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A Performance for Social Justice: The Life and Times of Patricia Prewitt

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COUNT TIME! — A Theater Production

Yuko Kurahashi

Since 1986 Patty has been incarcerated with no hope of parole until 2036. She is currently locked away in the Women’s Eastern Reception Diagnostic Correctional Center (WERDCC) in Vandalia, Missouri. Drawing upon her interviews with Patty, her daughter, lawyers, friends, a sister inmate, as well as portraying the prosecutor in his own words from his book: Practice To Deceive, Townsend crafted and has performed the piece to raise public awareness of the injustice Patty and her family continue to endure. The piece also addresses how other incarcerated individuals suffer injustice under our punitive criminal justice system.

Townsend met Patty Prewitt through the late Daniel H. Kohl, who served for many years on the board of directors of St. Louis’s Prison Performing Arts organization. In 2013, Kohl approached Townsend at a fundraiser for the Actor’s Theatre of St. Louis.   [Read more…]

How Do We Stop Trump and Win Gains in Justice and Equality?

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From defense to offense in an age that demands deep strategy and mass mobilization

By David Solnit, George Lakey / Common Dreams

As mass demonstrations against President Donald Trump’s Muslim ban rocked airports across the United States last weekend and after a week of mass demonstrations against Trump’s memo pushing for the Dakota Access and Keystone Pipelines, I asked George Lakey, an author and organizer with six decades of experience in movement training and strategy thinking, to share his thoughts on these most recent developments, the overall threat posed by Trump, and the resistance that has grown up in opposition.

Last week, Lakey wrote A 10-point Plan to Stop Trump and Make Gains in Justice and Equality. The piece went wildly viral as people respond, “In short, there’s good reason to see the Trump era as an opportunity not only to stop him but to make major gains in justice and equality.” In this interview he goes deeper on how we can do this.   [Read more…]

Calexit: A Waste of Time and Energy

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At the Sunday night airport demonstration, I was approached by somebody who wanted me to sign a petition to get a proposed Calexit initiative on the 2018 ballot. I politely declined. I don’t sign initiative petitions without doing my homework.

So I did a little research.

California Secretary of State Alex Padilla cleared the petition last week. Backers of Calexit need to gather 585,407 valid signatures from registered voters over the next 180 days to qualify for the ballot.What they’re asking people to sign on involves a two-step process.   [Read more…]

Honor Our Promise: US Vets Ask Trump to Rescind Executive Order

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Center for American Progress Action Fund

Coming off the heels of President Donald Trump’s immigration executive order barring refugees and others from seven predominantly Muslim countries entry into the United States, more than 200 military veterans released a letter on Monday, denouncing the president’s order.

The letter is signed by many of the Truman National Security Project members and veterans and a growing list of other Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force, and Coast Guard veterans. Addressed to President Trump, the letter urges him to honor America’s promise and rescind the order.

In a press call hosted by the Center for American Progress Action Fund and the Truman National Security Project, military veterans, former diplomats, and refugee policy experts discussed President Trump’s immigration order and its impacts on refugees and interpreters who serve on the frontlines with American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.   [Read more…]

Trump’s Muslim Ban: The Whole World is Watching

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Nationwide Protests, Faith Leaders Disapprove, and World Leaders Shake Their Heads in Dismay

In smaller cities like Hattiesburg, Mississippi, Staunton, Virginia, Boise, Idaho and Anchorage, Alaska, along 80+ other cities coast-to-coast, there have been or will be demonstrations responding to an executive order that amounts to a ban on Muslims.

In San Diego, hundreds of people showed up at Lindbergh Field on Saturday, followed by thousands on Sunday.

President Trump’s executive order bans all immigrants and visa holders from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the US for 90 days, bans all refugee admissions for 120 days and bans Syrian refugees indefinitely. It was issued at 4:30 Friday afternoon, causing widespread confusion among federal agencies as to its scope.
  [Read more…]

Feckless Democrats and Business Unionists Fail Early Trump Era Tests

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Making Deals with the Devil

As inspiring as the big marches were last week, it didn’t take long for evidence to emerge that there are still plenty of folks in the Democratic party and elsewhere who just don’t get what time it is. As I wrote on Martin Luther King Jr. day, it was dismaying to see prominent Democrats like Senator Cory Booker and twelve of his Big Pharma funded friends vote against Bernie Sanders’ effort to reduce prescription drug prices before the inauguration.

And that low bar was then pushed a bit further down when ex-Democratic Vice Presidential candidate and consummate corporate tool, Joe Lieberman, gleefully presented Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos while slamming American public education at her confirmation hearing. At that same hearing, Lieberman also failed to disclose that his law firm represents Trump.   [Read more…]

Love Really Does Trump Hate

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I could have never imagined a president like the one we’ve got today. Is there anybody who is anybody on the planet as hateful as he is?

I saw him on TV the other day and he was spewing hate every whichaway, talking to the Homeland Security employees in his signature pose: his index finger and thumb forming a circle in the shade of three fingers that seem embarrassed to be on his hand, still basking in the glow of having made a sucker out of a country, a land, that has no idea as to who or what it is.

He spoke in “gloom and doom” tones of a country that’s breaking down at the seams, riddled with crime, overrun by “illegal immigrants” – but don’t worry he was going to take care of them and build a wall that will keep vermin like them where they belong and Mexico was going to pay for the wall after we paid for it first. Yeah, and it doesn’t snow in Minneapolis in the wintertime.   [Read more…]

Call To Order, January 20, 2017

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By Fran Finley

Call To Order January 20, 2017

Play dead
The farce begins
Orange is the new black now
Friday unfolds the new order
Night comes   [Read more…]

San Diegans Responding to Trump Muslim Ban With Airport Protests

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As of Noon Sunday, two thousand people have responded to a call on Facebook for a protest scheduled for Terminal 2 (International Arrivals) at Lindbergh Field starting at 5pm.

According to social media posts, the theme for the demonstration is #NoBan #NoWall.   [Read more…]

Voter Fraud Claims: Amping Up the Crazy With an Eye Towards 2018

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There is no greater threat to democracy in the United States than voter fraud. I am not, however, referring to the ballot box stuffing variety envisioned by the purveyors of online paranoia.

It’s the logic behind the claims on this subject being made by the President and his minions that counts. They all lead to the same conclusion: some people’s votes are more valuable than others.

Donald Trump admitted as much during an astonishing interview with ABC News by asserting that none of the claimed fraudulent voters cast ballots on his behalf. Nevermind that arrests in the 2016 elections involving actual presidential ballots involved people trying to cast votes for the GOP candidate.   [Read more…]

Campaign Against Labor Leader for Sexual Harassment Charges Heats Up – Protest to Call for Mickey Kasparian’s Resignation – Wed., Jan. 25th

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By Staff / The OB Rag

The campaign against San Diego labor leader Mickey Kasparian is heating up, as a protest calling for his resignation as head of the local labor council is being held today, Wednesday, Jan. 25th at 6pm outside a labor delegates meeting.

Three women have filed gender discrimination, sexual harassment and retaliation lawsuits against Kasparian, the president of UFCW Local 135, who also sits as the President of the Labor Council.

Sandy Naranjo filed a gender discrimination lawsuit after being unjustly fired. Retired co-worker Isabel Vasquez filed a sexual harassment claim alleging sexual misconduct. And current UFCW employee Anabel Arauz filed a retaliation/discrimination claim against the union, Kasparian and secretary-treasurer (and current San Diego Unified School Board President) Richard Barrera.

Supporters of the three women are holding the demonstration today. They will be holding signs in support of Sandy, Isabel & Anabel and will be calling on San Diego Labor Council Delegates to show public support for these women and to demand the resignation of Mickey Kasparian.   [Read more…]

Pipelines, Propaganda, and Even More Protests

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Indigenous Tribes, Environmentalists, and Scientists Feel Trump’s Wrath

The number one selling book on Amazon earlier this week was George Orwell’s ‘1984’ the classic story of a world of government surveillance, propaganda and “newspeak.” In the book, the “Ministry of Truth” actually delivers lies.

I suspect this uptick in sales (and the announcement of additional printing by Penguin Books) comes from the realization by Americans that lying is officially part of the new administration’s program.

Now it’s time to acknowledge ‘alternative facts’ are just one part of what’s going on. The tactics of this administration also include chaos, as proven by the rapid-fire attacks on institutions, humans, and the planet over the past couple of days.   [Read more…]

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