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Resistance Efforts Turn Towards City Council Over Trump Travel Ban

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On Tuesday, February 14, the San Diego City Council will vote on whether to join the Washington State lawsuit challenging the Trump Travel Ban. Local activists are being asked to support this effort by contacting City Council members and attending a hearing on the matter.

Although a unanimous ruling by a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a temporary restraining order preventing enforcement of a ban on travel from some Muslim-majority nations, the suit challenging the executive order continues to move forward.

One year ago the very idea of San Diego joining this lawsuit would not have been considered. The election of Mara Elliott as City Attorney has changed the political landscape.   [Read more…]

Hiking as Resistance

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Over the last few weeks I’ve had the pleasure of speaking at a variety of forums along with folks from other activist groups about what needs to be done in the age of Trump. During one of these events at Grossmont College, I was struck by something a colleague of mine who leads nature expeditions for the Sierra Club said about his students and their relationship or lack thereof to the natural world.

Ten years ago, he observed, about half of the students he dealt with had had some experience hiking in the backcountry, roaming the desert, or visiting a state or national park, but that number has been consistently shrinking over the last decade or so.

He told a few stories of students on their first venture into the wild being afraid of getting attacked by mountain lions. Initially many of them are not sure what to do or how to act outside of the city. The experience, he explained, is uncomfortable for them at first, but, after some reassurance and education, they open their eyes to the wonder of the world.   [Read more…]

Privilege and the Wall

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By Ben Allen

Privilege and the Wall

After a long day at school, after dropping the ball on a Chicano Lit essay,
I watched the Frampton-Santa Cruz weigh in, watched those tiny men threateningly flex their muscles,
and I decided to go for a run.
I ran down Utah, past the boxing gym that was under construction and being repainted from white
to something less gaudy, and I watched the fighters skipping rope through the window in the wall,
before I continued on my end of day run, my privilege.
  [Read more…]

In This Post-Filner Era, the Democratic Party and the Labor Council Need to Do Better

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An open letter to Jessica Hayes, (Chair, San Diego Democratic Party) and Dale Kelly Bankhead (Secretary-Treasurer for the San Diego-Imperial Counties Labor Council), from Sara Kent.

Over the past two months, I have hoped for brave action from each of you. As women who hold positions of power in San Diego who should be stalwarts of fundamental Democratic ideals, instead of being proud of your leadership, I am gravely disappointed.

Not only for you, but for all of us.   [Read more…]

Public Transit as a Social Justice Issue

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By Joseph Wagner / San Diego UrbDeZine

One crucial aspect of contemporary debates on spatial politics, socioeconomic stratification, and immigration is the issue of public transit.

Prior to the question of a person’s right to be in a city (or supposed lack thereof in the case of undocumented immigrants), there is the question of a city’s duty to provide feasible means for moving around in its space. Albeit mundane, it is a key factor determining a person’s economic and educational opportunities, to name only two.

And it hardly bears mentioning, but moving around in San Diego all but requires a car.   [Read more…]

Progressives Lost The Vote On DeVos But Won Something Else

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By Jeff Bryant / Education Opportunity Network

Betsy DeVos may have won her contest in the Senate to become the new U.S. Secretary of Education, but her opposition wasn’t the only thing that went down to defeat that day.

For decades, federal education policies have been governed by a “Washington Consensus” that public schools are effectively broken, especially in low-income communities of color, and the only way to fix them is to apply a dose of tough love and a business philosophy of competition from charter schools and performance measurements based on standardized tests.

Since the 1990s, this consensus among Democrats and Republicans has enforced all kinds of unproven “reform” mandates on schools, and by 2012, as veteran education reporter Jay Mathews of The Washington Post noted that year, the two parties were “happily copying each other” on education.   [Read more…]

Top 10 Companies to Boycott Because of Trump Products or Money

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There is a nation-wide group that is organizing a boycott of companies that carry Trump products, or are owned by Trump or have other relationships with him. It’s call #GrabYourWallet and they believe economic push-back by American citizens and others is a very valid form of protest.

Their campaign has already been going on for nearly 4 months now and it has achieved some successes. Here is how they describe themselves and their history:

The #GrabYourWallet movement tracks & boycotts retailers that sell Trump family products as well as corporate leaders who enabled the political rise of the Trump family through fundraising and/or endorsements.

  [Read more…]

How Black Women Helped Shape History And Today’s Democratic Party

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By Denise Oliver Velez / Daily Kos

If you are not aware that in recent decades black women have been the most reliable and solid voting bloc for Democrats, you should be. We proved it, once again, in the recent presidential election. That stance and practice has a history, rooted in the time when many black Americans had been Republicans and the Democratic Party was the home of racist, anti-black Dixiecrats who took extraordinary measures to restrict black voting rights.

Of course the political party that currently represents and practices racism with a capital ‘R’ calls itself ‘Republican’—and is now occupying the White House. The popular vote loser and liar-in-chief (aka Birther Trump) has placed slimy white supremacist Steve Bannon in a key position to aid, abet and undermine the Constitution. The R’s in the House and Senate are doing nothing to stop the turning back of the clock to pre-civil rights days, and are participating in the deconstruction of our rights while embracing an openly racist, sexist, xenophobic agenda—which they advanced for the eight years they blocked President Obama.

This is our first Black History Month under the new, illegitimate regime, and since voting rights are on the table and more voter suppression and gerrymandering loom large in the near future, I’d like to honor some of the women of our recent past who we should adopt as shining examples to emulate and inspire us as we fight for our future.   [Read more…]

‘Nevertheless, She Persisted.’ One Heck of a Resist Trump Tuesday

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Indivisible Gets Visible at Local Congressional Offices, National City Hearing

Mitch McConnell and his Republican friends in the United States Senate handed the resistance movement a gift on Tuesday night when they invoke an obscure rule to silence Sen. Elizabeth Warren as she read from a letter by Coretta Scott King concerning the record of Attorney General nominee Jeff Sessions.

The letter was addressed to then-Sen. Strom Thurmond in 1986. In it, King objected to Sessions nomination to be a federal judge due to his use of “the power of his office as United States Attorney to intimidate and chill the free exercise of the ballot by citizens.” King continued, “Mr. Sessions has used the awesome powers of this office in a shabby attempt to intimidate and frighten elderly black voters.”   [Read more…]

Trump Goes For The Nuclear Option: Getting Rid of the Filibuster

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Not the Kind That Bombed Hiroshima

In Washington there’s such a thing known as the nuclear option which means changing the rules of the Senate to get rid of the filibuster. The Democrats shied away from this during the Obama administration even though Republicans effectively killed or watered down most of Obama’s initiatives by means of the filibuster. The Democrats could have changed the rules, but they were too nice, too traditional. Republicans just go for raw power. So now we’re at the pass where Trump says “If we end up with that gridlock, I would say, ‘If you can, Mitch, go nuclear.’” He’s talking to Mitch McConnell, the Senate leader.
  [Read more…]

It’s Time to Clean House at SANDAG

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Andy Keatts story at Voice of San Diego about SANDAG (San Diego’s Regional Planning Agency) prompted one of those “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore” moments for me yesterday.

He’s obtained emails showing the agency’s executive director and other high-ranking officials deliberately misled the public regarding economic forecasts with significant errors overstating sales tax revenues expected for transportation projects included as part of Measure A.   [Read more…]

Alt-President Bannon Presides and Other Tales of Trump

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Today we’ll look at some recent developments as the divisions of power within the White House are coming into focus.

So-called President Donald Trump is there for the fame and fortune. Vice President Pence and his buddy Reince Priebus are there to oversee the dismantling of the new deal social contract. And ‘Economic Nationalist’ Steve Bannon is overseeing the reshuffling of the world order while tweaking domestic social policies.

The rise of a nationwide resistance continues. While Senate Democrats won’t actually achieve the historically rare feat of denying cabinet confirmations, the drip, drip, drip of damning information combined with an increasingly aware and active electorate will continue to challenge the administration’s priorities.   [Read more…]

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