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Sex, Power, and Politics in San Diego – Trying to Blow the Whistle on Bob Filner

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Editors Note: Former Assemblywoman Lori Saldaña has an up close and personal story to tell about her dealings with former Mayor Bob Filner and the Democratic party establishment. This is part two of a five part series running this week at San Diego Free Press. Part one covers her early encounters with Filner.

PART TWO: Party Politics

By Lori Saldaña

I first contacted Durfee in August 2011. I recounted the Filner actions and allegations, and urged him to meet with Filner to determine if these were accurate accounts, and, if so, to take action to ensure the behavior would stop.

I reported Bob Filner’s bad behavior to the San Diego County Democratic Party Chairman for pretty simple reasons: I believe women deserve to be treated with respect. I also feared he would ultimately be “outed” with disastrous impacts on others.

I also expressed concern over what this would mean for Democrats and the Mayor’s campaign if these stories became public.   [Read more…]

Sex, Power, and Politics in San Diego – Run Up to the 2012 Election

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Editors Note: Former Assemblywoman Lori Saldaña has an up close and personal story to tell about her dealings with former Mayor Bob Filner and the Democratic party establishment. This is part one of a five part series running this week at San Diego Free Press. 

PART ONE:  Filner Clears the Field

By Lori Saldaña

In December 2010  I termed out of the California Assembly after serving 6 years; 3 terms were then the maximum allowed. In the summer of 2011 I prepared to teach a class in the Women’s Studies Department at San Diego State University on “Sex, Power and Politics,” and, as redistricting was concluded, decided to run  for Congress in the 52nd district in California. As I began preparing to teach and run for Congress, I  began hearing stories from women who told me they had been harassed by then-US Representative Bob Filner, who appeared to be the only Democratic candidate for Mayor of San Diego.

Filner did a good job of clearing the field.  He received support and promises of help from people who coveted his open seat, and saw in his retirement the opportunity for a “domino effect” to lead to additional openings and special elections in the California Senate and Assembly.   [Read more…]

It’s Equal Pay Day! Republican Incoherence, Executive Orders and How to Get a Raise

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By Anna Daniels

Republicans have been having a hard time stringing words together when it comes to explaining why they don’t support pay equity for women. It’s a straightforward concept–equal pay for equal work. Yet it takes women until April 8 to catch up with men’s earnings from the previous year. The median earnings for a woman working a full time job is about 77% of a man’s. That figure drops for women of color and it hasn’t budged in more than a decade.

President Obama’s first action upon assuming office in 2009 was to sign the Lily Ledbetter Fair Wage Act. This act restored protection against wage discrimination that was stripped away by the Supreme Court’s decision in Ledbetter v Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. The act extended the period of time for employees to file claims for wages lost because of discrimination. Yet wage discrimination on the basis of gender continues to exist.   [Read more…]

Prune Nourry: French Artist’s Terracotta Daughters Are on the Move

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By Mic Porte

I love Paris, the city where people will stand attentively in line for hours to view an art exposition. Galleries, book stores and theaters are always packed. In France, food is art, clothing is art, life is art, and art is in their hearts from the beginning of recorded time– think of the beautiful Lascaux prehistoric cave paintings.

French children are taught art appreciation from day one and it reflects in the architecture and design and lifestyle all around the country. Visual art. The French invented photography and cinema to further the reach of art for the modern world. They are not afraid to expand the boundaries of acceptability, always challenging our perspective of the world, from Impressionism to Dadaism.

The 2014 Spring Equinox heralds the arrival of one of their own, Prune Nourry, young woman sculptress and multimedia artist, and her astonishing and powerful army of Terracotta Daughters, come to Paris to change the world. There is one word to describe this art show: Awesome.   [Read more…]

And Why Shouldn’t the Government Force Corporations to Cover Abortion?

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By David Atkins / Hullabaloo

Justice Anthony Kennedy, on whose vote the Hobby Lobby SCOTUS case rests, seems very concerned about the government forcing corporations to cover abortion:

WASHINGTON, DC — Justice Anthony Kennedy thinks gay people are fabulous. All three of the Supreme Court’s most important gay rights decisions were written by Justice Kennedy. So advocates for birth control had a simple task today: convince Kennedy that allowing religious employers to exempt themselves from a federal law expanding birth control access would lead to all kinds of horrible consequences in future cases — including potentially allowing religious business owners to discriminate against gay people.

Kennedy, however, also hates abortion.   [Read more…]

Across America, Attacks on Pregnant Women’s Rights On the Rise

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Marlise Muñoz was removed from life support, but a growing pattern of state intervention in pregnancies threatens women from Alabama to Wisconsin.

By Michele Bratcher Goodwin / Alternet

In Texas, hospital officials refused for over two months to remove 33-year-old Marlise Muñoz, who was declared brain dead, from life support because of her pregnancy. A court ruling on Friday ordered John Peter Smith Hospital to take Munoz off life support in accordance with the family’s wishes, and her body was disconnected from machines on Sunday, Jan. 26.

The tragedy of Muñoz’s case is that it fits a terrible pattern of state interventions in women’s pregnancies.   [Read more…]

Reclaiming the Radical Spirit of Women’s History Month

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By Nadine Bloch / Waging NonViolence

If you missed celebrating International Women’s Day on March 8, don’t worry — there’s most of “Women’s History” month left to make amends. If you did celebrate it, there’s a good chance you participated in something quite unlike the original radical intentions for the day. Since 1975, when the United Nations established March 8 as the official date for International Women’s Day, it has been co-opted by corporate and state sponsorship of feel-good events — celebrating women’s achievements and inspiring actions — that cater to the political mainstream. That is, of course, only part of the story. It wasn’t always all about fun — and certainly it did not start that way.

The first International Women’s Day was celebrated in 1911 by socialists and labor activists to call for organizing rights for working women. It was followed quickly with other demands, including suffrage. Locking up so many women to slave away as garment workers in horrendous conditions in the early 20th century not only catalyzed the young women and girls into activists, but also led to organized resistance with fellow workers with whom they spent so much time. With no sick days, 16-hour shifts, a grueling pace, crowded and dirty floors, dangerous machinery, and hardly any time off, there were plenty of reasons to get mad and organize on the job!   [Read more…]

More Emphatically Pro-Choice With Every Pregnancy

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By Molly Westerman / First the Egg

Safe, legal, affordable abortion access is something I’ve felt strongly about since I was a child. I don’t remember quite what brought twelve-year-old, southern, Catholic me to feel that way: it was not exactly taught at my school! But it felt big in my heart, a revulsion at the idea of forced pregnancy and at the rhetoric of the “pro-life” movement around me.

Many years later, I have had two babies. I have held my breath hoping not to miscarry two very-much-wanted pregnancies, hoping to have healthy little humans join our family, and I have been so lucky to avoid unwanted pregnancies and to have unambiguously healthy planned ones. I have felt two beloved fetuses moving inside my body.

It’s interesting to me to hear how individuals’ gut feelings and beliefs about reproductive justice–and specifically about abortion and fetuses–are affected by personal experiences of pregnancy. People seem to expect for folks who’ve birthed babies to question whether terminating a pregnancy is acceptable, at least at an emotional level, as a reaction to All the Love and All the Cute (of which, certainly, there is a great deal).   [Read more…]

Bringing an End to State Sanctioned Sexual Assault, Rape Culture and Law Enforcement Impunity

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By Cathy Mendonça  / United Against Police Terror

The San Diego police department’s scandal involving officers accused of preying on women who they came in contact with while in uniform and on duty needs to be addressed.

First, former officer Anthony Arevalos is serving an eight year sentence for molesting female drivers during traffic stops in the Gaslamp quarter from 2009 to 2011. As a result, Chief William Lansdowne implemented changes within the department to help uncover the potential for other rogue officers to go unnoticed.

Then, on Feb. 9, Officer Christopher Hays was booked on criminal charges in connection with inappropriate pat downs that prosecutors allege were done for his sexual gratification.   [Read more…]

Femanifesto: Confessions of a Sexist Feminist

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By Lauree Benton

Women annoy me. There, I said it.

To be fair, a lot of men annoy me too. But it’s women who tend to really get under my skin.

I’ve always been somewhat of a tomboy. Not that I don’t wear dresses, or do my hair. (I grew into those things in college.) I just don’t enjoy a lot of feminine past times, like “girls nights.” I don’t understand feminine beauty standards. Make up? Are you serious? And I despise when my emotions run the show. Logic all the way. I’m aggressive. I’m competitive. And I do not do pink.

All of my close girlfriends and women like me. Women who think other women are insane. Women who reject classic feminine traits and apologize profusely when our inner “woman” comes out.   [Read more…]

For California Women Who Dream of Political Leadership and Power: Some Rules of the Road

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By Rebecca Sive

As we begin Women’s History Month, and celebrate International Women’s Day (Saturday, March 8th), I’ve been reflecting on the lessons today’s women office-holders, and those who aspire to political office, can learn from those who’ve already traveled this path.

But, first, a bit of context: this ruminating comes on the eve of my visit to San Diego as the special guest of close the gap CA’s Stop the Slide tour. This slide would be the slide (downwards) in the number of women in the California legislature: while there were a record 37 serving in the legislature in 2006, there are only 32 in 2014. (Sadly, California now ranks 19th in the nation for the number of women serving in its state legislature, down from sixth in 2003, according to Rutgers’ Center for American Women and Politics. That’s 26% of the legislature versus 31%.)

The Stop the Slide tour, whose purpose is to raise awareness of this problem and recruit women to work to solve it — by becoming candidates themselves — begins in San Diego Sunday, when we will gather at the Women’s Museum of California, at an event hosted by Run Women Run, a nonpartisan group that recruits and trains women candidates for office in the San Diego area.   [Read more…]

Femanifesto: There is No Right Way to be a Woman

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By Lauree Benton

If you dress too conservatively, you are a prude. But if you try to dress for your body, you are a slut. And there’s a good chance, either way you will be molested or raped.

If you are a stay at home mom, you are lazy. If you are a career woman with no kids, you are selfish. If you have both a career and a family, you are short changing everyone involved.

If you breast feed, you are disgusting! Keep those things to yourself. Never mind that your child needs to eat. But if you don’t, you are filling your child with poison. Why would you use formula? You must be a horrible mother. Everyone knows “breast is best.”   [Read more…]

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