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Friendship Park in 2015

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Making new meanings and memories through friendship

By Jill Holslin / Friends of Friendship Park

It has been a busy year for Friendship Park, the little park south of Imperial Beach where you can go to visit with people on the other side of the border wall in Tijuana. Friends of Friendship Park has continued with our mission this year: to maintain public access to the park on the border where friendships can blossom, and families separated by deportation, by mixed immigration status, and by the injustice of border militarization can come together and maintain family bonds.   [Read more…]

Progressive Activism in 2015: No Justice, No Peace for People of Color

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There were no elections in 2015. No candidates or ballot measures competed for our attention. No promises or threats interrupted our TV viewing pleasure.

A lack of voting opportunities allowed other forms of activism to come to the fore. Non-electoral efforts, like demonstrations, rallies, and petition campaigns are, to my way of thinking, critical components of our national discourse. As Howard Zinn and other historians have pointed out, our nation’s history is chock full of agitation and dissent as a precursor to many of the institutions central to our society.

I’ll be looking back at 2015 this week, reviewing many of the issues and causes important to progressives in San Diego and around the nation. Today it’s about fighting the most brutal forms of injustice.   [Read more…]

Love in the Time of Mania: Six Ways Americans Are Defying Islamophobia

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If you watch the news, you’d think anti-Muslim hysteria is everywhere. Thankfully, that’s not true

Nur Lalji / Yes! Magazine

On Dec. 8, a man identified as Piro Kolvani reportedly walked into the Fatima Food Mart, in Queens, New York, yelled that he was going to kill Muslims, and began punching the store’s owner, 53-year-old Sarker Haque. A customer restrained Kolvani until police arrived.

The attack is being investigated as a hate crime and, in the wake of terror attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California, there has been a surge of similar assaults on Muslims.   [Read more…]

Excerpt From Sunshine/Noir II: San Ysidro Blues — 30 Years After the Massacre

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By Francisco J. Bustos

I remember playing on the kitchen floor when the shots started firing.
I remember my cousin and I running outside the apartment, like many others did.
The sound of bullets instantly changed everybody’s eyes and nobody could
explain it.
We lived on Sunset Lane, just a couple blocks, de aquel Mac Donals, 30 years ago.
We jumped outside at the sound of more bullets,
if we could make it to the corner, we could catch a glimpse of our San Ysidro
Boulevard.

I don’t know why we tried running to that corner. Something pushed us. With every step that we took, more shots sliced the air,
and more shots and more shots, again and again and again.   [Read more…]

In San Diego and Elsewhere, Increasing Demands for Police Reform

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SDPD Union Contracts Under Scrutiny

Despite promises of increased transparency and action to prevent misconduct, the San Diego Police Department continues to draw criticism. Law enforcement agencies around the country are under increasing scrutiny, as reports about use of excessive force, sexual assault, and abuse of power surface. Today I’ll take a look at recent developments both locally and nationally.

Taking things one step further, activists associated with Black Lives Matter have broadened their Campaign Zero to include researching police union-negotiated labor agreements in many jurisdictions with the aim of flagging provisions delaying the interrogation of officers being investigated for use of force and used in erasing documentation of abuse.

San Diego is one of the cities under scrutiny.   [Read more…]

Donald Trump’s Audacity of Hate

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The debate went on inside my head throughout the night as I drifted in and out of dreams. Should I call out this latest batch of hate-mongering from The Donald? Or am I just giving him what he wants? The man sees his polls drop in Iowa and he’s at the ready with some new bit of outrage to keep his name in the headlines.

‘If you see something, say something’ won the debate. Plus, I realized Trump’s merely surfing the wave of fear empowered by his fellow chicken hawks and amplified by the media. Today I’ll examine reaction to the latest proclamations from the GOP candidate.

The press has also been remiss in letting the whole issue of the Planned Parenthood shooting get swept under Trump’s and the GOP’s rug. After what amounted to a conservative campaign to question whether or not the women’s health care provider was targeted, we now know the shooter was indeed after Planned Parenthood.   [Read more…]

Dr. Cornel West Comes to San Diego

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By Jess Jollett / Reclaim the Community

On Friday night, the Southeast community of San Diego hosted nationally renowned public intellectual and activist, Dr. Cornel West.

Dr. West came to speak at Lincoln High School after learning of the gang injunction case brought against 33 young, black men using an untested penal code, P.C. 182.5. The case brought national attention to District Attorney’s use of this draconian and obscure code resulting from a proposition passed in 2000.

The event was sponsored by Reclaiming the Community, a coalition of individuals, community leaders, and organizations that embrace the historic, rich, and diverse culture of Southeast San Diego, and recognize its ability to become a leader in community participation.   [Read more…]

“Those People”

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I just got back from a Paul Laurence Dunbar Junior High Reunion. Dunbar was Tucson’s first-thru-ninth grade school for “colored” kids aka Negroes.

Many of us show up at the school’s auditorium, the Friday after Thanksgiving, every two years. As black people and/or African Americans.

And let me tell you, it’s so nice to be among people who were at your side when you were a kid growing up trying to figure out how to make it in a world where you’re looked at as “Those people.” People to be looked down upon.   [Read more…]

Black Lives Matter Makes Powerful Connection With Racist Drug War

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A National Town Hall recently took up the question of how Black Lives Matter fits in with drug reform.

By Phillip Smith / Alternet

The Black Lives Matter movement sprung out of the unjust killings of young black men (Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Michael Brown), either at the hands of self-styled vigilantes or police. But as the movement blossomed and matured, BLM began turning its attention to a broader critique of the institutional racism behind police violence against the black population.

While the war on drugs plays a central role in generating conflict between the black community and law enforcement, the critique of institutional racism in policing and the criminal justice system necessarily implicates the nation’s drug policies. The grim statistics of racially biased drug law enforcement are well-known: blacks make up about 13% of the population, but 30% of all drug arrests; blacks account for nearly 90% of all federal crack cocaine prosecutions; black federal crack offenders were sentenced to far more prison time that white powder cocaine offenders; blacks and other minorities are disproportionately targeted in traffic stop and stop-and-frisks despite being less likely than whites to be carrying drugs, and so on.
  [Read more…]

So a Right Wing Nut Job with a Gun Walks into a Planned Parenthood Office…

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Friday’s shootout at the Planned Parenthood facility in Colorado Springs left three people dead, nine people wounded and right-wingers scrambling to distance themselves from an act of terrorism.

Misogyny, alienation and insanity were likely driving forces behind the actions of the 59-year-old white male who surrendered to police after the five hour seize. From what I’ve been able to ascertain, he had no ties to organized hate groups.

As the media and their sources in law enforcement have proclaimed the dozen or so “lone wolf” attacks in recent years to have been inspired by radical Islam,” it would appear what happened in Colorado Springs was a lone wolf attack inspired by radical right-wing righteousness.   [Read more…]

Black Lives Matter on Black Friday

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Two elements of the ugly side of our society and economy are coming together this week.

Black Lives Matter groups and their supporters in cities around the country, including San Diego, are staging Friday protests and urging people not to shop. Events in Alabama, Washington state, Chicago and Minneapolis have served to bolster their case about the pervasiveness of racism.

Black Friday sales events stand as reminders of the false prosperity of the consumer economy. Retail workers and supporters will be ending a fifteen day fast as they picket outside WalMart heiress Alice Walton’s apartment in New York City and various locations around the country.   [Read more…]

Kill The Damn Turkeys, Already! GOP Voters Disapprove of Presidential Pardons

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Public Policy Polling is out with a survey of Americans holiday preferences and, much like the Thanksgiving dinner consumed by many, there’s something for every taste.

Republicans surveyed opposed President Obama’s pardoning of two turkeys last year by a 27% margin. Democrats and Independents approved of the executive order.

I wish I could say this was satire, but it’s not. From the PPP press release:

“Republicans are so opposed to everything President Obama wants to do that they even take issue with his handling of the traditional Thanksgiving turkey pardon,” said Dean Debnam, President of Public Policy Polling. “It’s pretty hard to work across party lines on real issues against that backdrop.”   [Read more…]

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