Bang4Change rocks downtown SF

Photo: Patricia Jackson

“Bang4Change” was truly a “Human and Civil Rights Revival Fest” as countless performers and speakers came together in downtown San Francisco on Feb. 25. The event was dedicated to poor youth of color in this city. Speaker after speaker exposed the brutality of the police in Black and Latin@ communities in the Bay Area.

The civic center rocked with the sounds of Ace Washington singing “Inner City Blues” and Michael Franti reciting a poem from his album, “Staying Human.” Workers World Party delivered a solidarity message, along with many other groups.

The driving force behind Bang4Change is mesha Monge-Irizarry. This tireless anti-racist activist is the mother of Idriss Stelley, a young Black man killed by San Francisco police in 2001. Monge-Irizarry started the Idriss Stelley Foundation and in 2005 hosted a “civil rights cookout” in the SF Bayview District to “honor freedom fighters in her neighborhood.”

According to organizers, this year’s event was held in downtown SF as a wake-up call to all government officials from the “New Human and Civil Rights Movement.”

—Judy Greenspan