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Lived Experiences, Microaggressions, and Good Deeds in the Classroom | Readers Write

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By Vanessa Torres

As a college student, I now have about a decade’s-plus worth of experience with the benevolence of well-intentioned teachers. I say this as a student that grew up in low-income school districts and a high school in San Diego where the majority of students were minorities and the teachers were not.

Overcrowded classrooms and sharing a dilapidated textbook with your classmate was not out of the norm. The school year was initiated with the teacher’s usual disgruntled disclaimer that there would not be enough books to go around for the school year in yet another overcrowded class.

Teaching in and of itself is a tremendous responsibility a person undertakes as their professional career. Few other professions carry the weight that teaching does. A teacher has the ability to mold and inculcate a young person’s mind which ultimately adds to the prosperity of our community.

Some teachers take the seriousness of their profession and the resulting responsibility to heart; it’s not like they are doing it for the money. But I have to wonder about the others: As the incentive of a high paying salary is nonexistent, what is their reason for choosing such a significant profession? Were they looking for life-fulfillment? Or did they choose this profession as a way of escaping their inherent guilt?   [Read more…]

Azalea Park Murals offer a Mini-Survey of Gloria ‘Glow’ Muriel’s Work, Part I

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By George Howell

Artist Gloria “Glow” Muriel is touching up the large eyes of the “Mystery Lady,” whose wavy hair flows along the wall of El General Market in Azalea Park. Someone has “tagged” her, subtly adding brown paint to her eyes.

Muriel notes the graceful way the eyes were tagged and then squeezes a burst of spray paint.

“I’m improving their work,” she laughs. “I’m helping them.”

I first saw Muriel’s work in Tijuana’s Pasaje Rodriguez, the creative marketplace off Avenida Revolución known for its terrific assortment of murals. Muriel, born in Mexico City and raised in Mexicali, studied graphic design at the Universidad Ibero-Americano in Playas de Tijuana and came to San Diego in 2002 because of a medical crisis in her family. Although she continued to sketch during the illness, she put her art career on hold for several years, and then developed a unique style, a catalogue of female characters with exaggerated eyes and abstracted expressions who range from the childlike to the mature to the mystical.   [Read more…]

Responding to the Unconscious Bias and Racism at National City Council Meetings

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By Mark Lane and Shane Parmely

We went to the Tuesday, July 24, National City Council meeting to speak out against the police brutality that left Earl McNeil brain dead.

For almost six weeks, we’ve peacefully and loudly protested at the National City Council meetings. For six weeks, we’ve asked the National City Police Department (NCPD) to release the videotapes pertaining to the in-custody death of Earl McNeil. For six weeks, we’ve been ignored by the three men who control the National City Council and the NCPD. For six weeks, we’ve been treated to excessive force and violence by the NCPD.

And last week, after an hour of the police, including Chief Manny Rodriguez, repeatedly and openly pushing us and other people attending the meeting, we sat down on the floor and were subsequently arrested.   [Read more…]

An Open Letter in Support of SB 1186 to Assemblymember Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher

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By Shahid Buttar / Electronic Frontier Foundation

Dear Assemblymember Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher, 

We live in dangerous times. The rights of people of color, immigrants, workers, women, and asylum seekers are threatened every day. As history has repeatedly shown, one of the most powerful tools of oppression is surveillance. California has the opportunity to ensure public control and oversight of the spying technologies that law enforcement is most likely to abuse. Right now, the power is in your hands to ensure it moves forward.

With each year, civil rights advocates have watched technology advance amidst a climate of growing secrecy, allowing authorities to collect more and more personal data from more and more people and store it indefinitely, without parameters for how it can be used, with whom it can be shared, or what to do if it is misused or abused. We ask you, as chair of the California Assembly Appropriations Committee, to pass S.B. 1186 out of the committee without further amendments.

We have reached the point where unchecked surveillance may pose a public safety risk as great as the ones the technology is meant to address.   [Read more…]

The Shape of the Human Heart | Readers Write

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By Trevor Barton

As an elementary school teacher and a writer, I often recognize my students as the shape of the human heart.

One of those students is Maria, a 7-year-old second-grader. Her parents fled the after-effects of the brutal civil war in El Salvador and found a new life on the farms and in the fields of South Carolina.

She is like those farms and fields, with dark skin the color of the ground and a garden of a heart that produces love and joy as if they were tomatoes and beans.

I have seen her hold the hand of a frightened kindergartner in the cafeteria lunch line during early morning breakfast and offer her shoulder to a crying friend who scraped her knee on the blacktop during recess. She is a beautiful child.   [Read more…]

San Diego in National Spotlight: Failure to Prohibit Section 8 Discrimination Hurts Homeless Veterans

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By Parisa Ijadi-Maghsoodi / UrbDeZine

Achieving Housing Choice and Mobility in the Voucher Program: Recommendations for the Administration is in the latest edition of the American Bar Association Journal of Affordable Housing & Community Development Law (Vol. 27-1).

The article recognizes the Housing Choice Voucher Program as vital to helping homeless individuals and low-income families’ overcome barriers to housing stability and a powerful tool to deconcentrate poverty and decrease racial segregation in our nation’s communities.  While acknowledging the program’s potential to improve individual lives, families, and communities, the article discusses the program’s failure to meet its housing and community goals:

Tenants with a voucher disproportionately live in low-rent, racially segregated neighborhoods. In fact, almost a quarter million children in the voucher program live in neighborhoods of extreme poverty. Many voucher families are unable to obtain rental housing outside of areas of poverty and, in some cases, fail to lease up at all.   [Read more…]

A Tiny Home Update: “The New American Dream” in Progress

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By Orlando Barahona

Politics are the Ultimate Porn: The Art of Political Science is about a distilled and formulaic perversion of The People’s ideals: Politicians and bureaucrats do not provide what we want; they teach us how to desire it. Public officials’ speeches and a charismatic delivery do not guide my direction in assembling a business and housing plan for San Diego because they do not offer clarity in describing the steps to achieve its presentation and success.

A very important North County housing summit is about to be hosted in Escondido, California on July 19th, 2018 by the San Diego North Economic Development Council in conjunction with the Housing You Matters Coalition. When I reached the Coalition’s Facebook page I was told all the speakers were booked and thus my revised business and housing plan could not fit in for this event. That is understandable, but not ideal for me, after I have updated and refined my first plan, published here in 2016. Find out more on the event’s page here. I wasn’t offered the possibility to present the plan at any other time.   [Read more…]

Southwest High School Students Create Climate Awareness Through Murals

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By Michelle Roberts

In late May/early June, a number of my students at Southwest High School gathered in Biology Room 501 to embark on a climate murals project. Their goal? To help change the mindset of San Diegans.

I became involved in the murals project through volunteering with SanDiego350, who got input on the concept from local artist and muralist, Joanne Tawfilis, of the Muramid museum, Oceanside. SanDiego350 contacted Tawfilis and she got us started with some helpful insights on this type of project. Our volunteers then brainstormed on how we could adapt her concept so local kids could create murals relating to climate change.

SanDiego350 volunteer and artist, Anne Mudge, refined the concept in a Climate Murals PowerPoint presentation. Anne believes:

“Giving children and the youth a way to express themselves creatively as they explore the consequences of our actions gives them a sense of agency in a totally fun and community-building way. The images they create can be powerful motivators for the rest of us. Who isn’t moved by the hopes and visions of the ones who will be living in the world we hand off to them?”

  [Read more…]

The Coming Supreme Court’s Taint of Illegitimacy

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By Bill Adams / UrbDeZine

The circumstances underlying the creation of a strongly conservative Supreme Court for decades may have earned this Court the taint of illegitimacy. Here’s how it went awry.

The “One Person, One Vote” principle is strong in the consciousness of the American Public. It arises from fundamental notions of fairness, equality, and democracy. These notions arise from the spirit of the U.S. Constitution, even if the document itself is less direct in support of the One Person, One Vote principle.  In addition to the high-minded ideals of freedom and equality, the U.S. Constitution was born of compromises arising from practical considerations such as wooing slave states into the new union.

Now we have arrived at a perfect storm of factors to subvert the will of the people. It is the result of the distrust of direct democracy embedded in the Constitution combining with undemocratic intent. The majority is ruled by the minority. There has been a massive abrogation of the One Person, One Vote principle.  We are now rated as a “flawed democracy,” 21st among democratic countries in the company of Italy, Botswana, and Mexico.   [Read more…]

SB 237 Threatens Community Choice Energy

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By Laura Sisk-Hackworth

SB 237, authored by California State Senator Hertzberg (D-18), threatens to increase the use of fossil fuels in California by undercutting Community Choice Energy (CCE) programs. The bill would allow businesses to circumvent CCE providers and buy electricity directly from suppliers. These suppliers would be subject to the state’s required minimum on renewable content of the electricity – whereas CCEs consistently exceed those minimums. Therefore, this bill would reduce the use of renewables, hurt renewable energy job growth, and likely bankrupt all current CCEs. This bill would effectively end existing CCE programs and halt their future expansion throughout California.   [Read more…]

City Charter Amendment Would Provide Rigorous Oversight of Police by Independent Commission

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By Andrea St. Julian

Community trust in law enforcement is key to legitimate and effective policing. Right now, San Diegans have an opportunity to increase the community’s trust in its Police Department through an amendment to the San Diego City Charter. The amendment will eliminate the Community Review Board on Police Practices (CRB) that currently handles certain complaints against the police and replace it with an independent and more powerful commission.

In the city of San Diego, complaints filed against police officers are investigated by the Police Department through Internal Affairs. The Department provides some of those complaints to the CRB for review. The CRB’s review process consists of looking over the investigation conducted by Internal Affairs.
  [Read more…]

The Big ‘Bad Hombres’ Lie: Less Than 1 Percent of Texas Tent City Migrants Are From Mexico

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By Mike Harlos / Via Facebook

So I have almost completely avoided political posts for over a year now.

Today, I take a break from that.

Tornillo, Texas, is on the US/Mexico border. There is a “tent city facility” setup there. The facility is housing 326 children (312 boys, 14 girls).

Of the 326:

162 are from Guatemala

117 are from Honduras

40 are from El Salvador

4 are from “other countries”

3 are from Mexico   [Read more…]

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