Georgia Schreiber & Charles Minster: Prison Focus and Pelican Bay SHU

Freedom is a Constant Struggle TV Show, January 25, 2008.

Our first guest is Georgia Schreiber, Board Chair of California Prison Focus (CPF). Formerly known as The Pelican Bay Information Project, CPF was founded shortly after the supermax prison opened in 1989. CPF staff work with prisoners and their family members to expose human rights abuses with a larger vision of closing the SHU and ultimately abolishing California's racist, genocidal prison system (see www.prisons.org).

Also joining us will be Charles Minster, a retired trade union activist and supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee (www.partisandefense.org). Both activists have recently visited political prisoner, Hugo 'Yogi' Pinell, now enduring his 18th year in SHU, his 38th in solitary, and his 44th in California prisons.

For more information: http://www.hugopinell.org/

Jennifer Friedenbach: War on the Homeless

Freedom is a Constant Struggle TV show, April 18, 2008.

Originally from Redwood City, our guest Jennifer Friedenbach has worked about 18 years on homeless and poverty issues, including welfare rights, housing, homeless prevention, healthcare, disability, and human and civil rights. For five years, Jennifer worked at San Mateo County's Hunger and Homeless Action Coalition moving from administrative assistant to Director. She started work in San Francisco 13 years ago with the Coalition.


Jennifer has co-authored a number of reports including Locked Out! The Voices of People with Mental Illness, a 1999 study citing bureaucratic blockage of access to San Francisco's mental health system for people in crisis; Housing First for Families, which documents the impact of homelessness on children; and Shelter Shocked, which presents a statistical study of human rights abuses in San Francisco's shelter system. Jennifer sits on the Implementation Council for the Ten Year Plan to End Chronic Homelessness, and was a founding member of the People's Budget Collaborative, which redirects City funding toward supporting poor people's programs in San Francisco.Last year, Jennifer was among 11 San Franciscans honored with the Women Making History Award.

Raymond Nat Turner and Zigi Lowenberg: UpSurge!

Freedom is a Constant Struggle TV show, Feb. 22, 2008

Our Guests will be the founders of UpSurge!, a Bay Area band with a compelling mix of jazz, poetry and politics, featuring Raymond Nat Turner and Zigi Lowenberg - who chant, shout, sing, whisper, and speak their message against oppression and for community while transporting the audience on a high-spirited liberating journey.

Voted 'Best of the East Bay in 2003′, the group's ensemble includes piano, bass, drums, saxophone, and trombone. Their recordings feature special guests and can be found on their websitewww.upsurgejazz.com along with listings for their upcoming gigs.

Dennis Cunningham: The FBI and the Resistance

Freedom is a Constant Struggle TV show, May 2, 2008

Our guest, Attorney Dennis Cunningham, established the People's Law Office in Chicago from which he and young Attorney Jeffrey Haas conducted a landmark civil rights case ultimately winning a large settlement for the Panthers' families -- although Chicago's killer cops were never criminally charged.

Dennis continued doing civil rights cases over these 40 years, during which he also worked on the long-running class action for the prisoners who rebelled and survived the massacre at New York's Attica State Prison in 1971, and the Earth First case resulting from the 1990 bombing of Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney in Oakland, among many other defenses of protesters and victims of police misconduct, brutality and/or murder.

RELATED EPISODE: Dennis Cunningham on the Attica Prison Uprising (Sept. 12, 2008)