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ACLU Seeks Answers in Arrests at Vigil after Alfred Olango Killing

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San Diego ACLU troubled by “community reports of aggressive police response” and “potentially unlawful arrests” at peaceful vigil

Ferchil Ramos / San Diego ACLU

In response to a video post by a community member at what appears to be a peaceful vigil at the site of the killing of Alfred Olango, the ACLU of San Diego & Imperial Counties sent a letter requesting information from the El Cajon Police Department (ECPD) concerning the arrests of individuals at the vigil on the evening of Saturday, October 1.

While no video necessarily tells the complete story, the available information raises serious questions that the arrests were unlawful. One of the factors in declaring an unlawful assembly is whether there is a clear and present danger of imminent violence.   [Read more…]

Angst Over Police Shootings Rocks California Cities

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Community unrest over the deaths of black people at the hands of police in California continued unabated throughout the weekend. And it wasn’t just in El Cajon/San Diego.

Alfred Olango died in El Cajon on Tuesday. A composite video taken from a security camera and a bystander’s cellphone was released on Friday. Carnell Snell Jr. died in Los Angeles on Saturday, the second police-involved death in two days. And a particularly grotesque video of the July 11th death of Joseph Mann in Sacramento surfaced showing police officers trying to run him down before chasing him down and firing 14 shots into him.   [Read more…]

Family Calls for Peaceful Protests Over Death of Alfred Olango

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The Rev. Shane Harris of the National Action Network called a press conference on Thursday with the family of Alfred Olango, the Ugandan immigrant killed by a police officer in El Cajon earlier this week.

They gathered before the press, accompanied by supportive clergy and a couple of power lawyers, hoping to reshape what the family believes is a false narrative about the dead man.

In recent days following the official release of a single frame photograph from a bystander video, storylines casting aspersions on the character of Olango have worked their way into media accounts. These accounts include allegations of prior run-ins with law enforcement system and even the use of the word ‘suspect.’   [Read more…]

(UPDATED) Family Calls for Federal Investigation – Alfred Olango Dies After Being Shot by El Cajon Police

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Thirty-year-old Alfred Olango died of gunshot wounds during a confrontation yesterday with police officers from the City of El Cajon. He was mentally ill, unarmed, and the 197th Black man killed by police in the United States this year. And the 172nd mentally ill person, according to the NY Daily News.

Police responded to calls about a man in the street behaving erratically near a strip mall on Broadway near Mollison Avenue shortly after 2 p.m. One of the callers was Olango’s sister, who told bystanders that she’d warned police about his illness. Friends of the dead man told reporters he was having a mental breakdown that caused him to act out in the minutes leading up to the shooting.

When a reporter on scene asked ECPD spokesman Rob Ransweiler if police knew of any calls that referred to the man as being mentally unstable, the spokesperson said, “I do know the answer to your question, but because it’s an ongoing investigation, I’m gonna decline to answer that question.”

News of the shooting spread quickly throughout the San Diego area. By evening, a crowd, estimated at 200 people gathered to protest, including community leaders and members of local churches who led prayers.   [Read more…]

Activist DeRay McKesson on Campaign Zero (Updated)

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Note: #BlackLivesMatter activist DeRay McKesson was the closing keynote speaker at Politifest2016, all-day public affairs conference held at SDSU on September 24, featuring workshops and sessions about the November ballot.

Talking with DeRay McKesson was the highlight of my day. He has an engaging, low-key candor that put the mostly white audience at ease. He’s a good-looking 31 year old man with a unique style – wearing a preppy Patagonia vest with slim jeans and European style pointed shoes with colorful socks. He’s soft-spoken with an indistinct diction and fast flowing words.

I asked him how white people could help the cause of ending violence against black people. He suggested we use our “White Privilege” to disrupt it. Campaign Zero, the campaign he and fellow activists started, provides strategies for doing this.   [Read more…]

Jess Haro: From Stockton to San Diego

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Jess Haro is well known in San Diego’s Latino community. The Chicano activist has been a City Councilman, Chairman of the Board of the Chicano Federation and has served on various boards in our community. How did the boy born in Stockton, California end up in San Diego?

Jess’s father immigrated to the United States in 1918. Jess’s mother became a widow from her first husband in Durango, Mexico and followed her daughter to the United States in 1923. It was a very long journey and took eight days by mule to reach Nogales where she then caught a train to El Monte, California. She went to work at the Hick’s Ranch and lived in the huge farm worker camp located in El Monte.   [Read more…]

Dakota Access Pipeline Company Attacks Protesters With Dogs and Mace

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By Nadi Prupis / Common Dreams

The ongoing Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) protests were hit with violence on Saturday, as private security forces reportedly hired by the pipeline builders descended on the Native American activists with pepper spray and dogs that bit and threatened the protesters.

Democracy Now!, which was on the ground at the time, posted several photographs and video of the attack   [Read more…]

Black Folks Have Long Memories, Mr. Trump

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By Denise Oliver Velez / Daily Kos

Today, let’s remember the courage of Elizabeth Eckford. While Donald Trump plays games pretending to court black voters (who don’t support him, and almost unanimously loathe and reject him) in order to convince some white folks that he “isn’t so bad,” let’s remind him—and anyone who buys his bullshit—that we black folks have long memories.

The screaming, spittle-flecked people in the crowds drawn to him like flies on shit, his supporters waving confederate flags, shouting racial epithets, and grinning proudly at their own bigoted cleverness evoke a racial déjà vu that some of us participated in, or remember witnessing firsthand on the news, or heard stories about from older kinfolks. We saw Eckford brave an angry crowd alone, separated from the other members of the group who would come to be known as the “Little Rock Nine.” The photograph of a lone Eckford, captured by young journalist Will Counts, will forever remain in my memory and in the minds and souls of all who have seen it.   [Read more…]

Colin Kaepernick: An NFL Quarterback Was Just Added to My List of Social Heroes

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This is so deja vu, this state of affairs with Colin Kaepernick, the San Francisco 49’ers quarterback who sat when one is “supposed to stand” in honor of The Star Spangled Banner that heralds a time when non-white people in our county were not seen as human beings.

I fully understand and appreciate this man’s stance although I stand whenever the anthem is played out of respect for those who get goose pimples in such moments. However, I bow out at singing about “bombs bursting in air” and “flags still being there” and the empty promises inherent in the braggadocio “The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave!” at the end of the song.

That aside, I can’t help but think back to the 68 Olympics, when the quest for “liberty and justice for all,” in a spirit of today’s “Black Lives Matter” movement was pursued like never before. My soul still fills with pride remembering the image of Tommy Smith and John Carlos at the ceremony for handing out the gold and the silver and the bronze medals for the men’s 200, standing on their podiums with their heads bowed and their hands raised in the “Black Power!” salute.   [Read more…]

Black Breastfeeding Week 2016

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By South OB Girl / OB Rag

San Diego based photographer Vanessa Simmons has attracted quite a bit of attention nation wide with her “Normalize Breastfeeding Tour.” She has previously been featured in Vogue, The Huffington Post, and here at The OB Rag/San Diego Free Press.

Vanessa started Normalize Breastfeeding in 2014 – a project intended to bring awareness to breast-feeding through photography.

And August is National Breastfeeding Month (which many of us may not have known). And August 25 – 31st is Black Breastfeeding Week.   [Read more…]

Trump’s Black Outreach: Anything’s Better Than Zero

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A couple of weeks back, Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump told a largely white audience in Michigan that he’d win 95% of the black vote during his 2020 re-election campaign.

He’s got his work cut out for him. Public Policy Polling released a preview of a new poll on “The Rachel Maddow Show” Monday night showing Donald Trump’s favorability rating among African-American voters at 0 percent. 97% of those polled knew for sure they didn’t care for him. 3% were undecided. And there’s the matter of winning the 2016 election.

Public Policy Polling skews liberal, so it’s best to take this result with a grain of salt. But this isn’t the first survey showing Trump doing extremely poorly with black voters.   [Read more…]

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