Tag: San Quentin

Baba Jahahara uplifts in honor and commemoration our treasured Elders joining the Ancestors and honors also the fallen Freedom Fighters and revolutionary history bringing us into Black August 2021. 

Survival in the midst of historical and current long-term determined torture by prison guards against prisoners under the California Department of Corrections and rehabilitation is testament to the human spirit, and glaring evidence of our social decline as human beings to allow the existence of such atrocities.

The disconnect from our own humanity allows the fingers of dehumanization, abuse and terror to snake through the depths of our prisons where fellow human beings are methodically stripped to the bone of any evidence of human reveal.

UCSF White Coats for Black Lives leaves no uncertainty how Gov. Gavin Newsom and his appointee, Kathleen Allison, are playing the shell game, toying with the lives of our elderly and infirmed caged community members, and all Californians. CDCr is exposing all of us to ravaging and likely death by COVID-19. Equally troubling is the mental torture of all prisoners, their families and loved ones.

Prisoners at California’s largest prison, Corcoran Substance Abuse Treatment Facility (SATF), cry out their fear of a re-enactment of the recent deaths at San Quentin from the imposed COVID-19 outbreak. Transfers into SATF are being made with egregious disregard for health and safety practices, coupled with continued historical institutional abuse and neglect.

Kevin Cooper, still caged in San Quentin after 37 years, 35 years on Death Row, speaks with KPFA’s Flashpoints Dennis Bernstein in an exclusive in-depth interview. Cooper talks about simultaneously surviving Death Row and the COVID-19 pandemic, the blues and highlights the opportunity for Governor Gavin Newsom to order an Innocence Investigation, which will shine direct light on prosecutorial wrongdoings and new DNA evidence to support his innocence.

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!

July 1, 2020 – As the novel coronavirus spreads rapidly through California’s San Quentin State Prison, around 20 prisoners have launched a hunger strike to protest inhumane conditions inside, as reported by three men incarcerated in the facility.

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.

The Bay View is serializing the introduction to “Annotated Tears, Vol. 2,” by Talib Williams, who is currently incarcerated in Soledad, California, and has written the history of that storied place. In the spirit of Sankofa, we learn the past to build the future. Part 2 begins with the continuation of a letter written by George Jackson to his lawyer, Kay Stender, from his book, “Soledad Brother.”

Malik Ali chronicles the atmosphere at San Quentin State Prison amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Bay View is serializing the introduction to “Annotated Tears, Vol. 2,” by Talib Williams, who is currently incarcerated in Soledad, California, and has written the history of that storied place. In the spirit of Sankofa, we learn the past to build the future.

There are 2.3 million people incarcerated in America. I am one of them.

Correctional experts explain that the release of vulnerable populations – who are overwhelmingly older, seriously mentally ill, physically disabled, and/or chronically ill – presents little or no public safety risk of recidivism, while correctional medical and mental health experts predict that failure to reduce the prison population would result in increased numbers of deaths.

“Leadership does not mean domination. The world is always supplied with people who wish to rule and dominate others. The true leader is of a different sort; he seeks effective activity which has a truly beneficent purpose. He inspires others to follow in his wake and, holding aloft the torch of wisdom, leads the way for society to realize its genuinely great aspiration.” – from “The Wise Mind of H.I.M. Emperor Haile Sellasie I,” Chapter 10, Leadership

by Dorsey Nunn, executive director of Legal Services for Prisoners With Children and co-founder of All of Us or None I was incarcerated in San...

Prisons are an extension of the slave trade, and the death penalty is just a more evolved way of lynching Black folks. With ACA(12), we can vote the death penalty into extinction.

The upcoming feature-length documentary film, “The Prison Within,” a film exploring the destructive impact untreated trauma has on individuals and communities through the powerful stories of survivors of violent crimes and prisoners incarcerated for murder in San Quentin prison, will make its world premiere at the 35th Annual Santa Barbara International Film Festival (SBIFF).

Listen to this historic recording of Kumasi (using the player above), the official historian of the Black August Organizing Committee, speaking about the origins...

The opening film for the San Francisco Black Film Festival this year is the much anticipated award winning “Guitar Man.” The main character, Buzzy Martin, taught music to prisoners at San Quentin and later took those experiences back to the at-risk youth that he taught and still teaches to this day.