Yearly Archives: 2016

I’m not shuckin’ and jivin’ for you! --- I’m not gonna be yo’ house nigger! --- NO. --- I will look you in your eye … --- then drink from that water fountain you’re standing by. --- YES! I will. --- I’m the modern day Nat Turner, Marcus Garvey, Harriet Tubman, Ida B. Wells, Pauli Murray, Lumumba, El Hajj Malik El Shabazz – that’s Malcolm if you ain’t in the know. I’m Elaine Brown, Bobby Seale, Ericka Huggins, Serena and Venus Williams – with the backhand!

We are writing to urge you to commute the sentence of Dr. Mutulu Shakur. He has served more than 30 years in prison for his conviction arising from his participation in the social justice movement of the past century. He is recognized as a leading member of the movement for human rights for African-Americans. Granting Shakur clemency will be an act of grace and healing that is much needed in our racially divided society today.

The snow shined against the afternoon sun. The multicolored flags bearing the images of our ancestors rippled and flapped in the afternoon breeze as the “Po’ Folx Delegation” from POOR Magazine and Decolonize Academy rode in on a rented four-wheel drive car. After a long, harrowing journey from Huchuin, Ohlone (Oakland, California), in two planes and a rental car we finally arrived to find an avenue of flags from hundreds of nations across Mama Earth, including our favorite, where we piled out of the car to take our first picture, the RBG flag of Black liberation.

In the early 1800s, the government of Honduras awarded 2,500 acres of ancestral land to the Garifuna, descendants of shipwrecked and/or escaped African slaves. The land titles given to the Garifuna communities on the coast of Honduras state that the collective lands cannot be transferred to an outsider, but many Garifuna territories suffer from multiple ownership claims. The Garifuna are struggling to maintain their land.

Imam Jamil, 73, has suffered imprisonment for over 16 years – 12 years in solitary confinement, for no reason. Seven of those years were in the “supermax” federal prison in Florence, Colorado. While in that Administrative Maximum Facility, he had no human contact, no fresh air, nor sunlight. Now that Imam Jamil has been diagnosed with an incurable cancer and the prison has proven unable to provide medical care, please release him to Humanitarian Parole.

To punish Rashid for writing this, retaliatory guards massively gassed him while handcuffed, plus his bedding and cell walls and refuse to decontaminate; sign the RootsAction petition now (link inside)! Within a year, three federal lawsuits have been brought behind the tortured deaths of men imprisoned at the William P. Clements Unit in remote Amarillo, Texas. The latest suit was filed against 33 security and medical staff, concerning their roles in the Jan. 19, 2016, death of Alton Rodgers.

The Auset Movement: Loving Humanity into Wholeness reluctantly celebrated its one year anniversary today, Sunday, Dec. 25. The group, made up of concerned citizens, have been serving hot meals once a month since Christmas last year. If there is a holiday, we show up that day with hot breakfast, today, the menu was Wanda Ravernell’s homefries, Jovelyn’s delight – fresh greens, Tobaji’s beans and rice, Kwalin’s sausage and pumpkin spice bread.

It is very important that you all clearly understand the depth of human torture to which I was subjected for 30-plus years by CDCr and CCPOA.* The torture was directed at me and similarly situated women and men prisoners held in Cali­fornia’s solitary confinement locations throughout CDCr, with the approval and sanc­tioning of California governors, CDCr secretaries and directors, attorneys general, along with the California Legislature for the past 40 years.

It should be obvious by now that the U.S.-U.N., E.U., OAS and various hired paramilitary police have engineered a second fraudulent election in as many years in Haiti. This latest attempt to kill Haiti’s freedom by aborting her dreams of democracy via the electoral process was designed to prevent landslide victories by Fanmi Lavalas, reminiscent of the presidential victories of Jean Bertrand Aristide. The U.S. and U.N. do not want to see this.

Together we stand and divided we shall fall! That’s the wisdom that brought together two men, Ron Whittenberg of Brotherhood Keepers and Dwayne Gaines of Just Stop the Killing, and the Double Rock community is the better for it, during the holidays and all year ‘round. Together, for the second year, they organized the Annual Double Rock Christmas Tree Lighting on Nov. 26. It was a hit that folks are still talking about.

We point fingers all we want, but we can’t do that unless we’re ready to look in the mirror at ourselves. The mirror doesn’t lie. We have to stop killing us for Black lives to matter. We have to do something about the drugs in the hood. We have to teach the kids that’s having kids how to be parents. I was 15 with a kid. My story is very epic in that I am the epitome of what the youth in the hood face every day. I just haven’t figured out how to use my story and voice to help change things.

Is your driver’s license suspended due to unpaid traffic tickets? If so, you may qualify for the California Amnesty Program! Through the California Amnesty Program, if you have unpaid traffic tickets that you received before 2013, you may be eligible to have the amount of the ticket reduced up to 80 percent and get your driver’s license reinstated. If you have more recent tickets, you may still be able to get the hold on your driver’s license lifted.

Standing Rock has caught the imagination of the world: A resurgent Indigenous movement, which has been leading many battles in the U.S. and Canada; a fighting veterans’ movement, re-emerging as a powerful force; a large contingent of young people of many colors from all over, selflessly devoting themselves to the struggle; networks being activated around the country and the world – all coming together in a coalition that, in the context of the global economic and financial crisis, just might be able to take on a powerful oil company that is threatening to poison the water and defeat it.

My name is Emmanuel “Mandu-Ra” Johnson. I’m the inspiration behind the “Uncle Du” comic strip. My homie, Ruben Beltran, the artist behind the “Uncle Du” comic strips, told me how he received a letter from you guys – Bay View – and y’all agreed to put “Uncle Du” in your paper. I think that’s wonderful! When he told me he wrote y’all to see if y’all would publish the strip, I knew y’all would do it, because “Uncle Du” is all the news in Bay View rolled up in one. Everything “Uncle Du” stands for is what Bay View stands for, so it’s a perfect match.

In light of what occurred in Orlando, Florida, and other mass shootings, it comes as no surprise to any of us that the political establishment wants and encourages us to think of madness like this within the narrow context of gun control – taking guns out of the hands of criminals. But, the question must now be asked of the larger community: Why are we so unwilling to view and struggle around what these acts really are – hate!

The path forward for many Congolese youth is clear. They want to be free from tyranny more than the Kabila regime wants to repress them and deprive them of their God-given life pursuits. In the Congo, the youth are prepared for a sustained civil disobedience undertaking to cripple and ultimately remove an oppressive system that not only kills them but also squelches their aspirations and hopes for a dignified life.

Last week, an Alabama state prisoner who had testified in an ongoing federal trial over the state of mental health care in state prisons was found dead, apparently of suicide. According to the Alabama Department of Corrections, he was found unresponsive, hanging from a piece of cloth in his cell. The state’s attorney said, “Jamie’s case is emblematic of the utter neglect and mistreatment of people with serious mental illness in ADOC prisons.”

  RONALD MCDONALD HOUSE CHARITIES annually offers the African American Future Achievers Scholarship to high school seniors. Unfortunately, participation and application for this scholarship have dwindled...

We, the people, have to realize that our current contradictions are not just about economics, but instead are about being able to speak truth to the powers that be. Case in point, if we hadn’t been able to express in great detail what we prisoners were suffering from while being held in solitary confinement and have our letters published in the Bay View, then our voice would have never been heard. But because the Bay View was there for us, the world came to our defense.

Prisons in some states are withholding newspapers from inmates amid a strike against prison conditions and billions of dollars worth of prison labor. The passing of the 13th Amendment in 1865 formally abolished slavery, but with a stipulation that enabled plantation owners to use prisoners as a replacement for the lost labor. As a group called the Free Alabama Movement rallied for a Sept. 9 labor strike in spring, prison authorities across the country began clamping down on news and information in ways that the ACLU says may be in violation of the First Amendment.