San Diego Free Press

Grassroots News & Progressive Views

Don’t Get Distracted: 565 Immigrant Children Are Still Held by U.S. Authorities

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By Jake Johnson / Common Dreams

Amid a news cycle dominated by the day-to-day chaos, antics, and scandals of the Trump presidency, new government numbers released on Thursday offered a grim reminder that the humanitarian travesty sparked by President Donald Trump’s inhumane family separation policy is still ongoing, despite the fact that it has faded into the background of corporate news coverage.

In court filings on Thursday, lawyers for the Trump Justice Department said that 565 immigrant children remain separated from their parents and held in detention facilities more than three weeks after the court-mandated deadline for reunification.

While immigrant rights activists and advocacy groups have continued calling attention to the crisis and working tirelessly to ensure that every child is ultimately reunited with their families, much of the media “has largely moved on, worn out and dazzled by other outrages,” observed Toronto Star columnist Bruce Arthur.   [Read more…]

Southern Cross | Geo-Poetic Spaces

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The serpent in the rose garden
has monochromatic eyes
senses the heat of prey

A cold blooded predator
coiled up
in Jim Crow’s shallow grave

He poisons
the memory of lives sacrificed
for slavery’s sins

Takes a knee
for Robert E. Lee   [Read more…]

‘Brown’s Last Chance’ Could Be Our Last Chance To Avert Climate Change Apocalypse

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Brown’s Last Chance is a campaign demanding Governor Jerry Brown halt the development of unsustainable, polluting, fossil fuel infrastructure and begin an immediate phase-out of fossil fuels in California. If he’s unwilling to do so, a multitude of organizations (environmental, health, justice, community, consumer) are prepared to protest the upcoming Global Climate Action Summit.

This climate summit, held in San Francisco next month from September 12 to 14, was the brainchild of Gov. Brown. It was conceived of in response to President Trump withdrawing the United States from the international Paris Climate Accord. World leaders will be in attendance to continue the work of past international climate conferences to mitigate climate change. There will be numerous affiliate marches and rallies around the world (including San Diego’s Rise For Climate March) to demand a transformation to clean energy and real action on climate change.   [Read more…]

Walking the Talk – Parkland Students Take to the Road to Change the Nation’s Response to Gun Violence | Video Worth Watching

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The Parkland students who committed themselves to taking action to prevent gun violence in the U.S. organized a multi-city bus tour called “Road To Change”. It’s purpose was to encourage voter registration and turnout, with the hope that the newly empowered voters will turn out of office those officials who refuse to address the gun violence issue. The tour’s final stop was in Newtown, Connecticut, the site of the Sandy Hook elementary school attack nearly six years ago. Activists David Hogg and Bria Smith reflect on the tour and about what’s next.   [Read more…]

Aretha Franklin: the ‘Voice that Shook the Heavens’, the Woman Who Shook our Souls

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This past week we learned that Aretha Franklin was approaching the end of her life surrounded by friends, family and luminaries. During the ensuing days, images of Aretha and strains of her songs have been shared in the public sphere. Many of us have gone through our own personal play list of the Queen of Soul who died today.   [Read more…]

Editorial Statement: Who Is the Enemy of the People?

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Today – August 16 – in over three hundred editorials published in newspapers and on media platforms large and small across the country, the American press is standing up and renouncing president Trump’s declarations of the media as “the enemy of the people.”

The San Diego Free Press and the OB Rag join these denunciations, in the call to confront Trump first put out by The Boston Globe, which began its call with:

A central pillar of President Trump’s politics is a sustained assault on the free press. Journalists are not classified as fellow Americans, but rather “the enemy of the people.” This relentless assault on the free press has dangerous consequences. We asked editorial boards from around the country – liberal and conservative, large and small – to join us today to address this fundamental threat in their own words.   [Read more…]

Rapist Brock Turner’s Appeal Denied, Victim’s Statement Still Speaks Powerful Truth About Sexual Assault

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In a reassuring victory for assault victims everywhere, convicted rapist Brock Turner lost his appeal for another trial recently after his attorney, Eric S. Multhaup, argued that his client only sought to have “outercourse” with the former Stanford student he is convicted of assaulting — not intercourse.

For anyone wondering what that means, you’re not alone. The three-panel judges were at a loss as well.

“I absolutely don’t understand what you are talking about,” Justice Franklin D. Elia told Multhaup on August 8, according to Mercury News.

In 2016, Turner, then 20, was convicted of three felony counts of sexual assault: Assault with intent to commit rape of an intoxicated or unconscious person, penetrating an intoxicated person with a foreign object and penetrating an unconscious person with a foreign object. Rape charges initially brought against Turner were dropped as no penetration by him took place, and therefore no actual rape took place according to the law.   [Read more…]

Democrats Have Nothing to Fear but Fear Itself

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By Kerry Eleveld / Daily Kos

The results of an Ohio special election last week that many viewed as a harbinger for November—and that should have been a gimme for Republicans—aren’t even final yet. And yet even as the GOP candidate in Ohio’s 12th congressional district, Troy Balderson, clings to a lead of less than one percent over Democrat Danny O’Connor, a Washington narrative is developing that the Democratic advantage could all fall apart under the weight of either longtime liberal Nancy Pelosi of California or progressive phenom Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, depending on which article you read. 

It’s preposterous. As has been widely reported, House Democrats need to win 23 seats to regain control of the lower chamber and they have some 69 target districts that are less red than OH-12 and ripe for the picking. And yet there’s some scary myth out there that Pelosi’s too establishment and Ocasio-Cortez is too progressive and their mere presence is killing Democratic chances this fall.

Seriously, is this a joke? Just take note, they’re both women and supposedly they’re both the death knell for Democratic success this fall. The New York Times reported last week, for instance, that calls to “Abolish ICE,” partly led by Ocasio-Cortez, had “many Democrats fretting in competitive races.” In the meantime, reporters can’t seem to get enough of perseverating over some 50 Democratic House candidates who say they won’t back Pelosi for speaker if they’re elected or re-elected—something she actually encouraged them to do. Wow, it turns out Democrats truly have the big tent Republicans had been lauded for in theory for decades, but now that conservative advantage has morphed into a liberal liability and Democrats are doooomed!   [Read more…]

Group Asks District Attorney Stephan to Recuse Her Office from Investigation into Earl McNeil’s Death

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Monica Montgomery, Tasha Williamson, Mark Lane, Yusef Miller, and other community members held a press conference on Wednesday to publicly request that District Attorney Summer Stephan recuse herself and her office from the investigation into Earl McNeil’s death while in the custody of the National Police Department.

On August 10, 2018 the National City Police Department turned the investigation into Mr. McNeil’s death over to the San Diego County District Attorney’s Office. They are also asking DA Stephan to re-open every case where Earl McNeil was used as a law enforcement informant for the Office. 
  [Read more…]

Today is the Anniversary of Nixon’s Confidential Enemies List Memorandum | Video Worth Watching

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On this date, August 16th, in 1971, John Dean drafted a confidential memo that essentially outlined the structure of what is now popularly referred to as Nixon’s Enemies List. Rachel Maddow shows us the gory details from a copy of the original memorandum and notes that unlike the current administration’s very public retaliations against its perceived enemies, the Nixon administration believed it was necessary for this behavior to remain behind-the-scenes and covert. How times have changed!   [Read more…]

Despite Claims by Reform Opponents, Nobody Is Trying to Repeal Proposition 13 in 2020

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Somebody is threatening to touch California’s political third rail. You know, the one found in the Bible right after the Ten Commandments. I think it’s called–checks notes–Prop 13.

The 2018 general election is more than a couple of months away, and already the purveyors of fear are cranking up their noise machine for 2020. Visions of grannies being dumped off in the Arizona desert are being crafted for fundraising appeals to the Koch brothers and their ilk by so-called taxpayer groups.

What really happened is a coalition of over 270 endorsing community organizations, labor unions, business leaders, philanthropic foundations and elected officials, calling itself Schools and Communities First, held five simultaneous press conferences in  Area, Los Angeles, Fresno, San Diego, and San Bernardino. They’re proposing a ballot measure with sensible and long-overdue reforms to property tax assessments on business properties worth over $2 million in California   [Read more…]

After the Day San Diego’s Establishment Shattered; Lessons to Be Learned and a Way Forward

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By Cory Briggs

Something really good for San Diegans happened last Thursday: The rabid, asinine pursuit of a convention center expansion on the waterfront hit a concrete wall at 100 miles per hour.  But that wasn’t the best part about Kevin Faulconer’s last-minute effort to put a “citizens’ initiative” on the November 2018 ballot after an “unprecedented coalition” failed in its “Herculean effort” to gather enough signatures to clear the mark. 

For San Diegans, the best thing that could have happened was for The Establishment – the usual special-interest suspects on the right and the left who run City Hall – to break into a thousand tiny pieces.  That is indeed what happened.  Hallelujah!

I’m sure that my Twitter feed and e-mail inbox will start blowing up as soon as people read that last paragraph, if not before they finish this one.  I’m going to be accused of being anti-worker because, as those who had front-row seats to The Establishment’s demise last week know, some of the biggest names in San Diego’s labor movement were part of the “unprecedented coalition” that crashed and burned.  Many of them I consider good friends; outside City Hall, if I needed the shirts off their backs, they’d give them to me without hesitation (and vice-versa).   [Read more…]

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