Black Lives Matter Boston speaks out on the recent FBI/police killing of ‪UsaamaRahim‬

From Black Lives Matter Boston

“We, at Black Lives Matter Boston, are sickened to once more have to call out in grief over the violent taking of another community member at the hands of the white supremacist state. To his loving family and many friends: We offer our sincerest condolences. We honor Usaama’s life and mourn his passing.

We also say, together, that, regardless of what is alleged, that it was improper and egregious that the confrontation which was instigated by agents with the Joint Terrorism Task Force ended with the murder of this this son, this brother, and this spouse. We want to call direct attention to the callous efforts of both the Boston Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to, once again, distract from their misconduct by casting suspicions against the dead in order to back-fill cause for the targeting and very public execution of another Black person in these United States of America. The swiftly circulated claims about Rahim’s supposed terrorist-affiliation and purported plans to do harm to others which have been floated by law enforcement in place of their admissions of guilt are rooted in a larger pattern of racist and Islamaphobic fear-mongering that both agencies have deployed against the most vulnerable among us for nearly two decades. These lies are killing us.

Cultivating Resistance in Afrikatown [Interview with Linda Grant]

Originally Posted on FireWorks

On Saturday, March 7th, 2014, a group of people came together to paint a mural on the exterior wall of Qilombo, a radical social center located at San Pablo and West Grant in Oakland. Over the next several days, the mural was completed by a variety of artists. During this time, people began to congregate in the garden every day. A dozen garden beds are now bursting with food and people are always there. This place is now called Afrikatown, and Qilombo is at the center of it.

On March 26th, landscapers hired by the owner of the lot arrived with a bulldozer and began to open the fence around the Afrikatown garden but were stopped before they could drive in. A group of people stood in front of the bulldozer and eventually the police arrived. Ultimately, the lot owner backed down and promised to return on Friday, April 3rd. Undercover law enforcement have been seen observing Afrikatown from unmarked cars, as well as two white males in a white van and a silver pick-up truck. The latter are probably contractors.

“Welcome to Afrikatown” sign in West Oakland on San Pablo Ave.

The entire Afrikatown territory is within one of the “opportunity areas” of the West Oakland Specific Plan (WOSP). Because of this, the block that houses Qilombo and several low-income apartment buildings is now under increased threat of eviction. Just six blocks from Afrikatown is the old Sear’s building, now being called “Uptown Station,” which is slated to be filled with a luxury food court, BART access, and tech offices. In between, a small park that had been the site of a long-standing homeless camp was recently fenced off. This fence was briefly torn down, like St Andrews further north on San Pablo, but has now returned. The forces of capitalism are gathering around San Pablo – but so is the resistance.

#SisiLeaks: How do 37 prisoners die at Cairo prison Abu Zaabal?

Last August, outside Abu Zaabal, 37 prisoners trapped in the back of a van were allegedly gassed to death having been held for six hours in temperatures close to 40C.

Rasmea-Supporters in Oakland Lock Themselves to Fed Courthouse

Posted on Electronic Intifada. Photos from Jaime Omar Yassin

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Following the guilty verdict against Chicago-based Palestinian American community leader Rasmea Odeh on Monday, activists in Chicago and Oakland held rallies and direct actions protesting the conviction and demanding her release.

In an interview with The Electronic Intifada on Tuesday, contributor Charlotte Silver said that “for a lot of the activists who were organizing the rallies outside the courthouse every day, who have been organizing really across the country in support of Rasmea for this past year, they are very aware that this is an attack on their community.”

In downtown Oakland today, activists chained themselves to the federal courthouse, condemning the trial as one that was politically-motivated in an attempt by the US government to silence Palestine solidarity activism around the country. The five activists were arrested by local police just hours after their protest began. They were cited and released.

In a recent press release, the US Palestinian Community Network states that “Activists in the [San Francisco] Bay Area will continue to protest, and vow to intensify their efforts until Odeh is released … The case against Odeh was originally part of a larger federal investigation in Chicago and Minneapolis,” USPCN adds, where the US government has led a probe of Palestine solidarity activists and Palestinian community organizers in the Midwest…

Read the entire article here.

Solidaridad con Palestina, D.F. Mexico

From Más de 131 on YouTube

Manifestación en a ciudad de México en solidaridad con Palestina.
De la embajada de los estados unidos al hemiciclo a Juarez.

Khutbah with Dr. Hatem Bazian: Do not be utilized to support the empire.

Midday prayers held at the UN Plaza during SF rally for Gaza.

On Friday’s rally for Gaza in San Francisco, Brother Hatem Bazian gave the khutbah for Friday prayer services. He warned Muslims living in the US against being a cog in the machine of the “colonial mother land” –be it through direct aid to the military industry, work of so-called human rights organizations or seamless assimilation into a society/culture with a historical legacy of colonization, slavery and genocide.

[Side note: In the middle of the khutbah, a woman stood a couple feet from Brother Hatem and antagonized him as he spoke. Some organizers led her away from the front. Hatem briefly responded to the small commotion by criticizing the State’s neglect of social services and encouraging listeners to love and support people with mental health issues.]

Listen to the entire khutbah below:

Bay Area Demonstrates in Solidarity with Palestine

Photo by Kristian Davis Bailey

On Saturday, a youth-led demo in the Bay Area took over Market Street in outrage at Israel’s “Operation Defensive Edge”–the recent brutal bombing campaign against occupied Palestine, which has seen over 170 and counting (according to media, which always under-reports) of our brothers and sisters brutally murdered. [Read background here.]

As demonstrators rallied in a San Francisco plaza near the Civic Center on Saturday, Israel began a ground invasion. See videos and photos gathered from demonstrators. The first video features a speech by Dr. Hatem Bazian, co-founder and Chair of American Muslims for Palestine. The slideshow is a photo collection from different protestors present on Saturday.

 

 

From Jannah Media Productions

From various protestors:

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Supporters demand political prisoner Imam Jamil (H. Rap Brown), diagnosed with rare cancer, be hospitalized immediately

by Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition

Political Prisoner Imam Jamil Al Amin, formerly known as H. Rap Brown, is in critical medical condition and in desperate need of our urgent action. Imam Jamil was a dominant and influential figure in the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements of the 1960s. He served as chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and later as Minister of Justice for the Black Panther Party.

Like so many other Black Power activists, in 2000, Jamil Al Amin was framed and convicted for murder of a deputy sheriff and for wounding another. He is innocent.

Political Prisoner Imam Jamil Al Amin, formerly known as H. Rap Brown, is in critical medical condition and in desperate need of our urgent action.

Imam Jamil has suffered under brutal conditions for many years in solitary confinement in a federal facility known as United States Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility (ADX) in Florence, Colorado, far from his home in Georgia. It is a dreaded place sometimes called the Guantanamo of the Rockies.

Mi’kmaq Warriors Call For Support

[BAI NOTE: For background on Mikmaq request please watch:

Showdown at highway 134 from Franklin Lopez on Vimeo.

From Suzanne Patles

Our Mikmaq warriors are requesting the assistance of the people for help. They are requiring some assistance with their canteen funds. Germain junior Breau and Aaron Francis, members of the Mikmaq Warrior Society have been incarcerated and held as political prisoners of war since the raid of their encampment in Un-ceded and un-surrendered Mikmaq territory on October 17th, 2013. They are currently the only two political prisoners of war in so-called Canada.

They made a stance to not only protect the indigenous women, elders and children in their inherent territories but they were also defending the sacred land and waters for all people. They made their stance for the liberation of the Mikmaq nation and for the liberation of all indigenous people all over the world.

Slideshow: Lxs Zapatistas no están solxs! (The Zapatistas Are Not Alone!)

Photos by Bay Area Intifada

(Scroll below slideshow for English translation.)

Como miembros de diversas comunidades autónomas y como estudiantes de La Escuelita Zapatista, nos reunimos hoy en el Consulado mexicano de San Francisco para demostrar nuestro dolor y digna rabia ante el asesinato del maestro Zapatista Galeano en la comunidad autónoma de La Realidad, Chiapas. Repartimos volantes con información sobre lo sucedido en La Realidad, y manifestamos nuestra rabia con gritos rebeldes y el ruido de las cacerolas. En respuesta al incremento de agresiones en contra de bases de apoyo Zapatistas en Chiapas, Mexico, como el pueblo digno y rebelde del área de la bahía nos hemos organizado a condenar en los términos mas fuertes, el escalamiento de los ataques en contra de nuestros compañeros y compañeras del sur.

 

El asesinato del querido maestro Galeano a manos de grupos paramilitares respaldados por el gobierno crea el imperativo de construir relaciones autónomas y liberatorias aquí en la área de la bahía. Como tales, representamos nuestra fuerza en los que están aquí pero también de los que faltan, para denunciar los gobiernos títeres de tanto Estados Unidos y Mexico por su impunidad y brutalidad cometida en contra de los pueblos indígenas del continente. Nos unimos a muchos otros quienes protestan en cuidades alrededor del mundo como parte de una Semana Global de Acción en solidaridad con los Zapatistas y recordando al compañero Galeano.

 

¡GALEANO VIVE!

 

(Scroll below slideshow for English translation.)

 

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ENGLISH TRANSLATION

 

As autonomous community members and students of the Zapatista Little School from around the Bay Area, we gather today at the Mexican Consulate in San Francisco to demonstrate our dignified pain and rage while denouncing the murder of Zapatista schoolteacher Galeano, in the autonomous community of La Realidad, Chiapas. (Read the Zapatista communique here.)  We distributed flyers with information about what happened in La Realidad, and we expressed our rage with our rebellious cries and the noise of our pots and pans. In response to the escalating aggression against Zapatista bases of support in Chiapas, Mexico, as the dignified and rebellious people of the Bay Area we have organized ourselves in order to condemn, in the strongest terms, continued attacks against our compañeros and compañeras in the south.

 

The death of endeared teacher, Galeano, at the hands of government-backed paramilitary groups creates the imperative to build autonomous and liberatory social relations here in the Bay Area. As such, we will show our force in numbers and expose both the U.S. and puppet government of Mexico for the impunity and brutality committed against the indigenous people of the continent. We do so joining the countlesss of others who are demonstrating in cities around the world as part of a Global Week of Action in solidarity with the Zapatistas and in rememberance of our fallen compañero Galeano. See here to read a denuncia coming out of the West Coast, signed onto by countless individuals and groups. See here for solidarity shown from Palestine.

 

¡GALEANO VIVE!