands every dollar be extracted from the resource object, in this case, your new community advocate and editor of the SF Bay View Newspaper, Malik Washington, is the commodity, the enemy and still a prisoner in the grip of the multi-billion dollar GEO Group that runs the Taylor Center halfway house/private prison in the Tenderloin. Free Malik Washington!

Prisoners throughout the Alabama Department of Corrections system are refusing to work during this month of January. At great risk to themselves, they are exposing twice-designated unconstitutional conditions, which continue to such degree of inhumanity and torture that they will no longer be tolerated. The educated public is urged to support the strike and boycott prison contract services feeding the capitalist-imperialist colonist slave-holding system.

HOPE is the thread that tenaciously weaves its way through the chaos and darkness to infuse we humans with connection, courage and creativity to walk the storm and greet the buds emerging from twigs in spring. HOPE is the validation of our humanity.

Trapped behind the walls she said, “In the beginning, I used to flippantly say that when the COVID finally comes here, the prison will just let us all get sick and die. I thought that I was just being dramatic, but it might have been more prescient than I know.”

Deep grief mingles with pure pain and rage at the preventable death of beloved Dr. Susan Moore as the hospital allowing the death of Dr. Moore released a statement that only acknowledged lapses in courtesy and their plan to address such with “trainings” – what we correctly know as code for ‘business as usual’ – dismissed.

“Is this the life you want?” By design of the rich white slaver writers, the Constitution with the 13th Amendment to maintain free labor – then known as slavery, now identified as corporations – was constructed intentionally to support capitalism.

People who are prisoners are fighting for their lives and dependent solely on the support and voices of families and organizers on the outside because California Department of Corrections and rehabilitation (CDCr), the Governor’s office and legislators are acting like they don’t care if they die, and by non-action appear to encourage death by COVID for prisoners.

While mainstream media wasn’t/isn’t looking – ever – Dr. Willie Ratcliff joined in love and gratitude at Mother Brown’s celebrating the Bayview community and Thanksgiving with the best homemade, healthy food laced with the usual warmth and good tidings to feed the spirit and body.

A spectacular simultaneously real and virtual party/fundraiser lifted the love and light on Nov. 20-21, 2020 in the Bayview community! The SF Bay View editor’s torch was passed by Mary and Willie Ratcliff to Malik Washington who, along with Wanda Sabir and new managing editor Nube Brown and so many others, remembered the ancestors and highlighted art, dance, music, food, interviews, homegrown business and voices from the community.

Wanda’s Picks are right on time to lift us out of the anxiety of the day-to-day crisis attention, COVID-19 limbo and election/post-election teeth-grinding – like taking the lid off that gift box of chocolate truffles, creams and caramels, with plenty to share.