On May 1 International Workers Day, rallies and marches were held in cities in the San Francisco Bay Area, Santa Cruz County, and the Central Valley. Demonstrators called for action in defense of jobs, families, immigrant rights, and unions.

by Kevin Pina

President of Haiti Rene Preval appears worried as his security detachment far outnumbers voters at the polling station where he cast his ballot. - Photo: © 2009 Haiti Information Project, Jean Ristil Haiti’s Lavalas movement effectively destroyed the credibility of the April 19 Senate election through a successful boycott campaign called Operation Closed Door. Even the most generous electoral count puts participation at less than 10 percent in the capital of Port-au-Prince, while the actual figure may be as low as 3 percent nationwide.

According to Rene Civil, one of the spokespersons for Operation Closed Door: “What we are seeing is the non-violent resistance of the Haitian people to undemocratic elections. There is no way they will be able to call the senators elected in this process legitimate. You cannot hold elections without the majority political party.”

Ronald Fareau, another representative of the campaign, stated: “We want to congratulate the international community for their hypocrisy in these elections. They spent over $17 million on another electoral fraud in Haiti while our people continue to suffer from malnutrition and illiteracy.”

The controversy over the election began when factions of the Fanmi Lavalas party originally presented two slates of candidates to the Conseil Electoral Provisoire or CEP. In an apparent attempt to wrest control from Aristide, one faction led by former Prime Minister Yvon Neptune questioned the legitimacy of the slate presented by the former president’s appointed representative, Dr. Maryse Narcisse. Neptune’s faction presented a second slate, but in the end the Fanmi Lavalas party’s leadership managed to hammer out a compromise list of candidates in time to meet the deadline.

The CEP finally refused to accept the Fanmi Lavalas applications on the grounds they did not have former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s personal signature from exile in South Africa. The CEP reportedly would not allow for a facsimile copy of his signature on the documents when they were presented on the final day of the application deadline. This effectively excluded all Fanmi Lavalas candidates from participating in the election and led to the boycott of the Senate elections on Sunday.

A polling station at Building 2004 on the outskirts of Cite Soleil remained empty as voters stayed away. The same location was the site of throngs of anxious voters in the presidential elections of February 2006. - Photo: © 2009 Haiti Information Project, Jean Ristil Neptune and other members of his faction within the Fanmi Lavalas party called for participation in the election despite the nationwide boycott. Early Sunday morning Neptune said publicly on a local radio program, “We must vote today if we are to keep the integrity of the democratic process.”

When asked on Radio Caraibe’s Ranmase program if he had a message for voters, Neptune responded, “Vote well.” The success of yesterday’s boycott was taken as a referendum of support for Aristide by the base of the Lavalas movement in the much-touted internal party conflict.

Although there were some reports of sporadic violence in yesterday’s elections between supporters of current president Rene Preval’s Lespwa party and its rival, L’Union, the disruptions were isolated to a single city, Mirebalais, in the country’s Central Plateau region.

There were largely no reports of violence or voting irregularities in the capital, where streets and polling stations remained deserted throughout the day. The only incident occurred in the seaside shantytown of Cite Soleil after a member of the L’Union party was accused of handing out money and food to bribe voters.

Private vehicles and motorcycles were banned during the election as they were during the presidential election in February 2006. Where long lines formed at the polls early in the day on Feb. 7, 2006, polling stations remained virtually empty on Sunday due to the Lavalas boycott.

A nearly empty ballot box sits at a polling station in Port-au-Prince on April 19, 2009. Voters overwhelmingly stayed away from the polls after Haiti’s largest political party called for a boycott. - Photo: © 2009 Haiti Information Project, Jean Ristil Five Lavalas hunger strikers continued to occupy Haiti’s parliament building in an effort to draw attention to their party’s exclusion from the election. They vowed to continue until the election is nullified and demanded that it be held over again during upcoming national elections scheduled for November.

On the following day, thousands of demonstrators gathered in front of the parliament to support the hunger strikers as SWAT teams with the Haitian National Police, backed by U.N. military personnel, surrounded the building.

Popular initiative calls for removal of Bush appointee U.S. Ambassador to Haiti Janet Sanderson A spokesperson for grassroots organizations aligned with Haiti’s Fanmi Lavalas party demanded the Obama administration remove current U.S. Ambassador Janet Sanderson. Reached by telephone in the capital of Port-au-Prince, a leader of a group calling itself the Popular Initiative stated, “She is lying about last Sunday’s elections by not acknowledging it was our boycott that kept voters away.”

He continued, “She claims it was because this was not a regular election year and that people may be tired of the political process. The only voter fatigue we have in Haiti is with undemocratic elections. Allow Fanmi Lavalas to participate and we’ll show you the voters have a lot of energy and enthusiasm for an authentic democratic process. She is out of touch with reality in Haiti.”

Haiti held controversial Senate elections last week that were boycotted by Fanmi Lavalas after all of their candidates were excluded on procedural grounds. Voters mostly stayed at home on Election Day after Lavalas launched a campaign called Operation Closed Door. The Obama administration is widely seen as having green lighted the contested elections after Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton visited Haiti three days prior to the ballot.

The Popular Initiative has also called for a re-evaluation of U.S. policy in Haiti by the Obama administration, claiming that its current direction is a holdover from the Bush administration. A second spokesperson in the conference call declared, “It is time for a real change in Haiti and that can only come by breaking with the past, which means the policies of the Bush administration. A good place to start is with the removal of Ambassador Sanderson, who was put in place by the Bush government.”

They also blamed Ambassador Janet Sanderson for pressuring the Preval administration to issue arrest warrants for 42 of the organizers of the election boycott, including five hunger strikers who were forced out of the parliament building by police earlier on Monday, the day after the election.

“She made remarks on the radio that the organizers should be investigated. Since then several of our people have been forced into hiding, including Rene Civil and Nawoon Marcellus. They have invented a new and bizarre charge, ‘obstruction of democracy,’” concluded the spokesperson.

At a press conference yesterday, the Popular Initiative and other groups aligned with Lavalas announced they would step up the pressure for the return of Jean-Bertrand Aristide from exile in the Republic of South Africa. They declared May and June months of mass mobilization against elections that exclude Lavalas and to fight what they call the “growing misery and poverty as a result of the removal of our democratically elected president on Feb. 29, 2004.”

Kevin Pina is special correspondent to Flashpoints, heard weekdays at 5 p.m. on KPFA 94.1 and dozens of other stations nationwide. Haiti Information Project (HIP), winner of the Project Censored 2008 Real News Award for Outstanding Investigative Journalism, is a non-profit alternative news service providing coverage and analysis of breaking developments in Haiti. Email HIP at HIP@teledyol.net. To learn more, visit www.haitiaction.net.

On Saturday, April 25, hundreds marched through the streets of San Francisco to raise awareness of rape and sexual assault. The march, called "Walk Against Rape", started at Embarcadero and ended at Dolores Park. Organized by San Francisco Women Against Rape, the marchers chanted "Stop date rape" and "Who's body? my body!" The March concluded Sexual Assault Awareness Month where events were held throughout the country to call for an end to sexual assault.

On Monday April 13, Dr. Norman Finkelstein addressed a standing room only crowd at Chico State University auditorium concerning the recent violence in Gaza, occupied Palestinian territory inside of Israel. After giving a brief background of his Jewish parent's anti-war beliefs and actions in New York, and their influence on his current views opposing Zionist Israel's apartheid policies against the Palestinians, Dr. Finkelstein gave background on Israel's early wars against Palestinians and Egypt during 1967.

by Crystal M. Hayes

First Lady Michelle Obama, a class of fifth graders and Chef Sam Kass break ground for the White House Kitchen Garden on the South Lawn. – Photo: Todd Heisler, NY Times I used to visit and revisit it a dozen times a day, and stand in deep contemplation over my vegetable progeny with a love that nobody could share or conceive of who had never taken part in the process of creation. It was one of the most bewitching sights in the world to observe a hill of beans thrusting aside the soil, or a row of early peas just peeping forth sufficiently to trace a line of delicate green. - Nathaniel Hawthorne, “Mosses from an Old Manse”

When the news first hit that Michelle Obama was starting an organic vegetable garden, I became obsessed with reading everything about it. As a passionate locavore* and organic foodie, I can’t begin to describe the thrill I felt about her garden. As a Black woman, my first thought went to the ancestors who built the White House and most of the capital. I tried to imagine their pride and joy in watching one of their daughters as she reminded the world of their legacy in ways they could only dream about.

Don’t get me wrong; I am not “post-racial,” but I didn’t have any of the racial anxieties that numerous brilliant Black women bloggers and academics have written about in relation to the First Lady’s garden. Instead, I immediately wanted to know the veggies Michelle Obama was planting. I wanted to know who was helping her. I wanted to know if this was her first garden, or if she gardened in Chicago before.

I wanted to know what Michelle Obama’s favorite veggies were - if, like me, she loved collard greens and Brussels sprouts. I even wanted to know what books and resources she used to learn about gardening so that I could read them too. It’s no secret that the First Lady of the United States (FLOTUS) was really the Obama I wanted to vote for last November, but Barack is all right too.

When I saw the picture of Michelle in the garden with D.C. children on the front page of the New York Times, I even became emotional. At first, I had no idea why. Then it hit me: I spent my early childhood in a vegetable garden. The experience never left me even though I didn’t learn about it until last year, several decades later.

Most people who know me know that my father was a Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army member and that he’s been in prison since I was 2. Nothing can prepare a 2-year-old for the emotional and psychological trauma of losing a parent, especially one as loving and giving as my father. My dad was a doting parent then, and he’s a doting father and grandfather now. The story of my connection with vegetable gardening and my new home in Durham, North Carolina, affirms this.

Amid the chaos and confusion of his own violent arrest in the Bronx in 1972, my father took actions that showed he considered his children’s safety before his own. To keep my siblings and me physically safe (mental and emotional safety had to wait), my father sent me to Southern Pines, North Carolina. The location was supposed to be a temporary stop along a route that would eventually lead to Cuba, where I would reunite with my mother and other family members.

The plan didn’t pan out that way. I lived in Southern Pines for approximately four years, in the home of my father’s sister and “Momma,” the doting mother-in-law who I accompanied in the garden each day I was there.

I have no intellectual memory of any of this, but my body remembers. There are no pictures, there were no stories, nothing - until one year ago, when my father’s older brother died and I began to ask questions.

The answers hit me like a bombshell: Talking with surviving relatives, I realized that I’d moved 45 minutes away from the very homestead that nurtured me as a toddler after my father’s violent arrest and incarceration. I internalized the experience at the cellular level, so much so that, like a salmon to its birthing stream, I moved to the same rural Carolina land that once provided a glimpse of peace amidst an unraveling trauma.

And as I watched the television footage of the FLOTUS in her garden, raking leaves, surrounded by D.C. children, I considered the impact the experience would have on them. No one has discussed this, discussed the fact that these are children who most have written off. The picture of Michelle Obama creating a garden with them may be symbolic for all kinds of people, and for all kinds of reasons. For me, it was an invitation to unpack a history that was lost to me, but is no less significant today.

Again, I lived with my paternal aunt and her family in Southern Pines. She remembers me as a 2-year-old in a sundress and sunhat, up at the crack of dawn with Momma in the vegetable garden. Every day, my aunt recalls, I wanted to wear that same dress and hat, those same shoes and socks. If anyone tried to stop me, there was hell to pay. Apparently, I was as stubborn then as I am today.

As I watched the television footage of the FLOTUS in her garden, raking leaves, surrounded by D.C. children, I considered the impact the experience would have on them. No one has discussed this, discussed the fact that these are children who most have written off.

My aunt said that little 2-year-old wanted to be out in the garden all day long. So Momma had a gardening buddy the entire time I was there, and she loved the company. I never left her side.

The idea that I lived for several of my most formative years in the rural South with Black people who grew their own food - not having to rely on others to feed their children - blows my mind. At 2 years old, I was getting a powerful lesson in self-sufficiency and in life’s seemingly small daily joys, lessons few have access to anymore.

I’m convinced that what I learned then about how food grows gave me the strength to get here: a fulfilling adult life marked by the richness of motherhood, a large family of friends and an integrated career where, as Kahlil Gibran said, work is love made visible.

The idea that I lived for several of my most formative years in the rural South with Black people who grew their own food - not having to rely on others to feed their children - blows my mind.

When I was barely more than an infant, my entire family was ripped violently apart. I didn’t see my mother for I don’t know how long - some tell me it was years. Until now, I use to be haunted by questions of how that little toddler coped.

I now know that at age 2 I was being taught, through Momma’s vegetable garden, to have faith in something I couldn’t see right away. I was being taught that sometimes hope is all we have, and that that’s okay.

I was being taught that when people work together, everybody survives. I was learning to be flexible, and I was shown that asking for help is critical. I was being taught that if I was willing to work hard and have patience, I would be blessed beyond my expectations.

I now know that at age 2 I was being taught, through Momma’s vegetable garden, to have faith in something I couldn’t see right away. I was being taught that sometimes hope is all we have, and that that’s okay.

And finally, I was being shown that, as Alice Walker has said, “Everything we love can be saved.” At 2, I was being taught I could grow something. I was learning at that tender age that health, beauty, joy and love were possible even in the midst of unbelievable pain and devastation. For a 2-year-old little girl who watched her father almost be killed in a brutal police raid, I know Momma’s North Carolina vegetable garden helped save my life in ways I have yet to discover.

None of my adult habits made sense to me until events like my life in Southern Pines were unearthed. As a kid, after my lost toddler years in North Carolina, I remember feeling different from other children my age, who were more interested in sleeping-in on weekends.

Meanwhile, I was always up at the crack of dawn, methodically planning my day. I figured that if I got up early enough and finished my chores, I would have more time to do whatever I wanted. This habit was surely fruit from buried memories of daybreak in the garden.

Similarly, I never understood, until now, why I never met a vegetable I didn’t like or why I usually preferred vegetables over candy. Most important, Momma’s garden helps explain why I always had a vision. If you grow your own food, you know you must have a vision and faith that what you plant will eventually grow.

Although my aunt told me about this lost part of my childhood, she doesn’t have pictures of me in that sundress or sunhat. So I ripped Michelle’s picture out of the New York Times and put it near my computer because it helps me tap into an experience that still sustains me.

Despite the fact that intense loss, pain, and confusion has taken permanent root in my bones, it has never been able to permanently rob my empowerment. I work hard to live in my blessings, not my problems, but when things feel tough, when realities like the fact that my father is still locked up after 37 years pound at the doors of my heart and head, I try to remember that, at 2 years old, people taught me how to dig into my soul, have faith in the unknown and grow whatever I want.

In these precarious times Michelle Obama’s garden also teaches us to sow a vision that feeds faith, love and community instead of fear, despair and loss.

Help to free my father, political prisoner Robert Seth Hayes Robert Seth Hayes holds his granddaughter Myaisha, Crystal’s daughter, in this 1992 photo when she was 9 months old. She’s now 17. At a hearing this past winter, my father was once again denied parole. He has now served 12 years above his 25-year sentence for a total of 37 years. This is unacceptable. For this reason, we are making an urgent request for financial support in an effort to prepare for his next parole hearing. Your contribution is tax deductible. Please write “Robert Seth Hayes” on the memo line of your check or money order and send it to IFCO/ NYCJERICHO, P.O. Box 1272, New York, NY 10013. They will collect the funds and send them to Cheryl Kates, his new parole attorney. If you need more information, call Paulette at NYC JERICHO, (718) 853-0893 or (646) 271-4677.

When things feel tough, when realities like the fact that my father is still locked up after 37 years pound at the doors of my heart and head, I try to remember that, at 2 years old, people taught me how to dig into my soul, have faith in the unknown and grow whatever I want.

You can also drop Seth a note at the following address: Robert Seth Hayes, 74-A-2280, Wende CF, Wende Rd., P.O. Box 1187, Alden, NY 14004-1187. And check out his website, www.sethhayes.org.

Please join “Free Robert Seth Hayes” on Facebook. Here you can find out more details about his parole process, his health and how to help.

Crystal M. Hayes is the mother of a 17-year-old daughter, Myaisha. Crystal received her BA from Mount Holyoke College in African and African American studies and politics and a master’s degree in clinical social work from the Smith College School for Social Work. She lives in North Carolina and is currently writing a book about race and motherhood. Her research and writing interests include gender, Black life and culture, and social policy. Crystal is a dynamic public speaker who addresses wide audiences from youth groups to colleges, churches and other organizations. She can be reached at crystalmhc@hotmail.com.

* Locavore was the New Oxford American Dictionary’s 2007 Word of the Year. The editors explain: “The ‘locavore’ movement encourages consumers to buy from farmers’ markets or even to grow or pick their own food, arguing that fresh, local products are more nutritious and taste better. Locavores also shun supermarket offerings as an environmentally friendly measure, since shipping food over long distances often requires more fuel for transportation.”

by Greenpeace and Ann Garrison

Electronic waste – discarded computers, cell phones and the like – from the U.S. and Europe poisons children in Ghana who earn a living in the dump, burning it and extracting copper and other valuable materials with their bare hands. – Photo: Greenpeace Now we finally know where “conflict minerals” coltan and cassiterite, essential to the electronics industries, go after being smuggled out of the Democratic Republic of Congo to Rwanda - and from there to who knows where. No one really knows because coltan and cassiterite refiners and electronics manufacturers all assure us that they never buy conflict minerals, even though most of the world’s coltan reserves and much of its cassiterite reserves lie in conflict torn D.R. Congo’s North Kivu Province.

But at least we know where a lot of coltan and cassiterite go, in the end. They go to Ghana and other parts of Africa as toxic electronic waste, often disguised as charity: European and North American “contributions” of worn-out, broken, no longer fashionable tech garbage.

This demonstrates how homicidally Europeans still behave in Africa, including even many from nations like the Netherlands, which seems relatively benign, when compared to the U.S., which continues to expand Africom, the U.S. Africa Command, a chain of U.S. military bases commanded by U.S. Army Gen. William “Kip” Ward, in Africa.

The Netherlands joined Sweden in ending foreign aid to Rwandan President Paul Kagame’s regime, because of human rights violations and war crimes in both Rwanda and neighboring D.R. Congo. The Netherlands is, nevertheless, on Greenpeace’s list of European nations shipping and dumping toxic e-waste “charity” in Ghana.

Isn’t this an international crime more serious than Somali “piracy,” a response to nuclear waste dumping on one end of the Somali coast and to European trawlers fishing out Somali waters, which Somali fishing communities depended on, on Somali’s other coast?

Shouldn’t the same Netherlands politicians who canceled aid to Rwandan President Paul Kagame take the lead in stopping the shipment of toxic Euro e-waste to Ghana and elsewhere in Africa or any other African nation? And shouldn’t President Barack Obama either follow that lead or take it himself?

Ann Garrison is a Bay Area journalist and activist and the website writer-editor of thepriceofuranium.com. She can be reached at anniegarrison@thepriceofuranium.com. This story was first published by Colored Opinions.

by Wanda Sabir

The cover of Mumia's new book, "Jailhouse Lawyers" - highly recommended! Happy Birthday, Mumia Abu Jamal! Happy Birthday also to Mother Earth on this Earth Day Celebration weekend. Obama: 100 days into his administration, time for change continues … read Dave Zirin’s take.

Celebrating the Life and Work of Rev. Diama Clark

The celebration honoring the work and memory of the life of Queen Mother Rev. Diama Clark, educator, philosopher and founder of the Association of Africans and African Americans, is Saturday, April 25, 2:30-5:30 p.m., at Beth Eden Baptist Church, 1183 10th St., at Adeline, in West Oakland. For information, call (510) 452-4180.

Youth Town Hall

The National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives (NOBLE) in partnership with the San Francisco Bay Area Chapter of NOBLE, presents “A NOBLE Focus on Crime and Justice.” Juvenile arrests for murder increased in the last year by 3 percent. Youth younger than age 15 accounted for more than one-fourth - 28 percent - of all juvenile arrests for violent crime offenses in 2007 and nearly one-third - 31 percent - of all property crime offenses. In 2007, females accounted for 17 percent of juvenile violent crime index arrests, 35 percent of juvenile property crime index arrests and 33 percent of juvenile disorderly conduct arrests. To learn more, consult the OJJDP Statistical Briefing Book. It was released on Oct. 24, 2008.

What can our communities do to stop the violence? What are the crime and violence issues affecting our communities? How can law enforcement and the community collaborate to address these issues? Youth and the community are invited to express opinions and engage in dialogue at a Youth Town Hall Meeting Saturday, April 25, 1 p.m., at Fremont High School, 4610 Foothill Blvd., Oakland. For information, contact Chapter President Joan Johnson at (925) 786-6055 or Training Chairman Johnny Davis at (510) 773-2793.

Soul Green Connections Kaylah Marin Soul Green Connections will be mixing neo-soul, R&B, spoken word and live art every Friday in April and May with host Kaylah Marin, 7-10 p.m., at BollyHood Lounge, 3372 19th St. between Mission and Capp, San Francisco. Catch performers like Kaylah Marin, Colored Ink, Fiyawata, Alyse and more. For information, call (415) 819-1995 or email kaylahmarin@gmail.com. Shows benefit Grind for the Green.

Illumination Festival

The Fourth Annual Illumination Ball presented by Infinity Productions, Inc. will celebrate the arts and community in honor of Mary L. Booker, its founder. Ms. Booker has been an artist in residence in the Bayview Hunter Point neighborhood for more than 50 years. It will be an evening with special guests, musical entertainment, poetry and dramatic performances from “Weird Eyes” and Ossie Davis’ “Purlie Victorious.” The public is invited. Tickets are $100.

The event is at the Bayview Opera House, Ruth Williams Memorial Theater, 4705 Third St., in San Francisco, Saturday, April 25. The reception begins at 6 p.m., the ball, including dinner and program, at 7-11 p.m. Infinity Productions, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, highlights the rich tapestry of artistic talent among youth, adults and community elders. Infinity Production is a testament to the Bayview Hunters Point neighborhood’s artistry and the positive happenings in the community.

Hugh Masekela Hugh Masekela South African trumpet legend Hugh Masekela celebrates his 70th year with a new CD, “Phola,” his 35th as a leader. He appears at SFJAZZ tonight in San Francisco at the Palace of Fine Arts. Visit www.sfjazz.org.

Justice for Oscar Grant Townhall Meeting

The Oakland Townhall Meetings are every Saturday, including tomorrow, April 25, 4:25-6:25 p.m., at Olivet Missionary Baptist Church, 807 27th St. at San Pablo, Oakland. The April 8 Caravan for Justice was a huge success, carrying over 700 people to Sacramento. Help plan the next one, in May, organize for the recall of Alameda County DA Tom Orloff and join the movement. Visit www.caravanforjustice.com, read Caravan for Justice II: The people take their demands to Sacramento and watch the video, Caravan for Justice II on this site.

On the fly …

And there is a lot more … like Berkeley Earth Day and the great plays at Brava Theatre in San Francisco. I think Baba Ken has something at Ashkenaz in Berkeley Saturday, April 25, and Liberation Dance is performing its premiere, “Animal Farm.” at ODC in San Francisco.

There is a Barbecue for the Parks at Mosswood Park in Oakland 12-2 tomorrow afternoon also. Check back for updates. Oh, at Laney College there is a play, a take off on Aesop’s fable, “The Ant and the Grasshopper,” this weekend. Tonight is opening night, 6:30 p.m. Next week, I’ll have May 2009 out in the San Francisco Bay View newspaper, so send me any announcements you’d like to get in before April 26.

The McCoy Tyner Trio is performing this weekend with special guest Bobby Hutcherson at the Palace of Fine Arts Sunday, April 26. Dee Dee Bridgewater is at Cal Performances on Saturday, April 25, also. Oh, LINES Dance Company is at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theatre through Sunday, April 26. I saw a notice when I went to the opening of a great exhibit, curated by children yesterday in the upstairs galleries. Impressive - stay tuned for more.

Also this weekend, in the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts screening room, is a film about Rasta musical legend Lee Scratch Perry. The New Living Conference is at the Concourse Exposition Center in San Francisco this weekend: http://www.newlivingexpo.com/2009/html_files/index3.php.

Wanda’s Picks Radio April 24

Today we are celebrating Mumia Abu Jamal’s birthday and his new book, “Jailhouse Lawyers,” with an introduction by Angela Davis. Learn more at www.CityLightsBooks.com. On the air are Linda Evans, Robert King and Tiny. There is a birthday book release party tonight at the Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., in Oakland, beginning at 6:30 p.m. The second interview honors the memory of Rev. Diama Clark, whose life is being celebrated April 25 at Beth Eden Baptist Church, 1183 10th St., in Oakland, 2:30-5:30.

Following this we are joined by Kaylah Marin, singer-songwriter, whose new CD is “Loving Life.” She also produces “Soul Green Connection” on Fridays, beginning tonight, Friday, April 24, 7-10 p.m., at BollyHood, 3372 19th St., between Mission and Capp, San Francisco. The event is a fundraiser for Grind for the Green.

Hugh Masekela, who is appearing in San Francisco this evening, was not able to make it, so we close with Avotcja, who will continue the Happy Birthday, Mumia, celebration in words and poetry beginning earlier in the broadcast. Avotcja and Modupue perform Monday, April 27, 8 p.m., in San Francisco at Yoshi’s SF, Fillmore at Eddy.

Bay View Arts Editor Wanda Sabir can be reached at wsab1@aol.com. Visit her website at www.wandaspicks.com for an expanded version of Wanda’s Picks, her blog, photos and Wanda’s Picks Radio. Her shows are streamed live Wednesdays at 6-7 a.m. and Fridays at 8-10 a.m. and archived on the Afrikan Sistahs’ Media Network.

by Abayomi Azikiwe

Somali "pirate" Abduwali Abdukhadir Muse, 16, captured during the seizure of the Maersk Alabama, arrives in the U.S. After the execution of three Somalis and the wounding and capturing of another in the Indian Ocean on April 12, a leader of the so-called pirates vowed to avenge the deaths of these youth who held the U.S. captain of a cargo vessel known as the Maersk Alabama for five days. Capt. Richard Phillips was released while the U.S. military and the corporate media hailed the killings of the Somalis, saying the actions were justified.

[The mother of the 16-year-old youth who was captured is appealing to President Obama for the release of her son. See the sidebar below, followed by a video of her appeal. - ed.]

The Maersk Alabama was never taken over by the Somalis, even though the captain remained in the custody of the pirates for five days. The captain was not harmed during the five-day standoff, and the ship was later docked at the port of Mombasa in the East African nation of Kenya.

Abdi Garad, a spokesperson for the group of Somalis that attempted to seize the Danish-owned 17,000-ton Maersk Alabama about 450 kilometers off the coast, told the French Press Agency (AFP) on April 13 from the eastern coastal town of Eyl, “The American liars have killed our friends after they agreed to free the hostage without ransom. But I tell you that this matter will lead to retaliation, and we will hunt down particularly American citizens travelling our waters.”

Garad went on to say, “We will intensify our attacks even reaching very far away from Somalia waters and next time we get American citizens … they [should] expect no mercy from us.” Garad claimed that after dropping the ransom demand, the Somalis had asked that Capt. Phillips be moved to a Greek ship held by the group.

‘The American liars have killed our friends after they agreed to free the hostage without ransom. But I tell you that this matter will lead to retaliation, and we will hunt down particularly American citizens travelling our waters. - Abdi Garad

Jamac Habeb, a 30-year-old Somali from the town of Eyl, stated in Inside Somalia on April 13, “From now on, if we capture foreign ships and their respective countries try to attack us, we will kill them. U.S. forces have become our number one enemy.”

Another Somali, Abdulahi Lami, said in the same article that the pirates would not be intimidated by U.S. military actions in the Indian Ocean. “Every country will be treated the way it treats us. In the future, America will be the one mourning and crying. We will retaliate for the killings of our men.”

According to the official reports issued by the U.S. military, snipers positioned on the Naval warship the USS Bainbridge shot and killed three Somalis after monitoring their movements for several days. The plan to kill the Somalis was reportedly approved by President Barack Obama.

U.S. Navy spokespeople claimed that the snipers fired on the Somalis when Phillips’ life was endangered. “They were pointing AK-47s at the captain,” said Vice Admiral William Gortney, who heads the U.S. Naval Central Command. His statement was made in a Pentagon briefing from Bahrain and reported by Al Jazeera on April 13.

However, this version of events has been disputed by Somalis who support the vessel seizures. They contend that the three young men were killed after they agreed to end the standoff and release Phillips. This operation took place only two days after similar actions were carried out by French military commandos who stormed a yacht held by Somalis, which resulted in the death of one of the French nationals being held.

The cargo ship Maersk Alabama arrives in Mombasa, Kenya, April 11. – Photo: Sayyid Azim, AP Mohammed Adow, a correspondent for Al Jazeera, said in the same report, “U.S. forces are reported to have attacked the lifeboat when the pirates were expecting a diplomatic exchange … [and] have taken the remaining pirate to one of their ships in these waters.”

In another development that further escalated tensions in the region, two low-flying U.S. military helicopters flew over areas at the port city of Harardhere in the northeast of Somalia on April 12. The U.S. military claims that this area is a base for pirate operations against vessels traveling in the Gulf of Aden.

Local residents of the area believed that the U.S. helicopters were planning an air raid on the port. According to a Somali journalist, “The fishermen decided not to fish in the morning because of the helicopters; they are scared.” (Inside Somalia, April 13)

Behind the escalation in ‘piracy’

Over the last several months, Somali pirates have alleged that European corporations are unloading toxic waste off the coast of this Horn of Africa nation. A Ukrainian ship which was held and released by the Somalis garnered a multimillion-dollar payment by the owners, which is reportedly being utilized to clean up the waste being dumped in the area.

In a statement reported by Al Jazeera on Oct. 11, Januna Ali Jama, a spokesperson for the Somali pirates, said that the ransom acquired serves as a means of “reacting to the toxic waste that has been continually dumped on the shores of our country for nearly 20 years.”

A Ukrainian ship which was held and released by the Somalis garnered a multimillion-dollar payment by the owners, which is reportedly being utilized to clean up the toxic waste being dumped in the area.

Jama, who is based in the semi-autonomous region of Puntland, continued, “The Somali coastline has been destroyed, and we believe this money is nothing compared to the devastation that we have seen on the seas.”

Further evidence of toxic waste dumping came from the United Nations envoy to Somalia, Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, who told Al Jazeera in the same article that the international body has “reliable information” that both European and Asian corporations are unloading toxic chemicals, including nuclear waste, off the Somali coastline. “I must stress, however, that no government has endorsed this act and that private companies and individuals acting alone are responsible.”

In the aftermath of the tsunami in late 2004, evidence began to appear confirming such illegal dumping activity in the region. The United Nations Environment Program reported that the tsunmai washed up old, rusting containers of waste on the shores of Puntland, which was formerly part of Somalia prior to the collapse of the Western-backed government of Mohammad Siad Barre in 1991.

A UNEP spokesman, Nick Nuttall, told Al Jazeera in the same article that when the rusting barrels were opened by the force of the waves, dumping that had been occurring for many years was revealed. “Somalia has been used as a dumping ground for hazardous waste starting in the early 1990s, and continuing through the civil war there. European companies found it to be very cheap to get rid of the waste, costing as little as $2.50 a ton, where waste disposal costs in Europe are something like $1,000 a ton,” said Nuttall.

Nuttall went on to say that there are “many different kinds” of waste. “There is a uranium radioactive waste. There is lead, and heavy metals like cadmium and mercury. There is also industrial waste, and there are hospital wastes, chemical wastes - you name it.”

Since the containers have come to shore, there has been a sharp increase in various illnesses among the population, including such symptoms as oral and abdominal bleeding, skin infections and other ailments.

“We [the UNEP] had planned to do a proper, in-depth scientific assessment on the magnitude of the problem. But because of the high levels of insecurity onshore and off the Somali coast, we are unable to carry out an accurate assessment of the extent of the problem,” Nuttall continued.

Nonetheless, Ould-Abdallah said that the practice of illegal dumping of toxic waste continues in the region. “What is most alarming here is that nuclear waste is being dumped. Radioactive uranium waste is potentially killing Somalis and completely destroying the ocean.”

Mohammed Gure, chair of the Somalia Concerned Group, said in the same Al Jazeera article that the social and environmental impact of this toxic waste dumping will be felt for decades. “The Somali coastline used to sustain hundreds of thousands of people, as a source of food and livelihoods. Now much of it is almost destroyed, primarily at the hands of these so-called ministers that have sold their nation to fill their own pockets.”

‘What is most alarming here is that nuclear waste is being dumped. Radioactive uranium waste is potentially killing Somalis and completely destroying the ocean.’ - U.N. envoy Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah

Other factors involved in the exploitation of Somalia are that the Gulf of Aden shipping lane transports billions of dollars of goods through the region every week. Almost none of these funds are utilized for the benefit of the Somali people, who are still suffering from underdevelopment resulting from U.S. interference in their internal affairs.

The U.S. administration under George W. Bush financed and engineered an invasion and occupation of the country by the Western-allied state of Ethiopia in December 2006. As a result of fierce resistance, the Ethiopian military withdrew from the country in January 2009. The formation of a new coalition government has failed to bring all the various political groupings into the regime.

Consequently, Ugandan and Burundian troops remain in the capital of Mogadishu under the auspices of the African Union Mission to Somalia (AMISOM). The leading resistance group, Al-Shabab, is continuing to demand the withdrawal of the AU forces before it agrees to enter the coalition government headed by President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed.

The fledging government in Mogadishu, which has been endorsed by the U.S., applauded the attack on the Somali pirates on April 12. “We are very happy at this action and the outcome,” said Foreign Minister Mohamad Abdullahi Omaar. “I am not surprised, nor will anyone by surprised, at the actions of the American government to save its citizens and ensure the security of its people,” Omaar told Reuters. (April 13)

Increased U.S. military presence must be opposed

Recent reports coming out of the White House indicate that the Obama administration is divided over how to carry out its foreign policy in the Horn of Africa. Some elements want a more diplomatic approach to the problem of piracy as well as a concerted effort to bring more European and Asian nations into patrolling the waters in the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean.

However, other advisers within the White House want to see a more direct U.S. military involvement on land and off the coast of Somalia. The recent incident involving the Maersk Alabama prompted the dispatching of additional warships to the Indian Ocean region. (Washington Post, April 12)

According to the figures issued by the International Maritime Bureau, at least a dozen cargo ships and more than 200 crew members are being held by Somali pirates in the region. At the same time, fighting inside of Somalia is continuing between the Al-Shabab resistance fighters and the AMISOM forces, which are working in conjunction with the troops loyal to the new coalition government in Mogadishu.

On April 13, Garowe Radio reported that three people had been killed over a two-day period resulting from mortar fire in the capital of Mogadishu. “Suspected insurgents launched at least 10 mortars at the main port in the Somali capital Mogadishu on April 11.”

The report noted: “Islamist rebels vowed war against the Horn of Africa country’s interim government. Witnesses and workers at Mogadishu’s main seaport said AMISOM peacekeepers closed off roads near the port and entered nearby neighborhoods as a ship docked.”

The report continued: “There were many AMISOM soldiers in our area … on top of buildings and they refused to allow us to leave our homes, a witness said. Port workers said the ship unloaded military hardware, including vehicles, which were transported to AMISOM bases in Mogadishu.”

Based on these reports and the U.S. administration’s framing of the killing of the three Somalis, it is vital that anti-war and anti-imperialist forces in the United States emphasize that greater U.S. military involvement in the region will not create a more stable political situation in Somalia and throughout the Horn of Africa.

In fact, as history has proven, the role of U.S. imperialism in the Horn of Africa has created greater instability and underdevelopment in the region. As a result of the Bush administration policy toward Somalia, the worst humanitarian crisis on the continent of Africa came into existence.

During the present period, progressive forces must demand a shift away from militarism in the Horn of Africa and insist on the right of self-determination including reparations for the people of Somalia and the Horn of Africa as a whole.

© 2009 Workers World. This story was originally published April 13, 2009, by Workers World, 55 W. 17th St., New York NY 10011, ww@workers.org, www.workers.org, at http://www.workers.org/2009/world/horn_of_africa_0423/. Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of Pan-African News Wire, an extraordinarily valuable news source designed “to foster intelligent discussion on the affairs of African people throughout the continent and the world.”

Mother of young ‘pirate’ appeals for his release

by Mary Ratcliff

A very thin but broadly smiling Somali teenager, the sole survivor of the four Somali teenagers who seized the U.S.-flagged Maersk Alabama on April 8, arrived Tuesday in the U.S. - the place he had told a crew member he dreamed of visiting to attend school.

He will be the first alleged pirate to stand trial in this country in more than a century. The last pirates to stand trial in the U.S. were the captain and 11 crew members of the Confederate vessel Savannah.

“I cried when I saw the picture of him,” said his mother, Adar Abdirahman Hassan, who sells milk at a small market in Galkayo, central Somalia, when relatives showed her the photo.

“The last time I saw him he was in his school uniform,” she said. The photo shows a chain wrapped around his waist and his left hand heavily bandaged. A Maersk crew member tells of stabbing him with an ice pick and capturing him after Capt. Richard Phillips had left with the other three Somali teenagers who were later killed by Navy Seal snipers.

“He was brainwashed,” she said of her oldest son, Abduwali Abdukhadir Muse. She insists he is only 16, though a law enforcement official says he is at least 18 and can be tried as an adult in a U.S. court.

“I appeal to President Obama to pardon my teenager; I request him to release my son or at least allow me to see him and be with him during the trial,” said his mother, who described young Muse as a “talented boy” and “a good student.”

She said her son had been doing well in school but late last month had failed to come home. Fifteen days later she heard on the radio that he had been captured.

“Hassan says it breaks her heart to think that he will be tried as an adult criminal in the United States,” writes Alisha Ryu from Nairobi for the Voice of America. He was charged Tuesday with five counts, including piracy. “[H]is mother’s claim that he is a 16-year-old juvenile could pose a problem for prosecutors seeking the maximum sentence of life imprisonment,” Ryu reports. “International law is more lenient toward juveniles.

“Determining Muse’s true age is difficult because birth certificates are rare in Somalia, a country which has not had a functioning government for nearly two decades.”

According to the Guardian of London, Ron Kuby, a New York-based civil rights lawyer, said a legal team to represent Muse is being formed.

The guided missile destroyer USS Bainbridge tows Maersk Alabama's lifeboat after rescuing Capt. Phillips April 14. - Photo: U.S. Navy Lance Cpl. Megan Sindelar/AP “I think there’s a grave question as to whether America was in violation of principles of truce in warfare on the high seas,” said Kuby. “This man seemed to come on to the Bainbridge under a flag of truce to negotiate. He was then captured. There is a question whether he is lawfully in American custody and serious questions as to whether he can be prosecuted because of his age.”

Alleged by Capt. Phillips to be the leader of the four youths, Muse appeared in court Tuesday night. “The court proceedings were quickly thrown into turmoil when his lawyer claimed that he was 15 - too young to stand trial as an adult,” the New York Times reported. “The judge dismissed the claim after speaking with Mr Muse’s father in Somalia, who said that the accused was the first of his 12 children and the fourth was born in 1990. Prosecutors said that Mr Muse had admitted he was 18.”

The lawyers representing him Tuesday night asked that Muse be given painkillers for his hand wound and Muslim meals in jail.

Miguel Ruiz, a member of the Maersk Alabama crew, said he asked one of the pirates, “Why do you do that?” The response: “We’ve got 20 million people in Somalia who are poor, that don’t have education. We don’t have no food.”

‘The most powerful navy in the world against barefoot Somali brigands’

An April 18 New York Times story provides this description of the “battle” between the Navy destroyer and the “pirates”:

“Under cover of darkness dozens of U.S. Navy Seals parachuted into the Indian Ocean and made their way in inflatable boats to the USS Bainbridge.

“The $800-million U.S. Navy destroyer, armed with guided missiles, was shadowing a ragtag band of teenage pirates with AK47s holding an American hostage in a drifting 18-foot lifeboat.

“It was the ultimate assymetric stand-off, pitting the most powerful navy in the world against a skiff-load of barefoot Somali brigands.

“‘It’s almost reminiscent of “Black Hawk Down,” where you have high-tech, highly trained units which get into a situation where there is a low-tech environment but some pretty creative people with a lot of experience in a war zone,’ Jamey Cummings, a former U.S. Navy Seal, said. ‘These highly trained Seals are coming in to take out 17-year-old pirates.’”

Bay View editor Mary Ratcliff compiled this sidebar from several major media sources. She can be reached at editor@sfbayview.com.

by Minister of Information JR

After this Block Report interview at KPFA, the apprentices and other staff who had conducted and assisted with the recording gathered around the legendary Angela Davis for this portrait: from left, Angie D, Frank Sterling, Angela Davis, filmmaker Semaj, Minister of Information JR, Noelle Hanrahan and Mikki Mayes aka Ms. M. – Photo: Adalia Angela Davis, the legendary political activist professor in the UC system, personifies resistance. A former political prisoner who has worked within the Communist Party, she’s authored eight books analyzing race, class and gender and she cofounded the prison abolitionist group, Critical Resistance. She sat down for an interview with the Block Report to promote political prisoner Mumia Abu Jamal’s new book “Jailhouse Lawyers” by talking about her contribution: the foreword.

Angela Davis was one of the first political prisoners I learned about. Later, the first jailhouse lawyer I met - through the mail - was her codefendant, Ruchell Magee, who is still locked up.

This book gave me better insight into what life as a jailhouse lawyer really is like. I dug the fact that Mumia picked a subject that is rarely discussed on this side of the walls. I learned a lot and it whetted my appetite to learn more about these legal warriors.

Check out Angela Davis as she talks about her foreword in Mumia’s new book, in her own words …

M.O.I. JR: I want to talk to you today about your foreword in Mumia Abu Jamal’s new book, “Jailhouse Lawyers.” Since I know a lot of readers do not have the book, I want to start off with reading a few quotes, and I will ask you questions in relation to the quotes.

You say in your foreword: “Mumia points to what was for me a startling revelation: Jailhouse lawyers comprise the group most likely to be punished by the prison administration - more so than political prisoners, Black people, gang members and gay prisoners. Whereas jailhouse layers are now punished by what Mumia calls ‘cover charges,’ historically they could be charged with internal violations for no other reason that they used the law to challenge prison guards, prison regimes and prison conditions.”

In your opinion, what is the importance of Mumia choosing jailhouse lawyers to be the subject for his new book?

Angela Davis: Well, first of all, this is an amazing book. Everyone should read this book. And I was extremely excited to learn that he was working on a book on jailhouse lawyers because the story of jailhouse lawyers is a hidden story. Most people in this country are not aware of the extent to which resistance to the regimes of prisons - state prisons, federal prisons - all over the country, has been shaped through the work of jailhouse lawyers.

There is a long tradition of resistance. And Mumia himself is a jailhouse lawyer. And if one thinks about how many men and women have used the law in order to challenge the prison regimes, one gets a sense of what a powerful legacy that resistance is.

M.O.I. JR: In another quote in your foreword you say, “Mumia argues that the passage of the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) is a violation of the Convention Against Torture, for in ruling out psychological or mental injury as a basis to recover damages, such sexual coercion as that represented in the Abu Ghraib photographs, if perpetrated inside of a U.S. prison, would not have constituted evidence for a lawsuit.”

Why did you point this out in your foreword?

Angela: Many people assume that the PLRA, the Prison Litigation Reform Act, as I tried to point out in the foreword, simply prevents prisoners from engaging in frivolous lawsuits. But, as Mumia points out, it is a pointed attack on the capacity of prisoners to use the law itself. It is not about frivolity at all; it is about taking away from prisoners one of the only instruments that they’ve been able to develop to challenge the whole system. So we can’t assume that under the Clinton administration the PLRA was passed and that put prison lawsuits to rest. It’s important for those of us on the outside to support the rights of prisoners to use the law to resist the violence of the state.

M.O.I. JR: Again to quote you, you say in the foreword of “Jailhouse Lawyer”: “The way he situates the PLRA historically - as an inheritance of the Black Codes, which were themselves descended from the slave codes - allows us to recognize the extent to which historical memories of slavery and racism are inscribed in the very structures of the prison system and have helped to produce the prison-industrial-complex.”

Can you discuss the importance of Mumia making this connection in “Jailhouse Lawyers”?

Angela: Well, this is one of the things that I really love about Mumia; he knows how to make these historical connections. He makes connections with what might appear to be very disparate and different kinds of phenomena. For example, he points out that the PLRA was passed at the same time as the disestablishment of the welfare system and that there is a connection between preventing women primarily from having access to safety nets for their families and this assault on prisoners being able to defend themselves.

So I really like the way that he makes those connections with slavery. I think of the prison system today in this country - and especially the system of capital punishment - I think of it as a historical memory of slavery, as a palpable inheritance of slavery. And, as a matter of fact, the existence of those systems provides us with real evidence of the fact that slavery was not fully abolished. So I like the way in which he can show us the similarities between the Black Codes that were produced in the aftermath of slavery to basically replicate the system of slavery after slavery was allegedly abolished. And the PLRA serves a similar contemporary purpose.

It’s important for those of us on the outside to support the rights of prisoners to use the law to resist the violence of the state.

M.O.I. JR: Again, you write in “Jailhouse Lawyers,” in the last sentence, “He (Mumia) allows us to reflect upon the fact that transformational possibilities often emerge where we least expect them.” Why did you end your foreword with that statement in this book?

Angela: Well, you know, because people don’t usually think of prisoners in general as defending democracy. They think of the prison as the underside, the underbelly, of democracy, as the place where you send people who no longer have the right to be citizens.

But I think that what Mumia does - he manages to portray jailhouse lawyers in such a way as to persuade us, regardless of what our political persuasions might be, that jailhouse lawyers have been, in a sense, on the front line of the defense of democracy. I’m not talking about capitalist democracy. I’m not talking about neo-liberal democracy. I’m talking about the kind of democracy that would also tend to not only political equality, but racial equality, economic equality and sexual equality as well.

M.O.I. JR: What is the importance of us recognizing that Mumia is facing death right at this second, right when he released such an eloquent book on jailhouse lawyers? You also pointed out in this foreword that he rarely speaks of himself, so in the midst of this being a time of the first Black president of America, what does Mumia’s imprisonment, with all the flaws in his case, say about the real political climate in America?

Angela: Well, first of all, Mumia’s case is so important for us to get involved in. We have to save his life. We have to free Mumia. And yeah, as many people acknowledge, he rarely uses his amazing talent and capacities to advocate for himself. He’s always advocating for others, and that is all the more reason to be passionate advocates for him.

I have traveled in other parts of the world a great deal, and there are movements to free Mumia all over the world. Sometimes I feel very embarrassed that we have not managed to overcome the power of the Fraternal Order of Police, for example, and the other conservative forces that are determined to put Mumia to death.

But this book is yet another reason why we need to defend him and why we need to use whatever is available to us - whatever knowledge, whatever instruments are available to us - to guarantee that his life is saved and that he is eventually set free.

Email POCC Minister of Information JR, Bay View associate editor, at blockreportradio@gmail.com and visit www.blockreportradio.com.

by Peter Phillips

It’s hard to find a Black face on the SSU website. Men’s basketball star Ben Washington is a welcome exception. Racial inequality remains in the U.S. People of color continue to experience high rates of poverty, significant unemployment, police profiling and repressive incarceration. School segregation is a continuing concern among race scholars as well.

According to a new civil rights report published at UCLA, “Reviving the Goal of an Integrated Society: A 21st Century Challenge,” by Gary Orfield, schools in the U.S. are currently 44 percent non-white, and people of color are rapidly emerging as the majority of public school students. Latinos and Blacks are the two largest groups.

However, Black and Latino students attend schools more segregated today than during the civil rights era. Schools are still separate and not equal more than 50 years after the U.S. Supreme Court case, Brown v. Board of EducationBrown v. Board of Education. Orfield’s study shows that the most severe segregation in public schools is in the Western states, including California, not in the South as many people believe.

This new form of segregation is primarily based on how urban areas are geographically organized - as Cornel West so passionately describes - into vanilla suburbs and chocolate cities.

All the women’s basketball players pictured on the SSU website are white, as are all the students shown in sports photos, except one Asian woman tennis player. This is Lauren Redfield, who has been named All-CCAA twice in her career. Schools remain highly unequal, both in terms of money, and qualified teachers and curriculum. Unequal education leads to a diminished access to colleges and future jobs. Non-white schools are segregated by poverty as well as race. These “chocolate” low-income public schools are where most of the nation’s drop-outs occur, leading to large numbers of virtually unemployable young people of color struggling to survive in a very troubled economy.

There is a white people’s side of segregation as well. Diminished opportunity for students of color invariably creates greater privileges for whites. White privilege is a concept that is overtly difficult for many whites to accept.

Whites like to think of themselves as hard working and whatever they achieve is due to deserving personal efforts. In many cases this is in fact partly true: Hard work in college often pays off in many ways. What is difficult for many whites to accept is that geographical and structural racism still serves as a significant barrier for many students of color.

Whites often say racism is in the past, and we need not think about it today. Yet, inequality stares at us daily from the barrios, ghettos and behind prisons walls. Inequality continues in privileged universities as well.

An example of white privilege is how Sonoma State University in California (SSU) has recently achieved the status of having the whitest and likely the richest student population of any public university in the State of California. Research shows that beginning in the early 1990s, the SSU administration specifically sought to market the campus as a public ivy institution - offering an ivy-league experience at a state college price.

Part of this public ivy packaging was to advertise SSU as being in a destination wine country location with high physical and cultural amenities. These marketing efforts were principally designed to attract upper-income students to a “Falcon Crest”-like campus.

To achieve the desired outcome of becoming a wine-country public ivy SSU administration implemented a special admissions screening process that used higher SAT-GPA indexes than the rest of the California State University (CSU) system. According to Lani Guinier and Gerald Torres in “The Miner’s Canary,” high SAT scores correlate directly to both race and income with little relationship to actual success in college.

SSU also conducted recruitment at predominately white upper-income public and private high schools throughout the West Coast and Hawaii. The result was that SSU freshmen students with family incomes over $150,000 increased by 59 percent since 1994 and freshmen students from families below $50,000 declined by 21 percent (2007 dollars). The campus remained over three-quarters white during this 15-year period, while the rest of the CSU campuses significantly increased ethnic diversity.

We are at a time in society when a majority of the population has elected a Black president of the United States. This presidency is a hugely symbolic achievement for race relations in the U.S. We must not, however, ignore the continuing disadvantages for people of color and the resulting advantages gained by whites in our society.

Institutional policies and segregation contribute to continuing inequalities that require ongoing review and discussion. Efforts against racism must continue if we are to truly attain the civil rights goal of equal opportunity for all.

Peter Phillips is a professor of sociology at Sonoma State University. His recent research study, “Building a Public Ivy: Sonoma State University: 1994-2007,” is online at http://www.projectcensored.org/articles/story/building-a-public-ivy/.

Davey D interviews Mistah F.A.B. on the shooting deaths of Lovelle Mixon and four Oakland police officers After the funeral March 27 that filled the Oakland Coliseum with more than 20,000 cops, motorcycle officers escorted the body of Sgt. Mark Dunakin to its resting place in Tracy. Dunakin was notorious in North Oakland for wreaking havoc on Black Oaklanders. All the OPD officers killed March 21 lived outside Oakland. – Photo: Lance Iversen, SF Chronicle Davey D hanging here in Austin, Texas, and we have caught up with Mistah F.A.B. By now everybody knows the news that has taken place in the City of Oakland that is now national news. We’ve been around a lot of folks from around the country, from Jadakiss to Bundee, and we’re talking about the situation that has taken place with the four cops that have gotten killed on the eve of the Oscar Grant trial [i.e., the murder trial of former BART cop Johannes Mehserle, which was postponed].

We wanted to catch up with Mistah F.A.B. He’s one of the key voices of the Bay, at least nationally speaking, and we wanted to get your assessment, especially since you were part of the big showcase that was here last night with everybody who was on the bill, from the Bundees on down, and want to get your take on what people are saying and how you personally as an Oakland resident is feeling about this situation.

Mistah F.A.B.: Well, anytime where there’s a death situation, Davey, you don’t want to go out and say, well, they deserved it, because somebody lost a father and somebody lost a friend. And when you deal with death, nothing constitutes a reason for death. Like I don’t wish death on anyone and I don’t wish jail on anyone. Those are horrible things to face.

Unfortunately, when you live in times where it’s really war - and our city, for anybody who doesn’t know, the City of Oakland right now is under war; we’re like a civil war, and it’s us against the authorities - it’s unfortunate that if you get pulled over, you’re so afraid for your life that you’re going to react as someone would react in war.

I mean, man, if you’re hearing about these cops killing all these people, all these young brothers, and you get pulled over, you don’t know if you’re going to go to jail or if you’re going to die. So it’s a Catch 22, man, and it’s unfortunate because, like I say, more than one person lost their life here; more than two people lost their life here: The cops lost their lives and Brother Lovelle lost his life. That’s five deaths, man, as a result of 1) self defense and 2) being afraid for your life. So what do you do?

It’s a civil war, us against the authorities - if you get pulled over, you’re so afraid for your life that you’re going to react as someone would react in war.

Davey D: So let me ask you, one of the things people are saying is that it was wrong for people around the country - and we saw this last night when dead prez announced it and people cheered, well, I don’t know if they cheered at your spot, but they definitely cheered at the other spot - and some people are like, well, I don’t understand.

I mean when I talked to a cat from Philly, they had horror stories, and the people from Houston have horror stories. All these people come from communities where they have horror stories and it seems like you would think that after the tragedy of Oscar Grant or Annette Garcia or a Sean Bell or anybody that law enforcement would use that tragedy - the good people in law enforcement would use that tragedy - as a way to bridge that gap, strengthen the bonds with the community. And apparently that hasn’t happened. It seems that things have gotten worse.

Mistah F.A.B. Mistah F.A.B.: I’m not a guy that says all police officers are bad because there are some cops that really handle their obligations and their duty to their position. There are many cops that along the way they’ve spared me. There’s been times where they know you’re doing wrong but they’re like, “Get outta here, man; it’s bigger than that.” So all cops aren’t bad.

And, like they said, when they announced it, people cheered, like, “Fuck the cops!” “Kill ‘em!” “Kill the cops!” “Kill the pigs!” And that’s not going to settle anything. What that’s going to do is the cops hear - just like we talk, they talk: “So that’s how y’all feel? All right, we’re going to get your ass back!”

It’s war, man. It’s really gang war all over America, all over the world. In Philly, Houston, New York, cops need to realize the only way that this is going to stop is if they step up and take the initiative to say, OK, we’re wrong; we’ve done wrong things. How can we mend these relationships?

How can we sit down and come into the community and make a peace? And if there is no possible way to make a peace, let us admit our faults. Therefore, the people won’t feel like, “Oh, man, I’m getting pulled over.”

A random traffic stop is life or death now. Why does it feel like that, like you don’t even want to stop. So you got a high speed chase, you risk somebody else’s life, you pull over, you shoot a cop: That’s your life. You can’t win. People are blaming the people like they’re stupid for doing that. Why are they doing that? That’s some ignorant asshole wanting to shoot a cop. But no, they’re not.

That’s somebody who’s scared for his life. All over the country, all over the world, they’re afraid for their lives. People of authority are taking advantage of their authority and the good cops aren’t taking the initiative to step up and say, “We don’t support that.” They’re not saying: “Hold on! We’re not like that. All of us aren’t like that.”

A random traffic stop is life or death now. You don’t even want to stop. So you got a high speed chase, you risk somebody else’s life, you pull over, you shoot a cop: That’s your life. You can’t win.

Davey D: That’s something that was talked about last night and the question was asked - we were talking with some brothers off the record because they didn’t want to go on, and that just goes to show you there were folks that were here that were afraid to go on because of past situations and they don’t want to be on record - but they were asking, what was the reaction of the police after Oscar Grant? Did anybody send his mom a flower? Cards? Did anybody hold a press conference to say this is a tragedy? You didn’t see none of that.

Dude broke it down: He said they see us as inhuman. If they see us as inhuman, why should we not see them as inhuman?

Mistah F.A.B.: I don’t see a problem going on record because this is something I really stand firm and believe. I talked to many - I won’t put their name on record - but I talked to some Black officers in our community and I told them: Yo, you know, when this whole situation went down, I felt like you guys should have came forth like, “We’re not supporting that. We definitely don’t believe in the ideologies that some of these officers and these people of authority are enforcing. We want to make amends with the community.”

They see us as inhuman. If they see us as inhuman, why should we not see them as inhuman?

You have to realize, Davey, there are officers who have programs, like these summer programs where there are sports programs for these kids. Like I told one of them, I said, “Bro, you’re one of the main representatives to get kids into school and the initiative to get them into sports and community related type things so when it’s time for these kids to turn 18 and when they become grown, they’re an enemy? These same kids you played with in summer camp and baseball - they’re an enemy now?

“These are the kids that are dying. These are the grown men that were once in those programs. They aren’t your enemy. Don’t treat them like they’re your enemy. These are your offspring, these are kids that played in your camp.”

Davey D: What did these officers say when you broke it down to them like that?

Mistah F.A.B.: It was so humbling to see someone like me really tell them like that. Like one of the officers - I’m in the hood when I see him, and I flag him down and the homies were like, “Man, what you doing?” I’m like, “Hold on, man; this is a homie. He’s a cool dude.” So I flag him down and he pulled over. He like, “F.A.B., what’s up, man?”

I’m like, “Man, why you don’t take a stand to that, dude? Why you didn’t say nothing about that?” He’s like, “F.A.B., man, it’s so many politics.” I said, “Listen, there comes a time when you have to make your own politics. You have to say it even if this is worth losing my job or worth losing whatever rank I have or public persona that people perceive me as.

Tensions have remained high since war in Oakland broke out at 2 a.m. on New Year’s when BART police murdered Oscar Grant. Here, during the first rebellion, on Jan. 7, young people taunt the cops by lying face down, assuming Oscar’s position when he was executed, in a pose that conveys the message, “We are all Oscar Grant.” – Photo: Dave Id, Indybay “What are you going to stand for? This could have been your kid that they killed. Are you going to stand for something or are you going to hide behind your position?”

And to a lot of these artists, a lot of these political figures, these athletes: “Stop hiding behind your position. People say, oh, let’s do it off the record. Why? Let’s put it on the record. Show us how you really feel. Show us what’s going on in your community. Or is it something that you’re not wanting to stand for?”

This is not saying I’m going to kill a cop when I see one. I’m not saying that, ‘cause I honestly do believe that there are cops out there that really do their job. But I’m not going to hide behind my position as a rapper and be afraid that if I get pulled over, they’re going to take this out on me because I represent for my people. If we don’t address the politics and the issues that the public needs to hear, then no one will ever be conscious of what’s really going on.

Davey D: That’s real talk. We’ve been talking with Mistah F.A.B. As we wrap up, we’re here in Austin, Texas, and for people who don’t know, yesterday when the news broke out here at the South by Southwest Music Conference, it reverberated all the way around. Dead prez got on the stage at two concerts and announced it, and in both the concert that I was at, where it was a mixed audience - Black, Brown, white, everybody - the audience cheered - cheered - and that says a lot.

At the concert that F.A.B. was at, same thing: Packed house cheered. And I guess this leads to my last question: With these sorts of relationships, there are two concerns that people have. One is people are speculating, OK, this is how you feel and it will really bring the heat and not just people in Oakland but in all cities where people may feel encouraged or some sort of satisfaction from this are going to catch heat.

But I’m not going to hide behind my position as a rapper and be afraid that if I get pulled over, they’re going to take this out on me because I represent for my people. If we don’t address the politics and the issues that the public needs to hear, then no one will ever be conscious of what’s really going on.

Last night we saw a heavy presence of police. I don’t know if it was because of the closing or whatever but also the question is, what are some of the solutions that we can put forth? What kinds of things should happen?

Mistah F.A.B.: The people must realize that death is not cool. I’m not telling y’all, “Yo, go kill a cop, man. Make your people happy.” It’s not about that. What is that settling?

But if slaves revolted and killed a slave owner, then the people who have been oppressed will feel some type of satisfaction, because for so long they have been getting treated with the injustices of these slave owners. The authorities act like they’re slave owners and they treat us inhuman. They treat us like we’re less than one-third of a man like we used to be when we first came to this country.

If we take a stand and we make examples of these slave owners, then the slave owners will realize, “Wait! Hold on! This ain’t right. Something ain’t right. Wait a minute and they must realize it’s something that they’re doing that raises the level, the intensity level, that forces us to revolt and rebel.

But if slaves revolted and killed a slave owner, then the people who have been oppressed will feel some type of satisfaction … The authorities act like they’re slave owners and they treat us inhuman.

The people must understand that I’m not saying continue to accept the injustices - no way! Put your foot down, stand firm on your decisions that you do make, but also be aware of the fact that this is someone else’s family. If they want to continue to act that way, whatever your decision, stand firm with it. But always try to look for the positive decision out of it. Don’t just always say, “Well, I’m gon’ kill him.”

Like last week, Davey, they just gave my brother 432 years. That’s serious. It’s so serious that it’s unbelievable. When you hear your brother say they just gave me 432 years, what I’m gon’ do? What you gon’ do? 432 years? It’s serious, Davey.

They’re making examples out of us, all because they can. We stand firm on our decision as we gather, as we organize in a worldwide brotherhood realizing that we’re not going to take this anymore.

But let’s come forth with our political leaders and let’s sit down with their authority leaders and let’s make up a solution. And if there’s no solution to be made, then the problem will persist. And it’s not like this problem has just started happening. This has been going on for years. But who’s going to step forward and say, “Let’s make this change, let’s try to do this.”

I have no problem going to sit down with the chief of police and say “Dog, let’s do this. Let’s do that.” And once the public sees someone of my social status and my relevance in the community and I’m bringing those guys that you’re turning your back on, those same guys that you’re racially profiling, that you’re pulling over, that are afraid for their lives, they’re on the front line and they’re willing to say, all right what we gon’ do?

That’s what must happen. So political leaders, community leaders and people of activism all over the country and all over the world must step forth to make a change for power, not a change of continuing the cycle of ignorance.

Davey D Davey D: We’ve been talking with Mistah F.A.B. We’re here in Austin, Texas. Davey D hanging out with you. I want to thank you, Mistah F.A.B., for taking time out, sharing your thoughts.

We want people to reflect on this, and let’s figure out how we can really flip this to our collective advantage and move forward. We’ve had the Oscar Grants, we’ve had the Sean Bells, the Annette Garcias, the Adolph Grimes - 12 shootings already at the start of this year. Something has got to change; otherwise, it’s going to be a very, very, very long, hot summer.

Email Davey D at mrdaveyd@aol.com and visit daveyd.com. Listen to Davey on Hard Knock Radio Monday-Friday at 4 p.m. on KPFA 94.1 FM or kpfa.org.

Hear this interview and another with M1 of dead prez, plus Beeda Weeda and J Stalin’s “Fuck the Police: We Ain’t Listening” and more conscious music from dead prez, Truth Universal, Mistah F.A.B. and Jennifer Johns. Much of this was broadcast on Hard Knock Radio March 23.

by Crystal Carter

Conflict Mediators Gregory Claybron, Mary Pon and Anita Nicolas give a peer education workshop on drug prevention at the annual Youth Are Resources Conference at Fort Mason in San Francisco. Though the popular program was a source of pride and passion at Thurgood Marshall Academic High School in Bayview Hunters Point, that is the only school that lost the program to budget cuts. The end of this school year will mark the one-year period since the 8-year-old Peer Resources program at Thurgood Marshall Academic High School was discontinued. In the past year, two students have been jailed, fewer interactions between ethnic groups were witnessed and administrators have yet to do anything about it.

Sharolyn Bautista, former student leader and organizer in the Peer Resources class, knows that the absence of this program is negative for the future students who could have benefitted from the lessons that the class provided. Not only did she use what she learned in class but also outside of school with her friends and family.

“The program was a place for us to connect regardless of race,” she said. “Communication is key and it’s better than being violent. I wish everyone would be exposed to this program because it would only make them better.”

San Francisco Peer Resources (Peers) is a program created in partnership with the San Francisco Unified School District and the San Francisco Education Fund, devoted to creating capable youth leaders who can be effective allies to their peers. It is a service that is extended to other schools in San Francisco as well.

Conflict mediators help their peers resolve disputes peacefully. Youth are also trained in conflict management and learn how to help their peers talk through and resolve conflicts before they escalate into physical violence. Peers is also geared to giving students leadership roles and preparing them for college and higher education.

After students and teachers found out that this class was to be cut they decided to come together. But a firm set of limits was placed on the concerned teachers and students when they decided to raise money to save the program.

Conflict mediators help their peers resolve disputes peacefully, to talk through and resolve conflicts before they escalate into physical violence. Peers is also geared to giving students leadership roles and preparing them for college.

Resident and poet mentor, Kirya Traber, 23, who spent a few months working with the students of TMAHS, remembers asking the students how they felt about “not being supported by their administrators.” She said that “by the end of the seventh period, not only had they drafted a letter to the principal, but they also made initial plans for a sit down meeting, a leafleting campaign and a potential protest.”

After the first meeting that included the principal of TMAHS, Guillermo Morales, in agreement with the executive director of the San Francisco Education Fund, Hugh Vasquez, a list of rules and guidelines were put into play.

“I apologize for and accept responsibility for any miscommunication that left other possibilities open and contributed to any confusion,” stated Brian Stanley, director of the Peer Resources program for all of the San Francisco Unified School District.

And since the statewide student, parent and teacher strikes that took place in opposition to the cuts at the beginning of the spring semester of 2008, there are still demands that have yet to be addressed. Amidst the $4.8 billion budget cut to education in the state of California last year, TMAHS is the only school that had its Peers program cut.

“The principal said if we could provide the funds for the coordinator position we could have the program,” said Mica Valdez, 33, former coordinator of the Peer Resource Center at TMAHS. “But then (Brian Stanley) changed his mind at the last minute. I was really let down and so were my students.”

A total of $79,542, roughly a teacher’s salary, had to be raised in order for TMAHS’ Peer Resource program to continue into the fall 2008 semester. How this figure was accounted for is questionable because, according to Peers, the school pays for half of the teacher’s salary and the San Francisco Education Fund pays for the other.

“There’s always a plan,” she said when referring to the policy of the school officials. “It’s not that we do not have the money. It’s just that we are not spending it right.”

One of the guidelines that was placed on the fundraiser stated, “All funds raised for Peer Resources must be (a) submitted to the San Francisco Education Fund and (b) must identify the San Francisco Education Fund as the fiscal agent.” In other words, it was not guaranteed that the money would go towards the preservation of their class.

“I am donating because I had a conflict mediation this year,” said Dominique Crutchfield, 18, TMAHS graduating senior, before the effort to raise money was stopped. “I was about to get in a fight with this Asian kid, but then Peer Resources helped me. So I know it’s a good program.”

On Sept. 15, 2007, during physical education class, a rubber ball hit a young girl and the teacher immediately blamed a student who was known as a troublemaker. He was sent to the office. Distraught at being wrongfully accused, the student did not want to speak to the dean or the principal.

“It is standard protocol to use resources such as Peer Resources and other mediation before bringing in the police,” said Valdez.

When the principal confronted the child in the hallway, the student said, “Back away! I do not want you to come near me because I am afraid of what I might do.” Disregarding the child’s wishes, the principal approached the child to grab him and the child pushed back and ran off the campus. Instead of notifying the parents, the principal called the police and the child was charged with assault.

Marcus Hicks, 17, who is a student conflict mediator and works to racially integrate students, says that some adults make the youth feel “jumpy.” Students think if they go to an adult, they’ll get in trouble. But when it’s peer-to-peer, students feel at ease and more willing to talk about whatever their problem is, he said.

TMAHS is in the Bayview District and mostly caters to African-American, Latino and Polynesian youth. Due to the socio-economic disadvantages of living in this area, this school relies on additional resources to support students with special needs.

“Many schools are going to suffer next year and there will likely be higher dropout rates and incarceration of youth of color,” said Valdez. “Equity and a child’s right to a good education is what is at stake here.”

The U.S. prison and jail population has reached a record high exceeding 2.3 million people, according to a new report by the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Rodney Robinson, 32, has been a mentor to incarcerated youth at the Youth Guidance Center in San Francisco since 2000. He believes that the only way to make a positive effect is to connect with the community.

“Teachers need to get involved in the students’ life not just at school but doing home visits as well,” he said. “You’d be amazed by how much the child appreciates that.”

Robinson went on to state that from his experience with the youth, he has realized their need to vent their frustrations to a trusting ear is imperative.

Mica Valdez, who is now pursuing graduate work, gave students statistics about the rate of young people of color who are currently being incarcerated. She made it a point for students at TMAHS to connect what they were learning in class and to understand it by connecting it back into the neighborhood in hopes that their ideas will make a difference.

“How are disenfranchised youth to compete in a global market if they are not given access to the educational tools that will allow them opportunities to be successful?” she asked.

Peer Resources Director Brian Stanley stated that the school anticipates rebuilding the program in either 2009 or 2010. While there are still Peer Resource programs at Martin Luther King Middle School and Willie Brown Academy in the Bayview, there has been no notice as of now when the program will be re-implemented at TMAHS.

“The faculty has not shown that they care about getting the program back,” said Hicks. “Some students took the program for granted and the teachers failed to realize that this program meant a lot to us.”

If you are interested in contributing to getting Peers back in Thurgood Marshall Academic High School, please contact Peers directly at (415) 920-5211.

Crystal N. Carter, a 2008 graduate of San Francisco State University, is a member of the Bay Area Black Journalists Association (BABJA). She writes for ColorLines Magazine and can be reached at ccarter6@gmail.com.

Lovelle Mixon - Oakland’s Incredible Black Hulk? - and the OPD blue wall of silence and corruption

Since her son and only child, Idriss Stelley, was murdered in a hail of police bullets on June 13, 2001, Mesha Irizarry has dedicated her life to sparing more mothers a life of agonizing grief. by mesha Monge-Irizarry

The delirious police melodrama version of what supposedly happened on March 21, 2009, when Lovelle Mixon ALLEGEDLY killed four cops in two separate incidents before being blasted away by OPD is fuller of holes than Swiss cheese and seriously reeks. Something is badly stinking in the kingdom of Oaktown.

1) Have you ever been subjected to a “traffic stop” in Oakland, California, of all places and at an alleged “crime ridden street corner”?

One cop approaches your car; while other(s) stay at a safe distance so as to eventually call for backup or cover their partner.

“Step out of the car, license and registration.” All the while, the cop’s hand is firmly holding the gun at his side, just to cover all bases.

You panic and try to speed off, the cop grabs your steering wheel through the car window, and the cop shoots you dead.

Or you reach for the glove compartment or under your car seat to grab your license and registration; you are assumed to “reach for a gun,” and the cop shoots you dead.

Or you comply too fast and make a “furtive move,” and the cop shoots you. The cop feared for his life; you dead.

RIP Brother Jody Mac Woodfox, 28, Oakland, 2008. RIP Brother Oliver “Big O” Lefiti, 35, San Francisco.

Or you just run for your life. Wrong move on the plantation of the “slave catchers,” the very origin of police departments in the US of A.

Long live surviving warriors Tyrelle Taylor, 18, shot four times by San Francisco PD, 2005, and Laronte Studesville, 15, Oakland, 2007, who committed the violent crime of pulling up his sagging pants while running from OPD, who “feared for their lives.”

2) A “desperate man afraid of going back to jail” does not CALMLY blast away two cops, execution style. A desperate man afraid to go back to jail jumps out, cusses and hollers, and starts shooting in a sweeping motion.

RIP Iraq veteran Hermano Michael Philip Dorado, 21, Salinas, 2008.

Or begs for his life: “Please don’t kill me! I live here!”

RIP Brother Asa Sullivan, 26, shot as many times as his age, six times in the face, by SFPD.

3) A “cleaner” does not take off on foot, without cover, for an ENTIRE BLOCK. If the cleaner is struck by a moment of … unprofessionalism or temporary insanity and sets off running, the surviving cop(s), enraged at their partner’s death, take a clean shot.

RIP Brother Marlon Ruff, 32, San Francisco, 2007.

4) A “cop killer” uses TWO DIFFERENT WEAPONS? in TWO SEPARATE SPREES? less than an hour apart? Someone slap me upside the head anytime now, please; my brain is misfiring.

Monster Black dude, on an incremental rampage, blindly shoots through a closet door, and cleans two more cops with precision shots to the head, and as the monster, true to his rap sheet., takes a heroic risk of blasting away his own sister, Enjoli Mixon, in the process for good measure.

5) “We are all Amadou Diallo, Sean Bell, Kathryn Johnston, Oscar Grant.” But the cops make sure we think twice … about wanting to feel that we are ALL “Incredible Black Hulk Lovelle Mixon”!

A meticulously crafted monster profile, punctuated with three mug shots, taken much earlier than at the current age of Lovelle at the time of his execution, is quickly drafted by OPD public relations and the corporate press, hardly hours after the killings:

• “long criminal history”;
• ALLEGED rape of a 12-year-old kid;
• an estranged wife;
• parole violations.

Another son stolen by police, another mother grieving: Lovelle Mixon’s mother, Athena (center), and wife, Amara (right), must bear not only his loss but his demonization. – Photo: Dave Id, Indybay Nothing is missing in terms of speedy, convenient demonization, so that only a handful of faithful to the struggle would dare claim, “We are all Lovelle Mixon!”

6) Then, almost instantly, the pressure applied on Lovelle’s grieving family gets too intense for words.

His parents publicly apologize to the families of the dead cops, and Caroline Mixon, Lovelle’s first cousin, makes am astounding statement at the “Oracle” - notice the allegory, almost evoking a canonization - stage of the cops’ funeral, contending that she LOVES the police, on whom the Oakland domestic violence shelter, where she is employed, heavily depends.

Lovelle’s family timidly and periodically cries out, “You know, he was no monster” - too little, too late.

7) A new “hero,” besides the four dead ones, is born: Officer Patrick Gonzalez, the racist, deranged assassin of young Brother Gary King Jr., 21, Oakland, Sept. 20, 2007, the very sinister character who previously murdered a Black teenager and permanently disabled another Black youngster, paraplegic for life.

Tragically, ALL stolen lives at the hands of Gonzalez were interracial Black youth with dreadlocks. What’s up with that? Gonzalez survives the “second shooting” and, instead of nursing his very superficial wounds, “courageously” attends to his agonizing colleagues.

It’s kill two birds with one stone time: Overcast the people’s awareness of Gonzalez as serial killer and waste another of them “brothers,” yet another negligible casualty of the War at Home.

8) Although many Justice for Oscar Grant Campaign activists and supporting organizations vehemently refuse to draw a parallel between Lovelle’s and Oscar’s shooting deaths, not to mix apples and oranges and potentially offset the legitimacy of Oscar Grant III Campaign, the people’s critical thinking is rapidly connecting the dots:

• The bar of Oscar’s wrongful death lawsuit filed by the Oscar Grant III family’s attorney, John Burris, has been raised to $50 million;

• 80,000 petitions are about to be gathered by a Bay Area interfaith coalition towards the recall of Oakland DA Tom Orloff, and activists are calling for the dismantling of Bay Area Rapid Transit Police, who are, incidentally, Homeland Security personnel to fend off the remote possibility of “terrorism” on BART, while a bill is moving through the legislature to establish civilian oversight of the BART police;

• and the movement to drop the charges against the Oakland 100, the protesters arrested during the “Oakland is burning” rebellions, is gaining formidable momentum.

Ouch, goes the “top brass.” My department, my White Fraternal Order, my mayor, my DA, my corporate constituencies are in deep trouble. Next “they” will demand INDEPENDENT police oversight. We’d better think of a way to crush that movement, pronto.

From “racist murderers” to “street warriors and heroes,” there is just one simple demagogic step for us to take. Lose some, win much.

Four sacrificial pigs vs. thousands of newly mesmerized lambs, through one day of madness and alleged sequel shooting rampage, and we are the “savior platoon” all over again, “protecting” and “serving” their dumb asses, so they’ll think.

Let’s pick one of them foul N*****s from our prison industrial complex. Let’s see … who’s the least likely to muster public empathy? Let’s see … surely there’s gotta be one of them born losers waiting to exhale his last breath with a bang or two without raising suspicion.

Yeah, Mixon! Brilliant!

Patrick Gonzalez and Tony Pirone, we promise you a rapid promotion! Johannes Mehserle, not to worry, Buddy! We’ll cover all your legal fees. We’ll get you out of that slump with flying colors and added stripes on your bloody sleeve!

To kill or not to kill? be killed or not be killed? That is NOT our question.

Lovelle Mixon, the Oaktown Incredible Black Hulk? Think again, “Blue Code of Silence” Monsters.

Reporter Mesha Monge Irizarry can be reached at ISARConelove@cs.com or by calling Idriss Stelley Action and Resource Center Law Enforcement Accountability Bilingual Spanish Hotline at (415) 595-8251. And visit http://mysite.verizon.net/vzeo9ewi/proudtobeblack1/id7.html and http://Groups.yahoo.com/group/Remember_Lovell_Mixon.

by Anne Bromley

Angela Davis came to KPFA recently to record an interview with Block Report Radio. – Photo: Adalia Charlottesville, Va. - Walking around the University of Virginia’s Academical Village, activist and philosopher Angela Davis remarked that the Lawn rooms seem as cramped as prison cells.

The feeling made her realize that Thomas Jefferson’s architecture compels the observer to think about his legacy, Davis said in her keynote address for the Carter G. Woodson Institute’s conference, “The Problem with Punishment: Race, Inequality and Justice,” held April 16 and 17.

The connection is no mere coincidence. The rooms on the Lawn provide student residents with the privacy to contemplate knowledge, while prison cells confine the prisoner to give him the privacy to penitently contemplate his crime.

The idea of the penitentiary emerged at the same time as the American Revolution, but it has proven a failed experiment in democracy and an institution of racial injustice when one in 100 Americans is behind bars and half of them are Black, she said.

Davis called for a new movement to abolish what she called “the prison-industrial complex” in the U.S., which has become the largest jailer in the world.

Violent people should be dealt with, she said, in the context of the reasons behind the violence and how it is perpetuated. “Simply dumping these people in prison only has the tendency to reproduce more violence,” she said.

The American-style penitentiary system is spreading internationally and having a devastating effect, she said, with prisons serving as receptacles for people who can no longer find a place in their societies.

This may be an auspicious moment in U.S. history to confront the prison crisis, marked in part by President Obama’s election and the economic crisis, she said.

Davis was one of about 30 scholars and others who participated in the multidisciplinary two-day symposium that aimed to contribute serious discussion to the growing national debate on the growth of the prison-industrial complex and racial disparities in the U.S.

In residency at U.Va. for the week, Davis spoke Thursday night to a packed house in Newcomb Hall Ballroom that included hundreds of students - some even traveling from Charlotte, N.C. - as well as faculty, conference participants and community members, including those who identified themselves as ex-convicts and ‘60s radicals during the question-and-answer period following her talk.

Davis and Deborah McDowell, director of the Woodson Institute, both mentioned that Jefferson designed not only his renowned buildings at the University and Monticello, but also an early penitentiary. He contracted architect Benjamin Latrobe to design the first prison in Virginia, with cells for solitary confinement.

Putting offenders in prison was considered a more enlightened idea than the less humane conditions and practices criminals were subjected to around the turn of the 19th century, Davis said.

The example of Jefferson’s legacy, she said, tells us “to be aware of the histories we inhabit.”

The prevalence of corporal punishment for actions that were considered crimes clashed with ideas for the new democracy. Because of slavery, however, the need for corporal punishment persisted, she said.

For example, Davis recounted what ex-slave and abolitionist Frederick Douglass told a British audience in London at the time: Although laws were written to sentence a white man to capital punishment only for the crime of murder, there were 70 crimes that could lead a Black man to his death.

“These are the historical roots we see today. The ideas were incorrect, but the early American government saw prisons as progressive, a move away from retribution,” said Davis, who was active in the Black Power Movement and spent time in jail in the early ‘70s, before being acquitted at trial.

“Prison was supposed to allow people to reform themselves. Incarceration turned out to be far more damaging to the psyche … and could not effect rehabilitation,” she said. “We have to undo past damage.

“Racism fuels the prison-industrial complex,” she said. “The vast disproportion of Black people makes it clear. … Black men are criminalized.”

Law enforcement surveillance determines who gets caught and who goes to prison, Davis explained. Many people commit acts that, if discovered, would result in prison sentences, but they are safe because the police don’t target their communities for surveillance.

‘Racism fuels the prison-industrial complex,’ said Angela Davis. ‘The vast disproportion of Black people makes it clear. … Black men are criminalized.’

The assumption, even among some African-Americans, that Black people have a proclivity to criminal activities is part of the daily working of racism.

“The fear of free Black bodies is contained in the systems and strategies that criminalize racism,” Davis said.

She advocated for more productive modes of addressing people who do harm to others and their communities.

‘The fear of free Black bodies is contained in the systems and strategies that criminalize racism,’ Angela Davis said.

“When we think of 2.3 million Americans being in prison on any given day, and all the resources required to sustain the system, why do we not mobilize to change this?” she asked.

It is because of the fear of confronting persistent racism and its history in the U.S., she said. “We are all infected.”

Davis pointed out there are no great disparities in drug use among the range of people and communities. Recently, law officers have shifted their surveillance to rural white people and, oddly enough, that has subjected them to the same form of racism to which Black men are subjected.

Law enforcement surveillance determines who gets caught and who goes to prison, Davis explained. Many people commit acts that, if discovered, would result in prison sentences, but they are safe because the police don’t target their communities for surveillance.

Americans must develop and negotiate social relations to be able to talk about racism without it being so uncomfortable, she said, adding that a justice system must be created that is not based on revenge, but rather is more restorative.

The political climate seems to be more hopeful, she said, lauding Virginia U.S. Sen. Jim Webb’s recent call for prison reform.

Anne Bromley is on the media relations staff at the University of Virginia - her beat: African-American Affairs. She can be reached at abromley@virginia.edu. This story first appeared at UVaToday.

Angela Davis: ‘Not another prison’

by Pepe Lozano

Chicago - Under the theme “Imagine Justice for All in 2009,” the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression (NAARPR) held its 36th anniversary and annual Human Rights Awards benefit here April 18. The event was held at the Lutheran School of Theology on the city’s South Side in the Hyde Park area.

Dr. Barbara Ransby, a professor in the African American Studies Department at the University of Illinois at Chicago, emceed the event.

“As activists, we’re always protesting what we’re against, but tonight we are celebrating people who are long distance runners in this struggle,” said Ransby. “Tonight we’re here to seek inspiration and highlight the fight to forge lasting change,” she said. Ransby also noted the historic election of President Barack Obama last November was a detrimental blow to racism in this country.

Legendary African American activist Angela Davis, a civil rights leader against the racist U.S. prison system and staunch advocate of ending the death penalty, was the program’s keynote speaker.

“The election of Obama was a millennium transformation, and we’re in a new historical conjunction in 2009,” noted Davis. “In a short period of time so much has changed,” she said.

Given the current economy, there is a very serious crisis erupting in the capitalist system, said Davis. “Many assume Obama is going to save capitalism, but a lot of us here have other ideas about changing the system,” said Davis.

Davis talked about the prison industrial complex and the role President Thomas Jefferson played in constructing the first penitentiary in Virginia.

“Penitentiaries were considered at that time the solution to barbaric forms of punishment,” she said. Founders of the prison system felt correction facilities were an outlet where people could reflect on their crimes, develop a relationship with God and become new, changed and reformed citizens in democratic life, said Davis.

“It’s obvious those hopes were not truly reflected,” noted Davis. “Instead we were given the institutions of prisons as an alternative to death and capital punishment,” she said.

Today the fight against the prison system is the same fight abolitionists fought against slavery 200 years ago, said Davis. “And there is a reason why we still have the prison industrial complex and it’s called racism,” she added.

Davis said the death penalty could be imposed on slaves for 70 different crimes, while whites could be put to death for only one crime - murder.

“Today many whites are also victims of the racist reality of capital punishment,” said Davis.

She noted that one out of 33 U.S. adults is under the direct control of the criminal justice system.

“Racism is directly responsible for the fact that the U.S. has become the great incarcerator and more people are incarcerated here than anywhere in the entire world,” said Davis. “And there is a vast over-representation of Blacks in the system.”

Davis acknowledged that President Obama identifies with Black freedom struggles, and that rightfully excites many activists. She said that legacy of Black radicalism has always been a struggle in some form against the state dating back to slavery.

‘Racism is directly responsible for the fact that the U.S. has become the great incarcerator and more people are incarcerated here than anywhere in the entire world,’ said Angela Davis. ‘And there is a vast over-representation of Blacks in the system.’

“So what happens when you have a Black person at the head of that state?” she asked. “It’s almost a contradiction although we have to recognize the new terrain,” said Davis.

Davis said people cannot sit back and think Obama is going to do all the work. Those who voted for him have to play an important role, especially young people, she said.

“As much as we are told today that racism has receded and that Obama’s election was the last major blow to the racial barrier, that simply isn’t true,” said Davis. “We cannot pretend to talk about racism today like it was back in the 1950s or 1960s,” she said.

“The institutions of racism have very long memories and even Blacks and Latinos continue to practice various forms of prejudice,” said Davis.

“The question of race is so essential to the history of this country,” she noted. “And working against the prison-industrial complex and the death penalty will help us to understand the markings and history of U.S. slavery,” she added.

“The fight for justice today is indivisible. Justice for one always means justice for all and it transcends all national and ethnic groups,” said Davis.

The issue of decriminalizing drugs and the question of violent acts especially when it comes to sentencing people to prison deserves more attention and analysis, noted Davis.

“Not another prison should be constructed in this country,” said Davis, “because the solution is not putting perpetrators behind bars. Sending people to jail does not help heal society’s problems.”

Davis added, “We need a system based on healing, not one that focuses on revenge.”

“If we are ever going to abolish the prison-industrial complex, then we need to begin to abolish the social and racial injustices of our educational system,” said Davis.

Davis came to national attention in 1969 when she was removed from her teaching position at UCLA as a result of her social activism and her membership in the Communist Party USA. In 1970, she was placed on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List on false charges of murder, kidnapping and conspiracy. During her 16-month incarceration, a massive international “Free Angela Davis” campaign was organized, leading to her acquittal in 1972.

Soon after, Davis became a tenured professor in the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz. In 1994 she was appointed presidential chair in African American and Feminist Studies at the University of California. She has since retired from the University of California, Santa Cruz, but continues to teach classes, working with graduate students and helping to build an activist presence on campus.

Human Rights awards were granted at the event to honorees whose work includes ending the death penalty, overturning wrongful convictions, the fight against racism and efforts to help victims of the prison-industrial complex. The honorees included Patricia Hill, executive director of the African American Police League; Jane Raley, senior staff attorney with the Northwestern Law School; Judith Stuart, an anti-prison activist; Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright, retired pastor with the Trinity United Church of Christ; and Karen Yarbrough, Illinois state representative.

The NAARPR works to fundamentally change the prison-industrial complex, including the mass executions of those on death row throughout the U.S. Fifty-three prisoners were executed in 12 states in 2006. There are more than 3,500 people on death row in the U.S., all of them poor and most of them African American or Latino, according to the NAARPR. Most countries have abolished the death penalty in law or practice, NAARPR leaders charge. The NAARPR has active chapters in Nevada, Kentucky and Illinois. For more information, go to www.naarpr.org.

Pepe Lozano is a Chicago-based journalist who writes for People’s Weekly World, where this story first appeared, and its blog. He can be reached at plozano@pww.org.

by Dave Id

Rapper and magazine publisher JT the Bigga Figga has been motivating the youth throughout Northern California to join the Caravans for Justice and come to Sacramento to confront their lawmakers with their demands for justice. On Wednesday, April 8, 15 buses and numerous carpools headed to Sacramento to demand that legislators begin to address the concerns of all the people of California in the laws they pass. Caravan for Justice II, building on the success and numbers of the first caravan, included residents from San Francisco, Oakland, Richmond, East Palo Alto, San Jose, Antioch, Modesto, Stockton and across Northern California.

This racially, ethnically and religiously diverse coalition came to Sacramento to demand changes in laws and policies that disproportionately and negatively effect people of color in California. Injustices confronted included Three Strikes, gang injunctions, parole and probation, voter disenfranchisement, the power of police and prison guard unions, the Police Bill of Rights and other aspects of the California prison industrial complex, which continues to grow while budgets for education and community services shrink.

Grassroots speakers of every color of the rainbow applied their eloquence to the issues of environmental racism and police terrorism too. They spoke with a power and passion that motivated the crowd to walk like warriors.

This video includes many of the speakers from the steps of the Capitol and ends with participants entering the Capitol building one by one.

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The Caravans for Justice are organized by the multi-faith Town Halls for Justice for Oscar Grant, now meeting weekly in seven cities in Northern California. As the numbers grow with each new caravan and participants become more familiar with Sacramento, some have also begun attending legislative hearings such as the one on Tuesday, April 14, regarding AB312 and BART’s civilian police oversight.

Caravan for Justice III is coming in May. Stay tuned.

Special thanks to the kind person who recorded the event so that this video could be shared here.

Caravan for Justice I video and related coverage can be found at http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/02/25/18573374.php.

Dave Id is a journalist and activist who has thoroughly documented the Justice for Oscar Grant Movement with vision, sensitivity and consummate expertise in prolific postings at www.indybay.org.

by Raider Nation Collective

Oscar Grant’s mother and family weep as they lead over a hundred people on a march through Hayward Feb. 27, on what would have been Oscar’s 23rd birthday. A rally in front of the Hayward City Hall followed, but no officials came out to show support – only the police, who severely harassed the marchers. Is Oscar’s life worth less than the four police officers killed March 21? – Photo: Bill Hackwell Oakland - We began discussing this on a day dripping with hypocrisy. Local Fox affiliate KTVU is among many television channels broadcasting live and in its entirety the funeral for four Oakland police officers who were killed in a pair of shooting incidents March 21. News anchors speak at length and with little regard to journalistic objectivity - a commodity which, dubious in general, disintegrates entirely in times such as these - about the lives of these “heroes,” these “angels,” and the families they leave behind. Trust funds for fatherless children are established, their existence trumpeted loudly at 6 and 11; one can only assume with such publicity that donations are rolling in. There is not a dry eye in the house, it would appear: The “community” has rallied around its fallen saviors.

Or so initial press coverage would have us believe. But while the press was on the streets pushing the message of unity in mourning, live shots from the scene found somber and serious reporters disrupted by words and gestures suggesting little sympathy for the police, and reports emerged - notably in the New York Times - that bystanders had been mocking and taunting police after the shooting.

When the local Uhuru House hosted a vigil not for the fallen police but for the other victims, Lovelle Mixon and his family, the press was forced to abandon its tune of unity, deploying instead outrage and shocked disbelief - especially by Bill O’Reilly - only to later realize that such sympathy was rather widespread and worthy of discussion.

Liberal hypocrisy

The hypocrisy should be clear, but for some reason it has gone largely unmentioned, with those suggesting anything of the sort booed and hissed into anguished silence. Any and all mentioning, however quietly, the name “Oscar Grant,” with reference to the young Black man murdered in cold blood by BART police in the first hours of the New Year, have been made to regret it, but it is Grant above all others whose case shows this hypocrisy in all its clarity.

Jack Bryson, father of two of Oscar Grant’s closest friends, who were with him on the BART platform when he was executed, spoke March 4 at the Independent Public Tribunal to Investigate the Killing of Oscar Grant held by BAMN (By Any Means Necessary) at Allen Temple Baptist Church in Oakland. Speaking passionately on a recent Block Report to Minister of Information JR, he said regarding the official response to Oscar’s execution: “They act like Oscar didn’t matter. But Oscar does matter.” – Photo: Dave Id, Indybay After all, Grant was not deemed a “hero” or an “angel” by the mainstream press when he was gunned down by BART Officer Johannes Mehserle, and despite all of the outrage at the shooting, liberal or otherwise, we have seen how the press and local officials were bending over backwards to justify or at least understand Mehserle’s actions. Oscar Grant’s funeral was not carried live on local television, and what meager trust fund was established for Grant’s daughter exists thanks to a small group of sympathizers, most in the local Black religious community, and not thanks to the state, the media or BART.

This hypocrisy began with Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums, whose rapid reaction to the deaths of the four police speaks volumes in and of itself, since Dellums’ own week-long silence following Oscar Grant’s killing played a role in sparking the Jan. 7 rebellion. In this case, however, Dellums was on television within a few hours preaching the inherent equality of all human life.

But this was a magnificent display of liberal doublespeak, as Dellums’ declaration was meant to silence, not encourage, comparisons to Oscar Grant. But even this would not be enough to earn Dellums the support of the police union or the families, and the mayor was even refused permission to speak at the police funeral that had become the year’s must-attend political event, featuring such state political powerhouses as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Attorney General Jerry Brown, and Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer.

The reason remains unclear, but it is possible that even Dellums’ tepid sympathy for the life of Oscar Grant was too much for the families of the police, and it has even been suggested that Dellums’ equally tepid opposition to Blackwater-style privatized policing in East Oakland is to blame. However, since no other Black elected official was allowed to speak either, it seems that race was the deciding factor.

Kristian Williams, author of “Our Enemies in Blue” and “American Methods,” who was recently invited to give a public talk on the subject at the historic Continental Club in West Oakland, insisted that police funerals “have less to do with the grieving process of individual families and everything to do with legitimizing past and future police violence.” According to Williams, policing is the only occupation which regularly exaggerates its own dangerousness - which statistically comes in just below garbage collectors. But constant reference to the danger and heroism of policing has the effect of stifling any and all criticism: Police funerals as a public spectacle, according to Williams, “tell the public to shut up.” And shut up they have.

Farewell to the spineless left

Historically speaking, there is always a point at which the liberal and white left loses its nerve. As Ward Churchill demonstrates in his “Pacifism as Pathology,” it was a moment such as this one at which the white left abandoned the Black Panthers: “When [Black Panther] party cadres responded (as promised) by meeting the violence of repression with armed resistance, the bulk of their ‘principled’ white support evaporated. This horrifying retreat … left its members nakedly exposed to ‘surgical termination’ by special police units.”

Under the cover of pacifism, the spineless left paradoxically cleared the way for the violent extermination campaign that the Panthers would face. Certainly, the case of Lovelle Mixon and OPD is not the same as that of the Panthers, but the response on much of the left has been the same: silence. And this at a time when speaking and acting and questioning are more necessary than ever, when the police have been granted a political carte blanche to step-up attacks on the Black and Brown community in Oakland.

Friends and family expressed their love – remembering the good times – and their grief and anger at the rally for Lovelle Mixon on March 25, four days after his death. – Photo: Dave Id, Indybay Fearing association with a “cop killer” - a phrase which itself betrays the unequal value placed on different lives - or a “rapist” - an allegation the OPD’s PR machine was quick to deploy - fearing being inevitably painted as supporting Mixon’s actions, much of the local left has refused to even ask the most basic of questions. In what follows, we will address the most pressing of these.

A ‘routine stop’?

We recently had the opportunity to see some of OPD’s so-called “routine stops” alongside members of Oakland’s nascent Copwatch organization. We spoke with two young Black men on the 9800 block of MacArthur Boulevard who had been cuffed and detained for “matching the description” of subjects suspected to be in possession of a firearm. That is to say, they were young and Black and wearing black hoodies and jeans, just like everyone else around that night. Five minutes after Copwatchers arrived to document the stop, they were released.

We also observed more “routine stops” in the guise of illegal DUI checkpoints by California Highway Patrol running the full length of International Boulevard and targeting largely Latino men. Several tow trucks were lined up to line their pockets with another’s misfortune, as CHP officers would stop vehicles, run their licenses and registration, perform on-the-spot DUI tests and impound vehicles.

We spoke with a young woman who was abandoned on the street at 2 a.m. after officers arrested her sister-in-law, towed their car - with the keys to her apartment inside - and sped off after telling her they would get her a ride home.

Such are the status of “routine stops,” and in a country where racial profiling is all but accepted practice among police, we should be wary of any claim to “routine-ness.” The only thing “routine” about such stops is the harassment that the Black and Brown community suffers at the hands of the police every day.

What happened? Who was Mixon?

What little we know is this: It was at a “routine stop” that Mixon allegedly shot Officers Mark Dunakin and John Hege, before taking refuge in his sister’s nearby apartment. We also know that it was when the OPD SWAT team stormed into said apartment that Mixon, now allegedly armed with an AK-47, killed Daniel Sakai and Ervin Romans, wounding as well Patrick Gonzalez.

We also know, thanks to interviews with Mixon’s family, the circumstances he was facing at the time: released from prison after serving time for a felony and previous parole violation, unemployed and unable to find work as a felon and increasingly frustrated with his slim prospects for the future. According to his grandmother, equally frustrating was the shabby treatment Mixon received from his parole officer, who she claims had missed several appointments. Mixon, she says, had even volunteered to return briefly to prison if it would mean he could change parole officers.

In the face of such frustration, according to his grandmother, Mixon had himself missed a parole appointment, and so was facing a no-bail warrant and some jail time. Also, if it is true that he was carrying a gun, he would have been facing even more. These are the circumstances that Mixon faced when stopped, circumstances common to all too many under the regime of “Three Strikes” and the structure of policing in general. As Prisoners of Conscience Committee Minister of Information JR puts it: “To all the Three Strikes supporters, police sympathizers and prison industry businessmen, how does it feel when the rabbit has the gun? Welcome to East Oakland.”

Fast forward to his sister’s Enjoli’s apartment, where there is an additional question that needs to be asked: What was the SWAT team thinking when they stormed in, tossing stun grenades which injured 16-year-old Reynete Mixon in the process? What seems to have clearly been a bad decision in retrospect brings us back to where we started: Their fury at the news of dead police led them to risk the lives of many others rather than attempting to de-escalate. In all likelihood, the SWAT team expected to meet Mixon with the same handgun that had been used against Dunakin and Hege; in all likelihood, they expected to be at a tactical advantage in firepower terms, and to have an excuse to kill Mixon in response.

An occupying army? On April 4, Oscar Grant’s Uncle Bobby Johnson told the crowd that gathers at Olivet Missionary Baptist Church in Oakland every Saturday to strategize and fight for justice for Oscar Grant: “What I saw on television how the media up-played all of us Black folks, white folks supporting the officers who were killed – in a sense that was OK. But where I kind of twinged was, I didn’t feel Oscar got the same support.” Listen to his entire testimony here. – Photo and recording: Dave Id, Indybay Despite the efforts by the mainstream media, in close alliance with OPD, to paint a picture of a community unified in mourning four cops and equally unified in its hatred for Lovelle Mixon, this image of unity has been inevitably cracked, forcing a discussion of the very real divisions that exist in Oakland and the central position of the police as an instrument of that division. This position is best summarized in two words, drawn from the logic of colonialism: “occupying army.”

This certainly is the perception of many who were at the scene, telling police to “get the fuck out of East Oakland.” What is most striking is the fact that such spontaneous reactions by young Black men in East Oakland are, in point of fact, quite true, because here is something else the press isn’t saying: Not one of the officers killed lived in Oakland; all were residents of the suburbs.

It’s difficult to find out exactly what percentage of OPD actually live in the city - the Uhuru House puts the number at only 18 percent - but with salaries beginning at $87,000 and often exceeding $200,000 with overtime, we could assume that the percentage is very low. It’s difficult to argue with the claim that OPD functions as an occupying army, since even the younger members of the Black and Brown community know full well that they are, as Fanon defined the colonizer, “from elsewhere.”

If this recognition of the role played by OPD was clear in the “taunting” at the scene, it has also played out in the more generalized racial breakdown of responses to the deaths of the four officers. A friend who works in the Eastmont area, but a block or two from the shootings, recently told us:

“I have seen white co-workers speaking about it as if they were heroes. Even ones who were pissed and annoyed by cops were suddenly sympathetic. Social workers of color, on the other hand, were talking about the 40-ish Black youth killed in the last few years and how suddenly a few cops die - none of whom live here - and people act like their grandpa got shot.”

Rape and race?

As the press discourse of community outrage began to disintegrate, it now appears as though OPD found it necessary to reinforce its waning sympathy. To do so, the police turned to the most traditional of means: accusing a Black man of rape. These rape accusations have provided liberals and even so-called radicals a convenient excuse to distance themselves from the case of Lovelle Mixon, and the irony of the “discovery” of a “probable” (read: inconclusive) DNA link the day before the shootings provides a fulfilling belief that the shooting was tragically unnecessary as, supposedly, Mixon would have soon been arrested and taken off the streets. But it is here that we find the most disturbing of maneuvers by the police and the most infuriating silences on the left.

This is because few have felt the need to wonder aloud about this alleged “DNA evidence,” which has miraculously circumvented indictments and jury trials. This begs a clear question: was Lovelle Mixon guilty until proven innocent? Even if there was “DNA evidence,” most in our society at least pretend to believe that the job of evaluating evidence belongs to the district attorney, judge and jury and not to the police and media. And it begs a further question: If OPD was so devoted to the safety of women in East Oakland, why were neighbors never notified that a serial rapist was possibly on the loose? Quite simply because OPD does not protect poor and marginalized women: The record speaks for itself.

One woman who attended the Uhuru vigil and rally last week describes her outrage and disgust at how white reporters treated the many women present at the march, essentially insinuating they were there in support of a rapist:

“The fact that many people were at the vigil to show support for Mixon’s family and community - who are largely women - did not cross any of the reporter’s minds … The serious issue of rape does not nullify the issue of a failed prison system. If we think historically, protection against sexual violence is a key reason often given to escalate the most racist and oppressive policing practices, yet violence against women continues unabated.

“We need to stand against violence against women and a racist police system equally and not let one get used as an excuse to justify the other. The Mixon hysteria is going to be used to put East Oakland, women and men, on police lockdown, and justice for the most vulnerable women who live there is NOT going to be a priority.”

On April 9, No Justice No BART took control of the BART board meeting, with speakers expressing strong opposition and anger at BART’s attempts to cover up the murder of Oscar Grant. Speaking here is Sophina Mesa, grandmother of Oscar’s 4-year-old daughter. – Photo: Dave Id, Indybay As Angela Davis reminds us, “In the history of the United States, the fraudulent rape charge stands out as one of the most formidable artifices invented by racism. The myth of the Black rapist has been methodically conjured up whenever recurrent waves of violence and terror against the Black community have required convincing justifications … [Black women] have also understood that they could not adequately resist the sexual abuses they suffered without simultaneously attacking the fraudulent rape charge as a pretext for lynching …

“In a society where male supremacy was all pervasive, men who were motivated by their duty to defend their women could be excused of any excesses they might commit.”

‘We need to stand against violence against women and a racist police system equally and not let one get used as an excuse to justify the other. The Mixon hysteria is going to be used to put East Oakland, women and men, on police lockdown, and justice for the most vulnerable women who live there is NOT going to be a priority.’

Painting Black men as inevitable rapists represents a historical response to the sublimated guilt of white society, a society which for more than a century participated in the systematic rape of enslaved women. This much was recognized in a chant at the Uhuru rally:

“Thomas Jefferson was a rapist! George Washington was a rapist! Let’s get that shit straight!”

Who were the officers?

This question certainly feels taboo in a context in which the press refers openly to the “angels” that protect the community, who were in the words of a San Francisco Chronicle cover story - words cited verbatim from acting OPD Chief Howard Jordan - “Men of Peace.” But here again hypocrisy is palpable: We are told it is disrespectful to wonder aloud who the involved officers were, and yet racist slander directed at a dead man is somehow acceptable and expected. And while a couple of weeks ago, anyone would have told you that the OPD was a corrupt, inefficient force that routinely broke the law and brutalized city residents, such sentiment has faded into the background.

As (very limited) records from Oakland’s Citizens’ Police Review Board and the grassroots organization PUEBLO indicate, the officers involved are not the “angels” and “men of peace” that many have been suggesting. Officer Hege, for example, was listed in a 1995 CRPB complaint that involved breaking down a door less than 10 blocks from where Mixon was killed and assaulting a resident who was kneeling on the ground, leaving him with a detached retina, broken ribs, a concussion and missing teeth.

Officer Romans is among those named in a pending lawsuit (Docket No. C 00-004197 MJJ) for assault and battery, civil rights violations and conspiracy. Further, as JR puts it, Dunakin “long patrolled North Oakland, wreaking hell on young Black males,” and records indicate that he was implicated in a 1999 false arrest lawsuit which the city settled, and was more recently involved in the shady practice of towing cars under the city’s “sideshow ordinance.”

But perhaps even more interesting than the records of those officers who died is the record of the one who survived and who has been only communicating with the press through his lawyer - with good reason: Patrick Gonzalez. Those paying attention will recognize the name instantly, since his rap sheet is far longer than was Lovelle Mixon’s:

It was Gonzalez who murdered Gary King in 2007, shooting him in the back as he fled after being assaulted and repeatedly tased. King was suspected of being a “person of interest” in a case, nothing more, and his father suspects that the tasing would have killed him if the bullets didn’t. It was Gonzalez as well who shot another young Black man dead and left another paralyzed and in a wheelchair - all of these victims being under the age of 20.

But as a local community activist told me, “Everyone focuses on the shootings, but he did some messed up shit with his gun holstered, too.” Specifically, Gonzalez has had a long list of complaints against him, and in one notable incident he was accused of assaulting 18-year-old Andre Piazza in 2001. As the San Francisco Bay Guardian described the incident at the time:

“Piazza said that Officer Gonzales next turned to the front of Piazza’s body and ‘lifted and was looking under my sacks and stuff.’ Piazza confirmed that what he meant was that the officer lifted and felt around under his testicles … During the search, Piazza asked the officer if he was ‘fruity.’ Shortly thereafter, Gonzales reportedly smacked him in the face, dislocating his jaw. Docs in Highland Hospital had to put it back in place. The photos of Piazza taken in the ER aren’t pretty. Despite the photographic proof, charges against the cop were eventually dropped because of a lack of corroborating witnesses - it was Piazza’s word versus that of the cops.”

These are the men paraded as “angels” in times such as these.

***

At this year’s observance of Lil Bobby Hutton Day, the connection between Lil Bobby and Oscar Grant, two unarmed young Black men executed in cold blood by police in Oakland – one in 1968 and the other in 2009 – was clearly drawn by the selection of commemorative items placed on this table. – Photo: Dave Id, Indybay In short, there are those who are automatically guilty and those who are automatically innocent, those who are automatically heroes and, to use a term frequently applied to Lovelle Mixon in recent days, those who are automatically “monsters.” If the mainstream press was unwilling to make Oscar Grant a monster, it certainly did its part in digging up his police record and cultivating sympathy for Mehserle.

The rest is left to the public, and as a recent commenter on the San Francisco Chronicle website puts it: “Mixon and Grant could interchange lives and there would be no difference. The only difference in their end is that Grant was taken out (however accidental) before he got a chance to murder someone.” And this comment, which has since been removed, was more than the ranting of an individual: By the time I saw it, it had received 250 votes from readers, more than any other response to the article.

As Krea Gomez has shown,  even the Columbine shooters, who engaged in a premeditated massacre of fellow students, garnered more sympathy than has Lovelle Mixon, with a host of commentators struggling to grapple with what went wrong with these poor boys and to blame prescription drugs and bullying, while the very simple desire of someone like Lovelle Mixon to not spend one’s life in prison makes someone a “monster.” Interestingly, a similar effort to explain the inexplicable is currently being deployed to explain the massacre of immigrants in Binghamton, whose deaths have not led to their killer being labeled a “monster.”

To the inevitable accusation of disrespecting the dead, we must respond with a simple question: Where were you when Oscar Grant was murdered? There are some who are automatically respected in their death; there are others who are automatically disrespected and, in the case of Lovelle Mixon, demonized by a racist police department and press complicity. While some see moral equivalence, there was a difference between Grant and Mixon: The latter was able to foresee his impending death and fight back, so as to not meet Grant’s fate of catching a bullet in the back.

Raider Nation is a collective located in Oakland, California, and the Bay Area more generally. We can be reached at raidernationcollective@gmail.com.

by POCC Minister of Information JR

Sinista Z A lot of artists call themselves “political,” “revolutionary” and “conscious” artists but very few, including the internationally known ones, use their art to benefit people’s street campaigns, political and social struggles. In the Prisoners of Conscience Committee, the organization that I am of the minister of information of, we have the Code of Culture, where we ask artists to make their art come to some point of unity with the struggle and our organizing, concretely. See, it’s good if you say, “Free Mumia!” “Free AP!” “Free Imam Jamil!” and “Free Troy Davis!” on your record, but it is better if you are tied into the campaigns directly, so that these names and campaigns can get songs made about them, to really inform listeners to who these people we are fighting for are, and how we can help them.

That is what I respect most about East Bay Politix; that’s what they have done with the “Free the SF 8″ album. Every song is politically inspired by this bogus case where eight men are on trial for killing a San Francisco police officer in ‘71.

Two years after the SF 8 were indicted the trial is still underway, which makes an album like this that much more important for everybody to support that supports the eight - or anyone being locked up on phony charges. Why? Because a lot of times political cases attract the same crews of activists, but with an organizing tool like this album, the ears of younger people and other music lovers will be opened to finding out who the SF 8 are. Now that’s real political artistry.

I got a chance to sit down with my music-making comrade, so he could share some of the thoughts that went into making this project. Check it …

MOI JR: Can you talk a little bit about why you got involved in the Free the SF 8 campaign? What struck you about this case?

Sinista Z: We got involved with the Free the SF 8 case because we think that what the state is trying to do to these brothaz is wrong. The things that the police have already done to these brothaz, such as torturing them, was wrong. Pinning false charges on people has been going on far too long, especially when it comes to Black activists.

MOI JR: When did it get to the point when East Bay Politix decided to do an album about the SF 8 case?

Sinista Z: East Bay Politix is all about making music about our struggle as a people, and this case clearly shows that there is a war against our community. So we decided to do an album and comic strip about the case. Our interactions with the POCC taught us to tie our music in with campaigns, in the interests of the people.

MOI JR: Who does the album feature and what are the specific songs about?

Sinista Z: The album “Free the SF 8″ has songs about organizing to rebel against this system of hatred that seems to hate us especially. Produced by Sinista Z featuring East Bay Politix: Sinista Z, Down2earfth, Ras Ceylon with special guests Murda Ma, Richport the Savior, Baysho Bizness, Mommi Digital, Nemis B’Nai, The Fam and many others. “Free the SF 8″ will be released in early April.

MOI JR: What else is East Bay Politix working on?

Sinista Z: Also we are about to release the new East Bay Politix comic book, “Prepare 4 Conquest,” that should be coming out this summer. This album is about our resurrection and introduces the known world to Sinista Z and Down2earfth. You can hear the hot single off the upcoming “Prepare 4 Conquest” album called “Naturally Artificial” at myspace.com/sinistazofebp.

MOI JR: How do people get in touch with you?

Sinista Z: You can contact East Bay Politix at myspace.com/sinistazofebp or myspace.com/down2earfth1.

Email POCC Minister of Information JR, Bay View associate editor, at blockreportradio@gmail.com and visit www.blockreportradio.com.

T-Kash interviews Minister Christopher on KPFA’s Friday Night Vibe Young families are the heart of the movement, and Hunters Point entrepreneur JT the Bigga Figga and his family set an example, with their businesses, Mandatory Business Magazine and Get Low Records, and their activism. – Photo: Francisco Da Costa On KPFA’s Friday Night Vibe show the Friday before the latest Caravan for Justice set out to transform state government in Sacramento, host T-Kash’s guest was Minister Christopher Muhammad, who, as soon as he was introduced, dove right in to discuss what Black people and other people of color are demanding and why.

Minister Christopher Muhammad: We’ve been on the front lines trying our best to do all that we can to help save our people out of the clutches of those who would imprison them or watch them be murdered. We’re raising our voices and standing on behalf of our poor suffering brothers and sisters who it appears that nobody really cares about and, even worse, we don’t even really seem to care about ourselves.

T-Kash: When we talk about some of the issues in the community and people not caring about themselves or their community, there are times when people like to use that as a scapegoat: “You see these kids don’t care for each other, they don’t know what’s going on, there’s no hope. We shouldn’t even try with these people. Why are you even wasting your time?” Minister Christopher, what do you say to that?

People got on the bus in seven cities – San Francisco, Oakland, East Palo Alto, Richmond, Stockton, Modesto and Antioch – on April 8 in the Caravan for Justice II to demand justice from the lawmakers in Sacramento. – Photo: Francisco Da Costa Min. Christopher: Well, and that’s why I say “it appears,” because it’s not necessarily the case. But what is happening is our people are victims of social engineering, as those who rule have put us in a cycle that would appear to be self-destruction. But the level of violence that we are suffering from is being orchestrated at the highest levels of those who make policy.

And that’s why, Brother T-Kash, we’re calling all of the young brothers and sisters who are listening to this show: On April 8 we are going to Sacramento in what we call the Caravan for Justice.

What we’re finding is that after Oscar Grant’s murder by law enforcement, if you noticed, there was no outcry from politicians, from religious leaders, from community leaders. The only people who raised their voice were the youth. It was after the youth watched to see whether or not the political and the social or the justice system was going to do its job as related to the officer murdering that young man and the other officers standing by watching that execution. And if you’ll notice, nobody said anything.

These children from Muhammad University in San Francisco are a force for state government to reckon with – not only because they score higher than almost any students in the state but also because their school is at the fenceline with the Hunters Point Shipyard, where mega-developer Lennar has been poisoning them with toxic dust and they are not shy about demanding justice. – Photo: Francisco Da Costa But when four white officers were killed, everybody came out to make a statement about their outrage about the loss of life. But our position is, are you telling the Black community or the Brown community that those officers’ lives are worth more than Oscar Grant’s life?

Why was there no outcry when it came to Oscar Grant? This is because of the devaluation of Black life: A Black male, Brown male, man of color in this society doesn’t have value. And so what happens is that those people in Sacramento make laws called Three Strikes, laws such as Prop. 209, laws such as criminalizing youth - these laws were made in Sacramento.

But they make these policies, they make these laws and they don’t have input coming from the people they’re making these laws for, so we’re saying enough of this. No longer will you be allowed to sit in Sacramento and make laws that criminalize our people and you no longer hear from the people you’re talking about.

The mainstream media portrays the movement that the Caravan for Justice grew out of as Black only, but activists, young and old, from many communities are deeply involved. – Photo: Francisco Da Costa So we’re calling all of those who have been impacted, who have a brother in prison doing life, a cousin in prison doing life for nothing.

The young brother (Lovelle) Mixon was on parole and the parole system is so damaged that it took his dignity, as his family members told us. And when people can’t take it anymore, oft times you’ll find people doing things in retaliation or as a result of oppression. It causes people to begin to do things that are anti-social, but it’s a reaction to an unjust system, so we’ve got to challenge this.

We can no longer allow laws to be made that many of our young brothers are getting caught up in and not say anything to those elected officials who are making those laws. We want Gov. Schwarzenegger - we want to hear from him, not just about those four officers, but we need to hear from him on Oscar Grant. We need to hear from Jerry Brown on Oscar Grant.

Three years of fighting together for justice has forged many friendships across racial lines. – Photo: Francisco Da Costa We need to hear from congressmen, state senators and assemblymen. In fact, everybody should have taken a position on the murder of Oscar Grant, but they didn’t feel the need because nobody respects the life of Black and Brown young men. So we have to elevate their consciousness so that everybody understands that our life is as valuable as anybody else’s.

Gov. Schwarzenegger - we want to hear from him, not just about those four officers, but we need to hear from him on Oscar Grant. We need to hear from Jerry Brown on Oscar Grant.

T-Kash: Now, to add on to what you’re dealing with, what can the Bay Area hip hop community do to make sure that what you’re saying sticks to people and gets digested so that they can follow up and say, “We don’t know everything about this, but this affects us.” You’ve always been good at giving us advice with what it is we can do. You did it while we had the big show with you and Brother Paris. What are some of the things you can do this time around?

Min. Christopher: Well, the hip hop community has always, for the last decade or more, been the source of information for our young brothers and sisters - they’re not getting it in school, they’re not getting it in church. So what happens is the only place they can get information that they trust and respect comes from the hip hop artists. So the hip hop community becomes our CNN, becomes our MSNBC.

The Caravan for Justice is fun and there’s a seat on the bus waiting for you the next time it heads for Sacramento, where the lawmakers have never before been challenged by lobbyists like these. – Photo: Francisco Da Costa A brother whose music and whose poetry you were playing before I came on, he was saying things and putting things to a beat that were communicating wisdom and information and knowledge to our brothers and sisters and that’s what the hip hop community has to do. We have to get the information out. The corporate media has so locked down information flow that we must develop our own systems of communication very quickly.

The hip hop community needs to understand that the life it saves may be its own, because at any point as law enforcement is becoming more aggressive, as law enforcement is taking the posture of military occupation, as law enforcement begins to get more angry and desirous of retaliation for what they perceive as a loss, what happens is many of our young brothers will be targeted, including some hip hop artists. So we’ve got to find a way to heal it.

We need to rise up and organize ourselves so that we can become a political and social factor that has to be considered as laws are passed and as people we elect are developing policies. We’ve got to be in that debate or we in fact will be marginalized and then ultimately criminalized.

This is why the hip hop community has to use its networks - its social networks, its musical expression, all of that now has to be brought to bear on this movement and we’ve got to move very fast.

T-Kash: One of the things that you just got through talking about was police militarization in neighborhoods, and we’ve seen things - the so-called Taliban gang raid, the so-called Acorn gang raid, the so-called Deep Sea gang in Richmond and all these raids and all this urban terrorism talk going around. You’ve always from the beginning told us to watch out for that. Is that another topic that is going to be addressed in the Caravan for Justice on Wednesday and, if so, can you kind of give people an overview of that, because you’ve always consistently told us to watch for what is actually happening right now in the Bay Area.

It’s been three years since Minister Christopher Muhammad (center) began holding town hall meetings every Thursday in Hunters Point. Now there are weekly town halls in seven cities. – Photo: Francisco Da Costa Min. Christopher: Well again, as you’ve correctly stated, we’ve tried our best. As the desire and charge from the Honorable Louis Farrakhan said to me and us, “Warn your people. Arise and warn your people because there are things that they are planning. We can see now,” he says, “how many young brothers are being scooped up in these raids that are really designed to remove Black men wholesale from communities permanently.”

We have to understand that as the capitalist system begins to die, as you see it dying - President Obama is trying his best but it’s only so much stimulus he can come up with - the reality is that the economy of America is all but destroyed. And so as a result of that you’ve got a whole people who are not going to be just unemployed but unemployable.

And the only growth industry practically left in the United States is the prison industry. So a young brother on the street represents to the system $50,000 a year and if they can get you in prison for 25, 30, 40 years, you as an individual represent $4 or $5 million to the system, and if you’ve got hundreds of thousands of young brothers locked up starting at the age of 16 or 17 and matriculating through the prison system, then you’ve got a permanent slave who will represent billions of dollars to a system called the prison industrial complex.

So one of the tools of those who operate this complex is criminalization through the media by raising the stakes and portraying Black and Brown men as criminals and thugs and terrorists and hoodlums and gangbangers. In that way you now raise them in the eyes of the average person as a threat to society. Then it becomes easy for the law enforcement officials to come in and scoop all of these brothers up under the guise of fighting domestic terrorism.

A young brother on the street represents to the system $50,000 a year and if they can get you in prison for 25, 30, 40 years, you as an individual represent $4 or $5 million to the system. Then you’ve got a permanent slave who will represent billions of dollars to a system called the prison industrial complex.

And here’s the interesting thing about what happened in East Palo Alto. It was a group of young brothers, they called themselves Taliban, but they were like a hip hop group of people who would go to concerts and get everybody excited at hip hop concerts. What the government and what the police department did was they took this group and made them the Taliban Gang to connect them to what’s happening in Afghanistan. Then, according to what I read, 500 officers from ATF, FBI, DEA, sheriff, county, local all came together to scoop or arrest 40-some Black men.

No wonder so many hands went up when the crowd was asked whether they had loved ones in prison. When the Caravan for Justice brought hundreds of people of color to lobby their lawmakers, police surveillance was everywhere – on the Capitol roof, in helicopters and on the ground in plain clothes. – Photo: Francisco Da Costa Now keep in mind they said they were watching these young brothers, investigating them for 18 months. Our question is - they said there were murders, extortion, drug dealing, all of this - our question is, if you’ve been watching these young brothers for 18 months, how many murders did you observe? How many could you have prevented? How much drug sales did you observe? How many people did you allow to involve themselves in criminal activity and you sat back and watched? How many others came in the community and bought drugs and you sat back and watched?

So there appear to be certain law enforcement officials who allow criminal activity to take place and allow the activity to get to a certain point that when they finally come in to do something, now young men are not looking at a month or six months but are now looking at 25 years. And as one mother said to us recently, why would the police chief of the Palo Alto Police Department watch my son involve himself in some illegal activity, yet wait for 18 months when now the young man is looking at 24 years? You could have stopped this young man and we could have diverted him and got him into a program.

So it appears as if law enforcement is bent on this criminalization effort. As we’ve said to you and your audience before, it’s because they want the land. They want the land of Oakland, San Francisco, Richmond and Palo Alto - get the land, remove the people, criminalize the young brothers, put them brothers in prison for the rest of their lives.

Now you have a system that perpetuates itself. If you’re a prison guard, you’ll have employment for life. If you’re a policemen, you’ll have employment for life. Because you now have a perpetual system of slaves being bred into the criminal justice complex.

T-Kash: We want to talk about the environmental racism situation in the city of San Francisco that exists. Give us an update on that.

Min. Christopher: Well, yes, as you may know, our people who live in not just San Francisco but Richmond and Oakland, we’re being exposed to toxins that are literally killing our people. Not only are we being killed by police and racism and just systems in general but we’re also being destroyed by toxins that are in our community and as you may know the City of San Francisco along with wicked companies poisoned Black and Brown children in Hunters Point, and the City to this day has not done anything about it.

POWER was in the house! Central players from Day 1 in SLAM, Stop Lennar Action Movement, Alicia Schwartz (center) and Jaron Browne (right) of POWER (People Organized to Win Employment Rights) were the main brains behind Prop F that would have mandated 50 percent affordable housing. – Photo: Francisco Da Costa In fact I was on your radio station earlier today on the news dealing with this, because the mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsom, and his health department has yet - after three years of poisoning Black children - has yet to test these children to see what damage has been done by these exposures.

So since he’s running for governor, we felt we couldn’t just sit back and let this man run for governor and proclaim to be an environmentalist and somebody who cares about the health of children when you have an environmental racist catastrophe going on in San Francisco that you haven’t done anything about. So we’ve been trying to dialogue with him. And since he’s been having town hall meetings all over the state, people want to know what is he going to do about that issue.

So we have to fight on so many fronts because we’re under attack on so many fronts. And I’m hoping that the hip hop community and the young artists that are listening and that are in the studio will see this as their moment to stand up like men and women and let’s fight for the future of our community. Most of the young brothers have children. What is the future for your baby right now if we don’t change this reality, if we don’t fight for our people?

This is our time to fight. And so we want to build this movement and force the oppressor to do the right things because for too long they have gotten away literally with murder. Our peoples’ condition is getting worse and worse and nobody’s sounding the alarm on the condition of Black people and poor people so it’s on us now to give voice to the voiceless poor.

T-Kash: You mentioned that Gavin Newsom is running around in a pseudo-gubernatorial campaign. He’s registered as a Democrat. Some of us are under the false belief that the Bay Area is a progressive, completely progressive place and everybody loves everybody and it’s all Democratic and liberal and free. And then you have somebody like Gavin Newsom who is right here allowing this to happen. How do you get people to undo some of their political dogmas so they’ll be more prone to helping people and not so apprehensive?

Min. Christopher: Well, most people when they learn of what the truth is they stand up. The problem is you have a group of ours who are comfortable because they’ve sold out to the Democratic Party. And they’ve been playing plantation politics for so long we don’t know no other way. In the ‘60s we were fighting the system and fighting the man. Now anytime that you look around, Black people are into visions of leadership from the president on down.

So the problem is that most times when you have people in position it appears to be window-dressing because many of these brothers and sisters oft times are too afraid to own up to the real issues that impact our people. Many times even the preachers are even afraid to stand up. Look how many preachers called for candlelight vigils when the officers were slain in Oakland but some of these preachers wouldn’t even stand up and be seen when Oscar Grant was murdered. Well, what is this about?

This is why the hip hop generation young warriors have to speak for themselves. If others are too scared to speak for you and stand for you, then you stand for yourself. The movement has always been built on the backs of young brothers and sisters who rose up from the street to defend and stand for justice for our people.

The hip hop generation young warriors have to speak for themselves. The movement has always been built on the backs of young brothers and sisters who rose up from the street to defend and stand for justice for our people.

As it was then, so it is today. It’s going to require us to stop hanging out, stop doing the things that are self-destructive. We have too much to live for. I’m calling on the young brothers: STAND UP! You have nothing to lose but your chains - and your life if you’re not careful.

T-Kash’s show, Friday Night Vibe, can be heard every Friday except the last Friday of the month at midnight until 2 a.m. Saturday morning on KPFA 94.1 FM in Northern California. Minister Christopher Muhammad heads Mosque No. 26 at 5048 Third St. at Revere in Bayview Hunters Point, San Francisco. He also leads the movement that meets every Thursday, 7 p.m., at Grace Tabernacle Community Church, 1121 Oakdale at Ingalls, near the Hunters Point Shipyard, San Francisco. Learn more about the Caravan for Justice at www.caravanforjustice.com. Everyone is welcome and urged to attend the Thursday evening town hall meetings and the next Caravan for Justice.

Marritte Funches “You could hear a pin drop” when prisoner Marritte Funches’ letter was read at the April 14 hearing of the Nevada Board of Prison Commissioners, according to a report by Mercedes Maharis. Although testimony was limited to five minutes, the commissioners allowed all of Marritte’s letter to be read.

These are four of the shocking public comments submitted to the Prison Board on April 14; Marritte’s is last. Each one is different, yet they all say exactly the same thing: The lack of medical care is deplorable in the Nevada Department of Corrections and civil rights are being violated daily. Not only are basic rights guaranteed by the Constitution being trampled, all this occurs at a huge unnecessary expense to Nevada taxpayers.

Public Comment No. 1: Denial of medical care, other civil rights violations and NDOC’s use of the federal courts as a grievance process

“If we handle grievances and discipline in a balanced and fair manner, that eliminates lawsuits, which are expensive and time-consuming…As an inmate, you know you’re going to get a fair shot…” - Howard Skolnik

In late 2006, my husband was forced to file a federal civil rights lawsuit for denial of care for his serious medical needs, needs which had been diagnosed by NDOC’s own doctors. Magistrate Judge McQuaid in a Report and Recommendation to the court wrote:

“Defendants failed to act despite having knowledge of a substantial risk of serious harm. … Deliberate indifference to serious medical needs of prisoners constitutes the “unnecessary and wanton infliction of pain” proscribed by the Eighth Amendment. … Defendants have denied and delayed Plaintiff’s access to medical care by refusing to follow the suggested course of treatment for Plaintiff’s condition and, instead, merely providing Plaintiff with pain medication (although that is in dispute as well).”

In spite of Judge McQuaid’s strongly worded opinion and an unequivocal diagnosis by NDOC’s own doctors, my husband continues to suffer. The violation of his civil rights is worse than ever. As part of a campaign of retaliation, in fact, my entire family’s civil rights have been violated.

I sought help in resolving the withdrawal of my family’s visitation privileges several times. In addition, I submitted a public comment to the April 2008 BOP meeting; but, because no one at NDOC was willing to mediate the visitation issue, we were forced to file yet another civil rights lawsuit. The court allowed the case to proceed in March of this year. We are happy with the judge’s order, but we would prefer to just visit my husband; we haven’t seen him since 2005 and he has two new grandchildren born since that time.

Neither the medical case nor the visitation case ever needed to go to federal court. With oversight, arbitration or mediation, these issues should have been resolved quickly and easily.

Also, please consider that the following civil rights violations are ongoing and recurring. Administrative remedies have been exhausted on each one of them and each one of them, if not resolved, may end up being litigated in federal court. Not only is this immensely hard on my family, it is not fair to the hard working people of Nevada whose state and federal resources are being drained to pay for the complete lack of oversight of NDOC and the arbitrary decisions made by certain officials.

Denial of use of medically prescribed walker and/or cane - NDOC doctors prescribed a walker and/or cane, yet wardens have summarily rescinded that medical order.

Stopping of prescribed medication by a nurse - NDOC had my husband on pain medication for over a year. On his return to ESP (Ely State Prison) from NSP (Nevada State Prison), a nurse summarily discontinued his pain medication, causing further excruciating pain as well as “cold turkey” withdrawal from narcotic pain medication without even medical monitoring, in spite of the fact that the patient suffers from severe hypertension and blocked coronary arteries.

Confiscation of prescribed eye glasses - Patient’s eyeglasses were confiscated and all requests to see an eye doctor have been denied. This has caused excruciating headaches and eye pain.

A nurse’s rescinding of no-kneel order prescribed for severe degenerative disc disorder - A nurse summarily discontinued a no-kneel order that had been prescribed by NDOC doctors. The nurse claims that he discontinued the order because patient had “assaulted staff,” even though that never happened and the disciplinary charges for this event were dismissed.

Unauthorized taking of money from inmate’s account even after a restitution sanction has been lifted. Family services and my husband’s case worker refuse to discuss this issue; therefore NDOC is taking half of my husband’s money as restitution, even though the restitution sanction has been rescinded by Warden Greg Smith.

Native American prisoners in every state fought long and hard for recognition of their religious rights. Prisoners here are leaving the sweat lodge at San Quentin in California. - Photo: Nancy Mullane Confiscation of sage, the herb used by Native Americans for spiritual purposes - It is the first time in almost 25 years that his religious rights have been violated in such a way.

It is outrageous to the reasonable person not only that these gross civil rights violations continue unabated, but that the only recourse for inmates and their families is the over-burdened federal court system. Such unnecessary litigation places a financial strain on state and federal resources. We do not enjoy litigation. In fact, it is ruining our lives. We just want the violation of our rights to cease.

This pattern of retaliation and abuse must stop. My husband has been in the system for almost 25 years. He and his father were convicted of killing the man who raped their sister and daughter respectively. My father in law served 18 years and was released. His son, however, will pay with his life since his sentence was life without parole.

But his sentence should be the punishment: He should not be subjected to cruel and unusual punishment in the form of denial of medical care, summary denial of the use of prescribed medical devices or the basics of a civilized life for a disabled person. And the people of Nevada should not be punished by having to spend their hard-earned dollars to pay for litigation for issues that should and could be easily resolved by professionals acting as adults instead of as tantrum-throwing babies seeking retaliation.

I have made a good faith effort to attempt to mediate each of the above-mentioned issues with prison officials. Additionally, my husband has filed grievances, all to no avail. No one will resolve or even discuss these issues, leaving us, in the end, no alternative but to go to federal court yet again.

We do not want litigation; we do not want money from the state. We simply want the violations of our constitutional rights to cease.

I recently read an article where Mr. Skolnik says: “If we handle grievances and discipline in a balanced and fair manner, that eliminates lawsuits, which are expensive and time-consuming … As an inmate, you know you’re going to get a fair shot, which diminishes the likelihood of something boiling over.”

The administrative regulations are in place, federal law is in place, and Mr. Skolnik’s words express the right sentiment. It is my hope that the BOP commissioners will be able to assist my family in resolving these issues, so that my husband’s physical suffering can end and he can finally meet the grandchildren born since the imposition of this unconstitutional visiting sanction. It is also my hope that we can avoid further expensive and time-consuming litigation.

I am able and willing to provide documentation of every issue discussed herein.

Public Comment No. 2: Incarcerated people in Nevada are not receiving medical care

Dear Commission members and people present,

My name is Annabelle Parker. I live in The Netherlands, and I am a friend of an inmate in Nevada, Marritte Funches (#37050, Ely State Prison). Mr. Funches has serious health problems - chronic disuria, an enlarged prostate, severe kidney pain - and he has been having these health problems since 2004 or earlier. Left untreated they developed into severe kidney pain and possible cancer. In Dr. Noel’s report for the ACLU, Mr. Funches is mentioned on page 18 with these symptoms, which date from 2004.

Mr. Funches is being kept on “high risk potential” status in Ely State Prison, locked up 23 to 24 hours a day. He receives no diagnosis for his ailments and no treatment. This HRP status is not justified by any logic or backed up by any facts. Mr. Funches has as few points as needed to qualify for medium level security. Therefore, the HRP status he is under is illegal and is used to make him suffer more.

Cruel and unusual punishment is what I as a European and world citizen would call this. I am sure that the medical care Mr. Funches needs, had he been treated when the symptoms started, would not have been very expensive nor would the problems have been life threatening. But since nothing has been done to adequately diagnose what he is suffering from and what he needs to cure this, his ailments have become severe, with excruciating pain and potential kidney failure in view. And this in 2009, in a time when ample medical care exists to treat the disease that Mr. Funches is suffering from.

Due to Mr. Funches’ HRP status, doctors are not allowed to order certain tests, and currently he is not being seen by any outside doctors or specialists. There is only a nurse who sometimes gives a painkiller. Without the approval of the warden of ESP, who has continuously denied doctors’ recommendations, either directly or by simply refusing to remove Mr. Funches from HRP, there is no end in sight to the suffering of Mr. Funches.

Only upon an investigation of the medical care at ESP was Mr. Funches, along with a few other inmates, sent to High Desert State Prison some time ago, to be medically evaluated and treated. But his HRP status and specific notes written into his file by Warden E.K. McDaniel hindered access to medical care. On numerous occasions Mr. Funches’ medical appointments were cancelled simply due to his HRP status. Recommendations from Dr. Henff for Mr. Funches to be seen by an outside specialist were denied, now by Warden Dwight Neven, under the direction of E.K. McDaniel.

From Jan. 17 to Oct. 2, 2008, Mr. Funches was forced to languish and continue suffering from excruciating pain, as his symptoms got worse and worse. Warden Neven had the power to override E.K. McDaniel’s classification; so did Director of Prisons Howard Skolnik, both of whom Mr. Funches appealed to in this regard on several occasions. At one point, in June 2008, Dwight Neven was going to remove him from HRP after numerous prison staff at HDSP and Assistant Warden of Programs Jim Henson spoke up on his behalf, which would have allowed him to receive medical care and to program. But again, under E.K. McDaniel’s urging, Warden Neven decided not to take Mr. Funches off HRP. And so for another nine and a half months he was forced to languish in pain and misery. Numerous pleas to all of those above mentioned went ignored.

Northern Nevada Correctional Center Finally, after calls and emails from friends and family on the outside, demanding answers, Mr. Funches was transferred to Carson City on Oct. 2, 2008, to be diagnosed and treated by a specialist. But due to his HRP status, rather than being housed at the Regional Medical Facility at the Northern Nevada Correctional Center, as would normally take place because this is where the specialist was, he was housed at the Nevada State Prison nearby.

At NSP there was even more harassment. He was even given the psychotropic Elavil, even though it is known that this psychotropic makes disease of the urinary tract and prostate worse. And in his situation, the last thing he needed was a psychotropic. Mr. Funches was taken back to Ely State Prison in January of this year, still suffering excruciating pain from a potentially life-threatening illness if left untreated. And although Mr. Funches meets all the requirements for a medium security prison, Warden E.K. McDaniel refuses to take him off HRP. And with no legitimate explanation whatsoever.

Patrick Cavanaugh was left in his cell with gangrene to rot to death. I have read the Noel report and the order of the judge not to dismiss the case of the family of Mr. Patrick Cavanaugh, who was denied insulin as an insulin-dependent diabetic patient and who died from the results of this. I know that as long as this warden at ESP is in charge of prisoners, of human lives, there will be people held in his prison, under his charge, dying of treatable diseases and chronic diseases by denying them their vital medication.

And this is the same for the wardens and nurses, doctors (or so-called doctors) who also do not act upon the facts when an ill inmate is housed in their prisons. As the judge in the recent order of the case of Mr. Cavanaugh stated: “(A)s a matter of common sense, prisoners, as human beings, have the same bodies and suffer from the same medical conditions as the general population.”

Now, ladies and gentlemen of the Commission and people present, this is what I read on the Nevada DOC website, accessed March 29, 2009:

“The mission of the Medical Division of the Nevada Department of Corrections is:

“To provide quality, constitutionally mandated health care, using an efficient system of managed care, that is professional, humane and appropriate, and in support of the mission of the Nevada Department of Corrections.”

How, I ask you, is it humane to keep someone suffering in severe pain and not diagnose him and treat his disease? Is it appropriate? I think not. Does it support the mission of the NDOC? See the NDOC Mission Statement, accessed March 29, 2009:

“Protect the public by confining convicted felons according to the law, while keeping staff and inmates safe.”

So how is an ill inmate being kept safe from medical abuse and misuse of medicaments, in the absence of any diagnosis?

Let’s see the vision of NDOC:

“A Nevada with no more victims.”

So, no more victims, but what about the victims NDOC itself makes? Or those who work for NDOC?

What about the philosophy of NDOC?

“We will pursue our mission with integrity, act in a professional and ethical manner, be responsible for our actions, and raise the department to the highest standards.”

So if NDOC is responsible for their actions, why do those in charge let sick inmates die or leave them to suffer? How can we, the public, hold them to their responsibilities? Clearly the highest standards have by far not yet been reached. Is there any integrity? Is this professional? Is it ethical? This is the opposite of what I see is happening in Nevada’s prisons.

I myself wrote letters to the Office of the Inspector General on Jan. 23, 2009, for Mr. Funches and also a letter for Mr. R. Egberto (#20632), which I will add herewith. I received a reply from the office only about my letter for Mr. Egberto, which did not convince me that they would pursue the issues with the vision and philosophy of NDOC in their hearts. When people who support Mr. Funches call the warden or his secretary or Dr. Bannister, they always get the same reply: that there is nothing wrong with him - implying our friend is lying to his friends! - or that he gets adequate care: Tylenol against the pain, but the pain does not go away, and the symptoms surely will not go away!

The wardens and head of prisons may be proud of their budget that cuts costs for medical care, but the costs of medical care will definitely go up when the NDOC keeps mistreating those who are ill this way. It is inhumane, it costs human lives, it is unprofessional, unethical, and does not keep the inmates safe. It also costs money. This way of dealing with people has to change. Is it not a shame to be seen by society as inadequate and unprofessional? Or do the wardens and head of prisons know no shame?

Hoping that this Prison Commission has the courage to change the things mentioned above for the better of all, and requesting an independent overview of the prison system in Nevada, so that these missteps in medical care do not happen again, I remain,

Yours sincerely,

Annabelle Parker, The Netherlands

Literature

ACLU Class Action Complaint (2008), viewed on March 29, 2009

Dr. Noel’s Report, viewed on March 29, 2009

Order by the judge in the case of Patrick Cavanaugh

Public Comment No. 3: ‘His family is terrified for him’ - sister of an inmate

My brother was an inmate at the Stewart Conservatory. He was injured on the job in June of 2008. He was sent back to work and not properly checked out. In August because of his previous injury and continuing to work his back was more severely injured. He had Spina Equinus, a smashed spine. He also had some crushed nerves in his back. All he was given for pain was aspirin after he left the hospital. He developed sepsis from poor care, which turned to MRSA, the flesh eating disease. He was put in isolation for a month with no books, magazines or anything.

His continued pain has been ignored. He also has blood in his urine and he defecates blood. For this, he was told he would need another surgery. After an MRI and many letters written by his family to prison and state officials, a date for his surgery was set.

On April 9, 2009, he went for surgery, but after waking from the anesthesia, he was told he “did not need surgery,” that instead he needed another treatment. He was told there is only one place in Reno that gives this specific treatment and that Workers’ Compensation refused to pay for the treatment! He is told he will just continue to suffer. Spina Equinus, if left untreated, will leave him unable to walk or have any semblance of a normal life.

Because he was injured and is no longer able to work, he has lost good time - work time credits - which has set his release date back from Nov. 10, 2009, to March 10, 2010. Because of his deteriorating health, his family is terrified for him and believe if he does not get the proper attention he will not make it home.

I understand that he committed a crime and he is in prison, but this is very cruel and unusual punishment. Please remember that these are people also, not animals.

Public Comment No. 4: Inmates of Ely State Prison address the Nevada Board of Prison Commissioners

Esteemed board members, Mrs. Masto, Mr. Gibbons, Mr. Miller:

My name is Marritte Funches. I make this statement to you in severe pain and possibly from my own death bed after years of suffering needlessly from kidney and prostate problems, all the while enduring a long list of harassments. But all I’ve experienced and observed over the past 19 years here compels me to speak on behalf of everyone.

Immediately upon his arrival, E.K. McDaniel began implementing his lockdown-supermax ideology. He closed the school building, shut down the gym, locked down all but one of the general population units, and cut ‘most every positive program we had. The few remaining are now nothing more than a single workbook, which only call for you to answer a few questions alone in your cell in order to complete and receive a certificate. ESP was not constructed to be a supermax prison or even a lockdown prison. In order to implement this ideology, Warden McDaniel has had to manipulate conflicts and create policies which violate our human and civil rights on a daily basis.

This gloomy scene is inside Nevada State Prison, which NDOC Director Skolnik wants to tear down and replace, even though the prison population is down in Nevada and the budget needs cutting, not expanding. Marritte Funches was held in this prison for several months last year. Because it is impossible under these lockdown conditions for us all to receive the federally mandated five hours of fresh air and sunshine per week, Warden McDaniel has instituted an entire system of humiliations and punishments, which serve no other purpose than to dehumanize and discourage us from going outside. Going outside, fresh air, sunshine and exercise has been recognized by every court in the land to be vitally important to the good mental and physical health of a person.

Although we go outside alone with no other inmates and the enclosure is searched between each exercise period, we are forced to endure the humiliation of no less than three naked strip searches, two of which include anal cavity checks. In the cold weather months, when temperatures reach below freezing, we’re not allowed to wear gloves or any other extra clothing and there’s no inside area in which we can to exercise. We’re often forced to choose between going outside late at night, 1 or 2 a.m., or not at all. And to further discourage us, while we are outside, our cells are subject to being trashed for no reason.

We’re only allowed two showers per week, two weeks a month, and three per week the other two. Just going to the shower is made to be as humiliating as possible. We are forced to get down on our knees and to crawl backwards out the door while handcuffed, where leg irons are then applied. Once in the tiny shower stall, we’re forced to get down on our knees again, this time in whatever puddles of filth are left from all the men who showered before you that day.

Some of them are mentally ill or vindictive, so they have no restraint or they intentionally urinate etc. for whoever comes after them to kneel in. Some of these men have HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, hepatitus and staph infections. Suffice it to say, many of us refuse this humiliation and simply do not shower. But then we are not allowed to receive soap in our cell. Soap is only given during showers, at which time we’re allowed to bring a single small piece of soap (1 ½ x 1 inch) back to our cell, enough to wash your hands once or twice. This is all intentionally designed to keep us from wanting our five hours of fresh air and sunshine each week.

Early on in the McDaniel regime, in order to justify locking down the prison, he created hostile environments intentionally to cause violent conflicts, removing the convicts he knew could keep the peace and then mixing various gang members, known informants, pedophiles, mentally ill inmates: a sure recipe for conflict and one that that any person with common sense could see.

It is common now to see known enemies being forced to live in the same cell together. When cellmates can’t get along, requests for a cell change are often denied. Men who should not be living in a cell with anyone are threatened with harsh punishments if they don’t.

Warden McDaniel has instituted a policy among the inmates that punishes those who refuse to inform on each other or to participate in their own humiliation. And he rewards so called snitching, which is really just a tactic used by less scrupulous inmates to manipulate the system by fabricating lies to avoid punishment for their own infractions, obtain extra privileges, and to remove other inmates they don’t like. Men are regularly removed from the general population and found guilty of write ups based solely on the word of an unknown informant. This leads to many of these men doing more time in prison due to loss of good time credits and to loss of jobs and parole denials. And, as can be expected, it creates a lot of conflicts, including assaults, rapes and even murder. Warden McDaniel knows this, yet allows it to continue.

The horrors revealed in the declarations of state employees Barbara Walker and Lorraine Memory regarding the interference of Warden McDaniel in the medical care of ESP inmates is especially telling. Warden McDaniel has likewise encouraged a policy that rewards depravity and prejudice among his staff. Corrections officers are allowed to harass and even brutalize us with impunity, our complaints regularly dismissed or denied outright.

The few policies in place to protect what rights we do have are ignored. I myself have suffered many attacks, both physical and psychological, to this day for speaking out on behalf of our rights and seeking to expose the cruelties I’ve witnessed, such as the murder of a mentally ill man in 1999 known only as Edmonds at the hands of both corrections officers and medical staff. He was a young man in 2006 crying out for help as he revealed thoughts of suicide, only to be taunted by corrections officers as he was moved to the infirmary, and he somehow ended up dead the next day while on suicide watch.

Even our efforts to educate and keep ourselves sane under these conditions are criminalized. Simply sharing a book or a bowl of soup is illegal here. In fact any correctional officer with racist views or religious prejudice can take whatever books or literature they want from us under the guise of “gang activities.” Just recently literature on the Civil Rights Movement, Barack Obama and pro people politics by authors such as Alex Haley and Howard Zinn were held up by Warden McDaniel himself as gang materials and disposed of.

Esteemed board members, we realize there is an underbelly to this business and an appreciation among some for Warden McDaniel’s willingness to sacrifice our civil rights and even our lives to cut costs, but we wonder at the real cost. Has the board calculated the numerous monies it has and will continue to cost the state in legal fees, settlements and damage awards, along with the cost to “your” moral authority and standing in the community as families are destroyed by the loss of loved ones who have died needlessly due to lack of access to proper medical care, mental illness and suicides that could have been prevented? These are men who took their own lives rather than endure these conditions.

Then there is the cost of young men dehumanized and humiliated to the point there is only hate and frustration in their hearts. Then they are expected to re-enter society well adjusted and be able to function as productive citizens.

I submit to this board that many of us here want to change our lives, but this will never be allowed under the regime of E.K. McDaniel. Ely State Prison needs a new administration, one that will respect our rights as human beings and citizens of this country, rather than treat us as enemy combatants, criminalizing even our efforts to educate and improve ourselves as men.

In closing, I’d like the board to imagine for a moment that there is a great ship on the Pacific. The name of this ship is the Promise and Hope of America, a great ship indeed. But every so often during troubled waters, people fall from the ship and are swept out to sea. Now you have a chance to throw these people a life jacket or you can stand there, apathetic, and do nothing.

The fact is ESP is not a supermax prison. The majority of inmates here do not fall within the standard that calls for them to be locked down this way indefinitely. And as the majority of these men will return to society, it is our assertion here that to allow business to continue as usual would be a great disservice to the public interest.

We ask that ESP be run as it was built to be run as an open yard with regular access to the gym, school building, chapel and law library for all general population inmates with inmates in the segregation units receiving 8-12 man yard time, so everyone can get the necessary fresh air, sunshine and exercise to promote good mental and physical health.

We ask that mentally ill and protective custody inmates be sent to a facility better equipped to deal with their special needs or that in the least they be housed in separate units to keep the peace and order within the prison.

We ask that two full time medical doctors be employed to ensure all 1,000-plus inmates will have access to competent, quality and professional medical care that meets the national standard of care.

We ask that corrections officers undergo better training and that the training include a communications course that encourages humane and respectful treatment of the convicts.

And we ask that all rules, policies etc. already in place to ensure the fair and professional treatment of convicts be strictly enforced, including the discipline of staff misconduct, abuse of authority etc.

Marritte Funches
#37050
P.O. Box 1989
Ely, NV 89301

These comments were previously published by Make the Walls Transparent, where it was noted that they had been received via email. To learn more and get involved in winning justice for Nevada prisoners, visit that site, Nevada Prison Watch and Nevada Prisoner Voice.

by Mercedes Maharis

This is the face of abuse by the notorious “prisoncrats” of the Nevada Department of Corrections. Although only 7 percent of Nevadans are Black, 27 percent of Nevada’s prison population is Black. The April 14 hearing before the Nevada Prison Board was the most explosive meeting that I have ever been to. Twenty people testified in Las Vegas and 21, I’m told, in Carson City. In Las Vegas, the atmosphere was electric!

Although testimony was limited to five minutes each and many of us got cut off, we felt, before the five minutes had expired, parents and relatives of prisoners made very emotional statements. One woman appealed to the board to take care of a brother’s health problems at Ely and said to Nevada Department of Corrections Director Howard Skolnik words to the effect that she was going to be his biggest nightmare. Another complained about substandard dental care for her son.

A young woman whose son died years ago told his story. She wept along with members of the audience. A woman said she could not visit her son in Ely because they think she is a felon, but she is not. A mother said they should ask for food donations from groceries. The clothing issue came up - size 16 shoes for a son who wears 9 1/2?

A California nurse with nobody in NDOC (Nevada Department of Corrections) asked for compassion and better health care. Four Pahrump residents came to ask the governor to stop the building of a CCA prison in their town. A prisoner from NDOC years ago said that the correctional officers are overworked. Advocate Donald Hinton slammed the commissioners for not taking responsibility and action.

A mother in tears told of High Desert State Prison allowing only 50 visitors during visiting when Nevada prisoners need to keep family ties so badly and said families have to wait in line for an hour and a half to get in. Another mother asked to have all the wardens at Ely fired.

Two correctional officers in Las Vegas who are humane - one who has a lawsuit against the department himself - were there. They could not comment publicly, but they let me know afterwards that they are for firing Skolnik and E.K. McDaniel, the warden at Ely State Prison.

Perhaps the high point was Ralph Kenmore’s testimony. NDOC kept him years beyond his sentence, he said, presenting the documents to prove it. All his family died while he was in prison. “If I could have been given my earned time in the prison system, I could have saved my only son’s life.” He was brilliant - just released March 30, 2009!

Kim’s reading of Marritte Funches’ accounts of life at Ely State Prison was awesome. Tonja was able to present only a tiny portion of the inmate problems that had been reported to her, but she put 14 prisoners’ accounts on the record, she said. But our gal Kim in Las Vegas got to finish reading Marritte’s entire letter. It was also very emotional for everybody.

I got a retired attorney to read part of a letter from a woman in Holland but she only had time to cover the mission statement, which she thought was the most important. It confronts the commissioners with the fact that they are not doing their job of providing good health care for the prisoners. I personally put it in the hands of Deputy Secretary of State for Southern Nevada Robert E. Walsh, along with a copy of Maritte’s letter as well.

You could hear a pin drop as Kim read Marritte’s letter.

The audience clapped after several people’s testimony, including mine, for which I was grateful, but attendees in Carson City told us that the sound was turned off there during the clapping. Clapping and shouting out had never happened before, except once at a CURE meeting about 10 years ago when Director Jackie Crawford came to speak to parents and loved ones just after she came in as director. High hopes then, but little change ever occurred.

I think that the hearing went fabulously well. I believe that there were at least six people, maybe seven, who called for Skolnik’s firing - including me … well, I said we need new leadership in the director’s office and at Ely.

At its last meeting the Prison Board had discussed ousting Skolnik, but a vote did not come up. We were told the commissioners would discuss it after the public meeting.

So many people asked for Skonik’s and McDaniel’s firing, one would think that they will surely be gone. But Peggy Mace Johnson, former Nevada Democratic Party head, said that Commissioner Miller told her that Skolnik would remain until the legislative session closes on June 1. That’s all I know about Skolnik leaving. Surely McDaniel will go soon, too, because of the ACLU lawsuit in which he’s personally sued for the death of Patrick Cavanaugh, who was left in his cell to die of gangrene - to rot to death.

There was a beating involving two inmates and two officers on April 13, the night before the meeting at High Desert State Prison outside of Las Vegas. Channel 3, Las Vegas, reported a few details.

I showed photographs of past NDOC brutality to the commissioners. It was the perfect time to indicate the ongoing pattern of abuse and to point out that Nevada prisons are not accredited to professional standards of operations by the American Correctional Association! I asked for that at the legislature more than a decade ago.

Let’s keep our fingers crossed for victory that will push Skolnik and McDaniel out! Let positive change begin with accreditation to standards!

Here is my complete statement that I presented to the board … that I doubt they will ever read.

Statement by Mercedes Maharis presented April 14, 2009, to the Nevada Prison Board

TO: Nevada Board of Prison Commissioners
Attorney General Masto
Secretary of State Miller
Governor Gibbons

FROM: Mercedes Maharis, MA, MS, MA, Hereford, Ariz., for the record
Lifetime member of Citizens United for Rehabilitation of Errants (CURE), Washington, D.C.
Past director of Nevada CURE
Co-founder of the Spartacus Project
Co-author of the Spartacus Project Report

DATE: April 14, 2009

Good Afternoon,

We have become a nation of prisons, but how are we going to take care of our prisoners? We cannot.

What is the true cost of continued Nevada prisoner warehousing? It cannot be calculated.

Can a Nevada prison sentence become a death sentence? Yes, it can, and in many cases it has.

In the summer of 1971, the classic psychological Stanford Prison Experiment asked important questions: What happens when we put good people in an evil place? And does humanity win over evil, or does evil triumph?

The planned two-week investigation into the psychology of prison life had to be ended prematurely after only six days because of what the situation was doing to the college students who participated.

Guards became sadistic. Prisoners became withdrawn, depressed and showed signs of extreme stress and began behaving in pathological ways.

Here are four examples of sadistic, excessive force inside Nevada prisons that you may not have seen - worse by far than Abu Ghraib.

Prison officials have refused to remove the buckshot they had pumped into this prisoner’s back despite the migraine headaches it causes him. 1. Defenseless, beaten, still in prison, now with hepatitis C, suspecting reused needles in the medical department, since he was locked in a single cell for nearly two decades;

2. Defenseless, but shot in the back, unable to get prison medical employees to remove the buckshot causing severe migraine headaches. He currently has an open warrant in Florida. Would we be functional after such treatment?

As a prisoner in Nevada, Tony had no choice but extraction as a “cure” for tooth decay. 3. A victim. His only choice to relieve excruciating pain was dental extraction in a Nevada prison, but he was expected to reenter society with no front teeth and get a job. His fate? Unknown.

4. Unarmed, but clubbed mercilessly, out now, his fate also unknown.

On the other side of the equation, there is the issue of the older prisoners devouring the younger ones through domination by fear and sexual assault.

Of the 50 or more outsiders who saw the Stanford prison experiment, only one participant, a PhD brought in to do interviews, ever questioned its morality. The link of this ignored social research is on Nevada Prisoner Voice for your review.

Yet, Nevada prisons continue defying logic and common sense.

The system is broken, as Assemblyman Segerblom stated April 2, 2009, at the Nevada Corrections Committee meeting.

UNLV (University of Nevada Las Vegas) criminologist and author Randall G. Shelden has thrown in the towel. He wrote last week that he has come to believe that change will never come from inside the Nevada prison system.

On Dec. 5, 2000, I appeared before the Nevada Prison Commission to address the lack of prisoner medical treatment, excessive use of force and late parole release. But these issues continue today with no relief in sight.

After reviewing thousands of Nevada prisoner letters and legal documents over the years, we think that the current administration policy and operations are preventing the positive changes that can alter prisoners’ lives, officers’ lives, the families’ lives of both and community progress.

This is why new leadership is essential in the director’s office and at Ely State Prison immediately. Tomorrow may be too late. Buildings instead of drug programs: ineffective and unacceptable.

The enclosed April 13, 2009, New York Times editorial states, “The most effective programs provide inmates with high-quality treatment in prison and continue treatment when prisoners return to their communities.

“Such programs have been shown to reduce both drug use and recidivism. But good programs are rare, according to a report earlier this year in The Journal of the American Medical Association.”

We ask you to provide critical drug treatment and education to every Nevada prisoner who needs it for the benefit of all. If you will not, send prisoners home under house arrest to get treatment and education.

Timothy Reddman, while on death row at Ely State Prison, was viciously clubbed. Two hundred twenty-six Nevada prisoners died between Jan 1, 2000, and June 4, 2007. Up to date death information? We can’t get it. NDOC does not make it a priority. Mr. Reed, NDOC statistician, wrote me Jan. 22, 2009: “As for the death statistics, I don’t have a projected date. We are very busy with other projects.”

Not recording or revealing current prisoner deaths in prisons is unacceptable morally and reveals insensitivity to human life. Five more deaths have occurred at Ely alone since June 4, 2007. See Nevada Prisoner Voice for death information.

There were 545 Nevada prisoner lawsuits in federal courts on Feb. 19, 2009. The bulk of the work for the federal court in Reno is from Nevada prison inmates at Ely State Prison.

These 20 positive changes will avoid future litigation and create a safer, productive environment for the benefit of all:
• Humane Nevada prison conditions
• Effective medical, dental and mental health care in Nevada prisons
• Immediate food, clothing, shelter and exercise relief

The recent reported food and milk reduction - two packets of dried milk down to one at Ely, for example - is unacceptable. Withholding food is inhumane. We also brought this up to the Governor’s Committee on Corrections about a decade ago, but still there is no relief.

Accreditation to professional standards - we also requested that at the legislature a decade ago. No standards for facilities is disastrous for prisoners and staff.
• National Commission on Correctional Healthcare (NCCHC) Accreditation
• American Correctional Association Accreditation

Concerning prisoner jobs:
• Expansion of Nevada prison industries and agriculture
• Termination of discriminatory practices in the Nevada prison industries’ classification process
• Minimum wages for prison workers

Concerning confinement:
• Closure of all Nevada prison control units
• Termination of perpetual lockdown status for Ely State Prison, Ely, Nevada, with no due process regarding classification

NOTE: Administrative segregation is solitary confinement and highly destructive to the human psyche per expert psychiatrist Dr. Stuart Grassian’s 59 page report, “Psychiatric Effects of Solitary Confinement.” This report is also linked on the Nevada Prisoner Voice website.
• Removal of the civil justice system for Ely State Prison from White Pine County to Clark County, Nevada
• Termination of Mixed Classifications Policy and Practice to stop future sexual assault and rape
• Access to Nevada Department of Corrections’ Official Reports and Statistics
• Termination of Nevada prison censorship, including mail and retaliation for political activism
• Reinstatement of hardback books, typewriters, and regular pens for fair access to education and communications
• Introduction of personal netbooks as personal learning tools and to enable computer literacy
• Termination of mailroom personnel interference with U.S. mail
• The appointment of volunteer ombudsmen for each Nevada prison facility
• A Prison Monitor Corps of retired educators and business professionals whose duties include audit and oversight of the prison budget, time keeping, the grievance system

And lastly, the practice of confiscating family money without due process must be terminated. After reviewing Nevada Board of Prison Commissioners minutes from 1996 to the present day, we can find no record of the board ever discussing or carrying out this duty that NRS 209.382 mandates:

“The board shall take appropriate action to remedy any deficiencies that the State Health Officer reports after examination of medical, dental services, diet of offenders, sanitation and safety in institutions and facilities.” - NRS 209.382.

You must also reinstate the semi-annual health inspections, all but discontinued though they are still mandated by law. Otherwise, you will have failed to fulfill your jobs to protect the health and welfare of Nevada prisoners, wards of the state of Nevada.

If you will not do this, then you must send prisoners home today under house arrest and let their families find the health care that so many desperately need.

Prisoners are people, human beings with gifts and talents that can be uncovered with proper guidance under your wise supervision.

No to preventable suffering and deaths! No to prison officials’ medical malpractice! No to homicidal neglect! Yes to immediate positive change!

Commissioners, you have the power to see that Nevada prison officials and employees do no harm and that our prisoners return to society better than when they entered prison.

It is possible that the three of you could win the Nobel Peace Prize if you decide to empower our Nevada prisoners to succeed.

Mercedes Maharis MA MS MA, former director of Nevada CURE (Citizens United for Rehabilitation of Errants), can be reached at mmaharis@gmail.com. To learn more about her work, visit Nevada Prisoner Voice.