|
printable version
- js reader version
- view hidden posts
- tags and related articles
by Mark Gabrish Conlan/Zenger's Newsmagazine
Wednesday, Feb. 20, 2008 at 8:50 PM
mgconlan@earthlink.net (619) 688-1886 P.O. Box 50134, San Diego, CA 92165
Over 50 people attended a progressive community "Mega Summit" in San Diego February 17. Organized by the San Diego County Community Coalition and San Diegans for 9/11 Truth, the event brought together representatives from various local groups ranging from anti-war and anti-drug war groups to insurgent candidates for elective office and urban landscape activists.
 davis.a.jpg, image/jpeg, 600x684
Over 50 Attend Progressive “Mega Summit” in Hillcrest
Effort Attempts to Bring Activists Together for Common Causes
By MARK GABRISH CONLAN
Copyright © 2008 by Mark Gabrish Conlan for Zenger’s Newsmagazine • All rights reserved
Over 50 people turned out to the Joyce Beers Community Center in Hillcrest February 17 for the awkwardly named “San Diego Mega Progressive Community Coalition Summit,” an attempt to bring Left-of-center activists together for common causes. Though the event was co-sponsored by San Diegans for 9/11 Truth — which holds two meetings per month at the Center to challenge the conventional wisdom about 9/11 and allege that the U.S. government either knew about the attacks in advance or actually perpetrated them — the dominant voice came from African-American activist Walter Davis, who chaired the meeting and made two long speeches during it.
Davis, who while still a child lived in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963 and took part in Martin Luther King’s campaign there, survived the infamous bombing of the16th Street Baptist Church by Ku Klux Klan racists and knew the “four little girls” who were killed in that attack. A 25-year veteran of the U.S. military, he founded the Citizens’ Internet TV network and regularly covers progressive events for his Web site, www.walterdavisenterprises.com, as well as his radio talk show and columns in local North County community newspapers. Davis is also a former insurance agent, a job he said he got into “because my pregnant wife and daughter were shot in Los Angeles right after we came back after four years in Tokyo. The insurance company wouldn’t pay death benefits, so I started to study the insurance business and I eventually got my license.”
It’s that kind of grit and determination that Davis said, in his two big speeches at the Mega Summit — one at the beginning and one at the end — would turn the U.S. around and bring progressive victories. After talking about the persistence of racial discrimination and segregation against African-Americans and how his parents suffered from it most of their lives, he said, “Things changed when we got youth and outside people involved. It seemed like we were never going to win, but things changed in the 1960’s. … We need to look at how people won those battles. They were tenacious. We also have tl make our issues international.”
Davis said the biggest problem in organizing progressives is “we’re not goose-steppers like the conservatives. Our greatest strength is individual liberty, but that’s also our greatest weakness.” He said the task of the Mega Summit is to find the “little pieces we can all agree on” despite the differences within the progressive movement. “We can say we believe in standing up for justice and the environment, and fighting poverty,” he said. “This is about finding common ground.” He also said a progressive coalition has to think both strategically and tactically — both pursue long-range goals and respond to what’s going on day-by-day.
A wide variety of organizations was represented at the Mega Summit. In addition to the co-sponsors, the San Diego County Community Coalition (which Davis organized and heads) and San Diegans for 9/11 Truth, the summit attracted individuals from Nonviolent Peaceforce (the local branch of an international organization that is already sending mediators to trouble spots worldwide), the Drug Policy Alliance and A New Path (challenging the so-called “war on drugs” and how it’s led to the imprisonment of more Americans per capita than in any other country in the world), Progressive San Diego, Activist San Diego, the North County Coalition for Peace and Justice, Californians for Humane Farms, All of Us or None (which supports restoration of civil rights and employment opportunities for released ex-convicts), the Caring Council, San Diego Young Democrats, North County Democratic Club, the Ocean Beach People’s Food Co-op and the Islamic Public Affairs Council.
In addition, the summit drew at least two candidates for elective office. One, Mike Coppas, is challenging Congressmember Susan Davis in the June 3 Democratic primary on the ground that the district is “a progressive district” and needs, instead of a wishy-washy moderate like Davis, a representative at least as consistently progressive as San Diego County’s other Democratic Congressmember, Bob Filner. The other candidate was Eric Bidwell, a dreadlocked young man who’s running for mayor of San Diego on what he calls a “revolutionary mayor” platform. One of the most interesting people there was Colin Leath, urban gardener and member of San Diego Food not Lawns and a new organization currently being built, San Diego City Repair, which seeks to reduce the amount of paved space in the city and return as much of it as possible to nature.
Though most of the organizational representatives were only allowed to say a sentence or so about what their groups did, a few got to make longer presentations. “Peace is actually happening,” said Gloria Joyce of Nonviolent Peaceforce. “Just this week in Sri Lanka, we learned from third-party international workers that they’re beginning to get ready for another election and one of the Tamil groups has agreed to stop fighting. We helped mostly from our influence and example. We were there during the tsunami, and none of the looting that happened on other islands in Sri Lanka happened on ours.”
Despite Davis’s attempt to keep things on an even keel and encourage the groups represented at the summit to concentrate on points of unity, differences emerged. After Davis identified “peace” as one of the goals of the summit, veteran San Diego peace activist Tanja Winter suggested “anti-militarism” as a more specific goal than just “peace,” since even the American military claims to be in the business of ensuring “peace.” “Building up the weapons of the world makes war inevitable,” said Winter — and Davis, who mostly agreed, said that as a 25-year military veteran he felt left out by an attack on “militarism.”
In addition to the usual activities of progressive organizations — including lobbying elected officials, staging street protests and doing educational events — Davis strongly suggested that the Mega Summit bring forth a coalition that can actually stage boycotts against local outlets of major corporations. He identified Exxon Mobil and Wendy’s as potential targets, Exxon Mobil because as the world’s largest oil company they’ve been the principal profit-makers from the skyrocketing cost of gasoline, and Wendy’s because they’ve been a major contributor to Right-wing organizations opposed to universal health care.
The San Diego County Mega Progressive Community Coalition Summit will be holding its next general meeting Sunday, March 16, 6 p.m. at the Joyce Beers Community Center, Vermont Street north of University between Terra and Aladdin Restaurants in Hillcrest. Breakout sessions will be held every Tuesday in February and March at 6 p.m. at the Hot Monkey Love Café, 6875 El Cajon Boulevard in the College/Rolando area. For more information, visit the Web site http://progressiveconcerns.meetup.com/5/
zengersmag.blogspot.com
Report this post as:
|
Local News
GUIDE TO REBEL CITY LOS ANGELES AVAILABLE
A12 5:39PM
lausd whistle blower
A10 11:58PM
Website Upgrade
A10 3:02AM
Help KCET and UCLA identify 60s-70s Chicano images
A04 1:02PM
UCLA Luskin: Casting Youth Justice in a Different Light
A02 11:58AM
Change Links April 2018
A01 11:27AM
Nuclear Shutdown News March 2018
M31 6:57PM
Join The Protest Rally in Glendale on April 10, 2018!
M29 7:00PM
Join The Protest Rally in Glendale on April 10, 2018!
M29 6:38PM
Spring 2018 National Immigrant Solidarity Network News Alert!
M19 2:02PM
Anti-Eviction Mapping Project Shows Shocking Eviction Trends in L.A.
M16 5:40PM
Steve Mnuchin video at UCLA released
M15 12:34AM
Actress and Philanthropist Tanna Frederick Hosts Project Save Our Surf Beach Clean Ups
M06 12:10PM
After Being Told He's 'Full of Sh*t' at School Event, Mnuchin Demands UCLA Suppress Video
M02 11:44AM
Resolution of the Rent Strike in Boyle Heights
M01 6:28PM
What Big Brother Knows About You and What You Can Do About It
M01 3:30PM
Step Up As LAPD Chief Charlie Beck Steps Down
F14 2:44PM
Our House Grief Support Center Hosts 9th Annual Run For Hope, April 29
F13 12:51PM
Don’t let this LA County Probation Department overhaul proposal sit on the shelf
F13 11:04AM
Echo Park Residents Sue LA Over Controversial Development
F12 8:51AM
Former Signal Hill police officer pleads guilty in road-rage incident in Irvine
F09 10:25PM
Calif. Police Accused of 'Collusion' With Neo-Nazis After Release of Court Documents
F09 7:14PM
Center for the Study of Political Graphics exhibit on Police Abuse posters
F07 9:50AM
City Agrees to Settle Lawsuit Claiming Pasadena Police Officer Had His Sister Falsely Arre
F04 3:17PM
Professor's Study Highlights Health Risks of Urban Oil Drilling
F04 12:42PM
Claims paid involving Pasadena Police Department 2014 to present
F04 10:52AM
Pasadenans - get your license plate reader records from police
F03 11:11PM
LA Times Homicide Report
F03 1:57PM
More Local News...
Other/Breaking News
Worker-Owned Car Wash on Vermont Closed
A26 10:37PM
TheMilitary of Yemen IN In The 1990's
A26 5:42PM
The Shortwave Report 04/27/18 Listen Globally!
A26 4:03PM
Federal Bank Examiner FDIC recalls year long 1999 robbery in 2017
A26 3:24PM
Doxa du lobby
A25 2:03AM
Tech workers organize
A24 6:24PM
Architect Stephen Francis Jones
A24 3:01PM
UN Forum Wrestles with Economic Policies 10 Years After Financial Crisis Islands Call for
A24 12:34PM
Xyloglossie attitudinale
A23 8:07AM
What does the Quran Say About Islamic Dress??
A21 4:15PM
Biodiversité ou la nature privatisée
A20 11:22AM
The Market is a Universal Totalitarian Religion
A20 7:14AM
Book Available about Hispanics and US Civil War by National Park Service
A19 5:52PM
The Shortwave Report 04/20/18 Listen Globally!
A19 4:01PM
The Republican 'Prolife' Party Is the Party of War, Execution, and Bear Cub Murder
A19 11:48AM
Neurogenèse involutive
A18 9:21AM
Paraphysique de la dictature étatique
A16 10:13AM
Book Review: "The New Bonapartists"
A16 3:45AM
The West Must Take the First Steps to Russia
A14 12:25PM
Théorie générale de la révolution ou hommage à feu Mikhaïl Bakounine
A14 3:30AM
The Shortwave Report 04/13/18 Listen Globally!
A12 3:50PM
“Lost in a Dream” Singing Competition Winner to Be Chosen on April 15 for ,000 Prize!
A12 3:48PM
The World Dependent on Central Banks
A12 4:43AM
Ohio Governor Race: Dennis Kucinich & Richard Cordray Run Against Mike DeWine
A11 9:40PM
March 2018 Honduras Coup Again Update
A10 10:52PM
Apologie du zadisme insurrectionnel
A10 3:33PM
ICE contract with license plate reader company
A10 1:14PM
Palimpseste sisyphéen
A09 11:23PM
More Breaking News...
|