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Librotraficantes: Smuggling Banned Books back into Public Schools and Communities

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“Arizona banned our history. We decided to make more.”

By Anna Daniels

Editor Note: So here’s some good news in 2017–a Federal judge declared Arizona’s ban on Mexican-American ethnic studies unconstitutional. The legal battle took seven years, which goes to show that sustained resistance + access to legal remedies = progressive wins. The following article was published in 2014.

If you can ban one book, why not ban a whole bunch of them? Back in 2012 the Tucson Arizona public school system embraced the more is better approach when it eliminated the Mexican American Studies Program from the K-12 curriculum.

The LA Times reported that “The Tucson school board voted to end the program after Arizona’s education chief had ruled the district in violation of a controversial state law banning classes designed for a particular ethnic group or that “promote the overthrow of the U.S. government.” The Tuscon school district stood to lose $14 million in state education funds, which no doubt squelched a more robust debate on the topic of intellectual freedom and education.

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Will You Spare a Few Seconds to Help Homeless People in San Diego?

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Editor Note: This Starting Line originally published on December 15, 2016 details the plight of homeless people and steps to solve the problem of homelessness as well as some thoughts on national issues.

Today I’m giving over most of my column to Women Occupy, who have crafted a petition to Mayor Kevin Faulconer to actually do something ‘not mean’ for our rapidly growing homeless population.

Yesterday I sat in on a meeting with homeless advocates and heard a litany of horror stories about how the growth of the population of unhoused humans in San Diego is directly related to policy decisions made at city hall. I’ll report more on what I learned at a later date.

Will this petition end homelessness? Nope. But it could well be –if enough people sign it and YOU tell your friends about it– a step in the right direction. Only in movies has a single action ever righted a wrong. Change occurs because of thousands of little actions. Make signing this petition your contribution to a better San Diego. It only takes a few seconds.

CLICK TO SIGN HERE

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SDFP Contributors Make the News!

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By Staff

This past quarter a number of San Diego Free Press contributors and editors have been mentioned on other media sites or received special recognition for their activism in the community. Our congratulations to the people acknowledged below, not just for their words on this site, but for their compassion, insights and commitment.   [Read more…]

A Preview of What Your Conservative Relatives Will Be Freaking Out About Over the Holidays, Courtesy of Fox and Friend | Video Worth Watching

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Samantha Bee’s Full Frontal gives us a “heads up” about what to expect our conservative relatives to be freaking out about during the holiday get-togethers. It’s a sneak peek courtesy of Fox News, or as Chris Hayes of All In prefers to call it, Trump TV. Hint: it has to do with a threat to Trump’s reign, er, term in office, and the FBI is involved.   [Read more…]

Has Rupert Murdoch Finally Crossed the Line?

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By Bill Adams / Urbdezine

Fox News has recently engaged in a coordinated attempt to intimidate and derail the Special Counsel investigation of President Donald Trump.  Fox commentator Judge Jeanine Pirro has gone as far as accusing Special Counsel Robert Mueller of attempting a coup d’état and suggesting he and his investigatory team should be taken away in handcuffs.

Rupert Murdoch was born an Australian, the son of a newspaper magnate.  He is the owner of the News Corp., which has massive media holdings, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Post, and the largest cable news company, Fox News.

After Murdoch established himself in news media in his native Australia, he entered the U.K. media market in the late 1960s.  He experienced particular success in tabloid journalism at The Sun.  English tabloid papers are known for their sensationalist exploitation of bigotry and xenophobia.   [Read more…]

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai’s Cameo in an Proud Boys Video: Fun Guy or Closet Extremist?

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By the time most you of are reading this, the Federal Communication Commission will have changed the rules regarding regulation of the internet, despite a survey showing 83% of registered voters oppose such a move.

Critics say FCC Chairman Ajit Pai’s plan allows service providers to control download speeds, limit or block access to certain websites, and charge consumers extra fees for broader access.

There may be a darker side to the FCC chairman, one surfacing early on Thursday via Twitter. I’m not sure what all this means, other than an indication Pai likes to play with some not nice people with a track record of aiming to suppress free speech and supporting patriarchy.
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Facebook Minions, Greedy Old Perverts, and the War on Women

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There Is No #NotMe Here

Yesterday I learned to be careful about writing the lede and headline for a story tackling the subject of misogyny. Alex Zaragoza at City Beat wrote something about all men having a degree of complicity in sexism and its more extreme manifestations and was silenced for doing so.

It didn’t take long for Facebook’s content moderation team to remove the article from City Beat’s social media postings. It seems as though the headline “Dear Dudes, You’re All Trash” infringes on the rights of white men, who are considered a protected group on the platform, according to a six-month-old ProPublica investigation.   [Read more…]

Trump Administration Internet Scheme Allows Corporations to Throttle Free Speech

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By Jake Johnson / Common Dreams

Open internet advocates warned that “we’re running out of time” to save the web from corporate control and called on Americans to make their representatives’ phones “ring off the hook” Tuesday after FCC chairman Ajit Pai unveiled his long-awaited plan to scrap net neutrality that critics slammed as “naked corporatism” designed to give a major gift to the telecom industry at the expense of the public.

“The reckless wrecking ball strikes again,” former FCC commissioner and current special adviser at Common Cause Michael Copps said in a statement. “FCC Chairman Ajit Pai’s scorched-earth plan for net neutrality displays callous disregard for both process and substance. The chairman’s plan to do away with net neutrality will be a disaster for consumers and yet another handout for big business.”   [Read more…]

Former FCC Chair Wheeler Reacts to Net Neutrality Attack | Video Worth Watching

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They’re coming for Net Neutrality again! On Wednesday current FCC Chair Ajit Pai (who formerly served as Associate General Counsel for Verizon) will formally propose a roll back of Title II protections for the open internet. The full board will be voting on the issue on December 14, but given the current composition of the board, the expectation is that it will be approved.

On Tuesday, Pai announced his plan in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal (an annotated analysis by Mashable’s Jason Abbruzzese is here). In this video clip former FCC Chair Tom Wheeler who presided over the most recent implementation of the Title II protections weighs in on the issue, interviewed by Bloomberg’s Emily Chang.   [Read more…]

San Diego Is No Different Than Sacramento or Washington When it Comes to Sexual Harassment

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It seems as though 15 minutes can’t go by without a new revelation about some influential man being called out for sexual harassment. Sadly, the problem extends way beyond the rich, famous, and powerful, as a recent Huffington Post article about hotel housekeepers and casino workers explained. And then there’s the whole thing where women simply being in a public place are subject to a wide variety of what should be astonishing behavior, as documented recently in a photo essay at the Guardian.

Today’s column will take a spin around the media world to emphasize just how big a deal this overdue reckoning is, and offer up a few side thoughts along the way I felt were worth considering.

I’ll start local and work out from there.   [Read more…]

The White House Makes Its Own Fake News – You Just Can’t Make This Stuff Up! | Video Worth Watching

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MSNBC’s Chris Hayes reports how the White House has devised a way of getting its story out while making the source appear to be the Main Stream Media. Unfair and imbalanced? You decide.   [Read more…]

Google, Facebook, and Donald Trump Want to Control Your Media Choices

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Two seemingly different stories illustrate the external challenges faced by media in the 21st century.

The President wants the news media investigated by Congress.

Google’s algorithm changes made earlier this year are impacting more than the just the purveyors of fraudulent news accounts.

These threats come on top of the ongoing collapse of the traditional business model(s) responsible for funding the fourth estate.   [Read more…]

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