According to Indivisible activists, about 100 to 150 people rallied this morning at a press conference held on the steps of the County Administration Building to protest opposition to the anticipated Supervisor vote on whether to oppose Brown’s sanctuary laws.
After the rally – where a number of people spoke – the crowd went upstairs to the Supervisor’s chambers on the third floor. There were so many people that the spill-over room had to be used.
The San Diego City Council is moving to close a term limits loophole allowing incumbent District 2 Councilwoman Lorie Zapf to run for a third term in the upcoming elections. Current law allows sitting council representatives to reset the clock on term limits when their districts shift due to redistricting.
The Council’s Rules Committee voted lasted week to have the City Attorney draw up a charter amendment closing the loophole for consideration by voters in the November elections. If approved, it would take effect in 2020.
Councilwoman Lorie Zapf would not be eligible for a third consecutive four-year council term if the proposed change was already in place. It’s been more than 25 years since an incumbent councilperson has lost an election in San Diego. [Read more…]
Spoken without words. There is poetry in the deaf community as well. Here is Crom Saunders’ RAINBOW BRIDGE- an ASL poem about the Orlando tragedy. [Read more…]
On Tuesday, April 17, the San Diego County Board of Supervisors will meet in closed session to consider endorsing the Trump administration’s lawsuits challenging California’s legislation offering some minimal protections for immigrants.
While the Supes action is mostly symbolic, it is a statement of values. It is an affirmation of a cruel campaign waged by militarized forces, based on irrational fears, and drummed up by those who seek to disenfranchise all minorities as a means of building a political base.
Progressive organizations from throughout the region will rally at the County Administration building, starting at 8am. The weekly Indivisible protests outside Congressman Darrel Issa’s Vista office are moving downtown in solidarity. [Read more…]
Today’s column will come as a shocker to some folks. I’ve thought long and hard about this as someone who regularly offers up analysis of current events.
I grew up as a writer steeped in loathing for the establishment press. The hostility displayed towards the ideals and dreams of a generation that thought they could change the world needed to be answered. And our Smith-Corona typewriters were going to get it done.
Now I’m going to tell you the time has come where this attitude is counter-productive. A relentless assault on reason has led me to the conclusion that the best defense against propaganda is a flood of facts, even when the messengers aren’t on the same page as we are. [Read more…]
Editor’s Note: We’re giving Jim Miller’s column a week off to celebrate the publication of his new book.
By Ian Duckles
Jim Miller’s new book Last Days in Ocean Beach (City Works Press, 2018), explores the question of how to live one’s life in the face of looming catastrophic climate change. The novel, like life, is challenging, depressing, hopeful, sad, and filled with moments of incredible beauty and incredible tragedy and is highly recommended.
[Read more…]
If I’m breathing April 18th, 2018,
I will be 80 years old.
And to brag a little bit,
I lived those years
with a lot of love in my soul
and that’s quite an ac-com-plish-ment
for someone with
COLORED written on his birth cer-ti-ficate [Read more…]
Barring intervention by courts or its governor, Alabama will kill an 83-year-old man on April 19; long-incarcerated for the 1989 mail-bomb killings of United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit Judge Robert S. Vance and civil rights attorney Robert E. Robinson, Walter Moody, Jr.’s wizened, withered body, will, three decades after his crimes, be strapped to a gurney, pricked with a sharp needle (possibly many, many times), and pumped full of chemicals until he is dead.
Why? Other than the reactionary, regressive idea of “retribution” – whose flawed moral underpinning is interchangeable with bloodthirsty, wild, wild West revenge – how will justice be served? And, for whom? [Read more…]
From the Huffington Post’s Latino Voices:
Acevedo told The Huffington Post that the poem is inspired by the thoughts that run through her head when she hears that yet another black man has been shot and killed by police. “I was cooking black beans the day when the Jordan Davis case went to trial, and I was distracted, thoughtless in some ways, and the pot boiled over and the beans burned,” Acevedo said. “Something about that image really struck home. How the stove smudged, how the beans look when they’re split open, how heavy my heart was over this kid in Florida. But the history of Moros y Cristianos (Moors and Christians) also played into the moment. This is a Caribbean dish of simple ingredients, rice and beans elevating the other. It’s also A dish named after the Moor conquest of Spain. The racial dynamics in all of that: the Caribbean, Spain and North Africa, Jordan Davis, coalesced through that metaphor. It was how I was able to enter the poem by exploring that moment and my stake in it as an Afro-Latina and partner of a black man.”
This week’s edition of Looking Back at the Week contains articles, commentaries, columns, and other work by San Diego Free Press regulars, irregulars, columnists, cartoonists, at-large contributors, and locally and nationally sourced writers on National Poetry Month, Trump teetering, the stench of SD politics, Kasparian’s depositions and his vendetta in National City, shady Marshall Tuck, Barrio Logan residents getting screwed again, and lots of other grassroots news & progressive views from San Diego’s feisty, all volunteer, slightly funky, community news site. [Read more…]
O.K. I think enough time has elapsed since Despacito burst onto the music scene that I can once again hear that tune and not run screaming from the room. Especially if the tune is sung by a very talented musical chicken. Hmm, wonder if he’s any relation to Foghorn Leghorn … Enjoy! [Read more…]
