San Diego Free Press

Grassroots News & Progressive Views

Progressive Politics Don’t Feel So Inclusive When You’re Latino

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Failing to understand the interests of 55 million Latinos has been one of the greatest political failures of our time. Latinos want to be heard on more than just immigration issues.

By Roberto Lovato / YES! Magazine

Locals say angels quietly protect the dead buried beneath the live oak trees of Sacred Heart Burial Park in Falfurrias, Texas. Since the oil bust decimated the fracking economy in recent years, Falfurrias and other towns dotting the coastal plains of southeast Texas have taken on a ghostly quiet, a quiet so encompassing you can hear at a distance the hissing and flapping of big white owls.

Juan Manuel Villarreal, a 66-year-old groundskeeper, tends the oaks and other flora in the cemetery. And he sometimes also tends to the dead.

“Look,” he says in Spanish, pointing to a gravesite. “Those are truck tire marks. Someone just drove over these graves.” The graves are one of Sacred Heart’s many unmarked mass graves dug over the course of more than a decade. In addition to the families buried here since the founding of Falfurrias in the early 20th century, Sacred Heart also has corners and holes reserved for its newest group: immigrants found dead on the giant ranches farther south.   [Read more…]

Mayor Faulconer’s Republican Unicorns: Jobs! And the Minimum Wage Veto

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The Committee for Slave Wages and Free Puppies for Everybody Lives On

Have you seen the Falconer for Mayor ads in social media yet? San Diego’s incumbent mayor is claiming credit –sort of– for a 34% drop in local unemployment since he was elected. If you buy into this claim, you’ll love the expected follow-up ads claiming credit for the sun rising, the sun setting, and better-than-usual surf in Ocean Beach.

Think of this employment claim as like a candidate standing next to a cardboard cutout of somebody famous, hoping for the perceived endorsement. In Faulconer’s case, this cutout could be anybody but a member of his own political party since it would be hard to find a living Republican with a positive economic record. And hasn’t he heard the proclamations from his fellow Republicans about how jobs are fleeing the People’s Republic of California?

Independent mayoral candidate Lori Saldaña called Falconer out this claim this week, pointing to the reality that San Diegans are working more for less money, thanks to his veto of a minimum wage increase in 2014.   [Read more…]

A Democratic Spring: Thousands March on Washington Demanding Fixes to a Broken Political System

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By Steven Rosenfeld / Alternet

Thousands of protesters from across America descended on the U.S. Capitol and Supreme Court on Monday, where hundreds of pro-democracy activists were arrested for blocking Congress’ doorstep and loud crowds of young people, undocumented familes and immigration advocates rallied at the Court.

The action was a stunning display of a growing and vibrant progressive spectrum, reflecting a determination to work together on a range of justice issues that define much of what’s wrong with America’s political system.

The day began together, with thousands filling a nearby park for early morning speeches, prayers and pledges to protest non-violently. They then marched toward the citadel of political and legal power, the Capitol and Supreme Court, where hundreds of democracy protesters broke off to get arrested and highlight their agenda—driven by the recent loss of voting rights and the reach of big money in politics. The immigrant rights advocates, including teenagers and children whose parents have been deported, gathered and rallied for hours before the Supreme Court, which was hearing a Republican-led lawsuit challenging President Obama’s executive orders to suspend immigration enforcement.   [Read more…]

2016 Goldman Environmental Awards Announced Under Shadow of Murder of 2015 Recipient, Berta Cáceres

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The Goldman Environmental Foundation announced Monday the six recipients of its annual Goldman Environmental Prize, the largest eco-related prize in the world. The prize, established in 1989 by the late civic philanthropists Richard and Rhoda Goldman, is also known as the Green Nobel. Chosen to represent Earth’s different geographic zones, each prize recipient will receive $175,000, no strings attached. It’s not unusual for them to donate their award or plow it back into their environmental efforts.

The recipients this year are Edward Loure, of Tanzania; Leng Ouch, Cambodia; Zuzana Caputova, of Slovakia; Luis Jorge River Herrera, of Puerto Rico; Destiny Watford, from the United States; and Máxima Acuña, of Peru.

An invitation-only ceremony tonight in San Francisco likely will be more solemn than usual. Early last month, one of last year’s recipients of the prize, Berta Cáceres, was found shot dead in a small town in her homeland of Honduras, near the border of El Salvador. The slaying is unsolved.   [Read more…]

Is Affordable Housing in the City of San Diego an Oxymoron? Part 1

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The City has squirreled away millions of dollars in off-budget funds which could be used for affordable housing and housing for the homeless

By Katheryn Rhodes and John Lawrence

In the City of Palo Alto, if you make less than $250,000 a year, you’re eligible for a housing subsidy. The city council has voted to study a housing proposal that would essentially subsidize new housing for what qualifies as middle-class nowadays, families making from $150,000 to $250,000 a year.

Here in San Diego the situation is not much better as teachers, police and government workers cannot afford to live in the city they work in. So if middle class, college educated professionals can’t afford to live here, how can anyone else lower on the economic ladder afford to live here either? In particular those on the bottom most rung, the homeless, can’t even afford a foot in the door.   [Read more…]

Replacing Rasputin: A Subtext of the Election Contest for City Attorney

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Termed-out City Attorney Jan Goldsmith felt free to drop the pretense of serving all the public last week during his introduction of Texas Senator Ted Cruz at a campaign rally in Mission Valley.

“We believe in jobs, freedom and security. You know something? The Democrats don’t believe in these values,” Goldsmith said. So much for my theory that he wasn’t an ideologue.

The point here is that the current occupant of that office has utilized the resources available to him to protect political allies, namely the ones who believe that a plurality of the electorate owes its allegiance to a political party in the city engaged in undermining “jobs, freedom and security.”   [Read more…]

Listen Liberal: What’s the Matter with the Democratic Party?

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Thomas Frank has written the most important political book of 2016, and one that should disturb and hopefully influence progressives for years to come. If you have ever found yourself not just horrified by the lunatic right but also frustrated by the hapless and compromised “left,” Frank is your man. If you want to feel good about “your side” but are still troubled by the fact that economic inequality remains at historically high levels despite the last eight years of Democratic Presidential rule, Frank has some uncomfortable truths for you to ponder.

And it’s not just about those damn Republicans.

In his new book, Listen Liberal: What Ever Happened to the Party of the People?, Frank does his usual stellar job of research and analysis where he painstakingly makes his case by using the words of his subjects to illustrate his argument.   [Read more…]

Experience and Explosive Situations

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Scrolling down my facebook timeline
I found that someone had written words in line
with the idea
that Hillary’s lengthy experience
in foreign policy
makes her a better choice than Bernie
for the presidency.
The words went thusly:
“Consider… North Korea hits South Korea
and Tokyo simultaneously
with ballistic nukes.
I think Hillary could deal with it.
Bernie is unproven.”   [Read more…]

Working Without a Net

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By Tom Sullivan / Digby’s Hullabaloo

David Dayen shares scenes from his life in the “gig” economy, or what he calls “the 1099 Economy.” They are tales a lot of freelance writers can relate to, I imagine, as well as anyone working for themselves and receiving no benefits. Perhaps the most startling bit of data from research by Princeton’s Alan Krueger and Harvard’s Lawrence Katz is that the growth in those sorts of jobs accounts for pretty much the entire growth in the job market over the last decade. It is one key reason, Dayen argues, why voters are angry:   [Read more…]

San Diego’s Earth Fair 2016: All in for the Environment

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Sunday, April 17th. EarthFair Day.

Having heard all the warnings about trying to drive to Earth Fair–not to mention the irony–, I took the bus.

The Number 7 bus was a half hour late and it dropped me on the corner of Park & University. It wasn’t going anywhere near that mess in Balboa Park. Eventually, the Balboa Park “shuttle” appeared. After quibbling with the driver when he asked for another fare, we sped three blocks south only to get in line. Hurry up and wait.   [Read more…]

Looking Back at the Week: April 10-16

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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: elections in the South Bay, is a Dem really a Dem?, the TMD/Convadium/Citizens somethingoranother, Hillary vs Bernie, change we can believe in, those that fought for $15, Norma Hernandez, SDPD’s rape kit backlog, more South Bay election stuff 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…]

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