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LGBT+ Rights Movement of 1969 and the Women of Stonewall

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Adrianah Moreno / Women’s Museum of California Blog

Gay bars in the ‘60s were some of the only places members of the LGBT+ community could go to, and be themselves without guaranteed prosecution, so it makes sense how the LGBT+ movement was ultimately founded right inside one called the Stonewall Inn, located in New York City. Bars like Stonewall were prone to police raids, where cops would shut down the bars for disobeying regulations targeting LGBT+ people. Most raids went down simply, cops would shut the building down and arrest anyone who wasn’t wearing “gender appropriate” clothing or dancing with someone of the same gender – but most raids weren’t like Stonewall.   [Read more…]

Dissent Is Patriotic. It’s Also a Powerful Antidote to Propaganda.

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By Bethany Woolman / Speak Freely / ACLU
“If you’re to be called a communist every time you stand up for basic American rights and freedoms, what’s likely to happen? Will you be silent? And if so, is this what the House Committee on Un-American Activities is really after — a silent, submissive, un-protesting America?” -Ernest Besig, “Operation Correction,” 1961

Fifty-five years ago this January, the ACLU of Northern California was busy filling orders from across the country for copies of its recently produced film, “Operation Correction.” The film was a response to a piece of Red Scare propaganda, “Operation Abolition,” which was produced by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and depicted civil liberties activists in San Francisco as violent “communist agents” bent on destroying the fabric of America.

In those days, the federal government was deeply concerned with the political affiliations of ordinary Americans — if those affiliations were left-leaning.   [Read more…]

Historic Marston House Hosts Book Release of Maria Garcia’s ‘La Neighbor’

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Maria Garcia recently release her long awaited book based on the award winning San Diego Free Press series The History of Neighborhood House in Logan Heights. The site of the book release—the historic Marston House—was no accident.

On Saturday December 10 over fifty people gathered at the Marston House garden where decades earlier San Diego businessman and philanthropist George Marston and his daughters Mary and Helen held fundraisers for the settlement house.   [Read more…]

Rosalia Salinas: Bilingual Education Advocate, Educator, Leader

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San Diego Unified had what was then called a leadership list for future administrators. Thinking she would be able to have more influence if she became an administrator, Rosalia applied. While being interviewed by an assistant superintendent, she was told she didn’t qualify for the leadership list because she did not have experience north of Interstate 8. Rosalia took the moment to explain that she had no desire to be in an assignment north of 8 and that she thought those teachers north of 8 should have south of 8 teaching experience.

The assistant superintendent also explained that the second reason she could not be considered for the leadership list was that she had participated in a one-day teacher strike. She then informed him that she had no intention of applying for the leadership list.   [Read more…]

Navigating Between Worlds: The Peaceful Warriors of Standing Rock

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By Ariana Krieger

When you see the somber brown hills of the Dakota Borderlands for the first time, they don’t look like the setting for a historic victory by a people armed only with the power of prayer and reverence for the land. Yet among these hills of Standing Rock has sprouted a camp, a human crossroads whose unique character has made the seemingly impossible happen.

Seven tribes lead this movement and among the tribal elders are men like Wanasa, a Lakota elder who greets everyone warmly during meal times in the main kitchen.

“The most important thing you can do is pray,” he tells us, “What is happening on the front lines is secondary; the main purpose of this camp is to pray.”   [Read more…]

The Agony of Sandy Hook Continues Four Years Later

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Sane people had their hearts broken four years ago today. Twenty-year-old Adam Lanza first shot and killed his mother, then went to Sandy Hook Elementary School, opened fire and killed 20 children and six staff members before killing himself.

The massacre in Newtown Connecticut was the deadliest school shooting in U.S. history. It was also, as New York magazine points out, “the first major American tragedy subjected to the full force of the internet’s conspiratorial machinery in real time.”

Insane (a state of mind that prevents normal perception, behavior, or social interaction) people adopted this tragedy as the gateway into a fact-free world, brimming with conspiracy theories, and full of hatred for the victims and their families.   [Read more…]

Helga: Growing up in Hitler’s Germany

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By Karen Truesdell Riehl

I met Helga in 1977. She was the librarian in an elementary school east of Seattle. We became friends and daily lunch companions. Helga had a heavy German accent but never mentioned growing up in Germany. One day I asked her how long she’d been in this country. She told me she met her American soldier husband in Germany, shortly after the war. They moved to the United States in 1948.

I asked her to tell me about her experience during the war. She hesitated a moment, then announced, not proudly, “I was Jugend.”

“What’s a Jugend? I asked.   [Read more…]

Remembering Pearl Harbor and WWII Vets in the Time of Trump

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World War II Vets Would Not Have Stood for President-Elect

Remembering this December 7th – Pearl Harbor Day – has special significance for us today in this new Era of Trump. The 75th anniversary of the attack by Japanese forces on US air and naval power in Hawaii in late 1941 finds few surviving members still with us. And our collective memory of “the day of infamy” – as President Franklin Roosevelt declared it the next day before Congress – which pushed the country into World War II – has all but faded.

But yes, we need to remember this day – and all that it represents – all the contradictions of that historic moment and context. And all the parallels from that day to ours today.   [Read more…]

Rosalia Salinas: The Education of an Educator

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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…]

What Cornel West Got Wrong – and Right – in San Marcos

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By James Anderson

When noted philosopher and public intellectual Cornel West spoke to and fielded questions from a capacity crowd gathered in the ballroom on the second floor of the Student Union of California State University San Marcos, he hit just about every note.

With West’s stated intent to “unsettle” and “unnerve” everyone that Friday, November 4 – coupled with hefty doses of humility and humor – he delivered a compelling exegesis on democracy.

You cannot sustain a democracy based on superficial spectacle of the sort on display in the present electoral arena and in major media, he said. Online news media offer an illusion of hope, but as a recent piece denouncing West’s appearance at Cal State San Marcos as a “Totalitarian Conference to be Held at UC Marcos—With Your Tax $$” – despite there being no UC, a.k.a. University of California, in San Marcos – illustrates, the cybersphere serves as a space for amplifying confusion just as often as it functions as any sort of meaningful public sphere.   [Read more…]

Chunky Sanchez:“A good man, an extraordinary musician, and a tireless Chicano activist”

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By Herman Baca / Committee on Chicano Rights

It was with a sad & heavy heart that we heard of the passing of beloved; Ramon “Chunky” Sanchez. To Isabel Sanchez, the entire Sanchez/Enrique families our deepest & most sincere condolences from the Committee on Chicano Rights, Chicano/Mexicano/Latino community, and my family.

I first met Chunky in the early 1970’s at SD State at a rally where Chunky was a student. At the time both of us were doing what we were to do for the next 45 years, Chunky playing & singing (then with La Rondalla Amerinda, later with Los Alacranes Mojados) & I speaking. We hit it right off, since the both of us were from two small rural agricultural communities, Chunky from Blythe, CA & I from Los Lentes, New Mexico.   [Read more…]

Requiem for An Activist: Tom Hayden 1939-2016

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Tom Hayden died on Sunday.

The movement he played a role in inspiring lives on. A movement for racial and economic justice; for democracy; for peace; for the planet. A movement against injustice; against imperialism; against cruelty; against repression.

Hayden was smart: book smart and street smart. His gift in politics stemmed from an ability to connect the dots between small events and their place in the broader political picture.

His life was dedicated to activism.   [Read more…]

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