San Diego Free Press

Grassroots News & Progressive Views

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…]

Dueling Downtown Protests Set as Trump’s Immigration Crackdown Escalates

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Guadalupe García de Rayos was taken into custody by agents of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Phoenix during a routine check-in with the agency on Wednesday.

Seven people were arrested as dozens of immigration activists blocked the gates surrounding the office in an effort to stop several vans and a bus from leaving. The mother of two was photographed attempting to communicate with her children from inside one of the vehicles, which are used to transport people in ICE custody to detention centers, or to Arizona’s border with Mexico for deportation.

Observers fear this could be the beginning of a nationwide crackdown, targeting as many as 8 million people.   [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…]

The San Jose Solution for Emergency Shelter

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A state law allowing emergency sleeping cabins could work for San Diego too.

San Diego County / City of San Diego are in the middle of a serious emergency shelter crisis. The Point in Time Count numbers for 2016 for the county counted 8,692 homeless persons, with an 18.9% increase in the number of unsheltered individuals. Numbers from the recent count will not be available until April, but are expected to be worse. San Diego has the unenviable distinction of having the 4th highest number of homeless people in the nation – more than Las Vegas, Washington DC, Chicago and San Francisco. By comparison, Santa Clara County / San Jose reported 6,556 homeless persons in 2015, and came in 9th for number of homeless people.

The San Jose Solution – San Jose took bold action to address the human crisis.   [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…]

Bluff Collapse Reminds Us of Inevitable Erosion of Sunset Cliffs

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Sections of the bluff along Sunset Cliffs in Ocean Beach collapsed January 28th, right after heavy rains. First reported by Delinda Lombardo in the San Diego Reader, the collapse affected two properties, 5107 Narragansett Avenue – the Pelican Point apartment complex, and the property just to its south, 1783–1787 Ocean Front Street.

None of the units on the properties were directly affected, but the cliff gave way under patios on the first floor at the Pelican Point. Lombardo reported, “Though there was no reported damage to the structure itself, the seawall located below the property is crushed.”   [Read more…]

We’ve Got to Stay Ahead of This Devil Named Trump

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I was watching Stephen Colbert the other night, laughing away at his brilliant witticisms and daffiness, and a segment came on wherein a visual, referring to Trump’s “ban,” read, in part, “…a five year old was handcuffed…”

I stopped chuckling for a moment in reaction to such a terrible statement, trying to picture a five year old being shackled. But Colbert was on a flow so I had to let that go and next up on the show was White House Press Secretary, Sean Spicer, commenting on the little boy’s inhuman predicament with these words: “To assume that just because of someone’s age and gender that they don’t pose a threat would be misguided and wrong.”   [Read more…]

Restaurant Review: Ajisen Ramen on Clairemont Mesa

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The chain now has over 700 restaurants, but this is the only one in San Diego. The manager is from Hong Kong, and Hitomi does not think that many of the workers were from Japan, but she said the physical appearance is identical to the one in her hometown. And, surprisingly, the menu is the same also!

There are 116 items on the menu (!) plus a lunch special menu of ten items; a dessert menu featuring 14 items; the appetizer menu has 22 items, beginning at $2.25 and going up to $8.50. Hitomi and I elected to try their Gyoza – 8 pieces – for $4.50. In addition to the Ramen, which is what we went in for, they also serve Udon, Yakisoba, Tempura, Tsukemen, Rice with Curry, Chicken and/or Beef.   [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…]

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