Tag: Oakland

The Battle of the Bay, the annual pre-season game between the Raiders and the Forty Niners, is something most football fans look forward to every summer. It just so happens that this year’s game took place in one of the worst Funk Seasons in recent memory.

In the aftermath of Oscar Grant’s murder in 2009, directors of the Bay Area Rapid Transit district announced they would turn over the agency’s internal affairs probe to what they called an “independent, third-party law firm.”

Glen Cove was a large village and ceremonial grounds that was used by many different tribes throughout the Bay Area. This area has been deemed, declared and even federally recognized as sacred to indigenous peoples. Many Natives alive today have ties to ancestors buried there.

Local housing authorities across the nation are preparing for major cuts to HUD’s Section 8 housing voucher programs after being directed in June by HUD to come up with lists to prioritize which voucher recipients would be dumped in the event of major cuts to the subsidized housing program.

Mr. James Lowe is a man who believes in keeping promises. He taught fifth grade at Malcolm X Academy in Hunters Point for 22 years. He promised that two years after retiring from teaching, he would be back at Malcolm X as an Experience Corps volunteer. This fall, James will keep that promise.

How well indeed the creator saw fit to have the Muslim population worldwide join the hunger strike started by brothers in the Security Housing Unit (SHU) at Pelican Bay July 1, which continues in other California prisons, including I heard at the Central California Women’s Facility (CCWF).

Generally, what happened to Harding happens in colonized spaces to colonized subjects, from Hunters Point to Baghdad. The victims are people of color. Five centuries of colonially-constructed rationales have served the purpose of minimizing the value of racialized subjects.

“The police in our community occupy our area, our community, as a foreign troop occupies territory. And the police are in our community not to promote our welfare or our security or our safety, but they are there to contain us, to brutalize us and murder us,” said Huey P. Newton, co-founder and minister of defense of the Black Panther Party. Hunters Point has stood up to the Lennar Corp. and the City about the shipyard. It is time to expand that movement to include police terrorism, put new energy into it, and claim our right to live and not be wantonly killed.

Reaching at least 6,600 prisoners across 13 prisons, this massive and inspiring act of solidarity and people power across prison-manufactured and exacerbated racial and geographic lines has dumb-founded the CDCR (California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation).

In the Louisiana bayou, a descendent of slaves was born into the Pratt clan, whose entire community suffered under racial apartheid. Since Pratt was a strong and thoughtful boy, his community encouraged him to shoulder the task of working to help defend the downtrodden who surrounded him.

In a plea agreement on June 22, 2011, before U.S. Magistrate Claudia Wilken, wealthy slumlord millionaire, Tiburon resident and criminal defendant Richard Earl Singer, pleaded guilty to one count of solicitation to commit arson at Oakland’s low-income residential Menlo Hotel and was remanded back into custody of the U.S. Marshal.

Support for the hunger strike grows with solidarity actions across the U.S. and Canada this past weekend. A series of noise demonstrations outside jails, detention centers and prisons occurred internationally in St. Louis, New York City, Oakland, Los Angeles, Montreal and Kitchener, Ontario.

I came into contact with Madam T’s music first through Facebook, although we both live in Oakland. I was impressed with her business sense off of the mic: sound, production, lyricism, marketing and her street hardened demeanor in her music. I brought her on the Block Report Music Show – every Friday midnight-2 a.m. on KPFA 94.1FM in Northern Cali – and the callers loved her.

Oakland has been always full of talent. If you didn’t know, it was the home of the Black Panther Party, Andre Ward, Too Short, Bill Russell, Huey P. Newton, Toni Tony Tone, 2Pac, Ricky Henderson, Bruce Lee, Leonard Peltier and more. Now a new, up and coming duo known as the Newlyweds, are ready to show the world what they have to offer.

The new book by Manning Marable, “Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention,” will help us to get a deeper understanding of Malcolm X and the times we’re living in now. This will not be a direct result of what Marable has done, but rather of what needs to happen now because of what he has done.

The SF Bay View is holding a fundraiser! Come and meet the grandson of Malcolm X, Hajj Malcolm Shabazz, on his speaking tour hosted by the Minister of Information JR.

A number of trees have fallen in the forest this past month and we want to acknowledge the huge spaces their absence brings: Geronimo ji jaga Pratt, Black Panther, decorated veteran of multiple wars ...

“I Twirl in the Smoke” is a new collection of writings by Meres-Sia Gabriel, the daughter of two Black Panthers, most notably former Minister of Culture and internationally known artist Emory Douglas.

Rico Pabón is one of the most talented, versatile, dedicated and well-informed artists that I know on the West Coast. At home in the studio or on the stage, the Afro-Puerto Rican bilingual musician known as Rico Pabón is a man of many genres. Although hip hop is the music of his generation, he is just as comfortable singing traditional Afro-Carribbean tunes with a live band.

The lyrics to B.B. King’s classic “The Thrill is Gone” was the first thing that ran through my head when I showed up at both of the rallies that were held to “protest” the release from jail of Johannes Mehserle on Sunday, June 12. The speakers seemed to be a tad bit angry but not focused enough to do anything significant that would put police murders on the national radar. JUST ADDED: Minister of Information JR leads a full hour of debate on issues swirling around the murder of Oscar Grant by Johannes Mehserle broadcast on KPFA Wednesday morning.