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Sex In San Diego: Human Trafficking – the Other 20%

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By Cameron Conaway / The Good Men Project

“My very first survivor was a boy. How many of us are looking for boys?”
~ Sandra Morgan, Director, Global Center for Women & Justice at Vanguard University

His legs were thin as faded whispers and dangled like twisted ropes from his wheelchair, and his walk was a drag as he pulled himself along with worn-out school erasers clutched in each hand. Nadu was born this way and despite being 13 years old, he had just received his first wheelchair the day prior to my arrival. He hadn’t needed one for the past seven years. When he was five his family bent to the weight of foresight, tradition and circumstance. They sold him.   [Read more…]

Republican Candidates Possessed by Demons

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By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

A whimsical poll report last Tuesday by Public Policy Polling (PPP) has turned into a stunning revelation that is sweeping the nation: Republican candidates are possessed by demons. And according to some experts, that belief “explains it all” for distraught voters.

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Don’t Believe the Hype: The Gender Gap Still Heavily Favors Obama

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By Lynn Stuart Parramore / Alternet / Nov. 1, 2012

A flurry of recent headlines have encouraged us to believe that Mitt Romney is closing the gap with women — particularly in swing states. Is it true? Or is it just last- minute election spin?

Looks like spin. As I mentioned last week, the signs have been pointing for some time to an unusually large gender gap in this election cycle. The New York Times’ Nate Silver published his analysis of the major polls less than two weeks ago and found that we’re talking “near historic highs.” If women alone were deciding, he concluded, it would be obvious who would be occupying the White House, and his name isn’t Mitt. Silver’s research found a gender gap of 18 percent between men and women voters likely in the presidential election.   [Read more…]

Why Election Day Marks the Beginning of the End of Marijuana Prohibition

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By Paul Armentano / Alternet / Nov. 2, 2012

With just days to go before Election Day, voters in two states – Colorado and Washington – are poised to make history.

In Colorado, voters will decide on Amendment 64, a Constitutional amendment that allows for those age 21 or older to legally possess up to one ounce of cannabis and cultivate up to six cannabis plants in the privacy of their home. … In Washington, voters will decide on I-502, a statewide ballot measure that enacts regulations regarding the state-licensed production and sale of marijuana for adults.

The passage of one or both of these statewide measures this Tuesday will be both historic and game-changing. Here’s why.   [Read more…]

Will Superstorm Sandy Keep People From Voting?

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By Steven Rosenfeld / Alternet / Nov. 2, 2012

New Jersey will offer more options, including voting this weekend. New York looks at new polling sites.

Despite power outages and storm damage from Hurricane Sandy, early voting in 2012’s presidential election will continue this weekend in hard-hit states—with New Jersey and Virgina extending hours—and continue on Tuesday, November 6, according to state and county election officials contacted Friday.

“Election Day is Tuesday. There’s nothing that can be done about that,” Tom Connelly, New York State Board of Elections Deputy Director of Public Information, said, noting that the date of every presidential election is fixed by the U.S. Constitution.   [Read more…]

Put the “Public” Back in Public Transportation

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Sustainability 101: Put the Public Back in Public Transportation – Part 1

By Terrie Leigh Relf Reprinted from the OB Rag

With this first introductory segment on public transportation, I wanted to raise just a few points. The next segment will feature a few anecdotes I’ve been collecting. I hope that you, dear reader, will also chime in so I can include your experiences as well.

For those of you who know me, I don’t drive, and have never had a license. I am therefore dependent upon my feet, public transportation, and the goodness of others to get where I need to go. Since I live in OB, I can walk most places, but when I leave this walker’s paradise, I mostly rely on the bus and trolley.

Other riders have their reasons for using public transportation, such as the following:

  • Limited parking where they work or attend school
  • The cost of parking garages and lots

  [Read more…]

Ryan Invites Feminist to Phone for Romney — Oops!

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by Kit-Bacon Gressitt

Last Tuesday, one day after the worst of Hurricane Sandy and one week before Election Day, I received an email from Republican VP candidate Rep. Paul Ryan, inviting me to phone bank for the Romney-Ryan ticket.

Me! The feminist who “won’t vote for Romney or anyone who embraces a fundamentalist interpretation of women’s rights and roles.” A liberal woman phone banking for Romney? Not!

After returning my bottom jaw to a respectable distance from the upper, I enjoyed a moment of wonderment at the thought that the Romney-Ryan campaign might be naïve enough to assume every person who signs up for their campaign emails is a supporter.   [Read more…]

La Mesa Mayor Declares City “Fair Trade Town” – Bypassing Council

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From East County Magazine / Oct. 31, 2012

Last year, La Mesa Council voted 3 to 2 against declaring La Mesa a “Fair Trade Town.” But on October 12, Mayor Art Madrid signed a commendation letter posted on the Fair Trade La Mesa website and urged the national Fair Trade Towns USA group to grant the designation to La Mesa.

At the Fair Trade Towns and Universities Conference in Chicago in late October, La Mesa Fair Trade steering committee co-chairs Nancy Ryan and Anne Pacheco “were given the long awaited certificate declaring La Mesa a Fair Trade town,” the national group’s website states, adding, “Plans are in process for a formal presentation and celebration involving La Mesa residents and city officials.”

But now some opponents of the Fair Trade Town designation are questioning the appropriateness of the Mayor’s actions—and whether the rules were followed, or broken.   [Read more…]

Día de los Muertos Is a Reunion of our Past, Present, and Future Relations

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This is a Response to Brent E. Beltrán’s article, “Desde la Logan: Día de los Muertos, We Commemorate Our Dead”

By Remigia Bermúdez

With El Día de los Muertos just around the corner from the celebration of life for Aztleca, one can could surmise that indeed it was a well-deserved farewell as much as it was a “thank you to” and a “welcome for” Aztleca. Diligently, he danzó over 40 years every Día de los Muertos at Chicano Park, honoring those who passed on. And on October 27 of this year, it was others who dansarón (danced) for him for the first time since the 1970’s when the first Toltecas en Aztlán started las danzas indígenas de nuestros antepasados precolombinos (the indigenous dances of our pre-colombian forefathers).   [Read more…]

Sex In San Diego: How I Lost Faith in the “Pro-Life” Movement

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Patheos / By Libby Anne

The spring of my sophomore year of college I was president of my university’s Students for Life chapter. The fall of my junior year of college I cut my ties with the pro-life movement. Five years later I have lost the last shred of faith I had in that movement. This is my story.

I was raised in the sort of evangelical family where abortion is the number one political issue. I grew up believing that abortion was murder, and when I stopped identifying as pro-life I initially still believed that. Why, then, did I stop identifying as pro-life? Quite simply, I learned that increasing contraceptive use, not banning abortion, was the key to decreasing the number of abortions. Given that the pro-life movement focuses on banning abortion and is generally opposed to advocating greater contraceptive use, I knew that I no longer fit. I also knew that my biggest allies in decreasing the number of abortions were those who supported increased birth control use – in other words, pro-choice progressives. And so I stopped calling myself pro-life.   [Read more…]

Fighting the Bias of the ‘Voice of San Diego’

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by Larry Remer

 How would you feel if you were a baseball player in the World Series and you found out that the first base umpire was on the payroll of the other team?

That’s kind of how I feel about the Voice of San Diego’s coverage of Proposition Z.

I am running the Yes on Prop. Z campaign; and for months I’ve sparred with reporters and editors from ‘Voice of San Diego’ about the negative slant of their coverage. And they just parried back and defended what they’d written, as reporters usually do when campaigns and public agencies complain their stories.   [Read more…]

Women for Romney? (Plus: Official Republican Party Rape Advisory Chart)

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By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

“How can women possibly vote for Romney and Ryan?” She looked dismayed, my friend, and I understood how she felt.

How indeed, with the 2012 campaigns’ incessant flow of prejudicial comments spewing from white, male Republican mouths to splatter women with such idiotic statements:

As, abortion is never medically necessary to save a woman’s life and “Health of the mother has become a tool for abortions anytime, under any reason” (Rep. Joe Walsh, running for re-election); pregnancy that results from rape is a “gift from God” (Richard Mourdock, U.S. Senate candidate*); “forcible rape” is just “stock language” (Rep. Paul Ryan, vice presidential candidate); “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down” (Rep. Todd Akin, running for U.S. Senate);…   [Read more…]

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