San Diego Free Press

Grassroots News & Progressive Views

ACLU Report: Police Use Loophole to Profit from Innocent, Vulnerable Californians

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Policy brief exposes alarming cases of civil asset forfeiture abuse

By ACLU of San Diego and Imperial Counties

The American Civil Liberties Union of California released a policy brief Thursday, May 19, Civil Asset Forfeiture: Profiting from California’s Most Vulnerable, examining civil asset forfeiture abuse by California law enforcement agencies, a practice that greatly impacts communities of color and low-income Californians.

Under federal asset forfeiture laws, the government can legally and permanently forfeit a person’s property and money without charging the person with a crime, or seeking a conviction.   [Read more…]

Peering into the Heart of Darkness: Why I Oppose Mayor Faulconer’s FY’17 Budget

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I have attended close to a decade of budget hearings, always as an advocate for our library system.

But this year is different. I stand here before you as a person of conscience who has been witnessing first hand a burgeoning and permanent underclass of the dispossessed in City Heights and San Diego.

A growing population among us cannot find affordable places to live or jobs that pay a living wage. This is a crisis that we cannot ignore. Once people are reduced to living in the streets or their cars or a canyon the human and financial costs spiral out of control, becoming yet another crisis.   [Read more…]

Public Pays for Hedge Funds’ Profits

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By Donald Cohen / Capital & Main

What do 82 public libraries, a Texas beef-processing company and a string of Pizza Huts across Tennessee and Florida have in common?

They’re all managed by the same private equity firm.

Fifteen of those libraries are in Jackson County, Oregon, where public officials are starting to raise concerns over the firm’s ownership of the private contractor that manages them. Facing budget issues in 2007, the county contracted with Library Systems and Services (LS&S), the country’s largest library outsourcing company, to try to save money—but LS&S is owned by Argosy Private Equity, whose mission is to “generate outstanding returns” and “substantially grow revenues and profits” for the businesses it owns.   [Read more…]

San Diego Mobilizes Against Trump – Due Here Friday, May 27

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Four San Diego Networks or Groups Planning Protests

By Frank Gormlie

San Diego is mobilizing against Donald Trump’s appearance later this week when he stages a rally on Friday at the Convention Center.

At least four networks or groups are organizing protests outside the Trump rally. One of them has stated its intention of organizing something inside his event. One of the groups is mobilizing protesters from the LA area as well. And, of course, each network has their own facebook page.

The networks include:

  • Love trumps Hate Solidarity Network
  • Dump Trump San Diego
  • Smash Trump San Diego Anti-Trump Rally
  • Unión del Barrio Rally at Chicano Park

  [Read more…]

Sanders, Clinton and Trump, Oh My!

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San Diego Becomes Ground Zero in Presidential Contests (For a Few Days, Anyway)

As May slides into June, enthusiasm about election contests big and small is sweeping San Diego. Hope, an elusive feeling in an era of pessimism, is in the air.

Democrats Senator Bernie Sanders and ex-President Bill Clinton both campaigned in the area. Presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump is holding a rally at the Convention Center on Friday, prompting promises of protests from activists throughout the region.

Away from the bright lights and big crowds, campaigning for local offices has reached a fevered pitch. Democrats, environmentalists, and organized labor are providing volunteers, who are going door-to-door in City Council contests, backing up direct mail campaigns. Republicans are carpet bombing the city with money for TV ads, slick  (and often questionable) mailers and paid canvassers.   [Read more…]

On Dark Patches and Redemption

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Despite all our best efforts, things don’t always go the way we would hope. Sometimes we are stunned by the unexpected bad turn and left groping for answers…
…Sometimes the hard roads that our students travel get the best of them. Such was the case with the brilliant, shy young man who took his life at the very moment he was supposed to be turning in a final for one of my classes. Instead, he sent a group email to his instructors simply saying, “Goodbye.”

He was a smart, respectful young man who was always impeccably polite. In the classroom he was engaged and frequently smiled in the midst of our discussions. An “A” student who came to the office all the time, he never revealed much about himself. Circumspect, thoughtful, but guarded—no one would have suspected him to be in the grip of despair. As of this writing, nobody knows why he did it. But he did.
  [Read more…]

Eleanor’s Story: A Book and a Stage Production Not to be Missed

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I met a woman named Eleanor Ramrath Garner early in April at a nice party at a beautiful Del Mar home with a wonderful view on a warm inviting sunny day.

The gathering had everything I like: delicious food; refreshing drinks; interesting witty people, scholars all, practically, filled with colorful stories to tell and they didn’t mind telling them.

Some of them had written doctoral studies and books and essays for professional publications. Eleanor happened to mention that she was an author. She didn’t say what her book was about but something about her made me want to read it. So I looked for it on Amazon.   [Read more…]

The Sociological Imagination, Racism, and Trump

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It’s important to use appropriate and accurate language to describe Donald Trump’s supporters and the political cult leader himself.

By Chauncy DeVega / Daily Kos

The sociological imagination is the connection between personal experience and the broader social and political world. This concept is one of the most powerful frameworks for understanding the human experience and how we locate it within a given society and/or cultural milieu.

As such, the sociological imagination has been invaluable in my efforts to make sense of politics in the Age of Obama, the rise of “Trumpmania,” and the radical rightward move of the Republican Party and movement conservatism. Because such interactions are both disturbing and fascinating, I routinely take “human safaris” to overt white supremacist websites and the comment sections of Fox News and similar right-wing entertainment disinformation media. I also respond to conservatives via social media who are made enraged, hurt, and angry by the topics and themes explored by my essays and other work.

While the right-wing media exists in a state of epistemic closure—where the logic, reasoning, and rationales of the troglodytes stuck within are bizarre and exist outside of empirical reality—it remains essential that we pull back the veil and look inside: The machinations that are produced therein are a threat to the Common Good.   [Read more…]

Readers Write: Sanders Is the Hope of the Party

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By Michael-Leonard Creditor

Last Saturday, I joined more then 40 other San Diegans on a 350.org-sponsored trip to the Break Free From Fossil Fuels demonstration in Los Angeles. It was a good day of activism, but that’s not what this is about; this is just the set-up

On the way back, I realized that with this demonstration, being mirrored all over the world, climate action was taking a bold new step. It used to be, the mainstream environmental movement had the moderate goal of phasing out the use of fossil fuels as we further developed wind, solar, and other renewable energy sources. We seemed to know that we still needed some oil-based energy while those other forms are being developed.

No more. In the last few (or perhaps several) months, since the KXL pipeline was defeated, the drumbeat has grown more radical. Don’t defeat pipelines, and oil trains, and fracking separately; go right to the source.   [Read more…]

Looking Back at the Week: May 15-21

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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: SDFP picks for the June Primary, feeling the Bern in San Diego politics, the County $upervisors, Bernie and Bill make stops in SD, Trump coming to town, poverty the Cali way, the City Attorney forum, Norma Hernandez, a pissed off primary voter, students standing against la migra, the end of cannabis prohibition, 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…]

Readers Write: A Local High Schooler Feels The Bern

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By Luz Victoria

I’m in high school, too young to vote and I’m for Bernie.

At school I have heard my peers talking about Bernie’s visit to National City and they are excited. I can’t help but think about how National City is known for its poverty, and we would never have imagined a political name as big as Sanders planning to visit a place where the youth are predominantly black, brown, and Filipino students.

I’m a freshman in high school, and I’ve never been interested in a presidential race until now.   [Read more…]

Geo-Poetic Spaces: Another World

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Outside drawn curtains
many different worlds

Outside drawn curtains
orange eyedrops of ink
punctuating pages
between leaves   [Read more…]

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