COME ON, Y'ALL, LET'S BUILD SUPPORT --
PLEASE FORWARD BOTH ALERTS FAR AND WIDE!!
BUILD AND SUPPORT INDEPENDENT BLACK MEDIA!!
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4917 Third Street, San Francisco, California 94124
Phone: (415) 671-0789 Fax: (415) 671-0316
Email:
editor@sfbayview.com Website:
San Francisco Bay View - HOME
A Call for Solidarity:
Friends of the San Francisco Bay View Newspaper
You've probably heard the sobering news … the San Francisco Bay View Newspaper was forced to stop printing a weekly paper due to financial strain. The last printed copy went out on July 2nd, marking the 697th issue the Ratcliffs have printed since starting the paper back up in 1992.
We know that the Black press has been among our most powerful tools of liberation throughout history — in the first phases of what we now know to be ongoing work toward Abolition, Reconstruction, Civil Rights and Black Power. Today is no different. The Bay View paper had been carrying the torch of that legacy through incredibly challenging times.
It's hard to imagine a worse time to lose our ability to print the paper. As trouble brews for our comrades in international struggles, police repression and brutality escalate at home with millions of Black and other oppressed people forced into concentration camps (federal, state and private), the Bay View Newspaper struggles to maintain its national significance as a megaphone for resistance.
In California, where Black and Brown people's alliances are setting the stage for confrontation with the U.S. government's "free trade" and immigration policies, the establishment is desperately swiping back.
• San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom has unleashed a citywide ethnic cleansing plan to privatize affordable housing;
• Regional, federal, state and local police agencies are consolidating tactics to brutalize opposition to capitalist exploitation;
• Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has forced through the largest prison expansion project in U.S. history.
"At this time, our communities are faced with important questions like, 'Who else in the 'progressive press' and in the Black press is going to consistently cover Haiti, Colombia, Brazil, El Salvador, France and Zimbabwe as well as East Oakland, Hunters Point, Hurricane Amerikkka, Chicago and New York?" POCC Minister of Information JR asks.
One of the only Black-owned radical publications in the U.S., the Bay View newspaper has consistently provided a public platform for communication and solidarity among U.S., African, Latin American and Caribbean activists and incarcerated people who are challenging imperialism throughout the world and from inside the U.S. prison industrial complex.
At its last run, the paper was printed and delivered to thousands of homes in Bayview Hunters Point, hundreds of locally owned businesses, community centers, libraries and churches in San Francisco and Oakland, and hundreds of people in captivity. We receive at least 60 letters every week from prisoners, including pen pal requests, reports of torture and abuse, requests for legal support, and submissions of news and views from prisons throughout the U.S.
The Bay View has maintained itself as an individually-funded FREE paper through a trickle of advertising revenue, national prisoner and resident subscriptions and a small pool of donors, which has included the staff itself. Its printed format is key to bridging the 'digital divide' in more ways than one, as many of its readers have no or very little access to the internet and few sources of trusted, current, community and activist-oriented news.
This is an urgent appeal to radical activists, individuals, and organizations to support the Bay View financially.
Our goal is to resume printing a monthly paper. You can make this possible.
Will your organization commit to buying ad space at a rate of $50-$100 per month or more? You can advertise for political campaigns, meetings, conferences, events, jobs, updates, and petition or fundraising drives. You can post calls to action, announcements, or even something as simple as your logo, mission statement and contact information.
We already know the paper is an important resource for prisoners, people of color, and working class communities. With your contribution, it can be an important resource for people to hook into the work of grassroots organizing and activism. But we need YOU to make this happen.
Immediately, we're in urgent need of a low-cost, experienced web designer to post articles, updates, an events calendar and useful advertisements daily. Once we're reasonably assured that we can sustain a monthly printed publication at $5,000 per month, we'll get that print wheel spinning again!
We're in the fight for you. Will you fight for the Bay View?
Checks can be mailed to SF Bay View; 4917 Third St., San Francisco, CA 94124
Tax deductible donations can be sent to the same address and written to HRIN (Hurricane Relief Information Network). Or you can give online @
www.sfbayview.com
We thank you in advance for your continued support and contributions to the Bay View Newspaper.