San Diego Free Press

Grassroots News & Progressive Views

Bin Laden Won from the Grave on November 8, 2016

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In some deep, dark corner of hell, Osama Bin Laden must be having a good laugh. Fifteen-plus years after his group leveraged a half-million dollars in costs into a $4 trillion hit on the global economy, the after-shocks continue to eat away at the core of the secular democracy he so despised.

While a good part of the al-Qaeda plan may have been to provoke the United States to increase its military and cultural presence in the Middle East, it also spawned a rot domestically.

I would argue there is a definable link from much of the US response to the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center with the economic and political conditions making possible the election of Donald J. Trump as President.

It’s not the only reason or even the main reason. But there’s a connection.   [Read more…]

Finding Solace in Steinbeck During the Time of Trump

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In a jittery, newly authoritarian land of hatred and hurt, chastened criminal and social justice reformers and human rights advocates can find solace and sustenance in the words and works of the incomparable John Steinbeck, one of America’s greatest writers and psychoanalysts.

In his opus and Pulitzer Prize winning, The Grapes of Wrath, spotlighting exploitative and inhumane labor practices and living conditions of migrant agricultural workers during the Great Depression, Steinbeck masterfully wrote: “[F]ailure hangs over the State like a great sorrow . . . . And the smell of rot fills the country . . . . There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success . . . . [A]nd, in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is the growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.”

In the dawning, gloomy, metastatic malignancy of a Trump Presidency, do not Steinbeck’s hallowed words resonate every bit as much, if not terrifyingly more? Do they not poignantly describe the heartbreak and fear of so many?   [Read more…]

Discovering the Light In Darkness: Fighting Back Against Trump

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So first, remember to breathe. It won’t change what has happened, but it will keep you alive—and this, as it turns out, is indisputably helpful for what must come next. For only the living can resist.

I wish there were some way to spin this, to soften the sharp edges of these blades slicing into the connective tissue of our nation, but there is not. There is only the scythe, ripping collective flesh and tendon, swung by a deranged reaper and those who saw fit to hand him the tools with which to do such damage.

I wish there were some way to blink really hard, like I used to do as a child when trapped in a nightmare, thereby finding release from the clutches of whatever monster was in hot pursuit. It worked every time in dreams. But sadly, this escape route began to fail me years ago, right around the time I discovered that some monsters are real, some dreams incapable of circumvention. Ever since I came to appreciate that some disasters must simply be faced.   [Read more…]

You Want It Darker: Why Trump and What Next?

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I spent the days after the election, one that I too had hoped and predicted that Clinton would win, mourning and comforting despairing friends, colleagues, and students afraid of what the future will bring. Where I teach at San Diego City College, the majority of the students are part of the America that Trump hates. There is terror at the thought of family members being deported, unease at the prospect of discriminatory policies based on religion, race, gender, and sexuality, and fear of a cynical climate-denying opportunist bent on sealing the fate of the endangered natural world.

Most of all, there is grief and rage over the murder of hope.

Somehow it was fitting that Leonard Cohen died this week after penning one last shout: “You Want It Darker”   [Read more…]

Looking Back at the Week: November 6-12

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This week’s edition of Looking Back at the Week features articles, commentaries, columns, toons, and other work by San Diego Free Press regulars, irregulars, columnists, at-large contributors, and sourced writers on: the rise of a dictator and the end of American democracy. Plus, lots of other grassroots news & progressive views from San Diego’s friendly, neighborhood, all volunteer, slightly funky, community news site.
  [Read more…]

An Open and Sincere Letter to All Trump Supporters

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The following is a post pulled from Facebook:

I understand why someone would vote for Trump. I don’t mean that I can see his appeal, because I can’t. But I do understand why someone who normally votes Republican would cast a vote in his favor. However, I’m not sure this understanding goes both ways. I’m not sure that you, Trump voter, really understand why we non-Trump voters are so distraught.

A lot of you think you do — understand, that is. You think it’s politics. No one likes to be on the losing side of an election. And that’s why so many of you — and to be fair, I’ve seen Clinton voters share this same sentiment, in an attempt to restore rationality — have scolded people on my side for the unpatriotic heresy of disconnecting from Trump voters on social media. You see it as childish, sore loser stuff. You say, “Can you really not have someone who disagrees with you as a friend?”

You’re missing something vital though. You’re just happy the election is over, and that now you’ll have a government that pursues the conservative policies you prefer. All of which is fair. That’s a normal consequence of an election, and while the rest of us are understandably upset about that part, it’s part of the program. You win some, you lose some. We’ve been there before.

But this election includes extracurricular material. And that’s why, Trump voter, your more progressive friends are questioning whether or not they can keep you in their lives.   [Read more…]

From the Berlin Wall to a Border Wall: Humanity Will Prevail

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By Robert Terrell

Two of the largest mural collections in the world are on the remnants of the Berlin Wall and the architecture that encompasses San Diego’s Chicano Park.

One adorns a wall that for decades stood for the division of Europe and Cold War animosity, and has since come to symbolize the enduring spirit of freedom and peaceful revolution. The other is a memorial to another history of power, exploitation, and marginalization. It is a space that remains contested in the city of San Diego just as our president-elect promises to build a new wall to keep Mexicans out.

Twenty-seven years to the day after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Donald Trump began his transition to power, his long effort to deliver on many divisive promises. Border wall included.   [Read more…]

Geo-Poetic Spaces: Depreciation

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Driving
with the check engine light on
because auto repair
is grand theft

Like most of the middle class
I’m being written off
road   [Read more…]

ACLU Statement on Donald Trump’s Election

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If Donald Trump Implements His Proposed Policies, We’ll See Him in Court

By Anthony D. Romero, ACLU Executive Director / ACLU San Diego

[On November 8], Donald J. Trump was elected the 45th president of the United States, and the ACLU has a message for him.

President-elect Trump, as you assume the nation’s highest office, we urge you to reconsider and change course on certain campaign promises you have made. These include your plan to amass a deportation force to remove 11 million undocumented immigrants; ban the entry of Muslims into our country and aggressively surveil them; punish women for accessing abortion; reauthorize waterboarding and other forms of torture; and change our nation’s libel laws and restrict freedom of expression.   [Read more…]

If You Voted for Trump Because He’s ‘Anti-Establishment,’ Guess What: You Got Conned

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By Paul Waldman / Excerpt from the The Washington Post

The greatest trick Donald Trump pulled was convincing voters he’d be “anti-establishment.”

Well, maybe not the greatest trick. But in a campaign full of cons, it has to rank close to the top. This was near the heart of Trump’s appeal to the disaffected and disempowered: Send me to Washington, and that “establishment” you’ve been hearing so much about? We’ll blow it up, send it packing, punch it right in the face, and when it’s over the government will finally be working for you again. And the people who voted for Trump bought it. After all, he’s no politician, right? He’s an outsider, a glass-breaker, a guy who can cut out the bull and get things done. Right?

But the idea that he would do this was based on a profound misunderstanding of what the establishment actually is, and who Donald Trump is.   [Read more…]

San Diego Democrats Dominate in Local Contests

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San Diego Democrats came away with an impressive set of victories in the 2016 general elections, though you wouldn’t have known it from all the glum faces at election central on Tuesday night.

The implications of their party’s loss at the top of the ticket ruined the night for most folks. The question remaining now is how effective Democrats in San Diego and California will be in the face of a tidal wave of reaction coming out of Washington DC.

How bad is it? It’s so bad that Congressman Duncan Hunter, Jr has emerged as one of those being vetted for a position in Trump administration’s Department of Defense.   [Read more…]

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