“There are many causes I would die for. There is not a single cause I would kill for.”
― Mahatma Gandhi
Steve Biko December 18, 1946 – September 12, 1977) was born in Tylden, Eastern Cape, South Africa in 1946. As a medical student, he founded a black student organisation in 1969 and created a national ‘black consciousness’ movement. The movement’s aim was to combat racism and the South African apartheid government. … Google Books
Missouri executed a man on death row on Tuesday, despite objections from prosecutors who sought to have his conviction overturned and have supported his claims of innocence.
Marcellus “Khaliifah” Williams, 55, was killed by lethal injection, ending a legal battle that has sparked widespread outrage as the office that originally tried the case suggested he was wrongfully convicted.
In an extraordinary move condemned by civil rights advocates and lawmakers across the US, Missouri’s Republican attorney general, Andrew Bailey, pushed forward with the execution against the wishes of the St Louis county prosecuting attorney’s office.
Williams was convicted of the 1998 killing of Lisha Gayle, a social worker and former St Louis Post-Dispatch reporter. He was accused of breaking into Gayle’s home, stabbing her to death and stealing several of her belongings.
But no forensic evidence linked Williams to the murder weapon or crime scene, and as local prosecutors have renounced his conviction, the victim’s family and several trial jurors also said they opposed his execution.
“We must all question any system that would allow this to occur. The execution of an innocent person is the most extreme manifestation of Missouri’s obsession with ‘finality’ over truth, justice, and humanity, at any cost,” Tricia Rojo Bushnell, Williams’s attorney, said in a statement just before the execution. “Tonight, we all bear witness to Missouri’s grotesque exercise of state power. Let it not be in vain. This should never happen, and we must not let it continue.”
Williams’s son and two of his attorneys watched the execution from another room, the AP reported. Williams appeared to speak with a spiritual adviser by his side in his final moments. In a written “last statement” released by corrections officials, he said: “All Praise Be to Allah In Every Situation!!!”
Williams, who served as the imam in his prison and dedicated his time to poetry, twice had his execution halted at the last minute. He was days away from execution in January 2015 when the Missouri state supreme court granted his attorneys more time for DNA testing. In August 2017, Eric Greitens, the Republican governor at the time, granted a reprieve hours before the scheduled execution, citing DNA testing on the knife, which showed no trace of Williams’s DNA.
Greitens set up a panel to review the case but when Mike Parson, the current Republican governor, took over, he disbanded that board and pushed for the execution to proceed.
In January, Wesley Bell, the Democratic prosecuting attorney in St Louis who has championed criminal justice reforms, filed a motion to overturn Williams’s conviction. Bell cited repeated DNA testing finding that Williams’s fingerprints were not on the knife.
“Ms Gayle’s murderer left behind considerable physical evidence. None of that physical evidence can be tied to Mr Williams,” his office wrote, adding: “New evidence suggests that Mr Williams is actually innocent.” He also asserted that Williams’s counsel at the time was ineffective.
Additional testing on the knife, however, revealed that staff with the prosecutors’ office had mishandled the weapon after the killing – touching it without gloves before the trial, Bell’s office said. A forensic expert testified that the mishandling of the weapon made it impossible to determine if Williams’s fingerprints could have been on the knife earlier.
In August, Williams and prosecutors reached an agreement to halt his execution: he would plead no contest to first-degree murder in exchange for a new sentence of life without parole. His lawyers said the agreement was not an admission of guilt, and that it was meant to save his life while he pursued new evidence to prove his innocence. A judge signed off on the agreement, as did the victim’s family, but the attorney general challenged it, and the state supreme court blocked it.
Last-ditch efforts by both Williams’s lawyers and St Louis prosecutors were unsuccessful in recent days. In a plea over the weekend, Bell’s office said there were “constitutional errors” in Williams’s prosecution and pointed to recent testimony from the original prosecutor, who said he rejected a potential Black juror because he looked like he could be Williams’s “brother”. The jury that convicted him had 11 white members and one Black member.
The governor also rejected Williams’s clemency request on Monday, which noted that the victim’s family and three jurors supported calls to revoke his death sentence. The US supreme court denied a final request to halt the execution on Tuesday, with the three liberal justices dissenting.
The attorney general argued in court that the original prosecutor denied racial motivations for removing Black jurors and asserted there was nothing improper about touching the murder weapon without gloves at the time.
Bailey’s office has also suggested that other evidence points to Williams’s guilt, including testimony from a man who shared a cell with Williams and said he confessed, and testimony from a girlfriend who claimed she saw stolen items in Williams’s car. Williams’s attorneys, however, contended that both of those witnesses were not reliable, saying they had been convicted of felonies and were motivated to testify by a $10,000 reward offer.
Bailey and Parson have not commented on their decision to override the wishes of the victim’s family, but have pointed to the fact that the courts have repeatedly upheld Williams’s conviction throughout his years of appeals.
‘A kind and thoughtful man’
Williams’s execution was widely denounced Tuesday evening.
Derrick Johnson, NAACP president, said Missouri had “lynched another innocent Black man”. Missouri congresswoman Cori Bush said the state had failed Williams, adding: “We have a moral imperative to abolish this racist and inhumane practice.” And Bell said: “Marcellus Williams should be alive … This outcome did not serve the interests of justice.”
Bushnell, Williams’s attorney from the Midwest Innocence Project, praised Williams’s “evocative poetry” and “service to his family and his community”, saying he had been a “kind and thoughtful man, who spent his last years supporting those around him in his role as imam”.
“While he yearned to return home, he … worked hard to move beyond the anger, frustration, and fear of wrongful execution, channeling his energy into his faith and finding meaning and connection through Islam. The world will be a worse place without him,” she said.
Williams’s public defenders said the governor had “utterly ignored” the victim’s family, adding in a statement: “Khaliifah was an inspiration. We aspire to his level of faith, to his integrity, and to his complete devotion to the people in his life.”
Michelle Smith, co-director of Missourians to Abolish the Death Penalty, who considered Williams a mentor, said in an interview before the execution that she hoped his case would help the public understand that “capital punishment doesn’t work”.
“I know people who say: ‘We shouldn’t kill innocent people, but other than that, I believe in the death penalty.’ But if you believe in the system at all, that means you’re OK with innocent people being killed, because the system isn’t perfect. It is going to kill innocent people.”
Since 1973, at least 200 people sentenced to death have been exonerated, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Robin Maher, the group’s executive director, said she was unaware of another case in which someone was executed after a sitting prosecutor objected and confessed to constitutional errors that undermined the conviction.
Williams’s execution is one of five scheduled across the US in a one-week period. On Friday, South Carolina executed a man days after the state’s main witness recanted his testimony. On Tuesday, the state of Texas executed Travis Mullis, 38, who waived his right to appeal his death sentence for killing his three-month-old son in 2008. His attorney said he suffered a lifetime of “profound mental illness”, but was a “redeemed man” who accepted responsibility for his crime.
Don’t listen to Fox-So-Called-News, It’s misleading, it’s wrong, it’s designed to confuse. It will rot your brain, and make you mean, Turn off the noise, and see the truth unseen.
Zeteo • Sep 11, 2024 “The deregulated campaign finance system … allows essentially, billionaires and wealthy special interests to buy these elections.” In this ‘Mehdi Unfiltered’ segment, @davidsirota, award-winning journalist and founder of the investigative news outlet @LeverNews speaks to Mehdi about how Project 2025 has been in the making for years now. CHAPTERS 00:00 Mehdi on the billionaire oligarchs funding Project 2025 02:08 When did the ‘master plan’ start? 04:57 What’s in it for Wall Street? 06:51 Project 2025 post-Biden 08:01 How can Democrats respond to AIPAC? 09:34 Democrats part of Project 2025 11:31 Right wing billionaires like Elon Musk 14:03 That’s our show
The United States, it makes me very sad to say, on the basis of objectively verifiable data, is a second-tier nation in everything but militarism. The military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned us about has become one of the largest corporate corrupters in our society. It began with the Viet Nam war but becam supercharged with George W. Bush’s obscene “war on terror” which has caused the U.S. to be at a kind of low grade war ever since. Since Bush was president (2001-2009) we have never not been at war somewhere at some level. If not with our own troops, as the supplier of death weapons. It has been a fabulously profitable time for the corporations that make the weapons, and Citizens United legalized their overt bribery of politicians, which made it so much easier to keep the scam going. Putting aside the moral evil as this report describes, is the climate impact of these wars, and the weapons used in them. I have suspected this for some time, but this is the first fact-based report I have seen describing what this militarism is doing to Earth’s climate. You never hear anyone in media talking about this, but the effects are there nonetheless.
A soldier in the Afghan National Army (ANA) walks past a burn pit at a command outpost recently handed over to the ANA from the United States Army on March 22, 2013, in Kandahar Province, Zhari District, Afghanistan. Credit: Andrew Burton / Getty
This week marks 23 years since George W. Bush declared a U.S.-led “war on terror” and the people of Afghanistan and Iraq are still suffering its consequences.
After the U.S. invaded Iraq, an estimated half a million Iraqis were killed and at least 9.2 million were displaced. From 2003-2011, more than 4.7 million Iraqis suffered from moderate to severe food insecurity. Over 243,000 people have been killed in the Afghanistan/Pakistan war zone since 2001, more than 70,000 of them civilians. Between 4.5 and 4.6 million people have died in the post-9/11 wars.
The U.S.’s “war on terror” also escalated the climate catastrophe, resulting in local water shortages and extreme weather crises that are only getting worse. In 2022, Afghanistan had its worst drought in 30 years and it is facing a […]
Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump arrives to speak at a campaign event at Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, N.Y., on Sept. 18.Alex Brandon/Associated Press
After a gunman was spotted less than 500 yards from the former president on his Mar-a-Lago golf course last week, Trump and Republican leaders in Washington angrily insisted that Democrats tone down their election-year rhetoric, blaming their words for what appeared to be the second assassination attempt of the summer.
Of all the campaign nonsense spewed by those seeking election this November, this is perhaps the most cynical, insincere and hypocritical rot of all.
Within 24 hours, the Trump campaign used the apparent attempt on his life as a fundraising appeal and released an ad which labeled Vice President Kamala Harris and the Democrats as “the party of violence.”
Congressional leaders picked up the theme and indignantly blamed Harris for provocative language.
It is true that Harris has been harshly critical of Trump. But you’d have to be living in a tightly sealed conservative news bubble to believe that it is Harris who is setting the angry tone.
And it wasn’t Harris who encouraged a group of supporters — including some known to be carrying guns — to march to the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as electoral voters were being counted, telling them “if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”
It is horrific that Trump has faced two apparent assassination attempts this summer. Those who wish Trumpism would go away should understand — as most do — that defeating him at the polls is the only way to make it happen. Violence perpetuates the very divisions he capitalizes on.
The Sept. 28 event will be the vice president’s second campaign event in The City since becoming the Democratic presidential nominee
In previous campaigns, there have been moments of decency from candidates who calm overagitated supporters. 2008 Republican presidential nominee John McCain famously told a supporter who said she couldn’t trust Obama because he was an Arab: “No ma’am, No ma’am. He’s a decent family man, [a] citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues, and that’s what this campaign is all about.”
Trump himself flashed a moment of graciousness last week after telling a Michigan crowd that Harris, as well as Biden, had phoned to wish him well. When the crowd booed, he told them again that the calls were “nice.”
As refreshingly humanizing as it would be if such exchanges were more common, conciliatory words are not part of Trump’s repertoire. When one man responded to his comment by shouting “f— Biden,” Trump flashed a broad smile.
Trump doesn’t tell crowds that he disagrees with Harris on foreign policy. Instead, he says she “she hates Israel” and her victory would lead to World War III. They don’t have disagreements over trade policy so much as Harris is “dumb as rocks,” and incapable of negotiation. Her economic policies aren’t misguided, they are “communist.”
It is entirely reasonable to challenge Harris on her agenda. But there is nothing in her background to back his name-calling accusations, let alone evidence of her encouraging violence against her rivals.
Some Democrats have struggled to make this point, worried they will sound callous to the terrifying threats on Trump’s life. And the news media, aiming to look evenhanded, has too often reported that the campaign’s harsh tone comes from both sides.
It is neither objective nor true to say that both parties are equally guilty. It is Trump — not Harris or Biden — who has shattered the norms of political respectability and is responsible for the venomous discourse. No one at this level in modern American history has come close to spewing Trump’s level of hatred and anger.
Political violence destroys public confidence. It took San Francisco years to recover from the 1978 killings of Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk. Dianne Feinstein said it was the reverberations of that horrible period that shaped her Senate career as a conciliator, not a bomb-thrower.
The U.S. has been through — and emerged from — periods of terrible violence before. However, it will be more difficult to move on so long as Trump, when faced with violence directed at him, embraces fighting words to demonize his opponents in response.
Marc Sandalow is a senior faculty member at the University of California’s Washington Program. He has been writing about California politics from Washington, D.C., for more than 30 years.
Around 1,500 local hotel workers began a strike on Sunday, hoping to extract concessions from three Union Square hotels.
Unite Here Local 2, the union chapter representing the workers, says they’ve been in contract negotiations with the Grand Hyatt San Francisco Union Square, Hilton San Francisco Union Square and Westin St. Francis hotels for months, to no avail.
Today’s events come after a larger Labor Day walkout, and the expiry of the workers’s contracts in mid-August.
Negotiations between the larger union and the major hotel chains are also still mostly unresolved, meaning over 10,000 hotel workers across the country could be primed to walk off the job at any moment.
At issue are things like healthcare, staffing cuts that have resulted in higher individual workloads, fair pay, irregular hours stemming from hotels rendering certain guest services optional, healthcare, and pensions.
The union claims that many workers are forced to work second or third jobs to make ends meet, despite the hotel industry as a whole apparently making $100 billion in gross profits for fiscal year 2022.
“Hotel workers aren’t giving up, because we’re fighting for our families,” said Gwen Mills, International President of Unite Here in a statement. “Hotels and hotel workers all suffered during the pandemic, but now the hotel industry is making record profits. These huge hotel corporations can afford to reverse COVID-era cuts and give us wages that are enough to live on, health care that’s affordable, and workloads that don’t break your body.”
The three hotels all told The San Francisco Chronicle that they plan on performing business as usual during the strike, and that they remain optimistic that negotiations will be fruitful for both sides.
This is the second strike in San Francisco to occur this week, after musicians for the San Francisco Symphony Chorus began a walkout that led to abrupt show cancellations.
The frequency and scale of strikes on the whole have seen a resurgence across the country since 2023, marking a stark reversal to previous trends in collective bargaining in the post-Ronald Reagan era, whose administration is now notorious for its intensely anti-labor, pro-business agenda. Researchers for New York City’s university system, the City University of New York, attribute this rise in union activity to the combination of high inflation and growing income inequality since the 2020 pandemic, and believe that they ultimately lead to positive effects.
“Overall, we have such an imbalance of power and income right now, anything that shifts that balance in the direction of more equality is positive, both economically and socially for the country,” said Joshua B. Freeman, an author and professor of history who has studied labor movements since the 1980s.
Join us tomorrow at 6pm at the SF Federal Building where we will take to the streets in support of Lebanon, and the Lebanese people, and in opposition to the continued complicity of the US government in waging war against our people.
Today, heavy Israeli air strikes rained down across Lebanon, from the southern territories to the Beqaa Valley, and Beirut, resulting in the martyrdom of over 325 people and 1200 seriously injured. Lebanese officials have said that this is the deadliest day since the end of the Civil War in Lebanon in 1989.
Israel’s attacks against Lebanon are an attempt to force the Lebanese resistance to end its support front for Gaza against the US-Israeli genocide. We affirm the Lebanese people’s right to resist Zionist terrorism, occupation, and aggression against them, and we demand an arms embargo and sanctions against Israel now.
Call Gov. Parson to Stop the Sept. 24 Execution of Marcellus Williams: 417-373-3400
Missouri is scheduled to execute Marcellus Williams on Sept. 24 for a crime he didn’t commit. Last week, after previously accepting an Alford plea that was subsequently blocked by the Missouri Supreme Court, St. Louis County Judge Bruce Hilton denied the request to vacate Marcellus’ conviction and death sentence, despite the prosecutor’s admission that the previous administration committed constitutional errors in his case. We need everyone’s help to call on Gov. Mike Parson to stop Missouri from killing an innocent man.
Earlier, St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell filed a motion to vacate Marcellus’ conviction because he believed forensic evidence excluded Marcellus from the crime.
Then, at an Aug. 28 evidentiary hearing, his office admitted that the prior administration had committed constitutional errors that contributed to Marcellus’ unreliable conviction and death sentence, including improperly handling the evidence in his case.
Now, Judge Hilton has denied PA Bell’s motion to vacate Marcellus’ conviction and death sentence, and the Missouri Supreme Court is moving forward with the Sept. 24 execution date.
Bay Area Coalition phonebanks for Prop 50 Tuesdays & Saturdays RSVP Yes On Prop 50 | Special Election Phone Banks Virtual Phone Bank Time Tuesdays and Saturdays 2pm PDT + 1 more time Location Virtual event Join from anywhere Hosted in San Francisco, CA 94102 About this event Proposition 50 Vote... Continue reading →
We hope you can join us for a nationwide online town hall next Tuesday, September 16, from 7:00 to 8:00 p.m. EDT. RSVP here. The Trump regime is continuing to advance its destructive, authoritarian agenda. And Public Citizen is doing everything in our power to fight back. We’ll update you... Continue reading →
13th anniversary of Occupy Wall Street and Occupy San Francisco By admin | September 17, 2024 | Uncategorized Leave a comment (newlaborforum.cuny.edu) Occupy Wall Street (OWS) was a left-wing populist movement against economic inequality, corporate greed, big finance, and the influence of money in politics that began in Zuccotti Park, located in New York City’s... Continue reading →
One Million Rising: Strategic Non-Cooperation to Fight Authoritarianism Virtual Event · Hosted by No Kings Time Wednesdays 8 – 9:30pm EDT Location Virtual event Join from anywhere About this event Across the country, authoritarian forces are getting bolder and more dangerous. Trump and his allies are not hiding their agenda: mass deportations,... Continue reading →
THURSDAY, JUNE 29, 2023 AT 2 AM – 4 AM PDT How to create trust in a group? Details Event by Extinction Rebellion Empathy Circles online EMPATHY CAFE Duration: 2 hr Public · Anyone on or off Facebook How to create trust in a group? This is the question that arose in our... Continue reading →
Canvassing with Swing Left for Prop 50 Saturday and Sunday mornings Join here Time Weekends 9:30am – 1pm PDT Location 94114 San Francisco, CA 94114 Map About this event As partisan gerrymandering in states like Texas threatens to undermine democracy, California is stepping up with Proposition 50, the Election Rigging... Continue reading →
When you volunteer for Saikat, it’s on us to give you a great experience and a genuine chance to make a difference. We don’t want to waste a second of your time. That’s why we’re always optimizing. And I’m excited to report that this Saturday we talked with 300% more... Continue reading →
Bay Area Coalition phonebanks for Prop 50 Tuesdays & Saturdays RSVP Yes On Prop 50 | Special Election Phone Banks Virtual Phone Bank Time Tuesdays and Saturdays 2pm PDT + 1 more time Location Virtual event Join from anywhere Hosted in San Francisco, CA 94102 About this event Proposition 50 Vote... Continue reading →
Bay Area Coalition phonebanks for Prop 50 Tuesdays & Saturdays RSVP Yes On Prop 50 | Special Election Phone Banks Virtual Phone Bank Time Tuesdays and Saturdays 2pm PDT + 1 more time Location Virtual event Join from anywhere Hosted in San Francisco, CA 94102 About this event Proposition 50 Vote... Continue reading4:00 pm Public Citizen nationwide online... @ RSVPPublic Citizen nationwide online... @ RSVPSep 16 @ 4:00 pm – 5:00 pmWe hope you can join us for a nationwide online town hall next Tuesday, September 16, from 7:00 to 8:00 p.m. EDT. RSVP here. The Trump regime is continuing to advance its destructive, authoritarian agenda. And Public Citizen is doing everything in our power to fight back. We’ll update you... Continue reading7:00 pm Milk Club General Membership Mee... @ Moth Belly Gallery or remote.Milk Club General Membership Mee... @ Moth Belly Gallery or remote.Sep 16 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pmGeneral Membership Meeting Tuesday, September 16, 7pm Hybrid at Moth Belly Gallery (912 Larkin Street) or remote.Sep17Wedall-day Anniversary of Occupy Wall Stree...Anniversary of Occupy Wall Stree...Sep 17 all-day
13th anniversary of Occupy Wall Street and Occupy San Francisco By admin | September 17, 2024 | Uncategorized Leave a comment (newlaborforum.cuny.edu) Occupy Wall Street (OWS) was a left-wing populist movement against economic inequality, corporate greed, big finance, and the influence of money in politics that began in Zuccotti Park, located in New York City’s... Continue reading5:00 pm One Million Rising @ Virtual eventOne Million Rising @ Virtual eventSep 17 @ 5:00 pm – 6:30 pm
One Million Rising: Strategic Non-Cooperation to Fight Authoritarianism Virtual Event · Hosted by No Kings Time Wednesdays 8 – 9:30pm EDT Location Virtual event Join from anywhere About this event Across the country, authoritarian forces are getting bolder and more dangerous. Trump and his allies are not hiding their agenda: mass deportations,... Continue readingSep18Thu10:00 am Extinction Rebellion Empathy Circle @ Online via ZoomExtinction Rebellion Empathy Circle @ Online via ZoomSep 18 @ 10:00 am – 12:00 pm
THURSDAY, JUNE 29, 2023 AT 2 AM – 4 AM PDT How to create trust in a group? Details Event by Extinction Rebellion Empathy Circles online EMPATHY CAFE Duration: 2 hr Public · Anyone on or off Facebook How to create trust in a group? This is the question that arose in our... Continue readingSep20Sat9:30 am Canvassing for Prop. 50Canvassing for Prop. 50Sep 20 @ 9:30 am – 1:00 pm
Canvassing with Swing Left for Prop 50 Saturday and Sunday mornings Join here Time Weekends 9:30am – 1pm PDT Location 94114 San Francisco, CA 94114 Map About this event As partisan gerrymandering in states like Texas threatens to undermine democracy, California is stepping up with Proposition 50, the Election Rigging... Continue reading11:00 am Door knock for Saikat @ Dolores ParkDoor knock for Saikat @ Dolores ParkSep 20 @ 11:00 am – 3:00 pm
When you volunteer for Saikat, it’s on us to give you a great experience and a genuine chance to make a difference. We don’t want to waste a second of your time. That’s why we’re always optimizing. And I’m excited to report that this Saturday we talked with 300% more... Continue reading2:00 pm Phonebank for Prop. 50Phonebank for Prop. 50Sep 20 @ 2:00 pm – 6:00 pm