San Diego Free Press

Grassroots News & Progressive Views

You are here: Home / Archives for Columns

Digging Up Dirt in Duncan Hunter-Land | Election Snapshot for the 50th Congressional District

by

First in a series

The filing deadline has now passed for candidates seeking office in California, so it’s time to take a closer look at who’s running, what we know about them, and how they measure up as what needs to be done to end the reign of error also known as the Trump administration.

Incumbent Republican Duncan D. Hunter occupies what should be one of the safest seats in the House of Representatives. His father had the position until 2008. Political consultants say they believe many residents of the 50th Congressional District still think they’re voting for Duncan L Hunter (papa).

Republicans (+11) and white people (58.6%) are dominant parts of the electorate in a district encompassing the mostly rural east and north parts of San Diego County, along with a sliver of Riverside County. Duncan D.won his last two general elections by 70,000 or more votes.
  [Read more…]

Linda Brown Recalls Her Role in the Historic ‘Brown v. Board of Education’ Case | Video Worth Watching

by

Linda Brown, the schoolgirl at the heart of the Brown v. Board of Education lawsuit, died on Sunday, at the age of seventy-six. In this video recorded in 2004, she relates her memories of the situation that led her father to file the court case that ultimately led to the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision declaring school segregation unconstitutional.   [Read more…]

In the Wake of the March for Our Lives, Let’s Talk About Criminal Justice Reform in San Diego

by

This moment in time is about so much more than gun reform. It’s about political reform. It’s about criminal justice reform. And that’s what I’m going to focus on today, in light of recent events in Sacramento and along with what’s (or not) happening locally.

San Diego is lucky in that we have candidates for County Sheriff (Dave Myers) and District Attorney (Geneviéve Jones-Wright) in the June primary who stand on the side of criminal justice reform.

Assemblyman Todd Gloria and San Francisco’s David Chiu have joined forces with statewide Indivisible groups in partnership with ACLU of Northern California and the American Friends Service Committee to co-sponsor AB3131.

The bill would create oversight and ensure transparency on the sale of surplus military equipment to police departments statewide. This is important because President Trump and Jeff Sessions have rolled back an Obama executive order limiting the sale of surplus military equipment to state and local police departments.   [Read more…]

If the Democrats Want a Wave Election, Don’t Sell Out Main Street in Favor of Moneyed Interests

by

I have long thought that if you wanted to look back to find one of the key moments that showed how out of touch the Democratic establishment was on economic issues that it might very well blow the 2016 Presidential election, you’d likely want to revisit the debate over the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).  

Indeed, in 2015, in the wake of the riots in Baltimore, I observed how President Obama could sound great on some social justice issues while badly missing on key economic ones…

That’s why recent news stories about the national Democratic Party’s efforts to “contain” Elizabeth Warren once again are concerning.  As a recent Politico story notes, there have again been rumblings that Warren’s fierce condemnation of the rollback of the Dodd-Frank law was harshing the mellow of the neoliberal wing of the party   [Read more…]

Eleven year-old student Naomi Wadler speaks at March For Our Lives Rally | Video Worth Watching

by

Eleven year-old student Naomi Wadler speaks at March For Our Lives Rally. “I’m here today to honor the words of Toni Morrison: ‘If there’s a book that you want to read but it hasn’t been written yet, you must be the one to write it.’ ”   [Read more…]

Looking Back at the Week: March 18-24

by

This week’s edition of Looking Back at the Week contains articles, commentaries, columns, and other work by San Diego Free Press regulars, irregulars, columnists, cartoonists, at-large contributors, and locally and nationally sourced writers on: the March for Our Lives, Women’s Herstory Month, Kasparian’s D4 debacle, Cambridge Analytica, ending the NRA, American war culture, and lots of other grassroots news & progressive views from San Diego’s feisty, all volunteer, slightly funky, community news site.   [Read more…]

D.C. choir sings with Jennifer Hudson, ‘The Times They Are A Changin’ at March For Our Lives Rally | Video Worth Watching

by

Jennifer Hudson, accompanied by the D.C. Choir, shapes a new vision of Bob Dylan’s The Times They Are A Changin’.

And sometimes silence speaks louder than words. Emma Gonzalez uses a calculated silence to make a powerful statement in her address to the March For Our Lives assembly.   [Read more…]

Marching for Our Lives in San Diego & Other Places | Photo Gallery

by

Initial estimates say 10,000 people participated in the March for Our Lives rally at the County Administration Building on the waterfront in San Diego on Saturday morning. Locally, there were also marches in Escondido, Encinitas, Carlsbad, and Temecula.

There were over 830 March for Our Lives events on six continents. In Washington, DC, 800,000 people marched. In New York City, 175,000 people marched. Twenty thousand people took to the streets in Boston.

Today’s post is mostly pictures from around the world, with a few snippets from news coverage I saw.   [Read more…]

Music to Inspire a March For Our Lives Movement | Video Worth Watching

by

Here’s some insight into why young people are massing today in Washington, D.C. as well as 835 other locations around the U.S. The survivors of the Parkland, Florida, Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School: “We’re tired of hearing that we’re too young to ever make a change.” … “We’re not gonna let you win. We’re putting up a fight.” … “Stand up for one another and we’ll never give up the fight.”

And they are not marching alone. There will be battle-tested veterans marching with them.   [Read more…]

After the March for Our Lives, What Will You Do? Progressive Activist Calendar March 23-April 2, 2018

by

With rallies in over 830 cities worldwide, a handful of survivors of the Valentines Day shootings in Parkland Florida will have inspired one of the single largest expressions of political protest in history. The March for Our Lives can’t end when the day’s events have concluded.

If there ever was a time when assuming everything will be okay in the long run was a bad idea, this is it. There’s an unhinged man-child of privilege in the White House who is seemingly hell-bent on undermining the ideals most people believe this country was founded on. All forms of bigotry, be they racist, misogynist, or religious intolerance, are now being normalized. History clearly shows the next step on this path will be the state using its power to abet or conduct violent acts against those considered the ‘other.’

If you have not registered to vote, do so now. Everything you need to know, including how to register online is to be found on this page at the Women’s March San Diego site. Hopefully, someday they’ll do me the favor of listing this calendar in their Activist Resources.

A revolutionary way to learn about local politics: don’t miss the unique forum on the first Sunday in April, hosted by Flip the 49tth activists.   [Read more…]

Geo-Poetic Spaces: Final Account

by

The dead don’t lie
they aren’t sleeping
never passed away
crossed over
departed
nor do they rest in peace   [Read more…]

©2010-2017 SanDiegoFreePress.org

Code is Poetry