The Truth about Uncle Tom and Tim Scott is No Uncle Tom

by Vivian “Vicki” Jackson

Who was Uncle Tom in Stowe’s novel? A Maryland slave, Josiah Henson, was abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe’s choice to depict in her anti-slavery novel, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” which was influential in starting the Civil War.Josiah Henson used the Underground Railroad to escape to freedom, he protected fugitives, and he made several trips to bring other slaves to freedom. He settled in Canada where he established a school for fugitive slaves and he worked to organize the Afro-Canadian community that emphasized independence from any white patronage.The climax of the novel “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” is a tearjerker. Uncle Tom is asked to reveal where two runaway slave women were hiding. He knew that concealing their whereabouts would bring about his own death. He protected them anyway and Tom was beaten to death Unfortunately, Uncle Tom’s true character is only contained within the pages of the novel. The stage productions omitted Tom’s protective abolitionist attitude because it was not financially profitable regarding ticket sales. Therefore, stage producers “changed” Uncle Tom’s image into a man whose English is poor, and who will sell out black people for any white person’s favor. It is that “distorted” image of him as being a sell out that made “Uncle Tom” a negative connotative term. Josiah Henson, the real Uncle Tom, was an author, abolitionist, and minister. His settlement in Canada was the last station of the Underground Railroad. He died in Canada at the age of 93.We do a disservice to Josiah Henson/Uncle Tom by comparing him to such black people as Tim Scott and Clarence Thomas. They are no Uncle Toms. I shared this with my students throughout my career. Share with your friends, children, and grandchildren. Let’s not distort the images of our Black Abolitionists.

The REAL UNCLE TOM: Josiah Henson

Conflicting narratives were fed to us for generations, negative indoctrination was at the forefront of those self hate teachings from white Americans!!! Josiah Henson was definitely not a SAMBO the likes of white man’s Senator and other so-called Black Republicans!!! There are SAMBOS!!! BUT, HE IS NO UNCLE TOM!!!

‘She Embarrassed Everyone Who Supported Her’: Amanda Seales Hits Back at VP Kamala Harris for Saying America Isn’t a Racist Country

Posted byBy Atahabih Germain | May 4, 2021 CommentsComments (0)

Those familiar with actress and social justice activist Amanda Seales, know she presents herself as having a zero-tolerance policy for minimizing topics on the well-being of Black and brown bodies in America. When it comes to the subject of racism, Seales’ tell-it-how-she-thinks-it-is approach applies to anyone regardless of status

So it came as no surprise that when Vice President Kamala Harris agreed with the only Black Republican in the Senate, Sen. Tim Scott‘s controversial viewpoint following President Joe Biden’s “first address to congress,” Seales had much to say. Following Biden’s speech on Wednesday, April 28, Scott claimed that “America was not a racist country,” setting some quarters of social media ablaze. 

(L-R) Amanda Seales and Kamala Harris. Photo by Leon Bennett/WireImage. Joe Raedle/Getty Images

“Ok! So, everybody on some bullsh-t. Cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool,” Seales began her fiery post she uploaded to her Instagram page on Saturday, May 1. “That was dumb and embarrassing and she embarrassed everyone who supported her.”

In the caption of the nearly 30-second clip, the “Insecure” star wrote, “Damn, Kamala. The paradoxical political pandering is TIRED and insulting to the constituency that supported you along with affirming the doubts of those that didn’t,” and added, “Please fix this ASAPtuously.”

During Harris’ 2020 presidential campaign run, Seales had often advocated for the candidate, using her social media platforms to encourage all her supporters to go out and vote despite the hesitancy many reserved for the now-vice president. Harris’ record as the top prosecutor in San Francisco and then California before being elected to the U.S. Senate from that state was one of the issues the Black community had with her as a presidential candidate. 

Still, Seales promoted Harris. The 39-year-old even once wrote on Twitter, “STOP SAYING KAMALA HARRIS IS JUST AS BAD DONAL TRUMP” in response to those who did not favor Harris. She added, “JUST STOP. SH-T IS NOT ACCURATE OR HELPFUL AND ANNOYING AF.”

Still, Seales’ remarks garnered mixed reactions from many. While some agreed with the actress and were equally stunned at Harris’ statement, many either condemned Seales’ critique of Harris or reiterated their anti-Harris beliefs. 

“What’s dumb and embarrassing, is a BW who claims to advocate for blackness, demeaning this BW based on a spliced 12 second clip.” They added, “If you knew a damn thing about our VP, you’d know she’s been among the loudest to speak on America’s “Achilles Heel”, it’s racism.” The user concluded her post by telling the former “The Real” host to “think next time.”

Sen. Tim Scott offered his thoughts last Wednesday as part of the Republican rebuttal to President Biden’s congressional address, with Scott stating: “Hear me clearly. America is not a racist country. It’s backward to fight discrimination with different types of discrimination and it’s wrong to try to use our painful past to dishonestly shut down debates in the present.”

The following day Harris was interviewed on “Good Morning America,” where she was asked whether she agreed with Scott’s statement. She replied, “No, I don’t think America is a racist country, but we also do have to speak truth to the history of racism in our country and its existence today.” The vice president faced harsh criticism following her statement.

When asked by Craig Melvin whether he too thought America was racist, the President Biden responded, “No, I don’t think the American people are racist. But I think after 400 years, African-Americans have been left in a position where they are so far behind the eight ball in terms of education, health in terms of opportunity.” He added, “I don’t think America is racist but I think the overhang from all of the Jim Crow — and before that, slavery — have had a cost.”

6-Year-Old Boy Sent to Court for Picking Tulip

“Should children who believe in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy be making these significant life choices?”

A 6-year-old boy who was brought to court after picking a tulip is the latest example used by advocacy groups attempting to raise the minimum age for entering the juvenile justice system in North Carolina.

Attorney Julie Boyer’s child client was on trial for injury to real property after he stopped to pluck the flower from a yard near his bus stop, according to The Herald-Sun. Boyer said she gave him crayons and a coloring book during the proceedings, as he didn’t have the mental capacity to understand what was happening to him.

Boyer and others argue against the state’s juvenile justice law which holds the lowest minimum age in the world to enter the juvenile courts at 6. The maximum age was changed a few years ago from 16 to 18. Parents are still part of the process, but a child defendant is “expected to assist in his or her defense,” per the outlet.

“Should children who believe in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy be making these significant life choices? I think the answer is no,” Chief District Court Judge J. Corpening told WECTNews.

The National Juvenile Justice Network and the Juvenile Justice Advisory Committee recommend raising the minimum age to at least 10. State Rep. Marcia Morey introduced a bill to make it that age in March, after her first attempt in 2019 failed.

Lyana Hunter, a New Hanover County public defender’s office employee, said bringing young children to court can be quite detrimental.

“A 6-year-old — we’re talking about someone that’s in kindergarten, first grade. They don’t understand the process, they don’t understand what’s going on,” she told WECTNews. “The earlier that you introduce a child to the criminal justice system, the higher the chances are that they will remain in the criminal justice system.”

As for the tulip-picking defendant, the judge dismissed the case after the boy’s mother “couldn’t make the intake meeting,” according to The Herald-Sun.

“He gets served with papers. His mom gets served with papers,” Boyer explained. “It was just appalling.”

Acting as his own attorney, Philly man is acquitted of murder after nearly 13 years in prison

Hassan Bennett, right, pictured with his father in Philadelphia after being acquitted of second-degree murder. (Courtesy of Hassan Bennett)
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By  Meagan FlynnReporterMay 9, 2019 at 4:13 a.m. PDT

Wearing a suit felt like a sham.

Hassan Bennett had been locked up for nearly 13 years — 4,614 days, he said — and so when he recently stood before the jury in a Philadelphia courtroom, he didn’t want to pretend he had been anywhere else. He dressed for court each day in his powder-blue prison uniform, with “DOC” written on the back in big bold letters, and throughout the 11-day trial, explained to jurors why they could not find him guilty of second-degree murder.

“They told me not to wear a prison uniform. I’m here in front of you in a prison uniform,” the 36-year-old told jurors during his closing argument, as he recounted to The Washington Post. “They told me not to let you see my prison arm band. I show you my prison armband. They told me not to stand in front of you representing myself.”ADVERTISING

And yet there he was — representing himself without the help of any attorneys, with a mandatory life sentence on the line. It was his fourth time on trial for the ambush shooting death of Devon English in 2006, and Bennett’s second time acting as his own lawyer. But on Monday, he made sure it would be the last.

Achieving an exceedingly rare feat, the pro se defendant with no law degree was acquitted of murder.

The jury deliberated for 81 minutes. For Bennett, it was 76 minutes too long.

“I was sitting in the holding cell thinking, after five minutes, what’s taking so long?” he said. “When the jury came in and they called me up, I already knew it was a not-guilty verdict.”

The brash confidence is a product of more than 12 years of preparation from a Pennsylvania prison, studying case law in the library by day and meticulously drafting legal briefs in his cell by night, using a flickering TV as a light source.

He told the story to The Post by phone on Wednesday evening while strolling with his goddaughter through a neighborhood park, periodically hanging up by accident because, he said, he is only just learning how to use a touch screen cellphone. “Sorry,” he said. “It’s my first time. I had to ask the kid what to do.”

His story starts on a September night in 2006, when police accused Bennett of masterminding a plot to kill 19-year-old English after losing $20 to him in a dice game; a second teenager, 18-year-old Corey Ford, was shot in the legs and the buttocks. Lamont Dade, 16, was also arrested in the shooting, to which he pleaded guilty in 2008 and was sentenced to 25 to 50 years in prison.

In their original statements to police, both Dade and Ford identified Bennett as the shooter — but later, at Bennett’s trial, they recanted, saying a homicide detective coerced them into making the statements.

Bennett maintained his innocence from the start. He told police he was on the phone with a friend at home when he heard the shots ring out, then ran to the scene to see what happened. But he said his original lawyer failed to introduce the phone records or call the witnesses that he believes would have supported his alibi, saving him years in prison.

His first trial in 2008 resulted in a mistrial, his second in conviction months later. As he petitioned for a third trial, his post-conviction appellate attorney lost appeal after appeal — until finally, in 2014, against the advice of every sane person in the legal system, Bennett told a judge he wanted to do it himself. He said he was tired of losing.

“They told me, if you mess up here, your tail is done,” he said. “Well, I’m not gonna mess up then. There is no room for error. This is the time you rely on yourself. They call it crunchtime in basketball, when the best player in the game gets the ball with five seconds left and it’s his last shot. He wins or loses on this shot. That’s how I felt.”

From then on, Bennett’s casual study of the legal system turned rigorous. To teach himself to write in legalese, he sought the help of his cellmate, nicknamed “Brother Mook” — a legal-savvy mentor who would rip up Bennett’s handwritten draft petitions into tiny shreds if he failed to write them in the proper format. “He was like my Yoda,” Bennett said.

Eventually, after reviewing every trial transcript and police record in his own case, he turned his attention to former Philadelphia homicide detective James Pitts, who interviewed Ford and Dade to obtain their witness statements against Bennett.

In recent years, Pitts has been accused of coercing witness statements in at least 10 cases, and in some murder cases, judges have vacated convictions because of Pitts’s misconduct, as the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. (Mired in scandal, he is on desk duty while the police department investigates, the Inquirer reported.) Bennett petitioned a court for a new trial on the basis that Pitts had used the same coercive tactics to obtain statements from Ford and Dade identifying him as the shooter.

A judge did not grant that request, but in 2017, Philadelphia Common Pleas Court Judge M. Teresa Sarmina vacated Bennett’s conviction and granted a new trial on the grounds of ineffective counsel. Bennett’s third trial last September, when he first represented himself, resulted in a hung jury — with all but one juror finding Bennett not guilty. ““If the defendant knew how close he was [to acquittal], he would have been crushed,” juror David Scott, a college professor, told the Inquirer afterward.

But Bennett said he was not crushed. By the time trial No. 4 rolled around, he was feeling more at ease than ever, as though a guilty verdict weren’t a possibility.

In his opening statement last month, he told the jury it was a case about using common sense — and asked jurors to remember a song from “Sesame Street.” He described himself as a suspect who didn’t fit the description, like Oscar the Grouch in a photo array of fruits. “One of these things just doesn’t belong here,” he sang.

“The Commonwealth will try to tell you that Oscar the Grouch belongs because Oscar the Grouch is always seen on the corner. He has a smart mouth. He’s nobody’s favorite on Sesame Street,” Bennett said. “But that doesn’t make him guilty when the evidence shows he’s not guilty.”

His case was that simple, he said. He submitted the phone records. He called the three witnesses he said corroborated his alibi. He cross-examined Ford and Dade, who again maintained Bennett was not at the scene.

And then he called Pitts.

He accused the former homicide detective of coercing statements from Ford and Dade — and questioned why, if Pitts were credible, prosecutors elected not to call him as a witness. Pitts denied the accusations. But the jury, Bennett told The Post, ultimately “saw through his hogwash.”

“Why didn’t the prosecutor call Detective Pitts?” he asked the jury, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported from the courtroom. “He’s the lead detective. He’s the head honcho. Pitts worked the witnesses for hours on end. We can’t tolerate this misconduct. We can’t tolerate these actions.”

Spokespeople for the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office didn’t respond to a request for comment late Wednesday, but told the Inquirer the office disagreed with the jury’s verdict. The victim’s family has long believed Bennett was guilty, saying that every new trial is “bringing back the pain of Devon’s death,” the Inquirer reported.

“I’m still trying to cope with it. I think it is wrong. I think the whole process is unfair,” Arturo Alleyne, English’s father, told the Inquirer of Monday’s acquittal. “All of this will be cleared up by God.”

Leaving the courthouse on Monday, Bennett said the first thing he did was go home and have a home-cooked meal with his family. He’s spent his time this week re-acclimating to life on the outside, asking his 10-year-old goddaughter to teach him how to use an Android, remembering to look for cars when crossing the street.

But by Friday, he said, he plans to get back to work. He said the court-appointed attorney who was required to be on “standby” throughout his trial — in case he decided he no longer wanted to represent himself — invited him to his office to discuss how Bennett could assist with briefs or investigations. He plans to study for the bar exam, he said, and to one day have clients of his own.

He said he already knew where he thought he might open his office.

“People from our neighborhood, from low-income neighborhoods, they don’t really know the law,” he said. “But see, there are people from the legal community that don’t know about the low-income neighborhoods. They don’t know about ‘the hood,’ as they call it.

“I am that bridge.”

Color of Change’s Rashad Robinson has had enough of corporate America’s empty platitudes

Robinson’s civil rights nonprofit is pushing companies to get on the right side of history—whether or not they’re ready.

Color of Change president Rashad Robinson mobilizes his nonprofit’s 7 million members for change. [Photo: Dee Dwyer]

BY WESLEY LOWERY LONG READADVERTISEMENTADVERTISEMENTADVERTISEMENT

Rashad Robinson was on a zoom call with his staff in June when he got the news.ADVERTISEMENT

The TV show Cops, a mainstay of American culture for 32 years, the foundation for decades of ride-along-with-the-police programming that deifies law enforcement, was going off the air. It was a major moment in television history, and one that, for many, seemed to have materialized out of thin air—a knee-jerk response to the racial politics of the moment. In reality, it was the culmination of a seven-year-long campaign by Robinson and Color of Change, the civil rights organization that he helms.

Color of Change had long viewed Cops as blatant public relations for law enforcement that reinforced racial stereotypes—and that was beamed directly into millions of living rooms each week. In 2013, in the wake of the shooting deaths of Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis, both unarmed Black teens, and outrage over police stop-and-frisk enforcement in New York City and elsewhere, the nonprofit launched a social media campaign calling on Fox, the show’s then distributor, not to renew it. Next came a petition, targeting Fox executives and advertisers. Then came the meetings with network execs. A protest outside of Fox’s L.A. studios was in the works when the network suddenly announced, in May 2013, that it would no longer air the show. But Cops had staying power, soon landing at Spike TV (now the Paramount Network). It would take another half decade of public and private pressure by Color of Change—along with the racial reckoning brought on this summer by the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd—to knock the show off the air in the United States. (Cops is still producing episodes for international markets.)

“Is it canceled canceled?” Robinson recalls asking. He had trouble, at first, believing the news. He had no time to celebrate beyond a quick smile, however. There were more battles to wage.

It should come as no surprise that Color of Change was one of the forces behind the Cops cancellation. What began 15 years ago as a scrappy digital upstart focused on marshaling an online response to stories of racial injustice is now one of the heavy hitters in American civil rights activism. The organization’s presence can be felt in nearly every racial civil rights battle currently taking place in America—from corporate boardrooms to television sets to prosecutors’ offices and judges’ chambers.

Color of Change has launched a political action committee, pouring money into the coffers of progressive prosecutors who vow to bring accountability for police killings and brutality. It’s behind a sustained campaign to change how Black and brown people are represented by Hollywood. And, increasingly, the organization is a player in the business world.

Over the past year, Color of Change has further solidified its role as both lead agitator and diversity adviser for corporate America. It led the recent campaign to demand that Facebook and other social media companies take aggressive action to rid their platforms of hate speech, pressuring hundreds of advertisers, including Coca-Cola, Unilever, and Verizon, to pull their money. Through the “Beyond the Statement” campaign, which launched in June, Color of Change is challenging corporate America to do more than offer empty platitudes in the wake of racial unrest. It has targeted fast-food companies, including McDonald’s and Burger King, along with retailers such as Nike, for talking about racial justice while not paying workers a living wage. And the group has gone after investment firms that release statements about equity but also give money to police unions and foundations.

“It’s a 21st-century approach to issues that date back to 1619,” says Chris Lehane, Air­bnb’s senior vice president for global policy and communications. He credits the organization for “holding us accountable” for racism on the platform in 2015. Since then, Airbnb has worked closely with Color of Change on issues of diversity within the company and on the platform.

Robinson, who has led Color of Change since 2011, sees his mission as creating a new infrastructure for civil rights activism, mobilizing online outrage into tangible force that “holds corporations accountable, that pushes for changes to how the media engages, that changes the narrative and the stories that we tell ourselves about change. And that tills the soil for long-term policy change.”

Vice president and chief of campaigns Arisha Hatch oversees Color of Change’s political work. [Photo: Dee Dwyer]

The nonprofit is structured almost like a newsroom or a political campaign, with different staff members clustered around areas of expertise and focus: criminal justice, technology, Hollywood, media representation. They identify opportunities to bend the structure of culture and society and apply what Arisha Hatch, the group’s vice president and chief of campaigns, calls an “inside-out approach”: pressuring decision makers by leveraging Color of Change’s massive reach to flood organizations with calls, emails, and the specter of boycotts.

The organization’s email list ballooned from 1.7 million members in the spring to more than 7 million members in October, and its text-message list grew from around 100,000 people to nearly 6 million. And that digital infrastructure, combined with financial independence—unlike many civil rights groups, Color of Change does not accept corporate donations—has allowed the organization to be seemingly everywhere.

If you’re a newly woke company, wondering how best to devote money and resources to fight racism, the group is likely your first call. And if you’re a corporation or organization besieged by racial controversy, Color of Change is likely leading the digital picket line.


Color of Change was born out of the federal government’s disastrous mishandling of Hurricane Katrina, in 2005. James Rucker, a Black computer scientist working with MoveOn.org, had been interested in finding a way to apply the nonprofit’s digital organizing and fundraising strategy—empowering regular people to work together to apply political pressure through strength in numbers—to issues important to communities of color.

Then the hurricane hit, leaving millions stranded and the news channels playing clips of Black Americans begging for help from rooftops and wading through neck-deep water. “Those in power don’t fear disappointing or neglecting or turning their back on Black folks,” Rucker says, articulating the problem that he saw.

He called a friend, the activist and now CNN host Van Jones, and they soon launched Color of Change. It began with a single email, sent to 1,200 people. Before long, they had 10,000 signatures on a high-profile petition demanding an urgent, robust response from local and federal officials. They had spent more than a year largely focused on the aftermath of Katrina when Rucker learned about six Black teenagers in Louisiana who were facing 20-year sentences after an altercation that left a white high school student hospitalized. The Black teens were being charged with attempted murder for what looked like a schoolyard fight. Color of Change sprang into action in support of the teens, who became known as the Jena 6, raising nearly $300,000 for their legal defense. With the case now in the spotlight, the local prosecutor reduced the charges.

Within a few years, Color of Change had amassed a powerful digital following and an email list of nearly a million people. It began launching even more high-­profile campaigns, including a 2009 effort to get Fox News host Glenn Beck, who called President Barack Obama a racist, kicked off the air, by applying pressure to advertisers. The group’s tactics—online boycotts, hashtags, and petitions—raised eyebrows in traditional civil rights spaces, but they filled an important void. “What they were able to do is step into a space where many entities in the social justice community and great society were still figuring it out,” said Derrick Johnson, national president of the NAACP.

When Fox News canceled Beck’s show two years later, Color of Change staffers gathered in the organization’s office to watch the final broadcast. By then, Rucker had realized two things: that his group’s digital activism could deliver results and that it would need new leadership to channel that energy toward even bigger fights—someone with a master’s understanding of power and influence.

Rucker reached out to Robinson, who at the time was second in command at the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD). In his six years there, Robinson had gained a reputation as a smart strategist, capable of targeting media companies to bend public opinion. But, by 2011, Robinson was ready for a new challenge.

“It was a big deal for a lot of Black folks that had worked inside the movement that I got to drive things,” he recalls of his time at GLAAD, “but I also saw the limitations of my representation.” So in 2011, he took a risk—and a pay cut—to become executive director of Color of Change, which then employed only five people full time. (Today, there are 153 employees.) “I went from having a lot of resources at my disposal to wondering would I have money three months from now to pay folks,” Robinson recalls.

From Presence to Power: How Color of Change has already shaped business and society

He quickly began exploring new directions for the organization. Color of Change continued its media campaigns, applying public pressure to turn TV advertisers against the likes of Bill O’Reilly, but also took the lead on a number of social justice issues, raising awareness of police and vigilante killings and advocating for the prosecution of police misconduct. Following the 2012 shooting of Trayvon Martin, in Sanford, Florida, Color of Change was among the first groups to illuminate the role of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a conservative public policy organization, in the spread of so-called Stand Your Ground laws. After online petitions and a deluge of emails and phone calls from Color of Change members, Pepsi, Coca-Cola, and Kraft Foods announced that they would withdraw their memberships to ALEC. Three months after Martin’s death, with Color of Change members gathered outside Amazon’s annual shareholders meeting in Seattle, attempting to deliver a petition full of signatures, the e-commerce giant became the 16th company to end its ALEC membership.

“Companies invest a lot of effort and resources in managing the way people perceive and feel about their brand. So when you have a group of activists come out and start pointing out the hypocrisy in saying one thing and doing the other, that puts them in the danger zone,” says Nandini Jammi, cofounder of the online activist group Sleeping Giants, which also helped pioneer advertiser boycotts in the digital era. Robinson says that those early fights were not necessarily the organization’s most successful or influential, but they set the stage. “They allowed us to prove to members and those that joined us that investment in working with Color of Change was going to have benefit,” he says. “And it proved to the targets that they couldn’t ignore us.”

Robinson knew how to turn attention into power. He had grown up on eastern Long Island, New York, in a Black family that had landed there after the Great Migration. “When you’re Black [and living] in a community for multiple generations, you have a relationship to not just the Black community but the white people in the community,” Robinson recalls. “You have an idea about power and how you’re seen.” During high school, he produced and hosted a political talk show, Riverhead Teen Talk, on the local public access television channel, where he occasionally debated local callers. While studying political science at Marymount University, in Virginia, he worked as an organizer. A few years later, he appeared as a campaign manager on a short-lived Showtime reality show called American Candidate, in which 10 contestants mounted mock presidential bids.

One of Robinson’s earliest lessons was that “Black faces in high places” politics had its limits. Like most Black Americans of his generation, he’d grown up in a household with Ebony and Jetmagazines on the coffee table. A new wave of Black bankers, businessmen, and police chiefs was celebrated as the key to fundamentally changing a nation that, since its inception, has worked against its Black residents. But as more Black faces ascended­—even to the White House—inequity and disparity persisted.

This same realization later powered the Black Lives Matter movement. A new generation of young people became disenchanted as, even during the administration of the nation’s first Black president, it seemed little about the structures and systems under which they lived were changing. Robinson and Hatch, who joined Color of Change in 2012 and is now the group’s second in command, have steered the organization toward addressing these root problems even as they tackle of-the-moment issues that are making headlines.

Color of Change leverages its membership to move from “presence to power,” Robinson says, by forcing decision makers to confront the real people impacted by the choices they make. He says he also hopes to disrupt the “magical thinking” that is too common in activist spaces. “We’re trying to help people recognize that we can’t have charitable solutions to structural problems. You don’t solve the Flint water crisis just by sending water bottles. You don’t solve the crisis of inner-­city education and education at Black and brown schools by doing mentorship and service days. Those are ways to help, but those are not ways to undo the inequality,” he explains.

“People have a lot of Schoolhouse Rock theories about how change happens,” Robinson continues. “We’ve done a lot in our movement to talk about systems that hurt Black people. How do we actually change [them]? Otherwise we will get a lot more programs that work to fix Black people, and Black families, as opposed to working to fix the structures that hurt us.”


Perhaps no campaign has taken on more urgency for Color of Change, or been higher profile, than its battle with Facebook. For years, the organization has been among the groups pressuring the social media juggernaut to audit its internal diversity and inclusion efforts and publicly pressing the platform to more aggressively curb users and groups that post hate speech and calls to violence.

Despite periodically agreeing to a call or a meeting with civil rights organizations, Facebook had done frustratingly little in response to their demands, Robinson says. Moments after an hourlong video call with Zuckerberg and other Facebook officials in June, Robinson told The Washington Post: “What was clear coming out of that meeting is Mark has no real understanding of the history or current impact of voter suppression, racism, or discrimination. He lives in a bubble.”

[Photo: Dee Dwyer]

By early summer of 2020, the civil rights community was incensed that Facebook had allowed President Trump to declare “when the looting starts, the shooting starts,” in response to the George Floyd protests, and infuriated that far-right groups continued to abuse the platform. “It became clear that no amount of bad press affected Facebook,” says Jessica González, co-CEO of Free Press, a media advocacy group that works closely with Color of Change in the tech sector. “It became clear that going after advertisers was going to be an important strategy.”

Color of Change began organizing an advertiser boycott. Leaning on its membership ranks, it petitioned major companies to refuse to spend money with Facebook until the platform made a serious commitment to addressing the spread of hate speech. A coalition of groups took out a full-page ad in the Los Angeles Times to announce the “Stop Hate for Profit” campaign, and placed a flurry of phone calls urging corporations to pause any ad buys on Facebook and other social media companies. At the time of Floyd’s death, many advertisers were already reconsidering their financial commitments due to the pandemic. Now, corporate America was scrambling for ways to show its support for racial justice. Once the first few companies signed on, others lined up. Soon, hundreds of companies had pulled or paused their advertising on Facebook and other platforms.

In July, Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg met with the campaign’s leaders, who demanded she take more seriously the threat created by allowing racism to fester on the platform. The meeting, Robinson said publicly, was a “disappointment.” His sharp comments were yet another part of the strategy, aimed at showing the company that small concessions wouldn’t be a means of blunting criticism in the future. Facebook ultimately committed to installing a more permanent civil rights infrastructure within the company. More recently, it’s taken steps to combat the spread of hate speech and ban the conspiracy group QAnon from the platform.

“While [the campaign] hasn’t led to as many changes as I would like, my little civil rights organization is taking on the biggest communications platform the world has ever known,” Robinson says. “And has forced a scenario in which Mark and Sheryl have to deal with our attacks, which are rooted in their failures, and also have to still work with us.”

Officials at Facebook say they now consider Color of Change a partner, albeit an at times adversarial one. “They have been an important part of some of the changes that we’ve been making, and I think that they are really masterful at what they do,” says Ru­chika Budhraja, a Facebook spokesperson who has been involved in the negotiations with Color of Change.

Ashley Boyd, vice president of advocacy and engagement at Mozilla, who works with Color of Change on diversity issues, says the technology space is particularly ripe for this kind of pressure. The sector’s “move fast and break things” mindset is often blamed for reinforcing unethical decision-making, but Boyd notes that it also makes many of these companies uniquely prepared to undergo significant changes quickly. Color of Change’s effectiveness, she says, stems from the way it uses storytelling to force companies to see the consequences of their actions for communities they are otherwise inclined to overlook. The organization has had particular success with Airbnb, which recently announced a new effort to track racism on its platform, and Pinterest, which banned images of plantation weddings in 2019.

[Photo: Dee Dwyer]

At the same time, Color of Change has redoubled its efforts in Hollywood. Building on the model Robinson learned at GLAAD, which fought for more complex portrayals of gay and lesbian people on television, Hatch has set out to alter the way Black Americans are shown on the big and small screens. The group has waged an all-out assault on any programming riddled with stereotypes. In addition to the Cops campaign, it stopped Oxygen from airing a reality series about the rapper Shawty Lo, titled All My Babies’ Mamas, which intended to make comedy of the fact that he’d fathered 11 children by 10 different women, and it petitioned Bravo to turn its cameras off during fights that broke out during its Real Housewives series.

The organization also now offers consulting services to Hollywood writers rooms and works directly with production companies to make sure they’re factoring in inclusion and representation from the very beginning of the process. Color of Change has released a groundbreaking report on the lack of diversity among writers and showrunners, and the first-of-its-kind “Normalizing Injustice” study, published in early 2020, on how crime entertainment distorts our understanding of the criminal justice system. Robinson and his team have worked with creatives like director Ava DuVernay and producer Dream Hampton to promote award-winning projects such as the Central Park Five miniseries When They See Us and Surviving R. Kelly.

Hatch, who launched Color of Change’s political action committee in 2018, also used DuVernay’s When They See Us to encourage Black voters to push for reform-­minded district attorneys. The organization helped to elect more than a dozen in the 2018 midterms, and released a full slate of endorsements ahead of the 2020 election, signaling a new front for Color of Change.

While Robinson concedes that his organization has made progress, this work is part of a long game. None of us knows what will bring the next moment of reckoning. But when it comes, Color of Change, and its millions of members, will be ready.


Wesley Lowery is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of They Can’t Kill Us All: The Story of the Struggle for Black Lives.

Passing of Ali Woodson, Petition to President Obama, KPFA Thank You’s, Free Tix to Yoshi’s, BET LensOnTalent

NEWS NOW!
http://NowTruth.org/
(510) 394-4701
EMAIL: nowtruth@nowtruth.org Twitter: http://twitter.com/nowtruth



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Tribute to Ali Ollie Woodson (The Temptations) – Whatever It Takes:

انّا للہ و انّا الیہ راجعون  Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji’un) Surely we belong to Allah and to Him shall we return…

I am sad to inform you that former Temptation lead singer Ali Ollie Woodson has died after a battle with cancer. He was 58 with a wife and two children. A friend, client and arguably the BEST SOUL R & B VOICE EVER, not only of the Temptations, but EVER!!
The best a cappella performance I have ever witnessed was the improv rifting he did at an appearance on the Arsenio Hall Show with Evander Holyfield and Hammer where Ali saaaaang during the entire commercial break that was soo incredible that Arsenio could not stop him when the show returned from break Arsenio let him continue into the show after the commercial break because the crowd was going totally bananas!! Arsenio let him continue to saaaang after the show resumed and we ALL just sat and listened mesmerised in complete amazement, wonder and joy, now Keep in mind that show had Evander Holyfield and Hammer as guest as Evander was preparing for a title fight!!!!! At the Stag Festival in Romania, he did a featured segment with the Temptations that is still being raved about where he continued to sing solo for 20 minutes while the others went to the dressing room and changed! You can listen to his music at http://www.aliolliewoodson.com/

Biography

He is, quite simply, the Voice. The name Ali Ollie Woodson may not be familiar to large numbers of readers, but to those in the Soul music business he is known as one of the greatest modern singers.  In a career that spans 25 years, he has worked as lead singer for the Drifters and (the post-Teddy Pendergrass) Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes.  He has also served as guest vocalist on dozens of recordings of artists from Freda Payne to Paul Jackson, and as a backing vocalist for Whitney Houston, Rachelle Ferelle and Aretha Franklin.  However, his true coming out was as the lead singer of the Temptations from 1984-1996.

Temptations fans consider the late 70s as perhaps the group’s darkest days, culminating with the departure of lead singer Dennis Edwards and the group’s ill-fated move to Atlantic Records.  The group’s return to Motown in 1980 brought some commercial life (and Edwards) back to the group, but the continuing revolving door of group members and producers resulted in a series of mediocre albums.  Then, when Edwards again quit the Tempts in 1984, the group called upon Woodson to take over lead vocals and former Earth Wind & Fire guitarist Al McKay to produce Truly for You.  The result was the greatest Temptations album of the past 25 years, and a permanent place for Woodson alongside Edwards and David Ruffin in Temptations history.  His gritty, expressive voice was the perfect contrast to the classically smooth Temptations’ harmonies, and his ability to delicately handle ballads gave the group a versatility it generally didn’t have during the Edwards years. Click here to watch a live performance in Japan with the Temptations of “Just My Imagination” and “My Girl” with just the accompanment of a piano! He also brought along songwriting skills, co-penning “Treat Her Like A Lady,” (click to watch video) the smash hit from that album. Watch the video of his performance of “Some Enchanted Evening” with the Temptations here:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REW1qKnxjVY

Ali Ollie Woodson Testimony on TBN:

His work on the next year’s To Be Continued… was equally impressive, particularly the powerful ballad “Someone,” “Lady Soul” (click to watch video) perhaps Woodson’s finest recorded moment and “Special” (click to watch video), “Touch Me” (click to watch video) Oddly, Edwards rejoined the group, replacing Woodson in 1987 for Together Again, but was gone again within a year.  Woodson then reassumed the lead vocals spot through a handful of lesser albums, as the group struggled to find a contemporary sound.  Finally in 1995 the Temptations released For Lovers Only, a disc of covers of classic pop songs that brought renewed interest in the group.

By 1996, Woodson left the Temptations for good, and fans anticipated that a solo album would soon be on the horizon.  Instead, he worked on a number of different projects, performing in a series of stage plays, providing backing vocals on several soul and jazz albums, touring with other former Temptations Damon Harris and Richard Street , and briefly forming a group with two former Supremes.  Ultimately, he created the Emperors of Soul, a touring group covering Tempations’ and other Motown hits which has received positive reviews around the US .

It would be five years before Ralph Tee of Expansion Records would get Woodson back into the studio to record

Right Here All Along

Right Here All Along, Woodson’s long overdue first solo album.  It was a solid disc, and received kudos in most Soul music publications, which especially raved over his version of the ballad “Turn Out the Stars” (also covered at around the same time by the Manhattans).  It is available in the US through CD Baby.

“Lady Soul”

In 2002 Woodson was offered the lead vocalist position in the Spinners when poor health forced John Edwards to leave the group, but he instead recommended friend Frank Washington, who is now successfully fronting that group.  Woodson has continued to tour with Emperors of Soul, and was most recently seen on national TV as Aretha Franklin’s dynamic duet partner on the Spring 2003 PBS concert special, “Rhythm, Soul & Love.”  He also appeared on Juewett Bostick’s 2003 album It’s Not So Easy, singing “You Need Love.” Woodson later joined Dennis Edwards’ group, the Temptations Revue, ironically singing alongside the former Tempts member he replaced during his second stint with the mothership.

Never Give Up

Reports have come in in early 2009 that Woodson was ill. But by Spring of that year he had released his second album, Never Give Up, on his own Ollywood Records.

Ollie Woodson Farewell:

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MEDIA ADVISORY

June 1, 2010,  Oakland, CA:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: TV * RADIO * PRESS * INTERNET *
You can click on any highlighted word to view or download that itemSign this petition Now to stand against Corruption; Governmental, Legal and Police Misconduct; White Collar Crime; Unfair Employment and Business Practices; Consumer Fraud; Islamophobia and Xenophobia and show YOUR SUPPORT for Government Transparency; Accountability; Civic Reform; Enforcing Ethical Standards; Civil Rights and Religious Freedom!

Contact:
Martin Silverman (510) 394-4701

nowtruth@nowtruth.org;On May 5, 2010 Abdul-Jalil al-Hakim filed an Ethics and “Whistle-Blower” complaint with Congresswoman Barbara Lee, State Assemblyman Sandre Swanson, Alameda County Supervisor Kieth Carson, Oakland California Mayor Ron Dellums, Oakland City Administrator Dan Lindheim, Oakland City Auditor Courtney Ruby, Oakland City Councilpersons Desley Brooks and Larry Reid’s offices against Oakland City Attorney John Russo, Mark Morodomi, Randy Hall, Janie Wong, Anita Hong, Sophia Li, Demetruis Shelton- current President of the National Bar Association, Elizabeth Allen, Erica Harrold, Michele Abney, Eliada Perez; former Oakland and current San Leandro City Attorney Jayne Williams; former Oakland City employee Pat Smith; Stephan Barber and others of the law firm Ropers, Majeski; Ronald J. Cook, Randy Willoughby, Alex Stuart, Annette Bening’s brother Bradley Bening and others of the law firm Willoughby, Stuart & Bening; for constructing fraudulent fabricated evidence in 1999 and planting that evidence favorable to the defendants in the case files SIX years AFTER the case was closed; engaged in spoliation of remaining evidence in the court files from 1991; and fostered witness testimony based on this planted evidence in the al-Hakim v CSAA and the underlying Rescue Rooter case that was created thru EXTRINSIC FRAUD with accompanying testimony procured thru admitted suborned and solicited perjurious acts by John Russo and others, they engaged in actions to destroy the litigation of al-Hakim’s legal case; they engaged in actions to coverup their unlawful acts.

We have over 30,000 signatures and implore you to click on any one of the links and sign the Petition To The Honorables President Barack Obama and United States Attorney General Eric Holder to raise it’s investigation of corruption involving Attorney General Jerry Brown, Oakland City Attorney John Russo, former Oakland and current San Leandro City Attorney Jayne Williams, former District Attorney Tom Orloff, and current District Attorney Nancy E. O’Malley.

http://ex-why.com/petition-to-the-honorable-president-barack-hussein-obama-ii/

http://nowtruth.org/petition-to-the-honorable-president-barack-obama/

http://superstarmanagement.com/petition-to-the-honorable-president-barack-obama/

http://amwftrust.org/petition-to-the-honorable-president-barack-hussein-obama-ii/

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On Saturday, May 29, 2010 Radio Station KPFA made a special “Thank You” announcement on air for the invaluable food donation and heartfelt community service efforts of:

Abdu and Razak at the “Oakland Halal Meat Market”, 31st & Telegraph Ave, Oakland;
“SemiFreddis”, Owner Tom Franier, Ann Marina, and Kenny with their delicious apricot scones, YUUUUUUMMMMM!;
Mahasin, Brenda, Abdul, and Faheem at the “New Africa Kitchen Halal Resturant” and “Masjidul Waritheen”; and
“Trader Joe’s” Markets. You can click on this link to listen to or download the announcement. http://www.box.net/shared/doa4smp0cf

Download now or listen on posterous

KPFA- GospExp HalalSemiNewAfricaTJs 5-29-10.m4a (3124 KB)Congratulations and our “Thanks” to ALL!

KPFA also made an on-air “Thank You” announcement from the Aaron & Margaret Wallace Foundation to Beth Alsberg, the 70- 8th Grade students, 22 parents and teachers and administrators at Prospect Sierra School whom volunteered as customer service reps at Lincoln Child Center, St. Vincent de Paul, Wardrobe for Opportunity, OTX the Oakland Technology Exchange Center-all from Oakland, CA, – Bay Area Rescue Mission in Richmond CA, and KPFA Radio in Berkeley CA.    You can listen to or download the announcement at this link. http://www.box.net/shared/y0skkr77rm

The students while at KPFA made station promo’s that are now being aired in rotation! Thanks to ALL of YOU for allowing ALL of US to benefit from YOUR generosity!

Thanks for allowing us to help and support you ALL!

The Aaron & Margaret Wallace Foundation provides FREE food; clothing; computers; private school and college admissions educational opportunities; assists with referrals for job training and placement; rental assistance; social services assistance; homelessness assistance; mental and physical health assistance; medical assistance and legal aid assistance referrals for ANYONE whom has the need at the Aaron & Margaret Wallace Foundation website.
Anyone can register at http://AMWFTRUST.ORG by submitting an online request form in a strictly confidential submission and they can also feel free to call the number (510) 394-4101 as well.
Thanks again for the opportunity to serve you and let’s ALL do more and better for those less fortunate.

Free Tickets to John Handy’s Thursday Show at Yoshi’s Oakland!

Winners to be provided a pair of tickets and chosen from those that submit a “Petition to President Obama”

John Handy & His Music

Yoshi’s Oakland

June 3, 2010

510 Embarcadero West

Oakland, CA 94607

PH: 510.238-9200

Showtime: 8pm & 10pm

John Handy is an alto saxophonist who plays the tenor, saxello, baritone, clarinet, oboe and vocals. He is actually a consummate world musician and teacher who devoted his life to using music to elevate the human spirit. His soulful and fiery saxophone style is instantly recognizable to generations of jazz fans world-wide.

As a performer and composer he continues to sweep audiences into ecstasy with his vast range of creative, emotional, and technical inventiveness. With a superb knowledge and practical experience with music of several cultures, he fuses, with each selection, a musical genre that is coherent, provocative, logical, and enjoyable.

Known most readily as a saxophonist in jazz quartet and quintet settings, John Handy is also featured in solo, duets, and large ensembles ranging in size from big bands to concert bands, symphony orchestras, vocal groups, and choirs.

As a singer, he brings a kind of storytelling narrative to the blues that is entertaining, educational, and moving; while his “up tempo” scat vocals could be compared to the best scat singers anywhere. He sings ballads with inventiveness that is rare among singers.

John Handy has performed in the world’s great concert halls including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Berlin Philharmonic Auditorium, San Francisco Opera House, Davies Hall; the major performance venues including Tanglewood, Saratoga (NY), and Wolf Trap; and the pre-eminent jazz festivals including the Monterey Jazz Festival, Newport Jazz Festival, Playboy Jazz Festival, Chicago Jazz Festival, Pacific Coast Jazz Festival; and international jazz festivals at Montreaux (Switzerland), Antibe (France), Berlin, (Germany) Cannes, (France) Yubari and Miyasaki (Japan) among others.

His album and CD covers read like a who’s who of record labels – Columbia, ABC Impulse, Warner Brothers, Milestone, Roulette, Boulevard, Quartet (Harbor), MPS Records and many others. His most recent recordings are “John Handy Live at Yoshi’s” and “John Handy’s Musical Dreamland” (available only on Boulevard Records, Stuttgart, Germany) “Centerpiece,” and “Excursion in Blue.” Some of his earlier works have been reissued on CD – “John Handy: Live at the Monterey Jazz Festival,” “The Second John Handy Album,” “New View,” and “Projections.” He recorded with Sonny Stitt, and recorded nine albums with Charles Mingus Jazz Workshop.

John Handy has taught at San Francisco State University, Stanford University, UC Berkeley, San Francisco Conservatory of Music, among others. He is a popular performer on university and college campuses where he also gives inspired lecture-demonstrations on the technical, academic, spiritual, and creative aspects of music, winning new converts to jazz.

John Handy has written a number of highly acclaimed, original compositions. “Spanish Lady” and “If Only We Knew” both earned Grammy nominations for performance and composition. The popular jazz/blues/funk vocal crossover hit, “Hard Work,” brought him fame in another realm; while “Blues for Louis Jordan” displayed his talents in rhythm and blues. His more extensive works include “Concerto for Jazz Soloist and Orchestra” which was premiered by the San Francisco Symphony; and “Scheme Number One” which was lauded as a fine example of fixed and improvised music by the great composer, Igor Stravinsky.

Although he is well known in the continental United States, John Handy has taken his music to Germany, Austria, Spain, Italy, France, England, Sweden, Luxemburg, Finland, Norway, Switzerland, Belgium, Holland, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, North and South India, Yugoslavia, Japan, Alaska, Canada, among other countries – all with great acclaim!

For the past 23 years, John has led John Handy WITH CLASS, featuring John Handy with three female violinists/vocalists in an unforgettable sound that captures the full range of jazz, blues, r&b, popular, and modal music. This innovative group creates a new musical expression which John refers to (tongue-in-cheek) as “Clazzical Jazz.” He continues to lead and perform in groups with a combination of instruments and vocals.

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BET “Lens on Talent”

BET is looking for the best and brightest filmmakers for the new season of Lens on Talent: A Johnson & Johnson Filmmaker’s Challenge.

Lens on Talent is a half hour short film showcase hosted by noted film, television actor Blair Underwood featuring the best short films from emerging African American talent.

Lens on Talent takes its search for new filmmakers to the next level.  Only the best of the best will be showcased in Lens on Talent with the grand prize winner having the opportunity to produce a Short Film to be aired on BET.

Casting Opportunities

You can go ¿eX-whY AdVenture? Casting Opportunities Page for your BIG chance to succeed in Entertainment, Film and Television. Here are some of the opportunites you will find there. http://ex-why.com/casting/about-2/
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” In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” — George Orwell. For The Truth In The News!

” The Man Who Turn$ Hit$ Into Million$”

How a Grieving Family Saved A Troubled City with A Martyr

Abdul-Jalil Honored in Port Au-Prince, Haiti and Miami, Fla. for Relief Missions to Haiti
Abdul-Jalil’s Haas School of Business Profile
Linked In Profile on Abdul-Jalil
Abdul-Jalil on Twitter: @ajalil
Thanks You from Arch Bishop Joel Jeune to Abdul-Jalil
Abdul-Jalil’s “ooVoo” Video Chat Room
Abdul-Jalil on FaceBook
iPhone FaceTime: (510) 394-4501
AIM, Video Chat Screen Name: jalil@superstarmanagement.com
Skype Video Chat Screen Contact Name: Superstarmanagement
Portrait of Abdul-Jalil by Artist Buford Delaney in Paris, France


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“How a Grieving Family Saved A Troubled City with A Martyr”

From left, Octavia Spencer, Ryan Coogler, Melonie Diaz and Michael B. Jordan at the July 8 premiere of
From left, Octavia Spencer, Ryan Coogler, Melonie Diaz and Michael B. Jordan at the July 8 premiere of “Fruitvale Station”

The year 2009 began with a tragedy at an Oakland BART station. Shortly after 2 a.m. on New Year’s Day, BART police Officer Johannes Mehserle shot and killed 22-year-old Oscar Grant II, of Hayward, on the platform of the Fruitvale station after responding to reports of a fight on a train.

“Make no mistake about it Oscar Grant was Murdered, Executed by a BART cop!” That was the echoing sentiment boiling up from among the justifiably angry, restless community of Oakland and the surrounding communities that spread world wide as video of Oscar Grants execution was blared over and over on television screens all around the world. It had become the quintessential poster for the ultimate example of Police misconduct and abuse- a lawless execution as the Black victim lay face-down on the ground, hands behind his back, shot, then handcuffed as he dies- all caught on cameras for the world to see!

Also caught on camera for the world to see was the public reaction to the execution that led to violent protests, as the public “showed their outrage” with the costly destruction of property to areas around town.

The gunman police officer was allowed to go free, traveled outside the state of California until he was charged with murder and appended in Nevada after National public protest forced the District Attorney to file criminal charges. His attorney has argued he meant to fire his Taser gun when he shot and killed Grant.

The Oscar Grant movie: Fruitvale Station

As a result of the media coverage from the destructive protests, the Alameda County Superior Court found that it was unlikely that the gunman, former BART police Officer Johannes Mehserle, could get a fair trial in Oakland and the trial was transferred to Los Angeles.

The last time a police officer was convicted of a felony crime committed while on duty was the early 1990‘s when Abdul-Jalil al-Hakim knew his computer store was being burglarized by members of the Oakland Police Department but he could not complain to the police! al-Hakim turned to close friend Leo Dorado, then an Alameda County District Attorney prosecuting capital murder crimes, that lead to an investigation directed by Matt Golde conducted by the DA’s office of these rogue police activities. The case ended with the trial conviction of one officer, Newman Ng and the guilty plea of another, Kailey Wong. There was evidence of the involvement of over 15 police officers in these series of burglaries of businesses and the “fencing” of the stolen property. The problem was so rampant, even the Chief of Police George Hart had a stolen computer on his own desk at the station!!! Leo Dorado is now Judge Leo Dorado and Matt Golde, the son of former Judge Stanley Golde, brother of legal analyst Ivan Golde, is head DA of the Juvenile Division.

BART spokesman Linton Johnson said the agency is “trying to turn tragedy into triumph” by increasing transparency and enacting new policies. In August 2009, the BART board of directors voted unanimously to approve citizen oversight of the BART Police Department, and the agency is seeking a new permanent police chief.

For six months al-Hakim had been speaking with and advising Jack Bryson, father of two of Oscar Grant’s friends that were with him on the Fruitvale platform when he was murdered whom also were abused by BART police, regarding approaches to produce the proposed Oscar Grant anniversary event. Al-Hakim continued those conversations with the family spokesperson, Cephus “Bobby” Johnson.

In mid December as the date for the event neared, admitting that he knew nothing about producing any event, much less one of the magnitude of the January 1, 2010 Oscar Grant Anniversary Vigil, Cephus Johnson requested al-Hakim to produce the event for the family to assure that it would be handled properly and be a success! The event was less than 30 days away and Cephus only had an idea for a memorial as BART agreed to provide electrical power, to allow for a civil congregation and alter at the entrance of the station, and possibly at the scene of the shooting on the train platform in memory of Oscar’s death.

al-Hakim informed Cephus of the City and the Police Department’s requirements for assembly permits, security, sound and stage, possible entertainment and the fact that since the event was less than 30 days away, it was already too late to legally and properly secure them without some negotiating and special permission from the city and the police department.

al-Hakim discussed the idea of having an event that would capture the imagination of the nation and set a true landmark, a new paradigm in how to address social concerns in a large minority city with many, many, complex issues after having experienced such a tragic catastrophe.

al-Hakim proposed a “Celebration Of Oscar Grant’s Life” with a memorial prayer vigil and ceremony at the Fruitvale BART station to foster a comforting environment for those in attendance without the fear of any party provoking or intimidating the other at these events; to establish a working agreement with BART and Oakland Police department for the event to be held with a “low-to-no police presence” so there’s little or minimum possibility of confrontation between the expected attendees and law enforcement; and to have all the parties- the Oscar Grant family, BART, Oakland Police Department, and the Mayor/City to make a joint press release or have a joint press conference announcing the planned activities. This would make it possible for this events to occur and conclude in success and peace for everyone. This would be a phenomenal public relations coup that would rebuild the image of all the parties concerned while garnering a cache of goodwill you could not buy!

This would put the face of Oscar Grant on ALL the parties in a united platform of “We Are ALL Oscar Grant!” It would humanize the parties in the common bond of mankind and serve as an example for how these types of tragedies can be used to heal a strife-torn city. It would go a long way toward bringing the parties together publicly, promote reconciliation and potentially foster agreement.

Cephus thought it was an incredible idea but did not believe it was possible. al-Hakim asked him to discuss the possibility with the family and their attorney John Burris and let him know their response. Cephus returned with a resounding “Yes, if you can do!”.

al-Hakim first called long time friend, BART Director Carole Ward Allen who chairs the BART Police Department Review Committee and discussed the concept for her support.

He also called Linton Johnson, Public Information Officer for BART whom was unavailable and left him a voicemail message.

al-Hakim then called Jeffrey Thomason, Public Information Officer for the Oakland Police Department and explained to him the concept of the event and how it could be successful and problem free without the police presence. Thomason also thought it was an incredible idea but did not believe the family and their attorney John Burris would go along with it. Having already secured the family’s approval al-Hakim requested that Oakland Police Department stand behind their commitment and work with the family to secure needed permits and allow security with “no visible police presence”. He felt he could agree to do so wherein Thomason discussed the matter with the Chief and Captain, got approval and called al-Hakim back with a referral to the sergeant at the Eastmont Station that would be the liaison to secure all permits and verify the plan for a safe, trouble free event.

Shortly after, Linton Johnson returned al-Hakim’s voicemail and also thought it was an incredible idea but did not believe the family and their attorney John Burris would go along with it. Having already secured the family’s approval al-Hakim requested that BART stand behind their commitment and work with the family to secure needed permits, allow security with “no visible police presence”, provide sound and stage equipment, and allow the alter for the Oscar Grant Memorial. He agreed to do so if the family was in fact behind this proposal. al-Hakim assured him they were and informed him of the present state of the event with the help of BART Community Relations manager Roddrick Lee and to further allay his fears, al-Hakim gave him Cephus cell phone number and assured that Cephus would call him and Roderick.

Tatiana Grant

From there al-Hakim contacted Mayor Ron Dellums, City Administrator Dan Lindhiem and several of their staff members to inform them that the Oscar Grant family, BART, and Oakland Police Department had agreement on the event and would like to have the Mayor involved to join their efforts in this event representing the city. al-Hakim explained how this would be INCREDIBLY HUGE for the Oscar Grant family, BART, Alameda County Superior Court Administration, Oakland Police Department, and the City! This would be a ginormous step ahead in fostering civil relationships between what are publicly perceived as adversaries. This could be bigger than Rodney King’s ” Can We Just Get Along?”. They also agreed to go forward, so everything was in place.

Cephus spoke with both Roderick and Linton, where understanding and agreement was reached and the family began to plan for the “Celebration Of Oscar Grant’s Life” with a memorial prayer vigil and ceremony at the Fruitvale BART station, Friday, January 1, 2010 from 2:00 pm to 6:00 pm. The memorial would be hosted by the family of Oscar Grant with prayers and speeches from many of the Bay Area’s most prominent religious leaders in a civil congregation with alter at the entrance of the station and at the scene of the shooting on the train platform in memory of Oscar’s death.

At the conclusion of the memorial there, everyone would be invited to the Humanist Hall for a continuing evening of music, spoken word, poetry, food and drink until 11:00 pm.

With only days until the January 1, 2010 event, al-Hakim still had to meet with Oakland Police Department to discuss and present an acceptable plan to arrange the “no police presence, civil stand-by” type of a security enforcement for the short 3-4 hour time period for the Oscar Grant Events so those in attendance would not have any party provoking or intimidating the other at these events. He also had to assure them of a working agreement with BART for the event held at the Fruitvale Station with this same type of security so there’s little to no possibility of confrontation between the expected attendees and law enforcement. So al-Hakim brought on Gabrielle Wilson, a legal affairs reporter at KPFA; producer and co-host of “The Gospel Experience”, “Music of the World” and “Ear Thyme”; and Master of Ceremonies at many events around the Bay Area including the San Jose Jazz Festival to MC and assist in securing the entertainment and speakers.

al-Hakim met with the the sergeant at the Eastmont Station twice to secure all permits and verify the plan for a safe, trouble free event. At the first meeting, it was revealed to al-Hakim that Oakland Police had secured flyers, there was a Facebook page, and emails from a community activists organization allegedly associated with the event planning called the General Assembly (for Justice for Oscar Grant) detailing activities to incite violence at the vigil imploring attendees to “show your outrage!”. al-Hakim was shocked to learn of this activity as he knew of the group from working with the family but had not seen any flyers, email nor a FaceBook page inciting violence. al-Hakim assured the officers that the intent of the family was to have a peaceful vigil and was opposed to any other activity and would do all they could to insure that happened! The officers agreed to the plan that with the Nation of Islam providing on location security and BART and the Police on stand-by, we could work out an acceptable plan for the Fruitvale venue. But they insisted that the person, persons, or group that rented the Humanist Hall for the evening event would have to come forward with the contract, produce a security plan that they would reduce to 4-8 licensed security guards, event insurance, and would be liable for any and all damages that occurred as a result of any destruction stemming from the event. Like the police, the Humanist Hall requires that the person(s) in which whose name the rental is in must provide a plan for security for both inside and outside the venue, and how they plan to control exits from the venue in the event of something happening, and crowd control outside the venue. The police was concerned because they have had many problems with the Hall operating without permits and taking proper measures to secure safe events in the past. al-Hakim requested that the officers inform the family directly of these conditions and called Cephus from the meeting for them to do so. Cephus was unavailable so al-Hakim made an appointment for a second meeting for him and Jack Bryson, the named renter of the Hall so that all concerns could be resolved to the officers satisfaction since it was clear they wanted to work with the family to insure a safe, trouble free event.

al-Hakim discussed the meetings with the family and at another meeting again informed the “General Assembly” of the requirements of BART, Oakland Police Department and the City in order to have the events. al-Hakim expressed his concern for the family having their prayer vigil as planned without the decency of a few with opposing interest to make it their event, the police having more information about the happenings of the group then he had, and for obvious reason, decided that he no longer wanted to be associated with it.

https://i0.wp.com/farm4.staticflickr.com/3390/3332614386_34f1d8a102_n.jpg?resize=320%2C213It was clear that those with opposing interest from the Grant family’s wishes were intent on forcing conflict and advised Bryson not to meet with the police thus insuring a show down at the event. Since one of the agitators who would have an interest in filming any disturbance for their profit had donated a small amount of money for the rental, it was offered make to them to remove them from the decision making process. When they would not relent, that family canceled the Humanist Hall event and removed it from their schedule. Now, without any association to the family event, it exposed the those with divergent interest to have their own event without the shield of the family to hide behind. This was too much for them to overcome, along with the fact they did not want to address the reality that they would be combating the security provided by the Nation of Islam!

Begrudgingly but relieved, they relented and the family with a few people met with Oakland Police and the Mayors office and agreed to the exact same terms as negotiated a week earlier by al-Hakim.

On December 30, 2009 the “Oscar Grant family and BART issue joint statement on the New Year’s tragedy

“ Grant family calls for peace, love and forgiveness”

As the year anniversary of the tragic officer-involved shooting at Fruitvale Station of BART passenger Oscar Grant draws near, the Grant family and the BART Board of Directors are joining together to thank the public for their continued support for the reforms taking place in the BART Police Department.

Additionally, Oscar Grant’s mother, Wanda Johnson, wants to emphasize that people should honor her son’s memory on January 1 through “a day of celebration not demonstration.”  She added, “It is our hope that this day be a peaceful day to remember Oscar and the others who have been lost to violence.”

“We want the public to know we are a family of peace, love and forgiveness,” Oscar’s uncle Cephus Johnson said.

“In the year since my nephew was killed, I truly believe positive changes have occurred in the BART Police Department and many more will come. We want to thank the public for their continued involvement in making the BART Police the best it can be as we enter 2010.”

“On behalf of the BART Board of Directors, we want to again express our deepest and sincerest regret and our heartfelt condolences over the loss of Oscar Grant,” BART Director Carole Ward Allen said.  Ward Allen chairs the BART Police Department Review Committee, which is guiding the implementation of the changes within the police department. “We look forward to making more positive changes in 2010, including the hiring of a new police chief and working with the State Legislature to quickly amend the law so BART can implement independent citizen oversight of the BART Police Department.”

“This has been one of the most gut-wrenching episodes in BART’s history,” BART Board President James Fang said. “But through community involvement, non-biased professional assistance from the outside of BART and of course the extremely strong effort by our Board, particularly the efforts of Carole Ward Allen, we have learned from this tragic incident. Our prayers and deepest sympathies go to the Grant family on this inauspicious one-year anniversary of Oscar Grant’s death.”

“We want to thank the Grant family and the public for their support, which has been critical to making the reforms underway in the Police Department and we look forward to their continued support in the new year,” Director Ward Allen said.

On January 1, 2010 BARET issued the following press release:

BART Police Have Arrest-free New Year’s Eve

BART had an arrest-free New Year’s Eve despite dealing with crowded trains and the one-year anniversary of the shooting death of passenger Oscar Grant III in Oakland on Jan. 1, 2009.

BART carried about 87,800 passengers between 8 p.m. Thursday and 3 a.m. Friday, and carried about 302,800 passengers throughout the day, according to agency officials.

Many of the passengers were traveling to the annual fireworks show at San Francisco’s Embarcadero, where BART used a “skip-stop” schedule for the first time to alleviate overcrowding at its nearby station.

 photo oscargrant_flyer_web-2.jpgStarting at 8 p.m., trains on different lines skipped either the Embarcadero or Montgomery stations toallow the crowd to split evenly between the two stations, resulting in faster boarding times and less crowded platforms.

BART also assigned about 150 police officers, nearly 50 percent more than previous years, to patrol the system during the holiday. San Francisco and Oakland police officers and deputies from the San Francisco, Alameda and Contra Costa County sheriff’s departments also assisted near the stations during the evening.

There were a few isolated incidents on the system, but no arrests were made.

The relatively incident-free night stood in stark contrast to last year’s holiday, when former BART police Officer Johannes Mehserle shot and killed Grant, a 22-year-old Hayward man, at the Fruitvale station in Oakland. Mehserle, 27, and other officers had responded to reports of a fight on a train.

Mehserle has been charged with murder and is expected to stand trial sometime next year. His case has been moved to Los Angeles because a judge ruled it would be difficult for Mehserle to get a fair trial in Alameda County due to the extensive publicity the incident has received. Mehserle’s lawyer, Michael Rains, has admitted that Mehserle shot and killed Grant, but claims Mehserle meant to use his Taser to stun Grant and used his gun by mistake.

Grant’s family was among the people scheduled to attend a rally at the Fruitvale station at 2 p.m. today to mark the anniversary of Grant’s death.

BART General Manager Dorothy Dugger said in a statement that she was happy that this holiday turned out well for the agency.

“We couldn’t be more pleased at how this New Year’s Eve turned out,” Dugger said.

She thanked “our customers for continuing to put their faith in us to get them around the Bay Area quickly and safely.”

BART police Commander Daniel Hartwig said in a statement that, despite the few minor incidents, “New Year’s Eve 2009 was one of the smoothest I have ever seen in my nearly three decades at BART.”

“Fruitvale Station”

In the early hours of Jan. 1, 2009, Oscar Grant III, unarmed and lying face down on a subway platform in Oakland, Calif., was shot in the back by a white Bay Area Rapid Transit police officer. The incident, captured on video by onlookers, incited protest, unrest and arguments similar to those that would swirl around the killing of Trayvon Martin in Florida a few years later. The deaths of these and other African-American young men (Mr. Grant was 22) touch some of the rawest nerves in the body politic and raise thorny and apparently intractable issues of law and order, violence and race.

Fruitvale Station, Michael B. Jordan and Ariana Neal play father and daughter in this debut feature by Ryan Coogler, which opens on Friday in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Mr. Jordan plays Oscar Grant, who was killed by a Bay Area Rapid Transit police officer.

Those matters are hardly absent from “Fruitvale Station,” Ryan Coogler’s powerful and sensitive debut feature, which imaginatively reconstructs the last 24 or so hours of Oscar Grant’s life, flashing back from a horrifying snippet of actual cellphone video of the hectic moments before the shooting. But Mr. Coogler, a 27-year-old Bay Area native who went to film school at the University of Southern California, examines his subject with a steady, objective eye and tells his story in the key of wise heartbreak rather than blind rage. It is not that the movie is apolitical or disengaged from the painful, public implications of Mr. Grant’s fate. But everything it has to say about class, masculinity and the tricky relations among different kinds of people in a proudly diverse and liberal metropolis is embedded in details of character and place.

Respectfully,

Abdul-Jalil

California man who spent 39 years in prison gets $21 million for wrongful conviction

By Jackie Botts

A California man who was wrongfully convicted for killing an ex-girlfriend and her son four decades ago has reached a $21 million settlement with the city of Simi Valley, officials said.

Craig Coley, 71, was sentenced to life in prison without parole for the 1978 murder of his former partner, Rhonda Wicht, and her 4-year-old son, Donald, at their apartment.

He had always maintained his innocence, and was pardoned in 2017 by California’s then-governor, Jerry Brown, based on exculpatory DNA evidence found by investigators.

“While no amount of money can make up for what happened to Mr. Coley, settling this case is the right thing to do for Mr. Coley and our community,” Simi Valley City Manager Eric Levitt said on Saturday in a statement.

The 39 years Coley spent behind bars was the longest prison term ever overturned in California, the statement said.

Since his release, Coley has spoken to law enforcement officials about evidence collection, and has met with parents of prisoners who maintain their innocence, according to Mike Bender, a close friend and former police detective in Simi Valley, a community just outside Los Angeles.

Bender had pushed for Coley’s release for nearly three decades after he became troubled by aspects of the case.

“Craig’s message is always don’t give up,” Bender told Reuters by telephone on Sunday.

More than 350 U.S. inmates have been exonerated by DNA testing since 1989, according to New York-based the Innocence Project, which helps people who were wrongfully convicted. On average, convicts who were freed had served 14 years in prison when exonerated.

California authorities awarded Coley $1.95 million last year — $140 for each day he spent in prison. At the time, it was the largest payout for a wrongful conviction by the state’s Victim Compensation Board.

That money allowed Coley to buy a home. With the new settlement money, he will also be able visit places on his bucket list and continue to help the wrongfully convicted, Bender said.

“He’s looking forward to being able to live his life,” Bender said, “No one would want to trade places with him.”

Reporting by Jackie Botts in New York; Editing by Lisa Shumaker

Jury Awards $27 Million To Massachusetts Man Wrongfully Convicted Of Murder

Mark and Mia Schand, wearing T-shirts from the innocence organization Centurion Ministries in 2015, just want to move forward.Karen Brown/New England Public Radio

A man who served nearly three decades for a murder he didn’t commit was awarded $27 million — $1 million for each year he was in prison — by a federal jury last month. 

When the jury foreman read out the award, “everybody started crying and stuff like that,” said Mark Schand.

Schand was convicted in 1987 of a nightclub shooting in Springfield, Mass., that killed a female bystander. In 2013, a judge considered new evidence — uncovered by the innocence organization Centurion Ministries — and let him go. 

In 2015, Schand sued the city of Springfield and four police officers for violating his civil rights. A judge dismissed the lawsuit against the city — that case is currently awaiting appeal — but allowed the one against the officers, all retired: Elmer McMahon, Leonard Scammons, Raymond Muise and Michael Reid. 

‘Blind Injustice’ Opera Sets Out To Open Eyes About Wrongful Conviction Rates

When the case went to trial, Schand’s legal team relied on evidence that the officers used “unduly suggestive” techniques when identifying him as a suspect. 

The jury decided that was worth $1 million for every year spent in prison, an outcome even his lawyers hadn’t predicted.

“What are 27 years of a person’s life worth? That is a very interesting philosophical question,” said Heather McDevitt, one of Schand’s attorneys. “There are experiences that can never be recreated. There is the pain and suffering and subjection to violence and isolation and loneliness.”Article continues after sponsor message

For Schand, the verdict is less about the money and more about the vindication. He got no help from the government after he was released. He had to fight the state attorney general’s office for a few hundred thousand dollars in statutory compensation — $450,000, minus attorneys’ fees — and even then, no one apologized. 

“After all this time, this is the first time there was some acknowledgement that someone [had] done something in my wrongful conviction, someone was responsible for it,” he said. “And, you know, that was almost better than the monetary damages.”

He Went To Prison For A Murder He Didn’t Commit, Then Met The Man Who Put Him There

Still, Schand’s award is significant for a few reasons. Fewer than half of all exonerees have even filed a civil lawsuit for their wrongful conviction, according to Jeffrey Gutman of the Public Justice Advocacy Clinic at George Washington University. Out of those plaintiffs, Gutman said, only half have won any money, with an average award of $310,000. 

“So, comparatively, Mr. Schand’s verdict was quite high, although there have been other jury verdicts near or over $1 million per year [of incarceration],” Gutman said. 

In most cases, to win a lawsuit for wrongful conviction, plaintiffs have to prove there was official misconduct, not just a mistake. 

“It’s an incredibly high burden to meet to win a civil settlement,” says Rebecca Brown of the Innocence Project, which lobbies states to make it much easier to get compensation for wrongful conviction. As it stands, there’s a wide discrepancy among compensation statutes across the country. 

Plotted From A Prison Cot, Wrongly Accused Man Whips Smoothie Dream Into Reality

Brown also said high jury awards such as Schand’s — however justified — can overshadow the injustice that people have suffered. She points to the $41 million settlement shared by the five men wrongfully convicted in the infamous Central Park jogger case. 

“People say, ‘Oh, my gosh, that’s so much money,'” Brown said. But as one of the men put it: “I would have rather had my childhood back.”

The attorney for Springfield, Ed Pikula, wrote in an email that the city is considering options for appeal and that state law limits the city’s liability to $1 million per officer – or a total of $4 million. 

Schand said he’s so used to the system failing him that he’s not counting on any of the money. After a series of manual labor jobs, he now runs his own smoothie business in New Britain, Conn. 

“I’m 55 years old. It’s all downhill from here for me,” he said, with a wry laugh. “If I ever get [the money], I’m just going to be comforted by the fact that I know maybe my kids will be all right and they won’t have to struggle as much as I did — before I was incarcerated and since I’ve been home.”

His wife, Mia, does allow herself to daydream about the money. “We are looking for a new home,” she said, “and just some peace in our life.”

Schand is mostly looking forward to a time when he can go to a grocery store without people asking about his case. And he will be happy to never set foot in a courtroom again.

Attorney General, Superior Court Judges, District Attorney and Child Support Services Caught in Fraud of Minor Children

Alameda County Superior Court Corruption


Kamala “Kriminal Harass” Harris, Judge Stephen Pulido, Commissioner Glenn Olean, D. A. Nancy O’Malley and DCSS Director Matthew Brega Embezzled Child Support from FaceBook Legal Counsel and Fundraiser! Extorts Parents, Targets and Threatens Father,  Caught in Fraud of a Minor children!
Superior Court Judges, District Attorney, Department of Child Support Services ALL involved in Admitted Fraud, Extortion Case!
The decades old conflict between Abdul-Jalil al-Hakim and Family with the Alameda County District Attorney (DA) and the
Department of Child Support Service (DCSS) is among the most extensively told in the history of the American judiciary. The dispute concerns the admitted willful fraud and extortionate scheme that the District Attorney and DCSS extensively exercised to persecute the family that they are liable for.

al-Hakim had to file an action against Tom Orloff, the DA and ACDCSS because they failed and refused to enforce the courts own orders for the fair and proper application and accounting of payments al-Hakim made in trust to the DA in their fiduciary capacity for the minor al-Hakim child depriving al-Hakim and the minor child of over $2,000 of monies paid, then illegally charging al-Hakim with the crime of violating the child support statute for nonpayment. Full Story with Videos and Documents at http://tinyurl.com/ljk8av

Then Attorney General “Kriminal Harass” and the Office of The Attorney General of The State of California substituted in as attorney of record in this case for the Alameda County Department of Child Support Services allegedly “in the interest of justice”. What justice is there in the Attorney General defending, concealing and thereby further complicitly committing the admitted willful and intentional extrinsic fraud upon the court; prosecutorial misconduct; willful and malicious prosecution; misconduct; conflict of interest; obstruction of justice; denial of due process under the law; willful and intentional fabrication and authoring false evidence; misstating and mischaracterizing evidence; misrepresentation and concealment of material facts with knowledge of the truth with the intent to induce the court’s act or reliance; harassment; and intimidation on behalf of District Attorney Nancy O’Malley, former DA Tom Orloff, Maureen Lenahan, Valgeria Harvey, counselors L. Lavagetto, Ms. K. Pendergrass, Ms. Adler, Kris Ferre, and accountant Mr. Lovelady and others unnamed in the DA’s office; various judges and Commissioner Oleon’s abuse of discretion, willful misconduct, conduct prejudicial, illegal ex-parte communications and bias that resulted in error.

This was done to excuse and protect the Alameda County Department of Child Support Services from their ongoing conflict of interest in their alleging to represent the interest of Joette Hall, whom they had defrauded along with al-Hakim of the funds paid to the DCSS in trust for their minor child.

The Alameda County Department of Child Support Services was never representing the al-Hakim Hall family, they were defending and covering up their extrinsic fraud upon the state and the families. The Alameda County Department of Child Support Services wanted to conceal their attempted coercion of al-Hakim to pay the arrearage they created in his name. al-Hakim and his family had complained many times each year about the misapplication of the funds tendered to the Department of Child Support Services in trust for the al-Hakim Hall family.

You can view and/or download 290 page Appeals Court Subpoena Request for Production of Documents and Depositions for Kamala Harris.pdf here:

https://app.box.com/s/anfjzbqxe1vgkahy52fqisaf9cvgr9on

Here you can view or download al-Hakim’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Request for Production of Documents served on the California Attorney General Kamal Harris.pdf

https://app.box.com/s/a5ia5phh9dj8de7gpxfex04cz6uq2e95

Harris, now United States Vice President, publicly said she wants “to make sure that we’re giving those children due process of law” echoing comments made a day earlier by Gov. Jerry Brown, a fellow Democrat. “These are children, and many of them have relatives that are in California and other parts of the United States who are working, contributing to the well-being of people in the United States,” Brown said. “So given the principle of family values and family reconciliation, I want to give utmost consideration to what is in the best interest of those children, not what is in the best interest of politicians who might want to exploit this particular topic.” Harris said she wants “to make sure that we’re giving those children due process of law”.
New York Times story named Harris one of four state attorneys general who launched investigations into complaints against Trump University and also accepted campaign contributions from the school’s namesake, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump then stopped the investigation.
But as any good politician has done, she has actually been involved in stealing child support from Abdul-Jalil al-Hakim’s minor child with an outstanding order! She not only worked in the DA’s office during the time this embezzlement was happening but then represented the Department of Child Support Services and the DA’s office AGAINST al-Hakim. Now 25 years later, that minor child that Kriminal Harass embezelled is Bari al-Hakim-Williams.
Abdul-Jalil al-Hakim’s daughter, Bari al-Hakim-Williams, honored for her fine achievements this year, was at the White House where she was hosted by President Obama and Michelle Obama, is one of the Nations “40 Under 40” top lawyers by the National Bar Association, among others. She was featured in Black Enterprise Magazine, discussing her plight as a minority and woman of color in a major corporation, in a commanding leadership position over men, lawyers and engineers, and the Diversity Program she founded at FaceBook. Her title there is Legal Counsel, Global Infrastructure & Operations at Facebook where she governs everything that is purchased. She created the Diversity program and talks about it here.
al-Hakim-Williams has hosted and attended multiple fundraisers for Harris, even held at her home, that was promoted on “Heyevent.com”.
Host included ROBERT L. HARRIS, ESQ., SHONDA SCOTT, DEMETRIUS SHELTON, ESQ., LALITA TADEMY, BARRY LAWSON WILLIAMS, JAIME A. WILLIAMS, HON. JOEL YOUNG
Shelton posted:
Fundraiser – Kamala Harris for CA Attorney GeneralSaturday, 14 November 2009, 15:00
 At the Home of Bari and Jaime Williams – Oakland, CA
Fundraiser – Kamala Harris for CA Attorney General
Friends,
Please join me at a fundraiser in suppoort of my friend and colleague
SAN FRANCISCO DISTRICT ATTORNEY
&
CANDIDATE FOR CALIFORNIA ATTORNEY GENERAL 2010 KAMALA D. HARRIS
Saturday, November 14, 2009 3:00 – 5:00 pm
AT THE HOME OF JAIME & BARI WILLIAMS OAKLAND, CA*
Hosted by –
ROBERT L. HARRIS, ESQ., SHONDA SCOTT, DEMETRIUS SHELTON, ESQ., LALITA TADEMY, BARI A. WILLIAMS, ESQ., BARRY LAWSON WILLIAMS, JAIME A. WILLIAMS, HON. JOEL YOUNG
Guest . . . . . . . . . $250
If you are unable to attend the event, but would like to support. You can donate online by visiting: http://kamalaharris.org/donate/event/534. Please let me know if you donate via the website so that I can track your contribiution.
Thanks in advance for your support!
Demetrius
Oddly enough Shelton is involved in the al-Hakim legal action against the City of Oakland in the Case of al-Hakim vs CSAA and Rescue Rooter, et. al. You can hear Demetruis Shelton, President of the National Bar Association and City Attorney employee’s Voicemail “Russo Received Trial Subpoenas!!!”

This is now an over $100 million, 25 year; contentious action; with the largest case file in the history of Alameda County Superior Court, over 70 file boxes; over 100 motions and responses; plaintiff had over 300 trial exhibits; over 5,000 pages of exhibits; 3,000 pages of documents for trial rebuttal argument; 20 expert witnesses; 77 other witnesses; over 100 pages of jury instructions; 17 Judges have been Disqualified through Challenges for Cause and Recusal, there are numerous allegations of judicial corruption and misconduct, where EVERY judge and commissioner in this case has admitted error, committed perjury, recused themselves, or all three!
As a result, Abdul-Jalil al-Hakim, a very well known business manager, producer, and Muslim of native African-Native American descent from Oakland, California, filed a Federal Complaint with the United States Attorney General, Department of Justice, of a hate crime of Islamophobia and Xenophobia committed against him by Judge David C. Lee during the Rescue Industries trial in Superior Court of Alameda County, California.
al-Hakim began the task of unraveling the facts that former and current Alameda County District AttorneyTom Orloff and Nancy O’Malley, former and current Director of Alameda County Child Support Services Maureen Lenahan and Matthew Brega, former and current Attorney General of State of California Jerry Brown and Kamala Harris, their staff’s, agents and contractors committed Extrinsic Fraud Upon the Court, Prosecutorial Misconduct, Willful and Malicious Prosecution, Conflict of Interest, Obstruction of Justice, Denial of Due Process, Willful and Intentional Fabrication and Authoring False Evidence; Misrepresentation and Concealment of Material Facts.
It will examine the role of former DA Tom Orloff, Nancy O’Malley, Kevin Dunleavy, Ann Deim, Towanda Lee, Michael O’Connor, Bob Conner, Bruce Brock, David Stein, Matthew Golde and others unnamed in the DA’s office; and DCSS office including but not limited to former Director Maureen K. Lenahan, Director Matthew Brega, Charlene Perry, Sue Eadie, Valgeria Harvey, counselors L. Lavagetto, Ms. K. Pendergrass, Ms. Adler, Kris Ferre, accountant Mr. Lovelady, Mrs. Reese, Mrs. Remelton, Ms. Alder, Mrs. Carlilse, Mrs. Ricca Alcantara, Terry Simmons-Booker, B. Hoffmann, Mr. Williams and others unnamed in the DA’s and ACDCSS’ offices; various judges and Commissioner Glenn Oleon;  Michelle Escerra, Tanisha Jones, others unnamed in the Superior Court’s Family Law Clerk’s officein these criminal acts.
Nancy O’Malley, former DA Tom Orloff, Ann Diem, Kevin Dunleavy, Bob Connor, Bruce Brock,  Michael O’Connor,  and Judge Pulido?
What is the relationship between former DCSS Director Maureen Lenahan, Matt Brega,  Valgeria Harvey, counselors L. Lavagetto, Ms. K. Pendergrass, Ms. Adler, Kris Ferre, accountant Mr. Lovelady, Ricca Alcantara, Ombudsman Mrs. Reese,  Mrs. Remelton, Terry Simmons-Booker, others unnamed in the DCSS office; and Judge Pulido, Judge Bean, Judge Tara DeSautels, Commissioner Thomas Nixon?
al-Hakim has asked the court to remand this case to the Civil Court trial level to continue further trial proceedings consistent with the requested decision and order for former and current Alameda County District Attorney Tom Orloff and Nancy O’Malley, former and current Director of Alameda County Child Support Services Maureen Lenahan and Matthew Brega, former and current Attorney General of State of California Jerry Brown and Kamala Harris, their staff’s, agents and contractors face charges for committing Extrinsic Fraud Upon the Court, Prosecutorial Misconduct, Willful and Malicious Prosecution, Conflict of Interest, Obstruction of Justice, Denial of Due Process, Willful and Intentional Fabrication and Authoring False Evidence; Misrepresentation and Concealment of Material Facts, among others, as demanded.
This matter has been sumitted to Judges Winifred Smith Presiding Judge, Superior Court of California, C. Don Clay- Supervising Judge, Stephen Pulido- Presiding Judge Family Law, Judge The Hon. Melinda Haag- Director- No. District U. S. Attorney’s Office, The Hon. Claudia Wilken-Chief District Judge U. S. District Court- No. Division, Kamala D. Harris- Attorney General of California, Mr. Brega, Nancy O’Malley and County Supervisor Keith wherein they have ALL failed and refused to investigate the matter even though it was requested by the U. S. Department of Justice.

     The following is an actual copy of the letter that was faxed, hand delivered, personally served, and filed in the Alameda County Superior Courts in response to the continued persecution and extortionate scheme of the al-Hakim Family by the Alameda County Superior Court, District Attorney and Department of Child Support Services or more appropriately entitled the “Department of Child Support Fraud Services”.
    The DA’s goon, Bob “BULL” Conner is coincidently the chief investigator for the DA in the Oscar Grant case, yet was listed as the chief witness for the DEFENSE in that case. HHhhmmmmm? The main investigator and witness for the prosecution is the main witness for the DEFENSE???!!!
    Further, the County judge in the Oscar Grant case, Judge Don Clay whom is very familiar with Conner, also failed and refused to pursue a formal complaint by Abdul-Jalil al-Hakim against “Bull” Connor for his armed accosting al-Hakim, falsely arresting/detaining him in a room, threatening al-Hakim, forcing from the Courthouse, and telling al-Hakim “don’t ever come back!”. A racist example no less violent then the original “Bull Connor” from Alabama! It must be his daddy!
    These actions are unconscionable! 
    Read and distribute widely!!!

http://nowtruth.org/occupiers-redeem-kings-dream-while-keith-carson-and-his-poverty-pimps-are-killers-of-kings-dream-sell-it-out/
FAX MEMO
ABDUL-JALIL al-HAKIM
7633 SUNKIST DRIVE, OAKLAND, CA  94605-3024
PH (510) 394-4501
TO:         The Honorable Winnifred Smith        The Honorable C. Don Clay
Presiding Judge                                  Supervising Judge
Superior Court of California              Superior Court of California
County of Alameda                            County of Alameda
1225 Fallon St., Dept #1                    1225 Fallon St., Dept #6
Oakland, CA 94612                           Oakland, CA 94612
Fax No.: 510 891-6276                      Fax No.: 510 891-6276
TO:        The Honorable Sandra Bean            The Honorable Stephen Pulido
Alameda Family Law Court            Presiding Judge Family Law Court
Superior Court of California           Superior Court of California
County of Alameda                         County of Alameda
2233 Shoreline Drive                      24405 Amador Street
Alameda, CA 94501                       Hayward, CA 94544
Fax No.: 510 263-4309                   Fax No.: 510 690-2824
The Honorable Elizabeth Hendrickson
Dept. 103 Traffic
WILEY W. MANUEL COURTHOUSE
661 Washington Street
Oakland, CA  94607
Fax No.: 510 627-4906
bcc:
FROM:     Abdul-Jalil al-Hakim
DATE:     January 30, 2014
NO PAGES: 14
RE:         Stipulation in Superior Court Case #511339-2; The People vs Abdul-Jalil al-Hakim, Docket # WWM00000560171and reassign this matter as per then Judicial Administration Rule 6.603 (b) (1) (D) now Rule 10.603 (c) (1) (D); requesting security after being identified and targeted by the District Attorney and Sheriff’s Deputy.
Dear Judges Smith, Clay, Pulido Bean and Commissioner Hendrickson,
This three decades old continuing story of the conflict between the al-Hakim Family with the Alameda County District Attorney (DA) and the Department of Child Support Service (DCSS) must be among the most extensively told in the history of the American judiciary. This and other courts have previously described in detail the parties’ underlying dispute, which concerns the admitted willful fraud and extortionate scheme that the District Attorney and DCSS extensively exercised to persecute the family that they are liable for.
In the case of Abdul-Jalil al-Hakim v. CSAA, Alameda County Case No. 811337-3 an over $50 million, 20 year; contentious legal action; that has the largest case file in the history of Alameda County Superior Court, with over 60 file boxes of pleadings; over 120 motions and responses; plaintiff had over 300 trail exhibits; over 5,000 pages of exhibits; 3,000 pages of documents for trial rebuttal argument; 20 expert witnesses; 77 other witnesses; over 100 pages of jury instructions; with DQ’s filed against EVERY Judge for numerous charges from judicial misconduct to corruption, where EVERY judge in this case has admitted error, committed perjury, recused themselves, or all three!
Alameda County District Attorney Tom Orloff’s Extrinsic Fraud Upon the Court, Prosecutorial Misconduct, Willful and Malicious Prosecution, Conflict of Interest, Obstruction of Justice, Denial of Due Process, Willful and Intentional Fabrication and Authoring False Evidence; Misrepresentation and Concealment of Material Facts
al-Hakim had to file an action against Tom Orloff and the Alameda County District Attorney’s (DA) and the Alameda County Department of Child Support Services (ACDCSS) because for over 25 years they repeatedly failed and refused to enforce the courts own orders for the fair and proper application and accounting of payments al-Hakim made in trust to the DA in their fiduciary capacity for the minor al-Hakim child depriving al-Hakim and the minor child of over $2,000 of monies paid, thus creating a “mythical” arrearage and open account in al-Hakim’s name and on his behalf owed to the minor child, then illegally charging al-Hakim with the crime of violating the child support statute for nonpayment, reporting the alleged violation to the State of California for Collection and the State Department of Motor Vehicles for suspension of his driving privilege for nonpayment and illegally tossing al-Hakim into “debtors prison”, suspending his drivers license, revoking his passport, and ruining his credit. ACDCSS actions and claimed “right” to perform in this manner are not contained in any State or Federal statute, regulation, or other legislative act and therefore, do not have the force of law and renders it constitutionally infirm and no court officer can merely “grant” a ruling in their favor to cover getting caught having done so. Full Story with Videos and Documents at http://tinyurl.com/ljk8av
Attorney General of The State of California Substituted In for DA Tom Orloff
On January 22, 2008 Attorney General Jerry Brown and the Office of The Attorney General

Letter from District Attorney ADMITTING EMBEZZLED CHILD SUPPORT FROM al-Hakim

of The State of California substituted in as attorney of record in this case for the Alameda County Department of Child Support Services allegedly “in the interest of justice”. What justice is there in the Attorney General defending, concealing and thereby further complicitly committing the admitted willful and intentional extrinsic fraud upon the court; prosecutorial misconduct; willful and malicious prosecution; misconduct; conflict of interest; obstruction of justice; denial of due process under the law; willful and intentional fabrication and authoring false evidence; misstating and mischaracterizing evidence; misrepresentation and concealment of material facts with knowledge of the truth with the intent to induce the court’s act or reliance; harassment; and intimidation on behalf of District Attorney Nancy O’Malley, former DA Tom Orloff, Maureen Lenahan, Valgeria Harvey, counselors L. Lavagetto, Ms. K. Pendergrass, Ms. Adler, Kris Ferre, and accountant Mr. Lovelady and others unnamed in the DA’s office; various judges and Commissioner Oleon’s abuse of discretion, willful misconduct, conduct prejudicial, illegal ex-parte communications and bias that resulted in error.
This was done to excuse and protect the Alameda County Department of Child Support Services from their ongoing conflict of interest in their alleging to represent the interest of Joette Hall, whom they had defrauded along with al-Hakim of the funds paid to the DCSS in trust for their minor child.
The Alameda County Department of Child Support Services was never representing the al-Hakim Hall family, they were defending and covering up their extrinsic fraud upon the state and the families. The Alameda County Department of Child Support Services wanted to conceal their attempted coercion of al-Hakim to pay the arrearage they created in his name.
al-Hakim and his family had complained many times each year about the misapplication of the funds tendered to the Department of Child Support Services in trust for the al-Hakim Hall family.
For nearly three decades the District Attorney and DCSS has launched criminal legal proceedings that can aptly characterized as “unique in the annals of American judicial history.” Through these proceedings – which have resulted in numerous illegal orders and opinions from the courts, the District Attorney and DCSS gained access to an extraordinary quantity of material, including all of al-Hakim’s litigation files in totally unrelated cases that have absolutely NO value in this case to further their litigation, legislative, and political strategies to compel their enforcement strategy, extortionate scheme to force him to pay their fraudulent arrears including enforcement in multiple jurisdictions by placing illegal and unwarranted holds on his drivers license with the California Department of Motor Vehicles with the intent of al-Hakim being arrested and harmed physically and financially; placing illegal and unwarranted holds on his passport with the State Department; and these efforts to use judgment enforcement for settlement leverage to undertake in the event they don’t prevail before the courts. These proceeding efforts are ongoing.
    The District Attorney and DCSS presented its admitted evidence of fraud and bribery to the trial court, convincing it to rule against the family’s court ordered compliant payments complete with DCSS’s own receipts for same– instead using its unfettered, presumptively inadmissible product and evidence of admitted fraud and bribery, accounting report– as the basis for the trial court’s final decision. On the basis of these and other materials, the ruling and judgment was fundamentally obtained and tainted by fraud. The heart of the alleged fraud is two-fold.
First, the District Attorney and DCSS and their judicial team of covert illicit participants– the putative accounting expert that created and complied the entire presumptively inadmissible product and evidence of admitted fraud and bribery, the accounting report used as the sole basis for the judgment by Commissioner Glenn Oleon despite the fact he knew it was the product of fraud.
Second, the District Attorney and DCSS wresting control of the judicial process by exercising a clearly illegal conflict of interest in misrepresenting the family, conducting a complete trial to defend their illegal actions and evidence before admitting the conflict AFTER the trial was completed, exerting undue influence in the process, by conspiring with the court Commissioner Oleon; applying political pressure in order to obtain a judgment based on political advantage rather than the rule of law. Upon the substitution of attorneys, then California Attorney General Jerry Brown, responsible for carrying out investigation of Alameda County Superior Court and State Appeals Court judges, District Attorney Tom Orloff, Oakland City Attorney and various corporate defendants is himself defending some of the criminals and covering up the very same corruption he is supposed to be investigating and prosecuting! Full Story with Videos and Documents at http://tinyurl.com/ljk8av
Nevertheless, as noted above, the court returned a judgment against the family, rejecting the decades of presumptively inadmissible product and evidence of admitted fraud and bribery in the proceedings; family’s claims of civil conspiracy; conspiracy to commit obstruction of justice; obstruction of justice; conspiracy to commit extrinsic fraud; extrinsic fraud; fraud upon the court and The People of the State of California; conspiracy to commit extortion; extortion; conspiracy to commit bribery; bribery; conspiracy to commit embezzlement; embezzlement; conspiracy to commit intimidation; intimidation; conspiracy to commit harassment; harassment; conspiracy to commit blackmail; blackmail; conspiracy to misappropriate funds; misappropriation of funds; conspiracy to violate fiduciary trust; violation of fiduciary trust; conspiracy to co-mingle funds; co-mingling of funds; conspiracy to commit deception; deception; conspiracy to commit concealment; concealment; conspiracy to commit misrepresentation; misrepresentation; conspiracy to commit diversion of funds; diversion of funds; conspiracy to create and falsify documents as evidence; creating and falsifying documents as evidence; conspiracy to procure false testimony; procuring false testimony; witness tampering; conspiracy to violate racketeering laws; violate racketeering laws; conspiracy to commit tortious interference with contract; tortious interference with contract; conspiracy to commit unjust enrichment; unjust enrichment; conspiracy to commit conflict of interest; conflict of interest; admitting conflict of interest AFTER the trial was completed; conspiracy to commit misrepresentation; misrepresentation; conspiracy to intentionally inflict maximum pain, suffering, emotional distress; the intentional infliction of maximum pain, suffering, emotional distress; conspiracy to commit ; slander; conspiracy to conduct a complete trial to defend their illegal actions and evidence; conducting a complete trial to defend their illegal actions and evidence; conspiracy to exert undue influence in the judicial process; exerting undue influence in the judicial process; civil conspiracy with court Commissioner Oleon; conspiracy to directly or indirectly funding, commencing, prosecuting, advancing in any way, or receiving benefit from any action or proceeding; directly or indirectly funding, commencing, prosecuting, advancing in any way, or receiving benefit from any action or proceeding; conspiracy to litigate for recognition or enforcement of an illegal judgment previously rendered in the court; litigating for recognition or enforcement of an illegal judgment previously rendered in the court; among others.
I last contacted you all above with the exception of Commissioner Hendrickson on January 9, 2014 after I went to the Alameda Family Law Court to file a letter to the Judges dated January 7, 2014 and was prevented from doing so by a County Sheriff’s Deputy who informs me that I must go to Judge Pulido’s courtroom to file the letter and that he would be handling this matter in Probate Court. Both letters had already been faxed, served, or both on all the parties above except the January 7, 2014 one to Judge Smith and this is the first to Commissioner Hendrickson. The family and I have had no response to ANY of the five previous letters to the court to clarify the pending matters in this case totally comprised of the District Attorney (DA) and Department of Child Support Service (DCSS) presumptively inadmissible product and evidence of their admitted fraud in the proceedings that they themselves alone developed. The court must now address that issue with the family in open court with these admission and the product of fraud upon the court, The People of the State of California and the family. The District Attorney and DCSS’ larcenous moral turpitude, obstruction of justice and misrepresentation is all that remains of this case.
So again, now we need to know if in fact Judge Pulido is handing this matter, and if so, in what capacity and jurisdiction. Is he acting as the Family Law Presiding Court Judge or as the Judge in Probate Court? Is this a Family Law matter addressing the stipulation, or is this a Probate matter?
We need to know what Civil Code section specifically requires that a Stipulation by the parties without attorneys MUST be notarized? Who rejected the Stipulation and when?
The family has accounts that confirm that the Superior Court, District Attorney and DCSS and other representatives engaged in repeated, substantive ex-parte meetings and communications with the judicial officials presiding over litigation involving the family, including meetings and communications relating to the case and stipulation with court administration personnel that has very limited knowledge of civil law rules, substantively and especially procedurally including the selection of Judge Pulido to preside over this case in Probate. Such evidence would further establish the Superior Court, District Attorney and DCSS ex-parte contacts are improper under law and would also further prove the Superior Court, District Attorney and DCSS were attempting to exert undue influence over the court. This evidence indicates that the Superior Court, District Attorney and DCSS meetings were inappropriate and secret.
The family believes the Superior Court, District Attorney and DCSS nefarious and inappropriate abandonment of the family’s right to settle the case and have the courts to acknowledge the stipulation without any civil law citations and no evidence of such to support the alleged ruling by a judge is an untenable to prevent efforts to move the case towards resolution. The family has every right, and very good reason, to seek an end to the individual persecution that they believed the Superior Court, District Attorney and DCSS has been using as a way to extort the family, drag out the case and bleed their resources. We are requesting that the court immediately sign the order for the stipulation and noting that we realize that it should have already been ordered. By requesting that it be ordered, we are simply exercising our procedural right to that evidence.
The family believes that this maneuver by the Superior Court, District Attorney and DCSS attempted to alter the ordinary course of the trial and inject more delay into already protracted proceedings.
Now we have the pending matter of The People vs Abdul-Jalil al-Hakim, Docket # WWM00000560171, Citation # 5330190 presently assigned to Dept. 103 the Traffic court for trial on February 10, 2014 at 2:00 PM.
With this matter involving the alleged crime of driving with a suspended license, it would be an impossible burden on the court to hear the matter in Dept. 103 and further would be an unavoidable conflict nor would the family EVER agree for the matter to be heard by a commissioner after the most recent travesty of justice by yet another one. It was unconscionable that Commissioner Oleon would EVER entertain the presumptively inadmissible product and evidence of the District Attorney and DCSS admitted fraud much less use it SOLEY as the basis for an illegal judgment and think he could get away with it! Amazing!
In furtherance of their obstruction of justice and attempted extortion of the family, the District Attorney and DCSS has failed and refused to submit any of the releases of child support holds my drivers license to the California State Department of Motor Vehicles for nearly ten years! This despite court orders to do so and the account being current. Dept. 103 does not provide the time to plead, examine and hear this matter and we do not want to provide the same excuse that Oleon used of a “lack of time” to hear the matter, “it should be in another courtroom”. If he were truly concerned about a lack time to hear the case and JUSTICE, he NEVER would have heard the only evidence presented by the District Attorney and DCSS, that of their admitted fraud upon the court.
For these and the reasons presented herein, we request that this matter be re-assigned to another court room that has the necessary facilities of time and court staff, including a reporter and security. I have been threatened by both judges and the District Attorney staff and had requested security from both since 1989. So as Judge Northridge did in November 8, 2006, I am asking this court to reassign this matter as per then Judicial Administration Rule 6.603 (b) (1) (D) now Rule 10.603 (c) (1) (D).
However, it should be noted the family will contest jurisdiction because the testimony of various parties was merely legal theory orchestrated by the District Attorney and DCSS to willfully deceive the court, to allow them to pretend that the Family was represented by the District Attorney and DCSS and whose work was manipulated by the District Attorney and DCSS. Since this is admitted fraudulent evidence and testimony there is no need to impeach these assertions about the District Attorney and DCSS’ conduct. Nothing else has any bearing on this case. This was done in context for the District Attorney and DCSS’ furtherance of their fraud upon the court, the People of California and the family with the intent to deceive and their continued obstruction of justice scheme supported by the court itself to enhance their overall extortion scheme to make al-Hakim pay for their fraud and bribery- not a purported justification or belief in a larger good. This judgment is NOT the legitimate product of an impartial court.
Thus, throughout these extraordinary trials, the most important facts have gone uncontested:
the family has made it abundantly clear and by their actions and evidence that the District Attorney and DCSS violated a court order, perpetrated fraud upon the Court, defrauded the People of the State of California and the al-Hakim family, violated their fiduciary trust, engage in civil conspiracy, bribery, paid a testifying witness for admitted fraudulent evidence and testimony, obstructed justice and has pursued this litigation by a variety of unethical, corrupt, and illegal means, including exercising a clearly illegal conflict of interest in misrepresenting the family, conducting a complete trial to defend their illegal actions and evidence before admitting the conflict, exerting undue influence in the process, by conspiring with the court Commissioner Oleon, its designated accounting expert presenting admitted fraudulent evidence, and by controlling the subsequent production of that evidence over the objection of the family allegedly as a neutral damages assessment.
Certainly, there is no reason to deem a single judge in the Superior Court of Alameda County even capable of deciding whether norms of civil procedure or legal ethics have been or can be followed in this case. Yet that is exactly what needs to be done here as the family has asked this Court to do just that. Indeed, it has gone further, putting the’s entire County government, the Superior Court, the District Attorney and DCSS on trial. A courtroom spectacle more anathema to justice and civil rights is hard to imagine.
All of this is bad enough. But it is made worse by the central irony hanging over this case: The reason the case is toxic is because the District Attorney and DCSS alleged “representing” the family, their creation and use of the presumptively inadmissible product and evidence of admitted fraud and bribery in the proceedings, the substantive merit of their paid testifying witness for admitted fraudulent evidence and testimony on that subject, the judgment as the illegitimate product of an partial court, conducting a complete trial to defend their illegal actions and evidence before admitting the conflict. For nearly a quarter century, the District Attorney and DCSS showered praise on itself and the judiciary, extolling its impartiality and independence in an effort to persuade this Court to award litigation in it’s favor. That effort succeeded. The Court concluded the case in their favor every time with dubious and illegal rulings that contravened procedural law despite the evidence and testimony as it had “everything to do with extorting money from al-Hakim and persecuting the family and nothing to do with the truth, facts or evidence.
There are multiple legal defects that independently require that this case be dismissed but I will discuss this one:
First, there can no longer be any question that this Court lacks jurisdiction. No court has jurisdiction unless the plaintiff has standing, the courts and RICO imposes rigorous standing limits. The District Attorney and DCSS alleged “representing” the family, their creation and use of the presumptively inadmissible product and evidence of admitted fraud and bribery in the proceedings, the substantive merit of their paid testifying witness for admitted fraudulent evidence and testimony on that subject, the judgment as the illegitimate product of an partial court, conducting a complete trial to defend their illegal actions and evidence before admitting the conflict is yet another admission of willful fraud and bribery and lack of standing. Intent on depriving the family of their constitutional right to a fair trial- and apparently lacking confidence in its own actions and evidence-  dropped all of its claims of representation of the family upon the filing of appeal of trial. The California State Attorney General substituted in for The People of the State of California and the family. That also was a conflict as the family had filed a complaint with the U. S. Department of Justice that was referred to and filed with the California State Attorney General regarding these and other activities of the Superior Court, the District Attorney, DCSS, the Oakland City Attorney, other governmental and political officials, attorneys and their contractors, agents and employees. Though the conflict is clear, the investigation has not yet been done nor enforced, so its injury is still pending, not concrete nor non-speculative, and the evidence has gone uncontested.
The Superior Court, District Attorney and DCSS case fares no better on the facts. Given the mountain of discovery at its disposal, one would expect them to present a coherent narrative, backed by evidence. It hasn’t, it won’t and it can’t. Even on its own terms, this theory was implausible: how could anyone in the family possibly cause the District Attorney and DCSS to commit this willful fraud to the family’s own detriment and be responsible for it?
In my last letter to the courts, I said I would address several open concerns as well as the issue of being identified by the Sheriff’s Deputy and Court Administration without having announced my name and being pulled aside by the Sheriff Deputy in the next communication with the court. I will now do so.
    We have been informed and thereon believe that several unknown operatives made illegal ex-parte contact with the Superior Court, the District Attorney, DCSS and County Sheriff’s Department regarding this case. al-Hakim has previously been asked by the the District Attorney to place himself in harms way that could have easily resulted in his death, and by design, it would have rid the Superior Court and the District Attorney of the one indispensable factor in proving the guilt of a rampant Police Department theft ring that the chief investigator, Bob Connor wanted to DISPROVE!
    He first investigated al-Hakim, the victim, to compile/create enough evidence to force al-Hakim to give up the investigation/prosecution of the known guilty cops. I complained about his tactics and felt he wasn’t doing the job of investigating the burglars but the victim in an effort to let them off. Then he began to try to compile/create enough evidence to exonerate the known guilty cops. I again complained about his tactics and felt he wasn’t doing the job of investigating the burglars but trying to create a means to let them off. Realizing that he could not do so, he began to try to compile/create enough evidence to exonerate others involved in the same crimes, over 30 officers, and restrict the prosecution to the two known guilty cops. Upon having compiled enough evidence to convict the two known guilty cops, he began to try to negotiate with me how the case would be tried to the exclusion of others involved unless I was able to personally identify the guilty cops in the course of the burglary. He stated that he had knowledge that they were going to strike again and proposed that I pretend to leave the store, lock it up, yet wait inside for the burglary to occur and step out to identify the burglars. I asked if he had this knowledge, why wouldn’t they just “stake out the building and capture them when they set off the bomb on the windows and entered the store?”. He couldn’t answer with any logic other than to say he needed an eye witness. I rejected this fool hearty request to put my life in the line of fire to be shot by the same cop who set off the bomb to commit the burglary and then kills the the alleged perpetrator (me) whom he caught in the building while responding to the burglary-in-progress call he himself had made. Perfectly stupid!!! I complained about his tactics and felt he wasn’t doing the job of investigating the burglars but trying to eliminate the victim in an effort to let them off. I made it clear that I had no intention to talk to him again. He lastly came to the store to inform me that they had secured enough evidence and information to serve a search warrant and file a criminal complaint, that I should not speak to anyone, including the media excluding Tribune reporter Harry Harris. He further stated that I should know that half the police force thought I was a hero and the other half thought I was a “problem” and I should watch by back. My family, friends and I have lived with that fear since then. It was exacerbated when one night I came home from the store and laid down when shortly I heard a loud noise and saw bright lights hovering over the roof of my home. Since the home has skylights I could see a helicopter hovering over the home and shining a light around my home. I got a phone call from the Oakland Police Department asking me to identify myself, what was going on in the home, who was there, etc. I asked why was there a helicopter over my home and was told there was a report of a “burglary in progress” at my home. I told the person on the phone that there was no such thing happening and that this was perpetrated by some elements of the Police Department that wanted me out the way. They called off the report and I later went outside to find my house surrounded by police and one makes the remark “ you got away this time!”. Life threatening scary, but forces you to resolve NEVER to be intimidated by REAL PIGS! No decent, honorable human being would EVER initiate such actions because a person stood up to crime! Is that not what they are hired to do or are they above the law? This same investigator Bob Connor.
    In letters to Judge Clay and others, I have expressed my fear for my safety after being verbally accosted; physically threatened; attempted to be baited, provoked and intimidated into a physical altercation; threatened with arrest, disallowed from going to Judge Leo Dorado’s courtroom; forcibly removed and escorted from the courthouse building; and ordered not to return by District Attorney Officer Bob Connor on November 22, 2010 at approximately 3:45 p.m  I had litigation that was to be filed in November 2010 the day of my being forcibly removed from the court house and threatened with arrest if I returned by District Attorney henchman Bob Connor whom is very well known to me. The District Attorney Nancy O’Malley’s office has compromised these suits and this issue also must be corrected ASAP. District Attorney Nancy O’Malley’s abridging these inalienable, sacred rights are not a joke to African-Americans.
    This apparently was on order from Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O’Malley and assistant District Attorney Kevin Dunleavy as I sat alone in the lobby of the D. A.’s office for 30 minutes waiting to speak to Dunleavy on an update on the formal 200 page Corruption, Extrinsic Fraud, Criminal Misconduct, Ethics and “Whistle-Blower” Complaint complete with audio CD filed and served on their office on June 7, 2010 stemming from criminal actions committed by John Russo and the City Attorney’s office resulting from the sewer main collapse alongside my home in 1991. After requesting a response to Formal Complaint Served and Filed June 7, 2010 and several conversations with the Alameda County District Attorney office, District Attorney Nancy O’Malley assigned the case to Assistant District Attorney Kevin Dunleavy. After his review and several more conversations with me, Dunleavy decided to assign the case for investigation after he had been assigned this case in July 2010 when he told me months before that he had assigned it to another investigator.
    The D. A.’s lobby reception area is merely a very small space between the elevators and the bullet proof glass doors and windows that separate the public from the D. A. There are only a few chairs that line one side of the space and is not meant to accommodate more than 4-8 people. During the 30 minutes that I waited in the lobby, only 3 people from the general public came onto the floor from the elevators, yet 10-12 came to and from the D. A.’s office. Clearly I represented no threat to anyone, and I could have been assisted without any concern nor fear on anyone’s behalf. I’m sure that the lobby area is equipped with surveillance cameras and would verify my account of this incident.
    After the encounter with Bob Connor and my ouster from the Courthouse that was ordered by Dunleavey, I spoke with District Attorney Matt Golde and Superior Court Judge Leo Dorado regarding my treatment and called O’Malley to voice my extreme concern wherein I received a return call from Dunleavy. Dunleavey expressed his concern for the fact that I knew Golde and Dorado, but not as if it would have made a difference in their decision or actions in having me threatened and removed from the courthouse. He laughed as he recanted stories about them playing on a basketball team together, never once exhibiting any remorse for his or O’Malleys’ actions. The recorded conversation with Dunleavy regarding the encounter with Connor and the investigation can be listened to and/or downloaded at: http://www.box.net/shared/x46rvjorhj.
    We discussed Dunleavy’s second call to me stating the he would speak with the Department of Child Support Services attorney Valgeria Harvey that had to admit in court several times that they and the D. A.’s office had committed fraud, embezzlement and theft against me and my family. When I refused to pay for the D. A.’s fraud, they attempted to extort the money from me by suspending my drivers license and revoking my passport! You can listen to D. A. Kevin Dunleavy voicemail as he tells me he is going to talk with V. Harvey of CSS http://www.box.net/shared/ma0fyvzkdc.
    At the conclusion and throughout these conversations, I had been discussing this matter with  Rodney Brooks, the Chief of Staff for Supervisor Keith Carson who said that he would talk with Nancy O’Malley and get back to me.
    Again on February 23, 2011, I spoke with Rodney for 25 minutes wherein he said that he had discussed the case with Assistant District Attorney Kevin Dunleavey, the same DA that had me forcibly removed from the Courthouse without notice, cause or legal grounds.
    Rodney informed me that Dunleavey admitted he had me removed from the Courthouse without notice, cause or legal grounds and gave no reason nor legal grounds for doing so. Rodney further expressed through his “teeth clenched disdain” that the D.A. had concluded an investigation of the cases, found no wrong doing, and had sent me a letter of their findings and decision. I informed Rodney that Mike O’Connor, Senior Deputy District Attorney, had left me a voice mail message stating that, but in fact I have never received anything from them at all and asked him for a copy of this investigation report, and if he had read it. You can listen to D. A. Mike O’Connor voice mail stating he has ended the investigation at: http://www.box.net/shared/3oampngtby.
    Rodney said that he had not seen the report and did not have a copy. I asked Rodney if he trusted the person whom ordered me removed from the courthouse to conduct a fair and impartial investigation of his employer, boss, co-workers, department, friends, allies and himself- he couldn’t answer, but he didn’t need to. I reiterated my request for a copy of the alleged “investigation report” from the D. A.’s office and that this matter be referred to the Justice Department and the Alameda County Grand Jury for investigation. Throughout the entire conversation Rodney was clearly discourteous to the point he was aggressively attempting to provoke a verbal response from me such that he could abruptly end the conversation. I merely acknowledged his attitude and stayed the course to ascertain that he would respond to my requests in writing and provide a copy of the alleged “investigation report” from the D. A.’s office. Needless to say I have received nothing from Rodney, and after his actions for the last year, it is not unexpected.
    It is unfathomable that such a thing could happen right in your lobby and visitors reception area in today’s highly charged racial, political, and law enforcement versus community interactive environment, especially in Oakland and Alameda County where deadly force seems to be the rule rather than the exception. Given the history of the D. A.’s office, and in your short tenure, I should have expected it!
    To allow the D. A.’s office to handle me and my complaint in such a Gestapo fashion and to use Judge Leo Dorado as a ruse is unacceptable, needs to be investigated, the responsible parties held accountable and punished.
    Clearly something must be done as I have waited for Judge Clay and everyone notified to get back to me to move this process forward. There is no circumstance or law that can justify this use of force, intimidation, and threat of imprisonment under the guise and color of law! The family will not allow this continuing injustice to go on unnoticed and want to know what time is best for Judge Clay to meet as soon as possible!
    The critically serious, incriminating, willful admissions in the conversations and interactions of Rodney Brooks and yourself Judge Clay with D. A.’s Connor, Dunleavey and O’Malley has made everyone witnesses to these actions of the D. A. and any non-action on the prosecution of these crimes will entrap YOU ALL in complicity in the commission of these crimes, in it’s corruption, conspiracy, fraud, obstruction of justice, false imprisonment, aiding and abetting the crimes mentioned, the attempted cover up of these crimes, and willful blindness, among others. It is settled law that the cover up of a crime is itself greater than the crimes themselves! Those stakes are raised exponentially when it concerns corruption on behalf of Judges, elected public officials, law enforcement and legal servants whom are embodied with protecting the public trust.
In May 2008 Alameda County Superior Court Judge Jon Tigar attempted to provoke plaintiff Abdul-Jalil al-Hakim with comments made during a side bar at the recent testimony on behalf of plaintiff by fellow Judge Leo Dorado in al-Hakim’s bad faith insurance case.
As a result of this and Tigar’s continuing misconduct, al-Hakim took the extraordinary measure of filing another complaint with Victoria Henley and the Judicial Council, Alameda County Superior Court Presiding Judge Yolanda Northridge and former Presiding Judge George Hernandez demanding that all side bars be recorded for his own security.
You can view, listen to, and/or download the following related documents or audio files:

You can view and/or download 290 page Appeals Court Subpoena Request for Production of Documents and Depositions for Kamala Harris.pdf here:

https://app.box.com/s/anfjzbqxe1vgkahy52fqisaf9cvgr9on

You can view and/or download AG Harris FOIA Request.pdf here:

https://app.box.com/s/a5ia5phh9dj8de7gpxfex04cz6uq2e95

Judge Dorado Responds to D. A.pdf
http://www.box.net/shared/4ai0vr2s5j

City Administrator Dan Lindhiem Respond Russo Formal Complaint.pdf
http://www.box.net/shared/yfyvhaug0l
City Administrator Dan Lindhiem Post Russo Complaint Meeting.pdf
http://www.box.net/shared/6gj1ae9pa4
D. A. O’Malley Responds to Russo Formal Complaint.pdf
http://www.box.net/shared/pdquncg8x6
County Presiding Judge Rolfenson Responds to Russo Formal Complaint.pdf
http://www.box.net/shared/n8xxh4a93e
County Presiding Judge Rolfenson Discards Formal Complaint- Maggie Takeda Voice mail
http://www.box.net/shared/g10s3kzxn7
County Presiding Judge Rolfenson Receives Formal Complaint Maggie Takeda email
http://www.box.net/shared/2fqsl69z79
City Auditor Courtney Ruby Responds to Russo Formal Complaint.pdf
http://www.box.net/shared/pdi4kxel16
City Auditor Courtney Ruby’s Second Respond Russo Formal Complaint.pdf
http://www.box.net/shared/5a5ndkbmrb
al-Hakim’s Notice to Russo of Action.pdf
http://www.box.net/shared/lnvn6kn92k
Russo Responds to Formal Complaint.pdf
http://www.box.net/shared/dz72had24u
District Attorney Investigates City Attorneys John Russo, Jayne Williams, Meyers Nave Corruption Complaint.pdf
http://www.box.net/shared/sjgi7ynhgh
Oakland City Administrator to Meet al-Hakim on Fate of City Attorneys John Russo, Jayne Williams, Meyers Nave Corruption Complaint.pdf
http://www.box.net/shared/kuf0d18b7i
al-Hakim’s Second Notice to Russo of Action.pdf
http://www.box.net/shared/9gn72snasl
al-Hakim’s ROAR Complaint Against Russo.pdf
http://www.box.net/shared/4424e7822p
D. A. Kevin Dunleavy Removed al-Hakim from Davidson Courthouse Building VM
http://www.box.net/shared/x46rvjorhj
D. A. Mike O’Connor Ends Investigation VM
http://www.box.net/shared/3oampngtby
D. A. Kevin Dunleavy Tells al-Hakim he to Talk with V. Harvey VM
http://www.box.net/shared/ma0fyvzkdc
We presented the Stipulation to the Court as we expect and appreciate the signing where indicated, for we all want this matter resolved immediately. We hand delivered the original and two copies to the Court for endorsement and filing and was to provide an endorsed filed copy to the Director of the Department of Child Support Services afterwards. We all look forward to resolving this matter as soon as possible.
I can be reached at (510) 394-4501 if you have any questions. Thanks’ for taking the time to address these issues and endorse and return this Stipulation.
Respectfully,
Abdul-Jalil
Defendant
***

Forming a Legal Coalition for Victory
Suit vs. Alameda County District Attorney (DA), California Attorney General (AG) and the Alameda County Department of Child Support Service (DCSS)
This case is about, a civil and criminal judicial, governmental, and law enforcement fraud that goes back to the Department Of Justice- U. S. Attorney General and NSA. The government can not defend this admitted fraud, embezzlement, breach of fiduciary, extortion (recorded conversation and all documents can be listen to and/or downloaded below) and obstruction of justice in a MAJOR civil suit!
The nearly three decades old continuing story of the conflict between Abdul-Jalil al-Hakim and his Family with the Alameda County District Attorney (DA), the California Attorney General (AG) and the Alameda County Department of Child Support Service (DCSS) must be among the most extensively told in the history of the American judiciary. The related child support matter was being heard by Judge Stephen Pulido. Current Presiding Court Judge Winifred Smith has previously recused, as has former Presiding Judge Yolanda Northridge, Judge Sue Alexander, Commissioner Taylor Culver is conflicted, Commissioner Glenn Oleon has committed crimes that are the basis for this action and Supervising Judge C. Don Clay has been involved in this matter and exhibited highly questionable judgment by not pursuing a complaint against the investigator Bob Connor and the District Attorney’s office. We now have concerns about the impartiality of Judge Pulido with this case allegedly being assigned to him with the obvious exparte communications that have been had between him, court administration, the DA and DCSS. Pulido ducked out of the case after he incriminated himself, Commissioner Hendricks recused herself and even though she was TOTALLY conflicted by having worked in the D. A.’s office and was supervised by the mastermind of the fraud Sue Eadie, Commissioner Boydine Hall REFUSED to recuse herself and ruled in favor of her former supervisor! Hall, who first refused to answer if she worked for the D. A.’s office, then denied that she, later admitted that she had worked for the D. A.’s office. Hall had a 30 year career in the D. A.’s office, worked with ALL the individuals on this case that committed the admitted fraud, and Eadie was her supervisor! Just as soon as Hall admitted she worked for the DA, she denied it again when confronted with the fact that she was participating in this ongoing fraud and obstructing justice! In the related al-Hakim vs Rescue and CSAA et., al. there are numerous instances of judicial misconduct, where EVERY judge and commissioner in this case has admitted error, committed perjury, recused themselves, or all three!
In pursuing the matter with the leads that we have developed entraps those mentioned above and others that tried to investigate us for pushing back against the persecution and terrorizing that colluded with the real criminals that perpetrated these continuing crimes in their attempts to entrap us in crime. When there was no crime that we could be entrapped in, they created the crimes themselves and simply chose to prosecute on that basis. How does one answer to the question of “how can the District Attorney admit to committing a crime of fraud, embezzlement and obstruction of justice of a minor child and prosecute the father for it?”. How can ALL the State and Federal law enforcement agencies be on notice of the crime and prosecution, have received formal complaints of the crime and prosecution, be directed to investigate and prosecute the fraud and prosecution and do NOTHING but cover up the crime and prosecution?
We are seeking purposeful organizations that might be interested in forming a coalition for a MAJOR VICTORY that would inspire Muslims to stand up against the national criminal judicial, governmental, and law enforcement persecution and terror being inflicted upon innocent citizens everywhere! At the very least I would expect you ALL to support that effort. The government can not fight this admitted fraud and embezzlement in a civil suit! Since the facts and testimony is already admitted and developed over years, there’s little risk or costs involved and a GREAT REWARD/RETURN!! WE respect and recognize the boundaries that each of you have set for yourselves and if you would prefer not to get engaged in the task we ask that share this cause widely and refer it to others.
With that in mind, we would like to propose just that. Forming a Legal Coalition for Victory and would like references to organizations that want to participate in the civil suit against the DA and that will bring into focus the activities of the others in the cover-up and collusion. Ismail had mentioned the Muslim Advocates as a resource and I think they are a good fit. Please share this proposal with EVERYONE that you think might or should be interested in winning justice and respect for ALL childern, responsile parents, Muslims and people in general!

al-Hakim and family now wish to sue the DA, AG, DCSS, and possibly California Governor Jerry Brown. Due to the admitted, uncontroverted, uncontested evidence in this matter it could be won on summary judgment and I have attached recent filings to give you an idea of what has transpired in this matter. It just needs some relentless tenacity! Attorneys here are afraid of the system that has ignored the law for fear of being blackballed!
They created and complied an entire presumptively inadmissible product and evidence of admitted fraud and bribery, then exercised a clearly illegal conflict of interest in misrepresenting the family, conducting a complete trial to defend their illegal actions and evidence before admitting the conflict AFTER the trial was completed and have sought to cover it up since!
The DA, AG and DCSS and their judicial team of covert illicit participants– the putative accounting expert that created and complied the entire presumptively inadmissible product and evidence of admitted fraud and bribery, the accounting report used as the sole basis for the judgment by Commissioner Glenn Oleon despite the fact he knew it was the product of fraud.
al-Hakim and Family assert that good cause exists to question the legality of the standing of ALL the Parties including the Attorney General of The State of California (AG) whom substituted in as Attorney of Record allegedly “representing” The People of The State of California, et. al., “In The Interest of Justice” in this case for the Alameda County District Attorney (DA) and the Alameda County Department of Child Support Services (DCSS) as they exercised a clearly illegal conflict of interest in misrepresenting the family, conducting a complete trial to defend their illegal actions and evidence before admitting the conflict AFTER the trial was completed. This act makes them ALL a co-conspirator in the DCSS’s continuing fraud upon The People of The Sate of California, the Superior Court and the al-Hakim Family, continuing their persecution of our family. They did not have standing then and CAN NOT NOW!
 
Thank you and I welcome and look forward to your response with the furthering of the litigation and resolution of this ongoing case.

Respectfully,

Abdul-Jalil al-Hakim