Tag: Labor Video Project

“I’m angry about that because I would never have moved to Treasure Island if they had told me there was radiation (there). I didn’t know what was happening to me until I got these tumors (one) on my shoulder and one on my side.”

On Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2020, a press conference was held in front of San Francisco Superior Court, at 400 McAllister, at which San Francisco Attorney Stanley Goff and lead plaintiffs and former Treasure Island residents Andre Patterson and Felita Sample publicly announced a “class action lawsuit and complaint for damages,” arising from public and private exposure to toxins on Treasure Island.

The City and County of San Francisco is moving to privatize thousands of jobs through the EPIC program and the LEAN plan while outsourcing city jobs to non-union low paid workers. Part of this outsourcing drive is taking place at the pharmacy at San Francisco General Hospital, renamed Zuckerberg, where the Department of Public Health management and San Francisco Human Resource Director Micki Callahan are intent on more privatization and outsourcing for more profits.

A proposal to start charging tolls to enter and leave Treasure Island will be considered by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, sitting as the Treasure Island Mobility Management Authority (TIMMA), on Tuesday, Dec. 11. Residents and businesses, who nearly unanimously oppose the plan they claim will price out low-income residents and choke off the businesses’ lifeline, have organized an ad hoc coalition and will attend the 11 a.m. hearing to make their concerns known. The meeting will be held in the Supervisors’ Chambers, Room 250, City Hall.

On Tuesday, Nov. 27, 2018, the second San Francisco Board of Supervisors audit hearing will be held on racial discrimination in City jobs. The public is urged to attend the press conference on the City Hall steps at 12:30 and the hearing in the Board Chambers beginning at 3 p.m. The first hearing on Sept. 19, 2018, brought literally hundreds of workers to the Supervisors’ Chambers and the overflow room. Dozens testified that they had faced numerous instances of racist discrimination and retaliation and even physical assaults by city managers.

The U.S. Navy had its annual dog and pony show at the Treasure Island Restoration Advisory Board meeting on Tuesday, June 19, 2018. The previous meeting included a Tetra Tech representative and a loud confrontation, but this time Tetra Tech representatives were not on the panel since there are now two Tetra Tech managers in federal prison for falsifying the cleanup records at Hunters Point and an ongoing grand jury investigation with likely more sealed indictments.

At 11:00 a.m. Monday, April 16, 2018, community organizer Steve Zeltzer introduced former Treasure Island residents Andre Patterson and Felita Sample, who had been invited to speak at this press conference where whistle-blowers exposed the malfeasance of remediation contractor Tetra Tech on Hunters Point and Treasure Island. “I want to introduce two people today who’ve been personally affected by the corruption and the coverup at Treasure Island."

Over $1 billion has been spent by the federal government since 2004 to clean up and remediate one of the most highly toxic and radioactive sites in the U.S., the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard in San Francisco. This Superfund site was home for decades, 1946-1969, to the Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory, and large Navy warships were towed there from the Pacific, where they had been placed close to nuclear tests.

Block Report Radio interviews hunger striker Hassani Bell, one of four hunger strikers who were fighting to preserve and expand the College of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State. The hunger strikers were Hassani Bell, 18, Julia Retzlaff, 19, Sachiel Rose, 19, and Ahkeel Mestayer, 20, and their organization is called Third World Liberation Front 2016 in homage to the 1968 strike. After 10 days, many of the demands were met by the SF State administration of President Wong, but not all of them. The strike is suspended as the fight continues.

Mama “E” was a well-loved woman who changed California, San Francisco and Bayview Hunters Point forever. With Bible scriptures, fearlessness, faith and divine love planted in her huge heart, chosen and powerfully guided from above, she set out to make changes, for justice and equality. A memorial service will be held on Thursday, Feb. 4, 5:30-7:30 p.m., at Grace Tabernacle Community Church, 1121 Oakdale Ave., and a homegoing service on Friday, Feb. 5, 12 noon, at Providence Baptist Church, 1601 McKinnon, off Third Street, both in Hunters Point, San Francisco.

“This conference that we are picketing ... is an obscene reflection of the reality of this country today, that the most important thing is money and profit and not human needs!” – Carole Seligman, speaking at the demonstration - It was in their fancy tailored suits and with suspicious eyes that big pharma CEOs and investors got interrupted by protestors and speeches such as the above as they came and went from the too-big-to-fail JP Morgan-sponsored conference on “health care” (read: profit care) at the elite Westin St. Francis hotel on Union Square in San Francisco on Monday, the 11th of January, 2016.

Before Mayor Ed Lee even announced the itinerary for his 2016 inauguration celebration yesterday, plans were already underway to crash the party. The Justice for Mario Woods Coalition will meet on the steps of City Hall, rain or shine, at 11 a.m. Friday, Jan. 8, before the public inauguration ceremony begins at 11:30 a.m. Their demand of the re-elected mayor: Replace Police Chief Greg Suhr in light of his handling of the Dec. 2 officer-involved shooting that left Mario Woods, a 26-year-old Black man armed with a butter knife, dead in the Bayview.

Trade unionists joined a rally and press conference on Dec. 24, 2015, on the steps of City Hall for Mario Woods, a young African American worker who was executed by San Francisco police on Dec. 2, 2015, in Bayview Hunters Point. Black San Franciscans are being driven out of San Francisco through gentrification and displacement and a decades-long job lockout, and some unionists are calling for labor action to stop these economic and police assaults.

Mario Woods was a young worker who was killed by the San Francisco police on Dec. 2, 2015, with over 20 bullets. The funeral was held on Dec. 17, at Cornerstone Missionary Baptist Church, Third Street and Paul Avenue, in Bayview Hunters Point, and the family, community, youth and labor members spoke out. Speakers connected the dots between this police murder and the ethnic cleansing and gentrification of Bayview Hunters Point.

San Francisco police murdered another African American in Bayview Hunters Point on Dec. 2, 2015. Seven to 10 police surrounded Mario Woods, 26, and then shot him over 10 times, killing him. Community and labor people spoke out at a meeting on Friday, Dec. 4. The San Francisco NAACP is calling a public meeting to discuss the police murder of Mario Woods for Monday, Dec. 7, 6 p.m., at Third Baptist Church, 1399 McAllister St., San Francisco.

Leo L. Robinson believed in the power of the union, and in the power of the people. He fought to change the conditions of women within the ILWU just as fiercely as he fought against the apartheid regime of South Africa. “Inhale the spirit of Leo Robinson. Embody the spirit and go into struggle and battle for victory. Victory is ours only if we struggle,” said one of several who spoke at the memorial service.