San Diego Free Press

Grassroots News & Progressive Views

You are here: Home / Archives for Media

Activists Call for Police Accountability in San Diego

by

This week local activist groups are throwing their cards on the table, demanding accountability for the actions of those tasked with protecting the public. Recent events, both locally and nationally, have demonstrated the threat of and/or use of force is essentially exempt from meaningful review. The checks and balances supposedly built into the system are failing on a regular basis.

A list naming hundreds of persons killed by various agencies of law enforcement in San Diego going back to 1980 shows just how mundane lethal force has become in the city and county. A press conference by United Against Police Terror staged in front of police headquarters hopes to put a human face on those statistics.

Frustrated by their attempts to work within the system to enhance citizen oversight of the San Diego Police Department, activists with Women Occupy –backed by 19 civic organizations– are submitting a ballot proposal to the city clerk to make the Citizens Review Board on Police Practices (CRB) truly independent and transparent.   [Read more…]

Armed Militia Takes Over Federal Building in Oregon. They’re White, So What Do We Call Them?

by

By Laura Clawson / Daily Kos

Over the weekend, a group of armed militia members led by the son of deadbeat rancher Cliven Bundy took over a federal building in Oregon at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. The occupiers had gathered in support of Dwight Hammond and his son Steven, ranchers who are supposed to begin five-year federal prison terms on Monday on arson charges.

Alan Pyke explains the background:

The Hammonds set a fire in 2001 that ultimately burned 139 acres of [Bureau of Land Management] land. The ranchers say they began it on their own land with agency approval, but prosecutors say they were in fact seeking to cover up illegal deer hunting on the BLM acreage near their property. A second, much smaller fire in 2006 burned another acre of BLM land during a “burn ban” imposed to allow agency firefighters to combat a blaze caused by lightning.   [Read more…]

Accolades for SDFP, Recognition of Activist Writers

by

The power of citizen journalism in San Diego

By Staff

It has been a busy and deeply gratifying final quarter at the San Diego Free Press. The eight member editorial board and over sixty contributors– all volunteers– continued to make sense of what has been happening in the world through a distinctively progressive and grass roots lens.

During this past quarter it has become clear to us that our unique form of journalism resonates with an ever growing readership.   [Read more…]

Top 10 News Stories That Did Not Appear In 2015 (But I Really Wanted To Read)

by

By Susan Grigsby / Daily Kos

It is traditional at the end of the year to look back at the year’s events and rank them according to significance or popularity. In my youth, I used to enjoy the news reports that focused on the biggest stories of the year, mostly because I was too busy living to pay much attention to them while they were happening.

Now the years pass so quickly that I find year end round-ups to be a bit of a bore. It feels like January was last month. So instead of dwelling on the news stories that did happen and that everyone else will be covering, I decided to recount the top ten stories that were NOT written (because they did not happen) but that should have been written, and in the utopia of my imagination, DID occur. Here they are, in no particular order:   [Read more…]

Progressive Activism in 2015: Fighting for $15 and/or Anything Else They Can Get

by

This was the year that growing inequality became too big a problem to ignore. A growing chorus of voices broke through the white noise of the media’s slavish subservience to the concept of ‘trickle down’ as a viable economic choice.

None-the-less, all the national contenders for the presidency continue to swear allegiance to the failed idea. They are rarely challenged in interviews, editorials or debates, even though the preponderance of data demonstrates a growing disparity between the very rich and the rest of us. Why they don’t get laughed off of any stage where this bad idea gets bandied about is a mystery to me.

Today, we’ll look at some labor advocacy from 2015, focusing on the Fight for Fifteen campaign. Modern-day political reality dictates that the struggle to increase wages will be fought on the local level.   [Read more…]

Error 451: A New Dystopian Internet Code With a Very Important Meaning

by

By Nadia Prupis / Common Dreams

A new internet code inspired by the dystopian writings of Ray Bradbury aims to let users know when websites are unavailable because they have been censored by the state—Error Code 451.

The Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG), a global body which reviews internet standards, on Monday approved the XML specification, which can be used to alert users when requested content has been blocked by “legal obstacles,” typically government censorship. Tim Bray, a former Google engineer and co-author of the code, suggested the term in 2012 as a reference to Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, a 1953 novel in which books are outlawed and burned—an allegory for state suppression of free speech.   [Read more…]

Wild and Crazy Guys

by

I’ve got two explanations for the Trump phenomenon. They’re both a little hollow.

The first is, he’s the leading example of white privilege, and he’s proud of it. He’s got so much money he wouldn’t know how to fry an egg for himself if he were starving.

People like Trump have so much money and have been rewarded by media for so long they’ve lost track of what real people experience. They’ve become isolated. After decades of going out only to places where they can think and play with people whom they agree with these guys don’t have to watch what they say any longer.   [Read more…]

Central American Refugee Families Once Again Crossing the US-Mexico Border

by

It’s only a matter of time until one of the nattering nativists at Fox News ‘discovers’ the latest wave of refugees from Central America showing up in ever-increasing numbers at our southern border.

The number of unaccompanied children crossing the US-Mexico border over the past two months has more than doubled over the same time period in 2014. Health and Human Services Secretary Burwell has notified congress that the Administration for Children and Families — the HHS agency responsible for caring for the migrant children — could face significant funding problems, even with budget numbers requested by President Barack Obama.

The US Border Patrol has already opened shelters in Texas and California. Figures for October and November indicate that 10,588 unaccompanied children along with 12,505 family members crossing together have been apprehended at the US-Mexico border.   [Read more…]

Donald Trump: The Pure Product of American Politics

by

There’s been a lot of moral indignation recently in light of Donald Trump’s repugnant call to halt Muslim immigration and his fond remembrance of the American internment camps of the WWII era. Indeed, some folks have even started using the “F” word, rightly noting the fascist tendencies that the Donald’s inflamed rhetoric appeals to and accurately comparing his calls to ban refugees to the shameful exclusion of Jews fleeing the Nazis.

But as righteous as it is to call out Trump’s ugly racism and xenophobia, there is something suspect about the assertion heard in many quarters that somehow now this outlier has “gone too far.” Indeed, the frequent portrayal of Trump as an aberrant figure who has stepped outside the boundaries of mainstream American political discourse simply protests too much.

Donald Trump is not some “out of nowhere” demagogue who caught us unsuspecting; he is the pure product of the last thirty years of ugly American politics where “the center” has increasingly moved to the right.   [Read more…]

Donald Trump Is The Most Honest Man In Politics

by

By driftglass / driftglass

Yes, Donald Trump is a serial liar who lays on nonstop Conservative bullshit with a fire hose. Yes, he is the loudest, shiniest freak at the wingnut goat rodeo. And, yes, he is living out Newt Gingrich’s dream of being the …

  • Advocate of American fascism
  • Definer of American fascism
  • Teacher of the rules of American fascism
  • Arouser of those who form American fascism
  • Organizer of the pro-American fascist activists
  • Leader (possibly) of the American fascist forces

But by at least one measure — his open contempt for the political press — Donald Trump drops more barrel bombs of truth into the American political system than any other candidate running this year, because he understands the political media better and needs them less than any other candidate running this year.   [Read more…]

Donald Trump’s Audacity of Hate

by

The debate went on inside my head throughout the night as I drifted in and out of dreams. Should I call out this latest batch of hate-mongering from The Donald? Or am I just giving him what he wants? The man sees his polls drop in Iowa and he’s at the ready with some new bit of outrage to keep his name in the headlines.

‘If you see something, say something’ won the debate. Plus, I realized Trump’s merely surfing the wave of fear empowered by his fellow chicken hawks and amplified by the media. Today I’ll examine reaction to the latest proclamations from the GOP candidate.

The press has also been remiss in letting the whole issue of the Planned Parenthood shooting get swept under Trump’s and the GOP’s rug. After what amounted to a conservative campaign to question whether or not the women’s health care provider was targeted, we now know the shooter was indeed after Planned Parenthood.   [Read more…]

Progressive San Diego: 15 Years Ago Was a High Water Mark for OB Activism

by

In 2000 OBGO Held Its First ‘Coming-Out’ Community Forum

Grassroots activism has been in the air in OB of late, with a definite spike last year during the campaign to have the OB Community Plan approved, but it also has been seen this year around the Plan at the Coastal Commission. Prior to 2014, however, there had been many a lean year in terms of genuine local activism across the village, many a moon had passed without throwing shadows on such OBcean activity as petitions and community mobilizations.

And that’s the way grassroots activism is, it comes and goes – like the tides that lap OB’s beaches and cliffs.

Coincidentally or not, there has been some talk – also of late – of a former OB activist group.   [Read more…]

©2010-2017 SanDiegoFreePress.org

Code is Poetry