When the media does us wrong and community accountability
Every year, media justice organizations from all over the country convene under the name The Media Action Grassroots Network.
Here, illustrated more vividly than usual, is what happened this year in the 2016 Annual Report from the Anchor’s Congress convening.
On Thursday June 2, 2016,, I joined dozens of people who live or work in San Francisco’s Mission District at the San Francisco Planning Commission to speak up against yet another huge luxury housing development proposed for the neighborhood. The activist-dubbed “Beast on Bryant” adds 196 more luxury units to a neighborhood already built out way in excess of the Eastern Neighborhoods Plan, and removes tens of thousands of square feet of badly needed light industrial space. The project was opposed by the San Francisco Labor Council and the Building Trades Council.
While the Planning Commission’s tendency to rubber stamp housing projects is infamous and nobody really expected the project would go down to defeat, the surprising part of the day and evening spent at City Hall was the full court press of the San Francisco Sheriff’s department. Why were the sheriffs intervening in Planning Commission decisions? Was this on someone’s order? Continue reading Fighting the Beast on Bryant at City Hall
Originally posted January 2 2015
UCC OC Inc., Center for Media Justice and MAGNet teamed up with religious organizations, civil rights groups, labor and many others to submit a letter today supporting further reforms to end predatory prison phone rates. The letter supported the FCC’s proposal to end “kick-back” payments, known as commissions from phone companies to prisons, jails and detention centers. The letter also urged the FCC to cap local rates and to block unfair fees, to build on the FCC’s historic decision to cap long-distance rates in 2014. We also urged the FCC to take rapid action to protect people with disabilities, and to investigate unscrupulous rates for email and video visitation. Continue reading More Reform On Prison Phone Rates
Posted by Tracy Rosenberg on January 10th, 2014
Huffington Post
Meet Prisoner A: Incarcerated at Soledad Prison in California for a botched armed robbery committed in the thrall of an expensive drug addiction, Prisoner A is 3 years into a 10-year sentence. Committed to rehab and clean and sober for two years, A tries to keep in regular touch by telephone with two people: the aunt who raised him from a toddler in Oakland, CA and his 8-year old son, who has relocated with his ex-wife and her new husband to Oregon.
Calling his aunt, thanks to 2008 CA legislation, is free of commissions (often called kickbacks). A monthly 15-minute call to keep in touch is affordable, even for a financially-challenged senior, at a price of about $7 per call. Continue reading A Tale Of Two Prisoners
Posted by Tracy Rosenberg on February 11 2011
KPFA Radio, has received complaints from 3 Berkeley City Council members and 6 workers on two different incidents of problematic coverage in a week on the daily hour-long statewide broadcast of the Pacifica Evening News.
The first complaint was from by Berkeley City Council members Linda Maio, Kriss Worthington and Laurie Capitelli on a story on a council resolution asking all parties involved in the station’s contentious November layoff of 2 employees to negotiate in good faith with each other.
A delegation of community groups led by Media Alliance visited an Oakland Radio Shack on Friday December 19 2008 on behalf of the Media Action Grassroots Network (Mag-Net).
They requested digital television converter boxes be made available for the $40 federal coupon price for low-income populations that can’t afford to pay $20-50 to upgrade their TV’s to digital signals.
See the pictures.
Video testimonial from the Centro Legale created by the Raising Our Voices Training Program.
This Fall 2016 report reviews the state of policing in San Francisco and includes some 80 recommendations to improve the Department.
