Monday, March 18, 2024
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Tag: War on Drugs

Black cannabis entrepreneurs say state’s $30 million fee waiver fund may...

Inequities remain for Black entrepreneurs in the cannabis industry and SB166 fee waiver program should right some wrongs in support of equity.

Pattern of practice – brutality, schemes and crimes against humanity since...

Mutope Duguma defines the path from 1619’s forced exportation of Afrikans through the 400-year evolving in the domestic colonized nation to New Afrikans in the protracted struggle of present day.

Beacons of hope: Humboldt State’s Project Rebound builds a prison-to-college pipeline

Project Rebound at HSU breathes life support into possibilities for life successes to people returning from incarceration and at-risk youth.

What to the Black third striker is your Parole Board hearing?!...

With a crystal clear lens, Ronnie Winn sorts out the mumbo jumbo of CDCR and Board of Parole language to expose the bottom line realities for indeterminately sentenced non-violent third-strikers in CA prisons.

Shouting out loud: Not to free the elderly from prison now...

For those in positions of power in this state who, for whatever reasons, choose to ignore public calls and demands for change, know that united grassroot forces will seize every opportunity to SHOUT OUT LOUD that reforms are a dire necessity.

As opioid crisis hits home, Black media step up to spread...

“Those same Republicans and Democrats, when the problem was crack, showed no mercy. No compassion. No understanding at all, and locked up a bunch of people,” Van Jones continued. “I do think that now its hitting everybody, hopefully we can come up with a more compassionate response.”

After Dems’ crime bill, they now need super predators’ votes to...

The Democrats are complete trash to me, after destroying Black communities and disenfranchising generations of Black men, women and youth; they now need their votes to survive. However, these same people have done nothing to stop the recidivism that feeds the private prison machine that they all profit from. They also have not worked to make the many Black communities whole again after they were destroyed via mass incarceration and the so-called war on drugs.

Recovering from the War on Drugs: National Expungement Week Oct. 20-27,...

For decades the Black community has been heavily targeted by the war on drugs, which resulted in the disenfranchisement of many families of color and the destruction of Black communities nationwide. Now the same drugs are making white business owners billions of dollars for engaging in the same practices that Black “entrepreneurs” were incarcerated for at astronomical rates. NEW is offering free clinics throughout the week of Oct. 20-27 to assist with the legal and economic barriers affecting those disenfranchised by the War on Drugs.

Arrest the president! Sue the government! Our Nia, our purpose will...

Let me be the first to say it: Nia Wilson would be alive today if somebody else had been elected president in 2016! The man arrested for Nia’s murder was not alone. He had an accomplice. The president was not there in person Sunday night, July 22, at the MacArthur BART subway station when Nia Wilson was brutally stabbed to death and her sister viciously attacked, but his spirit was.

Frederick Douglass Haynes: Open letter to Trump’s preachers

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.

Running Green in D13: Tax the rich and stop the wars

In California’s top-two primary system, only the top two vote getters advance to the general election, meaning that only two names will be on the ballot for each race in November. Since California is a very blue state, that often means that two Democrats advance. However, three Green Party candidates for the U.S. Congress advanced in California races this year. Among them is Laura Wells, whose name will appear alongside that of incumbent Barbara Lee in the East Bay’s District 13 race.

Victory over military cop convention

On March 27, the San Francisco Bay Area’s Stop Urban Shield Coalition claimed victory in its four-year battle to stop Urban Shield, a war games and weapons convention for cops held in Alameda County every year since 2007. I spoke to Tracy Rosenberg, executive director of Media Alliance and co-facilitator of Oakland Privacy, a citizen’s coalition that works regionally to defend the right to privacy and enhance public transparency and oversight regarding the use of surveillance techniques and equipment. She has worked with the Stop Urban Shield Coalition since 2014.

Community pushes for equity in cannabis licensing

Activists, business owners and community members argued that victims of the War on Drugs should be given consideration as the city of San Francisco develops licensing policy for its fledgling recreational marijuana industry at a community forum on Oct. 21. The forum, which was held at the historic Bayview Opera House Ruth Williams Memorial Theater and called by San Francisco Supervisor Malia Cohen, was designed to engage community members in discussion regarding the cannabis industry.

It’s not mass incarceration, but slavery

Speech delivered at the Millions for Prisoners Human Rights March Aug. 19, 2017, in Washington, D.C.: Let me tell you what’s going on here today. This is the largest gathering of slavery abolitionists in the history of the United States, happening right here today. In 16 cities across America, they are marching in unison with us and in solidarity with us, and they’re not doing it to end mass incarceration. They’re doing it to end what? (Slavery!) Slavery.

New Abolitionist Movement on the march

Aug. 19 at 11:00 a.m., courageous and loving folks in San Jose, Calif., joined with sister marches and rallies throughout the country in support of prisoners’ human rights and amending the 13th. Their courage is found in the rejection of an institution so prevalent and insidious that any criticism can bring a mountain of ridicule and judgment. It is an institution shielded by a centuries old narrative that tells people, “They are not like us,” and consequently, “they” are undeserving of our humanity.

War on marijuana and disparate policing in communities of color must...

I went into law school thinking that I wanted to be a civil rights attorney. I wanted to use my law degree to fight the many systems of oppression that plagued and terrorized the communities that mattered to me. It wasn’t until my third year of law school, that I recognized current cannabis policies as a legitimate social justice issue – particularly due to the way marijuana prohibition is enforced.

I AM WE!

Let’s touch upon the phrase, I AM WE. It is an ancient African saying. To me it means: What affects you affects me. It means: We are together; we are one. I AM WE means that with unity, solidarity and agape love for one another, we can overcome any obstacle and achieve any goal! By applying I AM WE, together we can crush imperialism, eradicate white supremacy, destroy patriarchy, change misogynistic attitudes and save our planet!

On Dec. 6, 1865, Black bodies were nationalized – and our...

As I write this article, I am not sure what day the Civil War began or what day it ended. The facts that I do know about the Civil War are not worth repeating here, as that story already occupies plenty of space in American text. My muse, instead, is about the particular vestige of slavery that the Civil War bequeathed to us on Dec. 6, 1865, that now forms the basis of our struggle to end mass incarceration and prison slavery in 2017.

‘13th’ and the culture of surplus punishment

Ava DuVernay undertook the documentary “13th” in order to explore and bring attention to the Prison Industrial Complex. The film’s title refers to the 1865 amendment to the U.S. Constitution, in which slavery was abolished “except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.” The story told by “13th” thus goes back to the early chain-gangs of Black prisoners – men arrested for petty offenses under the post-Civil War Black Codes who were then contracted out to perform labor that they had previously performed as privately-owned slaves.

Prison lives matter

All across this kkkountry we are hearing and seeing the masses exclaim, “Black lives matter!” We heard Obama counter that by telling the people, “All lives matter” and “Police lives matter.” But what about the more than 2 million lives being held captive across this kkkountry in amerikkka’s kkkoncentration kkkamps (jails and prisons)? So we must raise the questions needed to spark the discussion so many fail to acknowledge: Do prison lives matter?