Category: Election

To get a sense of the depth and breadth of the new anti-Trump “Indivisible” movement that has exploded across the country, – consider this just here in San Diego: last Saturday, February 4th, three different networks of Indivisible San Diego held rallies and meetings on that same day.

There was a large gathering of at least 60 folks who met in Point Loma, that we carried a report on, there was a meeting of 200 at a coffee house in downtown San Diego, and up in Hillcrest, there was a third rally and meeting of another 200 people. This was all on the same day.

By Ernie McCray

I was watching Stephen Colbert the other night, laughing away at his brilliant witticisms and daffiness, and a segment came on wherein a visual, referring to Trump’s “ban,” read, in part, “…a five year old was handcuffed…”

I stopped chuckling for a moment in reaction to such a terrible statement, trying to picture a five year old being shackled. But Colbert was on a flow so I had to let that go and next up on the show was White House Press Secretary, Sean Spicer, commenting on the little boy’s inhuman predicament with these words:

By Annie Lane / San Diego Free Press

While Mike Pence decided to recognize Black History Month by honoring a white man, Donald Trump was busy vaguely listing the few black people he’s heard of throughout his 70-plus years of ignorant life in a zero-hearted attempt to care about anyone other than himself.

One such man was Frederick Douglass, the ex-slave turned abolitionist, author, suffragist, editor and diplomat. Here’s what Trump said:

“Frederick Douglass is an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job and is getting recognized more and more, I notice.”

The one thing Trump didn’t notice? Douglass died in 1895.

“Indivisible” Leaders Plan Comprehensive Campaign to Sway Congress

February 7 “Resist Trump Tuesday” Targets Feinstein, Harris, Issa, Hunter

POINT LOMA, CA – More than 60 San Diegans united in Point Loma on Saturday, Jan. 4th to defeat President Trump’s agenda through direct advocacy to members of Congress, and other elected officials.

Representing many of the five dozen “Indivisible” groups that have formed in the San Diego region since the election, the leaders met to network and strategize to maximize their impact through collective action.

The overflow crowd had to move to a larger room at a Point Loma community center to accommodate the attendees, who hailed from Alpine, Ramona, La Mesa, Carlsbad, Capitol Heights, La Jolla, Point Loma, Fallbrook, Tierrasanta and many other communities.

There is a nation-wide group that is organizing a boycott of companies that carry Trump products, or are owned by Trump or have other relationships with him. It’s call #GrabYourWallet and they believe economic push-back by American citizens and others is a very valid form of protest.

Their campaign has already been going on for nearly 4 months now and it has achieved some successes. Here is how they describe themselves and their history:

The #GrabYourWallet movement tracks & boycotts retailers that sell Trump family products as well as corporate leaders who enabled the political rise of the Trump family through fundraising and/or endorsements.

Tenants Are Encouraged to Run as Candidates for Board

Every year community planning boards and committees around the city hold their annual elections – most of them – in March.

And the Ocean Beach Planning Board is no different. The annual election to the panel of OB volunteers who make recommendations about projects that come before it to the city is being held Wednesday, March 15th. The balloting takes place inside the OB Recreation Center.

Any tenant, resident, property owner or business owner in Ocean Beach can take part in the election.

Importantly, everyone from these categories can also be a candidate for one of the seats on the 14-member Board.

So, if interested, check the district map for the district of your residence or business or property. At least one seat in each of the 7 districts is up for election each year.

CANDIDATE ELIGIBILITY REQUIREMENTS INSIDE

This Is Not an Issue of “Free Speech” for a White Nationalist with Connections to the White House

Risking becoming the lone voice in today’s wilderness, we say today that somebody has to say “thank you” to the UC Berkeley students and community members who demonstrated against the white nationalist Breitbart News senior editor back on Wednesday, February 1st, and helped cause the campus to cancel the talk by Milo Yiannopoulo.

So, thank you.

The whole incident has now blown up, with claims the protesters violated free speech, with Trump threatening to cut off funds to UC Berkeley – which he cannot do unilaterally – and the subsequent push-back against him from school and California officials.

Trump’s Supreme Court nominee could enact revenge against the EPA

By David Helvarg / Sierra Feb 1 2017

Neil Gorsuch, who won the rose from Donald Trump as one of two finalists for a Supreme Court nomination, is a deeply conservative choice in the mold of the late Antonio Scalia.

He is also the poisoned fruit of a partisan refusal to hold confirmation hearings on Judge Merrick Garland, who was President Obama’s nominee for Scalia’s vacant seat. That constitutional hostage drama played out very well for the hostage takers.

If Gorsuch is confirmed (something that the Sierra Club and groups across the progressive movement have vowed to prevent), his ascendance to the nation’s highest court might also play out as a family revenge-drama against U.S. environmental laws.

From City Heights Town Hall to Airport Protest

By Anna Daniels / San Diego Free Press

“Tell me what democracy looks like!”

“This is what democracy looks like!”

The chant ran up and down the whole length of Terminal 2 of San Diego’s Lindbergh Airport, up and down the opposite side of the terminal and could be heard on the second floor walkway. Three lines of cars ran between the two and those cars honked their horns while passengers waved flags and held signs outside of the windows.

By TG Branfalt / Ganjapreneur

San Diego California’s city council unanimously voted to allow adult-use cannabis sales at the cities current 15 medical dispensaries once the voter-backed program is fully implemented, the San Diego Union-Tribune reports. Officials also indicated they would consider regulations later this year that would permit commercial cannabis cultivation, testing, and distribution.

A “sunset clause” is included in the measure, which requires the council to vote whether or not to allow cultivation within nine months.

By David Helvarg / The Progressive

As a coastal developer, Donald Trump has bulldozed ancient sand dunes and opposed offshore wind turbines (because they “ruined the view”) in Scotland, sought to build seawalls and fill in (smother) seagrass meadows and coral reefs in Florida, and built golf club luxury homes on a geologically unstable bluff in California where the eighteenth hole had earlier fallen into the sea.

Myron Ebell, the man Trump tapped to oversee the transition team at the Environmental Protection Agency, is a well-known climate-change denier from the libertarian (and partly fossil fuel funded) Competitive Enterprise Institute. In the past he’s worked as the D.C. lobbyist for Chuck “Rent-a-Riot” Cushman, one of the more extreme leaders of the Wise Use movement of the 1990s. Ebell also promoted “safer cigarettes” (the “clean coal” of our lungs) with funding from Philip Morris.

Today, January 31st, the San Diego City Council will vote on a proposal involving recreational marijuana, that allows recreational marijuana sales, but would ban commercial and restrict personal cultivation and testing for safety and potency.

In response to the proposed ban, the Ocean Beach Planning Board wrote the City Council members to express their positions and concerns.