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Celebrate Maria Garcia Day in San Diego!

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San Diego Free Press writer, educator, activist and historian Maria Garcia will be recognized for her positive contributions to the Latina(o) community on Tuesday, December 5. District 8 Councilmember David Alvarez invites Maria’s readers, supporters and friends to this special event.

Maria was recently recognized by The San Diego Union-Tribune which selected the retired school-principal and longtime Chicana activist as a Latino Champion. She received a prestigious Governor’s Historic Preservation Award for her book “La Neighbor.” On the same day that she received the Governor’s Award in Sacramento, she flew back to San Diego just in time to receive the Citizen of the Year Award from the San Diego Chapter of Phi Delta Kappa, the professional educational honor association.   [Read more…]

Veterans Challenge Trump’s Islamophobia

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By Brian Trautman

President Donald Trump revealed his inner nature again last week when he retweeted a series of anti-Muslim propaganda videos from the deputy leader of an ultranationalist, neo-fascist hate group in the UK.

Trump sank to a new low in terms of the blatant falsehoods and myths he will invoke and propagate to incite enmity against Muslims. He’s demonstrated repeatedly that white nationalism and the demonization of Islam is something that he wholeheartedly embraces and intends to advance at every opportunity.

The encouraging news is that Trump’s fear and hate mongering against Islam and Muslims is increasingly being denounced by a wider spectrum of individuals and groups, including many staunch conservatives, both in the U.S. and abroad. The groundswell of resistance is steadily growing.   [Read more…]

Organize the Outrage: The Republican Tax Bill Is Bad, What Are You Going to Do About It?

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In the wee hours of Saturday, Republicans in the Senate, having learned from their shortfalls in attempting to repeal Obamacare, cobbled together enough votes to pass legislation using taxes as a mechanism to foster fundamental changes in the lives of Americans.

All the bad things you may have heard about this legislation are true to one degree or another, but it’s the overall effect that’s important. The GOP has signed America up for a subprime mortgage guaranteed to fail younger generations and paved the way for instilling a new social order based on greed and privilege. 

So, the question remains, what can be done? Sure a few smallish protests by the already-committed can make some noise, as they did in New York this weekend with a crowd chanting “lock him up.” These ain’t gonna fix what is obviously a systemic problem.   [Read more…]

Flynn Flips, Republican Tax Scam Lives On, for Now – Progressive Activist Calendar, December 1-11, 2017

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The Good News: The man who chanted “Lock Her Up” obsessively at rallies for Donald Trump is now officially charged with a federal crime.

ABC News Special Report: Michael Flynn promised “full cooperation to the Mueller team” and is prepared to testify that as a candidate, Donald Trump “directed him to make contact with the Russians.”

The Bad News: It appears the US Senate will pass some sort of budget. It still has to be reconciled with the House version of the bill, which is not a given because of the deficit hawks in the Freedom Caucus. Think about this: Republicans were ready to approve a tax bill that will affect our society for generations to be signed by an illegitimate President likely steps away from an indictment.

Three upcoming events you need to to be sure to notice: Save Affordable Housing – Planning Commision Meeting (December 7), Net Neutrality Protests at Verizon Stores (December 7), and Human Rights Day of Action (December 10)
  [Read more…]

Duncan Hunter Vapes While Opponents Organize

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By DWeisman/Escondido Grapevine

Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-50th Congressional District) has been a walking horror show for years, and generations if one harkens back to his dad from whom he “inherited” the once-safe Republican congressional seat.

Hunter and his mentor, President Trump, actually have a lot in common. They’re blowhards. They’re caught somewhere between ineffective and impotent. They shill. They lie. They’re under federal investigation and probable indictment.

Every day Trump says and does horrible and disconcerting stuff. Monday, it was Pocahontas slurs in front of Navajo code talkers and a portrait of Indian-killer Andrew Jackson, along with the appointment of a guy who wants to destroy the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as its director.

  [Read more…]

Progressive Activist Calendar – November 25 – December 4, 2017

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Welcome to the abbreviated holiday weekend version of the Progressive Activist Calendar.

I was having such a good time I almost forget to put it together. Three events you need to to be sure to notice: The #Me Too March (November 25), The first forum featuring Both candidates for District Attorney (November 28), Justice for Johnathan Coronel Protest  (December 2)   [Read more…]

Trump Administration Internet Scheme Allows Corporations to Throttle Free Speech

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By Jake Johnson / Common Dreams

Open internet advocates warned that “we’re running out of time” to save the web from corporate control and called on Americans to make their representatives’ phones “ring off the hook” Tuesday after FCC chairman Ajit Pai unveiled his long-awaited plan to scrap net neutrality that critics slammed as “naked corporatism” designed to give a major gift to the telecom industry at the expense of the public.

“The reckless wrecking ball strikes again,” former FCC commissioner and current special adviser at Common Cause Michael Copps said in a statement. “FCC Chairman Ajit Pai’s scorched-earth plan for net neutrality displays callous disregard for both process and substance. The chairman’s plan to do away with net neutrality will be a disaster for consumers and yet another handout for big business.”   [Read more…]

Palomar Airport: The November 16 PAAC Meeting

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Dracula Rises Again

At the well-attended November 16 meeting of the Palomar Airport Advisory Committee (PAAC), one of the PAAC members resurrected one of the County of San Diego’s favorite draconian questions: If you bought a house knowing an airport was in the area, why are you complaining? Ignore the noise. Endure the traffic congestion. Don’t breathe until you are far enough away. Brush the soot off your car. And do it graciously.

That was the gist of what a San Marcos mobile home park resident was told when she asked why aircraft had to fly so low over her mobile home.

With apologies to Jack Nicholson in the movie “A Few Good Men,” the county sentiment seems to be:

“I [the county] have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man (woman) who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom I [the county] provide, then question the manner in which I provide it. I prefer you said thank you, and went on your way … I don’t give a damn what you think you are entitled to!”  [Jack Nicholson, as Colonel Jessup]   [Read more…]

Tom Goldtooth: Carbon Trading is “Fraudulent” Scheme to Privatize Air & Forests to Permit Pollution | Video Worth Watching

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Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! during the last day of the UN Climate Summit in Bonn, Germany—COP23—interviews Tom Goldtooth, executive director of the Indigenous Environmental Network, and Isabella Zizi of Idle No More. The discussion includes a critique of Jerry Brown’s implementation of Cap & Trade in California, explaining its negative impact on communities, with Richmond, California as an example.   [Read more…]

Learning Courage from Thoreau in Dark Times

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One of the things that I am grateful for this Thanksgiving is the fact that I am fortunate enough to teach Henry David Thoreau every fall, particularly this 200th year since the great American author’s birth.  

Most of my students at City College have lived, worked, and struggled more than your average college student and, consequently, Thoreau’s call to avoid a life of “quiet desperation” speaks to them more profoundly than it might to other students from different circumstances.  Simply put, they are in a college English class reading literature because they have chosen to be there.  Running against the grain of all the siren calls for a more market-based education driven by efficiency and expediency, many of my students have decided that what moves them most is to read and think and to live a life they hope will be more meaningful because of it.  

Hence, before my students even get to this great old courage teacher, they have chosen to live “deliberately” as Thoreau put it.  And that, of course, is one of the central lessons that Thoreau still teaches us: that we can insist on choices and that those choices really matter.  They have moral consequences.  They make us who we are.   [Read more…]

When Will Democrats Stop Being Losers?

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Is it any wonder that more than 1.7 million voters left the top of the ticket blank in 2016?

By John Atcheson / Common Dreams

Much was made of the “blue wave” some saw on November 7th.  Blue ripple is more like it.  Don’t expect those results to translate into a 2018 landslide for Democrats, unless the Party figures out what it’s for, not simply what it’s against.

Most of the Party leaders are only too eager to tell you what an idiot Trump is, or how mean Ryan, McConnell and the rest of the conservative wrecking crew is.  But they are loath to tell you what, exactly, they, themselves stand for.

Oh, yes, you will hear some vaguely progressive platitudes, especially around election time, but in terms of real, specific and substantive stands on behalf of the middle class and poor Americans, there’s more rhetoric than substance.   [Read more…]

Feeding the Deportation Pipeline: Caveat Recruitees

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By Isidro Ortiz / Draft NOtices

A previous Draft NOtices article, Removing a Few Bad Hombres, discussed the deportation of immigrant military veterans. Non-citizen immigrant recruits in the United States now find themselves possibly facing a similarly cruel and irreversible fate.

In this case, their potential deportation isn’t due to any criminal actions on their part. Instead, its roots lie in the Department of Defense’s (DoD) proposal to terminate the Military Accession Vital to the National Interest (MAVNI) program over security concerns. The program’s end would result in the cancellation of enlistment contracts with non-citizen recruits.

As reported in media venues such as NPR, this action would leave 1,000 non-citizen recruits without legal protection from deportation. Their plight is yet another reminder of the highly problematic and untrustworthy nature of the institutional commitment to those who aspire to serve in the military.   [Read more…]

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