By Tanya Dennis

Victims’ rights are also a priority for Ursula Jones Dickson

“I don’t like it when people say ‘my office.’ It doesn’t belong to me. It belongs to the people.”

That philosophy is at the heart of Ursula Jones Dickson’s approach to leading the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office. Asked whether one person can rebuild an office that has experienced years of change, disruption and a massive backlog of cases, she said the answer is ‘yes,’ but only with time, focus and a willingness to change priorities.

“One person can affect policy that changes the office,” Jones Dickson said.

For her, one of the most urgent priorities is gun violence, an issue she says has deeply affected Black communities for generations.

“Gun violence has always been a concern in the Black community,” she said. “We all have a visceral reaction to a helicopter because it often means there has been a chase or gun violence.”

Jones Dickson said gun violence is personal to her because it has hurt both her and her community. “I take it personally,” she said.

She worries that America, and particularly its young people, are becoming desensitized to violence. School shootings and repeated lockdowns are leaving children with experiences previous generations never imagined.

“We can’t act like this isn’t affecting our children,” she said. “When schools become places where shootings take place, they are affected in a different way.”

She believes the community has become dangerously accustomed to guns and violence.

“We have to stop normalizing guns,” she said. “We have so many guns and so many people with guns.”

Perhaps one of the most disturbing changes she sees is the way ordinary disagreements can now become deadly.

“Nobody fights anymore,” she said. “They kill.”

Jones Dickson said the question communities must ask themselves is: “When gun violence becomes a part of the community, how many vigils and how many marches can we stand?”

At the same time, she is determined that victims’ voices will not be lost in the criminal justice system.

“I sit with victims on a regular basis,” she said. “There isn’t a week that goes by that I don’t sit down with a victim’s family and hear them ask why a case has not been charged.”

Victims often need far more than updates about a court case. They need assistance navigating the criminal justice system, counseling, burial assistance and, sometimes, simply someone to sit with them during one of the most painful moments of their lives.

“Victims’ rights have been pushed aside,” Jones Dickson said. “What I want to leave to this office is that victims’ voices will be heard. I don’t care whose toes I step on. Victims will be heard.”

The challenge, however, is enormous. Her legacy is to help victims feel seen and protected.

The office is working through a significant backlog of serious cases while trying to rebuild an experienced, well-trained staff. Jones Dickson said years of disruption, including the impact of COVID and frequent leadership changes, left attorneys needing additional training and contributed to delays.

“There have been three district attorneys in four years,” she said. “Every district attorney wants to build their own culture.”

Her goal is to create a stable office with skilled prosecutors who understand their responsibilities and can move cases through the courts. She emphasized that the work is not simply about winning cases.

“It is our job to prove a case beyond a reasonable doubt,” she said. “Just because law enforcement brings us a case doesn’t mean we can prove it.”

Jones Dickson also believes rebuilding public safety requires rebuilding relationships between law enforcement and the community.

Residents have told her they sometimes see police cars drive through their neighborhoods without officers getting out and speaking to residents.

“When police are in neighborhoods and stop and talk to kids, there is a connection,” she said. “We need more community-based relationships.”

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By Ken Epstein and Post Staff

Earlier this year, two Oakland parents formed a new Political Action Committee (PAC), which they describe as an “Oakland parent-led effort working towards better public schools” focused on electing new leaders in Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) Districts 2 and 6, opposing progressive incumbents.

So far, the Parent PAC has donated to Arielle Fleisher in District 2 and Alexandra Williams in District 6.

According to the latest filing with the City of Oakland, the PAC raised a total of $45,540 but received just 12 individual contributions from Oaklanders who appear to be OUSD parents, totaling $2,100, less than 5% of the total.

Most of this ‘parent’ PAC money came from two sources: San Francisco billionaire Michelle Boyers and the “Champions for Quality Education,” a PAC run by two long-time charter industry advocates in Oakland, Kimi Kean and Hae-Sin Thomas.

Besides charter advocates, the Champions PAC was funded by real estate developers and crypto executives and was active in the 2024 District 3 election. These two contributions totaled $37,120 and, together with a $5,000 contribution from former Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf’s failed state treasurer campaign, make up 92% of the total contributions received by this PAC.

Candidates running against the incumbents and supported by the Champions PAC favor closing more schools in Oakland, claiming in public meetings that this is the only way to balance the budget permanently. However, they have provided no evidence that school closings over the past 20 years have strengthened OUSD’s financial position or improved educational and budget conditions in other districts that have gone that route.

The current school board majority, including the incumbents in District 2, Jennifer Brouhard, and District 6, Valarie Bachelor, strongly oppose school closings.

Importantly, while many advocates of reducing the number of schools maintain that closing more schools is the road to fiscal health, almost as an article of faith, they do not examine nor even mention the consequences that follow as a result of the many schools that OUSD has already closed over the years.

To name only a few, Oakland has lost Roots International Academy, an East Oakland middle school that was closed over broad community opposition in 2019; Lakeview Elementary School near Lake Merritt, which, despite protests, was closed in 2012; and Santa Fe Elementary in West Oakland, also closed in 2012.

Several Oakland parents have expressed concerns over the new Champions PAC and the misleading name it gave itself.

“It’s pretty disheartening to see a PAC branding itself as ‘parent-led’ when over 95% of its funding came from wealthy non-parent donors and charter-aligned PACs — before most Oakland parents even had a chance to weigh in,” said Journey Meadows.

“Our schools deserve advocates who reflect our community and truly care about our children, not a well-funded campaign to reshape the board from the outside,” she said.

Stefanie Parrott also had harsh words for PACs that push to close schools.

“It is upsetting and insulting when a parent group lobbies for the closure of someone else’s schools, especially without ever engaging actual families of the schools they want to close and without a true understanding of, or with a cruel indifference to, the devastation school closures have on poor Black and Brown communities,” she said.

“This is especially true when the parent group is funded by outside interests like charter industry leaders and out-of-town billionaires,” she continued.

“Instead of dismissing the impacted students and families, they might actually talk to us in West and East Oakland before their ‘advocacy’ harms our communities. I am an OUSD parent, and they don’t speak for me,” Parrott said.

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By Haiti Action Committee

Haiti Action Committee condemns killings in Haiti and demands the Trump Administration stop deporting Haitians back to Haiti

Heavily armed, paramilitary death squad Viv Ansanm on Sunday, Aug. 23, carried out

another major massacre in the Kenscoff commune in the hills outside of Port-au-Prince. The

death squad attacked survivors of previous violence who were sheltering in a church in one of

the villages.

Many people in the church were killed, along with people in their homes. Women and young

people were targeted in particular. Community sources have provided different estimates of the

number of people killed, but they range from 40 to over 70 people. Women were raped, and

dozens of people were additionally taken hostage; they remain captive with imminent threats to

their lives.

According to local officials, this attack was announced by the paramilitary death squad at least

two weeks before it occurred. The police and government authorities were made aware of the

threat, but once again failed to provide protection, as has been the case in many other

massacres. The population is furious over the obvious collusion between the U.S.

-installed puppet government and the death squads.

Kenscoff has repeatedly been targeted by Viv Ansanm as it seeks to consolidate its control of

the commune and expand control into the adjacent Petionville region of Port-au-Prince.

Other massacres by paramilitaries, armed with weapons from the United States, have likewise

continued across Haiti in recent weeks, notably Gresye south of Port-au-Prince, a village in the

Akaye region north of Port-au-Prince, and Dessalines and other towns in the agricultural center

of the Artibonite region.

In another shocking incident in Ohio, Pierre Damas Bel, a 20-year-old Haitian college student. died by suicide Monday morning after losing his legal immigration status and receiving a GPS ankle monitor from immigration authorities,

It was 8 a.m., and he was sitting inside his car on the side of the interstate highway, struggling with the shame of being forced to wear an ankle monitor by immigration officials.

Bel, a student at Wright State University, said he had been bullied at school and felt “humiliated” by the device.

“I told him to come home so we can talk,” Bel’s father said in a statement. “Around 11 the police showed at my door to report that my son threw himself under a truck.”

Bel stepped into oncoming traffic and died from his injuries, the Ohio State Highway Patrol said. His family blamed the humiliation brought on by the ankle monitor he had been wearing since July.

Meanwhile in Haiti, there are now 1.5 million people internally displaced by violence and more than 5.8 million people on the brink of starvation.

These are the conditions into which the Trump regime is attempting to deport 350,000 Haitians

who have had their TPS (Temporary Protected Status) in the US revoked.

Haiti Action Committee urges people to call or email their senators to demand they

immediately pass Senate Bill S.4814 to extend TPS for Haitians! The House has already passed a version of this bill, H.R. 1689.

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