Tag: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Wanda Sabir offers great reading options in toasty coziness against the chill of winter’s breath outside.

The International Tribunal will hear testimony on U.S. crimes against Black, Brown and Indigenous people to which Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once referred stating the United States is the greatest purveyor of violence on the planet.

A little “pretend” and fantasy now and then can be an entertaining diversion. However, rebuilding COINTELPRO, like modernizing slavery, by FBI Director Christopher Wray and friends Sen. Lindsey Graham and Sen. Dick Durbin, et.al., is not an entertaining diversion – it’s a red flag, heads up, pay attention alert, which if ignored could find one in step with the SS/Stasi shuffle!

Congressman John Lewis’ “Good trouble. Necessary trouble” has become a mantra for movement to many working for shift in the status quo. “The Dream Keeper Initiative” was fostered by the SF Human Rights Commission to invest in the Black community with community members at the helm to bring healing, equity and reimagining in the present moment, and focusing on youth involvement moving into the future.

Digging deeper into our present reality, Oscar Blayton defines the path of the white leadership from the time of the Civil War and why they fought, to President Lyndon B Johnson’s signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the purpose behind that, to the treasonous assault on The U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 by the forces of burning white rage, which embers were ignited by the Civil War.

Treasure Island residents have been subjected to virulent poisons by what Dr. King called “economic conditions that … give luxuries to the few and leave millions of God’s children smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society.”

Black Lives Matter no matter how you embrace or argue it – we are in the reckoning and there is no going back. Trying to figure it out from the head will get you wherever it gets you. Go to the heart and you will be there.

A killer like healthcare denial or scarcity is still free to claim lives and roam our neighborhoods in spite of all kinds of laws passed in the name of justice and equality.

I was startled momentarily while driving down International and 87th Ave as I noticed a mural being drawn on the opposite side of the block from the East Bay Dragons Motorcycle Clubhouse. The faces of Marcus Garvey, Huey P. Newton, Malcolm X and others were being painted back to life.

No justice, no peace! These are the words that are filling streets around the world. This is a cry out from a people who are fed up.

Happy Juneteenth or Black People’s Liberation Day, June 19, 1865! Stay strong folks and be safe. Fists up to the youth who are leaders in this Movement for Racial Justice and their parents who raised them righteous.

The time is now to support the strongest candidate to beat Trump. The time is now to build power and dignity for Black, Brown and working people. Please join me in voting March 3rd and helping to elect President Bernie Sanders.

New Jersey, the last Northern state to completely abolish slavery, became the first in America to approve a statewide anti-discrimination law.

The Vietnam War ended on April 30, 1975. During the Vietnam War, approximately 4 million Vietnamese were killed and over 58,000 Americans died.

On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Wealth and Disparities in the Black Community – Justice 4 Mario Woods demands that Mayor Breed and the Board of Supervisors take real action and fire Department of Human Resources Director Micki Callahan due to her documented involvement in systemic racial discrimination of Black city workers. Leader of the group and SEIU 1021 steward Phelicia Jones said, “After this press conference, politicians of San Francisco will have breakfast in this hotel with the Labor Council and pay lip service to Martin Luther King Jr., as they do every year. Then they will walk away and do nothing for Black folks in San Francisco. When will justice for Black people actually matter to them?”

When, in October 2016, I wrote, “Death row inmates in Alabama are human guinea pigs” because the state’s capital punishment regime – specifically its barbaric, often bungled lethal injection protocol – is already so dark, so depraved, so outrageously cloaked in lies and officious secrecy, I never could have predicted the situation could get worse. But it has. Plans are now underway for Alabama to develop a protocol to execute death row prisoners with nitrogen gas.

Above the din of disturbing news – that discordant banging you’re hearing, steadily getting louder and louder, that you can no longer ignore – that’s the drumbeat of the unfree. Dehumanized by the labels “prisoner,” “inmate” and “convict,” even reduced to serial numbers like Victor Hugo’s Jean Valjean in “Les Misérables,” these men and women are, just like you and me, or any mortal – irrespective of flaws, frailties, even felonious acts and misdemeanors – endowed with the right to be treated with dignity, decency and respect.

A grand sunny day dawned in San Francisco’s Hunters Point Bayvew District for the naming of “Sam Jordan Way,” formerly Galvez Avenue between Phelps and Third Street. Over 150 people gathered for the celebration on Aug. 18. It is fitting that his two sons, Allen and Sam Jr., and baby girl Ruth with other family members were on hand. They pointed out that their father was the first African American to make a serious run for mayor and now we have a Black woman, Mayor London Breed.

With heartbreak, yet hope, we reach out to you in the Name of our Lord and Liberator, Jesus, the Christ. It was unsettling and upsetting to witness the meeting with you, our moral leaders, and one of the most amoral persons to ever occupy the White House in the name of discussing prison reform. We are sure it must have been intoxicating to walk the corridors of power and sit at the table of governing authority. Unfortunately, those precincts of power have been infected by White supremacy and moral bankruptcy.

The 13th Amendment reads in Section One: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, nor any place subject to their jurisdiction.” Understanding this contradictory character of the 13th Amendment sheds light on the utilization of the criminal justice system in the perpetuation of bondage for the purpose of institutional racism and class exploitation.