Over 500 Turn Out for San Diego Slut Walk (tags)
For those who thought the battle over whether women who dress in sexually provocative clothing are thereby giving men the ?right? to rape them was won in the 1970?s, it was a shock last January when a police representative in Toronto, Canada told a class he was lecturing to that ?women should avoid dressing like sluts in order to not be victimized.? His boorish, sexist remarks had one positive result: they rekindled the feminist movement via a series of ?Slut Walks,? mass demonstrations in which women deliberately dress in so-called ?slut wear? both to communicate a sex-positive message and to make the point that women should be free to dress any way they like and go about wherever they like without inviting men to rape them. The message of the ?Slut Walks?: don?t teach women how to avoid rape: TEACH MEN NOT TO RAPE!
Teen Producers' Project Makes Pro-Immigrant Videos (tags)
In addition to running the popular San Diego Latino Film Festival, the Media Arts Center in North Park also sponsors the Teen Producers? Project, which trains teenage filmmakers to make professional-quality videos. This year?s productions were a series of hard-hitting documentaries on the rights of immigrants that progressive Congressmember Bob Filner offered to take to Washington, D.C. and show to his colleagues.
Queer Democrats Endorse Susan Davis for Re-Election to Congress (tags)
Ignoring Congressmember Susan Davis’s often surprisingly conservative record on issues like the war (she voted against the authorization to attack Iraq but has faithfully voted for every supplemental appropriation to fund the U.S.’s wanton aggressions in Iraq and Afghanistan), global trade and health care, the predominantly Queer San Diego Democratic Club endorsed her for re-election seven months before the filing deadline and thereby foreclosed the possibility of considering a progressive primary challenger should one run, as Mike Copass of Progressive Democrats of America did in 2008.
“Outrage”: Exposing Hypocrisy or Perpetrating It? (tags)
“Outrage,” Kirby Dick’s new documentary on the practice of “outing” closeted Queer politicians who take positions in opposition to the mainstream Queer community’s political agenda, is an old-fashioned morality play in which the heroes are the activists and journalists who “out” such people and the villains are the politicians themselves and the mainstream corporate media which refuse to cover the issue. But the “outers” can also be seen as political enforcers of a liberal-Left orthodoxy that ignores both the political and the sexual diversity of the Queer community.
Republican Congressmember Investigates Climate Scientists (tags)
The Chronicle of Higher Education is reporting that the Republican chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce is investigating three professors whose work suggests that the earth's climate is warmer now than at any time in many centuries
Labor, Environmental Groups Target Congressmember Davis on Fast-Track (tags)
Labor and environmental representatives held a press conference outside NASSCO shipyards Monday, October 22 to demand that San Diego-area Congressmember Susan Davis oppose the controversial “fast-track” bill, H.R. 3005, that would give President Bush authority to negotiate trade and investment treaties that Congress could only vote up or down, without amendments. To reach Davis, call the AFL-CIO national Congressional hotline at 1-[800] 393-=1082 or her San Diego office at (619) 291-1430.