I’m running for City Council after being asked to do so by my community. I’m committed to supporting workers – including the working poor – fixed-income seniors, people of color and others who are ignored by our current political system. As a nonprofit professional and organizer, I also want to be the best constituent services councilmember ever in order to advance the quality of life for residents in the district and throughout San Diego. I believe I have the personal, professional, and academic experience to ensure that everyone in our community has an equal opportunity to succeed by continuing to draw from the wisdom of residents and strongly promoting the political voice of disenfranchised community members. [Read more…]
They Call Me ‘Battling Bella’
“I’ve been described as a tough and noisy woman, a prizefighter, a man-hater, you name it. They call me Battling Bella,” Abzug wrote in a journal of her first year in Congress in 1971. “But whatever I am … I am a very serious woman.” —excerpt from Women Politicians and the Media by Maria Braden
By Denise Oliver Velez / Daily Kos
I grew up in a world where women were breaking down the doors into politics.
A world where women like Shirley Chisholm and Barbara Jordan were elected to Congress. Growing up as a New Yorker, one of the fiercest role models of them all was Bella Abzug. She was a feminist, a staunch anti-racist and as a result of the cold-war, she became a leading voice in what would become a mass movement. In 1961 she co-founded Women Strike for Peace “after over 50,000 women across the country marched for peace and against above-ground testing of nuclear weapons.” [Read more…]
Why Climate Change Action Cannot Succeed Without Social Equity
By
Over 120 cities and counties in California have a climate action plan either completed or in the pipeline. As cities develop these plans and initiatives to address climate change, it is important to emphasize that social equity is integrated within environmental policies. The vulnerabilities, resilience and sustainability of the human ecosystem are as much determined by diversity and interdependence as its natural counterpart. As Pope Francis said inLaudato Sí, “a true ecological approach always becomes a social approach; it must integrate questions of justice in debates on the environment, so as to hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor.”
Sustainability is framed as a three-legged stool consisting of the three ‘E’s: environment, economy and equity. However, the third leg, social and economic equity, is often the weakest.
[Read more…]
Hugh Thompson, An American Hero
By Jack Doxey
March 16th, 2016 marks the 48th anniversary of the My Lai Massacre that occurred in Vietnam. To say that it was a sad day in the history of our country is a gross understatement. Our United States military systematically slaughtered over 500 Vietnamese women, children, infants and old men in the tiny village of My Lai.
Our country’s attention span is short; and revisiting old wounds can be painful. The result is that this event has been shoved into the “dust bin” of history.
Never the less, I beseech our government and every American citizen to not forget but instead “learn” from the events that unfolded 48 years ago in the tiny village of My Lai. [Read more…]
Geo-Poetic Spaces: Home Grown Terror
Half-cocked
hiding behind a shirt
hollering, “US MILITARY”
brandishing a shotgun
at poetry
The point-blank verse
must have struck a weak spot
in his Kevlar chest [Read more…]
GOP Congressman Furious After Obama Stops Sale Of Sacred Apache Land
By Bethania Palma Markus / Raw Story
Two Arizona congressional representatives are angry that President Barack Obama has intervened to prevent sacred Apache land from being sold off to foreign business interests, according to Tucson Weekly.
Republican Congressman Paul Gosar had joined forces with Democratic U.S. Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick in an effort to sell off the ancestral Native American land, known as Oak Flat or Chi’chil Bildagoteel to the Apache community, to mining firm Resolution Copper, owned by an Australian-British corporation. According to the New York Times, it would have been the first time in history Native American lands would have been handed over to a foreign company by Congress.
The land was set to be handed over due to last-minute language added to a must-pass military spending bill. But according to the Weekly, the Obama administration prevented that from happening. The site has long been used for Apache coming-of-age ceremonies, particularly for girls. [Read more…]
Carlsbad City Hall No Place For Apologies
By Richard Riehl
Mayor Matt Hall called for peace in the city at the Carlsbad City Council’s March 8 meeting, days after Measure A was defeated. After enduring a verbal waterboarding of criticism by seven speakers who asked him to apologize for his role in dividing the city, he concluded the meeting with a promise:
“If an apology is what it takes to bring us all back together I will say that 1,000 times. I realize there was a difference in this and I realize the passion for what you believe in. But right now I think the best thing for us is to come back together. That’s what separates Carlsbad from any other city in North County. It’s allowed us to go through a lot of different issues where there were differences. But at the end of the day we came back together and were willing to work together. And that would be my commitment to you.”
I guess he wasn’t ready to begin those 1,000 apologies just yet. But after someone yelled from the audience to remind him, he relented. “I apologize to you, Greg. Looking at you, I clearly apologize, if that’s what it takes to bring us back together, I apologize.” [Read more…]
Gonzalez Bill Opens the Door for Gig Economy Workers Rights
Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez has (re-)introduced legislation (AB 1727) ensuring that independent contractors working in the gig economy are allowed workplace rights currently enjoyed by conventional employees. Thus begins what will likely be a multi-year struggle to redefine the role of labor in the 21st century.
The rights under consideration include negotiating as a group, communicating with customers and the public, boycotting or critiquing a hosting platform’s business practices, and reporting publicly or to law enforcement any practices in violation of local, state, or federal laws.
The 1099 Self-Organizing Act, as it’s called, would apply to businesses and workers in the “gig economy,” where companies use online systems and mobile apps to match laborers with customers. State labor law would be amended, allowing 10 or more independent contractors, who work for “hosting platforms” such as Uber and Lyft, to join in union-like groups and negotiate workplace protections. [Read more…]
Readers Write: Eliminate Under the Table Gifts and Payments to San Diego Politicians
By John Stump
The U-T editorial “Who should vote on San Diego pol’s pay raises? They should” concerning the Citizen’s Salary Commission’s call for ethical pay reforms came to the wrong conclusion. I had hoped that it would stand for the elimination of gifts, luxury banquet dinners, closure of the Stadium Emperors’ Sky Boxes, and the rest of the insider’s under the table payments to politicians.
There is a political revolution going on.
[Read more…]
Is Jerry Brown Involved in the San Onofre Nuclear Plant Shutdown Scandal?
Nuclear Shutdown News for February 2016
By Michael Steinberg / Black Rain Press
Last year Nuclear Shutdown News reported on a scandal involving the San Onofre nuclear plant shutdown, and a secret deal that left its ratepayers holding the bag for a multibillion dollar debt for which the public bears no responsibility. This onerous debt will take consumers and their descendants decades to pay off if the powers that be get their way. But the people are fighting back. [Read more…]
Why Seniors—Not CEOs—Deserve a Raise
Social Security is the most powerful tool available to lift people out of poverty.
By Elizabeth Warren /TalkPoverty.org
Any conversation about tackling poverty in the United States should include protecting and expanding Social Security. The reason is pretty straightforward: Social Security is the most powerful tool available to lift people out of poverty. Nearly two-thirds of seniors depend on Social Security for the majority of their income, and millions more children and adults depend upon survivors and disability benefits. According to Center for Budget and Policy Priorities analysis of Census data, Social Security kept 21 million Americans out of poverty in the last year alone. All told, that’s more people than any other government program. [Read more…]
Guest Workers Or Bracero Slaves? Historically, Chicano Activists Opposed the Bracero Program
By Herman Baca
The immigration proposal exposing the hypocrisy & manipulation of the so-called immigration issue (or Mexican undocumented worker) is the foreign “guest worker” program. To date, every immigration plan proposed has included a proviso for a foreign worker importation program. Why, the historical reason is; “The U.S.’s economic addiction to cheap and exploitable labor.” [Read more…]
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