by JR Valrey

Will the Blue Wave taking over the country after this recent election cycle save captives at immigration concentration camps from being deported or held indefinitely?

Approximately a year ago, there was a major media circus around Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee “pledging” wholeheartedly to fight against ICE agents setting up a base on Coast Guard Island, which is connected to Oakland.

Days after her re-election, ICE agents have been swarming the streets of Oakland taking people captive while voters of color congratulate themselves for “creating a blue wave.”

Immigrants being picked up off the streets by unidentifiable masked men and held indefinitely in immigration concentration camps can clearly see through the fog of propaganda that no matter who wins, their conditions remain the same.

Whether we talk about the huge ICE budget, concentration camps, AI surveillance, police terrorism, lynchings of Black people in the U.S., forced deportations, genocide in Congo, Sudan, Haiti and Cuba, or local affordability, both parties represent the corporate class and not the working class, so there is hardly ever a time when the government puts resources into solving problems that affect average people.

In other words, we must create the solutions to the problems that we see. We cannot expect a political party or the government to look out for working-class Black communities.

Leandro Oliveira Xavier, aka “Leo,” is a young Black musician who immigrated from Brazil to the Bay Area a few years ago. While going through the process to become a legal resident, he was arrested and held captive in an immigration concentration camp. Then, after almost a year, he was eventually freed in mid-September ’26. Many Black people don’t believe that immigration is a Black issue. This is an account of Leo’s traumatic modern-day American horror story.

JR Valrey: Can you tell people where you were when you were captured/arrested? What was that ordeal like?

Leandro Oliveira Xavier: My arrest was an extremely traumatic experience that is difficult to forget. At that moment, I was at 630 Sansome St., San Francisco, CA 94111 <https://www.google.com/maps/search/630+Sansome+Street,+San+Francisco,+CA+94111?entry=gmail&source=g>.

Everything happened in a way that left me deeply frightened, not knowing what would happen to me or how long I would be away from my community and my freedom.

Being taken into immigration custody is a life-changing experience. Suddenly, you lose control over your own routine, you don’t know what will happen the next day and you live in fear and uncertainty. It’s an experience that affects not only the body but also emotional and psychological health.

JR Valrey: Where and how long were you held captive? What is currently going on with your case?

Leandro Oliveira Xavier: I was taken to Bakersfield, Mesa Verde, where I remained for nine months.

During that time, I lived with the anguish of not knowing when I could regain my freedom and return home. Being deprived of liberty, far from the people we love and without knowing what will happen to our future is extremely painful.

Currently, I am at home. With regard to my immigration case, I have been granted asylum. My freedom does not erase what I have lived through, nor does it mean that my struggle is over.

JR Valrey: What kind of conditions were you held in?

Leandro Oliveira Xavier: The conditions inside the detention center were horrific.

One of the hardest parts of this experience was dealing with the loss of freedom, the lack of privacy and the constant uncertainty. The emotional state of those detained also needs to be considered. Many people are separated from their children, partners, parents and family members without knowing when they will be reunited.

We need to remember that, regardless of someone’s immigration status, we are talking about human beings who deserve respect, dignity, adequate food, medical care and humane treatment.

JR Valrey: Many people in the U.S. think that immigration is an issue that does not affect Black people. Can you talk about the number of Black immigrants that you met in the immigration concentration camp?

Leandro Oliveira Xavier: This is one of the most important issues I would like to highlight in this interview.

Immigration is also a Black issue. Inside the detention center, I met several Black people of different nationalities and backgrounds. There were people from Haiti, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico.

Many people in the Black American community don’t realize how many Black immigrants are experiencing this reality. There are Africans, Haitians, Brazilians, Caribbeans and people from many other countries facing the immigration detention system.

The experience of being Black and an immigrant can bring a double vulnerability: the racism that already exists in society and the difficulties faced by those who do not have citizenship or permanent residency.

We need to broaden this conversation and recognize that the struggle of Black immigrants is also part of the broader struggle of the Black population for justice and equality.

JR Valrey: What is the one thing that you want Black people in this country to know most about how immigrants are being treated in these concentration camps?

Leandro Oliveira Xavier: I would like the Black community in the United States to understand that this also concerns them.

The history of the Black population in this country is marked by struggles against segregation, dehumanization, the separation of families and the denial of rights. Therefore, I believe there is a very important connection between the historical struggle of the Black American population and the struggle of Black immigrants.

We cannot allow someone’s origin, language, country of birth or immigration status to be used to strip them of their humanity.

People need to know that behind every detention number, there is a human being, a family, a story and interrupted dreams.

I am not asking people to agree with all immigration policies or to share the same history. I am asking them not to remain indifferent to human suffering.

Black solidarity needs to transcend borders. The pain of a Black immigrant cannot be invisible.

JR Valrey: How can people help you? How can people get more information online?

Leandro Oliveira Xavier: People can help by sharing my story, raising awareness of what happens inside immigration detention centers and supporting organizations that defend immigrants’ rights.

It is also important for the community to seek information, participate in solidarity initiatives and pressure political representatives for more humane immigration policies. Please follow my supporters, Community Movement Builders’ Oakland chapter (@cmb_oakland), ACUDIR – Alameda Community United in Defense of Immigrant Rights (@acudir_alamedacounty) and Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity (@im4humanintegrity).

Unfortunately, I am still unable to legally work. I would appreciate additional donations to support me in being able to sustain myself until I receive a legal work permit.

Those who wish to support can contribute to my GoFundMe (https://www.gofundme.com/f/free-leo-from-ice-detention) and follow me on social media (@leandro.oliiveeira).

Above all, I ask that people not forget the men and women who remain detained. My freedom is a reason for gratitude, but there are many other people who are still waiting for an opportunity to return to their families.

My final message is simple: Immigration is also a Black issue. Our humanity does not depend on a passport, nationality or immigration status. We all deserve dignity, respect, freedom and justice.

JR Valrey is a veteran journalist and Editor in Chief at the San Francisco Bay View. He can be reached at JR@sfbayview.com

The post What will Democrats do about immigrant concentration camps nationally? appeared first on San Francisco Bay View.

by Leah Harmony

The data trap we agree to every day

With the elusive and costly AI data centers on everybody’s minds these days, one thing absent from conversations is what they are actually for outside of artificial intelligence processes. For example, what data is AI processing? Because of its magnitude, we can surmise it has enormous value for both buyers and sellers. Then there is the loose notion that the data is about us, but to what extent?

In line with our ongoing coverage of all things tech, the SF Bay View newspaper took a deep dive into the who, what, where and how of data harvesting.

Perhaps the most unsettling information came with the understanding that surveillance, real-time location tracking and law enforcement analytics use data center infrastructure directly to function. The Fourth Amendment is supposed to protect you from unreasonable surveillance, but a massive commercial loophole has turned that protection into a bigger joke than it already was. However, this isn’t your average law enforcement overreach. This is a methodology once reserved for the NSA to profile terrorists, now available to your local cops through the apps you use every day. Whether you’re on Yelp looking for the best noodles in town or you’re swiping left on Tinder, you are feeding a global surveillance machine and swiping away your Fourth Amendment protection at the same time.

The legal loophole is called the Third-Party Doctrine, a 50-year-old law born during a 1976 robbery case where the Supreme Court ruled that if you “voluntarily” share info with a third party — like a bank or a phone company — you surrender your “reasonable expectation of privacy.”

In 1976, Justice Thurgood Marshall warned about this giving the government unchecked power to monitor “patterns of association.” He was outvoted. If he were here today, he’d be looked at as a prophet.

When you tap “Allow” on a location prompt, the law treats it as open season to allow the harvesting and utilization of that data. In other words, the only thing that can’t follow your every move is the Constitution.

Read the rest of our unsettling findings below. This is the data trap: a system where your most sensitive information is packaged and sold to benefit everyone except you.

What is being processed and stored:

Every time you download an app, invisible software is installed on your device. Whenever it runs, it harvests your phone’s exact GPS coordinates, timestamps and Mobile Advertising IDs (MAIDs). This creates Pattern of Life Profiles. By cross-referencing public deeds and rental records against where your device spends most of its time, they have your identity, home address, daily routines, religious attendance, medical visits and details about your personal relationships. From there, the intelligence can piece together much more. How much more? Well, there is a reason Pinterest knows when to show you a cheesecake recipe, and subsequently where to buy the ingredients, before you even knew your mom would be asking you to bring it for dessert.

Analysis by MIT researchers has proven that “anonymity” is a myth in this ecosystem: With just four approximate location data points, it is possible to identify 95% of individuals in a dataset of 1.5 million people.

At this point, we can all issue a silent apology to Edward Snowden.

Who and why

Commercial advertisers & retail brands

Why They Want It: Digital advertising shifted from placing ads on specific websites (like a fishing ad on a fishing blog) to tracking individual people everywhere they go. Advertisers want to know your exact routines so they can serve targeted ads at the precise moment you are near a store.

Why It’s Valuable: Location data provides offline attribution — the ability to prove whether an online ad actually caused a consumer to physically walk into a retail store. Knowing where you sleep, work, shop and socialize allows marketers to infer your income bracket, health status, brand loyalty and personal interests. This utility powers a $117 billion Real-Time Bidding (RTB) industry.

Commercial data brokers & aggregators

Why They Want It: Data brokers (like Predicio, Gravy Analytics and Near Intelligence) collect raw location pings through cheap software development kits (SDKs) embedded in everyday apps.

Why It’s Valuable: Location data is a high-margin, infinitely scalable digital asset. Once harvested, a single dataset costs virtually nothing to copy and can be resold dozens of times over to different corporate clients, hedge funds, defense contractors and law enforcement agencies.

Law enforcement & police departments

Why They Want It: Police use this data to bypass Fourth Amendment warrant requirements. Under the Third-Party Doctrine, courts treat app data as “voluntarily shared” by the user, meaning police can buy access to location histories without establishing probable cause, seeking a judge’s approval or notifying the phone owner.

Why It’s Valuable: It provides what Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts called “near-perfect surveillance” — acting like a 90-day historical ankle monitor on anyone in the country. Through “pattern of life analysis” (a profiling technique developed by the NSA), detectives can draw a box around any location, view every device that was present and unmask an “anonymous” device owner in minutes by analyzing where the phone sleeps overnight. Platforms like Fog Reveal sell this nationwide tracking power to small police departments for as little as $7,500 a year.

Defense contractors & foreign intelligence

Why They Want It: Military agencies, defense intelligence contractors and foreign actors use commercial ad-tech streams to track high-value targets, monitor foreign conflict zones and gather intelligence on government operations.

Why It’s Valuable: Smartphones do not stop broadcasting location pings when their owners enter sensitive facilities. Data leaks have revealed unencrypted, minute-by-minute location tracking for personnel inside Fort Bragg, the White House, the Kremlin and the Vatican. For intelligence agencies, buying commercial ad-tech data is far cheaper and less risky than deploying physical spies or wiretaps.

Hedge funds & financial institutions

Why They Want It: Wall Street firms buy aggregated foot-traffic data as “alternative data” to gain an unfair informational edge in financial markets.

Why It’s Valuable: By monitoring real-time foot traffic at retail chains, coffee shops, factories, oil refineries or airports, hedge funds can accurately predict quarterly earnings and trade stocks before companies publish their official financial reports.

Private media outlets & private investigators

Why They Want It: Private entities buy commercial location feeds to investigate, expose or blackmail specific individuals.

Why It’s Valuable: MIT researchers proved that just four location points are enough to uniquely identify 95% of individuals in an “anonymous” dataset. A real-world example occurred in 2021 when the media outlet The Pillar bought commercial app location data to track daily dating app usage from the office and home of a top Catholic Church official, forcing his immediate resignation.

When, how and how much:

The scale of this surveillance is nearly unfathomable. According to the ICCL, the average American’s location and behavior are exposed 747 times per day. Across the U.S., this data is broadcast 107 trillion times per year. This occurs via Real-Time Bidding (RTB). Every time an ad loads, your phone sends a “bid request” containing your location and ID to an ad exchange. In the time it takes for a camera flash to fire, your data is broadcast to thousands of companies. There are no technical measures to ensure that the “losing” bidders delete your data.

Furthermore, when users attempt to opt out, the industry employs fingerprinting to ensure the revenue stream remains uninterrupted. By computing identifiers through server-side code to evade on-device enforcement, vendors claim they can still reach over 95% of iOS users.

The asymmetric cost: You spend roughly $1,000 for a smartphone and $50 to $80 monthly for a data plan. Over two years, you pay approximately $2,200 to buy, power and maintain the very infrastructure used to monitor you. You are effectively subsidizing your own surveillance at a loss.

We’re not in the business of delivering strictly bad news. Getting all of our footprints out of the sand, and the wave back to the shore, may be difficult, but we put together an escape plan. This is subject to change as we learn more, but this is what we have for you right now.

The escape plan: Solutions to reclaim your privacy in levels

Level 1: Everyday hygiene

Revoke Permissions: Deny location access to any app that doesn’t strictly require it for a core function.

Private DNS: Configure your device to use DNS.adguard.com or NextDNS. This intercepts background tracker telemetry at the network level.

LNA Prompts: Pay attention to Chrome’s Local Network Access (LNA) prompts. These prevent sites from fingerprinting your router or attacking local devices.

Recognize Dark Patterns: Be wary of “Confirm Shaming” (e.g., “No, I prefer to pay full price”) used to trick you into opting into tracking.

Level 2: Intermediate technical defenses

Local Firewalls: Use RethinkDNS to block specific hostnames. If an app tries to send data to a known broker, RethinkDNS provides the “wrong address,” effectively killing the uplink.

Block Email Pixels: Use tools to strip tracking pixels from emails that record when and where you open messages.

Tracker-Free Migration: Switch to open-source alternatives from F-Droid (e.g., Librera FD instead of Google Play Books) that do not contain SDK harvesters.

Level 3: Advanced OS hardening

Migrate to GrapheneOS. It treats apps as “untrusted by default” and offers:

Network Toggle: Completely disable internet access for apps like calculators or flashlights. It even blocks “loopback” and DNS queries.

Storage Scopes: Apps only see the specific files you pick, preventing them from inventorying your entire digital life.

Sandboxed Google Play: Runs Google services as regular, unprivileged apps.

Sensor Toggles: When sensor permission is denied, GrapheneOS provides zeroed or randomized sensor data, defeating keystroke inference and gait analysis.

Level 4: Radical isolation

Faraday Bags: Use a physical RF-blocking sleeve like a Mission Darkness bag. Certified to MIL-STD 188-125, it stops all cellular, GPS and Wi-Fi pings by creating 100dB+ signal attenuation.

The “Dumb Phone“: Revert to a Nokia 3310 or a prepaid device paid for in cash. The ultimate defense is leaving the tracking device behind entirely during sensitive routines.

Who:

Lastly, if you believe in our government and the law, although this article isn’t a great cheerleader for those folks, the legal tide is beginning to turn, but slowly. In 2024, the Fifth Circuit ruled geofence warrants unconstitutional, and in June 2026, the Supreme Court finally labeled geofence warrants as a “search” under the Fourth Amendment. However, there is still no federal law requiring a warrant for the government to simply buy your data from a broker. Until that change comes, your phone remains a spy in your pocket — one that you are paying for the privilege of carrying.

This is America.

Leah Harmony is a journalist and Manager of Production at the San Francisco Bay View. She can be reached at leah@sfbayview.com.

The post We’re funding our own surveillance and exploitation appeared first on San Francisco Bay View.

by Gabriela Castillo

What a joy to be back! And for those who may be reading my words for the first time, my name is Gabriela Castillo. I’m a Cuban diplomat and second secretary at the Cuban Embassy in the United States. I’m also a Black woman, a mother and a Cuban who is deeply proud of her roots.

First, I want to give a heartfelt thank-you to the wonderful team at the San Francisco Bay View for welcoming me back and giving me this space to share my thoughts. After several interviews and conversations through this publication, I’m happy to be back, this time with a story that’s a little more personal. It happened more than a decade ago, but today it means something very different to me.

Back in 2014, when I was still a university student, the Semester at Sea academic and cultural exchange program returned to Cuba with a group of U.S. students. It was the first time in almost a decade that this kind of exchange had taken place.

I especially remember the day of the basketball game. I was sitting in one of the common areas at my university when a classmate came running up to me, full of excitement, and said: “Hey, let’s go to the stadium! A bunch of yumas just got here on a cruise ship, and they’re coming to play basketball!”

(Yumas is a very Cuban slang word we use to refer to Americans. No offense intended!)

And off we went.

What I remember isn’t just the game. I remember the noise, the laughter, the energy, the curiosity and how naturally we all ended up sharing that space. We were young people from two different countries, with different histories and realities, enjoying something as simple as a basketball game.

And yes, our Cuban university team won!

But looking back, more than 10 years later, I can honestly say the score was the least important part.

At the time, Cuba and the United States were beginning to experience a historic moment. After decades of confrontation, the Dec. 17, 2014, announcement opened a new chapter in relations between our two countries. There was talk of normalization, spaces for dialogue were reopening and opportunities for exchanges were beginning to grow. For those of us who were young at the time, meeting U.S. students, talking with them and sharing our experiences was one of the most direct ways to understand what was happening.

If someone had told me that day that, more than a decade later, we would look back with such nostalgia on something as simple as a basketball game between Cuban and U.S. students, I probably would have thought they were exaggerating.

How could we have imagined that something as natural as meeting, talking and spending time together could once again become so difficult?

The opening that began in 2014 showed that a different kind of relationship between Cuba and the United States was possible. The reopening of embassies, the expansion of academic and cultural exchanges, the return of direct flights and closer connections between different sectors of both societies created expectations that went far beyond political dialogue.

It didn’t mean our differences had suddenly disappeared. And it certainly didn’t mean either country had to give up its positions. It meant recognizing something pretty basic: We can disagree without turning those disagreements into permanent roadblocks to dialogue, cooperation and friendship between our peoples.

Unfortunately, that momentum began to unravel during Donald Trump’s first term. Restrictions piled up, opportunities became fewer and the relationship once again moved toward confrontation.

Since January 2026, the current Trump administration has taken things even further. The pressure is no longer limited to Cuba’s access to energy and financial resources. It also reaches third countries, companies, institutions and individuals who maintain ties with the island.

On Jan. 29, Trump signed Executive Order 14380, declaring Cuba an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to the national security and foreign policy of the United States. That’s quite a claim to make about a small neighboring country that has never attacked the United States and poses no military threat to it.

But the consequences of that order went far beyond the political statement. It opened the door to additional tariffs on products from countries that supply oil to Cuba, either directly or indirectly. In other words, the goal wasn’t just to put pressure on Cuba. It was also to send a warning to other countries: Doing business with the island could come at a price.

On May 1, Executive Order 14404 expanded the sanctions even further, giving the U.S. government greater power to target foreign individuals and companies doing business with Cuban entities in sectors such as energy, mining, finance and construction.

After that, the restrictions reached Cuban officials and companies, banks, businesses involved in oil supplies and strategic sectors such as nickel. Regulatory changes also created new obstacles to holding professional meetings and conferences in Cuba and to the financial operations of small Cuban private business owners.

The message is hard to miss: Maintaining economic, professional or institutional ties with Cuba is becoming an increasingly risky business, even for people who are not U.S. citizens and are not directly subject to Washington’s decisions.

So much for the principle that every country should be free to decide who it trades with, cooperates with and builds relationships with!

Now, beyond executive orders and government regulations, let’s think about what these measures actually mean for people.

Think about a professor who can no longer organize an academic exchange with Cuban colleagues. A group of students who lose the chance to experience Cuba firsthand. A researcher who runs into new roadblocks while trying to carry out a joint project. A small business owner who loses access to a banking channel that could help keep their business going.

We’re not just talking about distant political decisions. We’re talking about real opportunities, relationships built over many years and people who simply want to get to know one another, work together and share what they know.

And when those restrictions are combined with measures aimed at preventing oil supplies from reaching Cuba, the consequences become even more serious.

Cutting a country off from energy resources doesn’t just affect its institutions or economic figures. It affects the everyday lives of millions of people: homes, schools and hospitals that need electricity; families that need food and clean water; patients who depend on medicines, medical equipment and treatment.

The hardships caused by these policies have made already troubling indicators even worse, including infant mortality and survival rates among children with cancer. Cuban families are facing the heartbreaking reality of not being able to guarantee their children the medicines and treatments they need.

If the stated goal is supposedly to support the Cuban people, how can that possibly be achieved by restricting the very things people need to live, develop and overcome their difficulties?

When the consequences of a policy fall on an entire population, including its most vulnerable members, it’s only fair to ask: How is this anything other than collective punishment?

There’s another side to this effort to isolate Cuba that particularly concerns me: its impact on the longstanding ties between Cuba and African American communities.

For me, this story is personal, too. I’m a Black Cuban woman. My identity is shaped by a history that doesn’t stop at my country’s borders. When I think about the ties between Cuba and Black communities in the United States, I think about a relationship that existed long before I began my diplomatic career and that, I’m convinced, will continue long after we’re gone.

Our peoples share African roots, the memory of slavery and resistance to it, cultural and religious traditions, music and literature, and a long history of struggles for dignity, equality and recognition of our rights.

Throughout history, Cuban and African American intellectuals, artists, writers and revolutionaries have found reasons to come together, recognize one another and stand in solidarity. Those connections didn’t grow out of one particular political moment. They were built on shared historical experiences, common concerns and a deep understanding of our peoples’ struggles.

That tradition is still alive.

In Cuba, the fight against racism and racial discrimination means acknowledging the legacy of centuries of slavery, colonialism and exclusion, while also working to overcome the inequalities that still exist. It doesn’t mean ignoring our challenges or pretending that the experiences of Afro-descendant communities in Cuba and African American communities in the United States are exactly the same. Each society has its own history, contradictions and realities.

And that’s precisely why we need more spaces to talk, exchange experiences and learn from one another.

Young African Americans should have the opportunity to get to know Cuba beyond the headlines, connect with its communities, discover its diversity and form their own opinions. In the same way, young Cubans should be able to experience firsthand the richness of the African American experience in the United States, its cultural expressions, its struggles and its contributions to society.

When academic, cultural and community exchanges are restricted, it’s not just travel opportunities that disappear. The spaces where new friendships, projects, research, cultural initiatives and expressions of solidarity can take shape are weakened, too.

And that matters.

It matters because the history of solidarity between Cubans and Americans, and especially between Cubans and Black Americans, has a value of its own. It matters because younger generations deserve more than decades of mistrust and separation.

In my work at the Cuban Embassy, where I have the privilege of building relationships with African American and Afro-descendant communities across the United States, I have seen firsthand how meaningful these connections can be. One experience that stays especially close to my heart is my visit to Oakland. It is a city with a deep African American identity, a strong cultural spirit and a history that you can feel in its streets and its people. Although I was thousands of miles away from Cuba, there was something about being there that felt deeply familiar. I could recognize parts of my own history, my roots and my identity in the people I met and the stories I encountered. In a way, I felt that I could breathe in my own identity, even so far from home. That experience reminded me that these connections are not abstract ideas or diplomatic goals. They are human bonds that allow us to recognize ourselves in one another, learn from each other and feel a little less distant.

We cannot allow this kind of connection to become casualties of a U.S. policy toward Cuba that is as outdated as it is cruel: the blockade.

Normalization isn’t about making concessions. It’s about recognizing our right to have a relationship as the neighboring countries we are.

Standing up for the normalization of relations between Cuba and the United States doesn’t mean turning a blind eye to the problems in either country. Cuba has its own challenges, difficulties and contradictions. Acknowledging that is part of having an honest conversation about our reality and our commitment to making our society better.

But it is up to the Cuban people alone, in the full exercise of our sovereignty, to decide how to face our problems, set our priorities and build our future.

None of those difficulties justifies a blockade that holds back our development, collectively punishes our people and limits our opportunities. Problems and differences cannot be solved through coercion or outside pressure. They must be addressed by respecting every people’s right to decide their own future.

That should be the foundation of a good-neighbor relationship between Cuba and the United States: respect for sovereignty, noninterference, dialogue and recognition of both peoples’ right to build relationships with one another.

Normalization should not be treated as a concession from one administration to another, or as a goodwill gesture that depends on the political interests of the moment. It is a necessary alternative to a history of confrontation that has shown, time and again, just how high the human cost can be.

The opening of 2014 wasn’t one people making a concession to the other. It was a recognition that another path was possible. Getting back to that path doesn’t mean forgetting history or giving up our differences. It means having the political will not to let those differences keep standing in the way of cooperation and understanding.

Lately, I’ve found myself thinking again about that afternoon in 2014. I guess that, in the face of this extreme aggression against my people, my mind keeps taking me back to happier moments. I think about my classmate rushing into the classroom, the stadium, the laughter and those U.S. students who had crossed the ocean to get to know us.

We didn’t know we were living through a historic moment. We didn’t need to know. We were simply young people who wanted to spend time together, talk, play and discover something new.

Today, more than a decade later, I look back on that game with more than just nostalgia. I understand that it represented a possibility: The possibility of building relationships without allowing political tensions to decide how far we could go.

I would love for other Cuban and U.S. students to have similar experiences. To have the chance to meet, debate, play, make friends and discover how much they can learn from one another. And it would mean a great deal to me to see younger generations of African Americans and Cubans keep building those bridges, recognize themselves in a shared history and bring their own ideas to a future built on greater understanding.

Because we are not enemies. We are neighboring peoples, with intertwined histories and so much to share.

That day, our university team won the game. But I believe we all won something much more important: the chance to meet one another.

And it would be a tremendous loss to let future generations forget what that means.

Gabriela Castillo is a Cuban Diplomat and 2nd Secretary to the Cuban Embassy

The post Cuba and the U.S.: Don’t let human connections become a casualty of the blockade appeared first on San Francisco Bay View.

By Ramsey Robinson

In 1972, the Black Panther Party revised the tenth point of its program to include “people’s community control of modern technology.” Sixty years after the Panthers were founded in Oakland, that demand is back on the table. This August, billionaire real estate developer Colin Behring announced plans to turn a downtown Oakland building into an AI data center. Oakland has been fighting back.

Data centers, the infrastructure powering AI, are going up across California. The billionaires of Silicon Valley are betting AI will let them run their companies with as few workers as possible, and they are pouring record sums into it.

The working class is footing the bill. Developers, landlords and tech billionaires are using data centers and AI to wipe out jobs and boost their profits. The facilities only need a handful of workers once they open. They consume enormous amounts of electricity and water, straining the grid and driving up power bills. And their backup generators typically burn diesel, polluting the air nearby.

The data center fight lays bare the reality of life under capitalism: there are two Californias. In one, billionaires hoard the wealth and decide how new technology is developed and who benefits. In the other, working people live with the consequences: lost jobs, skyrocketing rent, a looming recession and environmental devastation. Changing this means organizing to take decision-making power into the hands of working people.

Behring wasn’t the only billionaire moving on Oakland this August. Tesla signed a lease for an advanced manufacturing site in West Oakland, and Jeff Bezos’ AI startup Prometheus leased space in the same complex. Black families in West Oakland already breathe diesel exhaust from the Port and the freeways that box in their neighborhood. Now billionaires want new industry in the neighborhood and a diesel-dependent data center downtown, with no community input. That is environmental racism.

Prometheus is building what it calls an “artificial general engineer,” software that designs and manufactures complex physical products, from jet engines to new drugs. Tesla is pouring money into robots and self-driving cars built to replace factory workers and drivers.

These companies show where capitalist AI is headed: automating our jobs. Job losses won’t stop at white-collar software jobs. Any job a capitalist can automate, they will. Lower-wage jobs – held disproportionately by women, Black, and brown workers – are at particular risk. Even if no data center is built in Oakland, what Prometheus and Tesla develop here can still be used to eliminate working people’s jobs everywhere. That’s why our fight reaches beyond any one facility to the system behind it. 

That fight began within hours of Behring’s announcement, when we, the Party for Socialism and Liberation, launched a petition to ban all data centers in Oakland. It gathered thousands of signatures in a few days and grew into the No Data Center Oakland coalition, with hundreds of volunteers and leaders from the Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation, SEIU, the California Nurses Association, and the Church of All Faiths.

Within weeks, Councilmember Carroll Fife introduced a data center moratorium. With her leadership and dozens of public commenters across three Council meetings, the movement won a unanimous 45-day moratorium on October 6. A 10-month extension goes to a vote on November 10.

The same day, San Francisco unanimously passed its own 45-day moratorium, proposed by Supervisor Shamann Walton after a private equity firm unveiled plans for a 160,000-square-foot data center in Dogpatch, about a mile from Bayview-Hunters Point. Organizers are demanding a full ban and reparations for a Black community poisoned for decades by the former naval shipyard. From Hunters Point to West Oakland, capitalism treats Black neighborhoods as sacrifice zones. AI is the latest example. 

These movements are people’s victories, but moratoriums alone won’t stop capitalist development of AI. A loophole in Oakland’s moratorium could exempt the downtown facility. Projects like Prometheus are kept opaque to dodge public oversight. 

From San Jose and Gilroy to Pittsburg, Hayward and Richmond, working people are organizing, and moratorium fights are spreading city by city. Nationally, local opposition blocked or delayed at least 45 data center projects worth $68 billion between April and June alone, according to Data Center Watch.

J. Edgar Hoover called the Black Panthers the greatest threat to the internal security of the country. Today, federal law enforcement is warning about “anti-tech extremism” and painting people who organize against data centers as a domestic security threat. Meanwhile, AI company Palantir sells ICE the software it uses to track immigrants for deportation – this month ICE arrests in Oakland and Emeryville ended in hospitalization of our neighbors. The ruling class has always called working people dangerous when we organize to take power over our own lives. It’s on all of us to get out, get organized, and end this unjust capitalist system. As Rev. Jeffrey Parker of the Church of All Faiths has put it, we need a system where innovation serves communities, and communities no longer have to serve innovation.

We need regulations that protect our grid, water and air, and protections that keep working-class people in our homes. But as long as billionaires own this technology, we’ll be fighting them one facility or regulation at a time. Winning for good means a new system, where working people plan how our resources are used to meet the needs of people and the planet, including where AI is sited, what it’s used for, and whether a project gets built at all. In workers’ hands, the same technology billionaires want to use against us could free us from tedious, dangerous work and give us back time for our families and communities. That is what people’s community control of modern technology means to us today.

Billionaires are trying to remake society without our consent. Ordinary people are leading the way: canvassing, packing City Hall and going up against the capitalist system, many for the first time. Sixty years after the Panthers raised the demand, the fight continues for a new system where the people control modern technology.

Ramsey Robinson is a school social worker in the Bayview, an organizer with the Party for Socialism and Liberation, and a former Peace and Freedom Party candidate for governor.

The post The people’s control of modern technology appeared first on San Francisco Bay View.

This is part two of a conversation with Nola Brantley of Misssey and Nola Brantley Speaks! about changing the realities of trafficking victims by changing community responses

Leah Harmony: California stopped arresting children for prostitution-related offenses, but you have argued that some agencies then stopped engaging with them altogether. What should a truly protective, non-criminalizing response look like?

Nola Brantley: Decriminalizing children was necessary, but decriminalization cannot mean disengagement. A protective response means a child encounters a coordinated team that understands exploitation, provides immediate safety and basic needs, offers developmentally appropriate services and continues showing up even when the child isn’t ready to leave the situation. And if that child comes from a community with a history of over-policing and institutional distrust, the response has to be especially intentional about building trust rather than simply replacing punishment with another form of control.

Leah Harmony: After training more than 500,000 professionals, what beliefs or practices have you found hardest to change inside agencies—and how can communities tell whether “trauma-informed” has become real action rather than bureaucratic branding?

Nola Brantley: I’ve trained more than half a million professionals, and one of the hardest things to change is the belief that a professional’s title automatically makes them the expert on a survivor’s life. Training can change vocabulary very quickly; changing behavior, policies, power dynamics and institutional culture is much harder. Trauma-informed care is real when a survivor can actually feel the difference in how they’re treated—not when an agency simply learns the terminology. And in historically marginalized communities, that also means asking whether the agency understands the racial and cultural context in which trauma is occurring.

Leah Harmony: Oakland has adopted steep fines for sex buyers and traffickers. Do penalties like these change anything in a positive way?

Nola Brantley: They can send an important message that the buying and selling of children is not a victimless transaction, and holding buyers accountable is essential. But fines alone will never end child sexual exploitation. If we don’t simultaneously invest in prevention, housing, survivor services, economic opportunity and sustained intervention—particularly in communities that have experienced generations of economic and racial exclusion—we’re addressing one piece of a much larger ecosystem.

Leah Harmony: Are there any advocates for the people who exploit children? Are traffickers victims too, and where do we draw the line between victim and accountability?

Nola Brantley: I believe we can acknowledge that people who harm others may have their own histories of trauma without confusing that with an excuse for exploiting a child. We also have to be careful not to create a system where the only answer to exploitation is more incarceration, particularly in communities that have historically experienced disproportionate policing and criminalization. Compassion and accountability are not opposites. My line is very clear: Children deserve protection from exploitation, and adults who intentionally exploit children must be held accountable for the choices they make.

Leah Harmony: What does an abolitionist response to child sex trafficking look like — one that holds exploiters accountable without feeding more Black people into prisons or placing survivors under greater state control?

Nola Brantley: For me, abolitionist practice means asking why this child ended up on the street in the first place. If she’s Black, has been in foster care, comes from generational poverty, has experienced abuse or homelessness and then gets exploited, putting her into another punitive system doesn’t address the conditions that created her vulnerability. Oakland’s history makes that conversation particularly important because many of the communities we’re talking about have experienced generations of racialized policing and economic exclusion. We need accountability for exploiters and buyers while investing in the communities and resources that give children real alternatives.

Leah Harmony: Have you encountered victims who have been trafficked by high-profile people in power?

Nola Brantley: Yes. Throughout this work, I’ve encountered survivors whose exploitation involved people with significant social, financial, professional or institutional power. My own experience included being exploited by a San Francisco police officer who, during the period of my exploitation, took a leave of absence from the police department and later became head of security for Prince. That experience taught me very personally that exploitation doesn’t always look like the stereotype people imagine; sometimes it looks like authority, status, access, credibility and power.

Leah Harmony: Have you read any of the Epstein files?

Nola Brantley: There are now millions of pages in the DOJ’s Epstein Library, and I think it’s important to distinguish between having access to released records and having personally reviewed the entire body of material. I have not reviewed every file, and I would never pretend that I have. What interests me professionally is what the Epstein case continues to reveal about power, access, grooming, exploitation and the ways systems can fail victims.

Leah Harmony: What’s changed since the Epstein event came and went?

Nola Brantley: The public conversation is much more willing to talk about the intersection of sexual exploitation, wealth, power and institutional protection. But public attention isn’t the same thing as systemic change. Survivors don’t need another news cycle; they need long-term access to housing, health care, mental health care, economic opportunity, legal support and people who will believe them and stay. And we have to make sure that the lessons we learn about powerful perpetrators apply to exploitation happening in communities that don’t have the same media visibility.

Leah Harmony: How surprised are you at the governmental response—or lack thereof—on both sides?

Nola Brantley: I’m not surprised by the inconsistency because I’ve spent more than two decades watching systems respond differently depending on who has power, who is believed and how politically visible an issue becomes. My own experience taught me very early that institutional authority does not automatically equal safety or accountability. And historically marginalized communities have plenty of experience with institutions responding differently to them than they do to people with greater wealth, status or social power.

Leah Harmony: Around 2023, there seemed to be some attention from folks in office who could potentially support efforts like yours and allocate resources. Now a lot of those people are gone. Was there progress? Do you see further progress?

Nola Brantley: There absolutely has been progress—we have language, models, research, survivor leadership, specialized programs and professionals who understand commercial sexual exploitation in ways that simply didn’t exist when I started. But progress isn’t linear, and programs can disappear when leadership or funding priorities change. My concern is that communities with the greatest need are often the first to feel the consequences when resources disappear. My goal is to make sure the knowledge we’ve built becomes institutional knowledge rather than something that disappears when one champion leaves office.

Leah Harmony: Since Trump took office, have more or fewer resources become available, or has there been no change?

Nola Brantley: I wouldn’t characterize it as simply “more” or “less” because the federal landscape is complicated and funding streams are changing at different levels. What I can say from the perspective of someone who has trained more than half a million professionals is that funding announcements don’t automatically translate into meaningful change for survivors on the ground. I’ve seen administrations change language, priorities and funding structures while the fundamental needs of exploited children—safe housing, trusted relationships, mental health care, education, economic opportunity and long-term support—remain remarkably consistent.

Leah Harmony: For the Black woman or girl who believes exploitation has taken everything from her, what does the light at the end of the tunnel actually look like—and what do you want her to know about the life, love, power and freedom still waiting for her?

Nola Brantley: The light isn’t simply getting a girl off International Boulevard. The light is helping her build a life where she doesn’t need an exploiter to provide the things she has been missing—housing, food, safety, love, belonging, money, purpose, family or opportunity. I want every Black girl who has survived exploitation to know that what happened to her does not get to define the rest of her life. She comes from communities with enormous strength and resilience, and she deserves access to all of that possibility. Your exploitation is something that happened to you; it is not the totality of who you are.

Leah Harmony: Lastly, what can we, your community, do to support your efforts?

Nola Brantley: We have to stop waiting until we see a child on the street before deciding we care about her. Support families before crisis, invest in foster youth before they age out, create safe housing and economic opportunities, support survivor-led organizations, challenge racism and adultification and build relationships with young people before an exploiter gets the opportunity to become their most trusted adult. And we have to recognize that communities like Oakland’s have incredible resilience but cannot be expected to overcome generations of structural inequality without investment. Prevention isn’t just teaching children how to avoid traffickers; it’s creating communities where children have fewer reasons to need what traffickers are offering.

Nola Brantley’s closing statement

When you see a Black or Brown girl on the streets of Oakland, I want you to understand that you’re often looking at the end of a story—not the beginning. Before she ever got to that street, there may have been foster care, abuse, poverty, housing instability, family disruption, school exclusion, trauma and a series of adults and systems that didn’t meet her needs.

And we can’t separate that from history. Oakland is a community with extraordinary resilience, but it’s also a community shaped by generations of racial and economic exclusion. So when we’re asking why certain children are disproportionately vulnerable, we have to be willing to talk about the structures that created those vulnerabilities.

I’ve spent more than two decades working to change these systems. I’ve trained more than half a million professionals. I’ve helped build programs for exploited children. And I’ve lived exploitation myself. So I don’t speak about this from a distance.

When I talk about trafficking, I’m not just talking about traffickers. I’m talking about everything that happened before the trafficker arrived—and whether we’re willing to change those conditions.

Nola Brantley can be found at nolabrantleyspeaks.org

Leah Harmony is a journalist and Manager of Production at the San Francisco Bay View. She can be reached at leah@sfbayview.com

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Earlier this year, the lily-white Atlantic Journal reported that the United States had become a “post-literate society.”

In 2004, according to studies conducted, 28% of people in the U.S. read for pleasure. Today, that number has plummeted to 16%. Newspapers in 1975 were read by 50% of the population. Today, less than 10% reported reading a newspaper on a regular basis.

If these are national averages, just imagine what the literacy stats are for the Black community, a community whose schools have historically been kept underfunded by the corporate elite and the U.S. government for decades.

I talked to author, illustrator and organizer Robert Trujillo about his inspiration and literary works and the upcoming Social Justice Children’s Book Fair, which is Saturday, Dec. 5, from 11 a.m. – 3 p.m. at Emerson Elementary in Oakland. Pull up. Check out Robert Trujillo, the local literary trailblazer, in his own words.

JR Valrey: What experiences inspired you to be a writer? Who inspired you to be a writer? How?

Robert Trujillo: I was a young dad. Had my first child at 24, so I immediately knew, based on what was being gifted to him and what was available through mainstream bookstores, that there was a lack of diversity. Specifically, kids’ books about Black and Brown fathers, so I started working toward illustrating first because I was a visual artist first. Then I became a writer after reading hundreds of picture books, teaching myself and getting game from locals such as Matthew Perry, who wrote “Turntable Timmy,” and Maya Gonzalez (RIP), who made “My Colors, My World.” I was inspired by many others, such as Innosanto Nagara, who made “A is for Activist,” and Janine Macbeth, who made “Oh, Oh Baby Boy.”

JR Valrey: Can you tell us about the dozen children’s books that you have published? What are the titles and themes?

Robert Trujillo: Sure, I began as an illustrator first, then slowly began to write and illustrate. The ones people know me for the most are “Furqan’s First Flat Top,” which is a bilingual story about an Afro-Latino boy getting a cut at the local barbershop with his dad, and, most recently, “Fresh Juice,” which was published by Lee & Low Books in NYC in 2023.

Books I illustrated for others are:

“A Bean and Cheese Taco Birthday/ Un cumpleaños con tacos de frijoles con queso,” written by Diane Gonzalez Bertrand

“I Am Sausal Creek/ Yo Soy el Arroyo Sausal” by Melissa Reyes, aka Gualikuya

“One of a Kind Like Me/ Unico Como Yo” by Laurin Mayeno

“Alejandria Fights Back/ La Lucha de Alejandria” by Leticia Hernandez-Linares & Rise Home Stories Project

“We Are Yoga/ Somos Yoga” by Jill Guerra

“Sam!” written by Dani Gabriel

“Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Boy” by Tony Medina

The other books I have written or produced are:

“Dolores Huerta – Get to Know the Voice of Migrant Workers”

“Hana on Stage,” written by me

“Art of Rob Vol. 1,” which is an art book

JR Valrey: How do you pick what subject you want to cover in your books?

Robert Trujillo: As a writer, I try to write about everyday life for Black and Brown kids and families. So I will often think of something that is ordinary or common that I see in my community, like a certain type of haircut or getting healthy food. As an illustrator, I try to do something representing Black and Brown families, queer families and/or social justice-themed stories.

JR Valrey: How have your books been received by Black and Brown children?

Robert Trujillo: Pretty good. There have been a few times where kids have come up to me to say they enjoyed a story or that they’ve read it without an adult telling them to. So I consider that high praise.

JR Valrey: How was your book fair conceived? What role does it play in politically educating local youth?

Robert Trujillo: The “Social Justice Children’s Book Fair” came about when Laura Atkins, Maya Gonzalez (RIP), Janine Macbeth, Innosanto Nagara, Matthew Smith and I were all being approached by folks looking for books with more representation of children of color, queer families or books about social justice issues. We got together and invited folks we knew to start a kids’ book fair based on friends, colleagues and people we knew locally who were tackling some of these issues. That was 2017, during the first Trump presidency, rhetoric around the wall, the Me Too movement, multiple police executions of Black folks, climate change discussions and more.

The role it plays in educating youth is by providing multiple age-appropriate books that proudly reflect Black, Brown and queer families, and any book that honestly tackles some of the issues I mentioned. Our fair is unique in that it focuses on these folks and these themes specifically for kids, and we welcome creators whether they are traditional or self-published. There are other book fairs that might cover kids’ books but don’t care about social justice. There might be a social justice event that does not have books for kids around the issues. There are kids’ book fairs, too, but they don’t always accept indie creators.

JR Valrey: What should people expect when they come to the book fair?

Robert Trujillo: A wide array of creators from different backgrounds selling books for parents, teachers, librarians, activists and more. There will be books with challenging themes, panel discussions about stories and industry, read-alouds led by Storyland Collective for our youngest readers, creative activities, book giveaways, a bake sale by our gracious hosts, the Emerson Elementary PTA, and lots of community from Oakland, Berkeley, San Leandro, Richmond and Frisco. It will be held on Dec. 5 from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. in Oakland at Emerson Elementary.

JR Valrey: How many Black authors will be there? What are the titles and themes of their books?

Robert Trujillo: As of right now, there are nearly 20 Black children’s book authors and illustrators who will be there selling picture books, middle grade, comics and YA books. There are more, but we’re still confirming all the names and titles.

– “As You Are: A Hope for Black Sons” by Kimberly Biddle – As You Are: A Hope for Black Sons

– “What Do Brothas Do All Day?” by Ajuan Mance – There is no one “right” way to be Black. Black men can be and do so many different things, from the mundane to the marvelous.

– “Juneteenth Is” by Natasha Tripplett – Themes of Black joy, community and food and housing insecurities, foster care.

– “Can’t Let Nobody Ride My Bike” by Robert M. Alexander – Bullying and peer pressure

– “Lion’s Water” by Sheila Hackbarth – Anxiety, doubt and displacement countered by courage, resilience and compassion

– “King Coyote” by Rachael Meyers Jones – African American belonging in nature, coming-of-age, family and belonging, dealing with change

– “Free the Curls” by Marissa McGee – Black hair, identity and action

– “This Hair Belongs” by JaNay Brown-Wood – Black hair, Black pride, empowerment

– “Kickin’ It With Kenzie – Seeing Me Is Believing in Me” by Makenzie Lee-Foster – 1) Self-esteem 2) Confidence building

– Sistah SciFi – Various titles from this bookseller focused on science fiction stories written by Black women

– Konscious Kidz by John Casselberry and Madeline Connor – Representation and community-building

– “More Trouble Than Its Worth” by Lisa Ramee – Friendship and social justice

– “Rikki and Rai” by Tiffany Golden – Sisterhood and family; identity and growing up

– Activity book by James Shields – Cooperation and self-reflection

– “This Is My Body” by Jazmine Williams – Body autonomy and personal empowerment; consent, respect and healthy boundaries

– “Stranded” by Nikki Shannon Smith – Family; being true to yourself

– “I Love The Me I See” by Channa Bannis – Self-love and identity: Encouraging children to embrace their unique qualities and develop a strong sense of self.

– “Major Taylor – The World’s Fastest Man” by Fred Noland – About cycling, race, American history

JR Valrey: Will there be presentations by authors or publishers?

Robert Trujillo: There will be readings of picture books for preschool through elementary-aged students, and there will be panel discussions with creators of middle grade (12-14) or YA books (14-18).

JR Valrey: How could people get more info?

Robert Trujillo: Go to https://socialjusticechildrensbooks.org/ or look up “Social Justice Children’s Book Fair” on Instagram and Facebook. Thanks for letting folks know, and please bring the entire family!

JR Valrey is a veteran journalist and Editor in Chief at the San Francisco Bay View. He can be reached at JR@sfbayview.com

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by Anthony Kerefa Rogers-Wright

This story was originally published at Black AgendaReport.com

White supremacy works through institutions, and FEMA’s formula for allocating disaster relief shows us how the state decides which neighborhoods are prioritized and which are left to suffer. Those in the surplus population are suffering.

“The truth is that this country does not know what to do with its Black population now that the blacks are no longer a source of wealth, are no longer to be bought and sold and bred, like cattle;” – James Baldwin

As preeminent environmental justice scholars and practitioners Dr. Beverly Wright and Dr. Robert Bullard remind us in their book, “The Wrong Complexion for Protection,” “Hurricane Katrina opened a window on a world of hurt often ignored by media, policymakers, and the public.” They continue, “[R]esidents of the poorest and Blackest neighborhoods of New Orleans quickly educated America to the fact that disasters and rescues are not equal opportunity affairs.” Years of data have revealed that Black folk in the U.S. are subjected to what I have referred to as an “iniquitous transmission of urgency” when it comes to relief after a “natural” disaster. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has a demonstrable pattern of prioritizing the allocation of disaster relief resources to wealthier and whiter communities as compared to Black and poor communities.

For instance, in 2022 journalist Thomas Frank in a piece entitled, How FEMA helps white and rich Americans escape floods,” notes, “FEMA has allocated billions of dollars of flood-mitigation money using a racially inequitable system that has favored saving flood-prone houses in rich areas or in communities that are almost entirely white, using costly projects that elevate the homes above flood levels,” Frank adds, “The elevation grants have helped turn dozens of wealthy or overwhelmingly white areas into enclaves of climate resilience.”

And it’s not just the grants and other resources themselves that need to be considered; it’s also the pace of assistance that reveals that Black communities are the wrong complexion for protection when it comes to disaster relief. Gary, Indiana, is the latest vindication of this iniquitous scenario.

Two weeks ago, Gary, Indiana, was hit by a powerful storm known as a “derecho” that delivered straight-line winds as fast as 90 miles per hour. The strength of the storm was enough to knock out power lines, and many areas of the majority-Black city have been without electricity for nearly two weeks. For one resident, Kyma Williams, who relocated to Gary following Hurricane Katrina, the situation is all too familiar as she explained why she recently moved her family to Indianapolis until power is restored, “It was too triggering. It was too dark.” It’s both ironic and sad that Ms. Williams is experiencing the same thing in Gary that she did in New Orleans, two cities that are not even located in the same region of the U.S. Nonetheless, there is something that absolutely links both cities and informs why both were dehumanized and invisibilized following their respective storms: demographics. At the time of Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans was approximately 67% Black/African American, with approximately 35% of the Black population living in poverty. Those material conditions almost mirror those of present-day Gary, with Black/African Americans accounting for approximately 76% of the population, with approximately 33.1% of the total population living in poverty – the vast majority being Black folk.

It’s incontrovertible to name racism and white “supremacy” as the primary reason why the recovery effort in Gary has taken so long while also denying the people(s)-centered human rights of its Black residents. According to a 2024 study conducted by the Harvard Kennedy School, “Black Americans receive less Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) relief funding on average than their white counterparts. Their communities take longer to recover in the wake of natural disasters, and they are less likely to relocate to areas with fewer disasters.” The report names systemic racism as the root cause for this trend, as FEMA bases relief funding on property appraisals and a given geography’s real estate market. This process puts Black folk in Gary at a disadvantage before disasters even hit due to the lingering and legacy effects of redlining.

According to the real estate group Redfin, the median home price in Gary is $129,929 and the overall housing market has seen a 5% decrease in sales over the last year. These conditions form what the organization Rebuild by Design refers to as an “Atlas of Disaster.” A map generated by the organization, “Atlas of Accountability,” that compares FEMA responses in counties across the country elucidates the disparities of disaster relief along lines of race/ethnicity and class. For example, between 2011 and 2024, Lake County, where Gary is located, experienced three Federally Declared Extreme Weather Disasters (FDEWDs) and received $715,404 in FEMA relief, which amounts to $1.00 per resident. Compare this with the whiter and more affluent Santa Barbara County in California, which experienced eight FDEWDs in the same time frame and received $84,871,273 in FEMA relief, which amounts to $191.00.

To put this in perspective, the U.S. government, according to Rebuild by Design, is sending the message that whiter and wealthier communities in California are valued 19,000% more than Blacker and poorer communities like Gary, which demonstrates the epitome of racial capitalism.

Making matters worse is a recent directive from President Trump that directs the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees FEMA, to “no longer require state and local governments to avoid unintentional discrimination as they allocate federal aid to households and communities recovering from major disasters.” Earlier this year I wrote a piece discussing how the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has placed the value of human life at zero dollars thereby sending the message of its intention to prioritize the protection of capital and corporate profits over people. Therein I discuss the crisis of “Black labor redundancy” as described by Cooperation Jackson founder Kali Akuno. Another way to characterize Black labor redundancy is that Black people in the U.S. are seen as nothing more than a surplus population with no material value for the U.S. empire and society. When you consider the fact that the U.S. was able to deliver money and weapons to the zionist ethnostate to carry out war crimes including genocide and ethnic cleansing faster than it has been able to provide relief for the people of Gary, Akuno’s analysis becomes even more accentuated.

The idea of a surplus population in the case of Gary is even more egregious when it has been reported that while Black people have been in the dark for two weeks, data centers in the area to power Artificial Intelligence (AI) have been in full operation. As University of California – Davis professor Michelle Yates notes in her report, “The Human-As-Waste, the Labor Theory of Value and Disposability in Contemporary Capitalism,” “This outcast proletariat — perhaps 1.5 billion people today, 2.5 billion by 2030 — is the fastest growing and most novel social class on the planet.”

She adds, “Once relegated as permanent surplus, meaning that capital no longer needs these populations as labor, these populations are little more than the human-as-waste, excreted from the capitalist system.” AI certainly risks the rapid increase of a growing surplus population and, like climate change, Black and poor people will get hit first and worst. Keeping data centers running while humans are left without power to preserve their food, cool their homes during one of the warmest summers on record, operate medical equipment, and have access to basic services necessary to survive is the ultimate manifestation of surplus populations.

The Black masses must understand that demands for justice, nor justice itself will prevent situations like Gary from occurring again. Only a basis for climate and environmental liberation can enjoin the manifestation of Black people as surplus populations. It was Ida B. Wells who once said, “A Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every Black home, and it should be used for that protection which the law refuses to give.” We must apply this same ethos as pertains to the protection of our communities and the praxis of relief for them following climate disasters that are becoming more frequent and more powerful. This requires replicating programs like Movement 4 Black Lives’ People’s Response Campaign as part of advancing the people(s)-centered human rights of Black and all poor and working class people through a liberatory framework.

Breaking the manifestation of surplus populations requires a shift in our mode of thinking and respective praxis from “No Justice, No Peace,” to one of “No Liberation, No Justice,” which is also to say if we don’t know liberation, we will never know justice and continue to be seen and treated as disposable entities by the U.S. and its psychopathology of white “supremacy” that continues to dehumanize Black and poor people and render them the wrong complexion for protection.

Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright is an international climate and environmental liberation advocate, a racial justice practitioner, and a writer and policy expert residing in the United States with his family and their mischievous cat, “Evil” Ernie. He is a proud and active member of the Black Alliance for Peace and the Movement for Black Lives. His radio program, “Full Spectrum with Anthony Rogers-Wright,” airs on the Mighty WPFW network every Tuesday at 6:00 PM EST. This story first appeared on Black Agenda Report.

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by Roberto Sirvent, Black Agenda Report

In this series, we ask acclaimed authors to answer five questions about their book. This week’s featured author is Colin Kaepernick. Kaepernick is a former NFL quarterback, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author and civil rights activist. He is the founder of the Know Your Rights Camp, Kaepernick Media (formerly Ra Vision Media), Kaepernick Publishing and Lumi Story AI. His book is The Perilous Fight.

Roberto Sirvent: You write that when you were young, “Sports was the air I breathed.” What were some of the earliest sports memories that shaped you as a person? And what were some of the aspects of sports culture that you found troubling or perhaps even harmful?

Colin Kaepernick: Some of my earliest sports memories are going to my brother’s games. He was 10 years older than me, and I wanted to do everything he and his friends were doing. I was constantly picking up a bat and swinging it around, throwing baseballs and footballs, trying to get shots up on the basketball court. I was always playing something. Eventually, that earned me the nickname “Bo,” after Bo Jackson, because I was playing every sport I could.

Another memory that really shaped me came later, when I was playing travel baseball in middle school. I was pitching one game and got rocked. They moved me to right field. I wasn’t hitting well either. I was walking on and off the field with a terrible attitude. When we got home, my parents had somewhere they needed to be, so my dad didn’t sit me down and lecture me. He just left me a note. It said something to the effect of: “If you want to start solving your problems, start by looking in the mirror.”

He never talked to me about it afterward. He didn’t need to. That note hit me because it forced me to ask whether what was happening was because of everybody else or because of my own actions and attitude. In that instance, the change needed to start with me. That became a defining lesson that has stayed with me.

At the same time, there are parts of sports culture that I think are worth examining. To play sports at a high level, you have to be a little bit off. You have to willingly put yourself through extraordinary levels of pain and discomfort. Particularly in football, getting yelled at, screamed at and told exactly what to do is normalized. You generally aren’t being asked questions; you’re being given instructions and expected to execute.

There are positive things that can come from that environment: resilience, perseverance, discipline, grit. But it can also create a culture that doesn’t necessarily encourage independence, self-determination or critical thinking. Both of those realities can exist at the same time.

Roberto Sirvent: We were fortunate to interview you for your children’s book, I Color Myself Different, in the Black Agenda Report Book Forum a few years ago. How did the creative process behind writing a memoir compare to the experience of authoring a children’s book?

Colin Kaepernick: The processes were similar in some ways and drastically different in others. With a children’s book, one of the challenges is distilling a narrative down to essentially as few words as possible and communicating an idea in its clearest, simplest form. Every word has to do a tremendous amount of work.

Writing a memoir is different because you’re dealing with such a significant span of your life. You’re not only trying to accurately capture individual moments; you’re trying to understand how those moments connect. There are themes and ideas that have to develop across the book, make sense alongside each other and ultimately create a coherent narrative for the reader.

The memoir process was also simply longer and more tedious. You’re revisiting experiences across years of your life, thinking about what they meant then and what you understand about them now. That requires a different level of reflection and examination. Both forms require clarity and intentionality, but the scale and complexity of the memoir made it a very different writing experience.

Roberto Sirvent: Was there a part of the book that was your favorite to write?

Colin Kaepernick: The parts of the book that were probably my favorite to write were the ones where I got to write about my loved ones, the people who have been with me throughout this journey and what we’ve built together.

Whether I was writing about my wife, my daughter or reflecting on my relationship with Eric Reid, those were meaningful moments for me. Writing gave me an opportunity to go back and reflect on what we experienced together, what we were able to accomplish together, what we had to endure and how those relationships developed through all of it.

When people see public moments, particularly something as visible as the protests, they often see an individual standing in front of the cameras. They don’t necessarily see all of the relationships, conversations, support, sacrifice and love surrounding that person.

Being able to reflect on those relationships and give some of those people their flowers was one of the most rewarding parts of writing the book. These were not experiences I went through alone, and it was important for the book to reflect that.

Roberto Sirvent: You include a lot of observations about racism during your time in the NFL – starting with your experience in the Combine. What kind of resistance did you face from teammates, coaches, executives, the media and even fans whenever you brought up issues of racial justice?

Colin Kaepernick: The response depended greatly on who I was talking to.

With teammates, the conversations were generally easy to have. A lot of players knew these issues existed because they had experienced them themselves or seen them in their communities. My teammates were overwhelmingly supportive. Whether people were willing to take action behind that support is a different conversation. Oftentimes, players understood the problem but weren’t necessarily sure how to solve it or what their role should be in addressing it.

Coaches and executives were different. Speaking generally about my experience within the NFL, there was significantly more resistance. Those environments are structured around hierarchy, control and players doing what they’re told. Challenging the institution or raising questions about racial injustice disrupts that dynamic.

With media and fans, it depended on the person and their perspective. Some were extremely supportive. Others weren’t trying to hear it at all. Ultimately, you’re navigating people, their politics, their experiences and the narratives they have already accepted.

Overall, I experienced substantial support from teammates and many fans and members of the media. Institutional resistance from coaches, executives and people in positions of power was a very different story.

Roberto Sirvent: You write about some specific injuries you experienced as an NFL player. Given the way you analyze race in the context of sports, what do you wish more outside observers knew about the physical, mental and financial toll of high-contact or collision sports on Black athletes?

Colin Kaepernick: One thing I wish people understood is how the relationship between fans and players has changed. With the rise of fantasy football, sports betting and gambling, fans can begin to think about players almost the way an owner or general manager does, as assets producing value for them.

Most players are out there because they love the sport. They want to be great at what they do, and they are putting everything they have into achieving that. Inevitably, things aren’t always going to go your way. I’ve seen players suffer significant injuries and then hear responses like, “You messed up my fantasy team.” Meanwhile, that person may have torn a ligament, broken a bone or suffered an injury that affects their livelihood and potentially the rest of their life.

That lack of empathy is concerning.

There’s a mental toll as well. There are few environments where you experience a spotlight like professional sports. Now combine that with social media. You make one bad play or have one bad game and thousands of people can immediately attack you. That constant scrutiny is something people should be more mindful of when thinking about athletes as human beings rather than simply as entertainment or commodities.

Roberto Sirvent: What are some reflections you include in this book about the 2016 protests that might surprise readers, even those who followed the protests closely?

Colin Kaepernick: I think one of the biggest surprises for people will probably be the story involving Nate Boyer and how the decision to take a knee actually happened.

There has been a narrative repeated for years that Nate Boyer was the person who told us to take a knee. That isn’t what happened. Taking a knee was Eric Reid’s idea.

The idea that Nate instructed us to kneel has become one of those stories that has been repeated so many times that people now treat it as historical fact. There’s also another part of that story: Nate had said he was going to take a knee alongside us and ultimately bailed at the last minute.

That’s one example, but there are a number of stories surrounding the protests where the public narrative and what actually happened are very different. There are misconceptions and assumptions that have hardened into conventional wisdom over the past decade.

The book gave me the opportunity to put those moments into the historical record from my perspective and explain what was actually happening behind the scenes. For all of those details, people will have to go check out the book.

Roberto Sirvent: I’m sure readers might remember Houston Texans owner Bob McNair using the phrase “we can’t have the inmates running the prison” during an NFL owners meeting amidst the protests. He and others dismissed this as a “figure of speech,” but can you shed light on what this reveals about how Black NFL players are treated?

Colin Kaepernick: The comment was revealing because it spoke to a broader mentality that exists within professional football. Players are too often looked at as commodities. You are there to produce value, you are expected to do what you are told and when you stop producing value, or when the people in power don’t like how you are using your position, you can be gone very quickly.

There’s a moment I reference in the book where one of our players was let go because, as our coaches and GM described it, he had too many “miles on his legs.” Think about that language. That is the language used to describe a horse, a vehicle or an asset that is depreciating, not a human being.

That mentality has consequences. You aren’t necessarily being viewed as a person with self-determination, autonomy and the freedom to decide how you want to use your voice. You are being viewed as someone who has been brought into an organization to perform a specific function. When you understand that dynamic, the backlash that occurs when Black players assert their autonomy or challenge the institution becomes much easier to understand. McNair’s comment wasn’t meaningful simply because of one offensive phrase. It exposed the underlying power relationship.

Roberto Sirvent: You write: “I had grown up in a white family, in a white community. I had a good sense that white people would be upset. And there was a strong historical precedent to the American establishment making people pay for protesting against American oppression, from Paul Robeson to Rosa Parks, Muhammad Ali to Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf. But with everything I knew, everything I was reading, everything I was seeing happening in the news, I couldn’t go back to blissful ignorance. I had to do something.” You also mention Malcolm X later in your memoir. Can you share more about how your study of this radical Black intellectual tradition (and history of Black-led social movements) prepared you for how the world was going to react to your protest?

Colin Kaepernick: Studying Black intellectuals and revolutionaries was incredibly important to my development. That includes everyone from Malcolm X to Frantz Fanon, Huey Newton, H. Rap Brown, Steve Biko, Angela Davis and many others.

Those thinkers gave me a lens through which I could better understand society, my position within it, our collective position within it and the systems that shape our lives. They helped me understand concepts like hegemony and assimilation, how power reproduces itself, how culture is preserved or erased and ultimately what it means to pursue freedom while maintaining who we are.

That history also prepares you for the resistance that comes with challenging existing power structures. There is a long history of people being punished for confronting American oppression. When you study that history, you understand that creating meaningful change is rarely comfortable. Oftentimes, people experience demands for justice and equity as though giving someone else freedom or opportunity means something is being taken away from them. It doesn’t. It means leveling a playing field that was never level to begin with.

Studying this tradition gave me a framework for understanding both why change was necessary and why there would inevitably be resistance to it.

Roberto Sirvent: From your writings and many public-facing projects, it seems like your community work continues to be firmly grounded in this Black radical tradition. What do you hope your book offers to regular readers of Black Agenda Report?

Colin Kaepernick: I hope the book gives people confidence to go out and create the society they want to live in and the resilience to continue pursuing that change when they encounter resistance.

I hope people walk away understanding that we cannot wait for somebody else to create justice for us. We have to be willing to act. We have to be relentless in that pursuit and unwilling to allow other people’s discomfort, criticism or attempts to stop us to determine what we believe is possible.

At the same time, that pursuit has to be grounded in just intent and in a collective and community-centered understanding of freedom. This isn’t simply about individual advancement. It’s about asking what kind of world we are creating together and who is able to live freely within it.

If you have that grounding, then go after it aggressively. Go after it relentlessly. Don’t let anybody stop you.

History changes because people decide that the conditions they inherited are unacceptable and then have the courage and discipline to create something different. I hope your readers see themselves as the people who will create something different and better.

Roberto Sirvent is the editor of the Black Agenda Report Book Forum.

This article was first published in the Black Agenda Report September 2026

The post Colin Kaepernick’s ‘The Perilous Fight’ appeared first on San Francisco Bay View.

Derick Davies is showing me his first mural before our formal interview begins.

Commissioned for the entrance of Destiny Arts Center near the Oakland-Emeryville border, the mural grew from a relationship he’s been forming for years now. Davies first worked at a summer camp there. After Destiny’s director saw his art, he designed limited-edition hoodies for the organization. They sold out. The mural came next.

“It’s about capturing destiny, capturing the essence,” he says, and I wonder then if he sees parallels between this casual description and his path forward in art and beyond.

At 19, Davies is already learning that talent alone won’t build an artistic career. He must also grow relationships and be willing to put his art in front of people, using his creativity to figure out unique platforms and mediums.

A West Oakland native and graduate of Oakland School for the Arts, he is now a college sophomore studying art on a full scholarship.

Davies works primarily in acrylic and oil paint, sometimes incorporating fabric, gilded gold and other materials. His paintings draw from comic books, music, Bay Area wall art, social media and scenes witnessed in everyday life. But their strongest material may be his own interior world.

As Oakland marks the 60th anniversary of the Black Panther Party, Davies represents a new generation of Black artists working in the city that raised Emory Douglas, the Party’s legendary Minister of Culture, to international prominence. When asked, Davies had to contemplate whether he’s a revolutionary artist. He is more interested in doing honest work and allowing the people to decide what it becomes. He epitomizes the vibrancy of youth and having all the time and the whole world in front of him.

We discuss it all in our Q & A:

Leah Harmony: When did you realize art could be more than something you enjoyed — that it could become your life?

Derick Davies: I started drawing and making art when I was 4 or 5, so it was always in my life. I went to Oakland School for the Arts from sixth through 12th grade, and going there kept me making art.

But when I really knew I wanted to pursue it was around 2023, when I was 16. I became an upperclassman, and it was like, “OK, I’ve got to lock in.” I slowly started building a business around my art, doing commissions, making business cards and putting myself out there.

I was playing basketball and working jobs, but I knew that after graduation, art was my next step.

Leah: Your paintings involve memory, self-reflection, and personal stories. What are you trying to express through them?

Derick: Stories I feel like I can’t express to people through words or physical actions. I paint feelings, scenes I have seen and things I have been through because I feel like they can reach people on a bigger scale.

One piece, “Reflect,” is about somebody going through hardship. On the outside, the person — which is me — may look OK to the world. But in the mirror, you see the mental reflection of somebody going through a hard time. You may want to cry or scream.

For Black men and Black boys, we’re often told we can’t show that because people will call us weak. That was a heavy emotion, and I thought it would be most powerful expressed through my work.

Music artists sing about their lives through words. I’m singing through my art.

Leah: Do people respond to that emotional openness?

Derick: People tell me the stories feel real and authentic. The emotions are universal. If you put the work out there, the right people — the people who feel it and can relate — will come to you.

The internet has also made some of us less scared to express those emotions. You can reach more people, and people who understand may support you. I feel like I found my way to express myself to the world through art.

Leah: Comic books inspired you when you were younger. Where do they appear in your work now?

Derick: When I was younger, I wanted to be a comic book artist. I’m not specifically pursuing the comic book industry now, but I still read and collect comics.

They come back through my compositions. Some paintings could almost be comic book covers or scenes from comic books. I may also add a phrase or a reference to a character. It’s mixed into my style.

Leah: Tell me about your painting “Say No to Drugs.”

Derick: It was inspired by moving to San Francisco. Growing up, my parents always told me to stay away from drugs. Then I moved here and started seeing people affected by fentanyl — people doing “the fold.” I had never seen that before.

Whenever I see it, my parents’ message comes back to me. In the painting, I use words inspired by graffiti and the wall art I grew up seeing in the Bay and Oakland. You can see the person, but you might not understand what caused their condition. The words in the background give more context and push the message.

I could see that piece enlarged on a wall or put on posters. You don’t see a lot of art like that out here.

Leah: Another powerful painting contains the words “Hello, I am too Black. Is this light enough for you?” Where did that come from?

Derick: When I was younger, I was always the darkest kid. People made fun of my skin and said, “You’re too Black” or “You hella Black.”

As a kid, I always showed my teeth because they were my lightest feature and a feature I felt confident about. So it becomes: “Hello, I am too Black. Is this light enough for you?”

Now my life has done a 180. People compliment my skin, my teeth and my face. I created that piece as a sign of embracing my skin, my teeth, my face and even the label. I’m proud of it now. I wouldn’t even mind being Blacker.

A lot of dark-skinned kids grow up dealing with this, especially in the social media age. I wanted to put that experience into the world.

Leah: I saw that painting and thought, “This is revolutionary.” What does revolutionary mean to you?

Derick: Something that causes a big change — a chain reaction through time and throughout an environment.

As far as whether my art is revolutionary, I feel like that is for the people to decide. I can create art and have my own views, but once it goes into the world, it can do things I never imagined.

Growing up in West Oakland, the art and history stay with me and enter my work. It may be something natural: showing myself, representing where I’m from and not being afraid to show my work.

Leah: Does an artist have a responsibility to the community?

Derick: I don’t want to put negative things into the world, so I am careful sometimes about what I create. But I think the responsibility is more on me as a person than on the art.

People will always look back at the artist. The responsibility is in how I move through life, how I step up for my younger siblings and how I represent my family. For me, it is more about the artist than the art.

Leah: After looking at Emory Douglas’ images, do you feel that you belong to Oakland’s artistic tradition?

Derick: I feel like anywhere I go, I belong. The people in my community who resonate with my work will always gravitate toward me.

It’s all about finding community.

Leah: What does success look like to you?

Derick: Being able to live 100 percent off my art and give back to my family and community.

I attend school on a full scholarship, so in a way, my art is already supporting me. But after school, I’ll need an apartment and have bills to pay. I want to live comfortably through painting — selling work and being in control of my destiny and my life.

Leah: I think the word your looking for is “free.”

Derrick: Yeah….

Leah: Where do you want your art to take you?

Derick: Looking at the leap I made in the last three years, I want to take it times 100 or times 1,000. I want my work across the country and the world. I want my family in a better position. I want to support them and support my siblings.

I want to be the best artist and the best person I can be. I’m going to keep working and trust the process.

A quote I recently heard says an artist’s duty is to reflect the times they live in. For me, that means reflecting the life of a 19-year-old who grew up in West Oakland in the age of social media, new technology, pop culture and urban life.

I want to make art that reaches young people and older people. Music lives forever. I want my art to affect kids, adults and elders that way too.

Davies may be reluctant to declare his work revolutionary. He paints what he has lived: colorism confronted, emotions released, public suffering witnessed and Blackness embraced. And he paints it in such a way that people have no choice but to be affected.

The definition of “revolutionary” has changed over the years, depending on the picture “they” want to paint (pun intended). If we go back to the most basic meaning — causing a sudden, complete change — I think that includes giving struggle, whether it’s drug abuse, police violence or the social media effect, a visual language to invoke change. Davies is finding his own language in paint, murals, video, social media and whatever medium comes next.

The tools evolve. Oakland’s young artists inherit the history, but they are not required to imitate it. Their responsibility — if there is one — is to tell the truth about their own time. Davies does that as naturally as breathing.

You can follow Derick Davies on Instagram: @thederickdavies

Leah Harmony is a journalist and Manager of Production at the San Francisco Bay View. She can be reached at leah@sfbayview.com

The post Painting freedom: Derick Davies on Blackness, Oakland and the art of becoming appeared first on San Francisco Bay View.

Many of us are dealing with health problems and ailments like eczema, migraines and swelling that seem to never leave, no matter how much pharmaceutical dope we swallow or apply to our skin. Most of the time, illnesses such as eczema, migraines, fibroids, leg swelling and the like are caused by what we eat, apply to our skin and/or wear in our hair. We have the power to make our lives and the community into what we want. We just have to have the willpower to do it. Being chemical-free and as natural as possible is the only way to be in a world that is heavily toxic and polluted.

Certified herbalist Colin Robinson’s health journey, inner courage and determination to change his life’s trajectory inspired me so much that I wanted to share it with our readers. What many of us have known for a while, and what the Dr. Fauci hearings recently documented, is that the U.S. government has declared overt war on the health of people living in the United States in general, although the overt war has never stopped against Black people since before the founding of the nation. It is only intensifying.

I conducted this interview to give the community some general natural health tips, as well as to spread inspiration to those who are fighting health battles seemingly alone and are ready to take the natural path. You can win. Here is Colin Robinson in his own words.

JR Valrey: What is an herbalist? What made you become one?

Colin Robinson: An herbalist is one who uses the knowledge of our ancestors about herbs, plants, foods and more to heal themselves and their community. This is one definition. Being an herbalist is evolving. There are many definitions, but I’ll leave this one, and for those looking to understand more, reach out and let’s chat. You can also look this up yourself to get your own idea. It is necessary for a lot of folks to have herbalists around them because we have lost our connection with the land in a lot of ways and places with modern technology.

I chose to become an herbalist because I was dealing with all sorts of health issues: eczema, excessive dandruff, digestive issues like IBS and, at times, extreme allergies to food and my environment. I was taking pills, hydrocortisone and more to deal with these issues. At a certain point, I had a really strong eczema medicine called triamcinolone. It stopped working. I know this because I found myself in urgent care several times a year for a handful of years. I was itching, couldn’t sleep, had trouble breathing and my face was puffing up more times than I could count. They gave me prednisone, which exacerbated the problem. Each time I took it, I would be fine for a while, then my symptoms would come back even worse, even stronger. They said the next option was an allergen shot. I told myself that was enough. I was going to find a solution that didn’t involve another prescription pill, needle or ointment.

I was at my wit’s end and I knew I had to turn to what is called “alternative medicine.” As I began to realize, it was actually the first medicine that people knew as a whole: Acupuncture, herbs in the form of tea, tinctures, fasting, alkaline. I overcame all of my health issues through my knowledge of herbalism and the help of some functional doctors and alkaline herbalists. I turned to it all until I developed my own unique way of healing that incorporated pieces of what I learned about ancestral healing. In learning how to heal myself, I became an herbalist and studied with Berkeley Herbal Center to get my certificate. I’ve continued my studying on my own and through various herbalists, food advocates and agriculture orgs across the Bay Area. I realize that true healing only comes as we heal not just ourselves but others, and that involves the healing of the systems that keep us unhealthy.

JR Valrey: Can you give people three different herbs that can help the human body and speak on how they’re used?

Colin Robinson: Ginger helped me so much with my eczema. It is known for helping with the digestive system due to its warming, antimicrobial and strong aromatic properties. It cleanses toxins and “bad” bacteria alike, while helping to heal the stomach lining and strengthening immunity. I’ve included this in my tea for those dealing with skin or digestive issues. The gut is usually the first place to correct or look for how to overcome health issues.

Orange peel is not necessarily thought of as an herb, but as an herbalist, we define herbs in the sense that anything that helps the body can be used as an “herb.” We have a lot of folks that may have orange trees. They eat the fruit, but that peel is filled with antioxidants. It doesn’t need to be thrown away. It helps cleanse the kidneys, calms headaches and nausea and can even cure skin itching directly. I’ve included this in my tea as well.

Dandelion root is a plant that many cut and throw away, a weed on many lawns that actually has a lot of qualities that can help your health. The roots have a lot of vitamins and minerals. It is good for detoxifying the body from chemicals, stress, bacteria and more. I have this in one of my teas.

JR Valrey: What herbs are the teas that you make comprised of?

Colin Robinson: My teas include herbs that have originated globally, like blueberry, which is native to the U.S.; cinnamon, which is from Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and China; and mullein, which is from Northern Africa. Some of these herbs can be found naturalized or widely grown in the U.S. These herbs are part of my healing story: ginger to help my stomach lining, orange peel to help my energy levels, mullein to help me breathe. I have a mix of six to 10 herbs in each tea, with some herbs that are uniquely in their own teas.

Family Batch, primarily ginger and cinnamon notes, is really good for warming the body, including the joints, and if your energy feels stuck — it’s hard to breathe — not to mention this gives good vibes, like being around a loving family. Presence of Rose, primarily marshmallow and rose notes, is really good for relaxing and calming yourself down. Also, it is great for the skin. Wake Up Brew is a tea that is an alternative for coffee with a similar flavor, no jitters, no issues with taking it rather than coffee, which begins to have folks rely on its strength daily to wake them up and get them ready for their day. These are my three best sellers, but I have Copacetic Calm, blueberry and vanilla notes that are good for immunity when you are feeling under the weather or sick. The blueberry brings a lot of vitamins and minerals to the body and helps defend the body.

I’ll have more flavors of tea in the near future. This is just the start.

JR Valrey: What is walnut butter and how do people use it?

Colin Robinson: Walnut butter is just like peanut butter. Instead of peanuts, though, folks that are allergic to it get walnut butter. It has a smoother texture instead of the chunky or creamy texture you get from peanut butter. Not only this, you’ll get the high omega-3s that are good for your skin and brain health and specifically helped me with my eczema as well. You can put walnut butter on anything you would put peanut butter on: Desserts, fruits, bread, anything. Turn that PB&J to a WB&J! Walnuts are an alkaline-approved food from Dr. Sebi, who is one of many folks I’ve learned from.

JR Valrey: Can you talk about the volunteer work that you do at local farms?

Colin Robinson: Well, Sun Roots Collective volunteers at local farms like Alemany Farm, which I’ve been to a lot over the years. I’ve volunteered at Planting Justice, CoCo San Sustainable Farm and Acta Non Verba as well. I’ve done everything from seeding to composting to buying produce or veggies from these places. Though, what I do now is weed at these farms. A lot of folks don’t want to weed. They want to seed, do all the other stuff, it seems, but it’s like weeding isn’t cool. When have you known anyone to say, “Let’s go weed!” Ha.

Well, there is a therapeutic feeling to weeding, especially if you do it with the hand tools we used to use in our granny’s gardens. Weeding helps plants grow because those weeds will take the nutrients, space in the soil and stop the plants from growing, so it is 100% necessary and needed for the plant to grow efficiently. And when you do that, you are giving that plant the space to grow. I think that each seed has immense potential to grow and bear fruit, but when that plant doesn’t have the right environment, nutrients or what have you, they won’t produce. We as people are like this. If we are given the right tools, we’ll excel beyond imagination.

JR Valrey: Why is it important to shop locally?

Colin Robinson: Shopping locally gives back to local businesses, which circulates dollars in our communities. I’m in the East Bay area. So by shopping with me, you are helping to circulate that money in the East Bay area. It can create jobs and opportunities for those in the local community. Choosing to shop with big brands, sure, we’ll have to do that at times, but by choosing to shop locally, you are giving back to your community. It’s more likely they will have your interests at heart rather than just having the dollar in mind. I can say that at Sun Roots Collective, this is our vision. We care. And we have to prove it, which is why I shop with local artists, small local businesses and volunteer in the community regularly.

JR Valrey: Where can people find you? How can they hook up with you online?

Colin Robinson: They can find me online at www.sunrootscollective.com or on Instagram at @sun.roots.collective. I’m going to start doing my own events where I’ll have my tea and walnut butter as well: hikes, meditation, learning about Black and Indigenous history, which will connect us to the ancestors of this land. I’ll be at more festivals, farmers markets and events out there soon too.

JR Valrey is a veteran journalist and Editor in Chief at the San Francisco Bay View. He can be reached at JR@sfbayview.com

The post Herbal solutions to toxic problems: An interview with herbalist Colin Robinson appeared first on San Francisco Bay View.

by JR Valrey

Plants are extremely important to our environment because they breathe in carbon dioxide and release oxygen that allows animals and humans to breathe. Plants are also used by humans for creating building materials in some places, as well as plants are a regular part of the human diet.

In the world of today, Plant Mama aka Inayah Baqee is taking it upon herself to educate people on how to identify plants, buy plants, repot and more. In capitalism, where your value is calculated by what you own, accumulating plants is way better for the mind and the environment than accumulating corporate-made items that we are conditioned to believe we need. Many studies have shown that just by having plants around, it lowers stress and cortisol levels in human beings across the board. For y’all that don’t know, I want to introduce you to our own local community horticulturalist Vibrant Plant Mama.

JR Valrey: When did you get into raising plants? Who inspired it?

Inayah Baaqee: My mom has a green thumb, so I’ve grown up with plants in the home. My father and grandmothers have also decorated their homes with plants. So I’ve always been around them and always had a plant or two of my own since college. When I moved into my own apartment after college, my houseplant collection grew to about 30 plants since I had more space (which was a lot for me at the time). But I’ve also killed about that many too (or more)! lol

After I had my daughter almost two years ago, I experienced severe postpartum anxiety, which was exacerbated by a colic and high needs baby. I was stuck at home with my baby, overwhelmed and overstimulated most of the time and my plants kept me busy and grounded. Now I’ve grown my plant collection to 100+.

JR Valrey: What does “Vibrant Plant Mama” mean?

Inayah Baqee: I describe my personality as vibrant and energetic. My spirit color is also orange, which is vibrant. Plant mama in the name is a double entendre. I’m plant mama and also a human mama too. Motherhood is a huge part of my identity now and really drives my plant hobby.

JR Valrey: What is the Vibrant Plant Mama brand about? What is the philosophy behind it? What do y’all offer?

Inayah Baqee: For now, I’m carving out a space on the internet for people like me. Mamas, plant mamas, sober women, introverts, postpartum mamas etc. I post content on Instagram, YouTube and TikTok so I’m accessible all over.

As I grow this brand, my vision is to continue plant education, both virtually and in-person. I see myself doing plant consulting for businesses and orgs and live demonstrations.

Ultimately representing Black women in the plant community and demystifying plant collecting.

JR Valrey: Can you talk about your Vibrant Plant Mama tutorial videos on IG? Can you tell people what you do?

Inayah Baqee: Online I document most of my life with my plants, repotting plants, purchasing plants, styling plants etc.

I stay transparent to show that while some would say that I am an expert, I acknowledge that I am still a learner and make mistakes too.

JR Valrey: Why is being a horticulturalist a very important part of your life? What do plants mean to you?

Inayah Baqee: Plants represent life and bring energy. They are the easiest way to elevate a living space. They just feel good to have around. This journey also symbolizes my transformation into motherhood, sobriety, and overcoming postpartum anxiety, which is all so important to me.

JR Valrey: Do you have any events or public presentations coming up?

Inayah Baaqee: I wish! But not yet. I will be sharing a video series on all platforms showcasing each of my plants along with care tips and education.

JR Valrey: How could people stay in touch with you?

Inayah Baqee: I am on all platforms (Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube) as @vibrantplantmama.

I post four or five times per week on Instagram and TikTok and I post twice weekly on my YouTube channel. YouTube is where I get a little more intimate since it’s long form.

JR Valrey is Editor in Chief of the San Francisco Bay View and can be reached at: jr@sfbayview.com.

The post For the plant lovers: Vibrant Plant Lady appeared first on San Francisco Bay View.

The fate of Bay Area public transportation is on the ballot today

Will local public transportation in the Bay die after the election or become a shell of its former self?

Today, the Regional Transit Measure (RTM) will be voted on. The result could severely limit, and in many geographic areas, completely demolish public transportation in the greater Bay Area, greatly affecting the most vulnerable people in the Black community and the general population.

If the RTM is not passed, up to 15 BART stations or possibly 10 Caltrain stations will close. There will be a 50% increase in fees for public transportation services across the board, and bus services will be cut by 16%.

A 0.5% sales tax increase is being proposed in the counties of Alameda, Contra Costa, San Mateo and Santa Clara. Additionally, a 1% sales tax increase is being proposed for San Francisco County.

If RTM is approved, it will fund free and reduced-price system transfers, infrastructure reliability projects, standardized wayfinding maps and signage. RTM will also support specialized transit discount programs for low-income riders and people with disabilities.

The RTM will cost residents living in the affected counties approximately $10 a month.

Public transportation agencies that will be affected by the Regional Transit Measure include BART, AC Transit, Muni, Caltrain, SamTrans, VTA, the SF Bay Ferry and Golden Gate Transit.

The Regional Transit Measure will have a 14-year duration, starting collection in April 2027 if passed by voters in the combined counties.

For more information, people can visit https://luma.com/connectbayarea

San Francisco International Airport has built a new immigration internment camp

The San Francisco International Airport is currently violating the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution, which guards against cruel and unusual punishment, with its new in-house immigration jail. It is a facility that was not constructed for detaining people overnight, yet it has been consistently holding people for over 72 hours at the airport, against California Border Patrol policy.

Congressman Kevin Mullins of California’s 15th Congressional District in the House of Representatives, who represents parts of southeast San Francisco and most of San Mateo County, recently went to investigate the Department of Homeland Security/ICE’s new detention center, aka immigration jail, at San Francisco International Airport (SFO), according to a Sept. 1 press release.

“I was really shocked at the sleeping conditions in a congregate setting with no access to a phone, very little privacy, a very dark, windowless environment. I was really concerned by the conditions at SFO,” said Congressman Mullins.

As it stands, captives have no access to beds, showers or medications. The lights are rarely turned off for the captives to sleep. And they cannot call a lawyer. Their only access to food is through vendors at the airport.

Out of two dozen people currently being held, a vast majority of the people detained are green card holders and have been held longer than 72 hours, which is against current California Border Patrol policy.

Spokespeople for the airport claim no responsibility for the human rights violations happening on airport property in relation to the Department of Homeland Security immigration jail.

San Francisco is a sanctuary city. Many believe that the SFO immigration jail is a result of the current administration demanding more detentions and more deportations. The question is: What are the people going to do to stop the U.S. government from committing these human rights violations and ruining people’s lives?

JR Valrey is a veteran journalist and Editor in Chief at the San Francisco Bay View. He can be reached at JR@sfbayview.com and on IG: @JRValrey

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by JR Valrey

One of the most talented yet overlooked and slept-on artists in Bay Area Hip Hop history is the Fillmore game spitter Willie Hen. His effortless, game-infested flow came to my attention when I first heard “The Product,” which also featured the legendary Texas rapper Scarface. Recently, Willie Hen has dropped some new material that Hip Hop heads need to check out. Here is the update.

JR Valrey: When and how did you start rapping?

Willie Hen: Technically, I first started rapping in 1990. I made my debut on an album called BSB, Both Sides of the Bay, which was a group album executive produced by my older cousin Jedi. The group had two rappers, J-Wanz and D -Flat, who were friends of my cousin. The way I started rapping was by eavesdropping on one of their writing sessions, which was held at my grandmother’s house. I overheard them practicing their verses on a song called “the BBQ,” and I wrote a verse from outside the door. When they finally came out, I told them I had something for the beat and I spit the verse to them, and they decided that I made the cut.

JR Valrey: How would you compare the Frisco music of today to the Frisco music that was being made when you got into the game?

Willie Hen: Frisco rap music back then was still new because the genre of rap was still new. The biggest difference I noticed is that we were more conscious of being original. Everyone had their own style and sound. It wasn’t cool to sound like someone else – voice-wise or cadence-wise. And we respected each other more. There were less politics, although we had street issues and crosstown beef in the streets. When it came to the rap, there was a mutual respect for your fellow rappers. Sometimes the beef spilled into the music because rap was more closely tied to the streets back then. Most rappers were actual street cats, not just people who are good at rap.

The music was more authentic and painted pictures of what was actually going on in the neighborhood, the city and the Bay Area. The music told stories about the good times and the bad times. Everybody was still figuring it out and putting their crews together. Having a crew was essential. Lately, the Frisco rap scene has been very vibrant. I’ve seen the younger generation functioning with the older generation. There’s a lot of talent, but some of the guys seem to be held back by the politics associated with the streets, which is understandable when there’s been bloodshed and lives lost. But we’re all players and also soldiers, so hopefully we’ll figure it out and all come together real soon.

JR Valrey: What are you working on currently?

Willie Hen: Currently, I’m promoting my newest single, THE FLYEST ft. Boogs Bentley, which is available right now on all streaming platforms. I’m also working on an EP that may turn into an album because I’m stacking songs. The vibe is real smooth, player, soulful, mixed in with some Mob Music that the Bay Area is known for. I’m giving a lot of game and sharing a lot of information organically. I think it’s different from past projects because I’m just kicking back in my bag. I’m picking the beats, working close with the producers and executive producing the project myself.

JR Valrey: Who are you using for production on this project? You don’t usually have the usual Bay Area sound.

Willie Hen: I have a mixture of producers and features that I don’t wanna name now because I want it to be a surprise. And I haven’t narrowed down exactly who’s going to make the cut yet either. I’m very particular about music. I don’t like to just throw music out there for the sake of having it out, so I’m taking my time with it to curate and create a great body of work. Trust me, when I drop, you won’t be disappointed. It will be worth the wait.

JR Valrey: You helped to create one of the most classic slept-on albums in Bay Area history that also featured the Hip Hop legend Scarface, called “The Product.” Y’all ever gonna do an album together again?

Willie Hen: I actually talked to Scarface a couple weeks ago. He’s doing good. We didn’t really talk about music. We just chopped it up and joked with each other on a three-way call. What I will say is me and the other group member Malice have been doing some music lately: 10 songs so far. And we have talked about doing another Product album altogether, but I guess you’ll have to wait and see!

JR Valrey: Why has it always been important for you to put consciousness in your music?

Willie Hen: It’s important for me to put consciousness in my music because if I don’t, then who will? Growing up in the Bay Area with parents who were very conscious about our position in society and how the world felt about Black people as a whole, I kind of grew up with a mentality and an awareness that spilled over into the music. I feel like it’s almost my responsibility to pass down the knowledge, information and awareness to the generations to come.

Even though I’m known for storytelling and player songs, I still feel like it’s important to teach and reach people by sharing your experience so that hopefully they won’t make some of the same mistakes, or at least learn from your mistakes.

JR Valrey: Do you have any shows coming up?

Willie Hen: I may be performing in early October throughout the Bay Area. Right now I’m rehearsing with a band and a couple of my collaborators to put something awesome together. Make sure you check my social media, @Williehen, for more info on upcoming shows.

JR Valrey: How can people keep up with you online?

Willie Hen: Make sure to stay in touch with me on all social media platforms. I’m most active on Instagram. You can also find me on Facebook, TikTok, YouTube and X. Search @Williehen. Snapchat is @Hendu415.

JR Valrey is a veteran journalist and Editor in Chief at the San Francisco Bay View. He can be reached at JR@sfbayview.com and also on IG @JRValrey

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By Leah Harmony

The first time I heard a Digital Underground song I was in Texas, a wayward teenager, missing my home in the Bay Area, and just missing the Bay Area entirely… completely. I turned on the radio to hear:

“So you’re freakin’ (freakin’), the furniture’s squeakin’ (squeakin’)/She’s tweakin’, sayin’ that she’s weak in the knees/Cheek to cheek, and pound for pound/You’re taxin’ it and waxin’ it and workin’ it around/’Til the booty starts makin’ that clappin’ sound/Which is cool, but your friends are chillin’ in the other room”

And because the Bay talks different, raps different and just hits different, I knew I was listening to home and that was everything.

That was 1990. It’s now 2026. Digital Underground has been around the world a few times, lost integral members of the Digital Underground family, including one half of the group’s mainstay duo, musical genius, Shock G. Things haven’t necessarily slowed down for Ronald “Money B” Brooks because life will do what life does, but it seems to be moving at that kind of manageable pace that comes with wisdom and years in the game. That’s what gives him room to share the stories, enjoy the nostalgia, and embark upon new endeavors in tech and literature.

We caught up at a perfect time. October is Black Panther History month and the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense. Not many people know who Money B was before he was making records with Digital Underground, so they don’t know as a child he was fed, taught and looked after by the Black Panther Party.

Early in our conversation, when I asked him what he knew about the Black Panther Party as a child, he said the most Oakland thing ever: “I didn’t really know about the Black Panther Party, because all I knew was the Black Panther Party.” He told me, “I just thought that that’s how you grow up.”

Raised by the village: The Oakland community

“My father joined the Black Panther Party in Philadelphia, at the Philadelphia chapter, in 1970,” Money B explained “I was one year old when he joined.”

The catalyst was good ol’ state sanctioned police repression and violence. Following nationwide crackdowns and police raids—precisely the infamous raid where Philadelphia police forced Panther members onto the street naked at gunpoint with snipers trained on their rooftops—his father, who lived right next door with his family, made a decision. “He saw all this happen, and he said the next day he joined the Black Panther Party. Seeing how the police did it, the way they treated us… it wasn’t right.”

By 1971, his father was summoned west to the party’s headquarters in Oakland, working directly alongside Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale, and the central committee. By 1973, a four-year-old Money B and his mother followed him to the Town.

While the mainstream media spent decades propagandizing the Panthers as a domestic terror threat, Money B’s earliest childhood memories were grounded in communal infrastructure and surviving to see the outcome of the revolution. He attended the historic Oakland Community School (OCS), founded and directed by the Party at 6118 East 14th Street in the heart of East Oakland.

“I was a part of the Free Breakfast and Lunch Program, which was originated by the Black Panther Party,” he recalled. “We would be fed breakfast and free lunch at the school. But it wasn’t just us—it was for the whole community. Right down the street from the Village. They had after-school programs, karate classes, meditation, movies on the weekends, teen dances. All of that was for the community.”

His recollections filled spaces we know are there but have learned to live without. Cooperative communities seem to be one such thing. Some children stayed in shared housing during the week while their parents worked. Mothers were mothers, it didn’t matter who’s biological child they were protecting, disciplining, or caring for.

“There was a bunch of us, and that’s where we stayed during the week—like a dormitory,” he said. “When people say ‘it takes a village,’ it really was that. They were taking care of us, they were protecting us, and they were also allowed to discipline us. If fourteen of us were staying in the house and somebody was messing up, you had to sit there and listen while they handled business in the back.”

When I asked whether people could sustain that kind of cooperation today, he pointed to ego and the pressure to put oneself first. He worries that giving something up for another person is looked at as a weakness these days.

“You know, it’s not all about you,” he said.

Out of that structure lifelong bonds were formed. Classmates at the Oakland Community School included Gregory Lewis (who went on to pen his own memoir about the experience), Mai Huggins (daughter of iconic Panther leader Ericka Huggins), and actress Kellita Smith (best known as Wanda on The Bernie Mac Show).

“Ericka Huggins was the director of the school, and we still have a relationship to this day,” Money B shared. “Elaine Brown runs the Black Panther apartments where my mother lives right now. Emory Douglas, who did all the revolutionary art, his daughter rhymes. Saturu Ned (formerly James Mott), who is still deeply influential around Oakland, was one of my teachers.”

Money B did not grow up waiting for somebody to introduce him to Black history. He remembers reading Malcolm X young, learning about Marcus Garvey and Langston Hughes in elementary school, and meeting Rosa Parks when she visited his school.

“We knew about ourselves,” he said. “We were taught our own history, and I thought that everybody knew that.”

Growing up immersed in this environment shaped his early worldview before he was grown enough to understand it was a rarity.

“When the late ’80s came around and everyone in hip-hop started wearing African medallions, dashikis, and talking about Black awareness, I never really hopped on it as a trend. I realized later that college kids were just discovering their Blackness. But I had read Malcolm X when I was 11. I knew Marcus Garvey. We were taught our own history in elementary school. Rosa Parks came to our school—we met Rosa Parks in person.”

Drugs as weapons and apathy as the norm

Rising above and looking through a wide lens over the mid-1970s into the 1980s, the purposeful sabotage of Black self-determination cannot be ignored. The destruction of the Black Panther Party through the FBI’s counter-intelligence program (COINTELPRO) coincided directly with the flooding of crack cocaine into inner-city neighborhoods, followed by the rapid expansion of the prison-industrial complex.

“It’s definitely on purpose,” Money B noted without hesitation. “When Public Enemy was going platinum in 1990, they didn’t just all of a sudden start making bad music. It was purposely pulled from the radio, and other messages were pushed forward. The negative messages were promoted at the exact same time industrial prisons were being built and needed to be filled. It’s not a coincidence. You dangle the carrot: ‘Keep making this stupid shit, you’ll get rich.’ And now our people have been conditioned to risk their entire lives over nothing, but won’t risk anything over something meaningful.”

Living through the peak of the crack epidemic on the streets of Oakland tested every ounce of discipline instilled in him as a Panther child. Yet, when he linked up with Gregory “Shock G” Jacobs, Jimi “Chopmaster J” Dright, and DJ Fuze to form Digital Underground, they chose a path that resisted the commercial pull of street exploitation.

“Digital Underground wasn’t on that,” Money B said. “Shock wouldn’t allow it. Shock was all about unity, peace, and bringing people together—One Nation Under a Groove. Early on, I had people telling me, ‘Man, if you talked about what you really do and where you really came from, you could say just as much as these gangsta rappers.’ But I was never impressed by that lifestyle. I lived around it, I lost people to it, and I knew what it really was. I wasn’t going to glorify it on a record.”

A DU Party Don’t Stop: Preserving Legacy and Reclaiming Ownership

That same stubborn integrity runs through every page of his upcoming book, A DU Party Don’t Stop: The Money B Story. Rather than producing a sensationalized tell-all about tour buses and backstage antics with 2Pac, Money B approached his memoir as a living historical document.

“People automatically think it’s going to be a tell-all hip-hop gossip book about being on tour with Digital Underground and Pac,” he said. “That’s in there, but that’s just a portion. I equate it to an American history tale. It’s a firsthand experience of being a child of the Black Panthers in the ’70s, surviving the crack epidemic as a teenager in the ’80s, rising with Digital Underground and Tupac in the ’90s, and then facing the 2000s when your star begins to fade at just 25 years old—navigating what comes next, family, survival, and reinvention.”

Getting the book to the public was a war in itself. After completing the original manuscript around 2017, predatory publishing practices dragged him into a three-year court battle just to secure the legal rights to his own life story.

“I spent three years in court just trying to get the rights back to my own story,” he said. “Once I got the rights back during the pandemic, I sat down, added chapters about what was happening in the world—Trump’s first term, the pandemic, the shifting culture—and brought it up to 2022. It’s information that doesn’t expire because it’s what really happened. It’s primary history.”

The book’s The release date—October 13—has an eerie, cosmic glow. October 13 happens to be the exact date of the sentencing in Las Vegas for Duane “Keffe D” Davis regarding the 1996 murder of Tupac Shakur.

When I asked Money B about the sudden “resolution” of the case after nearly three decades, his response was careful, as someone who finds it obvious that state institutions are as shady as record labels, but knows most people just really want to hear good music.

“Why 30 years later?” he asked rhetorically. “His mother, Afeni, passed away without ever getting closure. It feels too neat to just tie it up in a bow so nobody ever looks at the agencies or the deeper hands involved. But when the verdict came down and family members called me elated, feeling some sense of peace, I was happy for them. But the date lining up with my book release? You can’t plan that. Somebody close to it told me, ‘That’s Pac winking at you.’ It must be.”

Analog Wishes, Digital Dreams: Tech as Self-Defense

Unlike a large portion of the new generation of music makers, who seem too self involved to consider tools of tech, Mon stays true to the visionary culture of Digital Underground. They were, after all, a group that declared themselves “digital” back when multi-track recording actually utilized a “ginormous” multi track mixing board and getting your masters back meant you actually went to pick up boxes of 12 inch reels. Money B remains relentless about technological self-determination.

Recognizing how corporate streaming models carry the legacy of stealing from Black creators—paying fractions of a penny while blocking artists from their listener relationships—he launched Analog Wishes, Digital Dreams. Packaged as a physical, tap-to-play NFC content card (available at dumerch.com, the card operates like a credit card that opens a secure, standalone media ecosystem directly on a listener’s phone. It delivers ten new tracks, unreleased archival footage, animated stories about Tupac, and historic footage of early European freestyles between Money B and Shock G.

“You sell a million streams on Spotify, what is that? Roughly $4,000?” Money B broke down. “I can sell 100 physical cards and make the exact same amount. Our people were locked out of housing through redlining; we were locked out of generational wealth. We cannot afford to be left behind because we’re afraid of new technology. You have to adapt. Just because someone uses a tool to cause harm doesn’t mean you don’t arm yourself with information to protect your family and your culture.”

It reminds me of what we all can do with life experiences as a whole. A scarf can be a weapon or a lovely garment that keeps you warm.

From carrying the legacy of the Oakland Community School to touring the world with Young Hump keeping Shock G’s memory alive on stage (with his blessing, of course) Ronald Brooks took everything he lived through and kept that which the Panthers intended their children to be: grounded, organized, self-reliant, and incapable of selling out.

Money B’s memoir, ‘A DU Party Don’t Stop: The Money B Story,’ is available for pre-order at dumerch.com, where readers can secure signed copies alongside the ‘Analog Wishes, Digital Dreams’ NFC tap-to-play card. Digital Underground will be bringing the Bay to Belize for New Years Eve, with a show on the 2nd, with Oakland’s own Numskull of the Luniz (“I Got 5 on it”). .

Leah Harmony is Manager of Production for the San Francisco Bay View, a journalist, filmmaker, and music video producer. She can be reached at leah@sfbayview.com.

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by Obi Egbuna Jr

Reflections concerning navigating and maneuvering at the UN

Whenever Mother African’s Daughters and Sons touch down at the United Nations in New York City, regardless of where we fall on the ideological spectrum, it becomes abundantly clear that we are officially on enemy territory.

For US-born Africans with a sense of history, they never hesitate to remind our extended kith and kin at home and abroad that the UN is a precursor to the League of Nations, created by arguably the most racist Democrat to take the helm at the White House, Thomas Woodrow Wilson. During his tenure as president of Princeton University, Wilson refused to desegregate, leaving our people on the outside looking in. After all, Wilson considered segregation itself both rational and scientific. His apologists have always blamed this disposition on his Southern upbringing.

Since the League of Nations, in the eyes of Western political experts, could not curtail Axis aggression and prevent World War II, a facelift became the order of the day. Over 61 days in 1945, between April and June, 50 nations met in San Francisco to draft and sign the UN Charter.

During October of that same year, Africans were in Manchester, England, organizing our Fifth Pan-African Congress, which laid a springboard for the anti-colonial movement that led to self-determination and independence for Ghana on March 6, 1957, and 35 African nations between 1957 and 1960.

Exactly 10 years before Ghana’s independence, the Pan-Africanist and human rights champion Dr. WEB DuBois found himself locking horns with US First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who was seething with anger because he boldly presented “An Appeal to the World: A Statement on the Denial of Human Rights to Minorities in the Case of Citizens of the United States of America and an Appeal to the United Nations for Redress.”

Unfortunately, those who reduce Dr. DuBois to his disputes with Booker T. Washington and the Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey forget how exposing Wilson in his 1913 open letter, standing up to Mrs. Roosevelt at the UN and refusing to endorse Harry Truman, who breathed life into both the Zionist State of Israel and the CIA, set the tone for African anti-imperialist resistance worldwide.

The mass walkout at the UN last week during Zionist Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu’s General Assembly speech appeared in the same space where Israel refused to recognize Algeria and Tunisia’s independence and right to sovereignty. Every Zionist Israeli head of state has used their platform at the UN to vote for the maintenance of the illegal racist US blockade on Cuba.

Exactly four years later, in 1951, the cultural and artistic colossal Paul Robeson, who proudly considered himself a pupil of Dr. DuBois, along with William Patterson, submitted an appeal entitled “We Charge Genocide: The Crime of Government Against the Negro People” to the UN in New York. Patterson also delivered it to an additional meeting in Paris.

One decade later, the Liberation Committee for Africa and the United African Nationalist Movement interrupted the speech by US Ambassador to the UN Adlai Stevenson, condemning the role of the UN and Western imperialist forces in the horrific and barbaric assassination of Congolese Patrice Lumumba.

The sentiment that led to us taking to the streets in Harlem, Havana, Warsaw, Paris and New Delhi was echoed by Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah when he said, “History records many occasions when rulers of States have been assassinated. The murder of Patrice Lumumba and two of his colleagues, however, is unique in that it is the first time in history that the legal ruler of a country has been done to death with the open connivance of a world organization (the United Nations) whom the ruler put his trust in.”

From there we remember Brother Malcolm returning to Babylon from his second trip to Mother Africa, where he went primarily to generate support from the most revolutionary heads of state at our disposal for the purpose of exploring the possibility of taking US imperialism before the United Nations. What differentiated Malcolm’s efforts from what Dr. DuBois, Paul Robeson and Unsung William Patterson were attempting was that, in 1947 and 1951, we had no independent, let alone revolutionary, nations ready to do battle on that initiative. Brother Malcolm took the golden opportunity to multitask and pen a classic article in the Egyptian Gazette entitled “Zionist Logic,” which is why, when it comes to anti-Zionist resistance amongst Africans, he is a trailblazer. It would come as no surprise that when Brother Malcolm was poisoned by the CIA in Egypt, the Israeli Mossad was also involved.

It appears that, as it pertains to anti-Zionism, the social democrats too often appear to have no interest in the efforts to the left of them on the spectrum. Therefore, the role of the revolutionary Pan-Africanist head of state Ahmed Seku Ture, who was at the forefront of pushing UN Resolution 3379, Zionism and Racism, must be remembered. We must remind our people that Palestinian solidarity for Africans is only the tip of the iceberg, and if we fight them based on their crimes against the African world, their days are numbered.

Our comrade and brother, Venezuela’s President Nicholas Maduro, was captured by US imperialist forces in a manner similar to the way Phyllis Wheatley was snatched from SeneGambia at the tender age of 7, or Zimbabwe’s former President Robert Mugabe was captured by the Southern Rhodesians and imprisoned for 11 years without a trial.

As President Maduro sits defiantly in an imperialist prison cell under bogus charges of drug trafficking, many remember 20 years ago, during his speech at the UN General Assembly, his predecessor Comandante Hugo Chavez called former US President George W. Bush the devil. Ironically, today former President Bush parades around as a born-again humanitarian, boasting that he has tested more women for breast and cervical cancer in Mother Africa than any other institutional framework of its kind. This grotesque attempt at a political makeover was encouraged by the neocolonialist tandem of former Ghanaian Presidents John Kufuor and John Attah Mills, who, in sequence, announced and opened the largest highway in all of Ghana named in honor of former President Bush.

Due to the level of decorum expected in high-level diplomatic spaces, progressive and revolutionary forces face the challenge of keeping their cool because passion and emotion could lead to costly miscalculations and acts of bad judgment.

The battle cry for African heads of state asking for permanent representation on the UN Security Council should result in a campaign named in honor of late President Mugabe. During the final phase of his presidency, we saw US-EU imperialism attempt to block Zimbabwe from chairing the UN Committee for Sustainable Development, addressing the Food and Agriculture Organization meeting and trying to leverage the UN Security Council to impose additional sanctions on Zimbabwe. Only China and Russia’s vetoes prevented this cowardly and hateful overture.

When US imperialism resorts to using the UN Security Council to impose sanctions, that act of aggression represents a final death blow to a nation where they desire a regime change.

Our comrades in Eritrea were forced to endure these measures because of a lie propagated by US imperialism that they were supporting al-Shabaab terrorist cells, allegations which were eventually dropped due to a lack of proof.

Since this year marks the 25th anniversary of the UN Conference on Racism, Xenophobia and Other Related Intolerances, where former President Bush threatened to boycott the conference over our ancestors’ captivity, commonly referred to as slavery, reparations and the Palestinian question, the more-than-usual traffic in and around this year’s General Assembly should come as no surprise.

To all newcomers who are engaging on this level for the very first time, we hope they surround themselves with disciplined and principled organizers who know how to avoid the grandstanding and shenanigans at all costs.

At this stage, you can expect to see anything, like pretend demonstrations, opportunists present foaming at the mouth for photo ops with heads of state, foreign ministers or any other high-level diplomats they feel can enhance their individual or organizational profiles. This includes gross exaggerations about what they sincerely have the ability or genuine willingness to deliver as an act of solidarity and camaraderie. We must prepare to overcome vultures who are against cohesion and seek to exploit the mileage of issues that soak in our sweat and blood.

We are witnessing the Ghanaian government dance to the tune of reparations while openly volunteering to serve as a neocolonialist proxy to the European Union intelligence agencies and militaries, who are looking to bring about regime change targeting the Alliance of Sahel States. Before retirement, General Michael Langley was aiming to do his best impersonation of the war criminal and buffalo soldier General Colin Powell.

Our extended family in Cuba have notified the world that the recent energy blockade has cost them $5.8 billion and nearly $180 billion since it was imposed in 1962.

The Democratic machine stands with Cuba when it’s convenient but is obviously more anti-Trump than it can ever be pro-Cuba. Its disingenuous posture suggests that Trump isn’t trying to finish what Kennedy started in 1961, which was a working tribute to the first seven US presidents who wanted to annex Cuba.

When every ounce of smoke clears, only those on the battlefield who wish to be what the Pan-African giant Amilcar Cabral referred to as anonymous fighters when addressing the UN in 1962 will carry our struggle forward.

Our aim is to convert all weaknesses to strengths and expand on the strengths.

Matching the resolve of Cuba, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Eritrea, the Alliance of Sahel States, Nicaragua and all our comrades and friends who dare to defy the odds our enemies attempt to present as insurmountable is an honor and privilege beyond description.

Obi Egbuna Jr. is the External Relations Officer of the Zimbabwe Cuba Friendship Association.

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“Nobody in the world, nobody in history has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of the people oppressing them.” – Assata Shakur, a Panther who was given political asylum in Cuba after being liberated from prison by her comrades in the Black Liberation Army.

“An unarmed people are slaves, or subject to slavery at any given time.” – Minister of Defense Huey P. Newton, co-founder of the Black Panther Party

“Laws should be made to serve the people’s, the people shouldn’t be made to serve the law”. – Minister of Defense Huey P. Newton, co-founder of the Black Panther Party

“The task is to transform society, and only the people can do that; not heroes, not celebrities, not stars…” – Minister of Defense Huey P. Newton, co-founder of the Black Panther Party

“We are taught at an early age to be against the communist, yet most of us don’t have the faintest idea of what communism is. Only a fool let’s somebody else tell him who his enemy is.” – Assata Shakur, a Panther who was given political asylum in Cuba after being liberated from prison by her comrades in the Black Liberation Army.

“People get used to anything, the less you think about your oppression, the more tolerance for it grows. After a while people just think that oppression is the normal state of things. But to become free, you have to be acutely aware of being a slave.” -Assata Shakur, a Panther who was given political asylum in Cuba after being liberated from prison by her comrades in the Black Liberation Army.

by JR Valrey

Emory Douglas is by far the most revolutionary visual artist of our lifetime, with his artwork organizing, educating and inspiring Black and other oppressed people around the world for the last 60 years. Known in the Black Panther Party as the Minister of Information and the Revolutionary Artist, his revolutionary political cartoons conveyed the messages of the Black Panther Party to youth as well as to people who were illiterate.

Recognized around the planet, his artwork has been adopted and used by revolutionary movements in Algeria, Palestine, Cuba, Chiapas and China, to name a few. Emory Douglas is a living legend, and the SF Bay View newspaper salutes him and his Panther comrades on their 60th anniversary.

JR Valrey: Emory, when Huey and Bobby said that the Black Panther Party is an armed propaganda unit, what does that mean?

Emory Douglas: Well, that means that we were informing, enlightening and educating people about the contradictions and around the 10-point platform improvement in relationship to what the responsibility of revolution should be.

JR Valrey: When Huey said that “the Black Panther newspaper was the lifeblood of the Black Panther Party,” what did that mean to y’all?

Emory Douglas: That meant it was a lifeline between us and the world, and getting our message out there in the context of importance and telling our story from our perspective … and being able to criticize or praise what was going on in the context of the community and the world from our perspective. It was a lifeline because it was, that’s how people found out who we were around the world. Seeing it on the news and all those things, and then having requests to come speak and then our newspaper telling it from our perspective, our story and getting the firsthand insight.

JR Valrey: How much focus went into the Black Panther newspaper? I know it came out weekly, or was it monthly?

Emory Douglas: It was when it first evolved, we got it out when we could. That might have been monthly. And then after that we would try to get it out, say, every two weeks. And then it went as the party evolved and grew. We started getting it out every week, yeah, without any limitation. That was the comrades who may have worked in other areas of Panther work had to come a certain day, Wednesday. If it was Wednesday, they would work on the paper until it was finished, then they’d go back to the other work.

JR Valrey: And what was the process like?

Emory Douglas: Well, you had an editorial staff, editorial kind of, you had the editorial aspect of the paper, those who were the writers deciding what articles went into the paper.

JR Valrey: How did y’all do that?

Emory Douglas: Well, that was done by … we had people who we knew, sometimes who shared information with us, activists or progressives or otherwise, and then at the same time you had us getting in contact with folks, and they, the editors, would have all that information and sort through it, and decide on what was going on. Then shared it with maybe Huey or Bobby, but mostly the others did have a green light. But they were always in communication at some point in the process with Huey and Bobby about what articles were going into the paper, what’s going on, on the front and stuff like that.

JR Valrey: What’s the importance of the paper being directly involved with an organization with a revolutionary agenda versus a newspaper who’s not involved, taking more of a spectator position?

Emory Douglas: Yeah, that’s what we’re saying. The newspaper told our story from our perspective and we were not shackled by advertising and all the other stuff. We could say what we wanted to say, back it up and use language in the context of the culture of now that we communicated in.

JR Valrey: Okay, but I understand that you had a freedom of speech that most Black people didn’t have, but what was the power? Why did you even increase distribution? Why did the BPP increase the papers that they were pushing in the community?

Emory Douglas: It went from monthly, in barely any time, to every two weeks. Oh, it came from the readership and the demand for the paper. That was our lifeline … people would come to us to want to know who to vote for, and those kinds of things.

JR Valrey: What’s the difference between bourgeois media and, say, Black revolutionary media?

Emory Douglas: Well, you had that but a lot of them supported us. You had people in there who supported us. That’s why I went to work with The Sun Reporter after the BPP because Dr. Goodman supported us.

JR Valrey: Was he seen as radical in the ’60s?

Emory Douglas: Progressive, yeah. But you could say there was some who were shackled by advertisers on what they could say. You could say that in that context, they couldn’t speak on issues as much. They began to, and they would do some things, but on a broad scale.

JR Valrey: What is the difference between a conscious artist and a revolutionary artist?

Emory Douglas: Well, that is a revolutionary artist, a conscious artist.

JR Valrey: So you don’t make a distinction?

Emory Douglas: Well, you can make a distinction but it’s a broad context. What is it for? Whom is it serving? And how does it relate? Because it can be on a revolutionary scale that transcends the community or it can be on a scale that really focuses on certain issues within the community.

JR Valrey: What is the Artist Manifesto? Why was that important?

Emory Douglas: Well, that came over a period of time. That came about 2014, somewhere around then, and I thought that maybe putting it together. It’s ideas and thoughts that I had, in the context for the younger artists to have as a guide to act.

JR Valrey: So that wasn’t in the Black Panther Party?

Emory Douglas: No, it wasn’t a Black Panther Party manifesto. I had other articles that had maybe some of those points in it.

JR Valrey: When your title is said, it’s the Minister of Culture and the Revolutionary Artist. Why is that important to say? Why is it a title even as an artist?

Emory Douglas: Well, Huey and Bobby thought it was important in the context of it being done, but it was the Revolutionary Artist initially. And that came about when I came by a place called Black House, which was here in San Francisco where the elders used to stay upstairs, and a lot of cultural stuff was going on downstairs.

JR Valrey: It was in Fillmore, right?

Emory Douglas: Yeah, it was in Fillmore. The Black House was on Broderick around Sutter and Pine. And so what happened is that I came by there because I used to live right on the corner where the bus stops, going up on 8th. And so I came by one Saturday when nothing was happening and Huey and Bobby were downstairs sitting at the table. I seen Bobby working on the first issue of the paper during the Denzil Dowell case, and I told him I could help him improve it because I seen what he was doing. And he said, okay, and I went home and got my stuff and by the time he came back, I was finished. So Bobby said, “We’re going to start the Black Panther paper to tell our story from our perspective. It would be like a double-edged sword to praise you on the one hand and criticize you on the other.” And they say it would be to tell our story from our perspective, that’s the essence of it.

JR Valrey: What was the importance of photos and artwork that wasn’t particularly political cartoons? How would you pick the photos and general art for the newspaper?

Emory Douglas: Well, sometimes you would reflect on what’s going on in the story, so it had meaning, and in that context, not necessarily a revolutionary meaning but a meaning that reflected what the story and what the art was about.

JR Valrey: The Panthers had a lot of powerful pictures of Kathleen, of Huey and stuff at different times, so y’all were dealing with some kind of philosophy with photography. How did you pick this picture over that picture?

Emory Douglas: Well, sometimes it depends on what we may have, what choices that we had to pick from. The editor sometimes may say we want this picture to go with this. If not, we had the green light to look through our files to see what we had and connected with. Initially, before we had our own photography department, we had photographers who took pictures, but we required that if they took pictures, that they had to give us access to use those same pictures in the paper, if we chose to. So we got a lot of files from different well-known photographers of today, who gave us a lot of files, and then we developed our own photography department.

JR Valrey is a veteran journalist and Editor in Chief at the San Francisco Bay View. He can be reached at JR@sfbayview.com and on IG @JRValrey

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Speech by Afeni Shakur

May 11, 1971 — “Panther 21 Trial,” Criminal Courts Building, New York City

I don’t know what I’m supposed to say. I don’t know how I’m supposed to justify the charges that [Assistant District Attorney Joseph A.] Mr. Phillips has brought before the court against me. But I do know that none of these charges has been proven, and I’m not talking about proven beyond a reasonable doubt. I’m saying that none of the charges have been proven, period. That nothing has been proven in this courtroom, that I or any of the defendants did any of these things that Mr. Phillips insists we did do.

So, why are we here? Why are any of us here?

I don’t know. But I would appreciate it if you end this nightmare, because I’m tired of it and I can’t justify it in my mind. There’s no logical reason for us to have gone through the last two years as we have, to be threatened with imprisonment because somebody somewhere is watching and waiting to justify being a spy.

So do what you have to do. But please don’t forget what you saw and heard in this courtroom . . . Let history record you as a jury that would not kneel to the outrageous bidding of the state. Show us that we were not wrong in assuming that you would judge us fairly. And remember that that’s all we’re asking of you. All we ask of you is that you judge us fairly. Please judge us according to the way that you want to be judged.

Source: The Briar Patch; the People of the State of New York v. Lumumba Shakur et al, by Murray Kempton (New York: E. P. Dutton Co, Inc., 1973), pp. 268-269.

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By Donald “C-Note” Hooker and Jessica “Noonie” Noble 

COMPTON, Calif. — For generations, white corporate media apparatuses have treated Black America like an extractive colony—mining the brilliance, style, rhythm, and language of Black genius while locking our creators out of boardrooms, distribution networks, and equity. Few places have borne the brunt of America’s contradictory appetite quite like Compton: relentlessly stereotyped and pathologized by mainstream news as an emblem of urban decay, while simultaneously commodified by multi-billion-dollar conglomerates profiting off the city’s sonic and cultural exports.

On Saturday, Oct. 24, 2026, the streets of Compton are seizing the means of mythmaking and economic power with the 1st Annual Compton Comics Expo at Compton College. Presented by Studio Skye-Tiger in partnership with the Compton 125 Historical Society, this historic, free gathering is far more than an anime and comic book showcase—it is a defiant exercise in cultural self-determination, Afrofuturist world-building, and economic sovereignty.

The Power of Blackness in the Box Office Pantheon

For decades, Hollywood executives and comic publishing gatekeepers hid behind the self-serving myth that Black stories “don’t travel” or lack mass commercial appeal. The cold, hard numbers shattered that lie forever.

When you level the playing field and stack franchise against franchise across their first two releases in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Black Panther sits in near-untouchable territory. Amassing over $2.2 billion globally across Black Panther and Wakanda Forever, the franchise stands as the #1 solo character brand in Marvel history through its first two films. It generated more revenue out of the gate than the first two installments of Marvel’s crown jewel Spider-Man ($2.01B), crushed fan-favorites like Guardians of the Galaxy ($1.64B), and delivered more than double the sophomore launches of Phase One’s founding trinity: Iron Man ($1.21B), Thor ($1.09B), and Captain America ($1.08B).

In the entire brand pantheon, the power of Blackness yielded to only one entity: The Avengers—an all-star crossover ensemble requiring an entire universe of heroes to assemble. Domestically, the Black Panther franchise pulled in over $1.15 billion in North America alone, outpacing even the first two Avengers films. Black imagination isn’t a niche sub-genre; it is a historic economic locomotive. Yet, despite proving that Black worlds print billions, the corporate machine keeps the master rights, licensing profits, and intellectual property locked away in executive suites.

Dismantling the Gatekeepers: Black Intellectual Property as Liberation

The comic book industry and speculative fiction have long mirrored America’s racial hierarchy. Black youth have grown up watching white heroes save worlds that offer our people little justice, while Black characters were either omitted entirely or reduced to sidekicks and afterthoughts filtered through an unapologetic white gaze.

Commercially, the stakes are existential. Pop culture franchises and superhero intellectual property generate hundreds of billions in global box office, merchandising, gaming, and streaming revenue. Historically, our communities generated the creative energy while white corporate executives retained the copyright, the royalties, and the publishing houses.

The Compton Comics Expo flips this exploitative paradigm on its head. By giving prominence to independent outfits like Studio Skye-Tiger, the event centers Black ownership of the narrative and the copyright. It marks a decisive shift from merely begging for “representation” at Hollywood’s table to building our own platforms, owning the underlying intellectual property, and keeping economic capital circulating directly within our communities.

From Eve After Dark to Graphic Novels: The Lineage of West Coast Hip-Hop

The cultural lineage connecting Compton’s musical resistance to graphic literature takes center stage with a living legend: Alonzo “Lonzo” Williams, the undisputed “Godfather of West Coast Hip-Hop”. As founder of the World Class Wreckin’ Cru and the historic Eve After Dark nightclub, Lonzo launched an era that carried the raw reality of South Los Angeles into the global consciousness, breaking open doors for Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, Eazy-E, and DJ Yella.

From 1:30 p.m. to 2:30 p.m., Lonzo will host a signing for the graphic history Hip Hop Family Tree at the Studio Skye-Tiger Comics booth. His presence cements an unmistakable truth: hip-hop and comic book art share the same DNA of urban resistance, visual graffiti, raw lyricism, and community survival.

Following Lonzo’s signing, the Mainstage convenes the expo’s keynote panel at 2:00 p.m., “From Compton to Comics,” featuring hometown and vanguard creators Ray-Anthony Height, Shayla Height (creator of What The Fuck Mama!), Marcus D. Newsome, Jamal Anansi, screen/comic writer Marc Bernardin, and author/showrunner Rodney Barnes. The panel explores how the reality of growing up Black in Compton shaped their work, and how they weaponized visual art to challenge institutional barriers.

Radical Animation and Uncompromising Visual Power

Corporate Hollywood has routinely diluted radical Black thought, but independent animation provides an uncompromising front of resistance. At 12:00 p.m., Panel Rooms A and B host “From The Boondocks to Martian Blueberry,” featuring Carl Jones (The Boondocks, Black Dynamite) and Martian Blueberry co-founder/award-winning producer Love Jones.

Carl and Love Jones will pull back the curtain on how Black creatives can navigate structural racism in the entertainment industry to build self-sustaining, disruptive animation studios. Attendees will also receive an exclusive sneak peek at Intellectual Power, a new animated project featuring partner and Compton native Rizza Islam.

Further equipping the next wave of Black illustrators, the afternoon offers technical masterclasses:

• Drawing Workshop: Western Comics vs. Manga/Anime (1:00 p.m., Panel Room A): Led by Nex Vierling of Studio Skye-Tiger, deconstructing visual techniques across genres for creators of all ages.
• Portfolio Reviews with Lee Kohse (2:00 p.m.): Inkpot Award-winning artist Lee Kohse (Star Wars, Aliens) providing direct creative development and industry feedback for local up-and-coming artists.

Building for the Next Generation: Free Access and Family Solidarity

In a climate where comic conventions have been priced out of reach for working-class Black families through exorbitant entrance fees, the Compton Comics Expo stands on radical accessibility by opening its doors for free.

The day’s schedule is intentionally crafted to honor our youth:

• Kids Cosplay Parade (12:00 p.m.): Hosted in partnership with Kids Can Cosplay, ensuring children up to age 15 can hit the Mainstage, celebrate their imagination without apology, and receive treat bags.
• Adult Cosplay Showcase (3:00 p.m.): Elevating grassroots Black craft, costume engineering, and design on the Mainstage.
• Community Grounds: Free all-day access to community resources, a food truck rally, an Artist Alley courtyard, and youth craft zones.

Event Details and Support Information

• Date & Time: Saturday, October 24, 2026 | 11:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. (VIP doors open at 10:00 a.m.)
• Location: Compton College, 1111 East Artesia Blvd., Compton, CA 90221. Free parking is open while spaces last.
• Admission: FREE to the public. The first 400 attendees to enter Artist Alley when doors open at 11:00 a.m. will receive an expo swag bag.
• VIP Access: $25 (limited to 100 passes via PayPal or Venmo), which includes 10:00 a.m. early bird floor access, guaranteed swag bag, and official expo merchandise discounts. Up to two children aged 8 and under are admitted free with a paying adult.

To support the movement, register as a volunteer, or inquire about press access, reach out to organizers at comptoncomicsexpo@gmail.com or connect with Compton Comics Expo online.

The post Reclaiming the Narrative and the Bag: Inaugural Compton Comics Expo Plants the Flag for Black Cultural Sovereignty appeared first on San Francisco Bay View.

by Barry Hermansons

At the beginning of October, if you are registered to vote, you will begin to receive a mountain of information about the election. In addition to official materials from the State of California and the San Francisco Department of Elections, many pieces of mail sent by various organizations will seek to influence the way you vote. If you want to do something small for the environment and stop receiving so much election material, vote early. Most political campaigns do not want to waste resources trying to influence people who have already voted. The information below will enable you to get a head start on learning about the issues.

California ballot measures

The following list of propositions has been copied from a web page provided by the California Secretary of State: https://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/ballot-measures/qualified-ballot-measures.

For those of you reading this article on the www.sfbayview.com website, the links to the PDFs have been retained. I have provided the number of pages in each PDF in case you would like to read a few. Each PDF includes a title and summary and an analysis by the legislative analyst, including estimated fiscal impact. There is an argument in favor and a rebuttal, as well as an argument against and a rebuttal. There are also links to information about the committees that have been formed to support or oppose each measure, as well as the top 10 contributors to those campaigns. The full text of each proposition can be found at the Secretary of State’s website at voterguide.sos.ca.gov.

Proposition 1

Authorizes Bonds for Housing Affordability Programs. Legislative Statute. (PDF) 6 pages

No argument against Prop 1 was submitted.

Proposition 2

Increases State’s Rainy Day Fund. Legislative Constitutional Amendment. (PDF) 6 pages

Proposition 3

Provides Permanent Funding for Schools and Health Care by Extending Existing Tax on High Incomes. Initiative Constitutional Amendment. (PDF) 4 pages

Proposition 4

Repeals Prohibition Against Public Funding of Election Campaigns. Legislative Statute. (PDF) 4 pages

Proposition 5

Changes Recall Election Process for Statewide Officers. Legislative Constitutional Amendment. (PDF) 6 pages

Proposition 37

Creates Loan Program for Middle-Income Buyers of Qualified New Homes. Initiative Statute. (PDF) 4 pages – No argument against Prop 37 was submitted.

Proposition 38

Authorizes Bonds for Immunology Medical Research. Initiative Statute. (PDF) 4 pages

Proposition 39

Prohibits Citizens from Voting Unless They Present Government-Issued Identification. Initiative Constitutional Amendment. (PDF) 6 pages

Proposition 40

Imposes One-Time Tax on Certain Taxpayers. Initiative Constitutional Amendment and Statute. (PDF) 4 pages

Proposition 41

Prohibits New State Taxes That Exclude Revenues from State Spending Limit. Requires Audits for New State Special Taxes. Initiative Constitutional Amendment. (PDF) 4 pages

Proposition 42

Prohibits New State Personal Property Taxes and Certain Retroactive State Taxes. Initiative Constitutional Amendment. (PDF) 4 pages

Proposition 43

Limits Voters’ Ability to Raise Revenues for Local Government Services. Legislative Constitutional Amendment. (PDF) 4 pages

Proposition 44

Requires Community Health Clinics to Spend 90% of Revenue on Program Services. Initiative Statute. (PDF) 4 pages

Proposition 45

Modifies Environmental Review for Certain Projects. Initiative Statute. (PDF) 6 pages

San Francisco ballot measures

Full text for each of the measures below can be found at https://www.sf.gov/qualified-ballotmeasures. Below the title of each City measure is the question that will appear in the voter handbook written by City Attorney David Chiu. Also listed are the number of pages in the text of the ballot measure and the digest. I have provided an additional comment on only one of these measures, Prop I.

Charter amendments

A – Charter Changes Affecting Various City Departments and Commissions

“Shall the City amend the Charter to align it with how some City departments currently operate, change some processes, eliminate or reorganize certain commissions and advisory bodies, and require the Board of Supervisors to amend voter-approved laws to enact some of these changes?”

Text: 145 pages, Digest: 6 pages

B – Establishing a Municipal Finance Corporation and a Public Bank

Text: 29 pages, Digest: 1 page

C – Contributions to the Housing Fund

“Shall the City amend the Charter to change how the City’s annual contributions to the Housing Trust Fund are set, increase funding and expand programs for affordable housing, and extend the Fund to 2058?”

Text: 15 pages, Digest: 3 pages

D – Changes to Ballot Measure Process

“Shall the City amend the Charter to increase the requirements for signature initiatives from 2% to 8% of registered voters in San Francisco (currently from about 10,600 to about 42,500 signatures), increase the requirements for calling special elections, allow signature initiatives to be withdrawn before an election, and remove the ability of a minority of Board of Supervisors members or the Mayor to place measures on the ballot?”

Text: 11 pages, Summary: 1 page

E – City Administrator’s Authority and Changes to City Contracting

“Shall the City amend the Charter to give the City Administrator more authority by centralizing the City’s purchasing rules and processes, changing how the City approves purchasing rules, changing when contracts and leases require Board of Supervisors approval, and extending the City Administrator’s term?”

Text: 32 pages, Summary: 2 pages

F – Changes to Executive Branch Management

“Shall the City amend the Charter to expand the Mayor’s authority to transfer responsibilities between departments, hire deputy mayors, and hire some and fire most department heads; and to allow City officials to remove members of boards and commissions without cause?”

Text: 67 pages, Summary: 2 pages

Ordinances

G – Allowing Private Vehicles on the Great Highway in Sunset Dunes Park

“Shall the City close Sunset Dunes Park from Monday at 4:00 a.m. through Friday at 6:00 p.m., unless a holiday falls on a weekday, in order to reopen the roadway known as the Upper Great Highway to private vehicles during that time?”

Text: 6 pages, Summary: 1 page

H – Parcel Tax to Fund Public Muni Operations

“Shall the City fund Muni service through a new annual parcel tax on real estate at rates ranging from $129 per parcel up to a maximum of $400,000 per parcel, depending on the type of property and its size and adjusted annually for inflation, for estimated revenue of $177 million a year for 15 years?”

Text: 27 pages, Summary: 2 pages

I – Changes to Real Property Transfer Tax (Affordable Housing Guarantee Act)

“Shall the City permanently dedicate half of the transfer tax revenues collected when certain real estate with a value or sales price of more than $10,000,000 changes hands, which will continue to be taxed at rates of 5.5% to 6%, to be spent only on affordable housing, including social housing developments and housing assistance, and exempt certain sales from the dedicated portion of the tax, for an estimated annual revenue decrease of approximately $1 million?”

Note: This is a tax that was approved by voters in 2020 with the intent, but not the mandate, to spend these tax receipts on affordable housing.

Text: 14 pages, Summary: 2 pages

J – Removal of Foreclosure Exemption for Real Property Transfer Tax

“Shall the City permanently apply a transfer tax of between 0.5% and 6% of a property’s fair market value on the transfer of properties such as commercial, industrial and large residential properties that are transferred to a lender because of foreclosure or to avoid foreclosure, for estimated annual revenue of $100 million to $150 million?”

Text: 8 pages, Digest: 1 page

Regional measures

RTM – Regional Transit Measure

Provides financial support to public transit agencies. “The Initiative Measure would impose a retail transactions and use tax ordinance applicable to the District, for a duration of 14 years, and in an amount of 0.5% in the counties of Alameda, Contra Costa, San Mateo and Santa Clara, and 1% in the City and County of San Francisco.”

Resolution: 26 pages, No summary or digest

Barry Hermanson is a member of the San Francisco Green Party County Council. Before he retired, he owned and operated a small business and was a leader in the small business community in San Francisco.

The post A very full ballot in November appeared first on San Francisco Bay View.

by Zaire Saunders

In March 2024, San Francisco initiated the use of Flock Safety cameras to read license plates with the ability to capture passing vehicles’ make and model. Now, in 2026, SFPD is the sole owner of 500 artificial intelligence-enhanced surveillance cameras across the city.

Flock Safety, the company behind the nation’s increased surveillance, states on its webpage, “The nation’s largest connected LPR network helps law enforcement, businesses, and communities securely share vehicle evidence, uncover more leads, and solve more cases together. Customers stay in control of how their data is shared and accessed.”

Hunters Point alone has 17 Automatic License Plate Readers, or ALPRs, counted and mapped out. The data comes from Deflock.org, a crowdsourced ALPR map.

Still, many within the community of Bay View Hunters Point remain unaware of Flock’s ALPR presence.

“I promise you. If I asked 10 people right now, they wouldn’t even know they’re there,” said a woman selling oysters on the street at Third and Palou. “They didn’t notify us. We already have it rough with paying ticket prices. We don’t get a lot of funding like other communities. They’re coming for our money.”

In regard to money anxieties, she isn’t alone. A cashier working at a local neighborhood business also stressed the economic capabilities of Flock’s ALPRs.

“It’s militaristic. But they will monetize it. They’re gonna squeeze money out of you. They’re not putting these here without trying to make money. The potential for adding a ticket charge to their system will be child’s play for Flock.”

According to an independent study of ALPRs in Piedmont, California, done in 2021, less than 0.3% of ALPR hits translate to useful investigative leads, therefore failing to justify taxpayers’ costs for such systems.

Although a 2024 study conducted by Flock Safety found a 9.1% increase in crime-clearance rates for a police department using one Flock ALPR, Dr. Johnny Nhan of Texas Christian University, who participated in the study on the company’s reliability and impact, has since questioned the validity of the conclusions.

“The more complicated question would be what percentage of crime and crime types is Flock responsible for. There are just so many uncontrolled variables that it’s hard for me to methodologically isolate the percentage, especially related to any reductions in crime,” said Dr. Nhan. “My study and interest was more on the privacy side of things.”

San Francisco police say their usage of the hundreds of Flock cameras comes with oversight, restrictions on how arrests are made and securely protected data.

But in November 2025, a security researcher discovered Flock logins for sale on a Russian forum. In addition, vehicle data is collected whether you’re suspected of committing a crime or not. Millions are tracked in their day-to-day lives as they commute to jobs, head to recreational activities or – in the case of Grocery Outlet’s use of SAFR facial recognition technology – even when customers are shopping.

Anti-Flock protesters have cited the use of AI-supported Flock cameras as a dragnet, named after the technique fishermen use when dragging a net through the bottom of the ocean in hopes of capturing a large quantity indiscriminately. SFPD’s watchful eye through ALPRs lends itself to the definition.

According to the Flock company website, estimates are that anywhere from 5,000 to 7,000 law enforcement agencies throughout the United States have made contracts with them. The data captured by the ALPRs is entered into a nationwide database, allowing any agency with a contract access.

And although California’s 2015 privacy law – SB 34 – prohibits sharing license plate data with federal and out-of-state agencies, in June 2026 SFPD admitted to ALPR data being seen by those same restricted agencies.

Further privacy concerns have landed in courts across the country. Many raise the possibility of ALPRs violating the Fourth Amendment. Thirty courts across the U.S. have sided with the surveillance company in that Flock ALPR cameras do not violate the Fourth Amendment, with many maintaining that “photographing a license plate on a public road is not a Fourth Amendment search: plates are exposed to public view, and there’s no reasonable expectation of privacy in them.”

The role of ICE also has been called to attention. The organization has already used Flock cameras in its tactics against immigrants. While ICE does not have a formal contract with Flock, it has used data from the nationwide pool through requests from local and state law enforcement.

A man interviewed, but wanting to be identified only as “The watermelon man,” said he “was under the impression of cameras anyway.”

“I think it’s a positive and negative,” he continued. “It’s an invasion of privacy, but on the other hand if something goes down then they’ll be able to go back to the cameras.”

One patron visiting the Bay View Branch of the library offered her thoughts on the surveillance, saying, “They’re all around. It’s all eyes on us – we don’t know who’s behind those cameras.”

Unfortunately, the community paying the city’s taxes is not behind the cameras. For residents of Hunters Point, they are victims of a corporate-backed citywide surveillance system.

Thankfully, identifying Flock ALPRs is an easy task. They are often teardrop-shaped, black, placed on streetlights and traffic lights and supported with solar panels. For a larger list of ALPR suits and evidence used, readers can check out the website Black Dog Forensics.

Zaire Saunders is a writer in San Francisco, California. He can be reached at Zsaunders46@gmail.com

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