San Diego Free Press

Grassroots News & Progressive Views

So-Called Religious Freedom Laws Amount to An Attack on Democracy

by

The culture wars aimed at dividing the nation are once again prominent in the media. Having lost battles in the courts and in the arena of public opinion, extremists have turned to state legislatures mired in the stone ages, thanks in large part to partisan gerrymandering.

Mississippi is the latest state to enact legislation allowing religious groups and private businesses to deny services to gay and transgender people in the wake of last year’s Supreme Court ruling effectively legalizing same-sex marriage.

Schools and companies would be allowed to set “sex-specific standards or policies concerning employee or student dress or grooming.” In other words, women could be told not to wear pants in Mississippi.   [Read more…]

Housed to Homeless in San Diego: Could It Happen to You?

by

Quick— imagine a homeless person. Did you conjure up the image of an utterly ordinary looking seventy year old white woman attending classes at SDSU? or a neatly dressed young Latino waiting at a bus stop? or a pregnant African American woman passing by your house? or a neighborhood kid who disappears and reappears and seems disconnected, rootless?

We don’t hear much about these men and women, young and old, who are homeless. Instead, we read about the uptrodden who have to deal with homeless people crapping on the sidewalk in front of their expensive condos downtown or the bad optics and shabby aesthetics of the tents and battered pieces of cardboard where the homeless visibly bed down every night, also downtown.

The reflexive stereotyping of the homeless demands little of us individually and collectively. It is therefore no surprise that our civic efforts in housing the homeless in San Diego have been such a dismal failure.   [Read more…]

The New Liberty Station Public Market – A First Look

by

As a recognized “foodie” I have anxiously awaited the opening of the Liberty Public Market. The one thing I miss most about living in the Bay Area is the “Berkeley Bowl” – a converted bowling alley turned into a multitude of food shops. From all I had heard, this new venture was a cross between the Bowl and the Seattle “Pike Place Market.” Even at my age I have not yet learned not to expect too much.

My friend Irene and I decided to take a look at this new venture on a Friday morning during the first week it was opened. Parking was relatively easy – but we noted it was packed when we left shortly after noon. We also found that most of “stores” did not open until 11:00am. But that suited our purpose, because we were just “lookie-loos” this first time around. Unfortunately, it might just be my “last time around.”   [Read more…]

How Planned Parenthood Helped a Friend

by

By Anne Haule / Musings of a Boomer Feminist

Lately there has been a lot of negative press about Planned Parenthood. Recently I wore pink and “stood with Planned Parenthood”. This got me musing about the past and a very special second-hand experience I had with Planned Parenthood in Chicago about 20 years ago.

My memory of that day is vivid. It was a beautiful crisp fall day as only Chicago can have with its bright blue sky, puffy white clouds, and tree-lined street of orange, red and yellow leaves.

I had just arrived home from an otherwise unremarkable day at my law office.

As I opened the door and said, “I’m home”, Lindy and my daughter came out of the kitchen carrying a tray with a teapot, mugs, and cookies. They each hugged me and then we all sat down to have some tea.

  [Read more…]

Joseph Medicine Crow, Last Crow War Chief and Living Link to Battle of Little Bighorn, Dies at 102

by

Devoted Indigenous rights advocate and chronicler of Plains Indian history died this weekend in hospice in Billings, Montana

By Nika Knight / CommonDreams

Joseph Medicine Crow, the last living Plains Indian war chief and a passionate historian, died on Sunday at age 102.

A member of the Crow tribe, Medicine Crow was an outspoken advocate for his people, whose suffering he witnessed in the wake of the U.S. government’s relegation of American Indian tribes to reservations and the policy of cultural genocide in government-run boarding schools.

  [Read more…]

Ballot Box Basics for San Diegans: What You Need to Know About the 2016 California Primary

by

Massive Voter Turnout Expected

California’s June elections are looking to be like the OK Corral of presidential primary contests this year. With Senators Ted Cruz and Bernie Sanders both besting their party’s frontrunners by 13 points in Tuesday’s Wisconsin voting, the Golden State’s large lode of delegates is rapidly gaining in significance.

Better than 600,000 Californians have registered to vote online or updated their information in the last three months, says California Secretary of State Alex Padilla in a letter to Gov. Jerry Brown. One unnamed campaign has reportedly requested 200,000 registration forms, according to Padilla, and he’s looking for an additional $32 million to handle predicted major surges in turnout for both the June 7 California primary and Nov. 8 general election.   [Read more…]

Progressive Debate Deepens as Sanders Battles Clinton for New York

by

On ‘wedge’ issues like nuclear power and minimum wage, Sanders and Clinton tout different approaches

By Deirdre Fulton / CommonDreams

Democratic presidential contenders Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton have finally agreed on a date for what is sure to be a spirited debate in Brooklyn ahead of New York’s primary on April 19. The candidates will face off on Thursday, April 14 for a debate moderated by CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer.

To accommodate the invitation, Sanders—who initiated the call for another televised debate on the heels of his landslide victories in Alaska, Hawaii, and Washington state—was forced to reschedule a New York City rally. His campaign had put forward a number of other suggested dates.   [Read more…]

The History of Abortion Is a History of Punishing Women

by

There were just as many abortions pre-Roe as there are today. The difference was women died

By Larry Schwartz / AlterNet

The issue of abortion is never very far from the American consciousness. It once again bubbled to the surface recently when Donald Trump, the frontrunner for the GOP presidential nomination, gave voice to the obvious: if you make abortion illegal, as all the Republican candidates, including Trump, profess to want to do, then there must be punishment for having an abortion. Trump opined, “There has to be some form of punishment” for the woman. When everyone pounced, he backtracked, saying maybe only the doctors should be punished.   [Read more…]

The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, San Diego Chapter

by

By Barbara Zaragoza

They’re witty. They’re irreverent. Their fully professed Sister names range from Sister Hungry Bitch to Sister Hysterectoria. The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, San Diego Chapter seek “to promulgate universal joy and expiate stigmatic guilt.”

They’ve been called drag queens. They’ve been called a sorority of gay men. As a matter of fact, to be a Sister is a calling and their focus is on helping community members who have been marginalized or ignored.   [Read more…]

Mexico Assumes Role of Turning Migrant Children Back

by

Steven Dudley

Human Rights Watch has chronicled violent drivers of the continuing child migration crisis, as well as how the US government has stealthily outsourced to Mexico the job of returning these kids to their often perilous homes.

The report titled “Closed Doors: Mexico’s Failure to Protect Central American Refugee and Migrant Children” (pdf) was based on 61 interviews with “refugees, asylum seekers, or migrants” between the ages of 11 and 17; more than 100 adults from the so-called Northern Triangle countries of Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala; as well as 65 interviews with officials and workers with governmental and non-governmental organizations who work on these issues.   [Read more…]

Fukushima + 5: the Disaster Continues – Nuclear Shutdown News for March 2016

by

On March 9, two days before the fifth anniversary of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, the Wall Street Journal ran this story, “Japanese Court Orders Shutdown of Nuclear Reactors.”

The paper reported that the court “issued an injunction to shut down two of the four reactors recently restarted” by Kansai Electric Co. because the utility failed to prove to the court’s satisfaction that it could operate those nukes safely.

Driving the process, the Journal reported, were organized and outspoken community members “worried about a repeat of the March 2011 Fukushima disaster.”   [Read more…]

Highways, Not Skyways Motivate Voters in SANDAG Polling for Ballot Measure

by

In just a few short weeks, the Board of the San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG) will vote on placing a half-cent sales tax increase on the November ballot. At stake are billions of additional dollars for transportation projects in coming decades.

The regional government group has released results from a just completed Competitive Edge survey of 1201 local voters, weighted for voting history, survey mode, age, party, gender, and subregion.

The ‘Good News’ is that there appears to be enough of a consensus to reach the two-thirds majority required for passage. The ‘Bad News” is that the 68% supporting the idea dwindles to 62% once arguments against it are presented. (But the trend is in the right direction if you’re an optimist.)   [Read more…]

©2010-2017 SanDiegoFreePress.org

Code is Poetry