Looking Back at the Week: Nov 27-Dec 3
This week’s edition of Looking Back at the Week features articles, commentaries, columns, toons, and other work by San Diego Free Press regulars, irregulars, columnists, at-large contributors, and sourced writers on: Trump’s twitter tantrum, California hate, 2016 voter fraud, Rosalia Salinas, Chef Ramon, Trump reneging, our Jeeni Criscenzo, looking back at B&C, and lots of other grassroots news & progressive views from San Diego’s friendly, neighborhood, all volunteer, slightly funky, community news site.
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Rosalia Salinas: The Education of an Educator
Part I: From Laredo Texas to San Diego
Rosalia describes herself as lucky. She grew up in Laredo, Texas, the daughter of hardworking parents. She says her father Octavio was the hardest working man she has ever met. Her mother Alicia, who loved music and sincerely enjoyed meeting people, had an anything is possible attitude. Ocatvio was born in Mexico and Alicia was born in Michigan to a mother who had also been born in the United States.
Rosalia’s mother faced tremendous economic challenges. Her maternal grandfather Celestino left Texas before 1920 and moved to Detroit Michigan in search of a better livelihood. Celestino was born in Saltillo, and while living in Texas, worked as a shoe repair man. When the word spread all over the country that the Ford Motor company was hiring, Celestino, like many other Mexicanos, moved north in search of a better life. [Read more…]
Geo-Poetic Spaces: Up In Flames
Dancers stepped on their own feet
bankers robbed
consumers shopped
sellers sold out
rappers wrapped themselves in gold chains
politicians shit bricks [Read more…]
The Lowdown on 2016 Voter Fraud
Incidents of voter fraud in the 2016 general election have now been verified.
All four of them. In Iowa, Terri Lynn Rote tried to vote twice for Donald Trump and was arrested. In Texas, Phillip Cook was arrested for voting twice. He (falsely) claimed to be a Trump campaign employee testing the security system. In Illinois, Republican election judge Audrey Cook filled out an absentee ballot for her dead husband. It won’t be counted. In Florida, electoral employee Gladys Coego was caught and arrested for altering mail-in ballots, adding votes for a local mayoral candidate.
Meanwhile, internet wags are busy repeating variants on the meme “Trump’s lawyers are Russian to Putin legal challenges” to voter recounts in Michigan and Pennsylvania. [Read more…]
Chula Vista’s Bayfront and National City’s Affordable Housing Problem
The Chula Vista City Council has promised $1.2 million annually from the city’s general fund to back its agreement with the Port of San Diego on the Bayfront Master Plan project. The vote took place on Nov. 15. The San Diego Union Tribune elaborated on the details.
The Tribune quoted CV Port Commissioner Ann Moore as saying, “This action demonstrates the city’s continued commitment to this project, which will generate revenue and create the top-tier destination that Chula Vista deserves.”
The Editorial Board of the UT also wrote about Chula Vista this week, citing that the second most populous city is experiencing exciting times, particularly with an agreement to turn the 535-acre industrial site into a residential and resort destination (the Bayfront project). The editors did ask where the money might come from to build such an expensive project. [Read more…]
Too Bad About Your Health Insurance & Other Republican Nightmares
Ah, reality. The feces is about to hit the fan on healthcare.
After years featuring sixty-plus votes in Congress to end the Affordable Care Act, interminable misrepresentations (remember death panels?), and failing to move on even one alternative plan for legislative consideration, it’s time to put up or shut up.
There are three possible scenarios on paying for health care emerging, none of which bodes well for the more than one in three Californians covered in some fashion by Medi-Cal. All of them will enrich a few at the expense of the many by continuing commodification of what should be a public service. [Read more…]
California Leads the Nation in Hate Report
Two reports from the Southern Poverty Law Center released this week confirmed anecdotal reports of a spike in incidents involving harassment and intimidation in the days following the general election.
One report culled media reports and direct submissions to a #ReportHate page on the SPLC website. Online harassment and incidents determined to be hoaxes by authorities were not included. According to the group, “the incidents documented here almost certainly represent a small fraction of the actual number of election-related hate incidents that have occurred since November 8. The Bureau of Justice Statistics estimates that two-thirds of hate crimes go unreported to the police.”
Of the 867 occurrences cataloged by the group over ten days, 99 were reported from California. Schools were the most common locations, followed by public spaces and workplace/retail environments. The leading reported motivation for these incidents was anti-immigrant sentiments, with anti-Black, anti-Semitic, anti-LGBTQ, and anti-Muslim episodes also being significant factors. [Read more…]
Justice Won’t Wait: Fight Back, Give Back, Stand Up
Tuesday, November 29 is Day One of a new era of protest. Older topics, like the Fight for $15 and ending mass incarceration, are being joined by newer concerns, as Uber drivers and Standing Rock supporters connect the dots in their quest for economic, environmental, and social justice.
It’s also Giving Tuesday, and with the Trumpian onslaught on human rights about to begin, supporting organizations working for progressive causes is more important than ever.
Two other developments worth noting on this day are Elizabeth Warren’s speech on the Senate floor Monday telling Democrats to stiffen their spines and the release of an app to help consumers avoid spending money with any Trump-related enterprise. [Read more…]
Sleepless
I have not actually slept
since that long night when astonished reporters went off script,
as we watched one incomprehensible red piece after another
inserted into the puzzle
that was supposed to be mostly blue.
Hearing them stammer words that couldn’t possibly be true,
but were,
was when my subconscious determined
that if I never close my eyes
I won’t awaken to that same nightmare that millions woke to
in Germany, under Hitler,
and other fascist regimes…
the morning after the coup. [Read more…]
TinFoil Trump’s Twitter Temper Tantrum
By Doug Porter
Based on the say-so of a conspiracy-mongering website that claims 9/11 was an inside job and the killing of children at Sandy Hook elementary school was staged with actors, the President-elect of the United States now says there were millions of illegal votes cast in the 2016 general election.
Donald Trump didn’t make this claim at a press conference flanked by attorneys ready to force states to throw out those votes; he made it on Twitter. And he didn’t make this claim based on any actual evidence at all.
He followed up this initial lie by naming California (along with New Hampshire and Virginia) as states with serious voter fraud. Again, the claim was made without evidence. [Read more…]
From Mission to Microchip: An Interview with California Labor Historian Fred Glass. Part 3
It seems like a million years ago now, but back in my Labor Day column, I gave a shout out to Fred Glass’s seminal new labor history of California, From Mission to Microchip: A History of the California Labor Movement.
To learn more about this story and what about it is most important, I am pleased to present the third and final installment of my three-part interview with Fred Glass, author, teacher, union member, and long-time Communications Director for the California Federation of Teachers.
The entirety of this interview was conducted before the election which brought disastrous news for the American labor movement that will surely be dealing with a multiple-front assault from the Trump administration and an unchecked Republican Congress bent on imposing right to work nationally, overturning Obama’s pro-labor executive orders, threatening the very existence of public sector unions in particular, and stacking the Supreme Court with anti-labor judges for a generation. In light of this dire outcome, I contacted Fred to see what he thought of labor’s chances of surviving the onslaught in California. The interview ends with that answer. [Read more…]
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