Students Protest Gun Violence with Giant Dildos
By Sola Agustsson /Alternet
Texas Governor Greg Abbott recently passed the “campus carry” law, which will allow gun license owners to carry concealed firearms throughout public university campuses. The law will go into effect starting August 2016, and many believe it will make universities less safe. Students at the University of Texas at Austin are protesting this law in a peaceful yet subversive way- by openly carrying sex toys to class.
“You’re carrying a gun to class? Yeah well I’m carrying a HUGE DILDO.
Just about as effective at protecting us from sociopathic shooters, but much safer for recreational play.
“Express Yourself”
Acknowledging the Playwright Project’s
“Deborah Salzer Excellence in Arts Education Award”
By Ernie McCray
Being recognized
for any contribution
I’ve made to the arts
is like being recognized
for breathing
a breath,
like being identified
for being myself –
as I was raised by a mother
and a grandfather
and a great-aunt
and cousins
and a church
and more than a handful of neighbors
and a teacher or two
at a segregated school
to,
in the spirit of the Golden Rule:
Express myself. [Read more…]
Down With Columbus Day!
Sunshine/Noir II: A Continuing Exploration of Literary San Diego and Tijuana
San Diego City Works Press Celebrates 10th Anniversary with Anthology:
“Sunshine/Noir II: Writing From San Diego and Tijuana”
Friday, October 16th at 6:00 PM at the Glashaus Mainspace
1815 Main Street in Barrio Logan
By Jim Miller
This fall, San Diego City Works Press marks its 10th anniversary with the release of Sunshine/Noir II: Writing from San Diego and Tijuana, an anthology of local writing about San Diego edited by Kelly Mayhew and myself.
Sunshine/Noir II is dedicated to the late local poet Steve Kowit, who was an original member of the San Diego Writers Collective and, as so many San Diego writers can attest to, a fellow traveler and one of our community’s great treasures. His work appears in the anthology along with poetry, fiction, and nonfiction from Sandra Alcosser, Marilyn Chin, Jimmy Santiago Baca, Stephen-Paul Martin, Mel Freilicher, Elizabeth Cazessús, Perry Vasquez, and many more. Local journalist Kinsee Morlan formerly of San Diego City Beat as well as Doug Porter, Anna Daniels, Brent Beltran, and Frank Gormlie of the SD Free Press and OB Rag appear in the anthology along with former SDUT Book Review editor and columnist Arthur Salm.
[Read more…]
It’s Time to Abolish Columbus Day
By Bill Bigelow / Common Dreams
Once again this year many schools will pause to commemorate Christopher Columbus. Given everything we know about who Columbus was and what he launched in the Americas, this needs to stop.
Columbus initiated the trans-Atlantic slave trade, in early February 1494, first sending several dozen enslaved Taínos to Spain. Columbus described those he enslaved as “well made and of very good intelligence,” and recommended to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella that taxing slave shipments could help pay for supplies needed in the Indies.
A year later, Columbus intensified his efforts to enslave Indigenous people in the Caribbean. He ordered 1,600 Taínos rounded up—people whom Columbus had earlier described as “so full of love and without greed”—and had 550 of the “best males and females,” according to one witness, Michele de Cuneo, chained and sent as slaves to Spain. “Of the rest who were left,” de Cuneo writes, “the announcement went around that whoever wanted them could take as many as he pleased; and this was done.” [Read more…]
Ocean Beach … ‘It’s Beside the Point’
If you visit Ocean Beach in anything more than beach gear and flip-flops, there is a very real danger of being overdressed. Casual and colorful, Ocean Beach is San Diego’s land of hippies, surfboards, street music and weekend BBQs. And let’s not forget some pretty good-looking –er, hard-working — lifeguards.
This community is punctuated by older one-story homes, wild lawns, hand-painted fences, and open doors. There is an ever-present aroma of weed, and the number of dogs on the street sometimes ties the number of humans. [Read more…]
Geo-Poetic Spaces: Leaving the Underworld
Why
travel 7,000 miles
through 9 time zones
metal detectors
security checkpoints
layovers?
Endure delays
breathe recirculated air
exchange one currency for another
at inflated rates?
Why
leave the comfort of one’s native language
for a foreign tongue
landing
on an island
surrounded by turbulence
gambled away by offshore money lenders –
it’s geography: A garment
divided between soldiers
of foreign empires? [Read more…]
Planning My Garden for an El Niño Winter
By Jeeni Criscenzo
Now that my knee is healing, and the weather is cooling off a bit, my attention is turning back to my garden. Knee problems aside, the oppressive heat of the past two months pretty much silenced the siren call of my garden. Just dragging my sweaty self out to feed the chickens was my quota of physical exertion for the day. Some evenings didn’t even cool enough to inspire my meditative stroll through the succulent labyrinth.
Resigned that my vegetable garden this summer was a total disaster, I had removed all of the fencing that kept the chickens out of my raised beds. So while I wasn’t working, the chickens were. [Read more…]
North Of The Fence: South Bay GDP Growth Nearly 25 Percent More Than County
By Barbara Zaragoza / South Bay Compass
Incredibly good news for the South Bay this week. According to a report by the National University System Institute for Policy Research, GDP growth in the South Bay from 2010 to 2013 was 37.6 %, compared to 12.9 % for the entire County. Click on the article to see the increases.
We South Bay’ers can get awfully patriotic about our little neck of the woods. Although we’d like to be seen as an integrated part of both Tijuana and San Diego, some ‘outsiders’ would rather call us the Third Nation. Ok then, I guess, you can start calling us the Third Nation rising. [Read more…]
Charger Stadium Deal Could Be Key in Block vs Atkins Senate Contest
By Doug Porter
New polling from the Garin-Hart-Yang Research Group indicates increased voter awareness of Assemblywoman Toni Atkins willingness to ease environmental challenges to a proposed publicly subsidized NFL stadium in San Diego may be her Achilles heel.
The September 24-26 survey of a representative sample of 401 likely 39th Senate district primary voters was, according to a summary issued by Hart Research, fully representative of the district by geography, inclusive of variables such as race and partisanship, and has a margin of error of ±5.0 percentage points.
The summary indicated Atkins name recognition and favorability rating are higher among voters on first blush. When voters were presented with positive, similarly long descriptions of both candidates, incumbent Senator Marty Block gained ground. A shorter comparative description mentioning Atkins’s willingness to ease CEQA challenges to the proposed NFL stadium, voter preferences shifted to give Block a 46-to-35 advantage over Atkins. [Read more…]
California Here We Go: $15 Minimum Wage Headed for Statewide Ballot
By Doug Porter
California advocates for a statewide $15 per hour minimum wage are marshaling their forces in support of a November 2016 initiative. The mayors of San Francisco and Oakland, cities which have already passed increases, appeared at a press conference on Tuesday to announce they will be leading the effort. The measure was submitted to the state by the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West.
The Fair Wage Act of 2016 will raise the minimum wage for all California workers by $1 annually, effective January 2017. Once the minimum wage reaches $15, it will automatically go up each year to match the cost of living. The state’s minimum wage is currently $9 an hour and is set to rise to $10 on Jan. 1, 2016. Cities will continue to have the option of setting higher local minimum wages.
San Diego events related to the Fight for $15 movement are already planned as part of the build-up to next year’s election. A regional wage hearing set for October 17th will hear testimony from workers, economists, academics, students, and labor leaders as a prelude to garnering commitments from local political leaders. A Day of Action in November will see protests on college campuses, at fast food restaurants, and in downtown San Diego. [Read more…]
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