Monthly Archives: May 2010

Those of us who fought so hard in the 1960s for change, revolutionary change, are watching the clock turn backwards. No other group can claim to have fought longer or harder in the forefront of progressive and revolutionary struggles than Black folks. The most oppressed will lead any revolution since they have the least to lose and the most to gain from a change.

Rosen glosses over the damning case against Kagame – in the same way he ignores most Kagame critics. He fails to mention that right now Kagame’s regime is shutting down newspapers, is kidnapping the homeless and is demonizing and pronouncing Victoire Ingabire guilty. And hours ago in Rwanda, Kagame arrested eminent American law professor, Peter Erlinder.

Rwandan police have arrested Peter Erlinder, the American lawyer who traveled to Rwanda’s capital, Kigali, on Monday, May 23, to join the defense team of Rwandan presidential candidate Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza. He is charged with “genocide ideology,” a crime unique to Rwanda which Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and even the U.S. State Department have denounced as a tool of political repression.

Three days after Hurricane Katrina turned New Orleans into a ghost town, somebody shot Donnell Herrington twice in Algiers Point, ripping a hole in his throat. Herrington, who is African-American, says he was ambushed by a group of armed white men who attacked without warning or provocation.

Black farmer lobbyist John Boyd Jr., president of the National Black Farmers’ Association, has called for a meeting with BP. Boyd is concerned that Black and Native American farmers and fishermen are being overlooked in the search for farmers and fishermen whose lands and fishing grounds have been polluted.

"They are trying to find any way possible to evict us." “I’m under pressure to accept a Section 8 voucher, which I do not want because I will have to pay more for rent than I do currently, and I’m only getting unemployment at the moment." "There is nothing wrong with my home. It may need to be painted, but I can live around that, and there is no reason to force me out of my home. I want to stay and raise my kids."

“Ain’t nothing free in this world, babe. Everybody gotta pay to play. The only issue is that most of us is broke to begin with. And we’ll take what we need, from anybody we can, just to get in the game.” This is a statement my husband made to me just two days before he was murdered – no, assassinated – on Third Street on Mother’s Day.

Is Tony Pirone attempting to avoid testifying in Johannes Mehserle’s trial for the murder of Oscar Grant? The Alameda County District Attorney’s Office has filed papers to force former BART Police Officer Tony Pirone – who was fired April 22 – to testify in the murder trial of Johannes Mehserle, set to begin with jury selection next week.

Carnaval is one of the biggest festivals in the Bay Area that is rooted in African-ness. Most of the people in the streets know about the half naked women dancers that are a part of this festival, but very few of us know what this festival is all about, so I wanted to talk to Hannah Moore, a Carnaval dancer, to give us the 411 and bring the hood up to date.

As Oscar Grant triggerman Johannes Mehserle's trial approaches, issues that have been settled in court are still muddied in the media. Reports that Mehserle "allegedly shot" Grant abound, yet even Mehserle's lawyer admits his client did shoot Grant. And why are the media alluding to Grant's "criminal" past when the only evidence is a 2006 arrest for resisting arrest? Get ready to attend the trial at two forum-screenings of "Operation Small Axe" June 4 & 5 at the AFIBA Center in LA.

On Tuesday, May 25, over 150 California child care supporters will speak out against Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s proposal for a massive dismantling of the state’s child care system by July 1, throwing hundreds of thousands of parents who depend on child care and child care providers out of work and denying 200,000 children the learning and nurturing and joy of good child care.

A united front of Black and Latino Arizonans mobilized against a state law that they see as a threat to their civil rights. Gov. Jan Brewer signed SB 1070 into law on Friday, making Arizona the first state in the nation to make it a crime for a person to be undocumented.

In 2001 I founded the Radiological Subcommittee of the Hunters Point Shipyard. I became obsessed by the potential for one of the worst toxic environmental impacts to the human cell being realized with this development project on a federal Superfund site: Small radioactive particles called radionuclides becoming airborne on dust and breathed into the lungs and circulatory system of children.

Violence, repression and human rights abuse continues to increase as 2010 elections approach in the East African neighbor nations of Rwanda and Burundi, whose ethnicity, politics and conflicts are closely intertwined. This week Burundi ordered Human Rights Watch’s researcher out of the country by June 5, after she published her report on political violence, “We’ll Tie You Up and Shoot You.”

Rwanda Chief Prosecutor Martin Ngoga warned leading opposition presidential candidate Victoire Ingabire that she might be jailed once again if she continues speaking to the press. He also said that "some defense lawyers at the ICTR (International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda) have badly deviated from their professional duties and turned into activists and advocates of genocide denial.”

Opposition presidential candidate Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza stood before a judge in Kigali, Rwanda, on April 22 after the Kagame government arrested and charged her with “associating with terrorists” and “genocide ideology,” a crime unique to Rwanda which includes “divisionism” and “revisionism,” meaning politics and/or attempting to revise the received history of the 1994 Rwanda Genocide.

"People leave feeling alive when they see the film. The brutal police murders that are shown in the film, the drive and motivation of the people of Oakland who organized against all odds to chop down the big trees of terrorism and oppression leave audiences stunned," says Adimu Madyun, director of "Operation Small Axe," winner of the Rise Up Award for Most Motivational Film at the New Orleans Film Festival. Email blockreportradio@gmail.com to arrange a screening.

Cynthia McKinney invites you to “do something different: Join me on a cross country bike ride! You don’t have to be a pro biker – I’m not! But I have a lot of enthusiasm and a desire to change the world and to change myself. This will truly be for me an adventure of a lifetime. And in the process, we’ll spread a message of truth, justice, peace and dignity.

The San Francisco Labor Council is asking people to say “Yes to Thousands of New Jobs at Hunters Point Shipyard” — an EPA Superfund toxic dump site. This is the key part of the ongoing plan and activities by the Lennar Corp., the Democratic Party and the City and County of San Francisco to gentrify Bayview Hunters Point, the last largely Black community in San Francisco.

When the Aristide Foundation for Democracy launched our mobile school project in late February we wanted to do two things quickly: support children living in refugee camps across Port au Prince and offer immediate employment to young Haitians at a time when the whole economy has collapsed.