San Diego Free Press

Grassroots News & Progressive Views

San Diego Free Press to Suspend Publication After Dec. 14

by

We — the people who’ve overseen this platform called the San Diego Free Press — have decided it’s time to move on. December 14, 2018 will be our last day of posting.

We’re going out on a high note. We’ve just had our best two months ever in terms of readership. We have funds in the bank, and — most importantly — all of us on the Editorial Board remain friends. So, sorry to disappoint, but there’s no drama to report.

It’s just time. The political and media landscape is changing. For now, let’s just say we’re suspending operations.   [Read more…]

Changes – David Bowie | Video Worth Watching

by

Ch-ch-ch-changes are coming …   [Read more…]

Xenophobia, Tijuana-Style: Caravan Migrants Fear Angry Mob

by

It’s a Trumpian dream come true in TJ: mobs seeking to attack migrants as they arrive seeking asylum.

With passions inflamed by –at best– hyperbolic claims made on social media, anti-migrant protests led by various right wing groups have been taking place as elements of the caravan demonized by the U.S. President and his cohorts have been arriving in Tijuana.

One Facebook post claimed Hondurans tortured and killed a dog. Another claimed LGBTQ migrants were seeking molest children.   [Read more…]

“New Deeds for New”: Young Activists and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Demand a Green New Deal

by

Nothing in the wake of the midterm elections made me quite as happy as the sight of the newly elected Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez joining young climate activists who were protesting outside of Nancy Pelosi’s office in Washington, D.C.

The protesters, who were part of the Sunrise Movement, put their demands bluntly: “They offer us a death sentence. We demand a Green New Deal.”   [Read more…]

Rake America Great Again

by

God bless the Finns. They’ve been there for us after the Idiot-In-Chief visited a ravaged California – the death count is now 80, with 993 feared dead – stood awkwardly in the rubble of what was once Paradise, which he called “Pleasure,” and spewed gibberish.

Because many, many people say he knows the best words about how to stop fires, he intoned, “You gotta take care of the floors. You know the floors of the forest, very important…”

He went on, I was with the president of Finland and he said, ‘We have a much different – we’re a forest nation.’ He called it a forest nation, and they spent a lot of time on raking and cleaning and doing things. And they don’t have any problem. And when they do, it’s a very small problem, and when it is…I know everyone is looking at that.”   [Read more…]

Lessons From the Continuing Assault on Kansas City Public Schools

by

For three decades relentless harm has been visited upon public schools in Kansas City, Missouri. This city provides stark evidence for the fallacy of school choice and the folly of employing standardized testing results to gauge school quality.

Leaders from the Kansas City Public Schools (KCPS) presented at the recent Network for Public Education (NPE) conference in Indianapolis, Indiana. This article is in part based on that presentation.   [Read more…]

FRANKLIN: A Night With an Addict

by

By Jae Bireley

Franklin cuts down a line of white cocaine with a credit card in his Honda. The time passes slowly, it’s a little after midnight and Franklin can’t sleep, he rambles incoherent white-powdered conspiracies about himself and others.

“An old girlfriend introduced me to coke ….”

We puff on cheap 7/11 cigarettes in his car as he snorts his line of coke before offering me a hit. I pass. I don’t snort or shoot up. He rolls down the window and throws the butt of his cigarette out, and spits onto the concrete. Time feels like it doesn’t exist, were in another era and reality. One, that’s melted away. Death is the first thought that enters my mind as he buries away his coke in a bag.   [Read more…]

As Camp Fire Death Toll Rises, Meet the Prisoners Making $1 an Hour to Fight California’s Wildfires | Video Worth Watching

by

From the Democracy Now! YouTube web page:

As California continues to battle the deadliest fire in the state’s history, we turn to the hidden heroes on the front lines the raging climate-fueled wildfires: prisoner firefighters. At least 1,500 of the 9,400 firefighters currently battling fires in California are incarcerated. They make just a dollar an hour battling on the front lines but are rarely eligible to get jobs as firefighters after their release. In September, the Democracy Now! team traveled to the Delta Conservation Camp about an hour north of San Francisco, a low-security prison where more than 100 men are imprisoned. We interviewed incarcerated firefighters who had just returned from a 24-hour shift fighting the Snell Fire in Napa County.

  [Read more…]

Franchise Freedom at Burning Man 2018 | Video Worth Watching

by

From the Studio Drift YouTube web page:

In their work Studio Drift often contemplates the concept of freedom. “Franchise Freedom” visualizes the connection between a group and the individual by mimicking a swarm of starlings. As dusk fell over Black Rock City, 600 luminous drones rose into a hypnotic display of technological choreography, accompanied by the poignant keys of Joep Beving. The drones were guided by a specially made algorithm that simultaneously allows both individual choice and movement as a group. The innovative technology made it possible to create a 3d image in the sky that could be viewed from multiple angles.

  [Read more…]

Chavela Vargas – La Llorona (with Images of Frida Kahlo) | Video Worth Watching

by

I’m a Frida Kahlo fan, what can I say? This is also a consummate rendition by Chavela Vargas of the classic Mexican folk song La Llorona, but it’s the selection of Frida Kahlo’s works and the depictions of her that truly spellbinds me.   [Read more…]

Can We ‘Just Be Friends’ With Facebook?

by

A long look by the New York Times into how Facebook has responded to “cascading crises — over Russian misinformation, data privacy and abusive content” provides insight into the true nature of the most popular social media platform. And it should inform how or whether you should continue your relationship with (almost) everybody’s favorite social media platform.

Facebook’s pretensions have turned it into a useful idiot of the right, according to Guardian technology writer Alex Hearn.

  [Read more…]

A Historic 2,000+ Women Will Be in Office This Coming Year—Almost Entirely From One Political Party

by

When conservatives scoff at the progressive slogan “The Future is Female,” they are usually responding to the insecurity that comes with knowing, deep down inside, you are in the wrong.

The strides that women, people of color, and the LGBT community have made in organizing around the 2018 midterm elections is staggering. It’s absolutely terrifying to the Right, and you are seeing desperate and craven attempts to bully and suppress the levels of democracy they’ve inspired.

In January of the last two years, beginning on Donald Trump’s inauguration day in 2017, Women’s Marches have taken over the streets across not just the United States, but the world. These marches were not simply a public protest of our current misogynist in chief; they were a call to organize and take back our government.   [Read more…]

©2010-2017 SanDiegoFreePress.org

Code is Poetry