Lee Heidhues 5.14.2022

The disturbing photo of American basketball Brittney Griner star hooded and handcuffed in a Moscow courtroom on May 13 is sad, barbaric and reprehensible.

Detained by Vladimir Putin’s Police State for allegedly possessing hash oil since February, the 31 year old is looking at 10 years in Putin’s gulag.  Brittney Griner has become a pawn in Putin’s aggression against Ukraine.

Excerpted from The New York Times 5.14.2022

A court in Russia on Friday extended the pretrial detention of the W.N.B.A. star Brittney Griner until June 18, her lawyer said.

While Ms. Griner was arrested one week before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Russian authorities did not reveal her detention until days after the war began, raising fears she could be used as a bargaining chip in the overall crisis.

Ms. Griner, one of the most decorated athletes in women’s basketball, has been in Russian custody since mid-February on drug charges that can carry up to 10 years in prison. The charge is based on allegations that she had vape cartridges containing hashish oil in her luggage when she was stopped at the Sheremetyevo airport near Moscow in February.

Ms. Griner appeared in court in the town of Khimki near Moscow for a procedural hearing on Friday, according to her lawyer, Aleksandr Boikov.

“She is OK,” Mr. Boikov said in an interview, adding that the court denied his appeal to have Ms. Griner transferred to house arrest. He said he expects the trial to begin in about two months.

The U.S. State Department has said it had determined Ms. Griner was “wrongfully detained,” signaling its intention to get more actively involved in the situation.

Lee Heidhues 5.11.2022

The entire World is shocked and appalled by the wanton murder of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in territory occupied by Israel by a member of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).

Ms. Abu Akleh was clearly identified with a PRESS vest. The Israeli Defense Force assassin murdered the journalist from a distance shooting her through the back of the neck and head.

This totally cowardly and indefensible act calls for swift condemnation and action against the Israeli government, Israeli Defenses Forces and those responsible for this murder.

The American government cannot stand by and treat this as business as usual with the Israeli government. There must be an accounting and ramifications for this murderous act against a Palestinian-American journalist.

Excerpted from Al Jazeera 5.11.2022

• Calls for an independent investigation into the killing of veteran Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh grow amid global outrage.
• Abu Akleh has been shot and killed by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank.
• The 51-year-old was covering an Israeli army raid on the Jenin refugee camp when she was shot in the face by a single bullet, despite wearing a press vest.
• Another Palestinian journalist, Ali al-Samoudi, was wounded in the back but is in a stable condition.
• Al Jazeera, in a statement, said Abu Akleh was “assassinated in cold blood” and called on the international community to hold Israeli forces responsible

Shireen Abu Akleh – January 3, 1971 – May 11, 2022

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shireen_Abu_Akleh

US Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib has called on the American government to investigate the killing of Abu Akleh, saying that Washington should not allow “the same people committing those war crimes to do the investigation,” referring to Israel.

“We need to investigate, ourselves, the killing of an American citizen. Somebody that was out there being a guardian of truth and doing her job was murdered by an apartheid government that we continue to fund with unconditional aid,” Tlaib told Al Jazeera in a TV interview.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/5/11/veteran-al-jazeera-journalist-killed-by-israeli-forces-live-news

 

Lee Heidhues  = May 7, 2022

It was a joyful Saturday on JFK Promenade in San Francisco’s historic Golden Gate Park, celebrating its 150th birthday.

A large crowd gathered on a breezy sunny windswept afternoon as Mayor London Breed signed into law legislation designating a 1.5 strip of land car free forever. There was music, roller skating, dragon dancers, people of all ages, City officials who soaked in this momentous victory.

It took decades of tireless advocacy. The People prevailed and put San Francisco on the map as a leader in listening to the desires of people who want an oasis free of cars.

Following is a photo montage which conveys the victory better than words.

Lee Heidhues 5.6.2022

The chaos at the Hall of Justice on Friday is illustrative of what’s at stake as reactionary forces try to bring down Progressive District Attorney Chesa Boudin.

Boudin ran and was elected on a platform of  Justice for all. Which means holding renegade cops accountable for their law breaking. 

The forces of law and order are spending millions to oust Boudin and give free rein to the cops, once again.

Excerpted from Mission Local 5.6.2022

On Friday San Francisco Superior Court Judge Russell Roeca pushed back the preliminary hearing of former SFPD Officer Chris Samayoa, who shot dead Keita “Icky” O’Neil in 2017.

The hearing was delayed until July, a decision that caused outrage among O’Neil’s supporters, who were thrown out of court for the outburst.

“I’m so emotional, this is affecting me more than I thought it would,” said April Green, O’Neil’s aunt who attended Friday’s hearing at the Hall of Justice. “I was believing in a system that I thought was fair. I don’t know how to respond to this.”

“Oh my God,” Green loudly said from the second row, appearing in disbelief. “Oh my God, oh my God.”

A sheriff’s deputy on the opposite side of the room told Green to quiet down.

James Conger, an attorney with the District Attorney’s office who is prosecuting Samayoa, argued the defense is “doing District Attorney shopping. In other words, the recall is in June, and they hope it succeeds and they’ll get a better deal with a different District Attorney,” he said during the hearing.

“April, please,” Conger told her quietly from his podium.

The side of the courtroom where O’Neil’s supporters sat then began speaking frustratedly. One young man in the third row said something to a deputy, causing a deputy to approach and chastise him. “Step outside,” he ordered. Green and another woman seated in the row ahead began calling to the deputy, telling him to bother them instead of the young man. Suddenly the court erupted in chaos, with O’Neil’s supporters talking over each other and four deputies swarming the area.

“You’re fucking with us, you fuckin’ pigs,” O’Neil’s supporters said as they left the courtroom. 

“The judge has ordered the court closed,” another deputy yelled. “If you fail to leave, you will be detained.”

“Are you serious?” O’Neil’s supporters said. One woman at the front said, “You are evil. Evil. Evil!”  

O’Neil’s group walked out, and a deputy locked the door. Meanwhile, Judge Roeca told Samoya’s defense attorney Julia Fox the hearing would occur on July 14.

Green stood out in the hallway of the Hall of Justice in a ring of supporters with Conger, looking forlorn. She bemoaned that without a district attorney who presses charges on police officers, Black and Latino men would be vulnerable to police use-of-force and killings.

“I believe the judge already made his mind up,” Green told Mission Local. “Did you notice how extra police officers appeared just before he gave  the decision?”

She worries the case will change with the postponement. The first time Boudin called her to let her know that he pressed charges, she was “in disbelief. A white man in a position of power cares for a minority man and brought charges. They know if he is not in office, [Samayoa] is walking.” 

O’Neil’s supporters fear that postponing the matter to July may alter the case, since District Attorney Chesa Boudin’s office is prosecuting Samayoa, and he faces a recall election in June. 

On Dec. 1, 2017, Samayoa shot O’Neil, who was unarmed, video footage showed. O’Neil was pursued as a potential carjacking suspect. In November 2020, District Attorney Chesa Boudin filed felony criminal charges against Samayoa for voluntary and involuntary manslaughter, excessive force, and assault with a firearm. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors granted O’Neil’s mother a $2.5 million settlement. 

Chaos erupts as judge delays hearing of officer accused of killing Keita O’Neil

Top photo – April Green, the aunt of Keita O’Neil, talking to supporters after she and others were thrown out of the courtroom in the Hall of Justice. Attorney James Conger, right, is prosecuting Officer Chris Samayoa for the shooting of O’Neil in 2017.

Lee Heidhues 5.5.2022

For the latest manifesation of the Far Right extremists increasing their judicial and political power in America one need look no further than the pending Supreme Court decision taking away a woman’s right to control their bodies.

The United States is going to extremes to thwart anything deemed liberal and progressive.

In my home City of San Francisco wealthy reactionaries, tapping into fear and paranoia,  want to overthrow the progressive District Attorney in a Recall election.  It will take place on June 7.

This is one battle being waged by fervent reactionaries attempting to destroy anything which resembles progressive thought and action.

Taken to its most severe manifestation this totalitarian way of governance manifested itself in Hitler’s Nazi Germany. The German government, 80 years after the destruction of the Nazi regime, plans to make permanent a living memorial so people never forget the assualt on humanity.

The Voice of America reported Antisemitic incidents reached an all-time high in the United States in 2021, the Anti-Defamation League said in its annual assessment released in late April.

There were 2,717 incidents last year, representing an increase of 34% over 2020 and the highest on record since the New York-based Jewish civil rights group started tracking such cases in 1979. The ADL divides antisemitic incidents into harassment, assault and vandalism.

https://www.voanews.com/a/antisemitic-incidents-set-all-time-high-in-us-in-2021-/6545852.html

One day in the future America may be creating a similiar memorial for its legacy of genocide, racism, discrimination and abolition of individual rights.

Excerpted from Deutsche Welle 5.5.2022

In 2020, the German Bundestag advocated creating a documentation center for the victims of the German war of extermination and the Nazi occupations.

The center aims to shed light on how the devastating Nazi dictatorship with its war, destruction and extermination, including the atrocities of the Holocaust, affected all of Europe. Its focus will be placed on victims in Poland, the Baltic States, the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and Greece.

Two years later, the federal government approved a proposal by Minister of State for Culture Claudia Roth for the realization of the “German Occupation of Europe in the Second World War” (ZWBE) documentation center, which was designed by the German Historical Museum (DHM).

The new documentation center’s goal is to contribute to a better understanding of the present. “Above all, this remembrance should be directed toward the future and make clear how important democracy, the rule of law and active diversity are for the European project and for our country in the heart of Europe, how crucial our commitment is in and for Europe,” Roth said.

The idea is to illustrate the dimension of the Nazis’ reign of terror across Europe. With its decision to establish another memorial and documentation site in Berlin, the German government is advancing key remembrance policy projects decided on in the previous legislative period.

The Bendlerblock building in Berlin was the headquarters of a military resistance group. On July 20, 1944, a group of Wehrmacht officers around Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg carried out an assassination attempt on Hitler that ultimately failed. The leaders of the conspiracy were summarily shot the same night in the courtyard of the Bendlerblock. Today, it’s the German Resistance Memorial Center.

The World War II Documentation Center is not the only memorial in need of a home — three other memorials are supposed to be built in the German capital: for the victims of communist tyranny, the Polish victims of war and Nazi terror, and Nazi victims among Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Top photo –  1943 photo shows Jewish women and chaildren being deported from the Warsaw Ghetto

https://www.dw.com/en/germany-plans-documentation-center-on-nazi-occupation-in-europe/a-61690542

 

Lee Heidhues 5.1.2022

We acted as ushers and met Kathy Boudin at the inauguration of her son Chesa as San Francisco District Attorney on January 8, 2020.

May she Rest in Peace.

Excerpted from The San Francisco Chronicle 5.1.2022

Kathy Boudin, a former member of the radical Weather Underground who took part in a robbery that killed three people, an act that sent her to prison for 22 years and left behind a young son who would become the district attorney of San Francisco, died Sunday at 78.

Chesa Boudin, who was 14 months old at the time of the fatal robbery and was left with a babysitter, was raised in Chicago by the leaders of the Weather Underground, Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers.

Her son, Chesa Boudin, speaking to The Chronicle on Sunday, said he took a red-eye flight to New York overnight and was able to say his final goodbyes. In a statement, he said that “my mom fought cancer for seven years in her unshakably optimistic and courageous way. She made it long enough to meet her grandson, and welcome my father home from prison after 40 years.”

While imprisoned, she taught literacy programs, helped gather funding for college programming in the jail, worked with fellow inmates who were HIV-positive, and earned her master’s degree in adult education.

“She always ended phone calls with a laugh, a habit acquired during the 22 years of her incarceration, when she wanted to leave every person she spoke with, especially me, with joy and hope,” Chesa Boudin said. “She lived redemption, constantly finding ways to give back to those around her.”

Upon her release, Kathy Boudin accepted a job with the St. Luke’s Hospital HIV/AIDS Center, where she helped create programs for women.

Gilbert was granted clemency last year by outgoing New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, and was released from prison on parole in November.

Kathy Boudin, David Gilbert and Chesa Boudin – November 2021

Kathy Boudin and Gilbert reunited immediately after Gilbert’s release, Chesa Boudin said.

“My dad was here with her every day,” Chesa Boudin said.

After more than two decades of incarceration, Kathy Boudin became the co-director and co-founder of Columbia University’s Center for Justice, where her work focused on the criminal justice system and the harm caused by mass incarceration.

Kathy Boudin was a fugitive when she was arrested for the Brinks robbery. She’d fled from an explosion in 1970 at a Manhattan town house where the Weathermen made bombs. The daughter of civil liberties lawyer Leonard Boudin, Kathy Boudin had grown up in a home in which law and politics were debated.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/Kathy-Boudin-formerly-imprisoned-radical-leftist-17140432.php

Lee Heidhues 4.29.2022

Supervisor Connie Chan’s proposal to open JFK Promenade to cars crashed on April 26, 2022 when seven of her fellow legislators said NO. The newly minted JFK Promenade is a signal victory for “Progressives” who fought a pitched battle against Supervisor Chan and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

There will be a settling of scores at the ballot box in the newly drawn boundaries of District 1 in San Francisco. Some Political observers are already saying Connie Chan is at risk. Why?  The inclusion of the Sea Cliff enclave into the District. Wealthy moderate voters.  The area in Red on the Map above shows the additions to the District 1. The toney Sea Cliff, north of Lake Street and Presidio Terrace.

I would argue Connie’s political problem lies elsewhere. It is her flat out betrayal of the “Progressive” base which lifted her to victory.

The San Francisco District 1 Supervisor eked out a 123 vote victory in the 2020 election. (Connie Chan 17,030 – Marjan Philhour 16,907). A victory in large part the result of her environmental commitments.  Candidate Chan earned the nod from the influential national political group Sunrise.  Featured in a recent issue of The New Yorker.

Once in office in 2021 now Supervisor Chan proceeded to turn her political back on the crucial “Progressive” segment of her voters.  Beginning in March 2021, in well documented actions, Supervisor Chan was worked on by the influential Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.  Work which continued through 13 months and up to the final vote which made JFK Promenade a reality.

Supervisor Chan held the first of 14 documented meetings with FAMSF CEO Thomas Campbell, FAMSF management, Platinum Advisors, the well paid and politically connected lobbyist for FAMSF.  See Attached Public Records Request 4.5.2022

IDR Redacted Connie Chan 4.5.2022

Supervisor Chan phone log of conversation of her office phone call with Platinum Advisors 7.27.2021

“Progressives”, particularly those who waged this political battle,will be waiting to teach the Supervisor a tough lesson at the ballot box.  You do not betray the people responsible for your success. The people who waged this battle have long memories and will not soon forget her betrayal.

Liz and Lee Heidhues 4.28.2022

It was a celebratory windy, sunny afternoon on now official JFK Promenade in San Francisco’s historic Golden Gate Park. A struggle which has been ongoing 50 years.

The celebration was attended by San Francisco officials City Attorney David Chiu, SFMTA Director of Transportation Jeffrey Tumlin, and State Senator Scott Wiener.

The Senator made pointed remarks talking about the “Shit” advocates for JFK Promenade confronted. Wiener talked about SB 228 which passed the legislature in 2020 and made possible the expedited decision to create JFK Promenade. Absent this State law creation of JFK Promenade would have been mired in bureaucratic infighting for years.

It was two years ago today in the depths of The Pandemic that Mayor London Breed decreed JFK Drive to be a car free zone for The People.

Two years on, San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors, following a lengthy pitched battle, voted YES on behalf of future generations in an era of Climate Change.

Thousands of citizens rallied for over a year to make JFK Promenade reality.

Overcoming entrenched opposition from the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. Prevailing despite citizens who feel it their birthright to drive their climate killing cars anywhere anytime.

San Francisco strikes a blow for the environment and reaffirms it will be a leader in preserving open spaces for The People.

Following are photos from the joyous celebration.