Black August / September Action Alert: Support The SF Bay View

[Fenix]

Black August / September ACTION ALERT

The San Francisco Bay View has provided the Afrikan community with world and local news for over 16 years. Recently print media has taken a big hit, the kind of hit that small newspapers such as the SF Bay View are not able to absorb and keep moving. This coupled with a recent hack attempt that depleted the number of articles available on the website has forced the staff to convert the SF Bay View into an online only publication. With over 1 million hits per month, it is clear that the SF Bay View continues to reach people but not having a print version effectively takes it out of the hands of the poorest of our people who don’t own computers as well as the those of us behind bars, those who benefit most from the fearless information provided by the SF Bay View. With sufficient financial support, Bay View staff will begin in October to print the paper monthly.

Since its inception the SF Bay View has told the stories of our heroes, providing the community with relevant news and giving young journalists and photographers a platform for their work. After giving so freely for nearly two decades, after 16 years of service, of fearlessly telling the truth, of an unparalleled commitment to justice, the San Francisco Bay View is in need of emergency financial assistance. From Haiti to Zimbabwe, from Oakland to New York and everywhere in between, the SF Bay View tells our stories, our struggles, our triumphs; it is our news source and it is our responsibility to provide the financial support it needs.

This photo from the Bay View's front page was taken May 17, 2007, of the MOVE children speaking at the historic rally in Philadelphia outside the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals while the judges took up Mumia Abu-Jamal's appeal. Thanks largely to the photographer, Bay View Associate Editor and POCC Minister of Information JR, the Bay View appealed directly to Black youth, girding them, like the MOVE youngsters, to step to the front lines of the struggle.

Title: Support the SF Bay View

Time Frame: Until the work is done.

Plan of Action:
Donate finances, increase web traffic and provide moral support for the staff of the SF Bay View.

Purpose of Action:
To let the staff of the SF Bay View know that we appreciate all that they have done for the past 16 years and that we support their continued action. To invest in the future of the SF Bay View so that the story of Africans worldwide is told in a truthful and responsible way.

Website: San Francisco Bay View - HOME

What We Should Do Now:
1. Donate money. Visit the SF Bay View Website to make donations via PayPal. The amount is not important. Every cent helps.
To make your donation tax deductible, write a check or money order to HRIN (Hurricane Relief Information Network, the Bay View's 501(c)(3) nonprofit arm) and mail it to SF Bay View, 4917 Third St., San Francisco, CA 94124. Or go to About Us at sfbayview.com, scroll down to DONATE, and click on the nonprofit Donate button. Either way, you'll get an IRS acknowledgment and thank you letter in return.
2. Advertise your movement, organization, business or event at sfbayview.com, where it will be seen by people who are eager to support you. The Bay View staff needs help developing web advertising rates. If you can advise them on sizing and pricing web ads, call (415) 671-0789 or email editor@sfbayview.com.
3. Provide moral support. If you are not able to donate monetarily, send kind words to the staff of the SF Bay View to let them know that you support their cause.
4. Visit the SF Bay View Website regularly.

Goals & Outcomes:

Goals:

Support the SF Bay View as the SF Bay View has supported the community for 16 years, financially and otherwise. If $5,000 in donations and advertising can be raised in time, Bay View staff will begin to print a paper monthly in October, packed with the best of the stories from the website.

Understand that uncensored progressive news is essential to nation building.

Outcomes:

A better informed community.

A stronger SF Bay View that will continue to feed the truth and supply progressive news to our community.

[nattyreb]

COME ON, Y'ALL, LET'S BUILD SUPPORT --
PLEASE FORWARD BOTH ALERTS FAR AND WIDE!!

BUILD AND SUPPORT INDEPENDENT BLACK MEDIA!!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


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.

[nattyreb]

i know y'all ain't posting no responses cuz you're so busy e-mailing out, posting on other websites and using every other thingy to let folx know we are involved in the effort to rescue this phenomenal publication... but could you slow down one minute to just please let us know that you're sending out the ACTION ALERT far and wide to stress the urgency of this activity?

As most of you know, we do these Action Alerts because this is a critically important part of what this vehicle is about. We strive to focus a regular effort to provide concrete support for the broader community of righteous activists as well as everyday people tryna survive who are catching hell and calling out for help; in this case, those who are doing *independent media* that act as an immediate voice for *all* our people in need, on the street as well as those behind the walls.

So we love that you're reading and adding your "thanks" on, please do, but to those who may be procrastinating, it's mainly a call to ACTION. i look forward to reading from y'all!

[Jacuma]

The beautiful, lovingly restored little building with a flat upstairs where we live and work and three storefronts on Third Street at the main intersection in Bayview Hunters Point, San Francisco's Black heartland, will be sold on the auction block on the steps of City Hall on Tuesday unless a 30-60-day postponement we've requested is approved.

Even so, we need to find a FRIENDLY buyer quick, someone who will let us stay here, manage the property and, if they're planning to improve it, will count us in at some level so we can build back up, get a strong, exciting website where everything works and bring back the Bay View paper asap, at least as a monthly. We fought valiantly to keep the property; sale is the last resort. At best, we'll get very little out of a sale - we'll get nothing at all if the property is auctioned.

To see the listing of the Bay View Building for sale and a couple of photos, click here: View Listings Please remind anyone who's interested that, though the real estate market is in the doldrums right now, this is the part of San Francisco that buyers are looking to. It's called gentrification, you know. That's why we need a FRIENDLY buyer - one who will work with us to strengthen the community, not drive us all out.

A good friend said she thinks most Bay View supporters don't realize that we're losing the property because it's what kept the Bay View in publication for the past 10 years and now the equity is gone. Let me try to give you a thumbnail sketch of how it happened. The story won't be unfamiliar to those of you trying to survive in any Black community under siege. We can't let the bad guys win!

Ten years ago, when the City put Willie Ratcliff’s Liberty Builders (which subsidized the Bay View for its first six years) and all the other Black contractors out of business, Willie found a partner to help us buy this century-old building. It had been boarded up for 15 years and anyone else would have demolished it, but Willie lovingly restored it to more than its original glory. His work, along with the real estate boom, raised the value nearly 10-fold, allowing us to keep printing the paper by dipping into the equity to augment income from ads and yoursubscriptions and donations.

Refinancing was always at least a year-long battle, every loan more predatory than the one before. To avoid the need for more equity, we kept trying to increase the Bay View's revenue - while cutting costs to the bone, with most of the content volunteered - but the Black paper known as the most radical in the country isn't the choice of many advertisers. And a while back, the mayor of San Francisco had every one of our advertisers called and threatened.

That's how we got in this fix. So now let me tell you some good news: We should soon have a website that really functions and where we can post new stories daily and most if not all of the thousands of archived stories that people search for all the time. A pair of web designers Sharon Martinas met in New Orleans - one who just earned his master's from UC Berkeley - have volunteered to put up a site for the Bay View FOR FREE! They've promised to teach me how to maintain it, and I'll teach you how to post stories so we can get all that great content back.

That's another reason we need a FRIENDLY buyer who will let us stay here. I don't know how we'd run the website from under a bridge.

At our ages, 75 and 69, some would think we'd be ready to pack up and go where we could live on our little social security checks. But we want to stay in the struggle and believe we have a lot more to give, to teach and to leave behind.

We've recently been reminded of our mortality though. Two weeks ago, Willie got hit with pneumonia and was hospitalized for the first time in his 75 years. Then once he was home, I got sick and have been flat on my back since Monday. (I get sick so rarely that we never missed a scheduled issue of the Bay View for 16 1/2 years; that's 697 editions and I edited every word and loved every minute of all it took.) We're recovering now and out of bed for short periods, but it's oh so slow. Our being sick is what prevented us from putting out this plea sooner. Thanks to all who have wished us well and may I ask that you also wish Willie a happy 76th year on Sept. 18.

One more thing, dear friends: No one has ever surpassed the Minister of Information JR in contributions and dedication to the Bay View newspaper. Yet he is the only regular contributor who had no other source of income. What we could give him wasn't much but he stretched it to support himself and two little ones - he's an adoring father. He never complains, and he'll probably be furious to see this.

Please, everybody, be on the lookout for a temporary job or project or gig of some kind for JR. His skills and talents are excellent and abundant - radio, writing, photography - somebody with some money must need his help. He gives so much! All those incredible Block Reports you hear on the radio he offers for free to make sure they're aired. And the resistance he's organized against KPFA and Pacifica management after they called the cops who brutalized and terrorized Nadra Foster inside the station is nothing short of revolutionary.

So we'll sign off with undying love for all who have supported the Bay View and add at the end the announcement of his next meeting on that critical issue. Be there!

Willie & Mary Ratcliff
SF Bay View
(415) 671-0789
SF Bayview Newspaper (soon to be reconstructed)

[nattyreb]

10/30/08

*** Please spread far and wide ***

The Bay View’s back, on the web & in print --- San Francisco Bay View Home

Editor’s note: In Hunters Point, people were literally dancing in the street last Friday, Oct. 24, shouting, “The Bay View’s back!” Similar scenes were reported on both sides of the Bay and, within hours, 20,000 copies of the first printed Bay View since July 2 had been snatched up by eager hands. I’m dying to hear how the hundreds of prisoners on our mailing list feel to be reading the Bay View once more.

The cost of printing the paper – $4,000 just for printing and distribution – is far too high for us now that we’ve lost title to our little building in a foreclosure auction and have no reserves and very little advertising to pay for it. What made printing that paper possible was the miraculous sacrifice of some readers determined to put the Bay View in print before the election.

In these hard times, sacrifice is something we can learn to love doing. Keeping what we care about the most may mean sacrificing other things.

Everyone who wants the Bay View to continue in print as a monthly paper needs to pitch in to make it possible. You can
· Encourage all the folks you meet who would benefit from advertising their businesses, services or events to call the Bay View at (415) 671-0789 to talk about placing an ad, either in print or online;
· Donate directly to the Bay View by mail or at San Francisco Bay View Home – your gift can be tax deductible;
· Better yet, donate to your favorite worthy cause and “earmark” your donation to be spent only for advertising in the Bay View.

As an example of that last option, you could make a donation to KPFA to advertise an invitation every month to Bay View readers to tune in. Think how many new listeners KPFA could recruit with a big quarter page ad in the Bay View! The cost at our nonprofit rate is $393.75. Perhaps you could donate part of that and find friends to put up the rest – each of you reminding KPFA to spend your donation only on advertising in the Bay View.

Relaunching SFBayView.com

Another miraculous sacrifice has produced a fine, functioning new Bay View website. Two generous young men, recent graduates of UC Berkeley grad school, volunteered weeks of their time to design the new site and teach me how to post stories and photos and videos – what fun! They are Jed Horne and Brendan Nee, co-founders of Horne Nee Inc. Call them at (415) 373-6442 or visit HorneNee.com whenever you need a new or improved website.

Our plan is to build the traffic to SFBayView.com way up and beyond the 2 million hits we used to get. That’s the way to attract advertising that can help pay to print the Bay View monthly. You can help by forwarding this message far and wide and by sending stories you like to your friends and posting them to sites like Digg and Delicious and Facebook. Read the fascinating comments left by readers from all over the world – and add some of your own.

Before I go ahead and list the stories waiting on our new website for you to enjoy, let me pledge our deepest love and gratitude to all our readers and to all who have made the many miraculous sacrifices that have carried us through these hard times. We are deeply indebted and we won’t let you down. – Mary Ratcliff, editor@sfbayview.com

New stories, videos, photos – oh my!

Visit SFBayView.com often; we’re posting new stories daily. For the burning issues covered by several stories, I’ll group them together.

The most important election of our lifetimes: Bay View Voters Guide, Bringing democracy to Amerikkka, Please don’t feed the PiGE!, Cindy Sheehan speaks at Bayview Hunters Point Town Hall Meeting, What our country desperately needs is a leader who loves us, Vote Yes on Prop H: Don’t believe PG&E’s fossil fuel-powered lies, Greg Palast and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: ‘Steal Back Your Vote!’, Vote Hip Hop Contest taking entries until Nov. 1, Prop H for Clean Energy, Obama for President, Prop H: PG&E vs. Clean Energy in San Francisco, Bridges for Obama, Voting as addition and subtraction, Pre-election militarization of the North American homeland, Can’t vote because you’re in jail? Yes you can!, Millions of African Americans will be disenfranchised on Election Day and, coming tomorrow, Obama song for West Papua.

Revolutionary foment inside KPFA: The need for a Black public affairs show at KPFA, KPFA staffers release no-confidence statement, Lame-duck appointment of embattled KPFA manager, From Amy Goodman to Nadra Foster: Implementing alternatives to police terror, On the question of Pacifica and racism, KPFA’s Nadra Foster, Nadra Foster and the mission of KPFA, Pacifica patrones reject peace, use police to sustain their power,Open letter to the KPFA staff, paid and unpaid, KPFA’s racist hypocrisy: Once again it has come to pass …, What really happened to Nadra Foster: an eyewitness account and Police terrorize Black KPFA programmer in the station. Watch Arrest of KPFA programmer Nadra Foster by KPFA/Pacifica management.

The related controversy around the Chauncey Bailey Project: A journalistic critique of the Chauncey Bailey Project; My two cents on the engineering of media around the murder of Chauncey Bailey; Investigating the assassination of Post Editor Chauncey Bailey, Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3; and One on one with Yusuf Bey IV: Part 1 and Part 2.

More great stories and other goodies:
Jasper-style lynching in Paris, Texas
Congolese children work, fight and die for our cell phones and diamonds
In Focus: Congo’s Bloody Coltan
‘Repair the damage of destroying the Black presence in this city!’
Displaced poor still arriving in New Orleans as Saints go marching in
U.N. weighs in against demolishing public housing
New Orleans News Briefs
Katrina Pain Index: New Orleans three years later
All Power to the People!
Aaron Patterson’s torturer Jon Burge arrested
SF County Jail’s cruel and unusual punishment of Herman Bell of the San Francisco 8
Save the life of Nevada prisoner Marritte Funches
Free Troy Davis!
Imprisoned Rev. Pinkney runs for U.S. Congress
Three men crammed into a 6x12 cell
Mumia speaks to the youth
The New Jersey 4: Correcting the injustice
Wanda’s Picks for Oct. 24, 2008 (Her new Picks will be posted tomorrow.)
One on one wit’ Malik Yusef the Wordsmith
Disappearing voices in Black radio
Chairman Fred Hampton Streetz Party ‘08
Money, Black Power and radio
Haiti: Racism and poverty
When Ike hit Haiti
U.N. out of Haiti, Brazil out of Haiti
The struggle for the safe release of Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine, Haitian human rights activist
Haiti’s food crisis: Imposing hunger on the people of Haiti
The nationalization of Banco de Venezuela
Live from the streets of San Salvador
Child care families, providers abandoned by state government
From Death Row, Mumia Abu Jamal - Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
Africans reject U.S. Africa Command
Reflections on Zimbabwe 40 years later
‘Black in America’ misses the ‘why’
Pen Pals: Find a friend behind enemy lines
Calendar of Events
Photo Gallery
About Us
Advertise
BayView Classifieds - ads, opportunities, announcements

To reach the Bay View, email editor@sfbayview.com.

[Moorbey]

We still need to support the SF Bay View for it represents a legacy in in the Bay area from back in the day ...There are many of us here that were are will be regular readers once again of this great newspaper because it is from a Afrikan perspective and we here at Assata have the numbers to help if we all donate a $1.00 each a month..That is a small sum to help keep one of our nations oldest black papers from folding ..