San Diego Free Press

Grassroots News & Progressive Views

Anti-Immigrant Sentiment and Anti-Semitic Acts Impact San Diego

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San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer made a statement on Tuesday indicating his disapproval of the executive order banning immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries where President Donald Trump’s companies do not have investments.

Though milder in tone than statements by mayors in Boston, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Seattle (some of whom have actually joined protests), Faulconer’s statement does recognize that individuals affected by the order are essential parts of the community.

In making the statement, Faulconer sidestepped a potentially thorny confrontation with supporters of an online petition who were using his silence to promote the idea of San Diego declaring itself a sanctuary city.   [Read more…]

How Twinkies Made a Few Billionaires Richer While Thousands Lost Jobs

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The Junk Food That Is an American Tradition

Remember when Twinkies went out of business and people mourned the loss of such a time-honored treat? How could such a sorry state come to pass? Weren’t Twinkies profitable any more? Were people consuming less of them because they were mostly sugar and not good for you? Wrong and Wrong.

As it turns out, it was all about some hedge fund shananigans designed to make the wealthy even wealthier while sacrificing the jobs and pensions of loyal workers. It’s called financial engineering, and it creates profits by destroying jobs.   [Read more…]

What Happened to the Rails?

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By Roy Little

The Light-footed Ridgway’s Rail (LFRR) is on the endangered species list for both the Federal Govt and CA but there is a definite indication of problems locally as shown by the population crash of a factor of 10 according to the most recent 2016 census.

First I have to provide some background information to set the stage. The wetland is located west of Pacific Beach Drive and south of Crown Point Drive in the northeast corner of Mission Bay Park. The wetland area is roughly 40 acres, partly owned by UC and partly by the City of San Diego. Officially the wetland is called the Kendall-Frost/Northern Wildlife Reserve (K-F/NW.)   [Read more…]

Resistance Rather Than Collaboration Is the Only Way In the Trump Era

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By Andrew J. Mackay

Sens. Sherrod Brown and Elizabeth Warren, who liberals usually speak fondly of, both say they support the utterly unqualified Ben Carson for Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary. All but one Democratic senator confirmed Gen. James “Mad Dog” Mattis for Secretary of Defense. This despite Mattis having what can only be called bloodlust; a military man who can’t wait to kill foreigners. These same senators will in a year’s time decry what Mattis does in office, but they chose to approve him. This is not resistance, not even close.

Because the middle ground is treacherous between resistance and collaboration, accommodation, whatever you want to call it. For the last half century, activists have been trying to change the Democratic Party from within. This strategy failed in the past, and some Bernie supporters and Black Lives Matter activists are trying again today. But today’s activist can easily be tomorrow’s apologist, as social movements are co-opted.   [Read more…]

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 Long Shadow Falls on San Diego Immigrants, Refugees, Muslims

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From City Heights Town Hall to Airport Protest

“Tell me what democracy looks like!”

“This is what democracy looks like!”

The chant ran up and down the whole length of Terminal 2 of San Diego’s Lindbergh Airport, up and down the opposite side of the terminal and could be heard on the second floor walkway. Three lines of cars ran between the two and those cars honked their horns while passengers waved flags and held signs outside of the windows.

An estimated 2,000 of us put our bodies on the public sidewalks of the airport to protest the fear and chaos engendered by Trump’s recent executive order restricting immigration from seven Muslim countries.   [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.
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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…]

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