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Anti-Muslim Bigotry in San Diego; Trump’s Racist Rampage Continues

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A female Muslim student at San Diego State University was assaulted on campus last week. An unknown male, believed to be a SDSU student, pushed her and pulled her by her hijab while making hate comments and threats based on her religious appearance.

An unidentified pregnant woman, dressed in a traditional Muslim headscarf and pushing her child in a stroller in Mission Valley, was stopped by an unidentified man making racially charged threats. He went so far as to push her stroller back into her.

Those are just the most recent two of the 170 reported threats against Muslims in San Diego this year, according to officials with the Council on American-Islamic Relations. The Muslim Student Association organized a rally at SDSU for today, urging the community at large to come make a statement against Islamophobia.   [Read more…]

What to Do About a School Named After Robert E. Lee?

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By Lucas O’Connor

I’m not from San Diego.

I grew up in Arlington, Virginia, surrounded by the Lee-Custis Mansion, Lee Highway, Washington-Lee High School, and Jefferson Davis Highway. A place where schools and streets co-mingle presidents and traitors. Raised in a house a mile and a half from the intersection of Lee Highway and Lincoln Street with no apparent embarrassment or irony. Maybe it’s a perfect metaphor.

I know a little bit about what it means to be raised as though the Confederacy is an awkward family footnote we try not to bring up at Thanksgiving, even in an otherwise liberal bastion like Arlington (Obama twice won by 40 points there). I know growing up that way warps you. There’s no way around it. When these people are not only normalized, but memorialized, it’s a struggle to grasp the enormity of what they did.   [Read more…]

Hillary Held Her Own at Dems Debate; Sanders Needs to Step Up His Game

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I guess I have to start out by saying Senator Bernie Sanders is the democratic candidate whose positions align most closely with my own. I will, given the opportunity, cast my vote for him in the California primary.

Having put that disclaimer up first, I’ll go on to say that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton won (by not losing) in Saturday’s Democratic Debate. Yes, I know that Sanders won every straw poll out there. I also know that Ron Paul won a lot of straw polls in 2012.

Straw polls don’t replace actual canvassing, social media interest is an unreliable predictor for election results, and the photos of overwhelmingly white male attendees at Sanders watch parties are a big warning flag about vital segments of the electorate that are not engaged with the campaign.   [Read more…]

#BlackOnCampus, #MillionStudentMarch Create ‘Chaos’ At Colleges

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There were demonstrations on college campuses coast-to-coast yesterday. Some were in response to the recent success of students at the University of Missouri at calling out racism.

Others were responding to an earlier call via social media to protest the increasingly desperate economics of getting an education.  And some events were inclusive of both causes.

The far-right media, eager to fan the fires of the rabid uncle on Facebook set, actually provided more comprehensive coverage than their ‘objective’ mainstream brethren. Breitbart News even sent reporters to UCSD, looking for chaos. They didn’t find any.     [Read more…]

Will the City Council Join the Anti-Starbucks Holiday Coffee Cup Crusade?

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The San Diego City Council unanimously approved a resolution on Tuesday opposing the mere thought of a transfer of Guantanamo Bay detainees to the Marine Corps Air Station Miramar.

This was an act of political cowardice based on fear-mongering, led by Councilman Chris Cate, seeking to bolster his conservative cred. Now he’s officially a “manly man,” capable of staring down imagined threats no matter where they are imagined.

The fact of San Diego not being under consideration as a detainee destination wasn’t as important as a four-year-old assessment survey that included a look at local facilities. Sites actually under consideration are in Colorado, Kansas, and South Carolina. In addition, Congress has passed a defense spending measure barring the transfer of prisoners to US soil.   [Read more…]

Missouri Students Stand Against Racism, Sexism and Homophobia

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One week ago University of Missouri graduate student Jonathan Butler began a hunger strike as a protest against “a slew of racist, sexist, homophobic, etc., incidents that have dynamically disrupted the learning experience.” His decision to undertake this hunger strike followed months of futile attempts by different groups to get the school to pay attention to what was going on their midst.

This non-violent challenge to the status quo garnered nationwide attention. This morning University President Timothy Wolf announced his resignation as protests on the campus continued to build.

The media caught on to the story when MU football team has announced it would no longer practice or compete. Faculty members called for a walk out, and the student Missouri Student Association executive board joined in Butler’s call for the removal of school president Tim Wolfe, saying he has “enabled a culture of racism and has disrespected and ignored the concerns of students.   [Read more…]

Excerpt From Sunshine/Noir II: The Rock – Resistance Barrio Logan Style

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By Brent E. Beltran

Juanito held the rock firmly in his hand—almost too firmly, as his knuckles turned white from the pressure. He stood there shaking, and tears slowly fell from his reddened eyes. A wheezy cough escaped his tight lungs as the eleven-year-old stood on Harbor Drive facing the towering cranes that loomed over this toxic barrio. Every breath he took was a challenge. The setting sun cast a powerful glow of purples and oranges across the radiant, polluted sky.

He had grown up on these neglected streets, a Barrio Logan native in more ways than one. He stood there with rock in hand as semi trucks rumbled past, hauling bananas picked by people that looked just like him. The vehicles added more pollutants into the atmosphere as they traveled to various points north and east. That rock, smooth from centuries of ocean water beatdowns, weighed heavy in his trembling hand.   [Read more…]

Tom Hom, a “Rabbit on a Bumpy Road”

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By Ernie McCray

I just put down a nice read, “Rabbit on a Bumpy Road,” by Tom Hom, a man who was the first person of color to be elected to the San Diego City Council.

That took place back in 1963, a year after I had moved to the city. So I was greatly interested in the book for the history, a history in which, as a citizen, I’m a player.

I was a 24-year-old back then, still getting my feet wet and my mind wrapped around what was going on in my world socially, politically, and otherwise.   [Read more…]

Jazz at the Handlery

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By John Lawrence

There is a nice little jazz series running in San Diego at the Handlery Hotel’s 950 lounge at 950 Hotel Circle North. This has been put together by Holly Hofmann who has been presenting concerts in San Diego for 30 years or more. In addition she plays a helluva flute. Recently I saw Stef Johnson with Rob Thorsen and the week before Gilbert Castellanos and Bobby Cressey. The place has a nice happy hour menu and reasonably priced libations. There is no admission or cover charge. Parking is free with validation.

Jazz does not have that many dedicated venues in San Diego so the jazz loving public has to rely mainly on the musicians themselves to create their own gigs. There are no institutional venues such as classical music has. No Symphony Halls. No billionaire sponsors. For that you have to go to New York City, the epicenter of jazz. We do have a dedicated jazz radio station – KSDS-FM – 88.3. Now we just need a billionaire to step up and underwrite the equivalent of New York’s Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola at Lincoln Center. Holly would make a wonderful impresario for such a venue because her connections in the jazz world are endless and her dedication, nonpareil.   [Read more…]

Protests Planned as Police Explain Gaslamp Death

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By Doug Porter

As of this morning, police in the United States have killed 927 people this year. Number 925 on the Guardian’s list was Lamontez Jones, age 39, who died at Sixth and F Streets in San Diego’s Gaslamp District. He was, according to activists with United Against Police Terror (UAPTSD), the ninth person killed by law enforcement in San Diego this year.

Media reports say Jones was shot by two motorcycle officers when he pulled a gun replica on them as they chased him through downtown San Diego Tuesday afternoon. The body cams worn by the policemen were not activated before or during the encounter. Department procedure is to turn them on prior to arriving on the scene.

Police Chief Shelley Zimmerman defended the officers failure to activate the cameras at a press conference, saying officer- and public- safety concerns are more important than use of the devices.   [Read more…]

Thinking of Josephine and James and Langston and Other Gay Icons

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By Ernie McCray

After writing recently about a five-year-old girl being kicked out of a Christian Academy, in what seemed to me to be an example of rampant homophobia in the black community, I began thinking “Is it just me?”

Then a childhood friend commented on what I had written with these words: “This is all new to me in the black churches… many gay persons played the music, sang in the choir, helped get those fashion shows together and no one said a mumbling word or they never appeared to out loud.”

What a relief to discover it just wasn’t me who feels the way I do because what my homey had to say is so how I remember things back in the day – so how I happened to live all these years thinking that black folks were okay with folks who are gay.   [Read more…]

A Black Perspective on Ben Carson, the Teapublican’s ‘anti-Obama’

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By Denise Oliver Velez / Daily Kos

Historically, black Americans tend to be overlooked when it comes to achievements in science, math, and medicine. So it was with great pride that we embraced the acclaim garnered by Dr. Ben Carson, neurosurgeon, who inspired many of our youngsters to go on to college and to follow his career in medicine. His autobiography, Gifted Hands, is a present that has been given to many young people in black households across America.

Hence, many of us are beyond appalled that this man has morphed into an anti-science reactionary who touts creationism, intelligent design, and anti-evolutionism. What makes it even worse is that he is now the poster child for the right-wing tea party attacks against Barack Obama, the Democratic Party, and Democrats running for the 2016 nomination. He has become the antithesis of the civil rights struggle, directly attacking the gains we have made and are fighting to hold onto. He embodies a “great black hope” agenda for white tea partiers, and racists who are willing to forgo their racism as long as the black person they control is steeped in their brand of tea.

I can’t say that I am surprised by this tactic. Look at the “replacement” of Thurgood Marshall, an iconic Supreme Court Justice and defender of civil rights, with Clarence Thomas.   [Read more…]

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