SamBee is back! Here’s her in-depth investigative report on a counter-terrorism effort directed at the homegrown domestic kind. On hand to help are Fred and Carrie from Portland(ia)!
Don’t be stupid. Be a smarty. Undermine the Nazi party! [Read more…]
By Hugh Handeyside & Esha Bhandari / American Civil Liberties Union
Warrantless searches of smartphones, laptops, and other electronic devices at the border are a major threat to privacy and civil liberties. Today, the ACLU, along with the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the ACLU of Massachusetts, filed a lawsuit challenging such searches as unconstitutional. The border should not serve as a dragnet for law enforcement to pry into our personal and professional lives.
We represent 10 U.S. citizens and one green card holder from a variety of backgrounds: a military veteran, journalists, students, an artist, an engineer, a limousine driver, and a business owner. All of them had their rights violated when border officials searched their smartphones or other electronic devices when they were returning from travel abroad. Officials also confiscated and held several of our clients’ devices for weeks or months.
None of our clients have been accused of any wrongdoing, nor have they been given any valid explanation for why this happened to them. [Read more…]
ESPN sportscaster Jemele Hill in a recent Tweet stated that “Donald Trump is a white supremacist who has largely surrounded himself w/ other white supremacists.” and “His rise is a direct result of white supremacy. Period.” White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, when asked to comment on the Tweet, said that “I think that’s one of the more outrageous comments that anyone could make and certainly something that I think is a fireable offense by ESPN.” All In’s Chris Hayes invites Brittney Cooper, Professor of Africana Studies, Rutgers University, and Jason Johnson, Professor of Political Science, Morgan State University, to discuss. [Read more…]
By Unknown
A common and seemingly reasonable argument for white pride or white nationalism is, “Why can’t I be proud of my culture?”
Well, you can. Always have been able to.
We have Irish pride celebrations, we have German drinking festivals, we have Serbian food festivals. Any European culture you can think of has multiple organizations in North America dedicated to taking pride in their heritage and no one gives them shit for it.
But, you see, when you start talking “white pride,” that’s not a culture. That’s a skin color. There is no white culture; never was. There is no pan-European culture, never was. Europe is a continent, not a culture or ethnicity.
Now, some of you are probably about to go, “But wait! Black pride! How is that okay?“ [Read more…]
On Sunday, I should have been watching football, but wasn’t. The Chargers leaving San Diego, the reports of brain damage to players, the banality of network coverage, and –above all–the racism has ruined what used to be one of my favorite pastimes.
Mid-afternoon on the first regular weekend day of play, I realized I just didn’t care anymore. I didn’t go to ESPN to check the scores. I didn’t watch any of the recaps on the evening news. And the few mentions I saw on social media had no impact.
My malaise concerning the NFL didn’t happen overnight. Back in the day, I worked at a sports bar in Washington DC. It didn’t matter who was playing, we were always packed on game days. Drinking was part of the fun. So was gambling–mostly through pools, though one of the bartenders was married to a bookie and I assumed he got some action.
Now things are different for me. The greed at the top is so blatant it’s no longer possible for a reasonably aware human to believe in ‘their’ team. [Read more…]
By DWeisman / Escondido Grapevine
Many congressional staffers are young, not attached to geography as they represent congressional offices far removed from their native lands. And many in the Republican brand play a game of office musical chairs where no chairs go unfilled although they swap around from time to time.
Take, for example, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-49th District) and Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-50th District).
Or rather consider the unusual case of Issa’s most notorious spokesman, Kurt Bardella, who has landed on his feet with frequent CNN appearances and something he calls Endeavor Strategies, described as “entertainers as well as politicians…relying on a new frontier of public relations and communications.” [Read more…]
Former County District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis has formally declared her intention to run for the Fourth District Supervisor seat. Finally.
This will be one of four San Diego County contests I will focus on throughout the coming year. Simply put, the County government is the biggest entity impacting the most lives in San Diego. And if you look closely, it’s apparent the decisions of the Board of Supervisors regularly favor interests whose fundamental values do not align with those of most of the people living in the region.
The 2018 election represents an opportunity to begin changing that reality. As is true with any big institution, change will not happen overnight. But you have to start somewhere. [Read more…]
By Kelly Macias / Daily Kos
Dolores Huerta sees Donald Trump and the Republicans for the racists they are—and she’s not keeping quiet about it. At 87 years old, she’s been engaging in social and racial justice work since the 1950s.
Huerta wants us to know that what they are doing to actively marginalize immigrants and people of color is an old trick that is about economics and racism. She also wants us to know that we can do something about it. [Read more…]
One San Diego electoral contest in 2018 has national implications and doesn’t involve petulant Republican Congressmen hoping to avoid the Trump taint at the ballot box– County District Attorney.
Even as California voters have repeatedly favored criminal justice reforms at the ballot box in recent years, the state’s bloc of DAs has obstructed, obfuscated, and delayed those reforms.
Elected and nearly always re-elected with financial support from the likes of bail bond companies, correctional employee and police unions–which have funded opposition to reforms–, the state’s 58 County District Attorneys remain the least scrutinized players in the criminal justice system. [Read more…]
Many white people who consider themselves decent, concerned citizens, no matter where they are on the political spectrum, look upon racism as a too-sensitive subject. It seems so, because it is super-charged by our history and because racial prejudice never seems to go away.
As white people, we never seem to reach a point where we can safely say we are not racist. Someone else always seems to remind us that no matter how much personal progress we’ve made in shedding our prejudice, we can never embrace people of color as our brothers and sisters, except in situations where we momentarily have summoned the virtue to love across the lines.
My husband, a physician, says that right down to the very particles of our atoms, human beings are always are engaged in a relentless process of self/non-self discrimination. Through evolutionary dictates over which we have no control at all, our bodies are constantly policed by microscopic agents always on the lookout to destroy that which is not “us.”
Can it be any surprise that our psyches might be constructed in similar ways? [Read more…]
Today marks the 46th anniversary of Women’s Equality Day, an event commemorating the ratification of the 19th amendment, prohibiting the states and the federal government from denying the right to vote to citizens of the United States on the basis of sex. A resolution to designate this day in honor of the adoption of that amendment, was introduced by New York Congresswoman Bella Abzug and was eventually passed as H.J. Res. 52 on August 16, 1973.
In that spirit, here’s a brief clip recording a spontaneous expression of gratitude to one of the early pioneers of the Woman Suffrage movement, Susan B. Anthony. Last Election Day (Nov. 8, 2016) by 10:30 a.m., easily 1,000 people, a large majority of them women and girls, made the pilgrimage to her grave at this 196-acre Victorian cemetery. Hundreds more stood patiently in line, enduring an hour’s wait for the chance to approach Anthony’s stone. [Read more…]
By Edward Sifuentes / ACLU San Diego
A coalition of community-based organizations gathered on Wednesday in front of City Hall to express their disappointment in Mayor Faulconer’s flawed plan to select our next chief of police. Specifically, the group called on the mayor to do away with a proposal for a secret selection panel and asked for additional community forums in Districts 8 and 9.
In attendance were representatives of Alliance San Diego, Earl B. Gilliam Bar Association, San Diego La Raza Lawyers Association, San Diego Organizing Project, Mid-City CAN, Center on Policy Initiatives, The San Diego LGBT Community Center, and Community Assistance Support Team, and the ACLU of San Diego and Imperial Counties.
Members of the coalition said the selection process outlined by the mayor on Tuesday, which includes a secret selection panel and only four community meetings, fell far short of the mark. San Diegans deserve a public process, not closed-door interviews with a panel whose composition will not be revealed until after they decide who will be San Diego’s next chief of police.
[Read more…]
