You ever have one of those days
when you just
can’t shake your blues
because your soul feels so completely
battered and bruised
and defused and confused
and mis and/or overused,
seeming as though
it will never ever again
be enthused and amused? [Read more…]
Immigrant Families, Food, and Stalking a Border Town Greyhound Bus Station
Helping others is not political. It’s good for the soul. When you help others, you forget about your own problems for awhile. In addition, nobody should make you feel bad about who you decide to help. In my case, as a writer, I have interviewed many good folks assisting others — be they two-legged or four-legged — and ended up also giving to many charitable human and animal organizations.
I had wanted to find a way to help the mothers and especially the children in detention centers. My first thought was to bring stuffed animals to comfort the children at one of the centers, but that didn’t work out.
Then a successful business woman I know, who came here from Central America more than 30 years ago, told me about going to the local bus station to bring things to the mothers and children ICE was dropping off there. I decided that was a concrete way I could help. [Read more…]
Why Homeless Advocates Opposed the Convention Center Ballot Measure | Video Worth Watching
John Brady speaks before the City Council, August 9, 2018 to explain why Homelesness activists oppose the Convention Center Ballot Measure. [Read more…]
10 Ways to Fight Hate – a Southern Poverty Law Center Response to the “Unite the Right” Rally | More Video Worth Watching
As we mark the one year anniversary of the death of Heather Heyer and two law enforcement officers during a “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, a year ago today, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is promoting a web site it created dedicated to Fighting Hate—a guide to opposing the bigotry and hatred of white nationalism and neo-nazi movements. It presents a plan and suggests courses of action for creating a counter force of tolerance and inclusion. [Read more…]
Dumanis Gets Dumped by Deputy Sheriffs Association | Progressive Activist Calendar August 11 – 20, 2018
San Diego’s Deputy Sheriffs Association has rescinded an earlier endorsement of former District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis, the Republican candidate in the race for Fourth District Supervisor.
Former Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher, the Democratic candidate, now holds the title of ‘law enforcement’s choice,’ according to a press release landing in my inbox this morning.
Miss Cleo’s fortune-telling hotline has been strangely silent for me since she died two years ago, but I can say for sure the people who normally support Republicans are acting like they’ve seen the future. This endorsement, my friends, is kind of a big deal. I know the election isn’t over until the ballots are counted, but this switcheroo was a jaw-dropper. [Read more…]
Chicano Park Museum and Cultural Center: Victory for Barrio Logan, San Diego History, Culture
By Josie Talamantez
The community of Logan Heights/Barrio Logan has been the driving economic work force for the City of San Diego for over 100 years and has paid the price of discrimination, marginalization, and isolation through segregation practices for the majority of that time.
Chicano Park became a tipping point in our relationship with the powers that be and now close to 50 years later we are prepared to tell our story and the wonderful contributions our community and community members have added to the well being of the City, State and Nation. [Read more…]
SB 964 Will Require Largest U.S. Pensions to Report on Climate Risk
By Laura Sisk-Hackworth / SanDiego350
A landmark bill in the California legislature, SB 964, defines climate-related financial risk in law for the first time and requires the boards of the two largest public pension funds in the nation to report on this risk every three years. The importance of this bill is that it gives the public a way to respond to the boards’ consideration of climate risk and its investments in key industries. It also protects state employees and our economy from potentially devastating financial losses that could result from climate change. [Read more…]
Estela de los Rios- An Advocate for Others
As the executive director of Center for Social Advocates (CSA), Estela de los Rios cares about the well-being of the community. She also has a strong sense of justice, which she developed at an early age. As a human rights activist, she strives to make the world a better place and doesn’t want others to feel the pain of discrimination, something she herself has faced.
Growing up in rural Brawley, Calif., she went to a mostly white elementary school where she was taunted for being Mexican. Recalling her past still brings tears to her eyes as she explained how the taunting made her feel like she didn’t belong and that she was nothing as a Mexican.
Then in the 10th Grade, she had an epiphany while studying about Rosa Parks. She realized that like Parks, she had to do something to make change happen. Both these incidents shaped her into the person she is today: Someone who fights passionately for the rights of others and can make a difference in other people’s lives through her work. [Read more…]
Azalea Park Murals Offer a Mini-Survey of Gloria ‘Glow’ Muriel’s Work, Part II
Probably the most fascinating of Gloria Muriel’s murals in the alley is one she did with friends this year. Framing a large, classic “Glow” woman, a series of faces, beginning with two softly rendered women, evolve into hard-edged geometric faces that burst into triangular forms, all of which are bracketed by semi-circles floating over black space, a kind of evolutionary progression of humanity in time and space over chaos.
When I say this one appears to have a fully developed storyline, Muriel laughs. [Read more…]
Azalea Park Murals offer a Mini-Survey of Gloria ‘Glow’ Muriel’s Work, Part I
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…]
GOP Ghouls Ready to Go After Green Card Holders, Legal Immigrants Looking for Citizenship
According to NBC News, the Trump administration is in the late stages of developing policies aimed at keeping as many as 20 million legal immigrants from gaining green cards or applying for citizenship.
Using the same rationale employed during the 1930s to block Jewish refugees from settling in the U.S., persons deemed as potential, past, or current “public charges,” will be deemed ineligible for permanent residency. The slight of hand needed to make this happen involves labeling virtually all government programs as ‘welfare.’
The NBC report profiles a 55-year-old Haitian man who has been in the country since 1989, works eighty hours a week at two jobs, and is a homeowner. Because he required government assistance to care for his US-born daughter’s severe disabilities, his quest for citizenship–already in trouble due to another policy reversal–is likely to end in failure. [Read more…]
Can We White People Be ‘Woke’ to Our Privilege? If So, How and Why Should We?
It starts with realizing everything you have been taught was skewed from the perspective of white males – the educators, the faith leaders, the doctors, the historians and the politicians. Everything I had been taught was controlled by a white patriarchal society.
My journey began a few years ago when I met DeRay McKesson, a co-founder of the Black Lives Matter civil rights movement. He explained the concept of white privilege to me. This is the concept that just because my skin is white, life has been immeasurably easier for me than for people of color.
This fluke of nature automatically raised my social status above those born to parents with different skin pigment. It has nothing to do with how hard I may have worked. It has to do with understanding that my accomplishments were easier to achieve because I’m white. On the flip side, my failures were not as significant because as a white person, my safety net was bigger and stronger. [Read more…]
- « Previous Page
- 1
- …
- 8
- 9
- 10
- 11
- 12
- …
- 255
- Next Page »
