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Ex-SDPD Chief Zimmerman’s Fake News on Marijuana Takes on a Life of Its Own

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By Jessica Sutherland / Daily Kos

Ever since the term “Fake News” entered the popular lexicon, almost everyone knows to check their news sources closely, and roll their eyes at Trump. But what’s a responsible citizen to do when “Fake News” and “alternative facts” originate with reliable, trusted sources?

Recently retired San Diego Police Chief Shelley Zimmerman should, in theory, have been one of those reliable, trusted sources, assuming you trust law enforcement. Unfortunately, a recent investigation by Voice of San Diego’s Jesse Marx reveals that the former chief manufactured crime statistics in an apparent effort to block expansion of the cannabis industry within America’s Finest City. Worse, her fake facts are now being used to justify and shape cannabis attitudes and policy in other municipalities.

This is how it begins.   [Read more…]

City Charter Amendment Would Provide Rigorous Oversight of Police by Independent Commission

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By Andrea St. Julian

Community trust in law enforcement is key to legitimate and effective policing. Right now, San Diegans have an opportunity to increase the community’s trust in its Police Department through an amendment to the San Diego City Charter. The amendment will eliminate the Community Review Board on Police Practices (CRB) that currently handles certain complaints against the police and replace it with an independent and more powerful commission.

In the city of San Diego, complaints filed against police officers are investigated by the Police Department through Internal Affairs. The Department provides some of those complaints to the CRB for review. The CRB’s review process consists of looking over the investigation conducted by Internal Affairs.
  [Read more…]

‘He was full of dirt and lice’: Court Documents Describe Cruel Treatment of Migrant Kids, Families

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By Gabe Ortiz / Daily Kos

Hundreds of pages of sworn affidavits and court documents from forcibly separated migrant parents, immigration attorneys, immigrant rights groups and others reveal intentional cruelty, neglect, and chaos behind the Trump administration’s barbaric “zero tolerance” policy that has torn thousands of children from families at the U.S./Mexico border.

Over the past several weeks, officials have made it increasingly difficult for elected leaders and media to access both detention facilities and detained families. U.S. Jeff Merkley of Oregon, among the first to attempt to access a children’s detention facility in Texas, was asked to leave the property. Scanning the pages of court documents, some tweeted by reporter Adam Klasfeld, gives an insight into why.   [Read more…]

Trauma at the Border | Video Worth Watching

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From the Brave New Films YouTube website:

Pediatricians reveal the long-term damage that can be done when children are imprisoned – even with their families. Let’s stop this government-sanctioned child abuse now!

Childhood trauma, like imprisonment and family separation, provokes long-lasting implications caused by high levels of toxic stress. Short term damage can present with depression, anxiety, developmental delays, and autism-like symptoms; long term damage presents as cancer, heart disease, and diabetes. Through the expertise and first-hand observations of current American Academy of Pediatrics president, Dr. Colleen Kraft, and her pediatric colleagues: Dr. Lanre Falusi and Dr. Nathalie Quion viewers are confronted with the heartbreaking reality that these innocent, traumatized children are unwilling participants forced to endure the consequences of the Trump administration’s cruel immigration policy.

  [Read more…]

The CEOs Profiting Off of Immigrant Detention – Follow the Money | Video Worth Watching

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Brave New Films has produced an exposé of the private, for-profit prison industry’s role in the incarceration of immigrants: Immigrant Prisons. Here is a portion of the work that highlights the for-profit component and puts names and faces to the anodyne company names.   [Read more…]

Janus v. Black Families

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By Kyra R. Greene

As I was preparing to start my new teaching job at San Diego State University in the fall of 2007, I got a call from my father. It was an ordinary call at first, but then he got serious.

He wanted to know if I was planning to join my university’s faculty union. I knew the answer to that question right away: “Yes, Dad.”

After all, with me, our family would enter our third generation as trade unionists — while black.   [Read more…]

Immigration and Family Separation: 9 Facts vs. Fiction

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By Michelle Martin, PhD Cal State Fullerton / Reposted from Facebook

Have you heard that children were separated from their parents under Obama & Clinton? Then, you need a little Facts vs Myths lesson. Michelle Martin, PhD Cal State Fullerton summed up the most important FACTS:

There is so much misinformation out there about the Trump administration’s new “zero tolerance” policy that requires criminal prosecution, which then warrants the separating of parents and children at the border. Before responding to a post defending this policy, please do your research…As a professor at a local Cal State, I research and write about these issues, so here, I’ll make it easier for you:

Myth: This is not a new policy and was practiced under Obama and Clinton. – FALSE.

The policy to separate parents and children is new and was instituted on April 6, 2018. It was the brainchild of John Kelly and Stephen Miller to serve as a deterrent for undocumented immigration, approved by Trump, and adopted by Sessions. Prior administrations detained migrant families, but didn’t have a practice of forcibly separating parents from their children unless the adults were deemed unfit.   [Read more…]

Fear Mongering 101: MS-13 as the New ISIS

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Are you afraid yet? The Central American gang known as La Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, is everywhere in the news. They have officially replaced Al Qaeda and ISIS as the new poster children for why Americans need to live in fear.

Lately, I’ve seen what I thought were otherwise sane people mouthing government gibberish in social media about this group.

Don’t get me wrong. This gang and gangs, in general, are not nice people. They commit crimes to support their activities and are capable of extreme violence. But the narrative of MS-13 as a reason for more border security or immigrant roundups is severely lacking in substance.   [Read more…]

The ‘Fundamental Decency’ of Japanese Internment | More Video Worth Watching

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Putting a happy face on human misery. We’ve been here before. Remember how this turned out: litigation, legislation—the Civil Liberties Act of 1988—authorizing reparation payments to Japanese Americans who had been interned, eventually totaling nearly 1.6 billion, that began in 1990, with the last payment occurring in February 1999.   [Read more…]

Listen to Children Who’ve Just Been Separated From Their Parents at the Border | Video Worth Watching

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Yes, folks, this is still happening. Prepare to have your heart ripped out. ProPublica received an audio recording of children from inside a U.S. Customs and Border Protection facility. According to ProPubilca:

The person who made the recording asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation. That person gave the audio to Jennifer Harbury, a well-known civil rights attorney who has lived and worked for four decades in the Rio Grande Valley along the Texas border with Mexico. Harbury provided it to ProPublica. She said the person who recorded it was a client who “heard the children’s weeping and crying, and was devastated by it.”

The person estimated that the children on the recording are between 4 and 10 years old. It appeared that they had been at the detention center for less than 24 hours, so their distress at having been separated from their parents was still raw. Consulate officials tried to comfort them with snacks and toys. But the children were inconsolable.

The Washington Examiner notes that HHS reports holding around 11,500 children at the moment, but at the current rate of prosecutions and separations, that figure will climb to around 30,000 by August.   [Read more…]

‘We Have No Idea When Or If Mother And Child Will Be Reunited’ | One of the Detention Facilities is Here in El Cajon | More Video Worth Watching

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All In’s Chris Hayes speaks with Rep. Beta O’Rourke (D-TX) who visited several immigration facilities in McAllen, Texas this week and tells Chris Hayes what he saw.

Also, one of the detention facilities for the children is here in El Cajon. Chris Hayes speaks with MSNBC’s Gadi Schwartz reporting from outside the facility.
  [Read more…]

One Woman Who Knew Her Rights Forced Border Patrol Off a Greyhound Bus

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By Mitra Ebadolahi, Border Litigation Project Staff Attorney / ACLU of San Diego & Imperial Counties

On June 7, Tiana Smalls, whose Facebook profile describes her as owner of Fire Flower Beauty Company, was riding a Greyhound bus from Bakersfield, California to Las Vegas, Nevada. As the bus approached an agricultural checkpoint at the Nevada state line, Ms. Smalls said the driver made an unusual announcement: “We are being boarded by Border Patrol. Please be prepared to show your documentation upon request.” 

Ms. Smalls immediately reacted. According to a description she posted on Facebook, she stood up and loudly said, “This is a violation of your Fourth Amendment rights. You don’t have to show them *shit*!!!” She then used Google Translate to repeat her message in Spanish, reassuring the Spanish-speaking woman sitting beside her and probably countless other fellow passengers. 

Border Patrol agents boarded the bus and started to ask the passengers for their “documentation.” Ms. Smalls stood up again and shouted, “You have NO RIGHT to ask me for anything! This is harassment and racial profiling! We are not within 100 miles of a border so [these agents] have no legal right or jurisdiction here!”    [Read more…]

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