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Truth and Justice in San Diego Takes Second Place in Quest for Police Oversight

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Two recent episodes give proof to my belief that the Police Department is the most powerful government agency in San Diego with the least amount of taxpayer oversight.

This is nothing new. America’s Finest City has gone through decades of scandal and corruption being followed by hollow promises of reform. The point I’m making today is that things still haven’t changed, despite two changes of leadership, lawsuits, and political posturing.

What makes these political games more serious than say, the machinations around Civic San Diego, are the practical implications and applications for those with less privilege (and more melatonin) as they live their lives.   [Read more…]

Responding to the Unconscious Bias and Racism at National City Council Meetings

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By Mark Lane and Shane Parmely

We went to the Tuesday, July 24, National City Council meeting to speak out against the police brutality that left Earl McNeil brain dead.

For almost six weeks, we’ve peacefully and loudly protested at the National City Council meetings. For six weeks, we’ve asked the National City Police Department (NCPD) to release the videotapes pertaining to the in-custody death of Earl McNeil. For six weeks, we’ve been ignored by the three men who control the National City Council and the NCPD. For six weeks, we’ve been treated to excessive force and violence by the NCPD.

And last week, after an hour of the police, including Chief Manny Rodriguez, repeatedly and openly pushing us and other people attending the meeting, we sat down on the floor and were subsequently arrested.   [Read more…]

An Open Letter in Support of SB 1186 to Assemblymember Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher

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By Shahid Buttar / Electronic Frontier Foundation

Dear Assemblymember Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher, 

We live in dangerous times. The rights of people of color, immigrants, workers, women, and asylum seekers are threatened every day. As history has repeatedly shown, one of the most powerful tools of oppression is surveillance. California has the opportunity to ensure public control and oversight of the spying technologies that law enforcement is most likely to abuse. Right now, the power is in your hands to ensure it moves forward.

With each year, civil rights advocates have watched technology advance amidst a climate of growing secrecy, allowing authorities to collect more and more personal data from more and more people and store it indefinitely, without parameters for how it can be used, with whom it can be shared, or what to do if it is misused or abused. We ask you, as chair of the California Assembly Appropriations Committee, to pass S.B. 1186 out of the committee without further amendments.

We have reached the point where unchecked surveillance may pose a public safety risk as great as the ones the technology is meant to address.   [Read more…]

Earl McNeil: No Justice! No Peace! Riot Police Summoned for National City Council Meeting

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Another week has gone by without the National City Police Department coming clean about what happened to Earl McNeil, who never regained consciousness after being taken into custody on May 27. He passed on at UCSD Medical Center on June 11.

The man may be dead, but he’s not been forgotten. The story of his arrest and the lack of transparency about what happened afterward have begun to attract national attention, thanks to the persistence of community activists.

The fourth consecutive protest at a National City Council meeting brought police in riot gear from six agencies around San Diego County. Platoons of cops marched up and down outside the meeting, forcing the two dozen or so demonstrators off the sidewalks for no apparent reason.   [Read more…]

The MS-13 Gang, A Straw Man for Republican Racism

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By Hunter / Daily Kos

Donald Trump’s support is based on racism. And the racism is based on Republican conspiracy theories. And those conspiracy theories are now, thanks to White House propaganda, taking root within his racist, gullible base.

A majority of people who voted for President Donald Trump consider criminal gang MS-13 a threat to the United States, a new poll finds, indicating the Trump administration may be succeeding in inflating the perception of the gang’s national risk.

Specifically, 85 percent of Trump voters call MS-13 a “very” or “somewhat” serious threat to the United States, and roughly half of them are worried MS-13 is going to target them or their families personally, which is a ludicrous, asinine theory based entirely on Trump-peddled propaganda. Before Trump’s team settled on “MS-13” as their stand-in for Violent Ethnic People Coming To Get You, it would be a fair bet to say that precious few among Trump’s base would even know what MS-13 was. Now half of them are worried that MS-13 is hiding under their floorboards.   [Read more…]

Russian Spy Maria Butina, Donald Trump, the NRA, and Republican Politicians at All Levels

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By Mark Sumner / Daily Kos

On Monday, Russian pro-gun activist and lifetime NRA member Maria Butina, was arrested on charges of conspiracy to defraud the United States and acting as a covert agent of the Russian government.

The indictment against Butina, on the same day that Donald Trump so weakly acquiesced to Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, came after years in which the Russian agent openly presented herself as a gateway between Republican causes and Russia. During that time she not only supported the candidacy of Trump, but worked with other prominent members of the GOP, promoted Republican visits to Moscow, and secured pro-Russian statements from right-wing politicians up and down the line.

Butina has been a prominent and vocal presence in the link between the National Rifle Association and Russian pro-gun groups. But she has also inserted herself into other lobbying efforts, both for guns and for Russia. That includes open claims that she was a conduit between the Russian government and the campaign of Donald Trump.   [Read more…]

27 Things You Need to Know About Mueller’s Latest Indictments

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By James Dunlap / Facebook

Ok, so I’ve actually sat down and read the entire 29-page Mueller indictment (PDF) against the 12 Russian intelligence officers, and it is totally insane. I literally can’t believe the scope of this thing. I’m making this status public (i.e., shareable) because people need to know about this shit.

There is no way you can read the actual indictment and not conclude that

1) there WAS a RUSSIAN conspiracy;

2) that the scope of that conspiracy was GARGANTUAN;

3) that it was organized BY THE RUSSIAN GOVERNMENT (i.e., there’s no way Putin didn’t know about this);

4) That people connected to the Trump campaign (and, shockingly, other U.S. Gov’t officials) WERE INVOLVED; and

5) this is just the beginning. 

If Mueller has already uncovered this amount of information with such specificity regarding the goings-on in far-away Russia, there’s NO WAY some serious shit isn’t going to hit the fan going forward right here in the U.S.

So, without further ado, here are the highlights:   [Read more…]

The Coming Supreme Court’s Taint of Illegitimacy

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By Bill Adams / UrbDeZine

The circumstances underlying the creation of a strongly conservative Supreme Court for decades may have earned this Court the taint of illegitimacy. Here’s how it went awry.

The “One Person, One Vote” principle is strong in the consciousness of the American Public. It arises from fundamental notions of fairness, equality, and democracy. These notions arise from the spirit of the U.S. Constitution, even if the document itself is less direct in support of the One Person, One Vote principle.  In addition to the high-minded ideals of freedom and equality, the U.S. Constitution was born of compromises arising from practical considerations such as wooing slave states into the new union.

Now we have arrived at a perfect storm of factors to subvert the will of the people. It is the result of the distrust of direct democracy embedded in the Constitution combining with undemocratic intent. The majority is ruled by the minority. There has been a massive abrogation of the One Person, One Vote principle.  We are now rated as a “flawed democracy,” 21st among democratic countries in the company of Italy, Botswana, and Mexico.   [Read more…]

August 26, 2018: A National Day of Action Opposing Trump’s Supreme Court Nominee

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By Julia Conley / Common Dreams

While President Donald Trump said Tuesday morning that the nomination process for his Supreme Court pick Brett Kavanaugh would be a “beautiful thing to watch” over the coming weeks, progressive advocacy groups say they will leverage their collective political will—and the tens of millions of their outraged members—to stand against the president’s far-right and extremist choice.

Calling Trump’s nomination of Kavanaugh a “five-alarm fire,” NARAL Pro-Choice America, MoveOn.org, Color of Change, and other groups announced a mass mobilization against the right-wing judge’s confirmation, including a nationwide day of action planned for August 26.   [Read more…]

The State of Hate in California – Three Consecutive Years of Double Digit Increases

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The California Department of Justice released its annual report on hate crimes reported in 2017 on Monday, July 9. Local law enforcement agencies reported 1,093 hate crimes last year, a more than 17% increase from 2016, which was an 11% increase over 2015.

San Diego County had the second highest statewide total of reported hate crimes with 95 events, 121 offenses, 114 victims, and 82 suspects apprehended. Los Angeles County (with three times the population) was California’s biggest hotbed of hate, with 419 incidents.

A hate crime, as defined by the state, is a crime against a person, group, or property motivated by the victim’s real or perceived protected social group. The data included in the report does not include hate incidents, defined as is an action or behavior motivated by hate but legally protected by the First Amendment right to freedom of expression.   [Read more…]

Can Trump Really Pardon Himself? | Video Worth Watching

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Vox’s Danush Parvaneh ruminates on the question of whether a president has the ability to self-pardon. Note that one of the checks discussed is the judicial system, ultimately the Supreme Court. How about that as another reason for demanding no nominations until the Mueller investigation is concluded.   [Read more…]

Malcolm X and Police Accountability on My Mind

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I attended a meeting the other night at the Malcolm X Library about a proposed Amendment to the City of San Diego Charter to create a Commission on Police Practices.

I couldn’t help but think of Malcolm throughout the evening because he would be pleased at the very idea of why we were gathered together, considering that he relentlessly tried to keep an eye on the police, especially in black communities where they have, throughout our country’s history, practically run rampant in black neighborhoods: cruising up and down the street flashing “the look”; messing with folks for giving them “the look”; taking somebody out because of “how they looked.”

And Malcolm would appreciate that the proposed commission would be devoted to holding the police department accountable for their interactions not only with communities of color but with all of the folks they’re supposed to “serve and protect” – like the members of Women Occupy San Diego, most of them white, who were mistreated by law enforcement officers at a protest a few years ago.
  [Read more…]

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