Our Second Annual Party in the Park at Mission Trails Regional Park was a huge success. 120 members and guests enjoyed the beauty of MTRP, had a delicious dinner, and heard from our wonderful Democratic Candidates. The LMFDC paid tribute to Marti Emerald for her years of service to the citizens of San Diego.
Here are some photos from the event.
Guns are a Public Health Crisis
The United States has more guns and gun deaths than any other developed country in the world, researchers found. A study by two New York City cardiologists found that the U.S. has 88 guns per 100 people and 10 gun-related deaths per 100,000 people – more than any of the other 27 developed countries they studied.
They said they carried out their study because of what they said are seemingly baseless claims on either side of the gun control debate. “I think we need more of what I would call evidence-based discussion and not merely people pulling things out of their hats,” Bangalore said. “We hear time and time again about these shootings, especially in the last year or so. A lot of claims are made…so we wanted to look at the data and see if any of this holds water.”
Drs. Sripal Bangalore, who works at NYU Langone Medical Center, and Dr. Franz Messerli of St. Luke’s Medical Center studied the statistics of guns per capita and gun deaths. They used firearm injury data from the World Health Organization and guns per capita data from the Small Arms Survey to put together a list of 27 developed countries.
David Hemenway, a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health who specializes in injury research and is considered one of the top gun violence researchers in the country, said the there’s “no question” that the relationship between guns and gun deaths is real.
They concluded that more guns do not make people safer. http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/health/2013/09/19/u-s-has-more-guns-and-gun-deaths-than-any-other-country-study-finds/
NRA & Gun Manufacturers
At its snarling, take-no-questions press conference Friday, the NRA blamed the media, violent video games and just about everyone but itself for the massacre at a Connecticut school last week.
If anyone thought the National Rifle Association’s lengthy silence after the Newtown school massacre meant the gun group might have been chastened into re-thinking its guns-everywhere policies, Friday’s much anticipated “press conference” showed that wasn’t the case at all.
In a speech that veered from sanctimonious to snarling, NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre refused to retreat an inch. Instead, he blamed everyone but the NRA for putting the nation’s children in “mortal danger,” singling out politicians for creating “gun-free zones” open to killers, the media for misrepresenting gun issues, violent video games for egging on murderers and the entertainment industry for bathing children in violence
It’s not just a perception: Mass shootings have become more frequent, data show
Between 2011 and 2013, there was a mass shooting in the U.S. once every 64 days, on average Before 2011, mass shootings in the U.S. occurred once every 200 days, on average
If it seems like mass shootings are becoming more common, researchers say there’s a good reason: They are. Between a 2011 shooting at an IHOP restaurant in Carson City, Nev., that left four people dead and the 2013 attack on the Washington Navy Yard where 12 people were killed, a mass shooting occurred somewhere in America once every 64 days, on average.
In the preceding 29 years, such shootings occurred on average every 200 days, according to an analysis by researchers from Harvard University’s School of Public Health and Northeastern University. The study defined a mass shooting as an outbreak of firearms violence in which four or more victims were killed and the shooter was unknown to most of his victims.
Not only are such shootings more common, they have also become more deadly. In the 10-year period that ended with the Washington Navy Yard attack, a total of 285 people died in such events. In the 13 years before that, 151 people perished in mass shootings. Between Jan. 1, 2014, and May 26, 2015, 195 more people in the United States have been slain in an additional 43 shootings, according to statistics drawn from Mass Shootings Tracker, a Wiki-style site.
That doesn’t include the nine victims killed Wednesday night at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C.
Although the fatalities in mass shootings are dramatic, they are dwarfed by the number of people killed by firearms in attacks that affect one or two victims at a time and largely escape public notice. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that 11,208 people died in homicides involving firearms in the United States in 2013.
Today, American civilians are thought to own as many as 310 million firearms, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. A 2012 report from the Congressional Research Service noted that the number of guns per capita had doubled since 1968.
While recent mass shootings have prompted calls to keep guns away from those with mental illness, Stone estimated that only about 22% of perpetrators were “deeply mentally ill.”
Some people, including those opposed to the kinds of gun control measures routinely proposed in the aftermath of mass killings, dispute the claim that such rampages have escalated. Mass shootings are a constant on the American landscape and are more visible thanks to the 24-hour news cycle, they say. The trend lines may soon look even worse. In 2013, President Obama ordered that the definition of a mass shooting be changed to one in which three or more people are killed.
By that accounting, more than 300 people died in mass shootings between Jan. 1, 2014, and May 26 this year, according to data from Mass Shootings Tracker. http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-mass-shootings-more-frequent-data-20150618-story.html
.Having a gun in your home makes you less safe
The health risks of owning a gun are so established and scientifically non-controvertible that the American Academy of Pediatrics issued a policy statement in 2000 recommending that pediatricians urge parents to remove all guns from their homes.
Having a gun in your home significantly increases your risk of death — and that of your spouse and children. And it doesn’t matter how the guns are stored or what type or how many guns you own. If you have a gun, everybody in your home is more likely than your non-gun-owning neighbors and their families to die in a gun-related accident, suicide or homicide.
Furthermore, there is no credible evidence that having a gun in your house reduces your risk of being a victim of a crime. Nor does it reduce your risk of being injured during a home break-in.
The health risks of owning a gun are so established and scientifically non-controvertible that the American Academy of Pediatrics issued a policy statement in 2000 recommending that pediatricians urge parents to remove all guns from their homes.
Notice that the recommendation doesn’t call for parents to simply lock up their guns. It stresses that the weapons need to be taken out of the house
Which Kills More People in Your State—Cars or Guns?
Plenty of states are hitting a grisly milestone; for the nation, it’s only a matter of time.
Back in December, not long after the massacre at Sandy Hook school massacre in Newtown,
Connecticut, Bloomberg News published a study suggesting that by 2015, guns would kill more
Americans than traffic accidents do. The comparison struck a nerve, and the factoid has become
a talking point in gun control debates on Capitol Hill. But it’s clear from the data that the
prediction wasn’t just a hypothetical. A number of states have already hit this grisly milestone.
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RSVP: www.sddemocrats.org/east or (858) 277-3367 You can purchase tickets online here or contact me for more information at (619) 995-0234 or eastvc@sddemocrats.org. Please note that ticket prices will go up after June 20, so reserve your spot now! Thanks for your continuing support!
Sincerely,
San Diego County Democratic Party
The LMFDC contingent was a huge hit with the folks watching the 2015 La Mesa Flag Day Parade.
Everybody Loves A Parade!
The La Mesa Flag Day Parade is on Saturday, May 31st this year. Each year, our Club has proudly marched in the Parade and the great folks in La Mesa always give us a big cheer! Because of LMFDC, La Mesa is a Democratic city. Plan to join us in 2014, an important election year, and give a boost to our Democratic candidates running in the June 2nd Primary. After the Parade, join us at Swamis Café: 8284 La Mesa Blvd, La Mesa, CA(619) 668-9030. Enjoy these photos from past parades.
The La Mesa-Foothills Democratic Club thanks all our wonderful veterans, past and present, and those who are no longer with us. We thank you for your bravery, sacrifice, and patriotism. We can never repay the debt we owe you.
I have been working on this email about the ‘epidemic’ of police shootings of mostly unarmed black men and boys for two weeks. Every time I get ready to finish, another horrible tragedy happens, the most recent being the death of Freddy Gray in Baltimore, MD. I do not believe this is a recent phenomenon; it has come to light because of the ubiquity of smart phones and people recording these incidents. The sad truth is black people have been marginalized and exhorted by police departments for decades and it is only recently that we have become aware of these travesties.
The real problem is white people are blissfully unaware of “White Privilege” and the social luxury it affords. Some folks tie themselves in knots trying to define or explain ‘White Privilege”, I remember Jon Stewart attempting to explain it to Bill O’Reilly on his show. Simply, if you go through your day; working, shopping, going out to eat, etc. and never think about your skin color….that is White Privilege. People of color go through their days very mindful of their skin color. When white people go out to eat, they do first think; “will I be the only white person in the restaurant’? When white people go shopping at a department store they are rarely followed by a security employee, when white people hail a cab, they get one…this is not the experience of people of color, especially black people. White people can jog or run to a movie in the night and not be stopped by the police: this happened to now former Attorney General Eric Holder; he was running to catch a movie when stopped by police. There is no ‘driving while white’ but there sure is a ‘driving while black’ where folks are pulled over for no reason. In Ferguson, MO black people where ticketed for ‘manner of walking on the roadway’.
Images of rioting in Baltimore and the destruction of property in predominately black communities leaves white people scratching their heads, why tear up your own neighborhood they ask. This too is a social construct called ‘horizontal violence’ as explicated by Frantz Fanon.
Fanon was born on the Caribbean island of Martinique, which was then a French colony and is now a French département. His father was a descendant of enslaved Africans; his mother was said to be an “illegitimate” child of African, Indian and European descent. Fanon became a psychologist and spent time in Algeria. He counseled the native victims of torture and the French soldiers who tortured. Interestingly, those who were tortured suffered far less mental problems than those who did the torturing.
In The Wretched of the Earth, published shortly before Fanon’s death in 1961, Fanon describes the cultural situation in Algeria; two population groups existed at the time: the Dominant Group (white, French soldiers and those with governmental authority) and Oppressed group (native Algerians). The Oppressed group did not look like the Dominant group nor did they have any opportunity of being a member of the Dominant group. The Oppressed groups’ collective anger, fear, resentment, and despair had no outlet. The simmering tensions could not be expressed against the Dominant group and so native turned against native in what Fanon described as “horizontal violence.” I have witnessed ‘horizontal violence’ among predominately-white well-educated women, Registered Dental Hygienists, while I was employed by the American Dental Hygienists’ Association: dentists are the Dominant group who control hygienists’ education, licensure, and employment. Consistently stymied in achieving their professional goals, some hygienists turned on each other…and wound up “eating their young”. My Master’s thesis was on the subject of horizontal violence among healthcare practitioners and included nurses, dental hygienists, and other predominately-female professions.
Nearly two times a week in the United States, a white police officer killed a black person during a seven-year period ending in 2012, according to the most recent accounts of justifiable homicide reported to the FBI. On average, there were 96 such incidents among at least 400 police killings each year that were reported to the FBI by local police.
For example:
A small sample of fatal Police shootings of black men since the shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO:
Feb. 23, 2015 March 9, 2015
A police officer shot and killed a naked, unarmed man who was knocking on doors and running and crawling through an apartment complex. The officer, Robert Olson of the DeKalb County Police, is white; the dead man, Anthony Hill, who was mentally ill, was black.
Madison, Wis., and Aurora, Colo. March 6, 2015
In Madison, an officer shot and killed an unarmed man after responding to a report that the man, Tony Robinson, 19, had assaulted two people, and had been jumping in front of moving cars. The police said Mr. Robinson, who was black, fought with and injured the police officer, Matthew Kenny, who is white.
Los Angeles March 1, 2015
Police officers shot and killed an unarmed homeless man who, the police said, had attempted to take an officer’s gun during a scuffle. Multiple videos of the incident on Skid Row show the man, Charly Leundeu Keunang, 43, who had a history of mental illness, fighting with a group of Los Angeles officers.
Omaha, Neb. Feb. 23, 2015
An unarmed man suspected of having just robbed a store was shot twice in the back and killed by an Omaha police officer
We are told these are isolated incidents. We are told that they are simply the Officers procuring their own safety and if only the “suspects” had surrendered or obeyed they would still be alive today.
Every time. In each case. Police never get it wrong. They never make a mistake, are never in a bad mood, have a short temper, may have been overly fearful and may have overreacted. Because in nearly all these cases that is what we are initially told by Police sources and their supporters.
“It was a good shoot”.
How often does that record get put on in the iPad when Police want to drown out the cries of an outraged public, until they forced to find out what really happened and it’s not anything like the Police initially claimed? How often do Police shoot and kill unarmed suspects who pose no real threat to them? How often does this happen to Black People? How often does it happen to White People? Or anyone?
The truly frightening thing is that we apparently don’t know. We have no idea. Not even a clue. We’ve been tracking the statistics about Crime for decades at individual police agencies and in the FBI Uniform Crime Report, But those reports don’t document exactly when Cops become Murdering Criminals. This fact – which has sparked police riots and racial unrest going all the way back to the 1960’s – is still a mystery.
Efforts to keep track of “justifiable police homicides” are beset by systemic problems. “Nobody that knows anything about the SHR puts credence in the numbers that they call ‘justifiable homicides,’” when used as a proxy for police killings, said David Klinger, an associate professor of criminology and criminal justice at the University of Missouri who specializes in policing and the use of deadly force. And there’s no governmental effort at all to record the number of unjustifiable homicides by police. If Brown’s homicide is found to be unjustifiable, it won’t show up in these statistics.
If we want to know how many Justifiable Homicides occur by Police or Private Citizens we can get those number easily.
Justifiable Homicides:
Year Police Citizen
2007 398 252
2008 378 265
2009 414 266
2010 397 285
2011 393 260
2012 409 330
But if we want to know how many Law Enforcement Shootings are “Unjustified” – we get no answer from the FBI. None.
One source, in a report called “Operation Ghetto Storm” says that in 2012 that of the 739 “Justified” shootings shown above from 2012, 313 of them were Black. 44% of them or 136, were unarmed. 27% of them (83) were claimed by Law Enforcement to have Gun at the time of the shooting, but that could not be later confirmed or the “gun” was in fact, a toy or other non-lethal object. 20% of them (62) were confirmed to have been armed with a gun, knife or cutting tool.
This report, which was gathered by searching media reports, obituaries and even Facebook pages of deceased persons includes the following table as an example.
91% of the people killed by Police in Chicago in 2012 were Black? 87% in New York? 100% in Saginaw and Rockford? I gotta admit even after focusing on this subject for over 30 years, since Ron Settles was killed, I find that kind of shocking.
The report goes on to say that 47% of these killings (146 cases) occurred not because of the person brandishing a weapon (as noted above less than 30% of them HAD a weapon, or were even thought to have a weapon), it’s because the Officer or Citizen – “felt threatened” and were in “fear”. In only 8% (25 cases) did the suspect fire or discharge a weapon that wounded or killed Police or others while Officers were on the scene
Only eight (8) Officers were Charged with Murder, Manslaughter or use of excessive force in these case.
Is this report comprehensive? Is it fully accurate? I don’t know, it’s gone through several revisions and updates as none of the data is being officially compiled anywhere and some things can be missed that way.
And it’s not like some in the media haven’t attempted to divine the answer on their own, they have. http://www.colorlines.com/…
This summer ColorLines and The Chicago Reporter conducted a joint national investigation of fatal police shootings in America’s 10 largest cities, each of which had more than 1 million people in 2000. Several striking findings emerged
To begin, African Americans were overrepresented among police shooting victims in every city the publications investigated.
The contrast was particularly noticeable in New York, San Diego and Las Vegas. In each of these cities, the percentage of black people killed by police was at least double that of their share of the city’s total population.
They analyzed the data from the Ten Largest Cities and in Every City – every single one – had double the number of black shooting victims than their proportion in the population.
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-many-americans-the-police-kill-each-year/
Almost all police involved shootings, while investigated by special units, prosecutor’s offices, or an outside police agency, were investigated by governmental law enforcement personnel. It is perhaps not surprising that more than 95 percent of all police involved shootings were ruled administratively and legally justified. A handful of cases led to wrongful death lawsuits. Even fewer will result in the criminal prosecution of officers. Critics of the system have called for the establishment of completely independent investigative agencies in cases of police involved shootings.
Where People Were Shot
Most Deadly States
California 183 total (102 fatal)
Florida 96 (49)
Illinois 64 (26)
Texas 58 (26)
New York 49 (23)
Pennsylvania 49 (23)
Ohio 45 (28)
Arizona 45 (27)
Maryland 41 (16)
Washington 39 (29)
Least Deadly States
Delaware 0
Vermont 0
North Dakota 1
Wyoming 2 (1)
Alaska 2 (2)
Montana 3 (2)
South Dakota 3 (3)
Hawaii 4 (3)
Connecticut 6 (1)
West Virginia 6 (5)
New Hampshire 6 (5)
Idaho 7 (2)
Kansas 7 (5)
Most Deadly Cities
Chicago 46 total (10 fatal)
Los Angeles 22 (14)
Philadelphia 17 (7)
Las Vegas 17 (15)
New York City 16 (6)
Phoenix 15 (10)
Baltimore 15 (5)
Columbus, OH 14 (8)
Atlanta 12 (4)
St. Louis 11 (3)
Cleveland 10 (7)
Miami 10 (6)
Houston 10 (3)
Least Deadly Cities
Boston 1
New Orleans 1 (1)
Portland, ME 1
Buffalo 2
Detroit 2 (1)
Seattle 2 (1)
Denver 2 (2)
Pittsburgh 3 (1)
Cities with High Per Capita Shooting Rates
Fresno, CA 9 total (4 fatal)
Tucson, AZ 8 (6)
Aurora, CO 7 (6)
Oakland, CA 7 (6)
San Jose, CA 7 (3)
Albuquerque, NM 6 (5)
Mesa, AZ 6 (2)
Jacksonville, FL 5 (4)
Syracuse, NY 5 (3)
Orlando, FL 5 (2)
Miami Beach, FL 5 (2)
Little Rock, Ark. 5 (1)
Yakima, WA 4 (1)
Bakersfield, CA 4 (3)
Long Beach, CA 4 (2)
Garden Grove, CA 4 (3)
Redding, CA 4 (2)
Sometimes a report is released that defies imagination. The worst thing about the report in the New York Times this morning may be how unsurprising it is, despite how heart-wrenching it is.
They [black men] are missing, largely because of early deaths or because they are behind bars. Remarkably, black women who are 25 to 54 and not in jail outnumber black men in that category by 1.5 million, according to an Upshot analysis. For every 100 black women in this age group living outside of jail, there are only 83 black men. Among whites, the equivalent number is 99, nearly parity.
African-American men have long been more likely to be locked up and more likely to die young, but the scale of the combined toll is nonetheless jarring. It is a measure of the deep disparities that continue to afflict black men — disparities being debated after a recent spate of killings by the police — and the gender gap is itself a further cause of social ills, leaving many communities without enough men to be fathers and husbands.
Perhaps the starkest description of the situation is this: More than one out of every six black men who today should be between 25 and 54 years old have disappeared from daily life.
A snapshot in time that shows that 17% of black men have been disappeared from the population compared to 1% of white men is jarring, scandalous. Benghazi is a scandal? Complete bullshit. This is scandalous. Of course, because we’re not racist here in America, we don’t have to — and mostly won’t — do anything about it. One city among the worst in America for this “missing” effect? Ferguson, MO, which now has at least one more missing, Michael Brown. It doesn’t matter whether his hands were up before he was shot. What matters is he lived in a world where he was likely to be disappeared. And he was. Policy note. If you think that Democrats are more likely to do something about this — however slight the difference — than Republicans are, then this is a reason to support the Democrats. Just saying.
The facts about the criminal-legal system in America are sobering: The United States accounts for only 5 percent of the globe’s population, but for 25 percent of the world’s prison population.
We lead the world not in science and math education, college graduation or childhood health — but in the total number of people we incarcerate. We imprison more people than China, Russia, and India.
The United States not only has the highest incarceration rate in the world, but our prison populations are disproportionately comprised of Americans of color.
Despite African Americans and Latinos committing drug offenses at a rate no different than whites, African Americans are incarcerated at a rate six times greater than whites, and Latinos are incarcerated at nearly twice the rate of whites for the same offenses.
In my home state of New Jersey, African Americans comprise 13.7 percent of the total population, but 62 percent of the state’s prison population.
In the United States, African Americans are far more likely to be arrested for selling or possessing drugs, even though studies have shown that African Americans and whites use drugs at the same rate, and whites are actually more likely to sell drugs.
Similarly, Latinos and whites use drugs at equal rates proportionate to their populations, but Latinos are twice as likely as whites to be admitted to state prison for drug use.
Even once released from prison, formerly incarcerated people are often denied the right to vote, to go back to school, and to get a job.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/world/americas/23iht-23prison.12253738.html?pagewanted=all
Killing the Future: The Theft of Black Life
Nicholas Powers, Truthout: “To be Black in America is to be evidence of a theft… When cops bully them, scare them, f*** with them, it’s because our children aren’t seen as part of the future. Our children are disposable.”
The Collateral Damage of Mass Incarceration
Bryan Stevenson, Spiegel & Grau: Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption is about getting closer to mass incarceration and extreme punishment in the US. We have created a new caste system that forces thousands into homelessness, bans them from living with their families and in their communities and renders them virtually unemployable.
Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.
Martin Luther King Jr., Why We Can’t Wait
“He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.” — Martin Luther King
“Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.” — Martin Luther King
“The hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict.” — Martin Luther King
*The information compiled in this article is from multiple sources; references available upon request.
Linda K. Armacost, Ed.D
President LMFDC
More great photos from our 7th Annual Yard Sale!
Our 7th Annual Yard Sale was a smashing success! Huge thanks to Carol and Cy Perkins for opening their home for a whole week, you are awesome!
We had hundreds of donations and our Yard Sale Team, chaired by Mary Jane Tanquary and Suzy Perkins, did a spectacular job! We made more $ than last year. The Final Total will be revealed at our Wednesday, May 6th Monthly Meeting.
Be sure to join us for our May 6th Meeting with noted author, Peggi Chute who recently returned from Selma, AL. Ms. Chute will be offering her book, Soul of a Nation for sale and signing. We meet at the La Mesa Community Center, 4975 Memorial Drive in La Mesa. Social Time begins at 6:30 pm and the Business Meeting begins at 7:00 pm.
SELMA, ALABAMA
Where the VOTING RIGHTS MOVEMENT Took Center Stage in 1965
SOUL OF A NATION tells the riveting story of “ordinary people” who kept the movement alive with their determination, courage, and daily protests. They put their lives on the line as they spoke truth to power and stood up to Southern rule. Marchers were beaten, tear-gassed, and their children cattle prodded.
People of conscience, both white and black, came together in a movement that forever changed America … but not without great sacrifice. Three activists – Jimmy Lee Jackson, James Reeb, and Viola Liuzzo – were murdered before one of the most significant pieces of legislation in U.S. history, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, was enacted
THE AUTHOR:
Peggi Chute is a retired educator, educational filmmaker, and Hollywood film editor who read about the events in Selma, Alabama, and couldn’t believe such injustice happened during her lifetime. Thus began her long process of painstaking research to find her voice and speak through her strong characters to tell their story. SOUL OF A NATION is Ms. Chute’s first novel. She resides by a small lake in San Marcos, California.
WHAT OTHERS ARE SAYING:
“P.E. Chute has woven together a dramatic ‘historical novel’ in which newspaper and TV accounts of the march from Selma to Montgomery are brought to life with a cast of lovable characters of her own creation. In the midst of this 50th anniversary year, we need to be reminded of both the ‘real people’ and the bit players whose lives and deaths we celebrate. SOUL OF A NATION does just that!”
–Orloff W. Miller (Minister who marched with Martin Luther King, Jr.)
La Mesa-Foothills Democratic Club 