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Can Myrtle Cole Convince Voters She Really Cares? | San Diego City Council District 4 Snapshot

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In San Diego’s City Council District 4 race, it’s deja vu all over again.

I went digging through ye olde SD Free Press archives and found articles I’d written about a special election held in 2013. You’d be surprised how little has changed.  

The current drama traces its roots back to when rising political star Tony Young (2005-2013) resigned from the D4 Council position (he was also council president at the time) to become CEO of the San Diego-Imperial Counties chapter of the American Red Cross. His tenure lasted 14 months, and the reasons for his departure remain murky.   [Read more…]

It’s Time to Clean House: San Diego’s Rotten to the Core (and Racist) Elected County Officials

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As I’ve said for many months now, there are no more important election contests on June 5 than the various County of San Diego positions. The news over the past couple of days, starting with the Board of Supervisors’ pandering to nativists, to scandal after scandal with the Sheriff’s office and bs going on all the way down to the Assessor’s office proves my point.

The County Board of Supervisor met in closed session yesterday and voted 3-1 (Cox voted against, Roberts was absent) to submit an amicus brief in support of the Trump administration’s lawsuit challenging California’s legislation on deportations.

Considering that the deadline for submitting such a brief passed on April 6, you could easily say this was just some posturing. Someday–if the lawsuit gets appealed–the document might be useful, except that courts generally ignore these filings.   [Read more…]

‘Community Hero’ Attorney Steve Binder and San Diego’s Homeless Court Program

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Attorney Steve Binder recalls being in kindergarten in Flint, Michigan, and he and other children were sometimes asked what they would like to be when they grew up.  “We all replied doctor or lawyer or teacher. None of us responded ‘I want to be homeless and be a substance abuser.'”

And yet homeless populations are in every major city — and many are veterans.  In San Diego alone, the latest count for homelessness is over 9,000, 30 percent of whom are veterans.

Binder, a retiring deputy public defender, has just been named a Community Hero for his creation of a Homeless Court Program in 1989. The honor is given by KPBS and the National Conflict Resolution Center.   [Read more…]

ACLU Criticizes Board of Supervisors’ Decision to Support the Trump Lawsuit Against California

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Edward Sifuentes / American Civil Liberties Union of San Diego & Imperial Counties

On Tuesday, April 17, a majority of the San Diego County Board of Supervisors decided to support the Trump administration’s lawsuit against the State of California. The lawsuit, filed by the Department of Justice, targets three California statutes, including the California Values Act that serves to keep state and local law enforcement agencies out of the business of mass detentions and mass deportations.

Supervisors Gaspar, Horn and Jacob voted to file an amicus brief in support of the lawsuit at the “first available opportunity” (most likely on appeal). Supervisor Cox voted against the proposal. Supervisor Roberts was absent from today’s meeting, but issued a statement last week urging his colleagues to “stay out of this issue.”

The following is the ACLU of San Diego & Imperial Counties’ response to today’s action:   [Read more…]

The Art of Change: Feminism // A Prickly Subject | Video Worth Watching

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As summer approaches, this seems an apt time to consider the dilemma presented by Helen Plumb in one of The Barbican Centre’s series The Art of Change: Feminism // A Prickly Subject. Helen reflects on the question of whether or not, as a woman, to let one’s body hair grow and provides a visual accompaniment to her exploration.   [Read more…]

Will District 2 Voters Give Republican Lorie Zapf a Third Term? San Diego City Council District 2 Snapshot

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The San Diego City Council is moving to close a term limits loophole allowing incumbent District 2 Councilwoman Lorie Zapf to run for a third term in the upcoming elections.  Current law allows sitting council representatives to reset the clock on term limits when their districts shift due to redistricting.

The Council’s Rules Committee voted lasted week to have the City Attorney draw up a charter amendment closing the loophole for consideration by voters in the November elections. If approved, it would take effect in 2020.

Councilwoman Lorie Zapf would not be eligible for a third consecutive four-year council term if the proposed change was already in place. It’s been more than 25 years since an incumbent councilperson has lost an election in San Diego.   [Read more…]

Vengeful Alabama to Kill 83-Year-Old Man

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Barring intervention by courts or its governor, Alabama will kill an 83-year-old man on April 19; long-incarcerated for the 1989 mail-bomb killings of United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit Judge Robert S. Vance and civil rights attorney Robert E. Robinson, Walter Moody, Jr.’s wizened, withered body, will, three decades after his crimes, be strapped to a gurney, pricked with a sharp needle (possibly many, many times), and pumped full of chemicals until he is dead.

Why? Other than the reactionary, regressive idea of “retribution” – whose flawed moral underpinning is interchangeable with bloodthirsty, wild, wild West revenge – how will justice be served? And, for whom?   [Read more…]

Elizabeth Acevedo – ‘Beloved or If You Are Murdered Tomorrow’ – All Def Poetry | Video Worth Watching

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From the Huffington Post’s Latino Voices:

Acevedo told The Huffington Post that the poem is inspired by the thoughts that run through her head when she hears that yet another black man has been shot and killed by police. “I was cooking black beans the day when the Jordan Davis case went to trial, and I was distracted, thoughtless in some ways, and the pot boiled over and the beans burned,” Acevedo said. “Something about that image really struck home. How the stove smudged, how the beans look when they’re split open, how heavy my heart was over this kid in Florida. But the history of Moros y Cristianos (Moors and Christians) also played into the moment. This is a Caribbean dish of simple ingredients, rice and beans elevating the other. It’s also A dish named after the Moor conquest of Spain. The racial dynamics in all of that: the Caribbean, Spain and North Africa, Jordan Davis, coalesced through that metaphor. It was how I was able to enter the poem by exploring that moment and my stake in it as an Afro-Latina and partner of a black man.”

  [Read more…]

Langston Hughes -‘I, Too, Sing America’ | Video Worth Watching

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Langston Hughes reading his poem “I, too, sing America”. As testament to its enduring impact consider that according to the Poetry Archive, it was written in 1924 and recorded by Folkways in 1955, and that Wikipedia notes: “On September 22, 2016, his poem “I, Too” was printed on a full page of the New York Times in response to the riots of the previous day in Charlotte, North Carolina.”   [Read more…]

San Diego’s Solution to Trump Starts in Less Than 30 Days

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Donald Trump’s name won’t be on the June 5 ballots in California. But you can still vote against him in a meaningful way.

Mail-in ballots for our primary elections will be arriving less than one month, starting on May 7th. In speaking with activists who have been canvassing neighborhood around San Diego, I’ve heard that a majority of people don’t even know there’s an election on the horizon.

It’s everybody’s responsibility to change this situation.   [Read more…]

National City’s Fetid Mess at City Hall Revealed as June 2018 Elections Near

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National City’s ballot measures for the June 5 election have become a battleground for competing groups in the labor movement, as a splinter labor group led by UFCW President Mickey Kasparian injected $50,000 into the contest in support of a measure extending the tenure of Mayor Ron Morrison.  

There is a gendered subtext to this development, as it can easily be argued this support comes from an organization led by a man with a controversial background and will be used to deny political power to progressive women.  

The monies will be used in support of Measure B, which sets term limits for City council members but creates a loophole resetting the incumbent Mayor’s tenure, allowing him to continue past a voter-approved limit set in 2004. Kasparian’s union put up $25,000, for the effort as an Independent Expenditure PAC, and an equal amount came from Laborers International Local 89.   [Read more…]

The Third Conning | National Poetry Month

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Turning and turning over malls and freeways
The drones outrace their wireless signals;
Houses fall apart; grocery carts are filled with gear;
Mere starvation is loosed on half the world,
While others eat designer foods and
Protest they’re entitled to deny the real.   [Read more…]

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