The Beginning of a New Era for the Bay View Newspaper

The San Francisco Bay View Newspaper was forced to stop printing a weekly paper due to financial strain. The last printed copy went out on July 2nd, marking the 697th issue the Ratcliffs have printed since starting the paper back up in 1992.

We are making an urgent appeal to radical activists and organizations in the Bay Area to support us in doing everything we can to defend the paper and make it a more integral part of the work groups and individuals in the Bay Area are doing that connects to people and issues in the Bay View Hunter’s Point District of San Francisco and to the global struggle against land theft and the privatization of health care, water, housing, and basic public services.

One of the only Black-owned radical publications in the U.S., the Bay View Newspaper has consistently provided a public platform of communication and solidarity between U.S., African, Latin American, and Caribbean activists and incarcerated people who are challenging imperialism throughout the world and from both sides of the prison walls.

It’s hard to imagine a worse time to lose our ability to print the paper. As trouble brews for our comrades in the international struggle, SF Mayor Gavin Newsom unleashes the Hope SF social and ethnic cleansing plan, State Attorney General Jerry Brown attempts to frame-up the SF 8, and the San Francisco, Los Angeles, Oakland Police Departments promise more gang injunction zones, the Bay View Newspaper has to keep apace with the people’s resistance.

At its last run, the paper was printed and delivered to thousands of homes in Bay View Hunter’s Point and Oakland, dozens of locally owned businesses in the Mission District of San Francisco, and hundreds people in captivity. We receive at least 60 pieces of mail per week from prisoners, including pen pal requests, reports of torture and abuse, and requests for legal support from prisons throughout the U.S.

The Bay View Newspaper’s strength comes through its volunteers and activists in the Bay Area and a small staff of committed writers, and that spirit and perseverance is what has made the paper truly great. The collective work on the paper has been in the practical field of solidarity work. It is one thing to share a vision of abolition and an end to oppression and another to act in solidarity with those who struggle on the frontlines of state violence and, further, to seek to combine efforts with groups and individuals of the same persuasion but who value different approaches.

The Bay View has maintained itself as an individually-funded FREE paper through a trickle of advertising revenue, national prisoner and resident subscriptions, and a small pool of donors, which has included the staff itself. Its printed, weekly format has been key to bridging the ‘digital divide’ in more ways than one, as many of its subscribers have no or very little access to the internet and few sources of trusted, current, community and activist-oriented news.

We’re writing to you now as someone who has a vested personal and political interest in a thoughtful, spirited, and grounded resurgence of the paper through collective, cooperative means. The Bay View Newspaper is a community resource to its core and we believe its staying power resides in the willingness of grassroots activist, abolitionist, and solidarity organizations in the Bay Area and nationally to support the paper in ways that they haven’t before.

Our goal is to resume printing as a monthly paper. We already know the paper is an important resource for people of color and working class communities in the Bay Area. With your contribution, it can be an important resource for grassroots and social movement organizations, as a means of communication and education within our communities.

We are in the fight with you. Will you fight for the Bay View?

In return, we hope you will take advantage of the national distribution and political vision of the Bay View. Did you know that you could take out an ad for upcoming events, conferences or actions in the Bay View? Write an article about your current campaign? Get reporters out to your actions and press conferences? Put out a call for volunteer support?

As a community paper, we want to provide a space for our community organizers to be heard. We want to get news of your work to our brothers and sisters in prison cells across the country. With your support, we can get that print wheel spinning again!

Come to the important community forum led by the Minister of Information JR and BayView publisher Willie Ratcliff on the life and future of the BayView newspaper – including plans to print the paper monthly.

Saturday, August 9th, at 7 p.m. at The Black New World, 836 Pine St. in West Oakland, to discuss this question as well as others.

After the forum, there will be a party to celebrate the life and legacy of this phenomenal paper, with DJs X1 from KPOO, Davey D from KPFA and Leydis from Havana, Cuba, spinnin' R&B and Hip Hop on the 1's and 2's.

A donation is requested, but not required. Money raised will benefit the SF BayView's Prison News Bureau.

For more information, call (415) 671-0789 and read the Bay View's online edition at http://www.sfbayview.com