San Diego Free Press

Grassroots News & Progressive Views

Tens of Thousands March in Mexico City in Support of Striking Oaxaca Teachers

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By Lauren McCauley / Common Dreams

“You are not alone,” was the message tens of thousands of supporters sent to striking teachers in Oaxaca during a massive demonstration in Mexico City on Sunday.

Protesters marched against the government’s violent response to the teacher strikes and other dissension, as well as Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto’s neoliberal policies that spurred the educator protests and emboldened a wider backlash against his regime of privatization and repression—fueling many calls for his resignation.   [Read more…]

For Private Prison Companies, Orange Is the New Green

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By Donald Cohen / Capital & Main

Private prison companies are extremely secretive, but in the last few weeks we’ve gotten two powerful glimpses of how these companies harm prisoners and the people that work for them.

Recently, Netflix released the latest season of its fictional drama series depicting female prisoners, Orange Is the New Black. The show’s prison, now managed by a private company, receives a flood of new prisoners and becomes dangerously understaffed.

Piper Kerman, the former prisoner whose experience the show is based on, wrote, “This is true to reality—to maximize profit for their investors and reduce operational costs, private prisons often cut corners on staffing and other essentials of safety.”   [Read more…]

Supreme Court Strikes Down Texas Targeted Regulation of Abortion Provider Law

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The Supreme Court’s 5-3 ruling in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt will affect millions of women in several states. The case, arising from a Texas law, is the most important abortion rights case in a generation.

Justice Steven Breyer penned the majority opinion, which said in essence:

Both the admitting privileges and surgical center requirements place a substantial obstacle in the path of women seeking a previability abortion, constitute an undue burden on abortion access, and thus violate the Constitution.

  [Read more…]

2016 Summer Chronicles 2: Last Days of the Honeycreepers and Honeyeaters

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There is something deeply and tragically resonant about extinction in paradise. After returning from a hike on Haleakala where I was lucky enough to have spotted a number of rare birds, I sat on the lanai of my room on the edge of the Maui rainforest and read this from Errol Fuller’s haunting book, Lost Animals: Extinction and the Photographic Record:

There are two groups of birds on the Hawaiian Islands that are notorious for the number of extinct species they contain. Although these birds are not particularly closely related, they have names that are similar and this sometimes causes confusion. The birds of one group are known as honeycreepers, and the others as honeyeaters. Both names derive from the fact that many species feed on nectar, although most also eat other things like blossoms, insects or mollusks.   [Read more…]

On the 140th Anniversary of Custer’s Well-Remembered Demise, Why Is California Genocide Forgotten?

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By Meteor Blades / Daily Kos

June 25th marked the 140th anniversary of the Little Big Horn Battle, known as Custer’s Last Stand to Americans at the time and ever afterward. Remembered as the Battle of the Greasy Grass among the Lakota (Sioux), Cheyenne and Arapahoe, it’s hard to overstate how much the 7th Cavalry’s defeat in the hills of Montana that June day in 1876 affected the nation then and how it has shaped and reshaped subsequent views of both Custer and American Indians.

In the past couple of weeks, there have already been a few published commentaries about the battle and its impacts, including this fascinating New York Times piece: A Real War Story, in Drawings. It looks at colored pencil pictographs of the battle drawn five years after it occurred by Red Horse, a Mniconjou Lakota.   [Read more…]

Chomsky: Corporate Globalization Is Not Inevitable

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Interview conducted by James Resnick / E-International Relations

Noam Chomsky is Emeritus Professor of Linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Seen by many as “the father of modern linguistics”, his work as a theoretical linguist from the 1950s revolutionized the field of linguistics by treating language as a uniquely human, biologically based cognitive capacity. Through his contributions to linguistics and related fields, including cognitive psychology and the philosophies of mind and language, Chomsky helped to initiate and sustain what came to be known as the “cognitive revolution.” Chomsky has also gained a worldwide following as a political dissident for his analyses of the pernicious influence of economic elites on U.S. domestic politics, foreign policy, and intellectual culture.

The author of more than 120 books, Chomsky is widely recognized as a paradigm shifter who helped spark a major revolution in the human sciences, and is one of the most cited scholars in the last few decades. His most recent documentary, Requiem for the American Dream, focuses on the defining characteristic of our time—the deliberate concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a select few.   [Read more…]

Looking Back at the Week: June 19-25

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This week’s edition of Looking Back at the Week features articles, commentaries, columns, satire, and other work by San Diego Free Press regulars, irregulars, columnists, at-large contributors, and sourced writers on: the homeless purge, sad Donald, sadder Issa, Congressional Democrat sit in, Brexit, Border Fire, Da Bonnie losing another mmj case, the Nevada water grab, clean energy initiatives in North County, shell game land stuff in Carlsbad, valuing public space, and lots of other inspiring (and sometimes depressing), grassroots news & progressive views from San Diego’s friendly, neighborhood, all volunteer, slightly funky, community news site.   [Read more…]

Carlos and Linda LeGerrette : Lives Forever Changed by Farm Worker Organizing

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Linda and Carlos LeGerrette are known in San Diego for their Chicano activism, particularly with farm workers. They started César Chávez clubs in San Diego and have been politically active for decades. They continue to be examples of what can be achieved when working together, not only in marriage but through a shared value system. Like many of us, they have had their share of life’s ups and downs. Both grew up poor but as Linda puts it they weren’t aware of that because everyone around them was also poor.   [Read more…]

Let Them Eat Rocks

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This has been a helluva week for those of us helping people without a place to live.

There were plenty of tweets and Facebook posts about the heatwave, as well as the Border fire that was threatening several communities out in East County. But unlike the all-out effort to help residents, pets and livestock in the path of the fire, there was no effort to help the residents of downtown under direct assault from a relentless sun.

Except for access to the library which, for those living on the street, would entail leaving all of your few meager possessions outside, unattended, there was no Health and Human Services program to help them.   [Read more…]

Geo-Poetic Spaces: The Empty Bench

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An empty bench
listening waves
meditating trees
contemplating river

An invitation
to pause
streaming video   [Read more…]

Brexit: Not in Black and White

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Millions of words will be written over the coming weeks about the vote in Great Britain to leave the European Union, popularly know as Brexit. I’ll point to a few commentaries striking me as important as I surveyed the news this morning.

The immediate reaction in the Western media has been predictions of doom and gloom, backed by reports of stock prices declining. Nationalists worldwide are celebrating, as if a symbolic wall ala Trump has been erected. Nativists and xenophobes are thrilled that their messages about the “other” have resonated with the English electorate.

The truth of the matter is much more complicated. Attempts to put a left/right spin on the circumstances leading up to the vote fail to portray the many moving parts in play. However, the political parallels between the forces favoring disengagement and the rise of Donald Trump cannot be ignored in the context of the upcoming general elections.   [Read more…]

Evacuations Ordered As Border Fire Rages …

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… Three South Bay Mayors Endorse Tax Increase, and Shady History of Otay Mesa Power Plant Exposed

A fire at the U.S.-Mexico border near Portero and Tecate has been raging for five days. Although not near San Diego and Tijuana yet, the fire has South Bay locals worried. Some of the week’s updates included: Animal control officers worked to rescue hundreds of animals; residents were under evacuation orders Monday and hikers were advised to stay off the Pacific Coast Trail. As of Thursday, the border fire had destroyed 17 homes and threatened 200 more. The fire has burned 6,723 acres so far.   [Read more…]

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