San Diego Free Press

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Ballots Drop Tuesday: Do You Have a Plan to Vote? | Progressive Activist Calendar October 5 -15, 2018

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Traditionally media coverage of elections has focused on the actual election day. It’s time to dump that mindset. If the June primary was any indication (and it was), close to two-thirds of the electorate in San Diego will have already cast their vote before November 6.

Mail-in ballots are headed for the post office this weekend; people will receive them starting on Tuesday (Monday is a holiday). I’m told that most of the early returns from mail-in votes are from people who’d already made up their minds.

I suspect many readers of this publication know who they’re going to vote for in the big name contests. I’m fairly certain many of those same folks don’t know who to vote for in the contest for San Diego Superior Court Office #37. If you were unhappy about Brett Kavanaugh, you might want to know about Gary Kreep.   [Read more…]

We Need to Talk About Masculinity

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By Jill Richardson / OtherWords

When we discuss sexual assault, we often talk about women. What should women do to stay safe?

When I was in school, girls were even trained in women’s self-defense. I don’t know what the boys did during those time periods. Study hall?

Ask any woman what she does to prevent sexual assault and she’ll have an answer. She uses the buddy system when walking at night, or she carries pepper spray, or she doesn’t leave her drink unattended when she’s out, and so on.   [Read more…]

Mowing My Mother’s Lawn | Geo-Poetic Spaces

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I still feel my fathers hands
on top of mine
guiding the push reel mower
over lawn
the satisfaction of sweat
put into each cleanly cut line   [Read more…]

Presumed Innocent … But Locked in Cages Nonetheless | Video Worth Watching

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I’m guessing that when Chris Hayes saw the coverage of Trump’s recent rally in Mississippi, some button got pushed. This is the rally where Trump lamented the disregard for the principle of “Innocent until proven guilty” (particularly as it related to his Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh) and yet the crowd later repeatedly chanted “Lock her up” referring to Hilary Clinton’s unsubstantiated misdeeds! Irony is indeed dead.

The more galling aspect of this situation for Chris, though, is the disparity in the treatment of accused citizens—between the privileged few (such as Trump and Kavanaugh) and the rest of us, as evidenced by the treatment of Kalief Browder, the teen arrested in 2010 when sixteen years old, and when unable to post bail, imprisoned for three years in extremely violent conditions at the Robert N. Davoren Center on Riker’s Island while awaiting trial.   [Read more…]

Kavanaugh Confirmation: White House Whitewashed FBI Report Gives Cover to Swing Republican Senators

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News reports from this morning indicate that Judge Kavanaugh’s confirmation is now very likely because the whitewashed FBI report is giving cover to swing Republican Senators. This despite the failure of FBI investigators to interview neither Christine Blasey Ford nor Kavanaugh and nor at least 40 other witnesses who could give corroboration to Ford’s sexual assault allegations.

The newly-released 46 page FBI report is being called “incomplete” by Democrats and the White House is being blamed for restricting the scope and breadth of investigators. Reportedly, 10 people were contacted and only 9 interviewed by agents. That’s 9 people in the 5 day period (less than 2 a day – wow!). Also, the third woman to come forward, Julie Swetnick, was not contacted by the FBI. Also the second accuser Debra Ramirez gave agents a list of 20 people who come corroborate her accusations against Kavanaugh. None – again, none of them were contacted.

The report is also being called “a sham”, “a whitewash” by critics. Yet, this morning swing GOP senators Susan Collins and Jeff Flake stated it was enough for them. Which means it’s very likely they’ll vote to confirm.   [Read more…]

2018’s Bottom of the Political Barrel: Three Candidates You Should Avoid Voting For

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Mail-by-vote ballots will be arriving at homes in California next week and, after posting more than three dozen articles about candidates and issue since the June primary, it’s time to wrap up this phase of our election coverage.  There were lots of contests I wanted to cover, but couldn’t for lack of time.

My parting shot in this series involves a short-but-sweet essay warning folks about some people NOT to vote for. There are people running for office who you shouldn’t vote for, and then there are candidates are so bad you should consider crossing the street to avoid them if you see them coming your way.

On Monday, we’ll be posting the San Diego Free Press Progressive Voter Guide. The editorial board met last week to consider endorsements; those will be announced in the Guide. We endorsed 14 ballot measures and 37 candidates. Three candidates were so bad they deserved special mention.   [Read more…]

Poli-trick-ians Like Summer Stephan and Myrtle Cole Have Got to Go

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Nothing that these Establishment politicians (Republican and Democrat alike) do surprise me anymore, but it still disgusts me. I pray we learn our lesson from June’s election.

Remember when then-candidate, Summer Stephan suggested to the Union-Tribune she was a reformer? Remember when she told voters that she believed law enforcement officers were not above the law? Remember when she said she cared deeply for victims and victims’ families?

All lies. Since being in that seat, she’s cleared every officer involved in the shootings and deaths of San Diegans. Most recently, on September 21, she cleared every officer involved in the death of Earl McNeil although the Medical Examiner ruled his death a homicide.   [Read more…]

A Texas-Sized Destroy Public Education IDEA

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First it was KIPP, then it was YES Prep and now IDEA has become the point of the destroy public education (DPE) spear in Texas. KIPP flourished because GAP founders Don and Doris Fisher gave them big money. YES Prep so excited Oprah that she presented them with a million dollar check during a TV interview. Now, John Arnold has given IDEA $10 million to expand into Houston and the El Paso based Council on Regional Economic Expansion and Educational Development has pledged another $10 million for IDEA to expand into El Paso.

The oddest DPE-inspired plan of all comes from Austin, Texas. In 2016, the Austin American Statesman reported that the relatively small KLE foundation is committing $16 million to IDEA. Odd because that represents more than half of the foundation’s assets and is 20 times greater than any previous grant. The Statesman article says, “The financial gift … will more than double IDEA Austin’s previous expansion plans by 2022, and the charter school says the donation will help it boost enrollment to 20,000 students, more than 12 times as many as it has now.”

A recent article in the Santa Fe New Mexican says about the IDEA growth initiative, “Those plans include expanding to 173 pre-K, elementary, middle and high schools from Texas to Louisiana and Florida by 2022 — a goal of serving 100,000 students compared to 35,595 today.”   [Read more…]

Trump Administration Sends 1,600 Kids to Texas Tent City as Number of Detained Children Hits Record High | Video Worth Watching

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From the Democracy Now! website:

The Trump administration is transferring detained migrant children from shelters across the country to a barren tent city in West Texas. The New York Times reports that hundreds of children are being sent each week from shelters to the tent city, which currently houses 1,600 children. The facility reportedly has no school, and children have only limited access to legal services. The U.S. government is now detaining a record 13,000 migrant children. We speak with Louise Melling, deputy legal director at the ACLU, who says, “We have more children in detention now than ever before.”

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Republicans Harkey and Hunter Run on Pity Platform | San Diego’s Congressional Contests

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Three of San Diego’s five Congressional districts are, for now, dominated by Democratic incumbents. Electoral contests in the 51st (Vargas), 52nd (Peters), and 53rd (Davis) all include no-name, no-cash–Republican challengers.

Today I’ll focus on the noisy political contests in the 49th and 50th congressional districts, with a cursory listing of the candidates for the non-competitive seats at the end of the column.

The current version of history says the 49th’s retiring Republican Congressman Darrell Issa saw the handwriting on the wall following a surprisingly close election in 2018 and regular protests outside his Vista office.

While I’m sure both things played a role, a personal drama may have played a role in that decision.   [Read more…]

I’ve Been Seeing Ghosts Lately | Dear Ohio, Part 10

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I’ve been seeing ghosts lately. Ghosts of people I’ve known and never known. They rise from visions of pure white teeth climbing the mouths of rolling hills, erupting in rows along grassy plains. Teeth, in a mouth that grows bigger with each passing year, teeth more numerous with each generation.

Out of these teeth rise the spirits of men and women, young and old, all colors, races, all religions and origins. These spirits once lived in a sharecropper’s shack in Kentucky, a brownstone in New York, a mobile home in Lancaster, a walk-up in Chicago. They once picked fruit in California, harvested grain in Kansas, mined coal in Virginia, raised cattle in Texas. In more recent years, they babysat a neighbor’s children in Arizona, graduated from a community college in Colorado, clerked in a grocery store in Hawaii, cleaned rooms at a resort in Alaska.

These spirits evaporated from the arms of their mothers and fathers, watched their spouses and children slip away while waving to them across the growing gap of land or water, swallowed their tears of loneliness and grasped onto their fellows as a lifeline of family.   [Read more…]

Trump Mocks Kavanaugh Accuser; Republican Crowd Chants “Lock Her Up”

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Donald Trump mocked Dr. Christine Blasey Ford at a rally Tuesday night because of course, that’s what one of the worst people in the world would do.

Trump highlighted the things Ford didn’t remember about being sexually assaulted by Brett Kavanaugh—the exact address, the exact date—rather than the things she did remember—being sexually assaulted by Brett Kavanaugh as he laughed, and called into question her recollection of having had one beer rather than acknowledging the widely shared accounts of Kavanaugh as a frequent, sloppy, aggressive drunk.

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