San Diego Mayoral Candidates Address Queer Community (tags)
When this year's major candidates for Mayor of San Diego — City Councilmember Carl DeMaio, County District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis, Assemblymember Nathan Fletcher and Congressmember Bob Filner — addressed the Queer community March 28, the irony that gripped the room was that the two openly Queer candidates, DeMaio and Dumanis, were running to the right of the non-Queer Fletcher and Filner. DeMaio, who in other contexts has said he wants to be "the Scott Walker of San Diego," dominated the event with his anti-labor pension "reform" proposal and his refusal to acknowledge the leadership of San Diego's Queer community even though he is Queer himself.
The San Diego Mayoral Candidates That Didn't Bark (tags)
When A Better San Diego, a coalition made up largely of labor unions and their affiliates, sponsored a debate among the four leading candidates for Mayor of San Diego in next year's election, only two showed up. The no-shows were City Councilmember Carl DeMaio, whose whole campaign is based on targeting city workers as the source of San Diego's economic woes, and District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis, both Republicans. A third Republican, Assemblymember Nathan Fletcher, and Democratic Congressmember Bob Filner attended and differed on city workers' pensions, outsourcing city jobs to private companies and many other issues.
America's Barbaric Death Penalty (tags)
barbarism
Fletcher Rallies Progressive Crowd to Fight the Right (tags)
The leaflet advertising author and former labor educator Bill Fletcher's talk September 13 in Balboa Park promised a considerably more optimistic speech than the one he actually gave. Stunned by the mass demonstration in Washington, D.C. by radical-Right opponents of President Obama's supposedly "socialist" agenda, Fletcher gave a strongly worded warning to his Leftist audience that unless the American Left organizes now, not only to fight the Right but to appeal to the hearts and minds of ordinary Americans, the movement he called "Right-wing populism" — talk radio, Fox news, the "teabag" protests and the thug-like disruption of Congressmembers' town-hall meetings on health reform — will sweep the country and consign all progressive movements and any part of distributive justice and a social-welfare state to oblivion.
Kevin Cooper: Will California Execute An Innocent Man? (tags)
Author J. Patrick O'Connor was recently interviewed in San Francisco about his research into the case of San Quentin death row prisoner Kevin Cooper, whose appeal at the Ninth Circuit Court was recently denied, with Judge William Fletcher writing a stinging dissent, declaring that the "State of California may be about to execute an innocent man.” This fall, Cooper will be appealing to the US Supreme Court, which is last chance to avoid execution.
Wild Fires Burn Southern California Reservations (tags)
Saturday, October 27, 2007 : SAN DIEGO – Wildfires rampaging across Southern California have burned more than 17,200 acres of land on the Yuina, Rincon, La Jolla, San Pasqual and Pala reservations, according to Bureau of Indian Affairs official Jim Fletcher, reports Indian Country Today.
"Got water? Give some to the fish" (tags)
Tribe members stood outside a hotel holding signs with sayings such as, "Fish need water stupid" and "Got water? Give some to the fish." U.S. Interior Secretary Gale Norton, former Libertarian Party member, has been widely criticized for her assault on environmental protections.
Startled marines find Afghan men all made up to see them (tags)
"We were pretty shocked," Marine Fletcher said. "We discovered from the Afghan soldiers we had with us that a lot of men in this country have the same philosophy as ancient Greeks: ‘a woman for babies, a man for pleasure’."