December 23, 2024

Community News

"Surge to the Polls" Says San Francisco Bayview Newspaper
November 6, 2018

Courtesy of San Francisco Bayview Newspaper~~~

Surge to the polls: Bay View Voters Guide gets 13,800+ hits

 

We’re voting. Are you voting? If you haven’t already, today’s the day: Election Day. Revolution is in the air, and people are surging to the polls – with people like us in the lead.

Where are they leading? Overwhelming numbers – at this moment 13,860 people – have consulted the Bay View Voters Guide! In the 25-plus years we’ve been compiling a Voters Guide, never has it drawn that kind of attention. Our endorsements have always been limited – mainly to our own hood, Bayview Hunters Point, reaching across the Bay for special races, like electing Jovanka Beckles in Assembly District 15. I’m thrilled that Amani Sawari, our incredible new editor, sees us setting up satellite offices in chocolate cities across the country that would issue local voters guides, as well as make the Bay View truly a national Black newspaper.

To help readers prepare for the election, we got the November paper out early, on Oct. 30. And this November Bay View is also distinguished by its official announcement of the passing of the torch: Torch passes: Editor Amani Sawari calls SF Bay View ‘the community in print’ is a very special salute by renowned writer James Kilgore, who gets to the essence of who she is: “(H)eir apparent to the editor’s desk at the Bay View, Amani Sawari … carries an optimism and a vision that us OGs can’t touch. As she put it, ‘Lots of people think a newspaper is a dying form … but a newspaper adds more life and value to stories especially for people who don’t have access to the Internet.’ … I hope everyone who has known and loved the SF Bay View over its 42-year history will lend their support to Amani and the revitalization of the paper. As Amani told me, ‘The paper is a reflection of us … If the paper is thriving, we are thriving.’”

To help you help the Bay View thrive, Amani has set up a Patreon page. On Patreon, supporters of creative people and projects make monthly recurring donations, a bedrock for us to build on. As soon as the donations add up to her very modest salary, she’ll be moving to the Bay. Hurray! Until then, she’s working remotely from Seattle. We welcome the eight patrons who’ve signed on so far and invite you to find a comfortable level and join them.

More big changes are underway. Amani is working with our webmaster, SF Black Film Festival impresario Kali O’Ray, on a new website, one you can read easily on your phone. Like me, the old one is tired. The new one promises to be spectacular. Stay tuned.

Bookkeeping assistance needed asap! Are you or do you know a bookkeeper who’s very familiar with QuickBooksOnline? I badly need your help. I’ve mastered ordinary transactions but get stumped on data entry, so my desk is piled high with unentered deposits. HELP! Can you come here for a couple of hours of coaching, then be available for follow-up questions by phone? I need you!

Indulge in some recent stories and discover new ones every day at sfbayview.com ...

ONAMOVE! Mike Africa Sr. is free at last!

Political prisoner Mike Africa Sr. was finally released on Oct. 23, after more than 40 years in prison. He is one of the MOVE 9 who were unjustly convicted and sentenced to 30 to 100 years in prison following the 1978 police attack on the MOVE organization in Philadelphia. With son Mike Africa Jr., he made his way straight home to Mike Jr.’s house after leaving SCI Phoenix. Waiting for them was MOVE 9 member Debbie Africa, Mike Sr.’s spouse, who had been released this June 19.

Mos def sumthin-sumthin to vote for!

The important (s)election process is unfolding across the united capitalist prison terrorist states of america (ucptsa) and here in these occupied Indigenous nations. WE are working to change this deadly system that places higher profits for a few elites over the advancement of our broader population and proper stewardship of nature. Still, voters can mos def play a positive role in slowing down capitalism’s never-ending wars and destructive acts.

Linda Parker Pennington: Why I moved to the Hunters Point Shipyard

We caught the vision of the Shipyard, asked our Lennar sales rep. some pointed questions about the safety of this former Superfund site and were told it had been “thoroughly cleaned up, inspected and certified by the EPA as safe to build homes on.” As they often stated, the land that had been transferred for development had previously housed “officers’ quarters,” so none of the radiological testing being done on other parts of the Shipyard had happened there. I mean, of course they wouldn’t build if it wasn’t clean … right?

Behind 12-day statewide Pennsylvania prison lockdown: Control, power, money

The lockdown of 47,000 prisoners in all 25 Pennsylvania prisons began Aug. 29, 2018, and lasted for 12 days. Department of Corrections (DOC) Secretary John Wetzel backed by Gov. Tom Wolf said the lockdown was an emergency measure to protect prison guards. They claimed there was widespread illness of guards from physical contact with synthetic drugs. This is false. The lockdown looks like it was a planned pre-emptive action so that the National Prison Strike didn’t spread to Pennsylvania prisons. The “drug emergency” was a pretext to isolate, repress and control prisoners.

Kevin Hart’s new movie ‘Night School’ can help us create Real School

The new Kevin Hart movie, “Night School,” was about so many things, but like a good artist, as my poverty skola-teacher Mama Dee used to say, Kevin Hart didn’t pound on the table. Through subtle and sketch comedy, pranks, relationship issues, innuendo and character development, he showed an often unseen part of Mans Skoo (as I call it), which is an ableist, racist, classist institution known as Special Education, which so many of us who live with so-called “learning disabilities” know way too much about.

‘Yes on Prop 10,’ says Danny Glover

In California and across the country, progressives are coming together to demand change. We need affordable housing for our communities. On Nov. 6, voters in California will be able to vote on Proposition 10, an amendment that will let local governments determine if housing in their area should be rent controlled based on the needs of those in their communities. Prop 10 is a key example of how we can make California and the rest of the United States affordable for all families. Vote Yes on 10!

Israel punishes jailed Palestinians for support of US prison strike

Palestinians confined in Israel’s brutal prisons issued a statement of solidarity on Aug. 20 with the National Prison Strike in the U.S. Members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine expressed the utmost support for their sisters and brothers jailed in this country’s horrific system of mass incarceration who courageously launched a nationally coordinated protest against their imprisonment and the oppressive conditions they face. For bravely carrying out this act of international solidarity and other acts of defiance, Israeli prison officials retaliated against imprisoned PFLP leaders on Aug. 29.

New racial discrimination claims filed against Clark Construction

Civil Rights Attorney John L. Burris held a press conference on Oct. 26 to announce he is filing racial discrimination lawsuits in the Superior Court of San Francisco on behalf of four African American men against Clark Construction Group-California, Inc., for creating a racially hostile work environment and for allowing the men to be subjected to harassment, intimidation and retaliation.

The anatomy of abusive prison guards: Telford Unit’s overt assault and punishment program

The incidents described in this piece give context to the historical and contemporary art of abuse, inflicted on prisoners from the torturous isolation chambers of the Eastern State Penitentiary during the 1820s to the 1971 Attica rebellion and beyond. The documentation of the past and present grieved events of prison-controlled torture blaze a paper trail that shows abuse by guards is a lot deeper than being inadvertent or isolated events.

Vote Yes on Prop C, Our City Our Home

This proposition is stunningly progressive and spectacularly needed. It’s a small tax on corporations that will dramatically improve the lives of homeless San Franciscans. Over 20,000 San Franciscans experience homelessness a year. Prop C will address this by raising $300 million annually. Half of that will build and acquire permanent housing, a quarter will go to mental health and substance abuse treatment, and the last fourth goes to homelessness prevention, temporary shelters and hygiene centers.

Retaliation against Ohio prison strikers: Poisoning food, cutting off contact with other prisoners and outside world, beating handcuffed prisoners

I answered the call Aug. 21, 2018, and put together a hunger strike team. My name was released on the local WTOL News as one of the protesters with the Nation of Islam, who showed their support by hitting the parking lot entrance with banners to protest mass incarceration and prison slavery. A plot to kill me and poison my food by an officer was exposed. But I’m hard to kill. Can’t stop, won’t stop.

 

Does Martin v. Boise mean no more evictions of homeless people?

What politicians, the Navy and the EPA don’t want you to know: Treasure Island and Hunters Point are equally toxic Superfund sites

Folsom Manifesto for the California Statewide Prison Strike, 1970

The right to rape

Joe Debro on racism in construction, Part 19

Mayor Breed and Kevin Durant Charity Foundation unveil newly renovated Hunters Point Youth Park

Bernie Sanders endorses Jovanka

Gloria Berry is the kind of Supervisor every SF district needs

Damu released from Pelican Bay SHU three years after settlement

PACC member and Justice-4-Pedie-Perez organizer murdered

Khashoggi’s murder shows the House of Saud is not only barbaric but anti-Islamic

Stratfor: ‘Rwandans are cold ass mofos’

New reports show the entire Hunters Point Shipyard, one of the most toxic sites in the US, is likely to be radioactively contaminated

Recovering from the War on Drugs: National Expungement Week Oct. 20-27, 2018

Comrade Malik: I am nearly at my breaking point! Please intervene!


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