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Video Pick: Talking Pictures

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During last night’s Thanksgiving dinner, the guests would suddenly freeze during a conversation or while lifting a forkful of food to their mouths when a voice would sing out- “Picture!” All the pictures were taken on digital cameras or smartphones and end up being stored digitally for future retrieval- on a computer.

It is doubtful that any of these images will ultimately end up in a box of old photographs at some future flea market table or estate auction. No stranger will pull out a photo of the eight year old boy who flashed a Halloween pumpkin grin with his new grown-up front teeth or a closeup of the aging woman’s hand, now speckled like a fish, gracefully holding a champagne flute.   [Read more…]

Time for a Rolling Jubilee: Debt Relief By and For the People

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The statistics on personal debt in the country are pretty sobering- 77.5% of American households are in debt; tuition debt has now exceeded credit card debt; and 1 in every 4 Americans is being pursued by a debt collector. 40% of indebted households used credit cards to pay for basic expenses.

These statistics reflect wage stagnation over a period of decades, the prohibitive costs of a college education, the lack of jobs and access to quality affordable health insurance. The right prefers the simpler argument that they reflect a lack of moral grounding in hard work and individual responsibility. That argument was rejected in the recent election. It remains to be seen whether national policies reject austerity as our fiscal course of action.   [Read more…]

The Elections are Over. Will City Heights Get “Stuff” with their Pizza?

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Last Tuesday I walked the four blocks from my house to Euclid Elementary School in City Heights to vote. The election notices were in five different languages and the citizens lined up in the hallway were conversing in those languages. Young people had small children in tow and pushed baby carriages. Elderly people moved slowly using canes and walkers. The poll workers were all young and ethnically and racially diverse; the voting process went smoothly and quickly. Despite all of my anxieties regarding the electoral outcomes, I felt that “rush of democracy” Megan Burks described so well in her Speak City Heights article about election day in City Heights.   [Read more…]

Presidents Matter, but Movements Matter More

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The presidential campaign for those of us on the left was a real nail biter while the Romney team, optimistically cocooned in their alternative reality, had a victory speech and fireworks at the ready. Then the race was called when Ohio went to Obama.

We won. Whew. Team Romney/Ryan was handed its ass. Barack Obama has four more years, and yes this election was clearly a mandate. It matters that Obama will be sworn into office this coming January, but what matters even more are the progressive movements that put him there– and what effect they will continue to have on the remainder of his administration.
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Busloads of Foreign Looking People and Fraudulent Voting Assistance: Paranoia at the Polls and the City Heights Vote

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This past weekend I suddenly became conscious of a quotidian, unremarkable occurrence in City Heights. I was walking to the number 7 bus stop on University Avenue when a large van with the words Alliance for African Assistance turned down the street. Earlier that morning a mini-van pulled up next door with a small group that socializes regularly with my ethnic Chinese neighbors.

But this weekend I wondered if vans, mini-vans and even buses will be used to get citizens in City Heights to the polls on election day. I hope so.   [Read more…]

Paranoia at the Polls: The San Diego Election Integrity Project’s Troubling “Evidence”

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The Election Integrity Project, although it defines itself as non-partisan, operates as a platform for the conservative Heritage Foundation, the right wing Breitbart.com, and the Tea Party groups True the Vote and the non-profit iCaucus. Their website raises the ubiquitous fearful specter of voter fraud; their intent is to police the act of voting itself, to assure that “every lawfully cast vote [is] accurately counted.”

While the restrictive voter laws enacted after the Republicans gained power in 2010 have the impact if not the explicit intent to suppress the vote of communities of color, the young and the elderly who tend to vote Democrat, True the Vote and its offshoots not only support those efforts but have also assumed the role of election vigilantes at the polls and registrar offices.   [Read more…]

Video Picks of the Week: Mitt gets a little sazón, conservatives stand athwart history yelling “Stop” and the privileged class turns peevish

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The United States is steadily shifting from a predominantly white country to one in which nonwhites will soon be a majority. In addition, a recent Pew report on religion in the U.S. reveals that a third of adults under the age of 30 are religiously unaffiliated today. This poses a challenge to the Republican party in which close to 87 % of registered voters are white.

The conservative response? Whinge. And lots of prayer…   [Read more…]

The Continuing Saga of City Heights Capital Improvements in the Time of Austerity

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The City Heights Area Planning Committee (CHAPC) meeting held on Monday October 15 was spent presenting information and answering questions about the capital projects on the master list; a bare-bones list of projects that includes the installation of sidewalks, street lights, drainage projects, a number of small parks, renovations for a senior center, repairs to the police shooting range and a new fire station. During the course of the meeting committee members and the audience were given the opportunity to add additional projects to the list.

On November 5 the CHAPC will decide upon a prioritized capital project list. Their goal is to present the top five projects. I encouraged them to submit every single project as a number one priority for the community. I was dead serious. Jim Varnadore responded that while the committee didn’t dispute the validity of doing so, the City would impose its own prioritization. I responded that the City does that anyway and that their ranking process is not transparent.
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Video Picks of the Week: The Avenging Uterus, Hellfire with Deer Heads, and the Science Guy

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The extreme right wing depiction of science as a conspiracy of elitist lies used to undermine the authority of the family and biblical truth while promoting a dangerous liberal/socialist agenda has been given an undeniable legitimacy within mainstream Republican politics. Climate change denialism. The assault against women’s reproductive choice. Creationism. We speak constantly about providing a quality education for our kids that will enable them to be productive and competitive in the world, yet we elect a growing number of people to public office whose policies are dangerously, ignorantly anti-science. Do you think there will be consequences?   [Read more…]

The Scramble for Parks, Street Repairs, Fire Station, Street Lights and Sidewalks: City Heights Capital Improvements in the Time of Austerity

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The list does not include the pressing infrastructure need for wireless hubs throughout City Heights. Councilman Tony Young stated in a budget committee meeting earlier this year that he would like to see wireless access made available to the surrounding communities using our public libraries as a broadcasting source. He quickly discounted the possibility unless the City found a private partner.

Councilman Young knows that his district as well as the other low income districts constitute the have- not side of the digital divide. While the city as a whole ranks high in internet connectivity, there are whole sections of the city in which families do not have computers or are unable to afford monthly internet access fees. There are large swaths of the population who are not computer literate. City Heights is one of these communities.   [Read more…]

Staged Events– Mitt Romney, Barack Obama and Juanita LaRue

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Teresa has spent the last two decades addressing the impacts of inter-generational poverty, drug addiction and incarceration upon our young people– the very issues our presidential candidates have chosen to overlook. She carefully unwinds these young people’s stories resulting in fully realized, complex human beings who deserve not only our compassion and our understanding, but more importantly our commitment to finding solutions.   [Read more…]

Get Out the Vote with Sarah Silverman and Samuel L Jackson: Nana, Guns and a Wake Up Call

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WARNING: The following videos are not safe for the work place.

The past few weeks have provided a gold mine of incisive, laugh out loud political analysis of the election season. SNL has taken on the war against women, undecided voters, and Ann Romney, and we are left looking forward to so much more.

Sarah Silverman’s Let My People Vote and Samuel L Jackson’s Wake the F**k Up are political satire with an unequivocal message …   [Read more…]

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