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Travel Ban Ruling by the Supreme Court Gets a Passionate Response in San Diego

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This week the Supreme Court was asked to stand up for the rights of the vulnerable against the biases of the powerful — and failed, not once, but three times. Conservatives on the bench prevailed each time, ruling against Muslims, women, and public sector workers.

In Washington DC, San Diego, and cities around the country opponents of the administration’s travel ban took to the streets to express their disapproval of the ruling in Trump v. Hawaii. Comparisons with earlier wrongful rulings, like the Dredd Scott case upholding slavery were made in speeches and rallies, mostly near Federal buildings.

The mood at the demonstration in downtown San Diego was one of profound sadness and determination. It was, in many ways, more powerful than much bigger protests I’ve attended in past decades.   [Read more…]

Day of Action – #StandWithMuslims in San Diego – Protest on Supreme Court Travel Ban Ruling

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Today! Tuesday 6/26 @ 7:30 pm * U.S. Courthouse 880 Front Street, Downtown

This morning, the Supreme Court issued its decision to uphold the Trump v. Hawai’i Muslim Ban case.

From the Facebook call to action:

It is crucial that San Diego makes a public, strong and visible presence like our sisters and brothers will be doing across the country who care about Muslim, Immigrant and Refugee communities and oppose Trump’s White Nationalist agenda. the Partnership for the Advancement of New Americans – PANA, CAIR San Diego and Pillars of the Community are coalition partners of the #NoMuslimBanEver campaign and are calling for a national day of action.   [Read more…]

Fear Mongering 101: MS-13 as the New ISIS

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Are you afraid yet? The Central American gang known as La Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, is everywhere in the news. They have officially replaced Al Qaeda and ISIS as the new poster children for why Americans need to live in fear.

Lately, I’ve seen what I thought were otherwise sane people mouthing government gibberish in social media about this group.

Don’t get me wrong. This gang and gangs, in general, are not nice people. They commit crimes to support their activities and are capable of extreme violence. But the narrative of MS-13 as a reason for more border security or immigrant roundups is severely lacking in substance.   [Read more…]

The Civility Distraction: Sorry, We Can’t All Be Friends, Right Now.

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There’s rampant pearl-clutching and whataboutism in punditland currently, stemming from incidents where public officials have been rebuked by private citizens.  

Engaging in that particular debate is a waste of time. We’re past that point in our national discourse.

Our fearless leader is openly proposing ending the rule of law. For asylum seekers. (For now) No judges, no juries. Just some guys with badges administering ‘justice’ to people regularly characterized as less than human who have fled injustice at great personal cost.   [Read more…]

Photo Galleries: A Weekend of #KeepFamiliesTogether Demonstrations Throughout San Diego County

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Eds Note: This story will be updated as more information becomes available.

In San Ysidro, Otay Mesa, Chula Vista, downtown San Diego, and Escondido, people throughout the region this weekend raised their voices in opposition to the zero tolerance and family separation policies of the Trump administration.

At 9 am on Saturday, people began gathering in San Diego’s Community Concourse. By 10am, the place was jammed, and police blocked off Third Street to handle the overflow crowds. After a couple of hours of speaks and music, the crowd marched down Broadway to Front Street and rallied in front of the Federal Building housing the ICE offices for San Diego. Local media estimates of the crowd size put it north of 5000 people.

I’ve been going to demonstrations for five decades, and this was one of the best organized I’ve ever seen. It started on time, the public address system was actually good enough to cover the whole area, and the security people were friendly, well organized and helpful.    [Read more…]

Navy Proposes to Build Trump Internment Camp at Camp Pendleton

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In response to the President’s call for the military to assist in holding ICE detainees, the Department of the Navy has drawn up plans to build “temporary and austere” tent cities for tens of thousands of immigrants on remote bases in California, Alabama, and Arizona.

A facility at Camp Pendleton, according to an internal planning memo obtained by Time Magazine, will be built to house 47,000 people; another at a former Naval Weapons Station in Concord, near San Francisco, will hold a similar number.

Abandoned airfields near Mobile, Alabama, at Navy Outlying Field Wolf in Orange Beach, Alabama, and nearby Navy Outlying Field Silverhill will have facilities for an additional 25,000 people. The document suggests a further study to consider housing an undetermined number of detainees at the Marine Corps Air Station near Yuma, Arizona.

  [Read more…]

Immigration Protests: The Whole World is Watching | Progressive Activist Calendar June 22-July 2, 2018

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Protests Set for Three Cities in San Diego County As Trump’s Psychosis Continues

The Trump administration’s policies on immigration have fired up local activists, with protests set for Escondido, San Ysidro, and downtown San Diego this weekend.

Another round of demonstrations is in the works for next weekend, coinciding with actions in over 400 cities being organized by Move-On. See calendar further down in the story for details.

And while a substantial part of the U.S. looks on in horror at the cruelty and chaos within the administration, the rest of the world is taking notice.   [Read more…]

Immigrants as Hostages: The GOP’s Midterm Election Strategy

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Plus: Listings of ways you can help in San Diego

I laughed when late-night host Steven Colbert said the President folded like an origami Trump Casino on the child separation issue. The joke, however, is on us. The immigration policies of the administration remain fundamentally unchanged. And it has nothing to do with comprehensive reforms or building the great wall of Donald.

The motivation for those policies, exploiting a fear of the “other” manifested as racism remains. Donald Trump has overruled GOP strategists who thought campaigning on the strength of the economy and tax cuts was the ticket to victory (defined as not losing too many seats) in November 2018.

The specter of immigrant “gangsters, drug deals, rapists and welfare cheats” ‘infecting’ America will be the core GOP strategy this fall, whether the (few) remaining rational people in the party like it or not.   [Read more…]

Dazed and Confused in Ocean Beach | 1968

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1968 wasn’t a good year to be a transfer student at Point Loma High School.

A San Diego Police Department bust in early December 1967 (where a tiny amount of marijuana was seized with a street value of two million dollars) prompted lots of paranoia throughout the student body.

The Christian Science Church across from the school provided a great vantage point for the Evening Tribune photographer to document the dopers, and select students made the paper’s front page with black tape covering their eyes.

I wasn’t one of those students, but it didn’t matter. Depending on the point of view of the long-time students, outsiders were either narcs or dangerous drug dealers.   [Read more…]

San Diego Protests Are Still On: Trump’s Immigration Action Just Makes Things Worse

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This article has three parts, a simple explanation of what’s coming up from the government, a listing of San Diego responses to Trump’s immigration policies over the next 10 days, and an analysis of what’s likely going to happen on the legal and political fronts in the coming days.

I cobbled these sections together from other people’s work to make the situation more understandable for our readers.

You need to know the only things changed today were the details. Your voice is needed more than ever to stop these abominations.   [Read more…]

San Diego’s June Primary: Winners, Losers, Winners Who Lost, and a Flip Flopping DA

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We’re a couple of weeks past the June primary. While there has been no change in those claiming victory, there are bits and pieces of data emerging worthy of further analysis.

First up: Voter turnout. The depressing numbers bandied about (I saw one guesstimate as low as 19%) in the days following the election just weren’t correct.

In the 2014 primary election, 27% of voters cast ballots. This time around, the number is 39%, according to the County Registrar of Voters. Not great, but I’ll take it for now. There are 15,000 ballots still to be counted.   [Read more…]

Student, Farmworker Visas to Be Targeted as Administration Looks to Double Down on Immigration

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Officials with the Trump administration have been quietly meeting for several months, according to an article in Politico, planning additional crackdowns on immigration prior to the mid-term elections.

While the details are still being worked out, proposals include tightening rules on student visas and exchange programs; limiting visas for temporary agricultural workers; creating obstacles making it harder for legal immigrants to obtain residency; and collecting biometric data from visitors from suspect countries.

The H-2A program for agricultural workers is uncapped, meaning there’s no annual limit on visas. Limiting the number of visas flies in the face of immigration bills proposed by Congressional Republicans, which typically try to make it easier for farmers to bring in guest workers.   [Read more…]

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