As of Noon Sunday, two thousand people have responded to a call on Facebook for a protest scheduled for Terminal 2 (International Arrivals) at Lindbergh Field starting at 5pm.
According to social media posts, the theme for the demonstration is #NoBan #NoWall. [Read more…]
State of the State Address / Office of the Governor
This is California, the sixth most powerful economy in the world. One out of every eight Americans lives right here and 27 percent – almost eleven million – were born in a foreign land.
When California does well, America does well. And when California hurts, America hurts.
As the English poet, John Donne, said almost 400 years ago: “No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main…And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”
A few moments ago, I swore into office our new attorney general. Like so many others, he is the son of immigrants who saw California as a place where, through grit and determination, they could realize their dreams. And they are not alone, millions of Californians have come here from Mexico and a hundred other countries, making our state what it is today: vibrant, even turbulent, and a beacon of hope to the rest of the world.
We don’t have a Statue of Liberty with its inscription: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…” But we do have the Golden Gate and a spirit of adventure and openness that has welcomed – since the Gold Rush of 1848 – one wave of immigration after another. [Read more…]
Hey did you hear the news? Donald Trump has been president for one week.
While there is some truth to the sense that each day of this week has felt like ten, the sound and the fury masks some very real problems in the new administration.
Let’s stand things on their head for a moment and look for some silver linings. [Read more…]
The Women’s March may have been the largest day of protest in US history with an estimated 3.3 million to 4.6 million marchers. One in every 100 Americans marched. In Washington D.C. alone an estimated 575,000 people attended.
Organizers of this grassroots movement put together the march in only ten weeks. How did they do it? Mostly through communication on social media.
The grassroots march in Washington D.C. lacked a few elements most of us have become accustomed to. A flurry of advertisements from corporations were markedly absent. The number of food trucks and vendors selling trinkets were somewhat minimal. Large television monitors had been set up all along Independence Avenue for us to hear the speeches, music and poetry. At times, the monitors froze. At times the loud speakers stopped working for a few moments. Nobody cared that the technology didn’t work exactly or perfectly — that’s not why we were here. [Read more…]
Edward Sifuentes / ACLU of San Diego & Imperial Counties
“We can ensure that in California, our state and local agencies serve all Californians by passing SB 54 (the California Values Act) — making certain that our local institutions will not be conscripted into the deportation dragnet and that our schools, our hospitals, and our courthouses are safe spaces for everyone in every community,” added Norma Chavez-Peterson, executive director at the ACLU of San Diego and Imperial Counties.
“Muslim Americans are our neighbors, friends, and colleagues. They are us. We must stand together and pass SB 31 (the California Religious Freedom Act) to ensure that California does not participate in any way in a registry targeting Muslims,” concluded Abdi Soltani, executive director of the ACLU of Northern California. [Read more…]
The number one selling book on Amazon earlier this week was George Orwell’s ‘1984’ the classic story of a world of government surveillance, propaganda and “newspeak.” In the book, the “Ministry of Truth” actually delivers lies.
I suspect this uptick in sales (and the announcement of additional printing by Penguin Books) comes from the realization by Americans that lying is officially part of the new administration’s program.
Now it’s time to acknowledge ‘alternative facts’ are just one part of what’s going on. The tactics of this administration also include chaos, as proven by the rapid-fire attacks on institutions, humans, and the planet over the past couple of days. [Read more…]
While the press obsesses over Alt-Truths (the same kinds of lies being told all along), the deconstructing of the United States safety net has begun.
Our thin-skinned President has busied himself between tantrums by signing executive orders inspired by likes of the Heritage Foundation, which has long held that our national wealth would be better served if it were in the pockets of the very wealthy.
First up will be the elimination of government spending on anything other than national security and corporate welfare. Second up will be privatized replacements for programs deemed irreplaceable wrapped in the swaddling of alternative truths about how beneficial this will be. [Read more…]
with additional photos by Lisa Mix, Judith & Wayne Starker, Patty Jones, Byron Morton, Linda Taggert
January 21, 2017, was a historic day in San Diego – and around the nation and world – with the Women’s March. According to San Diego Police, the crowd in downtown San Diego at the rallies and the march down Broadway was 40,000 women, men, and children of all ages and all hues.
It was definitely one of the largest demonstrations in San Diego’s history – matched probably by the huge immigration march of nearly a decade ago.
Here are photos from yesterday’s march – taken by this reporter and by a number of friends who sent them to us. [Read more…]
Organizers of the North County San Diego Women’s March believed. As part of a nationwide effort of ‘Sister Marches’ to the Washington DC Women’s March, they created a local event for those who wouldn’t be able to attend other events due to reasons such as immigration status, transportation issues, or poverty.
North County San Diego has in the past not been very friendly for demonstrations or political activism with a progressive bent, but things are changing. Down ballot elected positions are becoming more diverse. The once invincible Congressman Darrell Issa had to struggle to get reelected this year, and challenger Doug Applegate is already building a campaign for 2018.
Organizers for the event, which started at San Marcos City Hall and ended at Palomar College, hoped for 2500 attendees. Heavy rains the day before and showers predicted for the day of the event didn’t dissuade them. Their faith was rewarded. [Read more…]
I’ve been to a few demonstrations in my day: Los Angeles, Berkeley, Madison, Chicago, Ann Arbor, Washington DC, but mostly in San Diego. (Hey, I’m a child of the sixties!) And Saturday’s Women’s March through downtown takes the cake for the unity and overwhelmingly positive energy I felt.
I know more than a few people in San Diego’s activist circles and saw almost nobody I knew. That’s when I knew something really big was going on. Another clue was that the cellular networks couldn’t keep up.
The best part was the absence of any sense of personal alienation, despite being surrounded by a crowd of strangers. We were one. People were polite and caring. Strangers weren’t quite so strange. For a few hours we were wrapped in a cocoon of solidarity. [Read more…]
There are 1,457 days left in the Trump presidency, assuming that he doesn’t get bored and quit, is impeached or that the skies rain glass upon us all.
Trump’s inaugural address “(Liberal) Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” made it clear that he is only interested in his adoring base–the 46% of the voting public who narrowly installed him in the White House. The strategy among his handlers is clearly to let Trump be Trump while they roll up their sleeves and dismantle our democratic institutions.
The massive Women’s March in Washington on the first day of the Trump presidency was successful on many levels, not the least of which is that it got under Trump’s thin skin–bigly. The half million or so people who showed up were not Trump’s adoring base. [Read more…]
At 9:30 the No. 7 bus driver stopped for us even though he’d lighted the “Out of Service” banner. He told us with a smile “room for two more.” Passengers were butt to butt and belly to belly. A woman said she loved my hat: I’d cut out the letter N and O, for NO, and taped them to the red baseball cap I hadn’t been wearing lately out of fear I’d be considered a TrumpLump.
By the time we’d arrived at Broadway at the 12th Ave. Transit Center crowds on foot were already heading toward the Civic Center. Cars and buses could only inch along beleaguered Broadway. So we jumped off the bus at 4th Ave. and headed north to B St.
We went over chains at parking lots, and squeezed through 5-inch gaps between walls and fence posts in order to get closer to the main crowd — we were probably 200 or 300 feet from the speakers’ stand. We couldn’t see them, so it’s impossible to say how far away we were from the center. Looking south on 2nd Ave. we could see the crowd on Broadway couldn’t move. [Read more…]
