While the start of 2021 doesn’t feel very different from the end of 2020, the NLG-SF Bay Area has some exciting new directions for this next year of the Gregorian calendar. 

Our year will start with our continued defense of the right to vote and defend of those standing against the authoritarianism and fascism that Trump is still trying to provoke. As tired as it is, he has stoked the depths of white nationalism and bigotry and he’s hoping they will give him an opportunity to stay in office or at least continue to implement repressive, regressive and authoritarian measures in the weeks and days he has left. 

In January, we are launching two new areas of work: 1) Environmental Justice (EJ) Defense & Support; and 2) an NLG Youth Caucus. Our EJ work will start with a webinar on January 14th about the work that Green Action is doing to stop environmental injustice in Bayview Hunters Point with NLG Weinglass Fellow, Zsea Bowmani (see the announcement below). Then, in late January we will regroup the youth focus group convened in the Fall to form a standing Youth Caucus to inform our work and keep it relevant to up and coming activists. The Youth Caucus will also translate materials and be trained to provide Know Your Rights trainings for young activists. 

We are also welcoming two new staff members! Welcome E Conner and Savannah Landau as our new Program Coordinators. Both will start in mid-January. We have more details on their roles at the bottom of the newsletter. We also have four interns joining us for the Spring semester and two confirmed for summer. In 2021 we will be formalizing and expanding both our intern and new lawyer support systems and launching a Litigation Program (more on these in future newsletters). 

Looking forward to moving together towards our goals of justice, liberation and common humanity. 

Sara Kershnar, Executive Director

NLG-SF is hosting this webinar as part of launching our new Environmental Justice Committee. We invite you to join and hear from our NLG-SF fellow, Zsea Bowmani, along with the grassroots activists he has been working with at Greenaction for Health & Environmental Justice and residents of San Francisco’s Bayview Hunters-Point and Treasure Island. You will hear about their experiences organizing for the health and safety of their communities, as well as opportunities for NLG members to support ongoing EJ campaigns. Please join this first webinar of our upcoming series and get plugged into the committee!

As the December outbreak entered its second week, cases peaked at 109 on December 30. This number dropped to 87 by the following day even though pending tests added 11 new cases, because around 33 people were declared to be recovered and one person was released while positive on Friday, January 1. Improbably, testing then stopped entirely for two days from January 2-January 3.

Santa Rita Jail prisoner Eric Wayne reported this week that, despite the ongoing outbreak which has impacted 93 deputies to date, staff mask usage remains inconsistent. He has personally witnessed staff pull masks down so that their noses and even mouths are uncovered.

This week, Wellpath created a new category, “Dark Red,” for people who have tested positive for COVID-19. This distinguishes them from “Red” patients currently experiencing COVID-19 symptoms. However, the Sheriff’s attorneys have not yet approved the release of a new Outbreak Control Plan, leaving advocates in the dark about what new practices Wellpath has implemented for testing and categorizing prisoners, as well as how they are determined to be “recovered.”

Decarcerate Alameda County and NLG-SFBA created an Action Alert and social media toolkit for community members to advocate for releases and other actions which would help to mitigate the outbreak. Demands include:

• Petition to release all people at higher risk of COVID complications, regardless of their charge or conviction.
• Petition to release everyone with 18 months or less to serve on their sentence, regardless of their conviction.
• Petition to release everyone being held pretrial, regardless of their charge.
• Petition to release everyone being held on probation violations.
• Instruct charging deputies to end their practice of overcharging immediately, as these charging decisions do not accurately reflect the seriousness of the case and lead to excessive bail, among other consequences.
• Do not seek bench warrants for failures to appear. 
• Urge judges to follow the emergency bail schedule.
• Allow all people with credit for time served at report and sentence offers to be released.  
• Encourage all police agencies to cite and release all people arrested for any offense.
• Implement mandatory weekly testing of staff and contractors. 

Featured Testimony

Monday, December 28: Deangelo Cortijo

For the past five days, I have been in the Covid quarantine unit (8A). The sanitation here is abysmal. There is dirt and grime on the floor and walls, and dry throw up on walls and on the drinking fountain. The surface areas are not wiped, the showers are not cleaned. When I asked for cleaning supplies, the deputies gave me a bottle of sanitizer, an old toilet brush, and a small broom handle. I've asked for a mop for the past 3 days, and my request was denied by the deputies. In order to receive medical tests, such as blood pressure, oxygen monitoring, and temperature checks, I have been forced to squat at or below waist level and  put my arms and face against rusted food tray slots. There are people in SRJ who are gravely and mentally disabled, and cannot defend for themselves. We are in critical need of our community to come forward and ensure that our basic human rights are being protected, and that law enforcement agencies are held accountable to the public.