ACLU Deputy Director, Immigrants’ Rights Project, Lee Gelernt speaks with All In’s Chris Hayes about the process of seeking asylum in the U.S., and the current Administration’s attempt to subvert that process in violation of current U.S. and international law. One recent attempt on November 9th was for Trump to issue a proclamation declaring that only those entering the United States at designated ports of entry would be eligible to apply for asylum. It then submitted a rule to the federal register, letting it go into effect immediately and without the customary period for public comment. After a number of civil rights groups took the government to court, Lee Gelernt successfully argued against that case, with Judge Jon S. Tigar of the United States District Court in San Francisco in Monday issuing a temporary restraining order blocking the implementation of that rule. [Read more…]
The Urgency of Transgender Safety, Legal Protections
Local ACLU joins suit against El Cajon Crunch Fitness Center
It is hard, if not impossible, to maintain awareness and then do something about the constant erosion of civil rights of minority populations in our country. The Trump administration never sleeps when it comes to undermining current laws or attempting to supplant them with cruel new ones, the Constitution be damned.
Recent news, both locally and national have underscored the degree to which transgender women and men sustain some of the worst weaponized bigotry and intolerance imaginable. They are paying with their lives, their employment opportunities and their ability to simply exist in society–you know, the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness guaranteed to each one of us. [Read more…]
After Their Traumatizing Journey, Asylum-Seeking Families Should Not Be Abandoned to Suffer On Our Streets
By Edward Sifuentes / ACLU of San Diego & Imperial Counties
One night in late October, volunteers with the San Diego Rapid Response Network received the first of many reports of asylum-seeking migrant families being released on the streets of San Diego by immigration authorities.
Many of the families, which included women and small children, were disoriented, hungry and penniless. Most knew no one in our region. They were literally strangers in a strange land.
These new arrivals – primarily from Central America and from as far away as Africa – are being abandoned on our streets because the Trump administration discontinued the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) program that helps asylum-seekers to coordinate their travel to loved ones throughout the United States. ICE says it no longer has room to hold migrant families long enough to finalize travel arrangements.
Consequently, ICE is now releasing asylum-seeking families into our communities without food, transportation or shelter – and without coordinating or even communicating with local governments or nonprofit agencies who want to help them. [Read more…]
On the Vile Technology of Self-Checkout Counters
By Eric Loomis / Lawyers, Guns & Money
Time to return to one of my oldest hobby horses: the horror of the self-checkout counter. Between no one knowing how to use them, the fact that companies are asking you to labor for free instead of paying people, and the job destroying side of them, this provides absolutely nothing positive for the world. Kaitlyn Tiffany has a good piece at Vox on these and other problems with them:
I saw a self-checkout in the Urban Outfitters in Herald Square and almost called the ACLU: Some lucky employee sits on a stool near the self-checkout stations and does nothing but remove ink tags from things before you buy them? Sure. What is a person if not just a slightly more dexterous arm than the ones that robots so far have?
Swimming With The Sharks: Or, Crime Does Pay (Big) in New York’s Gilded Age | Part I
By Mel Freilicher
As the city’s premier fence, Fredericka “Marm” Mandelbaum, a German-Jewish immigrant, accumulated more money and power than any woman in the Gilded Age, inconceivable for any woman engaged in legitimate business. A July 1884 New York Times article called her “the nucleus and center of the whole organization of crime in New York City.”
Her quite infamous career began as purveyor of stolen wares to dry goods merchants, legitimate commercial establishments, and many individuals, some in the underworld: first as a pushcart peddler, then out of a storefront on the lower east side, connected to a warehouse chock full of purloined merchandise of all kinds. It’s believed she herself never stole anything, but worked strictly as a fence. [Read more…]
No One Wanted Us – The Tragic Voyage of the SS St. Louis | Video Worth Watching
From the YouTube website:
In May, 1939, the SS St. Louis, a ship of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution left Hamburg, bound for Havana, Cuba. Without their knowledge, their landing passes had been voided by the Cuban President, Laredo Bru. When the ship arrived in Cuba, the passengers were not allowed to debark. Representatives from the Jewish Joint Distribution committee negotiated with the Cuban government, but to no avail. The passengers appealed to President Roosevelt to allow them to land in the United States, but they were again turned away. The ship was forced to return to Europe, where two-thirds of the passengers would perish in the Holocaust.
Current U.S. and international asylum policies and laws owe much to the eventual repudiation of that sort of reaction to the plight of refugees. [Read more…]
Chaos and Cruelty at the Border
We have become the barbarians at the gate
As if ripping children from their parents’ arms, locking them up in cages or sending them to facilities on the other side of the country weren’t the absolute low point of the Trump administrations response to immigrants seeking asylum, we are now tear gassing children.
Let that sink in for a moment. We are tear gassing children, who were reported as running screaming and crying from the tear gas canisters shot into Mexico, a foreign country, by US Border Patrol. (Imagine this situation reversed, with Mexico lobbying canisters into the US.)
There is essentially no operative immigration policy in this country.
[Read more…]
Oligarchy Sucks: Billionaires Are Undermining Our Democracy and Killing the Planet
We live under oligarchy. Yes, we have elections, but the interests of a tiny opulent minority are far better represented in our government than the concerns of the vast majority of Americans. That conclusion was the central takeaway of a Benjamin Page and Martin Giles study published a few years ago that grimly observed, “economic elites and organized interest groups play a substantial part in affecting public policy, but the general public has little or no independent influence.”
Now Page is back with two new academic partners, Jason Seawright and Matthew J Lacombe, and a new study that further unmasks the role of billionaires’ stealth role in driving American politics. Buried during the stretch run of the midterm elections, the Guardian published an article by the aforementioned trio outlining the thesis of their forthcoming book Billionaires and Stealth Politics that shows us how it is not the rich and famous we need to worry about but the very rich and unassuming donors to the coffers of the Kochs’ political causes. [Read more…]
Thrive Charter Schools All Hat and No Cattle
Excellent public relations and marketing mask a substandard educational program at the inappropriately named Thrive Public Schools (TPS). The misleading name indicates that this private business is a public school. It is not. Four years of assessments confirm that both San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD) and the County Office of Education (COE) were correct in 2014 when they denied TPS’s charter petition.
Jan. 7, 2014, SDUSD staff felt that TPS was not ready to open and reported to the board, “Staff recommends approval of the petition to establish Thrive Public School (Thrive) Charter School, for a five-year term beginning July 1, 2015, and ending June 30, 2020.” TPS leaders wanted a charter starting July 1, 2014. SDUSD board concluded TPS is “demonstrably unlikely to successfully implement the program” and denied the petition. [Read more…]
Op-Ed on the Status of the Select Committee on Homelessness
By Chris Ward
When I took office two years ago, San Diego’s urban core neighborhoods were in the midst of a homelessness crisis with no clear strategy to tackle the issue. My top priority has been improving our response to this devastating crisis, but one Councilmember can’t do it alone.
Building on successful approaches in other cities and national best practices, I outlined ideas and policies for a holistic response, and working with my colleagues, we’ve made important progress to increase funding, expand life-saving supportive services, and house our homeless. [Read more…]
KPBS’s Jean Guerrero Reporting on Conditions of Migrants Arriving in Tijuana | Video Worth Watching
KPBS’s Jean Guerrero was in Tijuana Sunday to report on the situation with the migrants that have been arriving from Central America. Here is some footage capturing the conditions around the municipal sports facility where the city is attempting to accommodate the arriving migrants. She also interviews a person who salvaged a spent tear gas canister from an earlier event where migrants approached the U.S. border. [Read more…]
Ana Tijoux – Antipatriarca | Video Worth Watching
Ana Tijoux was born in Lille, France in 1977, daughter of Chileans that had fled the 1973 Chilean coup of Pinochet. Her interest in rap, hip-hop and dance began in 1988, but she didn’t return to Chile until after 1973 when civil power was restored. This song is from her 2014 album Vengo and even though it’s in Spanish, I believe the sense of independence and autonomy will come through even for non-Spanish speakers. Equally as impressive is the evident diversity of her world. For me, it echoes the sensibilities of Edward Steichen’s The Family of Man.
Since lyrics can be difficult to discern, especially on a first listening, I’m including the lyrics after the video. [Read more…]
- « Previous Page
- 1
- …
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- …
- 747
- Next Page »
