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I Am Kalief Browder

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By Branden Miles / OtherWords

The day before I started high school, my father took me up to the park around the corner from our house to have “the talk.”

It’s the talk black families had when Trayvon Martin was shot and killed in Florida. It’s the talk we had when Michael Brown was shot and killedin Missouri. It’s the talk we had when Tamir Rice was shot and killed in Ohio. And it’s the talk we had when Sandra Bland was found dead in a jail cell following a traffic stop in Texas.

If you’re a black teen, it’s a talk about how to survive.   [Read more…]

North of the Fence: Institutionalized Racism in San Ysidro …

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… South Bay Rapid Transit Breaks Ground, and the Bill of Rights Schooner Needs Help

On Wednesday, February 17th a groundbreaking ceremony marked the construction of the South Bay Rapid project, a $113 million, 21-mile bus route from the Otay Mesa Port of Entry to downtown San Diego. Mayor Mary Salas said it would connect eastern Chula Vista with downtown San Diego.

The biggest question yet unanswered: Will residents switch from their car to public transportation?   [Read more…]

On Moral Courage: By The Recipient Of The Award

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[Editor’s Note: Richard Lawrence received the Moral Courage Award during the Martin Luther King Jr. Breakfast at the Kroc Center in San Diego, CA on Janunary 18th, 2016. He delivered a keynote address, which was submitted to SDFP. The following is an edited version of his speech.]

By Rev. Richard Lawrence

During my undergraduate days at Albion College, located in a small town in Michigan, I spent the 1956 Thanksgiving holiday break with my college roommate in his home in the Detroit suburb of Royal Oak, Michigan. When we arrived, my roommate’s father came hurriedly down the stairs to greet us with the news that he was late because “he just had to finish a great book which proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that gorillas are superior to Negroes.”   [Read more…]

Looking Down the Road at San Diego

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It’s like a tale of two cities. The staff with the San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG) have put together competing proposals for spending priorities in advance of a ballot measure for countywide half-cent sales tax increase, raising $18 billion over the next 40 years.

Two constituencies are targeted with these proposals: city politicians and environmentally conscious citizens. Both plans include construction of a new trolley line running from South Bay to Carmel Valley, a skyway system of gondolas connecting the first tier of mesas (Balboa Ave to PB, Sorrento Valley to UCSD) to the coast, along with various clean air and water projects.

One proposal offers up 40% of revenues for cash-strapped localities to be spent on infrastructure, 30% on transit projects and operations and 10% on highways. spending priorities. The other proposal offers up 50% of revenues for transit, 17% for highways and zero for infrastructure.   [Read more…]

America Was Great at One Time?

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Making America great again
sure sounds like something worth doing.
But the word “again,”
implies that America must have been
great somewhere along the line –
and when I run the feasibility of that
through my long-active mind,
having not been deaf or blind
in my time,
a couple of questions come to mind,
on the fly.   [Read more…]

The Blind Spots of Dead White Men

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Black history must be remembered all year long.

By Jill Richardson /Other Words

As the rest of the nation celebrates Black History Month this February, I’m taking a graduate-level course I call “Dead White Men.”

It’s actually a classic theory class that covers a number of influential thinkers, like free market theorist Adam Smith and the famous French observer of American democracy, Alexis de Tocqueville.

It’s a good class. But the thinkers we’re studying are all dead white men.   [Read more…]

Excerpt From Sunshine/Noir II: At the Chargers Game

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By Mario Lewis

“In the mid- to early ’70s my sister and I went to a Chargers game with my father. We (are) actually Raiders fans. My father, is a nice—nice-size man with some nice-size arms and everything and we were enjoying ourselves at the game and at the end of the game these four white guys were following my father out of the game calling him the n-word. Calling US the n-word, I should say.

“I was a youngster. I was maybe about 10 or 11 years old, if that. And so my father had a van and so my father, I guess he knew that he was about to get into a confrontation with ’em because they followed us all the way to the car. My father told us—he said ‘Run and lock yourself in the van.’ Right. So me and my sister ran and we locked ourselves in the van.   [Read more…]

Dump Dumanis: A Quest for Justice in San Diego

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I don’t expect a massive crowd at the Hall of Justice in downtown San Diego on Friday afternoon, but symbolism will be large, non-the-less.

Activists motivated by the apparent injustice involved in the officer-involved shooting death of Fridoon Nehad, an unarmed Afghan refugee whose life was shattered following imprisonment by the Taliban, will stage an event calling for a sustained campaign to “Dump” County District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis.

This rally and press conference should be seen as the local manifestation of nationwide dissatisfaction with the criminal justice system. Organizers are calling for the DA to be indicted, saying Dumanis has “abused her power, withheld evidence, misled the media, persecuted innocents under the guise of a “gang injunction” and failed her public responsibilities related to the unjustified killing of Fridoon Nehad.”

[Don’t forget! Friday’s Starting Line includes the Weekly Progressive Calendar]   [Read more…]

Trans Pacific Partnership Signing Brings on International Protests

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Representatives of the United States and eleven other Pacific Rim nations are gathered in Auckland, New Zealand this week for discussions and a largely symbolic signing ceremony of the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement. Activists around the world have been staging protests to drive home the point that reshaping international trade cannot be limited to protecting the interests of transnational corporations and their investors.

Events in San Diego, Los Angeles and other cities will echo the Capitol Hill appearance of AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka and Democratic Rep. Rosa DeLauro, joining with MoveOn.org to deliver 1 million petitions calling on Congress to reject the agreement. Protests at the signing ceremony in New Zealand are expect to be muted, given the efforts by local police to visit “known activists” in recent weeks.

The deal still has to be ratified by at least six of its member nations, a process that can take up to two years and must include Japan and the United States. In the US, ratification has been (unofficially) put off until after the November elections meaning it will be voted on by a lame-duck congress. Under the terms of the TPA Fast-track legislation, a yes or no vote with no amendments allowed must take place within 90 days of its introduction in the congress.   [Read more…]

Why We Need Black History Month More Than Ever

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By Denise Oliver Velez / Daily Kos

I will never forget my fifth-grade schoolteacher in Brooklyn, New York, giving me an “F” on a report because I stated that Egypt was in Africa. Thankfully my parents went up to the school and visited the principal, and my grade was changed. However, my trust in teachers (other than my parents) was eroded. I’m grateful that they taught me black history at home, because it was not part of the grade school curricula.

As we move into the month of February, which is Black (or African-American) History Month, once again there is a spate of news articles and blog posts about “why we don’t need it anymore,” including idiotic statements from a certain black actress trolling for publicity.

Ninety years have passed since the inception of “Negro History Week.”   [Read more…]

How Hollywood Treats People of Color

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7 Toxic Assaults on Communities of Color Besides Flint: The Dirty Racial Politics of Pollution

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The lead poisoning of children in Flint is only the latest example of environmental racism in the U.S.

By David J. Krajicek / AlterNet

Don’t try to tell Dr. Robert D. Bullard that the noxious water disaster in Flint, Mich., is anything but business as usual in the United States.

“My first take was that this is déjà vu all over again,” Bullard says. “When will this madness stop?”

For 30 years, Bullard, dean of the school of public affairs at Texas Southern University in Houston, has been writing books and journal articles about environmental racism, the fact that sewage treatment plants, municipal landfills and illegal dumps, garbage transfer stations, incinerators, smelters and other hazardous waste sites inevitably are sited in the backyard of the poor.   [Read more…]

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