San Diego Free Press

Grassroots News & Progressive Views

You are here: Home / Archives for Activism / Immigration

Primary Update: The GOP’s Hate Campaign Heads to California

by

California Republicans announced yesterday that Presidential candidate Donald Trump will be the keynote speaker at the state party’s spring convention, joining Ted Cruz and John Kasich at the Bay Area gathering later this month.

The Donald will address a lunch banquet on the opening day of the GOP gathering in Burlingame, on April 29. Kasich will speak that evening, followed by Cruz the next day. Needless to say, Trump slot is the most high profile.

The June 7th California primary will likely play a decisive role in the Republican nominating contest, with voters determining whether Trump can amass the 1,237 delegates necessary to secure the nomination.

Only 13 of the state’s bloc of 172 GOP convention delegates go to the candidate who collects the most votes statewide.   [Read more…]

La Migra: A Chicano Historical Perspective

by

By Herman Baca

If the so-called U.S. immigration issue is a historical labor issue as Chicano/Mexicanos activists, historians, scholars & academicians claim, what then has been the historical role of the U.S. Border Patrol (BP)? To answer that question one has to study the U.S.’s historical addiction to free and cheap labor. That started when white supremacists created the Afro-American slave labor system in Jamestown, West Virginia in 1619.   [Read more…]

Immigrants Shouldn’t Be Locked Up for Being Poor

by

By Michael Tan, Staff Attorney, Immigrants’ Rights Project, ACLU

In the federal criminal bail system, judges are required to consider someone’s financial ability to pay a bond and determine if alternative conditions of supervision — check-ins, travel restrictions — are enough to get the person to show up for court.

But such protections don’t apply to immigrants locked up in detention centers. The result is that people like Cesar Matias, a gay man from Honduras, end up jailed simply because they’re poor.

Matias fled to the United States more than a decade ago to escape the persecution he suffered because of his sexuality. He worked as a hair stylist and in a clothing factory in Los Angeles, renting a small, one-bedroom apartment.   [Read more…]

Mexico Assumes Role of Turning Migrant Children Back

by

Steven Dudley

Human Rights Watch has chronicled violent drivers of the continuing child migration crisis, as well as how the US government has stealthily outsourced to Mexico the job of returning these kids to their often perilous homes.

The report titled “Closed Doors: Mexico’s Failure to Protect Central American Refugee and Migrant Children” (pdf) was based on 61 interviews with “refugees, asylum seekers, or migrants” between the ages of 11 and 17; more than 100 adults from the so-called Northern Triangle countries of Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala; as well as 65 interviews with officials and workers with governmental and non-governmental organizations who work on these issues.   [Read more…]

Highways, Not Skyways Motivate Voters in SANDAG Polling for Ballot Measure

by

In just a few short weeks, the Board of the San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG) will vote on placing a half-cent sales tax increase on the November ballot. At stake are billions of additional dollars for transportation projects in coming decades.

The regional government group has released results from a just completed Competitive Edge survey of 1201 local voters, weighted for voting history, survey mode, age, party, gender, and subregion.

The ‘Good News’ is that there appears to be enough of a consensus to reach the two-thirds majority required for passage. The ‘Bad News” is that the 68% supporting the idea dwindles to 62% once arguments against it are presented. (But the trend is in the right direction if you’re an optimist.)   [Read more…]

New Veteran-Led Campaign Challenges Islamophobia

by

By Brian Trautman

Violence against American Muslims is growing faster than at any time since 9/11, with assaults on Muslim individuals and their places of worship having tripled since the Paris and San Bernardino terror attacks. A NY Times article published last December cites several examples, which include shootings and vandalism.

According to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), last year set a record for the highest number of incidents targeting U.S. Mosques. As a result of this violence, Muslims across the country, including women and children, have conveyed to the public that they genuinely fear for their safety and security.   [Read more…]

International Women’s Day Celebration in Pictures

by

Los Angeles site of March 5 rally and march

By Bree Davis

International Women’s Day is a global celebration to recognize the women of the world. Af3irm, a leading political feminist organization that has many chapters throughout of California, is the organization that put the march together in downtown Los Angeles this year. The focus of the March 5 celebration was different issues among transnational women of color.

The rally started out strategically in front of the Downtown L.A. Police Department with speakers and musicians. Supporters of the #blacklivesmatter movement were there and even went as far as to call out the LAPD and their racist police officers and how racial profiling needs to end. Other people came to talk and support the trans+ community, Muslim community, Asian community, and reproductive justice, along with other issues that face women of color.   [Read more…]

On Government Abuse, Democracy and Poverty, California Has Work to Do

by

ACLU of California-sponsored bills will advance

By Becca Cramer / ACLU San Diego

Every year, the ACLU of California sponsors several bills in the California Legislature. What does it mean to sponsor a bill? In most cases, it means we have collaborated with other advocacy groups and the legislative author in drafting the bill, providing our input on the text. We also may lobby legislators, testify in support of the bill, seek support from other groups, work with opposition to address their concerns, draft fact sheets and sample support letters, and provide communications and media support.

Here are the 10 bills we are sponsoring this year:   [Read more…]

Study Shows Why Women Janitors and Security Guards Are At Risk

by

By Debra Varnado / Capital & Main

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley’s Center for Labor Research and Education are shining a light on troubling conditions they uncovered in the state’s property services industry. Their new report, Race to the Bottom: How Low‐Road Subcontracting Affects Working Conditions in California’s Property Services Industry, was released last week.

Women janitors and security guards in the industry— a rapidly growing sector of the state’s economy– are at increased risk of violence and sexual harassment, due to a combination of factors that allow the problems, as the study claims, “to occur and to remain unchecked.”   [Read more…]

America, Got Fascism?

by

By Frank Gormlie / OB Rag

Okay, America – are we ready for fascism?

As the presidential campaign season degenerated into racist and xenophobic diatribes by the Republican front runner, with those images of Trump supporters pledging their loyalty to him in Hitleresque salutes, after that scene in Chicago when the Trump rally was cancelled, triggering skirmishes between Trump supporters and demonstrators, it seems everybody is forming an opinion of whether Donald Trump is a fascist, comparing him to Hitler and Mussolini, and other dictators.
  [Read more…]

Maria Garcia Inducted into San Diego County Women’s Hall of Fame

by

Recognized for writing the people’s history

Five San Diego County women were inducted into the San Diego County Women’s Hall of Fame on Sunday March 6 at the Joe and Vi Jacobs Center. Maria Garcia, Evonne Seron Schulze, Sally Wong Avery, Elizabeth Lou and Christine Kehoe were recognized for their lifetime work and achievements and hailed as role models.

Each of these dynamic women has left an indelible mark on our civic life, making it more inclusive and vibrant. Each of these dynamic women also exemplifies a unique voice and story. For Maria Garcia, her story is history—she was inducted into the Hall of Fame as Historian.   [Read more…]

Border Activists At Friendship Park: John Fanestil’s Christian Service Turns Into Civil Disobedience

by

By Barbara Zaragoza / South Bay Compass

“I think Americans project onto the border their fear and phobia and racism and then construct policies that are predicated on fear and phobia and racism. And so, in the long haul, apart from any legislative fixes for immigration reform, culturally and at a more existential or spiritual level, the only solution is to construct an alternative narrative. To construct a narrative of the border as a meeting place, the border as a place of encounter, the border as a place of friendship, the border as a place of communion where people actually figure out, despite their differences, how to get along.”   [Read more…]

©2010-2017 SanDiegoFreePress.org

Code is Poetry