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Assemblywoman Shirley Weber’s Police Accountability Bill Couldn’t Come at a Better Time

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On the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr’s assassination, it seems appropriate to write about gun violence and the haters who enable it. Three local events relate to this topic, and there is some news of national interest I’ll add along the way:

  • Two bills introduced in the State Legislature, aim to bring California’s police use-of-force law into the 21st century and open a gap in the Blue Wall of silence surrounding investigations into police misconduct.
  • High school students from Carlsbad and San Clemente joined the weekly protests outside Congressman Darrell Issa’s Vista office to present a petition asking him to hold a town hall to address gun violence and school shootings.
  • San Diego resident Nasim Aghdam was named as the shooter following an afternoon of terror at YouTube’s San Bruno headquarters. Three people suffered gunshot wounds and police found Aghdam dead of apparently self-inflicted wounds.

  [Read more…]

Let’s Bring Back Dueling

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I saw and read a note to The New York Times the other day that set me to thinking of kinda complicated politics.

Well, that is what that newspaper likes to engage in, and so probably do they all. They’ll say, “If this, then that, and, pretty soon… The Apocalypse. On the other hand…,” they’ll say. So we end up back in the muddled middle, our fondest hopes for reason and enlightenment lost in the give and take back.

If you want to know what the news business stands for, play The National Anthem, or ask who’s interested in an interview with Donald Trump. Keep it simple.

Truth? Truth in the industry has become a now-and-then preoccupation, rising and falling as do other preoccupations, like getting people to read a story, or to consider buying all-electric, self-driving 2-ton cars that happen to be advertised as part of sports coverage.

Still, no one is as cynical as today’s out and out conservative, who believes in family values and then supports separating immigrants from their children. Or he’ll (usually it’s a he) advocate hard work after he’s invested in robot technology that eliminates jobs for humans, or he’ll recommend home schooling and send his own kids to prep schools and Yale.   [Read more…]

How the NRA Hijacks Gun Control Debates | Video Worth Watching

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Who does the NRA really represent? Is it its gun owning membership, or the companies that send millions of dollars its way? Hmmm. Vox’s Carlos Maza and Coleman Lowndes present some revealing statistics and a remarkably analogous historical situation to help answer that question.   [Read more…]

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

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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…]

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

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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

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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

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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…]

NRA, Your Time Is Running Out | Video Worth Watching

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Heading into the weekend and this Saturday’s March For Our Lives, here’s a glimpse of how the this generation is turning the tables on the NRA. They’re unabashedly able to take the NRA’s rhetoric (as delivered by one of it’s more histrionic spokespersons) and turn it back on itself. No fear!   [Read more…]

Ending the NRA’s Reign of Terror in the US

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As we head into the March for Our Lives weekend, a look at the organization largely responsible for our glut of guns is in order. When you drill down into the issues surrounding gun violence in the U.S., it’s impossible to escape the conclusion we would not be having this debate if it were not for the National Rifle Association.

It’s my contention people of our country are being held hostage by a small group of people financed by arms manufacturers.

Their approach to keeping us interned involves generating an ‘intense state of fear,’ which just happens to be the definition of terror in the Merriam-Webster dictionary. Terrorism is therefore described as the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion.   [Read more…]

Free Lyft Rides for March for Our Lives Attendees in San Diego, 49 Other Cities

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On March 24, those around the country will join March for Our Lives demonstrations to demand that their lives and safety become a priority. This movement has been led by student organizers from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, which less than a month and a half ago was the site of one of the nation’s deadliest school massacres.

Earlier this month, Lyft Co-Founders John Zimmer and Logan Green shared their support for the civic engagement these students have inspired by offering free Lyft rides to marches around the country.   [Read more…]

The Impact of the Student-Led March for Our Lives, Even Before Local and Nationwide March 24 Rallies

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The mission and moral clarity of the student survivors of the Valentines Day shooting in Parkland, Florida continues to have a nationwide impact. Locally there will be March for Our Lives rallies on Saturday in Temecula, Escondido, and downtown San Diego. And these mass gatherings are not occurring in a vacuum.

Indivisible 49 and its coalition partners moved its weekly protest on Tuesday from the Vista office of Rep. Darrell Issa to the Oceanside office of State Assemblyman Rocky Chávez, who seeks to replace Issa in Congress.  Several hundred people showed up to make their feelings known about Chavez’s 93% approval rating from the National Rifle Association (NRA) and its endorsement during his last campaign.

The Del Mar City Council is asking directors of the nearby fairgrounds to end their relationship with the Crossroads of the West Gun Show, held there five times a year. According to the Union-Tribune, they have also reached out to 78th District Assemblyman Todd Gloria and State Sen. Toni Atkins to draw up legislation prohibiting gun shows at the facility. The City of Solana Beach will be considering a similar action.   [Read more…]

Warriors Of Change

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By Fran Finley

Warriors Of Change

Oh young brave souls
Let your music out
Sing your songs of sorrow
As you weave for yourself
Cloaks of change
Paint your innocent faces
With the color of blood
And sky and earth
Lay your hand over
Your wounded heart
And pledge allegiance
To end the violence
Spreading upon this land   [Read more…]

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