Ralph McKnight

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  www.pasadenaweekly.com/cms/story/detail/mother_wife_sup - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 6/5/2008    Last Visited: 6/19/2008  

  Ralph McKnight, an Obama campaign volunteer who sits on the executive board of the California Democratic Party, described the event as an "uplifting" occasion.
  
  "The fascinating thing was you had a sense you were in close company with someone who before long is going to be the first lady," he said.

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  www.pasadenaweekly.com/cms/story/detail/get_to_know_mic - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 5/22/2008    Last Visited: 5/22/2008  

  "On the one hand it's an opportunity to further enhance Barack's campaign, and to answer a lot of the questions people ask of her and the role she intends to play as the first lady," said Ralph McKnight, co-chair of the Organization & Development Committee of the California Democratic Party.

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  www.pasadenademocrats.com/node/view/1029 - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 12/15/2006    Last Visited: 5/2/2007  

  Ralph McKnight
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  Executive Board representative: Ralph McKnight

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  Congratulations to elected 44th Assembly District reps... - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 5/2/2007    Last Visited: 10/18/2009  

  Ralph McKnight
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  Executive Board representative: Ralph McKnight

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  Feb. 15, 2001 update - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 2/15/2001    Last Visited: 8/9/2001  

  by Ralph McKnight
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  Ralph McKnight is a longtime political activist and currently serves as chairman of the Rainbow Caucus of the California Democratic Party.McKnight is also a member of the Majority Coalition.He can be reached at rainbowcaucus cdp@yahoo.com.
  
  It seems only months ago that we were embroiled in a rather gnarled special election for the Pasadena School Board.Because of the successful attempts of a handful of the matriarchy of the Pasadena Old Guard , along with some of the employees of a local group called ACT , the relatives of some of those employees and a handful of others , one of Pasadena's most qualified candidates , Porfirio Frausto , was defeated.

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  Jacque Robinson for Pasadena City Council District 1 - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 2/3/2008    Last Visited: 7/28/2008  

  Ralph McKnight, Executive Board Representative (44th AD), Democratic Party

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  News&features - September 9, 2004 - [Cached Version]
  Last Visited: 9/9/2004  

  Ralph McKnight Former chair of the Rainbow Coalition Caucus of the California Democratic Party

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  PASADENA WEEKLY: Archieved 3/6/03 - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 5/7/2003    Last Visited: 5/7/2003  

  Daughter of longtime local Democratic Party leader and Rainbow Coalition Caucus Co-chairman Ralph McKnight, no stranger himself to individual protest and dissent, Kareim also goes by the name Xochitl.It was under that name she became cofounder of the Not in Our Name peace coalition, which helped organize the more than 6 million demonstrators who protested on Feb. 15 against an American preemptive strike against Iraq.
  
  When police in riot gear formed a barricade in front of an April 2, 2002, peaceful demonstration against Israeli-Palestinian violence, McKnight and others in the just-born peace organization were linking arms in the front of the 600-strong march so that it would not be dispersed.
  
  "It's very difficult to link arms like that because you're totally exposed," she recalled."And the police put up a line right in front of us and they had their billy clubs and they started pushing and punching into the crowd with their clubs - right into my chest.The police were pushing and pulling on people, and I got pulled through the line."
  
  McKnight was subsequently thrown face-first to the ground, she said, and kneed and punched in the back, right arm and shoulder before being dragged away in handcuffs.
  
  According a report by Berkeley police Officer Peter Hong, Hong suffered "trauma, stiffness and swelling to the fourth finger" while arresting McKnight, hence the battery charge.
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  The other arresting officer, identified only as Officer Stein, said McKnight charged police.
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  I think they tried to make an example of her [McKnight].They were close to her and she was one of the more vocal people in the crowd, so they grabbed her as a signal to the crowd that they would deal harshly with people who were outspoken or visible," Pritchett told the Weekly.
  
  Don Najite, a demonstrator within four feet of McKnight, told local reporters, "I saw several officers being very aggressive.
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  One officer shoved her [McKnight] with the baton, she fell back, then forward and they arrested her."
  
  Police and prosecutors refused to return more than a dozen calls about McKnight's case.
  
  Police also didn't interview any witnesses, according to McKnight's lawyer, San Francisco defense attorney Donald Bergerson, who is planning to file a motion of malicious prosecution and believes police kept secret records on McKnight and targeted her.
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  "Her history as an organizer has something to do with it," Pritchett said of why police arrested McKnight, who was the only arrested at the demonstration.
  
  "They need to suppress people who lead people," said McKnight.
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  Just five days before arresting McKnight, Berkeley's Police Review Commission sustained an allegation against Hong for harassment.
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  By contrast, McKnight may be a tough woman and a self-proclaimed radical, but she doesn't look the part.With her toothy smile, hearty laugh and loquacious personality, McKnight looks like one of a growing number of seemingly typical Americans taking to the streets to protest against our country's foreign policy and its plans for a preemptive strike against Iraq.
  
  "I'm an agitator.It's what I do," said McKnight, who is not shy about labeling herself a communist and a peaceful revolutionary.
  
  For that, Ralph McKnight is a very scared father, but even more proud of his baby, as he calls her even today.More than 40 years ago, the elder McKnight put his body in the way of clubs, gas and bullets from police as a protester in the Civil Rights Movement.Apparently, courage and dissent run in the family.Ralph McKnight recalled his daughter's first week in college as a freshman at UC Berkeley.
  
  "What was it?About a week later, baby, maybe two weeks later and you were getting hauled in the back of a police van for the apartheid rally?I was very proud," said McKnight, now 70.
  
  "I'm very, very, very, very, very, very proud of my daughter, what she is doing.There's always a possibility she could get very, very, very hurt out there, perhaps even killed, because the attitude of this country regarding individual dissent and civil disobedience has been one that it's very, very dangerous for people who choose to express their independence in ways like that," he said.
  
  Donations to Kareim McKnight's defense fund can be made to Free Xochitl at Not In Our Name, 5245 College Ave. #636, Oakland, Calif., 94611.

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  PASADENA WEEKLY: Archieved 5/29/03 - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 6/4/2003    Last Visited: 6/4/2003  

  Prominent civil rights activist and former Rainbow Coalition Caucus chair Ralph McKnight, 70, still gets up at the crack of dawn to plan and organize, and says times have never been tougher for treasured American civil liberties.
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  Social change was also a life and death struggle for McKnight, a Navy veteran moved to action by the murders of friends and neighbors during the civil rights struggles of the 1960s. McKnight, a Howard University graduate and perhaps the first black air traffic controller east of the Mississippi River, left his Washington DC home in 1964 to serve the United Nations teaching a new government in the Congo how to run an airport.Back at home, he had helped organize Martin Luther King Jr.'s famed 1963 march on Washington.When he came back, McKnight, who had seen several friends attacked and even killed in pursuit of civil rights, also saw blacks assaulted in their own neighborhoods by un-checked police brutality.He joined the underground Revolutionary Action Movement, a group dedicated to physically protecting black neighborhoods from police aggression." We were prepared to go to war," said McKnight of the organization, many members of which "had weapons on the rooftops and were prepared to use them." En route to Canada in the 1970s for a job in the aviation industry, McKnight visited and decided to stay in California for love of the weather, he saidHe then became director of the Watts Media Center, ran political campaigns and, among other things, became the chairman of the Rainbow Caucus for the California Democratic Party and co-chair of the California Democratic Party.He remains a member A of the party's executive board.In 1999 McKnight traveled to Cuba to advocate lifting the more than 40-year-old embargo against that nation.Today he spends his time organizing and combating anti-terror legislation, such as the controversial USA PATRIOT Act, which he said violates civil liberties by expanding government powers and amounts to "a social corrosive" that "flies in the face of everything this country stands for."
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  " Now most kids aren't fully aware, especially kids of color," said McKnight, though he also said many older people remained uninformed on the issues of the day.
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  McKnight is scared for the future of civil rights, warning that the PATRIOT Act and other anti-terror legislation authorizes new government powers akin to Soviet KGB controls." Someone can read my history, the FBI, NSA, whoever the fuck it is, see me at a demonstration, see the SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee), RAM (the Revolutionary Action Movement).They can say I have terrorist potential, snatch me out of my house and put me in jail. … That's how acute and absurd it is," said McKnight.

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  PASADENA WEEKLY: Greater Pasadena's News and... - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 2/21/2003    Last Visited: 2/21/2003  

  After reading the bill, Ralph McKnight, longtime political activist and co-chair of the State Democratic Party's Rainbow Coalition Caucus, said, "It's oppressive, it's scary, it's facist.It's all there."
  
  But, he said, secret arrests and detention camps operated by the government to silence dissidents and minorities have always been realities for America's dispossessed.
  
  "This is very, very frightening.I'm afraid for anyone who wants to express their opinion, anyone who wants to demonstrate, anyone who wants to speak independently. … African Americans should be out on the streets protesting because they are the ones who will be most affected by this.This takes me back to the ‘60s," McKnight said.
  
  "I think it's horrible.If it's passed it will be devastating.And those who are not engaged in trying to repeal these things, to hell with them," McKnight said.

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