San Diego Free Press

Grassroots News & Progressive Views

San Diego Representatives Wonder: Where Do We Go from Here?

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Laura Fink remarked, “There were twelve women in the history of the world that have been on a ballot and won a democratically elected head of state or head of government position. That’s twelve. Seventy total if you count the Prime Ministers, but twelve that have had their name on a ballot and won.

“I don’t think we know the implications of gender in this race or their degree. I think that they’re massive. The consistency among those twelve women: almost all of them were called iron ladies. They all had powerful husbands. They were all fairly disliked and they were all political insiders.

“I’ll just leave you with this. You guys do the math and see if we require something of Hillary Clinton that we now dislike about her.”   [Read more…]

Here’s the Hate From Donald Trump’s Followers

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We’re sharing a compendium of tweets seen by SDFP editors on social media since election night.

Anybody who has any doubt about what’s coming and the need to organize, mobilize, and fight back should read these all the way through.

Does anybody have a plan yet? Not that we know of. Rome wasn’t built in a day.

That doesn’t mean people aren’t working on it.

Stay angry, my friends; build a network; give hugs where needed.   [Read more…]

South Bay Election Results: Highlights, Insider Information and Facts

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This year, I tried to cover elections for a region that often feels ignored: the South Bay — defined as everything south of the I-54 (including National City, Chula Vista, Imperial Beach and South San Diego). For Democrats and pro-labor, the overall results were quite positive in this region.

Here, I want to introduce you to the candidates based on my own coverage. During this election cycle, I have gotten to know many of the candidates and wish them all best of luck serving our communities.
  [Read more…]

Nobody Saw a Trump Victory Coming! Here’s What’s Next for America

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Trump Astounded and Shocked Democrats — and Even His Own Pollsters

Hillary was a shoo-in.. or at least that’s what everyone thought. Hillary had a blue firewall and many paths to 270 electoral votes. Donald had a bunch of heavy lifting including an almost impossible flipping of one or two blue states.

Whaaa hoppened?! What happened was that angry, white rural voters went for the guy that was against free trade (much as Bernie Sanders was) and promised to bring their rust belt jobs back from China and other Asiatic places. You had only to look at the state by state maps to see solid red in rural areas even in blue states with the only blue being in the big cities.

It wasn’t enough for Hillary to win even though she came close, and unmistakably the popular vote by more than two million. According to an article by the New York Times, this 1.5 percentage point surpasses margins by Al Gore, Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy .   [Read more…]

Let’s Do This, People. Calls to Action & Nationwide Anti-Trump Protests

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Emerging from shock and denial over the results of the 2016 Presidential election, protesters took to the streets in more than two dozen cities nationwide, including San Diego.

Carrying signs including slogans like #NotMyPresident, “Misogyny Has to Go”, “Black Lives Matter” and “Trump Makes America Hate,” demonstrators carried flags and effigies of the president-elect, disrupted traffic, and declared a refusal to accept Trump’s victory.   [Read more…]

California Goes a Different Way in 2016: Election Reactions & Results

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San Diego, Statewide Results on Propositions, Legislative & Federal Offices

Voters in the State of California opted for more progressive choices when it came to elected officials than most of the rest of the country.

Nationally, it should be noted marijuana measures did well (except Arizona), as did minimum wage increases, and paid sick leave, along with reform-oriented local prosecutors.

(It’s a two-column day, folks. Look for coverage of protests & calls for action in a subsequent piece, posted as fast as I can type.)   [Read more…]

The Night that Democracy Died in America

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Sometime after 2 a.m. eastern standard time – in the middle of the late night, Hillary Clinton – who won the popular vote for President – phoned Donald Trump and made her concession. He had won the electoral vote.

In an historic rebellion of the white, working-class, half of American voters used democratic means to elect a man who does not understand the Constitution, who does not respect the Bill of Rights, and who does not believe in democracy.

It is an irony, then, that a radical regime was voted into power that represents the greatest threat in 40 years to what is left of American democracy. Words do matter. With the threats and promises made by our new President-elect over the course of the last year and a half, it’s clear that not since the time of Richard Nixon have the civil rights of Americans been so openly splayed out on the chopping block as they are now – or will be in a few months.   [Read more…]

I’ll Have the Apocalypse Burger, with a Bullet on the Side

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The Democratic Party, not the Republicans, died Tuesday night. It took with it to the grave a functional middle class.

From now on smart people will have to find some new ways to avoid the hoi polloi, the downward bound still clinging to their weekend Harleys and storing their AK 47’s in whatever closet they can afford to rent. We’ve watched our tepid and bland Democrats — the Susan Davis’s and Scott Peters — clapping and wiggling their asses to the tunes of corporate advisers for so long that we’ve failed to notice they look and sound just like Republicans.

They just wouldn’t go away, would they? They kept cloning themselves, and droning the same songs of the party of Jefferson. They were forced by political law to live in their districts but we didn’t know where they were, and we knew it wouldn’t be in their local offices. How many pieces of our minds were we unable to give them?

Who’d a thunk the Dems would die first?   [Read more…]

Trump’s Triumph: The Gut & the Butt Won vs the Head & the Heart

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Like many of you, I’m feeling shocked and scared this morning. Donald Trump is going to be the next President of the United States. Let’s work together to make sense of this looming reality. (I’ll write at another time in the near future about state and local contests, and there was much good news there.)

The people Trump villainized in his campaign have every right to be terrified. His win was a victory for authoritarianism, nativism, misogyny, and racism. Those who support cultural reaction will feel and act empowered by his victory.

But this is not why Trump won. His victory came for economic reasons in addition to those aforementioned causes. He promised prosperity after getting people’s attention by playing to their fears. His ultimate appeal came down to ‘a chicken in every pot.’   [Read more…]

The Lost Airman Has My Heart and Mind Fixed on Peace

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I just finished a book, “The Lost Airman,” that made we want to cry out for some kind of miraculous change in the world, where people would finally come to “study war no more.”

The book is a true story of Arthur Meyerowitz, who was shot down over Nazi-occupied France in 1943.

Although the story is factual it reads like a masterful tale spun by an author adept at keeping a reader on the edge of his seat.   [Read more…]

Government Agency Puts Out a Hit on Vegan Mayonnaise Manufacturer

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You Can’t Make This Stuff Up, Folks!

The American Egg Board, which is overseen by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, put out a hit on an eggless mayonnaise start-up which had come up with a product called Just Mayo which contains no eggs. Perceiving this as a threat to the egg industry and the thousands of chickens it represents, Egg Board members exchanged emails asking, “Can we pool our money and put a hit on him?”

This was in reference to the founder of the eggless mayonnaise company, Josh Tetrick. They also suggested that “old buddies from Brooklyn pay him a visit.” Evidently, the $7 billion egg industry saw the vegan start-up as a threat to its profits, and was determined to stop it in its tracks at all costs. The Board’s president, Joanne Ivy, sent an email to her organization’s public relations consultants at Edelman. “It would be a good idea if Edelman looked at this product as a crisis and major threat to the future of the egg product business,” she wrote.   [Read more…]

Decoding the Power of Symbols

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Rev. Jim Conn / Capital & Main

When Cesar Chavez led a band of farm workers on their historic 300-mile march from Delano to Sacramento half a century ago, they prominently displayed banners of the Virgen de Guadalupe throughout the line. Why? Because that image held symbolic weight far beyond any other the group could carry.

We often dismiss such symbols as empty of meaning or hollow of intention. “It’s just symbolic,” people say. But those images or slogans can hold a deep emotional meaning that communicates in a moment what discursive language would take pages to evoke. The Virgin speaks of justice dating back to colonial Mexico. She illustrates a story of peasants lifted from their caste and honored. She embodies an empowerment beyond the social system that had kept the people powerless.   [Read more…]

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