Activism

Hundreds Rally at Court House to Support DA Pamela Price and End Mass Incarceration

Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price shared her vision and determination to fulfill the goals of the historic civil rights movement, to work with the community to end violence, support victims of crime and end the institutionalized injustice that plagues criminal justice in Alameda County and this country.

Published

3 years ago

May 1, 2023

Ken Epstein

By Ken Epstein

Several hundred people attended a rally last Sunday on the steps of the Alameda County Court House by Lake Merritt and live on social media to rally in support of newly elected Alameda County District Attorney Price, who already faces blistering establishment attacks for carrying out her campaign pledge to end mass incarceration and to meet the desperate needs of both crime victims and victims of the criminal justice system.

District Attorney Price shared her vision and determination to fulfill the goals of the historic civil rights movement, to work with the community to end violence, support victims of crime and end the institutionalized injustice that plagues criminal justice in Alameda County and this country.

“I stand before you as the first non-appointed, non-anointed district attorney of Alameda County in over 100 years,” said Price, who began her remarks by underscoring her determination by singing one of the anthems of the Civil Rights Movement the 1950s and 1960s, “I Ain’t Going to Let Nobody Turn Me Around.”

Among the speakers were diverse Alameda County residents and leaders who support Price, including Berkeley resident Paola Laverde, a member of the Alameda County Democratic Central Committee, District 15.

“Like the 228,721 people who voted for her in November, I believe she is the right person to be Alameda County’s top prosecutor,” said Laverde, who has worked as a translator for the courts.

“I support Pamela Price because she’s a Black woman who had the audacity … to challenge and stand up against the status quo in Alameda County, where the district attorney has been handpicked by politicians and not by the people (for decades).

“For over 30 years she has fought for the victims of sexual assault and harassment, victims of retaliation, victims of discrimination, regular people like you and me, nurses, doctors, electricians, teachers, office workers, security guards and police officers, working class people, victims of unscrupulous employers and systems that depend on maintaining the status quo,” Laverde continued.

“She is a trailblazer (who) ran a people-powered campaign for district attorney,” she said. “She refused to take money from corporations – she returned the donation from the biggest landlord in Berkeley.”

Norman Birkenstock, who described himself as a senior leader in the Asian American and Philippine-American community, introduced Price.

“I stand beside our minister of justice, Pamela Price,” Birkenstock said. “We stand strong, resolute, unwavering, for social justice, and public safety for all Asian Americans, all African Americans, all Hispanic Americans, (and) for all white Americans.”

Ron Curtis, Oakland firefighter and paramedic for 19 years, focused on some of the attacks on Price.

“All the negative things that have been said about Pamela Price and the negative press have been a lot of lies, a lot of misinformation,” Curtis said. “We’re having a war on injustice, and they’re having a war on us. They’ve been having a war on us for how many past generations. And Pamela Price gets into office for four months, and they’ve already started.”

The rally was chaired by civil rights attorney Walter Riley, who has a long history of working for justice in Oakland.

“(Pamela Price) has the tenacity, the toughness and the experience to bring equity and justice to a badly broken system,” said Riley.

“She has the mandate to carry out the reforms she has been talking about (and campaigned on), and our community supports that,” he said. “Now, for the first time, we have someone right here (in the district attorney’s office) who we can support and fight for.”

Speaking to the crowd from the courthouse steps, DA Price said she had just returned from a civil rights tour of the South.

“I had the privilege of standing in places, like Montgomery, (Alabama) where the modern civil rights movement for this country was born in 1955. (Today,) there is triumph in Montgomery, just like there is triumph in Alameda County.”

Many Black people in those days died fighting for their rights, but they were not deterred because they understood he vote meant they could change who ran the country, she said. “Just like in November 2022, we knew that if we vote we can change who runs Alameda County.”

Less than a month after the historic March on Washington, where Dr. King spoke of his dream, racists blew up a bomb, murdering four Black children in Birmingham.

She said, there is a lesson in that: “When you show up for freedom and justice, you have to be ready for the backlash.”

She presented some statistics of racial injustice in Alameda County:

A Black person in Alameda County is 20 times more likely to be incarcerated than a white person;
50% of the people on probation in the county are Black;
66% of the people in Santa Rita County jail are Black;
86% of juvenile arrests in Alameda are Black or Brown children;
Of those in the county sentenced to life without parole under the age of 21, over 82% are Black.

Price said that when she took over the DA’s office, she found “an organization in chaos.”

“There was no transition plan,” she said. “This is (former DA) Nancy O’Malley’s shame, leaving an organization totally unprepared for change. We entered an environment filled with employees either traumatized or toxic.”

In her first 75 days, Price has put many changes in place.

Her office started with improving victim services. Only 40% of the victims in this county receive services they are entitled to, she said.

Her office is rebuilding “collaborative courts,” providing mental health units. “We listened to the families of the seriously mentally ill for the first time,” she said.

She successfully found places for almost three dozen people with serious mental illnesses, “who were languishing in Santa Rita County jail,” she said.

She created a public accountability bureau with more lawyers, paralegals, and investigators to investigate in-custody deaths, “to enforce the constitutional rights of every resident of Alameda County.”

She seeks to reform “racialized justice mechanisms,” establishing new guidelines and procedures for charging, sentencing and plea disposition.

Her office is creating community-based commissions to advise on “how to transform this broken system,” a mental health commission, a re-entry commission, a victim-witness advocacy commission and a gun violence task force.

Concluding her remarks, District Attorney Price said, “I’m not fearing the backlash that they call a recall, because I believe in the engagement and the activism of this community. In Alameda County, we know what democracy looks like.”

For a copy of the report produced by her volunteer transition team, go to https://bit.ly/41II5ld

Ken Epstein

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Diabetes in Black California: Turning the Tide from Crisis to Control

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System data, nearly 17.9% of Black adults in California have been diagnosed with diabetes — above the national Black adult average of 16.8%, and nearly five points higher than California’s overall adult rate of 12.6% across all races. California ranks 24th out of 39 states with available data for Black adult diabetes rates.

Published

1 day ago

July 5, 2026

Oakland Post

Dr. Khadijah Lang is a family physician with a clinic in Los Angeles who specializes in several family medical practices, including prenatal care. Lang believes in family medicine. She says it is important to treat all members of a family. Thursday, June 5, 2026. Photo by Solomon O. Smith/California Black Media.

By Charlene Muhammad, California Black Media

Crystal Lambert knew something was terribly wrong with her three-year-old granddaughter as she sped down the street trying to get her to the hospital.

“I thought she got a hold of some poison,” Lambert recalled.

Doctors found Lambert’s granddaughter had a blood sugar level over 800, diagnosing her with Diabetic Ketoacidosis(DKA), a state in which the body, starved of insulin, begins to shut down.

Lambert said she was born with a pancreas that was not fully functioning — it lacked the specialized cells required to produce insulin.

Her granddaughter survived and is five years old today. Now, she gives herself insulin shots, asks endless questions about her condition, and runs like the spirited child she is. But the terror of that night transformed Lambert — and ultimately inspired her to launch the We Fight Back Organization, a mobile health and food access initiative serving underserved communities across California. Lambert is the executive director.

The Crisis by the Numbers

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System data, nearly 17.9% of Black adults in California have been diagnosed with diabetes — above the national Black adult average of 16.8%, and nearly five points higher than California’s overall adult rate of 12.6% across all races. California ranks 24th out of 39 states with available data for Black adult diabetes rates.

Nationally, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Black Americans were 24% more likely than the overall U.S. population to have diabetes in 2024. They also died from diabetes 78% more often than the general population in 2022. Black Americans are also more than twice as likely as the overall population to develop kidney failure caused by diabetes.

According to the California Health Care Foundation’s 2024 Health Disparities Almanac, Black Californians have the shortest life expectancy in the state at just 74.6 years — due in part to chronic conditions like diabetes and its devastating complications.

Leon Rock, co-founder of the African American Diabetes Association, believes statistics, though revealing, only tell part of the story.

“There are a whole bunch of Black folks that don’t tell you that they have diabetes — or don’t know,” he said.

And the disease itself, Rock is careful to note, is not what kills. “They die from the complications. That’s heart attack, that’s stroke, that’s amputations of legs, of feet. Going blind. All those complications are inherent in a system that has impacted Black folks with diabetes in California and across America.”

Crystal Lambert, creator and executive director of We Fight Back. She started the organization out of a need to learn more about diabetes on behalf of her granddaughter. Now she is looking to spread the impact of her organization to the valley. Friday, June 6, 2026. Photo by Solomon O. Smith/California Black Media.

Crystal Lambert, creator and executive director of the We Fight Back Organization, started out of a need to learn more about diabetes on behalf of her granddaughter. Now she is looking to spread her organization to the valley, on Friday, June 6, 2026 Photo by Solomon O. Smith/ California Black Media

An Information Gap Fuels the Crisis

For Rock, part of the solution is diagnosis. He says the medical and public health systems are failing Black Californians by the absence of information designed for them.

“That is the bottom line. We need good information. Information that is culturally specific,” said Rock.

Telling people to eat healthy or exercise, he added, falls short when culturally specific alternatives are not provided, and when many residents of urban communities do not feel safe exercising in some neighborhoods – or outside at night.

Dr. Khadijah Lang, a family medicine physician and president of the Golden State Medical Association, agrees that the roots of the crisis run deeper than individual behavior — and blaming patients misses the point.

“We are not genetically predisposed to diabetes,” Lang said. “But the system under which we live increases the likelihood that we will develop it.”

What the Body Needs — What Communities Are Denied

Type 2 diabetes, which accounts for 90 to 95% of all diabetes cases, according to the CDC, develops when the body can no longer use insulin effectively to regulate blood sugar. Left unmanaged, it damages nerves, kidneys, eyes, and the cardiovascular system. The hemoglobin A1C test is a blood draw that reveals how the body has processed sugar over the previous three months — not just at the moment of the test. It is the standard tool for both diagnosis and ongoing monitoring.

That distinction matters, Lang emphasized, because patients cannot manipulate three months of blood sugar history the way they might fast for a day before a single blood draw.

“The pill is not meant to undo or control a sugar level that’s being constantly stressed,” Lang said. “It’s meant to work in conjunction with a low-carbohydrate diet and exercise.” She recommended at minimum 30 minutes of physical activity five days a week — breakable into 10-minute sessions for those who need it.

Lang stressed that education must be delivered in language people recognize and can relate to. The goal is to inform them of the choices that serve their health best, she said.

But for many Black Californians, even those informed choices remain out of reach, Lambert said.

“They need access to healthy foods and medication, too” she said.

California has made some critical policy advances. The state has expanded access to the Continuous Glucose Monitor (CGM), which has transformed diabetes care for state residents. Assembly Bill 365, introduced in 2024, proposed requiring Medi-Cal to cover the costs of CGM and other related medical equipment but it failed in the State Senate. Since then, the California Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) reports that the core Medi-Cal CGM benefit now available to eligible patients was solidified through previous budget actions and pharmacy policy updates.

These measures, while meaningful, have not closed the gap for the communities most at risk, according to advocates.

Control Through Community

Health care advocates conclude that the solution must be communal, culturally grounded, and sustained — not a fad, not a celebrity moment, not a single clinic visit. For example, observed Lang, lifestyle shaped by shared values and collective accountability can move the needle where individual prescriptions have not.

Rock is building infrastructure to match the urgency, establishing local chapters of the African American Diabetes Association across the country, with California next.

“We have to do for self, period,” he said. “Health is wealth. We have to eat to live.”

And Lambert, whose granddaughter unknowingly started all of this for her, keeps showing up.

“Diabetes advocacy is about dignity, education, prevention, and hope,” she said.

Video: Diabetes Disparity Exposed in California

This article is supported by the California Health Care Foundation

(CHCF). Visit www.chcf.org

Oakland Post

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Oakland Post: Week of July 1 – 7, 2026

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of July 1 – 7, 2026

Published

1 day ago

July 5, 2026

Oakland Post

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NPRC Joins National Grand Jury Proceedings Seeking Accountability, Constitutional Restoration

Organizers state that testimony will explore historical and political developments that they believe have contributed to the expansion of corporate influence over public institutions and governmental decision-making. Participants are expected to discuss concerns regarding constitutional governance, individual liberties, property rights, and the protection of vulnerable populations, including seniors and persons with disabilities.

Published

1 week ago

June 26, 2026

Oakland Post

Photo by Billie Powers.

Special to The Post

The National Probate Reform Coalition (NPRC) has joined Toll and Roll and a growing coalition of advocacy organizations, victims, whistleblowers, and citizen groups in support of a nationally broadcast People’s Grand Jury proceeding scheduled for July 1 and July 7.

Organizers describe the event as a public forum designed to examine allegations of government abuse, judicial misconduct, legislative failures, and the erosion of constitutional protections affecting millions of Americans.

The proceedings will feature testimony from victims, families, advocates, and organizations from across the country who contend they have experienced harm through government actions, institutional neglect, and failures of oversight.

According to organizers, the People’s Grand Jury will focus on concerns involving probate courts, guardianships, conservatorships, child welfare systems, property rights, civil liberties, and what participants view as a growing disconnect between government institutions and the constitutional rights of the people they are sworn to serve.

NPRC is participating because many of the issues being examined mirror the concerns raised by advocates, victims, and families who have participated in its monthly town halls. For years, families have reported cases involving exploitation of elders, questionable guardianships, estate depletion, denial of due process, and a lack of meaningful oversight within probate court systems.

“This proceeding gives victims and advocates an opportunity to place their experiences on the public record,” said Tanya Dennis, lead facilitator of NPRC. “For too long, families have struggled to have their voices heard regarding elder abuse, probate exploitation, and government inaction. This forum allows those stories to be shared before a national audience.”

In keeping with principles of transparency and fairness, invitations have been extended to legislators, members of the judiciary, law enforcement representatives, and other public officials who may wish to respond to concerns raised during the proceedings or defend actions taken by their respective institutions.

One of the primary outcomes sought by organizers is public consideration and support for the People’s Remedy and Restoration Act, a proposed legislative framework that advocates believe would strengthen oversight, increase accountability, provide remedies for victims of governmental abuse, and restore constitutional protections.

The proceedings are expected to be broadcast nationally, providing citizens throughout the United States an opportunity to observe testimony, review evidence presented, and participate in an ongoing conversation regarding government accountability and the protection of individual rights.

Advocates hope the hearings will encourage meaningful dialogue, legislative reform, and renewed public engagement in the democratic process.

Individuals, organizations, public officials, and members of the media interested in attending or obtaining access information may contact the organizers at tollandroll2025@gmail.com.

As Americans continue to debate the future of constitutional governance, judicial accountability, and the protection of vulnerable citizens, the July proceedings are expected to serve as a significant forum for public testimony and civic engagement. For more information, go to https://tollandroll.com