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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.
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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.
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‘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…]

The Good, the Bad, and the Stupid: State Ballot Propositions You’ll Vote on in November 2018

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One hundred seventeen years ago, direct democracy came to California with the adoption of the initiative, referendum and recall processes by way of a special election called by a newly empowered progressive wing of the Republican Party (yes, there was such a thing back then).

The push for direct democracy was a reaction to the excesses of the gilded age when millionaires and their corporate entities became powerful politically. In California, the entire state government was under the control of the Southern Pacific Railroad. Bribery was the accepted method of doing business in the state capitol.

The state’s political establishment and its wealthy backers spent a decade trying to undo the process but eventually threw in the towel, opting for gaming the new system. Although California voters have generally been cautious at the ballot box when it comes to exercising their power (only about one-third of ballot propositions have passed), there have been some embarrassing exceptions and unintended consequences over the years.   [Read more…]

Why Doesn’t POTUS Own A Dog?

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You’d think Trump would have one of the very best, most excellent dogs in the world, maybe one of those Afghans with hair like his own. Because dogs, unlike FBI directors, are known to be among the most loyal and subservient of animals.

Or … that he’d be attracted to pitbulls because everyone is afraid of them.

It remains a mystery, though, because POTUS doesn’t allow cameras in his living quarters, where all the cosmetic stuff is, along with the jacuzzi and his collection of golf balls from The Rich and Famous. Not even Breitbart News and FOX have stories on the subject of a missing White House dog.

So, we can’t even know why he doesn’t have a dog.   [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.

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What to the Working Class is the Fourth of July?

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On this day when we celebrate the Declaration of Independence, it’s important to remember Jefferson himself believed that each new generation needed to make the American creed their own. And everyone from slaves to women to working people did just that as we see in Frederick Douglass’s great speech “What to the Slave is the 4th of July?”, the early feminist manifesto “Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions, Seneca Falls,” and the much lesser known “Working Men’s Declaration of Independence.”

This last is centrally important to remember because while Americans are largely aware that the battle for inclusion involved long and heroic abolition, civil rights, and women’s movements, struggles around issues of class have all-too-frequently been relinquished to the dustbin of history. Such is the case with the early Working Men’s Party that was railing about what Bernie Sanders calls “the billionaire class” well before the time when many historians mark the beginning rustlings of the American labor movement.

Indeed, what the early Working Men’s Party history shows is class rebellion is as American as apple pie and was seen as a fulfillment of the Jeffersonian project. How so?   [Read more…]

What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?

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“Had I the ability, and could I reach the nation’s ear, I would today pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.” –Frederick Douglass

Editors Note: Back in the days before tweets and excerpts long-form oratory was considered a high art form. And the occasion of Independence Day was considered the ultimate forum for such speeches. In 1852 –on the day after all the patriotic celebrations–  fugitive slave Frederick Douglass delivered the following speech to the Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society in Rochester, N.Y. It’s ten thousand words long, a massive tome by today’s standards. I hope you’ll consider taking a few minutes out from your holiday to read what historian Andrew S. Bibby calls a  “tribute to national independence, to political freedom, and to the coming into being of a nation.” 
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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…]

A Challenge to Lorie Zapf’s Eligibility, Razor Thin Leads, Leave San Diego Primary Results Uncertain

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Tabulating the ballots from the June 5 primary may be just about finished in San Diego, but the results aren’t clear. Two contests are within single-digit margins, a recount is possible in one, and a court case could muddy the waters in another.

City Council District 2 candidate Bryan Pease has announced plans to challenge incumbent Lorie Zapf’s eligibility to run for a third term.

Pease was the third-place finisher in the June 5 primary. A court ruling affirming his contention would allow him to advance to the November general election.   [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…]

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