Monthly Archives: March 2018

Community members and family of Sahleem Tindle, a 28-year-old father of two, killed by a BART Police officer in January, packed a BART meeting March 12 to demand that justice be served. Tindle’s family passionately protested the lack of action by BART following Tindle’s death on Jan. 3 outside the West Oakland BART Station. Tindle’s family and legal team are calling for the city of Oakland to arrest and charge the involved BART officer, Joseph Mateu, with murder.

By now, many of you may have had the opportunity to view the brilliant screenwriter-director Ryan Coogler’s film, “Black Panther,” which was produced and distributed by the for-profit European-American owned and operated Marvel and Walt Disney corporations. For the past few weeks, people of differing ages and nationalities have been flashing the cross-armed “‘Wakanda’ Forever” sign. i will not at this time debate the neo-colonialist and imperialistic politics of this technically-stunning visual work.

As a Black Nation and prisoner class, we have come too far since the Agreement to End Hostilities and the last hunger strike of July 8, 2013, which 30,000 prisoners partook in to break the chains of our inhumane solitary confinement to allow ourselves to lose focus on the AEH and what it has done to enlighten society that we still have our humanity. But we will never change this miserable, decaying prison system or our neighborhoods if the oppressor state sees and can utilize our violent, hostile actions toward one another to show just cause to retaliate.

On Monday, April 16, at 11 a.m. at the U.S. Federal Building, 450 Golden Gate Ave. in San Francisco, United Public Workers for Action and concerned citizens will hold a press conference calling on San Francisco’s U.S. Attorney to begin a criminal investigation and prosecution of Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who have refused to investigate the massive $1 billion fraud by the Navy and Tetra Tech in their botched and faked cleanups of both Hunters Point and Treasure Island.

Angry and frustrated residents are demanding answers after a police-involved shooting left an unarmed, Black man dead. Stephon Clark, 22, was fatally shot in his Meadowview area backyard Sunday, March 18, after two Sacramento Police Department (SPD) officers shot at him more than 20 times. Local and national Black leaders have vowed to demand justice for Clark and his family. Black Lives Matter and Rev. Les Simmons of South Sacramento Christian Center spearheaded vigils and rallies, where those who knew Clark called him a loving son and father of two young boys, who didn’t deserve to die.

I need to bring to your attention a corrupt, retaliatory, unprofessional, ruthless tyrant, who holds the slave-master title of unit manager, and his blatant, unethical conduct and his disregard for the North Carolina Department of Public Safety (NCDPS) Division of Prisons policy and procedure, which he swore under oath to uphold. His name is Kevin Ingram! Mr. Ingram is a Black man who hates his own and rules with an iron fist.

Two-term Richmond City Councilperson Jovanka is a leading contender for the open California State Assembly District 15 seat being contested by a dozen candidates. Jovanka wants “power to change the laws, to change oppressive, corrupt and racist policies … Politics impacts everything … We have to put ourselves at the table. If you’re not at the table, you’re probably on the menu.” She wants your vote and your support June 5 (and again in November) so she can take your causes to Sacramento.

All of these acts of violence against Mama Earth and her earth peoples are happening because the hard workers, the migrante indigenous labor that the multi-billion dollar farm industry relies on to pick, tend and distribute its products are being deported across the hate-filled colonizer borders. Borders created, enabled and enacted by the forefathers of the farm industry families themselves. To this violent paradox, I propose an emergency form of Ag-Reparations and Farm Sanctuaries.

Today as I write this article I am sitting in one of Alabama’s prisons looking around at the many lost, confused and content slaves who occupy the overcrowded slave quarters called Alabama Department of Corrections. The task that I, Brother Ra Sun and Kinetic Justice have before us is to convince these brothers on today’s modern day plantations; they are still slaves, made applicable by the 13th Amendment of the United States Constitution, and are contributing to their enslavement. Unfortunately, I’ve yet to find the best way to do that.

Midtown Park Apartments is a 139-unit development for low and moderate income households in the Western Addition community. It has been the subject of a lot of political fighting and accusations recently. It is also our home. In the last few years we have watched individuals and organizations who don’t live at Midtown and have never been active in the community spread misinformation and work against the interests of residents.

Kwame Shakur is a New Afrikan Revolutionary Nationalist and political prisoner currently held in the Indiana slave kamp known has Pendleton Correctional Facility. Kwame Shakur requires outside supporters to shine a spotlight on Pendleton Correctional Facility. They must let the warden know that they are aware of what is being done, that it violates any standard of human decency and international human rights law, and likely prison policy regarding the retroactive application of disciplinary reports.

If you have a high-profile lawyer with powerful friends and you’re tortured while on death row in Alabama, everyone in the nation not only knows about it – overwhelmingly, especially in liberal, progressive, civilized circles of thought and news – they’re righteously appalled. But poor death row inmates in Alabama can be tortured just as terribly, just as brutally – they can be killed barbarically – and not many people in America, much less the rest of the world, knows a thing about it. Or worse, cares.

In a historic day of action, more than 800 protests on Saturday urged lawmakers to pass gun control. In Washington, D.C., alone, organizers say up to 800,000 people took part in the March for Our Lives, which was organized by students who survived the Feb. 14 shooting massacre at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. In New York, another 150,000 people took to the streets; 85,000 rallied in Chicago; 55,000 marched in Los Angeles. Tens of thousands also rallied in Atlanta and Pittsburgh. And 20,000 people gathered in Parkland, Florida.

For years now, I have endured threats, both overt and covert, from the mouths and hands of CDCr’s (California Department of Corrections and rehabilitation’s) OCS (Office of Correctional Safety), ISU (Investigations Services Unit) and IGI (Institutional Gang Investigations), all of them paramilitary services that boast they are a gang and call themselves the Green Wall. (See my article “Sitawa: Exiting solitary confinement – and the games CDCr plays.”)

This year’s Good Friday Service at the historic Third Baptist Church of San Francisco will be far from typical, with an acclaimed pastor and civil rights icon from New York City announcing a national movement against poverty and immorality in religion and politics, sponsored by the NAACP, the Episcopal Diocese of New York and Sojourners magazine. Good Friday Service is March 30, noon to 1:30 p.m., at Third Baptist Church of San Francisco, 1399 McAllister St., San Francisco.

Why have the recent marches been so large, with not even a whisper of peace as an issue? As I often say, follow the money. There is bipartisan agreement that war is good for business. The U.S. is by far the largest arms dealer in the world. Until we stop the plague of endless war, guns are the norm, and they will be on our streets as well as the streets of Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen.

On March 15, 2018, Wealth and Disparities in the Black Community – Justice 4 Mario Woods hosted a rare and historic event: a visit by California Attorney General Xavier Becerra to the Bayview neighborhood of San Francisco to take part in a discussion about police violence and racist policing in the San Francisco Bay Area. The conversation with Attorney General Becerra is part of our ongoing efforts to outreach to elected representatives and bring them into the underserved, historically Black neighborhood.

The Black Joy Parade in Oakland, Sunday afternoon, Feb. 25, was a heartwarming and overwhelming success! A great thing that just happened in Oakland that has practically received no media play. But what a day – a history making day! I’ve never seen anything like it in all my days. Initially, I really didn’t know what to expect and yet I had great expectations. The buzz about the event had been good for at least a month.

Gov. Brown’s Public Safety and Rehabilitation Act of 2016 was a sham that gave false hopes of freedom to thousands of juvenile offenders who have grown up – and are now adults – in California prisons and Three Strikers, who believed they would finally see their 20-, 30- and 40-year-old priors, which have kept them behind bars long after their current sentence has been completed, go away. But that’s not the reality.