by Mark Aspillera

Harry Belafonte speaks during a special reception at SFSU. (photo by Marvin J. Ramirez)

In a San Francisco State University theater filled with professors, academics, students and press, famous musicians, political activist Harry Belafonte addressed a group of original participants of the university’s 1968 student strike on Oct. 29, 2008.

The voice, detailing the events on October 2008, filled the room in slow paced, unhurried. Its softness required the audience to listen quietly, with great attention.

Belafonte, held in infamy for years not only for his title as the King of Calypso music, but as an unabashed and vocal man of the left. He described the strike as a “trigger” for protest around the country in 1968, pushing for the civil liberties and rights movement.

The Jamaican-American calypso musician forged his reputation as a leftist activist beginning in the 1960s. Belafonte was among celebrities like Sidney Poitier and Charlton Heston who marched with Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1963 Civil Rights March on Washington D.C. Belafonte spoke of the time he met King as a young man for the first time.

“He was 24, I was 26,” he said.

King told him at the time that he believed “we are integrating into a burning house,” referring to blacks and America.

“I recognized he was prophesizing,” Belafonte said.

True to his reputation as a freethinker and speaker, Belafonte did not shy away from talking about present-day political issues during his address, in particular the year’s presidential election.

“What we’re really seeing, what are we really saying is that we are going to have great expectations on Obama when he is sitting in that chair,” he said, referring to the Oval Office.

Despite predicting Democrat Barack Obama as the victor of the presidential election, Belafonte had criticism to level towards both candidates, especially in what he saw as negligence towards issues of poverty.

“Of all the speeches I’ve heard, I have not heard anyone speak of the poor,” he said, adding “they are still holding poor people responsible for the crisis on Wall Street.”

Belafonte’s address was part of the events on the SFSU campus commemorating the 40th anniversary of the student strike. Hosting the event was SFSU’s College of Ethnic Studies, a department created in 1969 by the agreements that ended the strike.

The four-day conference recognized an act of civil disobedience still surrounded by many dark clouds of controversy.

Critics of the strike say student strikers used a disproportionate amount of violence in attempts to achieve their goal of campus policies more receptive of student and faculty diversity. Tactics employed included the throwing of firebombs and setting of fires in the school library.

Among the strikers were controversial groups such as the Progressive Labor Party, a party underpinned by a Maoist political philosophy.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, the San Francisco Police Department deployed horse-mounted officers, riot sticks and pepper and tear gas shells against concentrations of students in their attempts to quell the strike.

Accompanying Belafonte was actor, film director and fellow political activist Danny Glover, a former San Francisco State University student. Glover was a participant in the strike itself and a member of the Black Student Union at the time.

Glover told The Golden Gate [X]Press, SFSU’s campus newspaper, that the actions of strikers, including the 1969 resolution at end of five months, were historically significant, even though they “didn’t really know it at the time.”

­(Marvin Ramirez contributed to this report.)

by Mark Aspillera

An empty Civic Center Plaza, while abandoned political signs ask for votes for canditate Ralph Nader, who only got 1 percent of the vote. (photo by Marvin J. Ramirez)

Nov. 4, 2008’s historic election night was marked with slightly more conventional results on the state and local level, but not without its own upsets.

In San Francisco County, Superior Court Judge Seat 12 was won by Gerardo Sandoval, a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Sandoval defeated current Superior Court Judge Thomas Mellon with 54.84 percent of the vote.

Of the seven races for seats on the county Board of Supervisors, only three were decided as as of Nov. 5, 2008. Districts 5 and 7 were carried with comfortable majorities by Ross Mirikami and Sean Elsbernd respectively. Carmen Chu won the seat for District 4 by a closer margin with 50.16 percent of the vote.

Districts 9 and 11 remain undecided, but led by Latino candidates David Campos and John Avalos respectively. Campos’ 6,065 votes represent 35.52 percent of the vote, while Avalos’ count of 4,371 is followed closely by 3,562 for Ahsha Safai.

The four Latino candidates out of seven for Board of Supervisors District 9 hold the top four ranks in terms of vote counts as of Nov. 5. Trailing Campos are Mark Sanchez, Eric Quezada and Eva Royale. Sánchez held 29.49 percent of the vote with 5,036. Quezada came in third with 21.26 percent, 3,631 votes. Royale, whose endorsers include Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA) and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, trails in fourth with 6.07 percent, 1,037 votes.

It might be a reason why Civic Center was empty. A loud party of Obama’s supporters took a fraction of Valencia St. as their own on election night to celebrate.

San Francisco Unified School Districts four new board members are Norman Yee, Sandra Fewer, Barbara Lopez and Rachael P. Norton. López was a guest speaker at Oct. 31, 2008’s anti-ICE protests in front of the San Francisco Immigration and Customs Enforcement building. Lopez claimed 8.94 percent with 47,101 votes in her name.

In Berkeley, Latino candidate and Rent Board Commissioner Jesse Arreguin leads the as-of-yet undecided race for District 4 councilmember with 49.47 percent of the vote.

Behind Arreguin, candidate Terry Doran trails with 36.1 percent.

In San Mateo County’s race for Colma City Council, Raquel “Rae” Gonzalez won one of three open council seats. Following Gonzalez into Colma’s council are Diana I. Colvin and Joseph A. Silva. Fourth candidate Charito A. Casanas fell short with 146 votes, 21.5 percent.

Carlos Romero and Laura Martínez, two of several Latino candidates for the City of East Palo Alto’s three open city council positions, carried the day alongside incumbent councilmember A. Peter Evans.

Latino candidates won all of the three board member positions open in the Hayward Unified School District. Newcomers Luis Reynoso and Maribel Heredia were voted in along with school board incumbent Sarah Gonzáles.

In San Leandro, Hermy B. Almonte gained the single open board member seat in Area 1 of San Leandro Unified School District with 58.41 percent.

Adding to the gains of Latino candidates in the Bay Area education sphere was Guillermo “Memo” Morantes, whose 65.2 percent won him the open position for Trustee Area #7 of the San Mateo Board of Education’s Board of Trustees.

Gerardo Sandoval

On the state level, the California State Assembly retains its Democratic majority with all 80 members having been up for reelection­ Assembly member and Majority Leader Alberto Torrico (D-Newark) was reelected to District 20 with 71.7 percent of the vote, beating Republican Jeffrey Ward.

In many of the State Assembly districts they ran in, Latino candidates have carried the vote with exceptions such as Fran Florez, who lost in District 30 to Republican candidate Danny Gillmore, and Manuel Cosme, the Republican candidate for District 8.

In the House of Representatives, incumbent Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, won the District 8 seat with 71.6 percent of the vote over San Francisco-based Independent Cindy Sheehan, who came in a distant second with 17 percent.

California’s controversial Proposition 8, which eliminates the right of same-sex couples to marry in the state, passed with 52.1 percent of voters in favor.

San Francisco local propositions had few close calls, with the exception of Proposition B. Prop B, which would have appropriated a portion of property tax to allocate towards affordable housing in the City of San Francisco, failed with 50.54 percent of voters against.

Proposition A, which would have the City and County of San Francisco issue $887.4 million in bonds across the length of several fiscal years to San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center to “ensure availability” in the case of a natural disaster, passed with 84.29 percent of voters in favor.

Proposition K, the move to decriminalize prostitution in San Francisco, lost with 57.56 percent of voters voting against it.

by the El Reportero news services

Paatricia Espinosa

The governments of Ecuador and Colombia have dismissed any prospect of reconciliation in the short term. Instead, they are engaging in an acrimonious exchange of accusations, Ecuador insisting that Colombia, by leaving its border areas uncontrolled, enables the persistence of crossborder hostage-taking, and Colombia claiming that there is still a strong, tolerated Farc presence in Ecuador.

Both sides have been stretching the facts and switching around their arguments.

Right snatches symbolic victory in Chilean elections

The ruling Concertación and the opposition coalition Alianza por Chile claim that they won the municipal elections on 26 October. They both have a point.

The Alianza has the most to celebrate. It recorded its first electoral victory since the return to democracy 18 years ago by winning the mayoral elections, taking some of the biggest and most emblematic municipalities in the process.

The Concertación, however, won a greater percentage of the vote in the elections for council seats a more accurate gauge of party political support ahead of presidential elections in December 2009.

Russia is back and Latin America is its new play ground

For almost two decades, even long after its turn around in 1999, the Russian elites continued to believe in the West, much longer than they ever should have.

To that end, Russia refrained from encroaching on the American playground, Latin America.

With the Monroe Doctrine, the US has seen to Latin America, especially to Central America, as it’s personal play ground, where national governments are over thrown as would be and policies are shoved down everyone’s throats as desired.

The area was kept hands off by Russia, even while the West continued, driven primarily by the Anglo-Americans, to surround and encapsulate Russia from all sides.

Outside of some weapons sales to Venezuela or some nice words to Cuba, Russia was gone from Latin America and with no plans on returning.

That all changed, of course, as so many other things did, when the Anglo-American Trotskytes, the Neocons, attempted to restart the Cold War and to renew their sagging fortunes. They poked the bear, not directly, but by using their proxy Saakashvili. What they found was not a hibernating bear but the renewed Russian Imperial eagle of the Holy Third Rome.

That point was driven home all the more by the endless stream of relentless lies that fl owed forth. With the lies came the malice that had previously been ever so lightly disguised, except that it was disguised no longer.

Now even the Russian liberals were shocked and dismayed by what they found that the West, particularly the Anglo-Americans really were, once the fairy dust settled from their eyes.

Now no sphere is off limits and Russia has roared back into Latin America. The response?

The response both from the Anglo-Americans and the Latin Americans has driven one thing home clearly not only to Moscow but the world: the Anglo-American Empire is teetering. It is not over, it is not dead but it will cede territory as it starts its long retreat. In other words, except for some words and confusion there has been no response from the Trotskyte Neocons.

From the Latin Americans, the response is loud and clear.

1. Cuba is in talks about setting up air defense, new Russian bases and a space center.
2. Mexico is Foreign Minister Patricia Espinosa for trade talks and political cooperation.
3. Nicaragua has come out in support of Russia’s recognition of Abkhazia and S.Ossetia by also recogniz- ing them, as it too seeks to get closer to Moscow.
4. Columbia has sent Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos to discuss combined military efforts against terrorism, drugs and possible equipment deals. Columbia is looking at fi ghters and helicopters and radar systems, just like the ones Venezuela bought.