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Black Votes Matter: Jones Wins Senate Seat in Alabama

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The Roypublicans Are in Panic Mode

In Alabama on Tuesday, Democrat Doug Jones won 49.9% of the vote to Republican Roy Moore’s 48.4% in a special election to replace Jeff Sessions, who resigned his Senate post to become Trump’s chief elf and Attorney General. The other 1.7% wrote in someone else’s name.

Republicans in Alabama have typically been winning elections in recent years by a half million votes. Jones won by 21,000. Turnout for the special election was projected to 25% of registered voters. Double that number showed up at the polls. Moore lost 12 counties that Trump won in 2016. Republicans won this particular Senate seat in 2014 with 97% of the vote.

This was a huge victory, and let’s give credit where credit is due. Black voters showed up, despite being systemically obstructed from access to the polls.   [Read more…]

ACLU Demands Naturalization Hearing for Deported Veteran Hector Barajas

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The ACLU and the law firm of Latham & Watkins have petitioned the federal court to conduct a long-overdue naturalization hearing for deported U.S. Army veteran Hector Barajas, who received an honorable discharge after serving nearly six years in the military. 

Barajas, a decorated veteran, and founder of the Deported Veterans Support House in Tijuana, Mexico, was granted a full pardon last year by Gov. Jerry Brown for a conviction that led to his deportation. But U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has not issued a decision on his naturalization application, even though Barajas successfully completed the required portions of the process in November 2016. According to regulation, that decision was supposed to be issued within 120 days, a deadline that has long passed.  

In taking this court action, the ACLU Foundations of Southern California and San Diego & Imperial Counties, and Latham & Watkins ask that the U.S. District Court take over the matter and conduct a naturalization hearing for Barajas.     [Read more…]

Tell The FCC Not To End Net Neutrality!

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By Robert Reich / RobertReich.Org

The FCC is voting Thursday on whether to repeal the “Net Neutrality” rule adopted in 2015.

Since its creation, the internet has been an open exchange of ideas and information, free from corporate control and influence. But corporations could soon have tremendous power over what we can access and share online, ending the internet as we know it.

In 2015, the FCC passed a landmark rule that prevents internet service providers from favoring some sites over others – slowing down connections or charging customers a fee for streaming or other services. It gave Americans equal access to all the content that’s available on the internet – videos, social media, e-commerce sites, etc – at the same speeds.   [Read more…]

Counter-Protest at Pro-Border Wall Rally Was an Embarrassment

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What I have to say today is probably gonna make some people unhappy.

On Saturday, a group of regional nativists held a rally in Otay Mesa celebrating the prototypes for Trump’s wall. Rep. Duncan Hunter was the featured speaker. Eyewitness accounts agree the crowd size was 100 or less, as likely was the average IQ.

Another group thought it would be a good idea to get twenty people to yell stuff at the MAGA types. Now they’re upset because punches were thrown and the battalion of Sheriffs and other law enforcement types standing around didn’t come rushing to their aid.

Really?   [Read more…]

California’s Burning: What Will Rise from the Ashes?

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Welcome to the future.  

That’s the thing I’ve been thinking to myself as the frenetic news cycle over the past year has veered from political chaos to natural disaster and back again in a vertigo-inducing downward spiral.  Increasing social division domestically as the rich pillage the rest of us, the intensified threat of international conflict, the brazen plundering of the commons, and utter disdain for the natural world amidst a myriad of sexual harassment scandals and horrifying mass shootings are punctuated by catastrophic natural disasters from the epic fires to supercharged hurricanes and yet more fearsome firestorms.  

Reality is exceeding the capacity of our dystopian imaginations.   [Read more…]

KPBS Honors Our Everyday Hero: Diane Takvorian

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By Environmental Health Coalition

This week, KPBS recognized Environmental Health Coalition’s Executive Director Diane Takvorian as its environmental sustainability community hero.

For more than 37 years, Diane has empowered community members living in low-income neighborhoods of color.

She credits her passion for social justice to her own family’s struggles that stretch back to the early 1900s. Her grandparents survived the Armenian Genocide in 1915 and came to the United States two years later. Diane and her parents lived in Pasadena, where she says she experienced some discrimination because of her ethnic background.   [Read more…]

Will the Coast Be Toast? Tuesday City Council Hearing on Vacation Rentals Will Decide

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December 12th Session Will Decide Future of Ocean Beach and Other Coastal Communities

If San Diego City Councilmembers from inland districts get their way and legalize short-term vacation rentals with hardly any restrictions, coastal neighborhoods like Ocean Beach will be inundated with a flood of new such rentals. And it could have a devastating impact on OB, uprooting the sparse housing stock and turning entire sections of the community into “Airbnb Beach”.

The City Council meets on Tuesday, December 12th, and come hell or high water will make policy on vacation rentals that day. Short-term rentals have been boiling San Diego politics for nearly 3 years as city government kept delaying any decisions, one way or another. And now, after all this time, the Council is set to put something into law, into the Municipal Code on the 12th.

Come next Tuesday, nothing but the very future of Ocean Beach is at stake.   [Read more…]

ACLU Asks City of El Cajon to Reconsider Its ‘Food Sharing’ Ban

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New Ordinance May Violate First Amendment Protected Expression of Charity

By ACLU of San Diego and Imperial Counties

A few weeks ago, the City of El Cajon adopted an ordinance prohibiting people and organizations from sharing food with homeless individuals on public property. This needlessly cruel ordinance dampens the spirit of giving this holiday season. It may also be unconstitutional.

On Friday, the ACLU of San Diego and Imperial Counties sent a letter to the City of El Cajon requesting reconsideration of its food sharing ban.

“By prohibiting food sharing only when done for ‘charitable purposes,’ El Cajon is regulating food sharing because of its expressive content, punishing only those who share food to express their religious or political beliefs in ministry or charity but not those who share food for other purposes,” said David Loy, Legal Director for the ACLU of San Diego. “If charitable appeals for funds are within the protection of the First Amendment, the same is true for charitable giving, whether of money or food.”   [Read more…]

Sheriff Groping Scandal: Nine Women and Counting… Progressive Activist Calendar December 8-18, 2107

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A ninth woman has come forward with claims of sexual misconduct by San Diego County Sheriff Deputy Richard Fischer, according to the Union-Tribune. All the victims are alleging incidents involving unwelcome hugs, groping and, in some cases, implied threats. Although the complaints date back to 2016, the Deputy was not placed on formal leave until lawsuits were filed last month.

It’s not like this was a one-time thing for at least one of the women; I’d call it stalking:

“When he clicked the seat belt into place, he rubbed L.R.’s breasts up and down using the heel of his hand and the inner part of his arm,” one of the new lawsuits alleges. “Fischer said, ‘Oh I hope your husband doesn’t mind.’”

That complaint, filed Wednesday in San Diego Superior Court by a woman who did not want to be publicly identified as a victim of sexual assault, accuses Fischer of accosting her five other times before she was released with a misdemeanor ticket last year.    [Read more…]

Time to Escalate? First-Ever Rights of Nature Lawsuit Dismissed

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By Will Falk

Our first-in-the-nation lawsuit seeking personhood for the Colorado River was dismissed. After the Colorado Attorney General filed a motion to dismiss and threatened sanctions against attorney Jason Flores-Williams for the unforgivable act of requesting rights for nature, Flores-Williams withdrew our case.

When I agreed to serve as a next friend, or guardian, of the Colorado River, I saw the opportunity as a win-win. Either, we would win the lawsuit and the Colorado River would gain a powerful new legal tool to protect herself. Or, the lawsuit would be defeated proving that the American legal system privileges corporate rights to destroy the natural world over the natural world’s right to exist.

I knew it was highly unlikely that corporations, the courts, and the Colorado Attorney General would let rights of nature gain traction in American law. I wanted to be there, when the case failed, to remind everyone who invested hope in our cause that lawsuits are not the only way change is made.

I do not want this essay to come off like I am saying “I told you so.” I am heartbroken. A small part of me clung to the hope that Flores-Williams could resist the threats, that the Colorado Attorney General would, at least, litigate the case on the merits, and that the legal system would do the right thing. This hope, of course, was misguided.   [Read more…]

A Look at Climate Change Effects On San Diego County

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By Cynthia Wootton and Angela Deegan / SanDiego350

A  recent presentation by Dr. Veerabhadran Ramanathan of UCSD’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography on climate change held locally (at the San Diego City Council Environment Committee meeting), made us wonder what climate change might look like here in San Diego County.

Typically, weather events will conform to two characteristics of climate change: more extreme and, generally, more frequent weather events.   [Read more…]

ACLU Vows to Keep Fighting as Supreme Court Allows Trump’s Mostly Muslim Travel Ban to Take Effect | Video Worth Watching

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ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt, who presented the first challenge to Trump’s travel ban order, resulting in a nationwide injunction, describes the current status of the Administration’s travel ban. The recent Supreme Court decision to permit the latest version of the ban to be implemented while the legal challenges proceed in court will have drastic effects on affected communities.   [Read more…]

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