California’s mean streak, from Native annihilation to Oscar and Lovelle: Ishmael Reed on history
Ishmael Reed is one of the most read writers of his generation, along with Toni Morrison and Amiri Baraka, living in America. In 1962, Reed co-founded “East Village Other,” a well known underground publication at the time, and was a member of the Umbra Writers Workshop, which helped to give rise to the Black Arts Movement. He has published nine novels, four collections of poetry, six plays, four collections of essays and a libretto. He currently lives in Oakland, and I approached him one day while he was visiting KPFA’s studios to ask him what he thought about the state of affairs between the police and Oakland’s Black community, with the backdrop of the police murder of Oscar Grant and, in a separate incident, the police murder of Lovelle Mixon, after Mixon allegedly killed four Oakland police officers.
San Francisco 8 case takes a critical turn
A few days ago, Herman Bell accepted a plea bargain from the prosecution and will be returning to New York for his parole hearing as soon as California gets him on a return flight. The news was greeted soberly and from some quarters with bemusement.
Coverage of Chauncey Bailey murder dramatizes need for Black media
Chauncey Bailey was probably the best known Black journalist in the Bay Area, yet his own Black newspaper is ignored by every agency investigating his murder. Justice for this Black journalist cannot be achieved by silencing Black journalism. By interviewing only the mainstream media, Democracy Now is implying that the Black press and the Black community have nothing significant to say about the murder of the Black editor of a Black newspaper.
Betraying the legacy of Chauncey Bailey
Everything about Chauncey Bailey’s life and work spoke of his devotion to the Black community. Yet the Chauncey Bailey Project appears to have veered far off the course that Chauncey was taking.
Jerry’s Brown-nosin’ with California’s prison guards
The prison guards’ union is built on the backs of human beings in cages. Jerry Brown is cozying up to the prison guards and fighting Proposition 5, a measure that offers drug treatment and a second chance to young people, nonviolent offenders and prisoners.
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