The simultaneous demolition of radiation contaminated buildings at the Hunters Point Superfund Site and the Islais Creek Bridge threatens to transform Bayview Hunters Point into ‘LITTLE GAZA!’

by Ahimsa Porter Sumchai MD, aka Politico MD

The Islais Creek Bridge Project proposes to demolish and replace the historic Levon Hagop Nishkian Bridge (locally known as the “silver bridge”) that carries Third Street across the Islais Creek channel in San Francisco’s Bayview Hunters Point. The existing bridge was designed in 1945 by structural engineer Leon Hagop Nishkian and named after his grandson, Levon. Described as a side double leaf bascule with three girder lines, two on the edges and one in the center, the Islais Creek Bridge features futuristic metal covers that provide both protection and decoration. [See https://historicbridges.org/bridges/browser/?bridgebrowser=california/3rd south/]

The replacement bridge would meet structural and seismic standards and be resilient to projected sea level rise to the year 2100. Project construction is expected to take up to two years. There would be no public access for vehicles, light rail or pedestrian traffic once the bridge is closed to the public. Light rail operations will shut down up to 19 months after the bridge closes. 

Many Bayview Hunters Point neighbors accept the need to replace the structurally deteriorating and eroding drawbridge. However, most residents have no idea the City is planning to demolish the seismically unstable bridge this year and that the total duration of the project is estimated to be 30 months.

At a Town Hall meeting hosted by congressional candidate Saikat Chakrabarti in January, the cumulative impacts of the proposed demolition of the Islais Creek Bridge on a timeline simultaneous with the proposed demolition of six radiologically impacted buildings at nearby Hunters Point was discussed. Saikat visited the Parcel G Demolition Zone in September of 2025 and later filmed a sternly worded video at Parcel G affirming as a policy statement he will not build houses on property “with radiation signs on it!”

The San Francisco Metropolitan Transportation Agency has proposed mitigation measures to address traffic impacts and to develop a community engagement and mobility strategy for residents and businesses impacted by the demolition and closure of the Islais Creek bridge. The Department of Public Works will construct the new bridge with new T-Third light rail tracks that SFMTA believes will ensure a more reliable and efficient transit line.

The ancient history of Islais Creek

The Ramaytush Ohlone cultivated the rich tidal wetlands of what became San Francisco’s largest watershed draining from Mount Davidson and Twin Peaks. The Yelamu tribe gave name to the Islais Creek wetlands that sustained them with an abundance of salmon, trout and edible fruit. The creek’s name, Islais, is derived from the native word for the hollyleaf wild cherry: Islay. 

The Indigenous American gathering site became a heavily polluted industrial channel by the early 20th century – filled with rubble and debris from the 1906 earthquake. It was called the “sewer-choked channel” when Islais Creek was encircled by meatpacking plants and slaughterhouses and came to be known as Butchertown during the 1860s.

Islais Creek Channel remains a tidal waterway emptying into San Francisco Bay. While Islais Creek is not listed on the National Priorities List as a Federal Superfund site, it has a long history of industrial contamination and federal enforcement actions. State regulators designated Islais Creek a “toxic hot spot” due to elevated levels of PCBs, heavy metals and bacteria.

Islais Creek sediment contains elevated concentrations of persistent pollutants like mercury, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and organochlorines. The proximity of Islais Creek to the northern piers of the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard federal Superfund site increases the likelihood of radiation contamination of the contiguous shoreline sediments.

Islais Creek acts as a culvert for sewage and storm water management causing heavy rain overflows that release and disperse chemicals hazardous to public health. In 2005, 40,000 gallons of diesel fuel leaked from a SFMTA facility into Islais Creek, leading to a Clean Water Act violation settlement.

In May 2024, EPA filed a complaint against the City and County of San Francisco for unauthorized discharges of billions of gallons of sewage into tributaries of the Bay. While not a Superfund site, the Islais Creek Bridge Rehabilitation Project received $90.8 million in federal grant funds.

Hunters Point Biomonitoring Foundation Board of Directors unanimously adopts four-point platform resident protection measures on March 18, 2026

1.Measure 1 in HP Biomonitoring’s Four Point Platform for Resident and Worker Safety and Resident Protective Measures is the build out of the SF Shipyard Neighborhood Watch to include photo and video documentation of demolition activities that endanger community safety. HP Biomonitoring proposes NAVFAC install one or more 24/7 live cams overlooking the Demolition Zone for Phase I and Phase II Building Demolitions. HP Biomonitoring invites neighboring businesses and residents to install live cams on properties facing the eastern shoreline of HPNS. Historical precedent for construction site monitoring in Bayview Hunters Point is memorialized in the naming of Youngblood Coleman Playground. Rubin Youngblood and Wardell Coleman were 10 years old who died when a dirt wall collapsed on them while playing at a negligently maintained housing construction site in 1974.

2. Fence line fortifications as required by the Draft Final Remedial Action Work Plan for the Parcel G Building Demolition are called for in Measure 2. The Federal Superfund site has historically lacked basic fence line fortifications, signage and public notifications of exposure to chemicals proven to cause cancer and reproductive harm — as required by State of California Proposition 65. 

3. Measure 3 requires the community-led creation of a Community Notification Plan (CNP) modeled after the CNP developed by the Hunters Point Shipyard Restoration Advisory Board in the aftermath of the August 2000 Parcel E-2 landfill fire. The CNP was demanded by community leaders following attempts by the Navy to conceal a chemical fire that erupted in clear view of Hunters Point hilltop residents and shipyard workers. On June 7, 2001, EPA announced a $25,000 penalty against the Navy for the two week delay in notifying the community and lead regulators of the landfill fire that erupted on the southern border of the base. The failure in notification violated the Federal Facilities Agreement (FFA). The Navy violated the FFA in October 2024 when it failed to notify regulators and the public that airborne Pu-239 was detected by air monitors downstream from a Radiation Staging Yard operated by the Navy on Parcel C — next door to the Parcel G Demolition Zone.

4. Measure 4 is a Temporary Emergency Relocation Plan — TERP — created to offer provisions for urgent relocation to residents with documented injuries, associated illness and/or property damage due to demolition activities. The TERP includes community education about the right to file a Federal Tort Claim within a year of injury, illness or property damage using SF95.

SF Bay View Health and Environmental Science Editor Ahimsa Porter Sumchai, MD, PD, founder and principal investigator for the Hunters Point Community Biomonitoring Program, founding chair of the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard Restoration Advisory Board’s Radiological Subcommittee and contributor to the 2005 Draft Historical Radiological Assessment, can be reached at AhimsaPorterSumchaiMD@Comcast.net. Dr. Sumchai is medical director of Golden State MD Health & Wellness, a UCSF and Stanford trained author and researcher, and a member of the UCSF Medical Alumni Association Board of Directors.

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by Aïda Jones

On Monday, April 20, in San Francisco Hall of Justice Courtroom 13, Judge Brian Ferrall denied Kevin Epps bail pending appeal. What followed was more than an hour of a judge explaining himself.

Earlier this year, a jury found Epps — filmmaker and Executive Editor of the San Francisco Bay View Newspaper — guilty of manslaughter. Ferrall sentenced him to six years and eight months, saying his hands were tied.

But in Monday’s hearing, reviewing his own conduct, Ferrall demonstrated just how untethered to constraint he has been all along. He equated the dissatisfaction of both defense and prosecution as proof of his fairness. He spent considerable time explaining why his own rulings could not possibly lead to dismissal or resentencing.

Then he turned to the defense’s claims of prosecutorial misconduct and called them barely above frivolous. This would be unremarkable, except for the prosecutor in question. As noted by Tim Redmond in 48Hills, Jonathan Schmidt is the same attorney whose conduct in United States v. Blueford helped establish Ninth Circuit precedent on prosecutorial misconduct. The case is cited in appellate guides nationwide as a textbook example of what not to do. That the word “frivolous” would appear in any sentence about Schmidt’s conduct requires a certain confidence.

Ferrall went further. He questioned the judgment of two District Attorneys — who declined to prosecute Epps — and declared that Epps should have faced a jury long ago and must now begin serving his sentence immediately. He added, more than once, that if an appeal is granted, he is certain his rulings will be affirmed. 

After two-plus hours in Ferrall’s courtroom, I walked away thinking: The lady doth protest too much.

San Francisco writer Aïda Jones can be reached at info@thejonesinstitute.com. 

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by Nicholas Mwangi

Across the African continent, progressive movements, grassroots organizations and Pan-African networks are rallying in renewed solidarity with Cuba at a moment of deepening crisis. While global media narratives often reduce Cuba’s situation to internal failure (a narrative activists and many Cubans claim is imperialist propaganda), African movements are advancing solidarity rooted in history and shared struggle. International solidarity with the people of Cuba is rising, with caravans of medicines and food supplies being mobilized to support the island in the face of the ongoing siege.

Cuba today faces severe shortages of fuel, energy and essential goods. These hardships are real and deeply felt. They are the direct outcome of a prolonged economic war by the United States’ decades-long embargo, now intensified into new levels of inhumanity.

Since the victory of the Cuban Revolution, Cuba has stood as a defiant example of resistance to imperial domination. Its continued commitment to a socialist path, despite immense external pressure, has made it both a symbol of sovereignty and a target of sustained aggression.

Cuba and Africa: a history of shared struggle

Cuba, a nation of roughly 11 million people, has played an outsized role in supporting liberation struggles across the Global South. Its contributions have never been symbolic alone; they have been material, strategic, decisive and often made at great sacrifice.

From the early years of African independence, Cuba provided weapons, training and political support to liberation movements. Its role in Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau was particularly significant. In Angola, over 300,000 Cubans fought alongside African liberation movements against apartheid South African aggression, contributing to decisive victories, such as the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale. This turning point weakened apartheid South Africa militarily and politically, accelerating the independence of Namibia and contributing to the eventual collapse of apartheid.

A continental call

In a statement endorsed by multiple organizations, Pan-Africanism Today has articulated a clear and uncompromising position of solidarity from Africa.

The statement situates Cuba’s crisis within the global context of intensifying imperialism:

“We write to you at this crucial moment in history, characterized by the increasing barbarism of United States imperialism and the equally growing anti-imperialist resistance of the peoples of the world. We write not only to offer words of comfort, but to reaffirm active solidarity and internationalism forged through decades of shared struggle against a common enemy.”

Linking Cuba’s situation to global struggles from Palestine to Iran, the statement puts it clearly the blockade is not an isolated policy but part of a wider system that has “abandoned all pretence of legality, morality and human decency.”

And, “a persistent act of war against an entire people … one of the gravest ongoing crimes against humanity in the modern era.”

Recent escalations, including new measures under US policy, have intensified this reality, particularly through restrictions affecting fuel supplies, with devastating implications for hospitals, food systems and daily life.

Internationalism vs. imperialism

African movements contrast Cuba’s global role with that of imperial powers. Where dominant states deploy sanctions and military force, Cuba has historically deployed doctors, teachers and technical support.

From sending medical brigades across Africa to training thousands of African students in medicine, Cuba has embodied a form of internationalism rooted in solidarity rather than extraction.

As the statement affirms: “You have not lectured us; you have shown us.”

This distinction is central. Cuba’s internationalism is not charity; it has been a political commitment grounded in a shared struggle against domination.

Solidarity is our responsibility

For African progressives, supporting Cuba is not about gratitude; it is about political responsibility in the face of a common enemy.

The statement unequivocally declares:

• We condemn the criminal blockade of Cuba with contempt and pledge to intensify every effort to end it – politically, diplomatically and in the court of international public opinion.
• We commit to strengthening our solidarity with the Cuban people and to ensuring that the truth about Cuba’s revolutionary achievements, and the crimes against it, reaches the widest possible audiences across our continent and the world.
• We salute the leadership of the Cuban Revolution for its steadfastness in the face of an ongoing US-led imperialist siege.
• We honor the memory of the revolution’s giants – such as Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Haydée Santamaría and others – by dedicating ourselves to upholding their example in our own struggles.
• We stand with the Cuban people as you withstand the latest tightening of the imperialist stranglehold.

“You do not face this alone. An injury to Cuba is an injury to all of us.”

Cuba’s experience stands as living proof that another world is not only imaginable, but possible. As the statement concludes, “The task now, as African progressives insist, is to fight to make that world a reality. We commit ourselves to doing precisely that: building the organized power of workers, peasants, women and youth; deepening the anti-imperialist consciousness of our peoples; and forging continental and international unity in action. This can break the chains of capitalism and imperialism – our ability to work together and construct the socialist world that the people of Cuba have dared to demonstrate is necessary. A world for the many, built by the many!”

Nicholas Mwangi writes for People’s Dispatch, where this story first appeared.

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by Tabari Morris

SF Bay View is unequivocally in solidarity with Minister X and those joining him in his fight to bring about a new way of thinking regarding the intersection of labor activism, human dignity and re-entry into society in California. His proposed paradigm calls for those coming out of incarceration to be viewed not as expendable labor or perpetual subjects, but rather as workers and organizers.

The heart of such an approach would be an initiative within CDCR that incorporates elements of legal literacy, reentry preparedness, organizing skills training and cultural education. Such initiatives are presented as the California Coalition for Worker Power initiative and the Workers Power Assembly, which includes fair chance rights, non-retaliation policies, sector-based career paths, and an agreement to end hostilities.

Minister X is presented in the report as an important link between internal organizing and external labor power. In terms of art, political education, media work and the 5-2-A curriculum, he plays a vital role in elevating the voices of those who have been and are currently incarcerated.

That matters to SF Bay View because this newspaper has long stood with imprisoned, formerly imprisoned and working-class people whose voices are too often erased from public debate. The report’s emphasis on shared humanity, collective agency, family unity, real rehabilitation and protection from exploitation reflects the same struggle for justice that community media has a responsibility to document and defend.

Moreover, the paper highlights that the movement is practical rather than symbolic. The paper provides real-world solutions to be taken in construction, healthcare, green infrastructure, logistics, and manufacturing industries, along with warm hand-off reentry assistance that could link returning individuals with legal help, housing, health care, mentoring and job opportunities.

SF Bay View understands that solidarity is not just about paying lip service. Solidarity means understanding that workers’ rights, the rights of our people behind the walls, and re-entry rights cannot be separated from each other, and that the voices and guidance of those who suffer the most under the system must stay in the foreground. Minister X is bringing this message with clarity and vision.

Tabari Morris, a journalism student at City College of San Francisco and news editor of The Guardsman, City College’s student newspaper, is managing editor of the Bay View and can be reached at tabari@sfbayview.com.  

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by Minister of Information JR Valrey

A disappointment. Save your money and watch it for free in a couple of weeks. The story was poorly written. At no time did it pull me in. 

The story line was the same script we always saw: MJ leaving the Jacksons, getting burned on the set, and him funking with Joseph. The movie makes Joseph the bad guy, when Black people know without Joe, the Jacksons would have been blue collar steel mill workers. Joe was a necessary evil, abusive, opportunistic and all. 

We know that US media has problems with the existence of Black fathers leading their families to greatness – look at how they talk about Beyonce’s pops, Venus and Serena’s pops, and Lavar Ball – so this was no disguise. 

The US wants Black talent without anyone around protecting it. Obviously the film left out MJ’s beef with Tommy Mottola, him owning a huge catalog of white and Black music, the Epstein smearing of MJ’s name as a pdf file, the CIA following him in Moscow, him working with Biggie and other rappers. In fact, the characters playing the Jackson brothers don’t even have speaking parts. 

The white record execs are so “helpful” to Mike in the movie, we do not get to see that Mike was a shrewd businessman. The movie has no soul or Blackness in it, when at one time MJ was the epitome of Black music and dance. 

The characters are very one dimensional. The script was very vanilla. It seemed like a white man from Hollywood was trying to write about the lives of Black people who rose from the ghetto without a lick of understanding of Black life and love in the eras depicted. F+

JR Valrey is a veteran journalist who can be heard weekly on Wednesdays on 89.5FM KPOO or KPOO.com from noon to 3 p.m. His work can also be heard on www.blockreportradioworld.com. 

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by JR Valrey, The People’s Minister of Information

Hundreds of supporters of the Cuban Revolution arrived in Cuba in March, as part of the Nuestra America Convoy, whose goal was to show solidarity with Cuba’s right to self-determination amidst a complete oil blockade and 67-year general blockade sponsored by the US government, operating with US taxpayers’ money. 

Because Cuba refuses to bow to the Monroe Doctrine, aka the US government’s imperial project, US sanctions have sentenced the island to a slow genocide, which is playing out in real time currently with Cubans encountering on a daily basis: food shortages, blackouts that last for days and that have led to patients dependent on ventilators dying in hospitals, epidemics of diseases spread by mosquitos and more. 

Longtime organizer Brenda Lopez of US Hands Off Cuba Committee recently returned, and is reporting back on how critical it is for people in the US to fight to end the blockades against Cuba, since our taxes are fueling this genocide. 

JR Valrey: You recently were part of a delegation that went to Cuba. What was your mission?

Brenda Lopez: March 20th I headed from Miami to Cuba with the CODEPINK delegation as part of the Nuestra America Convoy, a global coordinated mission delivering humanitarian supplies for homes, hospitals, schools and families in need. This act was an act of solidarity but also an act of defiance against the cruel blockade that the US has upheld for 67 years and that is now being escalated with Trump’s most recent oil blockade starting in January of this year. So together, we broke the siege, saved lives, and stood up for the cause of Cuban self-determination. 

JR Valrey: Now that we are four months into the US government’s criminal oil blockade and 67 years since the beginning of the general blockade, what did you see people lacking?

Brenda Lopez: The Cuban people and government are lacking sovereignty above all. Without that, they do not have access to the world market like the rest of the world does, limiting their buying autonomy. Now with the oil blockade it adds a whole other layer of obstacles of people not being able to go to work, get to appointments, access basic needs. People are out of power for hours, since, unfortunately, Cuba’s power grid is still heavily reliant on oil. Without power, water pumps don’t work, so that also means no water for hours and sometimes days. One million Cubans rely on water transportation, severely affected by the lack of diesel.

JR Valrey: What was the general sentiment of the Cubans that you encountered?

Brenda Lopez: “Esta duro pero ya estamos acostumbrados,” which translates to “It’s hard but we’re used to this.” That is the indomitable Cuban spirit – dignified, creative and resilient. Some of the folks shared that on days when there is no electricity, they set up a wood fire and a big pot so they can make sure their whole neighborhood eats. Others told me how even in the dark they can hear joy happening: people singing in the dark in the distance, kids still playing outside in the dark; and they remember that despite the darkness and scarcity, life continues.

JR Valrey: Under the US imposed blockade, what is the condition of the world renowned Cuban healthcare system?

Brenda Lopez: They have continuously faced the obstacle of accessing material stuff like medications and equipment and now this is exacerbated. Ambulances are struggling to find fuel to respond to emergencies. Persistent outages have plagued deteriorating hospitals, more than 96,000 surgeries are pending, and thousands of babies have not been vaccinated.

Something we heard from multiple doctors was that without power doctors are having to manually do a lot of things to keep patients alive, like manually pumping air to patients that are on ventilators that stop working with no power and no oil in the back-up generators. The oil blockade has severely impacted neonatal hospitals in Cuba, as well, leading to increased infant mortality rates. Hospitals are struggling to operate due to limited electricity and resources, resulting in preventable deaths among newborns and other vulnerable populations.

JR Valrey: Can you talk about the food shortages caused by the blockade?

Brenda Lopez: There is food but access to it is limited since the prices are very high compared to the income that Cubans make. This means tourists, like myself, can still access a lot of food and food services, but the regular Cuban is very limited and restrained. 

Tourism is a way that Cuba fuels its economy, and since the COVID pandemic Cuba has not been able to go back to its tourism numbers from before. In addition, with the oil blockade it means that Cuba’s airport cannot provide fuel for planes to go back to their original destination, this has also limited tourism from Canada and other countries.

However, the government says it is prioritizing available fuel for essential services like public health and food production. While I was there I was able to walk around a plaza that had a lot of farmers selling directly to the local communities at relatively affordable prices.

JR Valrey: Would you regard the US policy towards Cuba as an act of genocide? Why is that word appropriate?

Brenda Lopez: US sanctions are no longer just crippling the island’s economy, they’re threatening basic human safety. So yes, I would consider this a slow and cruel suffocation of basic human needs that the revolution has had to fight so hard to maintain and the cost of it has at many times meant lives. Sanctions kill, because they block access to essential materials to save lives, like life-saving medications and vitamins.

Another current example is the current chikungunya and dengue epidemic in Cuba. Something as simple as having access to mosquito repellent or medications could have avoided thousands of deaths. So yes, US policy toward Cuba is a cruel and sick act of genocide against the Cuban people and their ideologies.

JR Valrey: What are your thoughts on a number of Latin American and Caribbean governments kicking Cuban doctors out of their countries, due to US government pressure? 

Brenda Lopez: I’ve seen that many of their people have protested these actions. They must listen to their people and communities. To be against Cuba is to be against humanity. Moreover, all these countries are part of Latin America, which has suffered greatly from oppression and the exploitation of labor and natural resources by the United States and its corporations for so much of their history. Cuba has time and time again been there to offer support wherever it is needed most. They have even offered medical aid to the United States during environmental crises because, for them, people and lives come before politics and ideologies. So I believe more countries should also center on keeping people alive instead of being afraid of the big bully that is clearly losing its grip.

JR Valrey: What can people do if they want to get involved or donate? 

Brenda Lopez: Well, first I want to continue to push for people to go to Cuba to experience and see the cruelty of the blockade and the scarcity it has created for over 60 years. But also so they can feel and experience the strength of the Cuban people, their creativity and resilience that is beyond inspiring. And also to remind folks that it is not illegal to go to Cuba. Going is an act of solidarity. Folks can hit up Not Just Tourists and receive a free medical bag that they can take and make an impact that way as well.

Additionally, there are amazing organizations like Global Health Partners that have continuously organized incredible campaigns to give Cuba medical supplies that they have asked us for. Last year GHP was able to fundraise enough to send over 900 pacemakers to Cuba. This year they are focusing on a year long campaign to give Cuba surgical sutures, necessary for basically any surgical procedures. And they are currently working on launching a neonatal campaign that will cost millions of dollars and go to the heart of the impact of the blockade. People can support all of these life-saving efforts by visiting and donating to ghpartners.org. They are also active on instagram and facebook @ghpartners.

JR Valrey is a veteran journalist who can be heard weekly on Wednesdays on 89.5FM KPOO or KPOO.com from noon to 3 p.m. His work can also be heard on www.blockreportradioworld.com. 

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by Danielle Smith

Six thousand San Francisco educators won fully funded health care, sanctuary schools and an up to 8.5% raise over two years by walking out for the first time in nearly 50 years.

After just four days on strike, Feb. 9 to 12, they won their top demands — some of which the district had previously refused even to bargain over.

“It was hard and it was joyful and we f-ing beat them,” said Ilan Desai-Geller, a high school teacher who served on the bargaining committee and as a regional strike captain. “They found the money all of a sudden.

“They found the money for the things they said they couldn’t. They agreed to the language they said they couldn’t.”

Workers in classified roles, such as paraeducators, will get a raise of 8.5% over the two years of the contract; workers in certificated roles, such as teachers, will get 5%.

Next up will be Los Angeles, where 35,000 educators are poised to strike on April 14 alongside 30,000 members of SEIU Local 99, such as cafeteria workers, custodians, bus drivers and special ed assistants.

In San Francisco, other union workers including principals, custodians and lunchroom staff joined educators on the picket line in a sympathy strike.

United Teachers Los Angeles and United Educators of San Francisco are part of We Can’t Wait, a statewide campaign by more than 30 California Teachers Association locals, with a shared platform calling for smaller class sizes, more resources for schools instead of layoffs, and competitive wages and benefits to address the thousands of vacancies in California’s public schools.

The locals also agreed to escalate along a common timeline. Across the bay from San Francisco, Richmond Teachers United also struck this year, for the first time ever, and won 8% raises over two years. Two locals in the Sacramento area also struck; one of them, Twin Rivers Educators United, stayed out for 12 days and won 7% raises over two years.

Years in the making

The San Francisco strike success was five years in the making, as the union worked to develop an elected committee at each school. The committee focused on problems within the school, but also kept in touch with the larger union.

There were meetings bringing together all the elementary school committees, for instance, and all the middle and high school committees, and a citywide general assembly. Activists from different schools got to know each other and saw what issues they had in common.

“Once we start getting more sites with union building committees, then there’s more conversations happening at each site, there’s more information getting shared to each member,” said Alanna Merchant, who teaches sixth- and seventh-grade science.“I feel like that was how all of this started.”

From these building committees came many of the strike captains and 120 members of the bargaining committee, Merchant among them.

Paraeducator Faith Avalos said that building to a strike took a lot of conversations with her co-workers, asking questions like, “How do you feel about the district right now?”

“It was issues-based, but a lot of it was just, do you feel supported at your job by the district? Do you feel they could be doing a better job?” said Avalos, who would become a strike captain.

Schools held their own strike votes and practice pickets. The union asked rank and filers who were organizing in their own schools to go help out other worksites too, Merchant said, and this developed into a network of regional strike captains like her, who helped support the strike captains.

Outside the bargaining room

The strikers picketed at schools in the mornings, then gathered for larger community actions in the afternoons.

Strike captains were responsible for turning out members to picket and keeping track of participation. Each picket also had an attendance person, a communications person and chant leaders — everyone had a role.

At Avalos’s middle school in northern San Francisco, art teachers made custom banners and painted the sidewalks. Two workers made custom signs with a picture of Superintendent Maria Su crying that said: “Boo Su.”

When middle school students came out to show support, the strikers taught them how to lead chants and walk the picket line and explained why they were taking action.

“Middle school students don’t do anything unless you tell them they have to do it, but we had a bunch of students show up [on their own initiative],” Avalos said. “They were the most energetic. They drew hopscotch, but you were jumping on Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s faces. They made signs that were like ‘Teachers can’t survive on only apples.’”

Avalos’ middle school was one of the sites where the district chose to send scabs from human resources, so small groups of strikers covered the back entrances. However, the strikers at her school mainly focused on getting support from the community. Out of a staff of about 500, only one person, who was non-union, crossed the picket line, she said.

The afternoon rallies and marches drew up to 15,000-20,000 participants, according to the union. One day they marched from a rally in Mission Dolores Park to City Hall. Another day, thousands gathered on the beach to spell out “Strike” and “For Our Students,” an impressive turnout given the “schlep to the beach,” said bargaining committee member and regional strike captain Michelle Cody.

Though the bargaining committee couldn’t always attend them, those actions gave them the morale boost they needed to keep going and the leverage to win their demands, said special education paraprofessional Diana Mueller, another regional strike captain and bargaining committee member.

“We filled the streets; it was incredible,” Mueller said. “And it really is true when you hear folks talk about how what happens outside the bargaining room really has an impact on what happens inside the bargaining room.”

Love letter to the city

Even though San Francisco has fewer children and parents than many other cities, the community support for the strike was strong. Local businesses provided free food, coffee and restrooms. Desai-Geller said he heard from a lot of people that it felt like a version of San Francisco they hadn’t seen for a long time.

He said gentrification and an influx of transplants in A.I.-related jobs are pushing the working class out of the city to the East Bay. Meanwhile educators were being told there was no money for public schools.

The school district had initially refused to negotiate over union demands that it claimed weren’t legally mandatory subjects of bargaining: sanctuary schools to protect immigrant students and families and extending an in-school shelter program for students who need housing, according to Desai-Geller. But ultimately, the district agreed to these demands during the strike.

Cody, who was born and raised in the city, said the strike felt like “a love letter back to San Francisco.” She got to lead chants at two of the actions and said that “one day longer, one day stronger” became like the soundtrack of the strike. She loved seeing people say “The rain be damned!” and fill the streets together, singing.

“In that moment, it was like everyone believed in what we were doing,” she said, “because it wasn’t just about us, it was about what this could mean for our city, our government. Everyone could connect with something that we were asking for. Everyone at some point had a teacher, an educator, a social worker, a para, a counselor that has impacted their lives.”

Danielle Smith is a staff writer and organizer at Labor Notes, where this story first appeared.

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by Carol McGruder

April 8, 2026, was a painful day in the packed courtroom of Judge Brian L. Ferrall.  We were there to hear the sentence the judge would hand to Kevin Epps, who in December was found guilty of voluntary manslaughter for a tragic 2016 incident.

Listening to the impact statements of the now adult children of the victim, Mr. Marcus Polk, was heart wrenching. When Polk’s children described the events of that day, some of them were in the house and witnessed their father dying.  His children described the profound and ongoing effect that this terrible trauma has had on their lives. 

I understood more than most in that courtroom because I can vividly recall my own grandmother sitting in her San Francisco kitchen painfully describing the childhood trauma of her father being killed by his brother-in-law in Mississippi.  That event forever changed the trajectory of two families, starting the family migration from Mississippi to Chicago and for my branch eventually, San Francisco.  I lived my grandmother’s pain through the stories of a tragedy from decades before I was born. 

That day in court, I wished I could have put my arms around Polk’s children and consoled them. I wish I could have told them that, somehow the “first cousin” children of these two men could possibly manage to remain a family — that my favorite aunt, and a woman who profoundly influenced my life, was the granddaughter of the man who had killed my great-grandfather. 

But I had come to court that day to lend moral support to Kevin Epps, the defendant. Kevin is a man I have known for 30 years.  I watched him grow from a budding filmmaker, documenting the harsh realities of the neighborhood where we grew up, to a humble, transformative community leader and activist.

The circumstances of his tragic family event were quite different from mine.  His was an urban story of two imperfect men, who in my eyes were brothers-in-law — as they each had children and long-term relationships with two sisters who were the mothers of their respective children. 

These two men came of age in an era of violence, drugs, societal neglect and, of course, racism. The struggles in their life trajectories were, unfortunately, in many ways predictable. Indeed, they were quite intentional, as the US government was flooding the Black community with crack cocaine in conjunction with a mass incarceration campaign, utterly decimating the Black community.

During those decades, the public health addiction model did not exist for Black people, as our communities endured first heroin and then the catastrophic crack epidemic. The lack of education and economic opportunities primed a whole generation of Black boys and men to engage in self-destructive activities that destroyed lives, families and community. Trauma, violence, substance abuse and untreated mental health issues plagued our community.  

Unfortunately, when Black people face mental illness and substance abuse, the standard treatment of care is incarceration.  They bounce back and forth between jail and the community with family members trying to fill in the gaps that the greater society should address.  One need only look at the many homeless Black men in San Francisco. Our men fill the streets of the Tenderloin and homeless shelters.  

Mr. Polk unfortunately was such a man. His painful past was well documented. The court ruled this history inadmissible and prejudicial, so the jury was not allowed to truly understand the totality of that history. Mr. Polk was portrayed as harmless, and perhaps at one time he was, but he was far from that at the time of the incident.  

I never met Mr. Polk, but I have lived through the painful mental, physical and moral deterioration of a loved one who was never able to surmount the hurdles that many Black men face, simply trying to survive. These are all very pertinent facts that the jury should have been made aware of; this information was the reality of their lives, but it was judged prejudicial and kept from jury knowledge and deliberations. 

Kevin Epps was aware of Polk’s criminal history, mental health and substance abuse issues. There was testimony at the trial that there was friction between the two men and that Kevin did not want Mr. Polk in the home.  In the prosecutor’s summation, he said Mr. Polk was only armed with the television remote, but the true dynamics and history of what happened were not discussed. The prosecutor cannot judge the volatility of the situation nor the fear or danger that Kevin might have felt.  It is interesting to see those members of our society who can assert the right to self-defense and those who are not allowed to. 

During the sentencing, Kevin expressed profound remorse. He took responsibility for his actions. He apologized to Polk’s family and the community.  He regrets the events of that day.  Kevin Epps was sentenced to over six years — six critical years away from his young children, his elderly mother, and a diverse community that has stood firmly with him.  Kevin is appealing the verdict for issues of prosecutorial misconduct that include withholding the history and background of Mr. Polk. A history that was certainly front and center in his demise. 

Kevin was taken into custody the day of the sentencing and now the court must decide if he will be released on bail during the appeal process.  We pray that Kevin be allowed to raise his children and do his vital work in the community pending appeal.  Kevin has been a model citizen during the 9-plus-year ordeal since the shooting and has proven he is neither a flight risk nor a threat to public safety.  He is a powerful and credible man who is creating hope, changing lives and contributing to society. I pray for grace and mercy for all of us. 

Carol McGruder grew up in Bayview Hunters Point. She is a nationally recognized activist and Co-Chair of the African American Tobacco Control Leadership Council, fighting to remove mentholated tobacco products from the US market and to end the Tobacco Industry’s racist predatory targeting of the Black community. To learn more, visit www.SavingBlackLives.org. She can be reached at cmcgruder@usa.net.

The post Shared tragedy, hope for shared healing, and a plea for Kevin Epps to be returned to family and community pending his appeal  appeared first on San Francisco Bay View.

by Aïda Jones

On April 8, in Department 26 of San Francisco Superior Court, Kevin Epps, Executive Editor of the San Francisco Bay View newspaper, was sentenced to six years and eight months in state prison. 

You can read that in KQED or Mission Local. Or in the SF Chronicle’s article that was filed by a climate reporter and cited KQED as its source — where you’ll also learn that two district attorneys refused to file charges against Mr. Epps before a third did, nine years after the killing.

What you cannot read there is how that sentence was arrived at. 

Judge Brian Ferrall claimed he was bound by the penal code to sentence Mr. Epps to three, six or 11 years. He acknowledged Epps’s trauma, his community contributions, the mitigating weight of a nonviolent criminal history and the fact the single prior felony offense was nearly two decades earlier. He dismissed the three-strikes enhancement, the prior prison term enhancement, and the prosecution’s most aggressive arguments. 

The record suggests a balanced proceeding.

It was not.

What the transcript cannot convey is the quality of the judge’s skepticism — applied exclusively in one direction. Every mitigating factor offered on behalf of Epps was diminished, including the defense’s trauma expert whose assessment the judge dismissed as “cursory.”

Meanwhile, the prosecution’s portrait of Marcus Polk went unchallenged from the bench: a canonization of a man who, by the court’s own record, was high on methamphetamine, had been sent away earlier in the day after being in an altercation, and returned — uninvited — to a home full of children, the home of a man he knew didn’t like him.

Judge Ferrall remarked that Polk was “probably the least empowered” person in the room that day in 2016. That may be true in a narrow material sense. But the burden of moral clarity — of making the right decision in a moment of mortal threat — was placed entirely on Kevin Epps, not on the man who chose to trespass his way into someone else’s home while high on meth.

The judge asked why Epps had an illegal gun. He did not ask why Polk was there at all.

That asymmetry is the story. And the only way to know it is to have been in that courtroom, to have heard the timbre of the rulings, and to have watched the prosecutor theatrically mourn a man he spent the trial flattening into a symbol. 

The reporters who filed their dispatches by calling the attorneys after the fact or from prior coverage missed it entirely — though credit goes to SF Bay View, California Black Media and Mission Local reporters for attending and covering almost every proceeding.

They missed the judge twice referring to Epps as “Mr. Polk” in the last moments of the trial, and after condemning Epps to six years and eight months, lecturing how he knows Epps “will do good for the community when you come out.” 

The system failed Kevin Epps. The media, the institution designed to hold our systems accountable, failed one of its own. Not by covering the verdict incorrectly, but by treating presence as optional when presence is everything.

San Francisco writer Aïda Jones can be reached at info@thejonesinstitute.com. 

The post Letter from the courtroom on the sentencing of Kevin Epps: The verdict the press missed appeared first on San Francisco Bay View.

by JR Valrey, The People’s Minister of Information 

Ninety miles from the shores of Florida, the US government imposed a policy of economic strangulation via a Blockade on the economy of the Caribbean nation of Cuba nearly seven decades ago, all because the Cubans want to practice sovereignty – to maintain the right of Cubans to determine what happens in Cuba. 

In January of ’26, the US government imposed a complete oil Blockade on Cuba, after abducting Venezuelan President Nicoloas Maduro, a close ally of Cuba, completely depriving the island’s 11 million people of oil and greatly hindering social life, where food distribution, transportation, the pumping of water and general electricity among other aspects of life, depend on oil. 

With the resilience of the Cuban people being displayed at this critical time, doing what they can to fight off the US goverment imposed “slow genocide,” Russia has also recently broken through the US military’s oil blockade of the island to deliver a much needed shipment of oil, and thousands of people recently descended on the island from around the world with the Nuestra America Convoy, to show person to person solidarity with the Cuban Revolution. An enormous amount of solidarity is also coming from the Black Liberation struggle in the US and the Pan African struggle in the greater world. 

As the call for the end of the Cuban Blockade grows louder and louder within the United States and throughout the world, I wanted to talk with Second Secretary of the Cuban Embassy in the US Gabriella Castillo about what is happening on the island and within international geo-politics during this crucial time.

JR Valrey: How has the US government’s inhumane and criminal oil Blockade, since the beginning of the year, affected the Cuban people and different sectors of society on the island? 

Second Secretary Gabriella Castillo: First of all, thank you very much for providing this space. To discuss the current situation in Cuba, it is vital to understand that we are not looking at an isolated phenomenon. While the Executive Order of Jan. 29, 2026, has escalated the crisis to unprecedented levels, this is a history of energy siege that intensified in 2019 and is entirely tied to the policy of the US Blockade that Cuba has faced for nearly 70 years. What we see today is also the cumulative impact of years of persecution against every ship and every fuel transaction attempting to reach the island.

Today, the absence of oil is not just a statistical problem; it impacts the life of a nation. With an unstable power grid and blackouts that can sometimes exceed 20 hours a day, every aspect of daily life — from water pumping to education — is impacted. But where this Blockade becomes especially cruel is in the healthcare sector, a field that the Cuban Revolution has defended and maintained for years as a fundamental human right.

The healthcare system faces challenges that defy humanitarian logic. Currently, we have a surgical waiting list of over 96,000 patients. The most painful part of these figures is the human face behind them:

• Over 11,000 children and nearly 5,000 cancer patients are waiting for surgeries that are being postponed due to a lack of supplies or stable energy.
• Vital services such as hemodialysis (on which nearly 3,000 people depend) and radiotherapy (for 16,000 patients) are at constant risk due to electrical instability.
• The Maternal and Child Health Program is suffering directly: 32,000 pregnant women are struggling to access diagnostic ultrasounds, and more than 30,000 children face delays in their vaccinations because the cold chain for the doses cannot be guaranteed.

However, it is fundamental to highlight that if our healthcare system has not collapsed, it is thanks to the titanic effort of our doctors and scientists, and a national contingency strategy. Cuba has not stood idly by:

• We are accelerating a sovereign energy transition. We have already installed solar panels in 282 polyclinics, 15 hospitals, and dozens of maternal and nursing homes. Power supply for hospital centers is strategically prioritized over any other economic sector.

To summarize, what we are facing is a siege designed to suffocate the survival logistics of a people. Despite limited resources, the state’s priority remains saving lives, but the human cost of this policy of energy persecution is, quite simply, incalculable.

JR Valrey: With the Russian oil tanker reaching a port in Matanzas days ago, is the end of the US imposed oil blockade in sight?

Second Secretary Gabriella Castillo: This is an excellent question, but difficult to answer with a simple yes or no. To analyze the impact of the Russian tanker’s arrival in Matanzas, we must view it through three fundamental dimensions:

First, what Russia did is extremely significant, especially given the critical context Cuba faces today regarding fuel and electricity generation. We cannot underestimate what this means for the functioning of our hospitals, water pumping systems, and the daily lives of Cuban families who have been suffering through prolonged blackouts. It is a gesture of solidarity that arrives at a moment of extreme necessity.

Furthermore, this event brings a debate of principles to the table. Under international law, no country has the right to threaten another to prevent it from trading with or sending solidarity aid to a third nation. Trade and cooperation are the sovereign prerogatives of every state. The fact that this tanker has reached our shores is, in essence, an act of affirming that sovereignty in the face of external pressures that seek to dictate who we can or cannot associate with.

However, it would be premature to say that we are seeing the end of the oil Blockade. I cannot predict what will happen after this, but the facts are clear: The Executive Order of Jan. 29 remains in effect. The unilateral legal framework that sustains the energy persecution against Cuba has not changed; the unilateral threat of sanctions and tariffs against any shipping company or country attempting to establish a regular flow of fuel remains present. Although this specific shipment is a victory for solidarity, the U.S. policy of economic strangulation remains intact.

As long as that Executive Order and the laws of the Blockade remain in force, we cannot speak of an end to this criminal policy. What we are seeing is a constant struggle between international solidarity and a siege that attempts, day after day, to turn off the lights of an entire country.

JR Valrey: How does Cuba respond to the US government and corporate media saying food shortages and blackouts are evidence that socialism has failed on the island, without addressing the enormous economic and political impact of the criminal and unjust 67-year general Blockade that the US government imposed on the island?

Second Secretary Gabriella Castillo: That is a vital question because, in reality, it contains its own answer. To honestly analyze what is happening in Cuba today, it is impossible to separate our economic challenges from the context of the external siege the island has faced for nearly 70 years.

How can one judge the viability of a social or economic model when it is subjected to such brutal and prolonged external pressure? The intent of this policy is neither a secret nor a matter of interpretation; it was explicitly stated as far back as the 1960s in the Lester Mallory Memorandum, which established with total clarity that the objective of the Blockade was to provoke discontent and disenchantment through “hunger, desperation, and the overthrow of the government.”

To speak of shortages or blackouts without mentioning that every fuel ship, every financial transaction, and every attempt to acquire basic supplies is being hounded, is to omit the primary variable of the equation. The question we should be asking ourselves is not whether socialism has failed, but rather: What country in the world, regardless of its political system, would survive a siege of this magnitude for seven decades?

What we see in Cuba today is not evidence of internal failure, but evidence of extraordinary resilience. We Cubans have done much more than just survive: We have maintained a priority on healthcare, education, science, and innovation — reaching the standards of “developed” nations — even while the logistics of basic survival are attacked day after day.

 Furthermore, we have been an example of a different model of international cooperation and solidarity, sharing what we have rather than what we have to spare with other nations. To judge the results without acknowledging the siege is, quite simply, to ignore the reality of what it means to defend sovereignty under conditions of total economic warfare.  

JR Valrey: How does Cuba respond to Trump saying in the media that he is considering “taking” the island? 

Second Secretary Gabriella Castillo: Look, Cuba is a sovereign and independent nation, with a seat at the United Nations and very active participation in the international arena. We maintain diplomatic relations with the vast majority of the world’s countries and we defend the United Nations Charter and the rules established by International law — among them, and most importantly, peaceful coexistence between nations.

The reality is that Cuba’s destiny is decided, and will continue to be decided, by the Cuban people. Our history, especially over the last 70 years, is proof of an unbreakable will to defend our independence.

While some sectors stir up discourses of domination or intervention, Cuba continues to champion a model of international cooperation and solidarity. We have always — even in the most tense contexts — expressed our willingness to engage in dialogue with different United States governments across various fields, sitting at the table as equals, as two sovereign nations, which I consider fundamental for any honest process of engagement. Our response to hostility has always been the building of bridges with other peoples and the defense of multilateralism. Our priority will always be the well-being of our people, the updating of our model, and creative resistance against the Blockade. Cuba’s sovereignty is not negotiable nor subject to external considerations; it is a historical and legal fact

JR Valrey: Would you equate the US government’s current policies on Cuba as a scripted genocide, that is being carried out in real time? Why or why not?

Second Secretary Gabriella Castillo: Well, according to the 1948 UN Convention, genocide includes the “deliberate inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction.”

The Blockade fits this definition for three reasons:

It has the intent: The 1960 Mallory Memorandum explicitly stated the objective of breaking Cuba through “hunger and desperation.” That is a roadmap for the destruction of a people.

The method of suffocation: Unlike tragedies such as Gaza, where we see immediate physical destruction, what is happening in Cuba is a “silent genocide.” Bombs are not falling, but medicines, food, and the fuel necessary for hospitals to function are being blocked.

Therefore, using the deprivation of the basic means of life as a political tool for 70 years is, by definition and by impact, a genocidal act.

JR Valrey: Recently thousands of people arrived in Cuba to show their solidarity with the island nation. What was their purpose?

Second Secretary Gabriella Castillo: You are referring to the Nuestra América Convoy, an immense gesture of solidarity that recently brought people from all over the world to Cuba, including a very significant representation from the people of the United States. This experience was fundamental for three main reasons:

First, showing that Cuba is not alone in this struggle

Second, these people did not arrive empty-handed. They brought much-needed solidarity aid: medicines, food, solar panels — resources that directly help mitigate the shortages we face due to the energy and economic siege.

Second, and perhaps most importantly, these individuals were able to see with their own eyes the reality of Cuba. They didn’t rely on media narratives; they witnessed firsthand the consequences of this blockade on the Cuban people and, above all, the day-to-day resilience on the island.

Many of those participants have used their platforms to give visibility to what they witnessed, breaking the wall of information silence regarding the human impact of these sanctions.

JR Valrey: Do you think that people only calling for an end to the oil Blockade, while the nation has been getting economically strangled for 67 years by the US in a general Blockade, is a benefit or detriment to the long term cause of Cuban sovereignty? 

Second Secretary Gabriella Castillo: Focusing solely on ending the oil Blockade — while it is an immediate urgency due to the Executive Order of Jan. 29 — can be a double-edged sword if the bigger picture is lost. The energy siege is only the tip of the iceberg of a policy of economic strangulation that has lasted 67 years.

Calling only for an end to the oil Blockade, without questioning the general Blockade, could give the false impression that once the electrical crisis is resolved, the rest of the sanctions are “tolerable” — and they are not. Respect for Cuba’s full sovereignty will only be complete when the entire framework of laws preventing us from developing normally is eliminated. Therefore, any call to action must be comprehensive: Ending energy persecution is an urgent step, but the ultimate goal must be the total and unconditional lifting of the Blockade.

As for how everyday people can help, anyone from their own community, anywhere in the world, can make a real difference.

I can tell you that I have seen many individuals and organizations break the wall of silence and misinformation regarding Cuba by sharing real information about the human impact of these policies—much like the members of the Nuestra América Convoy have done. This has contributed to providing a more nuanced narrative.

In the case of U.S. citizens, they possess a unique capacity: requesting that their representatives put an end to a policy that not only harms the Cuban people but also violates the rights of Americans themselves to travel and trade freely.

As we saw with the recent Convoy, sending medicines, medical supplies, and technology for the energy transition (such as solar panels) is a form of shared resistance. Every syringe or solar panel that reaches the island is an act of sovereignty in the face of the siege.

JR Valrey: Where can people go to get up to date news in English about Cuba?

Second Secretary Gabriella Castillo: Well, as always, I recommend following the social media accounts of the Cuban Embassy in the United States; we are on X, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube as ‘Embassy of Cuba.’ I also suggest following the work of Belly of the Beast, as well as other outlets like BreakThrough News, DropSite or The Final Call, which provide objective coverage of what is happening. Additionally, I recommend looking at the work of influencers like Vic Mensa and Hassan Piker, who were recently in Cuba as part of the Nuestra América Convoy and created content regarding their visit.

Furthermore, you can hear about the reality of Cuba on programs like Make It Plain with Rev. Mark Thompson on WURD Philadelphia and, of course, on Block Report Radio and WPFW in Washington, D.C.

JR Valrey is a veteran journalist who can be heard weekly on Wednesdays on 89.5FM KPOO or KPOO.com from noon to 3 p.m. His work can also be heard on www.blockreportradioworld.com. 

The post Unpardonable offenses: US government policy vs. Cuba appeared first on San Francisco Bay View.

by Eric Arnold

Kevin Epps shot and killed Marcus Polk inside his home in 2016, saying he did so to defend himself. California’s Castle Doctrine, which allows homeowners and residents to use reasonable — including deadly — force against intruders, was supposed to protect people in that situation.

It didn’t protect Epps.

In November 2025, a jury acquitted the San Francisco-based award-winning journalist and filmmaker of first-degree murder, but convicted him of voluntary manslaughter. His fate will be decided in a sentencing on April 8, with prosecutors opposing probation and seeking more than 11 years in prison. Some observers view the case not as an isolated incident of selective prosecution, but a verdict on how the criminal justice system is slanted against Black male defendants.

“We see recurrent cases wherein Black homeowners and residents are prosecuted when they defend their homes,” said Harvard professor Caroline Light, who researches the racial history of self-defense law. 

Self-defense laws like the Castle Doctrine, she argued, have never operated as irrespective of race as they’re written: “When we see the cases actually adjudicated, what we see is the stretching of the boundaries of Castle to accommodate the violence of certain types of people. Think George Zimmerman. Think Kyle Rittenhouse.”

Light called the decision of Epps’ judge Brian Ferrall to modify jury instructions regarding the Castle Doctrine consistent with a pattern of selective application that she has documented across American courts — what she describes as judges “putting their thumbs on the scales one way or the other.”

The people who most need self-defense protections, she said, are the ones least likely to receive them: domestic abuse victims, Black homeowners and Black residents in no-knock warrant situations: “These are the people who are going to be prosecuted most frequently.”

Some of Epps’ supporters have accused the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office of selective prosecution, saying the case reflects a more aggressive prosecutorial approach by DA Brooke Jenkins since the 2022 recall of her reform-minded predecessor Chesa Boudin. 

Attorney Walter Riley says this shift is real. The DA’s new approach, he says, has resulted in cases being pursued even when the evidence may not support the charges. Epps’ case,  initially dropped due to insufficient evidence, was reopened based on a digital animation commissioned by the prosecution that was later withdrawn.

“That’s the nature of bias, racism, overcharging and improper charging in this country,” said Riley, the father of rapper-turned-filmmaker Boots Riley.

The attorney became active in the civil rights movement in North Carolina during the 1950s, when Jim Crow laws were still in effect. In his view, the core issues of unequal justice since then have remained constant: “What happens in the criminal justice system is definitely a civil rights issue.”

Riley rejects softer framings of the problem like the term “implicit bias.” 

“It is not implicit when Black folks are being criminalized at a greater rate than anyone else,” he said. “It’s not implicit when crimes are developed that particularly criminalize the conduct of Black people.”

At the intersection of civil rights and criminal justice, the two “are absolutely not separate,” Riley added. “Justice Sotomayor, to paraphrase her, has said that the nature of the criminal justice system is an issue that we have to deal with in terms of the way we deal with racial biases.”

These inequities extend beyond the courtroom. 

San Francisco Public Defender Mano Raju said his office operates on roughly $39 million less annually than the DA’s office, which also has access to SFPD resources, police experts and a crime lab.

“A lot of the DA’s experts, for example, in gang cases, they’re police officers or they have access to the crime lab,” he explained. “If we want an expert, we have to hire it out of our expert budget fund, which is limited. But more importantly, they have more investigators, they have more clerical staff, they have more attorneys and they have a police department that’s 15 times our budget.”

 “There’s not anywhere close to parity,” he added. “The scales of justice are definitely not balanced in our system.”

Those resource gaps translate into pressure on defendants. Raju says clients who lose confidence in the system — whether from over-crowded dockets, racial bias in jury pools, or the sheer cost of fighting charges — often take plea deals for crimes they didn’t commit. “When clients don’t have confidence, they will plead to things they didn’t do.”

Prosecutorial misconduct worsens the problem, he says, and “is actually way more common than the public generally knows”  — including prosecutors delaying or withholding exculpatory or guilt-clearing evidence; this contributes to wrongful convictions and clients taking plea deals. 

In these cases, said Raju, the public defender’s office will attempt to take the appropriate action, asking for a mistrial or a jury stipulation in some cases, but ”unfortunately, there aren’t enough times where judges actually hold prosecutors accountable for their conduct.” 

Overcharging defendants of color is a “common phenomenon,” he continued, and prosecutors don’t always play fair: “There are times when prosecutors are feeling an urge to win at any cost, as opposed to seeking justice. And when that happens, wrong outcomes occur,” including improper convictions and jail time. 

Racial disparities play a role in this “in every way. First of all, we don’t have the diversity you’d want in the legal profession yet,” he explained, and “it’s usually the case that our clients do not have a jury of their peers. And when we do go to trial, we often have to overcome a presumption of guilt … When clients don’t have confidence, they will plead to things they didn’t do.”

Epps’ attorneys have laid the groundwork for a potential appeal, but Raju warned that even successful appeals carry their own costs. 

“Often, that result comes after a period of separation … Those costs of separation are no less severe just because someone happens to be accused of a crime,” he said. “Justice delayed is justice denied.”

Eric Arnold writes for American Community Media, where this story first appeared.

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by Asė Mora

All My Usos (AMU), meaning “All My Brothers” in Samoan, is a homage to the organization’s grassroots initiative that’s provided services and resources to thousands of families over the last decade. It is one of 12 organizations participating in Kaiser Permanente’s Voices for Mental Health and Wellness Campaign, a component of Kaiser Permanente San Francisco Mentoring for Health and Wellness Initiative. In March, I had the opportunity to learn more about their organization. 

Founded by the late Jaytee Mauia in 2015, during his battle with stomach cancer, the principles of All My Usos still align with Jaytee’s initial vision for building community amongst Pacific Islander families in San Francisco. And providing them with support and services that the community often lacks. 

Since his passing in 2018, his wife, Executive Director of AMU, Christine Mauia continues to keep Jaytee’s legacy alive. Now with a team of all women, AMU continues the movement started by Jaytee centered around love, service, and the power of community. 

“AMU wasn’t birthed or formed in a boardroom or for a political vote. It was formed in my husband’s hospital bed while he was going through chemo. And because he’s from the community, as we all are, I think it’s more than just some people that just got hired on to come and do this work. This is rooted in us,” said Mauia.

“Rooted in Us”

Jaytee along with other staff grew up on the Southeastern side of the city, the impact of his work, AMU, has been rooted in the city since before the organization began. 

According to Mauia, the organization’s boots on the ground approach, like; meeting with families in hospitals after a tragedy, bringing families food and other goods to show support holds significant weight in the Samoan community. 

Mauia emphasized how these acts of cultural understanding and connection allow them to serve the Pacific Islander community more efficiently than external city officials or departments.

Shirley Alapati, Community Health Worker at AMU, stated that AMU’s roots as a Samoan organization, makes connecting with the Pacific Islander families easier. Alapati recalled specific outreach efforts such as advertising their programs in Samoan to increase their elderly Pacific Islander population.

Other services AMU provides aim directly to supporting the needs of the Pacific Islander community and breaking down cultural taboos around mental health and grief. Alapati emphasized AMU’s monthly group therapy sessions that specifically cater towards helping people process grief, loss and trauma. 

Breaking Taboo 

Tina Sataraka, Associate Mental Health Therapist at AMU, emphasized how the expectation to be strong can lead to a suppression of emotions and aversion to bringing up certain topics such as grief, depression and abuse. Due to shame or ostracization these topics are never addressed and become taboo. 

According to Sataraka, her work with AMU has also allowed her to heal from trauma and abuse within her own life, she described AMU as a pipeline to breaking generational trauma and taboo.

“So it’s how can we provide access to quality of life, especially resources that are not just only culturally rooted, but beneficial for our people to thrive. For too long, folks are in survival mode.

And we’re trying to cultivate a generation of folks who can live in an environment where they’re thriving,” said Sataraka.

Jillian Payuran, Senior Marketing Director at World System Builder, and professional financial educator was hosted by AMU this past February to give a free financial literacy workshop class. 

Payuran started her own journey with financial literacy after she found herself in debt post-graduation. She stated that although she majored in economics and finances she felt like her education didn’t focus on personal financial independence, rather teaching young college students how to make someone else money. 

Her own journey to financial independence meant addressing taboos centered around talking about finances in many Filipino families such as hers. Beyond financial literacy classes, according to Payuran, AMU is a “one-stop shop” for resources and services for all families in need. 

Specifically emphasizing AMU’s ability to meet specific needs of many immigrant families in San Francisco, Payuran said,

“I really appreciate that. Because if they didn’t do stuff like that, my family would have never been helped.” 

Asé Mora is a writing and media intern with the San Francisco Bayview National Black Newspaper and a freelance journalist based in the Bay Area. She is a special reporter on the San Francisco Kaiser Permanente’s Voices for Mental Health and Wellness Campaign. Asé is a senior at San Francisco State University studying journalism with a minor in Broadcast and Electronic Communication Arts, and Deaf Studies. She is also a staff reporter for Xpress Magazine, SF State’s student-run publication. 

The post Meet the women of All My Usos – Breaking taboo appeared first on San Francisco Bay View.

by Landon Willis

APA is an important organization in the Bay Area that serves the AAPI (Asian American and Pacific Islander) community, but its services are open to all. On August 24 2025, APA held their Anniversary Block Party in China Town. The anniversary day commemorates cultural identity and the community bonds that the organization has been creating for years. The event featured game booths for the families, cultural performances, live entertainment, and an auction for fundraising. The organization also invited the Mayor of San Francisco, Daniel Lurie, to attend the event. The mayor expresses profound appreciation for APA and other organizations like it. Lurie recognizes the importance of such organizations and continues to say, “There is no better investment as a city or as a community to make than in our children, and we have to keep investing in zero to five and make sure our kids get off to a strong start.” 

This event is one of the many ways APA builds and strengthens a community of over two thousand people. However, the organization has not always been as broad. Recently, APA was awarded a grant from San Francisco Kaiser Permanente’s Voices for Mental Health and Wellness Campaign to help expand on their services.  

What Is APA? 

APA Family Support services was originally founded in 1987 by Dr. Don Wong, who was a pediatrician at San Francisco Hospital. Dr. Wong was inspired to start the organization after seeing the struggle AAPI families faced and their lack of resources due to language and cultural barriers. 

APA’s mission is to promote Safety, Wellness and Economic security for at-risk youth and families. They also focus on providing culturally appropriate services for all their clients and they do this by considering each client’s background in all of the services they provide. A prime example of this is the Parental Stress Line which is designed to provide support for those with language barriers and the hotline has over seven languages available. 

AAPI Struggles 

According to the National Institute of Medicine, “Approximately 8.6% of Asian Americans sought mental health services compared with about 18% of the general population.” This information was from an article written in 2017, but more recent data still shows mental health is still an issue among AAPI groups. A 2024 article from TAAF (The Asian American Foundation) conducted a study on those from AAPI backgrounds and found that 48% scored above the threshold for moderate depression, 93% receiving some form of racial discrimination and 55% not wanting to burden their parents by seeking help.

Mental health is not the only issue that these families face. According to EBRI, (Employee Benefit Research Institute) Pacific Islander national income and asset ownership is shown to be lower than national figures. In addition to the other issues listed the National Domestic violence hotline has recorded, “Up to 55% of Asian Women in the U.S. have experienced some form of sexual violence in their lifetime.” These statistics show what the different issues AAPI groups face in the United States.  Yet, how does APA as an organization provide the resources to combat these struggles?  

Bringing Families Together 

One way APA provides these sources is by bringing families together. Earlier in March , Asé  and I, special reporters on the San Francisco Kaiser Permanente’s Voices for Mental Health and Wellness Campaign,  had the pleasure of interviewing the Senior Community Outreach and Training Manager of APA, Barbara Chung. She gave a detailed breakdown on all the resources their organization provides.

APA has 6 areas they provide service for: 

• Behavioral Health: This program is for kids who struggle with mental health and behavioral issues who are Medical eligible, but lack access to mental health assistance. It utilizes formal counseling for the families to help kids have better behavior in and outside of school. 
• Home Visitation:  Home Visitation is another mental health resource for families but instead focuses on the parents and engagement in activities that help them with understanding their child’s development. 
• Enhanced Visitation: Visitation for parents removed from child’s care and are involved in child Welfare. This type of visitation creates safe environments for parents to visit their kids and for Visitation Supervisors to make sure children are being treated properly. The Parental Stress Line is also a part of this program.  
• Youth Development: Helps build assets for youth by preparing them for future job searching and strengthens professional skills. 
• Economic Success: Aims to provide families with all the tools necessary for economic success in all aspects of finances. 
• Family Resource Center: Last but not least the China Town, Excelsior and Visitacion Valley resource centers help create community for families. These sites offer many group workshops to bring parents and families together. 

APA Family Support Services continues to bring families together through shared resources and community love.

Landon Willis is a writing and media intern with the San Francisco Bayview Newspaper. He is a second-year marketing student at San Francisco State University. He is a special reporter on the San Francisco Kaiser Permanente’s Voices for Mental Health and Wellness Campaign.  In addition to school, Landon enjoys exercise, music, and hanging out with friends. He is very passionate about film and acting and is currently working on creating his own feature film.

The post Fun, fellowship and family – APA is bringing people together appeared first on San Francisco Bay View.

by Tabari Morris

A historian of Black Freedom steps into California’s 2026 governor’s race 

California’s long crisis of homelessness, mass incarceration, corporate capture and economic inequality has a new challenger in the 2026 governor’s race: historian, activist and educator Dr. Butch Ware, now running on the Green Party ticket with an unapologetically Black radical, liberation-centered platform. After a wide-ranging interview touching on housing, prisons, surveillance, education and political power, the San Francisco Bay View is proud to officially endorse Dr. Ware’s candidacy for governor of California. “This Green Party run is an opportunity to bring our radical politics outside of that duopoly system and really put that to the center of state politics and national politics,” Ware said.​ 

In my interview with him, Ware framed his campaign as a direct challenge to what he calls the “two-party duopoly” that has overseen California’s highest-in-the-nation poverty, deeply racialized policing and an historic homelessness crisis despite the state’s position as the world’s third-largest economy. He is running as a self-described “Black Muslim revolutionary,” promising to wield the ballot as “a weapon” in the tradition of Malcolm X, the Black Panther Party and the broader Black radical tradition.​ 

From Black radical history to the governor’s race 

Ware comes to the race as an associate professor of history at the University of California, Santa Barbara, teaching African history, African American history and Islamic intellectual history, with a body of work focused on Black radical traditions, colonialism, genocide, revolution and social transformation. He credits his decision to jump into electoral politics to his 2024 vice-presidential run alongside Dr. Jill Stein, which forced him to revisit how earlier generations of revolutionaries treated the vote.​ 

“I went back to Malcolm, 1964, ‘The Ballot or the Bullet,’” Ware recalled. Malcolm’s insistence that “the ballot is a weapon as effective or more effective than the bullet,” and the Panthers’ choice to run for office convinced Ware that electoral work could be a tool of organizing, not a substitute for it. “I’m running to try to build an independent liberation-centered politics that comes out of the Black radical tradition, but channels that Black radical tradition towards the aims of collective liberation in the same ways that the Panthers did,” he said.​ 

Breaking the Democratic-Republican ‘duopoly’ 

Throughout the conversation, Ware returned to a central premise: Democrats and Republicans are two wings of the same corporate machine. Citing Malcolm X’s metaphor of the liberal “fox” and conservative “wolf,” he argues that the differences between the parties are “a difference of style, not substance,” particularly on policing, prisons and economic inequality. “The Democrat establishment in the state turns California citizens and residents upside down and shakes us until all of the money comes out of our pockets,” he said, describing the state’s additions of tolls, fees and regressive revenue schemes.​ 

Ware says the current system is a bipartisan failure, a state that is simultaneously a global economic powerhouse and a national leader in poverty, wealth inequality and carceral expansion. For Ware, the Green Party’s refusal to take corporate funding was not a branding decision, but a requirement for democracy: “Who funds you runs you,” he said, contrasting his campaign with Democrats and Republicans funded by defense contractors, private prison interests and Wall Street asset managers. 

“Our job is to restore power to the people,” he said, advocating for proportional representation, ranked-choice voting and mixed-member districts as a way to break the corporate stranglehold on state power. 

‘Poverty industrial complex’ and a housing-first vision 

If there was one issue that drew special urgency from Ware, it was homelessness – and the multi-billion-dollar ecosystem that has failed to end it. He referred to the web of agencies, consultants and developers as the “poverty industrial complex,” saying that too much of the state’s homelessness funding functions as “poverty alleviation for them, but not for the people.” Under Gov. Gavin Newsom, Ware pointed out, California has spent roughly $25 billion on homelessness programs, while the average number of people sleeping on the street each night has risen from about 120,000 to 187,000.​ 

Ware’s criticism is personal as well as it is political. He tells of a childhood spent riding a bike through shelters, relatives’ homes, public housing and other unstable living situations. He also tells of his father who was struggling with mental health and addiction issues who lived on the streets at times. “I don’t see homeless people as a public nuisance. I see homeless people as human beings who need care,” he emphasized. His plan focuses on a housing-first approach combined with universal single-payer healthcare including mental health and addiction services, as well as social housing funded through aggressive taxation of vacant properties, especially those of companies such as Blackstone and BlackRock. 

Care, not cages: healthcare, addiction and drug policy 

Ware links California’s housing crisis and homelessness problem directly to healthcare and criminalization. He supports universal single-payer healthcare, currently blocked by Democrats who advocate for it but take millions from the health care lobby. Ware argues that universal healthcare is the only way to treat addiction and mental health issues as a healthcare problem, not a crime. When Ware ran for national office on the Green Party ticket with Jill Stein, he supported the Green Party’s platform of legalizing and regulating controlled substances, decriminalizing users and treating substance abuse as a health crisis, not a pipeline to prison. 

“At the intersection of the two problems that you just stated is the fact that many of those folks who have some kind of record inside the carceral system are people who were serving time for drug offenses,” he said in our interview, arguing that both public and private prison interests profit from criminalization. “If all you have is a hammer, then every problem looks like a nail,” he said. “And if all you have is corporate donors, then you’re always going to craft solutions that serve your corporate donor class rather than just fixing the damn problem.”​ 

Abolition, political prisoners, and ending prison slavery

Ware describes himself as an abolitionist who “envision[s] a day when we close down Pelican Bay,” and he says his team is already vetting lists of political prisoners for gubernatorial clemency. He situates California’s carceral system within a long genealogy of racial violence and intellectual resistance, pointing to figures like George and Jonathan Jackson and Huey P. Newton and the intellectual work produced behind bars that has shaped Black liberation movements worldwide.​

On the continued use of prison labor under the 13th Amendment’s “punishment for crime” clause, Ware is equally blunt: “Slavery still exists inside the state of California,” he said, drawing a straight line from chattel slavery to post-emancipation vagrancy laws in South Africa to today’s forced labor regimes. He criticized the state’s recent ratification of carceral slavery at the ballot box as a failure of moral and political leadership, promising to side with incarcerated workers who refuse to participate in coerced labor. “One of those human rights is to be exempt from slavery at the hands of the state,” he insists.​

Standing with inside-outside organizing and street organizations

In one of our interview’s most powerful exchanges, a question from formerly incarcerated organizers asked how they could form a political action committee to back Ware’s platform as “new stakeholders.” Ware responded with clear enthusiasm: “First of all, I love this,” he said, revealing that his campaign is already working with formerly incarcerated street-organization leaders in San Diego on community-based violence prevention and political organizing.​

He cited as a point of pride the 2024 endorsement of the Stein-Ware ticket by the Almighty Vice Lord Nation, arguing that street organizations are uniquely positioned to build the political formations necessary to “wrest power out of the hands of the corporations.” “The only murderous gangs that I know that wear blue and red are Democrats and Republicans,” he quipped in an interview on the Breakfast Club, clarifying that his campaign sees street organizations, incarcerated people and their families as central partners, not scapegoats.​

Ending hostilities, building safe and liberated zones

Asked whether he would meet with “principal thinkers” behind the historic Pelican Bay Agreement to End Hostilities and support using that framework as both inside-outside peace work and a curriculum for schools, Ware did not hesitate. “Without any question. So mark that down, put it on the record,” he said, noting that such work has already begun through his campaign’s collaboration with street leadership. His view of violence prevention is rooted in structural analysis: He recalls growing up in Washington, D.C., when it was the murder capital of the United States and argues that current conditions reflect “the indelible marks of white supremacist, capitalist and imperialist violence on our communities.”​

For Ware, the real public safety work is twofold: meeting people’s basic needs – “housing, healthcare and education because those are the things that lead to opportunity” – and supporting robust, community-rooted violence prevention programs both inside the prison system and in neighborhoods under constant surveillance and policing. He sees little meaningful boundary between “inside” and “outside” for Black, Latino and poor communities living under militarized policing, recalling being stopped “for driving while Black 17 times before I got to my 18th birthday.”​

Fighting surveillance and the expanding police state

Ware and I also tackled the explosion of surveillance technology in cities like San Francisco, where flock cameras, license-plate readers and private systems like Ring create what Ware calls a 21st-century police state. Quoting Dead Prez’s song “Police State,” he noted how streetlights now function as watchtowers as corporations and law enforcement track movement and activity with “no respect for people’s rights to privacy.”​

Ware argues that this surveillance boom is inseparable from the influence of Silicon Valley over state politics. “When the executive authority and the Democrat Party is in the employ of Silicon Valley tech bros …  of course they’re going to look the other way as our privacy and civil liberties are violated,” he said. As governor, he says he would press the attorney general to aggressively litigate in defense of civil liberties, leveraging the office’s power against tech overreach instead of shielding corporate donors.​

Schools, students and ending the school-to-prison pipeline

In my interview with Dr. Ware, the conversation frequently returned to young people and education, including my observation – grounded in the actual Chicago experience – that closing dozens of schools and forcing students to cross neighborhood lines escalated violence and instability. Ware connected those experiences to his own, recounting his transformation at 15 after reading “The Autobiography of Malcolm X” and the Qur’an in two nights, and to the long history of Black students being told that their ambitions are unrealistic, from Malcolm being told to become a carpenter rather than the lawyer young Malcolm wanted be to Ware himself being told in third grade that there had never been a Black president and likely never would be.​

Dr. Ware argues that schools in Black and Brown communities often function as extensions of the carceral state – complete with metal detectors, prison-like architecture and a culture of surveillance – that make students feel unsafe and unwelcome. To change that, Ware calls for equalizing per-pupil funding across districts so that students in places like Compton and Stockton are funded at the same level as those in Beverly Hills, as well as universal pre-K and a return to free tuition at public colleges and universities, paired with relief from crushing student loan debt. “The student is the bag,” he said, describing how student debt has turned higher education from a path to social mobility into a revenue stream for corporations.​

Taxing billionaires, cutting tolls and ending ‘extortionary’ fees

On economic policy, Ware is sharply critical of what he calls California’s “never ending constant shakedown” of working people through tolls, fees and layered taxes while billionaires and major corporations pay little. He points to proposals such as per-mile “road-use” charges and escalating tolls as examples of a state that “turns California citizens and residents upside down and shakes us until all of the money comes out of our pockets.” Meanwhile, he notes, nine households in Silicon Valley control about $683 billion in personal wealth, 186 billionaires reside in the state, and companies like Tesla and Palantir pay effective tax rates that are negligible or reportedly zero.​

Ware’s alternative is straightforward: Cut “extortionary” tolls and fees by rooting out entrenched corruption and pork in Sacramento and raise modest taxes on the ultra-rich and large corporations. He argues that a 2% increase in income tax on the state’s 186 billionaires alone could fund the elimination of state income taxes for Californians making $100,000 or less while cancelling many regressive charges on everyday life. “The only freeloaders who are getting over on our dime are the billionaires, not the immigrants,” he said.​

100-day agenda: emergency single-payer and structural change

When pressed to elaborate on what he would do in his first 100 days as governor, Ware said they are working on releasing a comprehensive plan but pointed to one major action he said he would take right away: declaring a public health emergency and immediately establishing a single-payer health care plan for Californians. “People need relief now,” he emphasized, noting that Democrats have shown they could pass a single-payer plan by doing it twice, in 2006 and 2008, knowing Republican Gov. Schwarzenegger would veto it.

Ware accuses Democrats of betraying voters by campaigning on single-payer – Newsom did so in 2022 – then abandoning it after accepting $2.7 million from the healthcare lobby and refusing to even bring a single-payer bill to a vote. Ware quotes James Baldwin: “I can’t believe what you say because I see what you do,” promising that a Ware administration would act immediately on what he calls an “80/20 issue” that enjoys overwhelming popular support.​

Building a statewide movement: from 2% to the governor’s mansion

Despite being a non-corporate candidate running as an independent in a so-called “jungle primary,” Ware insists that this campaign is meant to win rather than merely being symbolic. He argues that his recent poll figures have placed him between 2% and 5%, a feat that is impressive for a third-party candidate in California. He further notes that with so many candidates in the race, the current leaders are polling at around 13 to 14 percent, meaning that he is merely “single digit off the lead.” No third-party candidate has polled at 5 percent in California since a third-party candidate actually won in 1917, Ware observed.

The campaign’s growth, he says, is fueled by real-world organizing rather than “Instagram AstroTurf.” Ware describes “boots on the ground in every community,” from San Diego to Humboldt, including a 500-person rally in San Leandro headlined by Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters where the campaign raised roughly $40,000 in a single day – more than some left formations have raised in entire cycles. He reports having “a few thousand” volunteers already engaged in field work and expects that number to rise sharply as vote-by-mail ballots go out on May 4, 2026.​

A Muslim, pro-Palestine multi-racial coalition

Ware’s candidacy is also changing political assumptions about who makes up the backbone of state insurgent campaigns. A practicing Muslim who was fasting during Ramadan while giving an interview with me, Ware pointed to 2024 exit polls in California that found 53% of Muslim voters supported Stein and Ware, while only 20% of those voters chose Democrats, whom he called “team blue genocide,” and Republicans, whom he called “team red fascism.”

As there are a million Muslims in California, Ware sees a scenario where Muslim, youth, Black, Latino, Asian-American and working-class voters can easily provide the 1.75 to 2 million votes needed to win the June primary election.

He points to especially high levels of enthusiasm among young voters, who are “deeply anti-Zionist, very pro-Palestinian, very pro-ICE abolition,” and also have Green Party chapters at about 20 colleges across the state. “We’re trying to win,” he says straightforwardly, emphasizing that his platform of housing, healthcare, human rights and stopping carceral and imperial violence is popular beyond traditional “left” communities.

‘A new day is dawning’: Why SF Bay View endorses Dr. Butch Ware

In closing, Ware turned again to Malcolm X, reminding Black Californians that being taken for granted by Democrats makes them, in Malcolm’s words, “political chumps.” “Aren’t we tired of Black Californians being chumped by a party that plays in our face and locks us up, that plays in our face and keeps us impoverished?” he asked. For him, a Ware victory would signal that “the third largest economy on the planet has gone out of the fold of imperialism and capitalism and white supremacy and that a new day is dawning in the political history of humanity.”​

The SF Bay View agrees that California is past the point of tinkering at the margins and that the crises facing Black, Brown, working-class and poor communities demand a fundamentally different governing vision. With his lifelong commitment to Black liberation, his lived experience of housing precarity and family incarceration, his refusal of corporate money, and his concrete plans for housing, healthcare, education and decarceration, Dr. Butch Ware has earned our full and official endorsement for governor of California in 2026.​

How to get involved – and a thank you

Readers and viewers who want to learn more or plug into the campaign can visit ButchWare4Gov.com, where they can sign up to volunteer, donate or connect with field teams across the state. The campaign can also be reached directly at https://contact@butchware4gov.com and volunteer@butchware4gov.com for those organizing PACs, inside-outside efforts or local community initiatives.​

On behalf of the SF Bay View community, we extend a heartfelt thank you to Dr. Butch Ware for sharing his time, clarity and courage with our readers and viewers and for placing the needs of our people at the center of his bid for California’s highest office. We look forward to covering this campaign as it grows – and to seeing power return to the hands of those who have carried the heaviest burdens for far too long.​

Tabari Morris, a journalism student at City College of San Francisco and news editor of The Guardsman, City College’s student newspaper, is managing editor of the Bay View and can be reached at tabari@sfbayview.com.  

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by Eric Arnold

San Francisco – As San Francisco-based filmmaker Kevin Epps awaits sentencing for the 2016 fatal shooting of Marcus Polk, his supporters continue to raise allegations of selective prosecution, prosecutorial misconduct, and judicial error in his recent murder trial. 

The issues go beyond this singular case, they say, highlighting longstanding concerns about structural inequity and racial disparities in criminal cases involving African American men.

Epps, who claimed self-defense, was acquitted of first-degree murder charges, but found guilty of voluntary manslaughter. A sentencing hearing is scheduled for April 8. 

During his trial, dozens of community members – including prominent faith leaders like the Rev. Amos Brown and officials from the San Francisco and San Mateo NAACP – held rallies outside the courtroom steps, demanding justice for Epps.

One key issue is the lack of diversity among the judiciary. 

As of March 2026, Black or African American judges represented almost 10 percent of judges statewide. In Alameda County, the percentage of Black or African American judges is more than double the statewide average. In San Francisco County, Terri L. Jackson became the first African American woman Superior Court judge in 2002, and the court’s first Presiding Judge in 2016.

A handful of African American judges currently serve on San Francisco’s bench, including Monica F. Wiley, Murlene J. Randle, Christopher C. Hite, Patrick S. Thompson and Justine Cephus (appointed by Gov. Newsom in March 2026).

Still, despite recent gains, judicial diversity is often cited as a factor in wrongful convictions, overcharging, and sentencing disparities disproportionately impacting Black defendants.

“It’s not uncommon,” says retired Judge Brenda Harbin-Forte, for judges to rule on cases involving minority defendants “based solely on stereotypes and not an appropriate reading of the facts on any particular case.”

Harbin-Forte, who is African American, spent more than 20 years on the bench in Alameda County Municipal and Superior Court. Her judicial expertise includes presiding over civil, juvenile, criminal and drug courts. She has long been a champion for diversifying the judiciary, chairing the State Bar of California Council on Access and Fairness’s Judicial Committee, which was instrumental in the 2006 passage of SB56. The bill increased transparency in judicial diversity data collection statewide.

“It was very important to me to make sure that there was diversity on the bench, that people could walk into the courthouse and see judges who looked like them,” she said. 

San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins, who is also African American, has publicly criticized judges for lenient sentences, which she says don’t do enough to deter violent crime.

Jenkins’ comments came in response to a case that Judge Brian Ferrall – the same judge in the Epps case – ruled on, in which the DA’s office recommended a 23-year sentence for a first-time offender convicted of armed robbery. Ferrall handed down a sentence of 4 years 8 months. 

Public Defender Elizabeth Camacho, who had sought probation with no jail time, later accused Ferrall of inappropriate comments and racial bias. 

Jenkins herself has drawn criticism for dropping police misconduct cases involving minorities, and was ordered to undergo a diversion program for ethics violations by the State Bar. 

Jenkins’ predecessor, Chesa Boudin, attempted to reform the DA’s office, firing numerous prosecutors, including Michael Swart, who reopened the Epps case in 2019. But after Boudin was recalled in 2022, the DA’s office under Jenkins has seen a return to a “tough on crime” hardline, which Harbin-Forte says “too often” results in “overcharging” minorities. 

Harbin-Forte chairs the Legal Redress Committee of the Oakland NAACP. She’s been closely monitoring the Epps case “particularly since Rev. Brown and then the San Mateo [NAACP] branch have been in his corner.” 

In a lengthy interview, Harbin-Forte returned her own verdict: “(Epps) should not have a conviction on his record. Not under these circumstances. Absolutely not. I just can’t believe how much the prosecution was able to get away with in this case.”

In 2019, prosecutors claimed to have new evidence, which amounted to a digital animation commissioned by the San Francisco DA’s office. When challenged during a 2025 pretrial hearing, the DA withdrew this evidence and sought to introduce another digital animation, which was much more limited in its scope.

“Quite frankly, I’m outraged that the DA’s office decided to charge this case,” said Harbin-Forte, noting the prosecution “did this 3-D animation and everything, and that was the quote-unquote ‘new evidence’ that they had discovered that justified charging Epps?”

The animator, Jason Fries of 3-D Forensic Inc. once claimed “100% admissibility” – his current slogan is “seek and illustrate the truth.” 

Public documents show there have been several instances where his testimony and animations have been excluded due to unscientific methodology and/or lack of expertise in forensic pathology. In 2018, Fries made a controversial recreation of Laquan McDonald’s fatal shooting by a Chicago police officer, which contradicted visual evidence from the scene. 

During the Epps trial, the defense asked for a mistrial, arguing that the prosecutor, in closing argument, had asked the jury to draw inferences that the prosecutor knew to be false. The defense cited a 2002 9th Circuit Appeals Court ruling establishing that government prosecutors have a “sovereign obligation” to govern impartially: “The prosecutor’s job isn’t just to win, but to win fairly, staying well within the rules.”

The 2002 case – prosecuted by Jonathan Schmidt, then an Assistant US Attorney and the ADA [Assistant District Attorney] in the Epps trial – has become a textbook reference for prosecutorial misconduct. Judge Ferrall stated that he read the opinion yet ruled that it did not apply.

Harbin-Forte contends that decision was “absolutely judicial error.”

More alarm bells went off over jury instructions. While considering the Castle Doctrine — which allows for use of reasonable, even deadly force against an intruder in one’s home — the judge modified the legal definition of the term, citing ambiguity over whether Epps could be considered a resident if his name wasn’t on the lease, and whether Polk, a frequent visitor, could be considered an intruder. 

The defense pointed out that Epps received mail at the residence, and the address was listed on his driver’s license. Multiple witnesses previously indicated Polk was homeless, was regularly refused admittance or told to leave, and had barged into the residence despite being asked to leave on the day of the shooting. 

In Harbin-Forte’s view, “Modifying the jury instruction is questionable in itself,” adding that “did seem to change the burden of proof for the prosecution.” 

The Castle Doctrine, she said, makes no reference to being a property owner or leaseholder. The legal standard is simply being a resident. By modifying the instruction, the judge “changed the whole import of the Castle instruction.” 

Another questionable jury instruction was allowing jurors to consider manslaughter charges based on Epps being a felon in possession of a gun. 

The California Penal Code defines voluntary manslaughter as an “unlawful killing” committed “upon a sudden quarrel or heat of passion.” The law does not say mere possession of a weapon by a felon meets this standard and is clear that the burden of proof is on the prosecution. 

All these red flags had a cumulative effect on the trial’s outcome, says Harbin-Forte. 

 “There is too much that happened to give anybody the sense that this was a proper prosecution and a proper conviction. They went out of their way and twitched too many concepts and did so much wrong in order to bring this man into the criminal justice system.”

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated the number of African American judges in Alameda and San Francisco counties. The error has been corrected.

Eric Arnold writes for American Community Media, where this story first appeared.

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by The People’s Minister of Information JR Valrey

The Black Panther Museum is one of the most important institutions in the Bay Area’s Black community. It serves as a living monument to when the people captured a parcel of community power, and it is a testament of hope for Black and other oppressed people worldwide of what we can do when people are organized. 

Dr. Xavier Buck is the executive director of the Black Panther Museum in downtown Oakland, and I thought that it was fitting to talk with him about the history of the museum, as well as the Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation which established it, during the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Black Panther Party. 

JR Valrey: What is the Huey P. Newton Foundation? How did it start and when? 

Dr. Xavier Buck: The Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation was founded by David Hilliard and Fredrika Newton in 1995 to preserve and promote the legacy of the Black Panther Party and its co-founder, Dr. Huey P. Newton. The organization has preserved Dr. Newton’s archive, planned youth conferences from Oakland to Washington, D.C., curated exhibits across the U.S. and Europe, commissioned public art, and founded the Black Panther Party Museum, among many other things.

JR Valrey: How did you get involved with the Huey P. Newton Foundation? 

Dr. Xavier Buck: I began volunteering for the Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation in 2019 when I was a graduate student at UC Berkeley. The organization had a robust archive and history, but needed a jumpstart because David Hilliard had stepped back and Fredrika Newton, having just retired from nursing, stepped in. She and I had lunch at her dining room table four days a week, developing our vision and strategy. Two years later, we installed Dr. Huey P. Way and the Dr. Huey P. Newton Memorial Bust in West Oakland. These projects were pivotal in opening fundraising opportunities so I could hire a team and by 2024, found the Black Panther Party Museum.

JR Valrey: How did the Black Panther Museum start? What is its purpose?

Dr. Xavier Buck: Dr. Huey P. Newton developed his theory of intercommunalism, which posits that global corporate imperialism has rendered the nation-state obsolete. This transforms the world into a collection of dispersed, oppressed communities that must unite in revolutionary solidarity to seize power from the ruling elite. Ultimately, he wanted to create an institute where intercommunalism could be seriously studied. However, we also understood that our local community had asked for a space where they could learn the Black Panther Party’s history and tactics from the Panthers’ perspectives. With every exhibition we get closer to our goal: creating an institution that helps people authentically understand the Black Panther Party while providing a theoretical background in intercommunalism relevant to on-the-ground movements. The Black Panther Party Museum is an evolving institution, changing with Panthers and the community to remain accurate and relevant.

JR Valrey: What kind of events are organized there?

Dr. Xavier Buck: In 2025 we hosted over 50 events and we don’t plan to slow down anytime soon. Our Black Panther Party Advisory Committee often hosts film screenings and discussions, while our community partners host the Men’s Wellness Fellowship, Revolutionary Rest, Breath in the City, and the Poetry Workshop. We also host our signature events in Black History Month, Black August, and Black Panther Month (October).

JR Valrey: What exhibit is currently on the walls of the Black Panther Museum? Why was the exhibit selected, and what is its importance?

Dr. Xavier Buck: Two exhibitions are currently on display. “Survival Pending Revolution” documents the Black Panther Party’s 65 community programs, showing our visitors what, why, and how they implemented them. The second exhibition is “Happy Birthday, Oscar,” an art installation commemorating what would have been Oscar Grant’s 40th birthday and grounding people in a long and unbroken history of state violence.

JR Valrey: Is the Black Panther Museum doing anything special to organize around the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Black Panther Party, in October?

Dr. Xavier Buck: The Dr. Huey P. The Newton Foundation is collaborating with Panther groups across the country to commemorate the Black Panther Party’s 60th anniversary in Oakland, California, from Oct. 15 to 17, 2026. We are building on the momentum of the 50th anniversary and expect an even larger crowd hungry to know how to apply the Party’s ideology and tactics today. For more information, please visit www.bpp60.org. 

JR Valrey: Can you tell people a little about the political education segments that you offer on social media? How do you pick the topics that you cover? Where can people find them?

Dr. Xavier Buck: For seven years, I’ve created social media content under the name @historyin3, where I disseminate Black history and offer political commentary. During my Ph.D. in the history program at UC Berkeley I felt like I was reading texts fundamental to us as a people but locked away in the ivory tower. I’ve spent the better half of my career getting that information out to the masses. However, just like a journalist, I pay close attention to current world events so that the history I’m sharing is relevant to the present and useful for our movements.

JR Valrey: How do people keep up with what’s happening at the Black Panther Museum?

Dr. Xavier Buck: To learn more about the Black Panther Party Museum, sign up for our email list at www.blackpantherpartymuseum.org and follow us on Instagram @blackpantherpartymuseum and @hueypnewtonfoundation.

JR Valrey is a veteran journalist who can be heard weekly on Wednesdays on 89.5FM KPOO or KPOO.comfrom noon to 3 p.m. His work can also be heard on www.blockreportradioworld.com. 

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Girls elementary school in Minab, Iran, bombed as US-Israel start war on Iran 022726 by Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi on X. 

The Black Alliance For Peace condemns, in the strongest terms, the recent U.S.-Israeli bombing of Tehran and other cities in Iran, which included the bombing of an all-girls school in Minab, which reportedly killed at least 50 students. This military attack is a flagrant violation of the most fundamental principles of the United Nations Charter. 

As articulated by Iran’s Foreign Ministry and multiple international observers, it constitutes a clear act of aggression against a sovereign member state, undermining international peace and security. Such actions underscore the rogue statism of the U.S. and Israel as existential threats. 

Western powers, particularly the U.S., have embraced “international lawlessness” to support Israeli expansionism. In just the last two months, this lawlessness has enabled the kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores, and the bombing, invasion and ongoing intervention in Venezuela; the heightened strangulation and attacks on Cuba; and now bombing and possible further attacks against Iran.

This criminal escalation serves the interests of no one but the imperialist-zionist warmongers. It flies in the face of domestic and global public opinion, which largely rejects such violence. The international community has condemned the strikes as an unprovoked act of armed aggression. When faced with such international gangsterism, we must ask: Whose interests are being upheld? Certainly not those of the Iranian schoolchildren, workers or the millions worldwide who desire peace. It is the capitalist-imperialist ruling class that rules through ever-accelerating militarism and the most extremist elements in Tel Aviv and Washington that benefit from this carnage.

Such U.S. and Israeli murderous lawlessness forces us to take coordinated action to impose consequences on these states. The international community of nations must not allow the normalization of U.S. led global fascism. This is why BAP has called for organizations and people of conscience to demand that FIFA move the World Cup out of the U.S., demand that both FIFA and the IOC ban the U.S. and Israel from hosting or participating in International Sporting Events, and to join coordinated resistance to boycott the World Cup.  U.S. Zionist-imperialist impunity must end now!

More immediately, we call on all people of conscience to stand with the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Iranian people against this bombing and intervention, to mobilize where they are against the widening scope of U.S. wars, and to defend the right of peoples and nations to resist imperialist violence.

Resources and mobilization information here:

tinyurl.com/stopuswar

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by Kevin Epps

The energy at GLIDE felt more like a block party than a ribbon-cutting.

Outside, a live band played from a makeshift stage set up in front of GLIDE’s entrance as people danced, gathered and filled the sidewalk with excitement. Inside and outside the historic San Francisco institution, conversations buzzed as community members packed the space for the launch of GLIDE’s newest initiative — a community barbershop designed to connect men with critical health and support services.

Sitting front row as the program got underway was iconic actor and longtime social justice advocate Danny Glover, whose presence underscored the significance of the moment.

At first, I wasn’t immediately clear on the connection when I received word that GLIDE was opening a barbershop. But when you look at the history of the organization — its deep commitment to innovative community care and radical compassion — the idea begins to make perfect sense.

GLIDE continues community care

For decades, GLIDE has been known for meeting people where they are, offering unconditional love, essential services and spiritual grounding to those facing poverty, addiction, homelessness and hardship. This new barbershop reflects that same philosophy — a holistic approach centered on dignity, humanity and connection.

And, according to city health leaders, the need is urgent.

Daniel Tsai, director of the San Francisco Department of Public Health, emphasized the importance of the partnership between GLIDE and the city to bring vital services directly to people who need them.

The shop will serve as a gateway to health resources, mental health care, and substance use treatment — all within a familiar and trusted community setting.

Also present for the celebration was Bilal Mahmood, the District 5 representative on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, who presented GLIDE with a certificate recognizing the launch of the barbershop and the organization’s continued impact in the community.

“GLIDE has always been a hug for the community,” Mahmood said. “The Tenderloin represents a real holistic way of life — making sure people are housed and have food. I think now having a barbershop here completes that circle to provide people a full life, even if they don’t have everything.”

But the barbershop is about much more than grooming.

It’s about conversation, connection and care.

Black men at risk

“The Director of Public Health mentioned that Black men are dying at higher rates from overdose than the general population,” said Rev. Dr. Gina Fromer, GLIDE’s CEO. “Even though things are getting better overall, that number has stayed the same.

“So this shop is a very innovative way to get people — anyone who needs a haircut — off the street, get cleaned up, and maybe start talking about their health. Maybe they want to get a job. Maybe they enter one of our programs to get off drugs.

“It’s a doorway,” Fromer said.

“What the Department of Public Health recognizes is what the barbershop has always meant in every community — it’s the community living room.”

For generations, barbershops have served as informal gathering places where men talk openly about life, politics, family, and struggles. GLIDE’s vision builds on that tradition by creating a space where conversations can also lead to counseling, support services and life-changing opportunities.

Tacing Parker, chief program officer at GLIDE, says the initiative also addresses long-standing disparities.

“It’s important because Black men’s lives matter in San Francisco,” Parker said. “As a community, city agencies and partners want to rally our services to ensure that they live. That’s why it’s important.”

Rev. Ishmael Burch takes the cut

Leading the shop is Rev. Ishmael Burch, who will manage the barbershop and whose deep roots in barbershop culture shape the spirit behind the effort.

Speaking in his warm Louisiana drawl, Burch described the barbershop as far more than a place for grooming.

“The barbershop started in the church,” he said. “I was raised in the barbershop since I was 4 years old, and I know the barbershop.

“If I had a problem as a young man, I could go there and find someone to talk to. And that’s the way this barbershop is.”

Burch explained that the vision goes beyond the barber’s chair.

“We’re teaching each one of the barbers to build relationships,” he said. “So we have counseling sessions after the haircut. Then they can set up time to come back in two or three days, and we keep working with them.”

The goal is to help people rebuild their lives.

“The idea is to lift people up,” Burch said. “Those who are unhoused, we help get them housing. It doesn’t do any good to give a man a haircut, make him look good, and then send him right back to the ground.

“So there’s a lot of work behind it, but we’re going to get there with all the resources and support.”

For Burch, the connection between service and faith is also central to what makes the shop unique.

“God is connected to it,” he said. “And that makes this barbershop different.”

Danny Glover is the first client in an effort towards community upliftment

Following the ribbon-cutting ceremony, the celebration continued as Danny Glover stepped forward to become the shop’s first customer. Sitting in the barber’s chair as clippers buzzed and cameras flashed, the legendary actor received the first haircut inside the new space — a symbolic moment marking the official opening of the shop.

The moment drew smiles and applause from those gathered, capturing a scene that reflected both community pride and the spirit of support behind the project.

GLIDE’s barbershop officially launched on March 5 and is located at 330 Ellis St. in San Francisco’s Tenderloin.

Services and hours are designed to provide both grooming and access to deeper support services — and the haircuts are free.

The barbershop is open Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and on Wednesday from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. 

Grooming services are offered Tuesday through Saturday.

Counseling, case management and support groups are offered Monday through Friday.

The shop is more than a haircut — it’s an invitation to critical health conversations, building dignity, strengthening community, and creating a pathway to GLIDE’s full continuum of care.

In a city searching for solutions to overlapping crises of addiction, homelessness and mental health challenges, GLIDE’s barbershop reflects a simple but powerful idea: Meet people where they are.

And in the heart of the Tenderloin, where struggle and resilience have long lived side by side, GLIDE continues its legacy — turning the timeless tradition of the Black barbershop into a place of dignity, healing and brotherhood, where a free haircut can open the door to conversation, community and a new beginning.

Kevin Epps is a Dad, award-winning filmmaker, community activist, author, executive editor of the SF Bay View “National Black Newspaper” and a board member for the SF Bay View Foundation. Reach him at kevin@sfbayview.com or on Instagram: kevinepps1.

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Jeffrey Epstein by Rick Friedman, Corbis 

by Jason Renard Walker 

It has been six years since pedophile Jeffrey Epstein was murdered in his cell between Aug. 9 and 10, 2019. To call his death anything other than a government financed effort to silence him from implicating prominent others on the political left and right is a disgrace to the victims. Such an insensible pivot from logic to an unsubstantiated belief tediously ignores the evidence on record, regardless of what his death was officially ruled as. 

It is important for us to take a moment to reiterate the facts of this matter. As it seems, and with the help of conservative news outlets, members of Donald Trump’s cabinet and their ilk are engaged in a full court press campaign that is designed to distract the public from discoveries in the unredacted version of the Epstein files, murderous ICE agents in Minnesota, and Trump’s failing efforts as president. To achieve this end, outlets like FOX News have given 24 hour coverage to the Nancy Guthrie disappearance, sprinkled with a dash of unfounded Trump-based conspiracies, political blame games, and falsities on how great “Trump’s economy” is. 

In Europe, where Epstein was well connected, those named in the files on that side of the world have been stripped of their royal titles and forced to resign from high end positions, as each one’s name slowly pops up. What this shows has nothing to do with justice, but the shame and embarrassment people abroad feel that named officials in the U.S. are too opportunistic to even pretend to empathise with. 

The official story 

The first time Epstein tried to commit suicide, he was placed on suicide prevention watch. He was upgraded to observation status after telling mental health staff he wasn’t suicidal. According to reports, these staffers noted in his file that at all times he was to have a cellmate. A day before he was found dead, his cellmate was moved to another location. 

On Aug. 10, 2019, jailers Tova Noel and Michael Thomas discovered Epstein hanging from a bunk in his cell as they were passing out breakfast. Epstein’s body was removed from the cell, the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the FBI both investigated the matter and each came back with the conclusion that he committed suicide. Five days after initially listing his death as inconclusive, and without explaining why, the Medical Examiner’s Office changed its ruling to suicide by hanging. 

Though the Associated Press tediously reports that Epstein died of suicide, other legacy media outlets simply suggest he died in jail. The former version of events is what has become historic law, under the notion that he committed suicide to abort the obligation of giving his victims justice. Nothing could be further from the truth. 

The authorized coverup 

Former New York Medical Examiner Dr. Michael Baden expressed on an episode of Oz and during an interview with CBS 60 Minutes that the findings from Epstein’s autopsy, which his brother Mark hired Baden to witness, show that Epstein didn’t commit suicide, but was in fact strangled to death by another individual.(1) “In a hanging, the arteries and the blood vessels, the veins are both clogged off and the person is pale. The face is pale.” he told Dr. Oz, while further suggesting “with a manual strangulation, there’s a back up of a pressure and the little capillaries can rupture and they’re best seen in the eye.” During this appearance, he showed Dr. Oz a picture of Epstein’s ruptured capillaries and lack of a pale face. 

Baden explained how it is unusual for an autopsy in a prison setting to be changed from inconclusive to suicide. And how Epstein’s lower legs weren’t purplish or maroon like they are in suicide by hanging cases. Another key detail Baden pointed out to Dr. Oz in photos taken during the autopsy was three broken bones in Epstein’s neck, which he said doesn’t occur in suicide by hanging.

The keys I used in determining whether he died by murder or suicide came from 1) examining the evidence presented to the public, 2) 17 years of experience in witnessing similar suspicious deaths and 3) common sense. 

For instance, as Epstein lay on the floor during his supposed first attempt to commit suicide, he told responding staff that his cellmate tried to kill him, but later changed his story. This cellmate, ex dirty cop Nicholas Tartaglione, was charged in a 17-count indictment that includes mass murder and kidnapping. Yet staff felt it was in the best interest of security that he be housed with a high profile pedophile. 

After being upgraded to observation status, Epstein was moved to a special cell equipped with a surveillance camera inside to monitor him and was given a new cellmate. This, they say, was a measure to comply with mental health staff orders even though he told them he wasn’t suicidal, nor had he tried to harm himself in the past. 

Ironically the records show investigators never treated his cell as a potential crime scene nor did they identify what was supposed to have been tied around his neck. Instead they collected two items, claimed it had to be one or the other and eventually threw them away. His new cellmate was moved a day before he was killed (which could be false documentation or because there was no conflict) and the in-cell surveillance camera and every camera in proximity to the crime scene malfunctioned. 

In an attempt to hide these oddities from the public and to hush truth-seekers, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi released a surveillance video she claimed was of Epstein’s cell door. Since it didn’t capture any inmates going in or coming out, this was her proof that no one had entered his cell. The scheme was Mickey Mouse at best. 

Not only was the video she produced of a door that leads guards in and out the cellblock, that Fox News sold to its viewers. It was missing two minutes and 53 seconds of footage and had been scrubbed with Adobe premiere editing software first. Bondi’s excuse about this during an oversight grilling was that after a year, part of the surveillance footage is automatically deleted because it loops back around. 

Despite this making no sense, everyone seems to have moved on or bought her excuse, which is why I think it is important that these facts be restated ad nauseam. 

To conceal their duty breach, Noel and Thomas falsified the security check logs to reflect that they’d checked on Epstein every 30 minutes during their shifts that stretched over 16 hours straight for one and 24 hours for the other. In reality one of the few cameras working that day captured them spending most of the shift sleeping at their duty post for hours at a time and surfing the internet for furniture and motorcycles. This mishap is what got them both criminally charged and fired, with the felony charges eventually being dismissed in a non-prosecution plea agreement. 

While Baden’s report is probative to showing that Epstein didn’t commit suicide, as you can see, it is not the only evidence I and other skeptics out there have used to come to this alternate conclusion. What it did do was reinforce my belief and the facts I used to draw the inference in a past article.(2) 

The following are questions that steered me from believing the official story; they are, by design, still unanswered. 

1) Why was an ex-cop who was charged with murder, kidnapping etc. assigned to be Epstein’s cellmate? 

2) Why weren’t any of the surveillance cameras that could see inside and outside Epstein’s cell door working the day of his death? 

3) What evidence did the Medical Examiner use to guide him into ruling Epstein’s death a suicide? 

4) Why weren’t the fabrics found in Epstein’s cell examined by an expert or tested to see if his or anyone else’s DNA was on them? 

5) Why was Epstein given items that he wasn’t allowed to have while on observation status?

Unanswered questions like these should have anyone who truthfully believes Epstein killed himself concerned about the lengths to which the powerful will go to keep their immoral desires secret. If a person like him ends up dead in jail and the head of the DOJ’s only response is to dupe the public by lying and forging evidence to fit the suicide narrative, this is a sign of corruption and coverups, not law and order. And this also raises the question: What other similarly situated people were killed in this scandal and in scandals of the past, and who’s next? 

Team MAGA and those in support of keeping the lid on the Epstein files may try to dumb down the event as a Democrat hoax and petty smear campaign we all need to move on from. But remember they were the instigators that opened this can of worms the Biden administration smartly kept closed. That’s because this is one of those rare glitches in world politics where the veil of integrity has been pierced and it’s no longer about partisanship. It’s about misguiding an inquisitive people in order to preserve the status quo of the ruling class, regardless of how some of its minions behave when they think no one is looking. And this is something the public must not be distracted into moving on from. 

Of course there will be those on the left and right, like Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna, who will fight for us to advance in this matter like bourgeois puppets are supposed to. But even their reach will come to a dead end, because they in no way will ever engage in any serious struggles for power. To do so is intuitively contradicting to the fundamental laws of capitalism, which they are servants to and slaves of. 

Had Epstein been kept alive, there is a very good chance he would have gotten a deal the victims were comfortable with, faded the civil suits, gone to prison and we’d have all moved on. But the number of prominent individuals who caroused with Epstein, as the newly released files prove, and what they communicated to him, was too embarrassing and career-ending for someone to risk becoming public knowledge. 

Why kill Epstein? 

In order to suggest that Epstein was killed as part of a conspiracy to prevent him from implicating prominent others in a child sex trafficking ring, the information he had not only had to be valid – merely putting their names in the mix would have to have a negative domino effect on the reputations of more people than the most powerful of the lot could throw under the bus. For starters, the DOJ erroneously released, then removed from their website, a picture of Epstein in a room with boxes that had CIA stamped on them. This photo alone does not have a negative effect, but how they handled it assists in bringing the totality of what’s in the files to a boiling point. 

Following and in response to 3 million documents from the Epstein files being released in January, which is only 50% of the total amount stored, it is apparent that he engaged with more high class and powerful men and women than I expected. This includes a wealth of college professors, academics, members of foreign intelligence agencies, multiple owners of NFL teams, the crowned princess of Norway and performance artists, to name a few. 

In many of the released email exchanges Epstein had with some of them, a variety engage him in a manner where they acknowledge his ways, give him advice on how to worm out of his charges, thank him for a torture video, or schedule to party on his island after becoming aware he was a registered sex offender. 

Just in the U.S., as soon as the following people’s names appeared in the newly released files, they conveniently resigned from their jobs. This includes Yale computer science professor David Gelemter, museum curator David Ross, former attorney and White House counsel to President Obama Kathryn Ruemmler, and CEO of Wasserman Media Casey Wasserman. 

This small portion by itself is reason to have Epstein silenced before he could cut a deal and talk.

According to the files and his own admission, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, whose name appears a ton of times and was Epstein’s next-door neighbor in New York, was invited to his island in 2012. Not only did he take Epstein up on this offer, Lutnick brought his children, wife and nanny. In 2014 he got back in touch with Epstein to make a business deal. 

He initially lied about his relationship with Epstein on a podcast, claiming to have only visited his New York mansion once before Epstein’s jail sentence. The experience, he said, was too creepy to continue communicating with him and he ended the relationship then. 

The name of Dr Mark Tramo, a neurologist at UCLA, came up in an email exchange he had with Epstein. Though he claims his connection with him was always rooted in cultivating donations, as Epstein’s jail term came to an end, Tramo sent him an email stating “only 13 days to go, buddy!!!! – where and when’s the party?” After this email came up he told the Associated Press he didn’t know Epstein’s crimes involved underage girls until years later. 

So as you can see, there is a pattern of politicians and others in the U.S. that continued to engage with Epstein after he registered as a sex offender and most likely lied about knowing because the consequences are beyond being shamed. They can be career-ending, or in Epstein’s case – something to die for. 

While the Trump administration is trying to cover up the scandal, the governments in the United Kingdom and throughout Europe are beginning to open up investigations, which include Americans and Epstein’s connection to their intelligence agencies. 

Recently the UK Ambassador to the U.S. resigned after files surfaced showing he gave Epstein a heads up on the government’s response to the EU debt crisis before it happened. This is in lockstep with the prime minister of Slovakia’s National Security Advisor resigning after his name appeared. 

Thorbjrn Jagland, who headed the Norwegian Nobel committee from 2009-16, is one example. He and Terje Rod-Larsen, a Norwegian diplomat who introduced Epstein to Jagland, were charged in Norway with “aggravated corruption” after their names appeared. Evidence suggests Epstein, with the knowledge of Steve Bannon, Richard Branson, Larry Summers and Bill Gates, was involved in attempting to lobby the Nobel Peace Prize. In a 2018 email exchange found in the file between Epstein and Bannon, Epstein writes “donalds head would explode if he knew you were now buds with the guy who on Monday will decide the nobel peace prize.” 

Trump has a lot more to worry about. His name appears thousands of times, with damning allegations in reports that weren’t supposed to have been released. Such as him supposedly slapping a 13-year-old girl for biting him while she performed oral sex, and raping children. In one FBI report a police chief told them that Trump called him after Epstein’s first arrest, thanked him for finally catching him and admitting that he and others already knew Epstein was raping children. 

True or not, the fact that governments throughout the world are responding to one man Trump insists no one cares about, is proof enough that the files hold weight. What made Epstein so charming to so many rich and powerful people was his availability, skewed sex life, a secret platform they could use to walk on the wild side, and connections to other like-minded people, where their interests could be shared, profited off of, invested in and expanded. 

So to those who still believe Epstein killed himself and the content of the files is made up, just take a look around; the aftermath is real. 

Sources 

1) Lee Brown and Yaron Steinbuch: “Disturbing Evidence in Jeffrey Epstein’s Autopsy Points to His Murder” 

2) See my article. “The Murder Of Jeffrey Epstein: The Facts, The Theory, The Evidence.” www.jasonsprisonjournal.com.

Jason Renard Walker is a prison journalist who has published articles and essays in various print and online media outlets since 2016. His work can be viewed at: www.jasonsprisonjournal.com You can also purchase his paperback book ‘Reports From Within The Belly Of The Beast: Torture And Injustice Inside Texas Department Of Criminal Justice’ available on amazon.com

Send our brother some love and light: Jason Renard Walker, 1532092, Powledge Unit, PO Box 660400, Dallas, TX 75266.

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Dr. Butch Ware, California gobenatorial candidate

San Francisco – Dr. Rudolph “Butch” Ware, candidate for governor of California with the Green Party, joined the picket line at Malcolm X Academy Feb. 9 to demonstrate his enthusiastic support for United Educators of San Francisco (UESF) as they launched their historic strike. As a professor of history at UC Santa Barbara, he expressed strong support for the educators’ demands, which align with the campaign’s policy platform of equitable funding for public schools regardless of ZIP code and a living wage for all educators. 

Dr. Ware promises strong support for unions after he wins the governor’s race: “When we win, I’m going to have the backs of the unions.” 

“Who has led the way in organizing for power in the last century? Unions have,” Dr. Ware emphasized during his remarks on the picket line. “And don’t let nobody cause you to desist from this fight, because this is a sacred struggle for all of our liberation.”

“We see what you and all of our special education teachers do,” Dr. Ware says as he stresses the need for more funding for educators. 

One of the members of the bargaining committee for UESF, a paraeducator, stressed that the union was composed of not just teachers, but many different roles that all contribute to the day-to-day functioning of public schools. Echoing this, Dr. Ware added, “I’m the father of a 15-year-old son with special needs. … We see you – what all of our special education teachers do, our aides, our paraeducators – because the next generation, that’s what we’re investing in and that’s what we’re fighting for.” 

SFUSD has the necessary funding to meet all of UESF demands and is painting a false narrative, according to UESF. 

“These people [at SFUSD, San Francisco Unified School District] are holding $429 million of taxpayer money in reserves, and they are crying poor, telling you that they can’t afford to pay teachers,” Dr. Ware said, echoing UESF’s demand that SFUSD dip into its reserve funds, instead of obstructing union demands with a projected budget deficit. The Butch Ware for Governor campaign is in full support of all of UESF’s demands and hopes that SFUSD will come back to the bargaining table in good faith to keep the schools open for workers and students. 

About Butch Ware for California governor in 2026 

Dr. Rudolph “Butch” Ware is running for the governorship of California with the Green Party. He is a longtime organizer and movement builder, and he is a tenured professor of African and Islamic history at University of California, Santa Barbara. He ran as the vice presidential candidate alongside Jill Stein in the 2024 U.S. presidential election. His campaign is fully grassroots and does not accept corporate or super PAC donations. His platform includes guaranteed affordable housing, universal healthcare, free community and state college for California residents, fully funded and expanded public transit and more. 

To learn more, visit his website: https://www.butchware4gov.org/; Instagram: @butchware; Twitter: @ButchWare; Facebook: ButchWare4Gov2026; or contact Valielza Huynh-O’Keefe at press@butchware4gov.org.

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