Tag Archives: San Diego

After Weekend Walkouts, Hotel Worker Strikes Grow on Labor Day

“We refuse to accept wages that can’t support our families. It’s insulting. And it ends now.”

By Jessica Corbett. Published 9-2-2024 by Common Dreams

Workers from over two dozen hotels across the United States are on strike as of September 2, 2024, which is Labor Day. Photo: UNITE HERE! Local 30/X

After approximately 10,000 hotel workers across the United States walked off the job over the weekend ahead of Labor Day, the strikes not only continued but grew on Monday, with employees of the Hilton Baltimore Inner Harbor taking to the streets.

In Maryland’s biggest city, workers with UNITE HERE Local 7 carried signs that said, “Respect our work,” “One job should be enough,” and “Make them pay.”

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US Court Orders Transfer of Migrant Children From ‘Profoundly Inhumane’ Open-Air Sites

“But it remains a tragedy that a court had to direct the government to do what basic human decency and the law clearly require,” said one advocate.

By Brett Wilkins. Published 4-5-2024 by Common Dreams

An open-air detention site in California. Photo: Al Otro Lado/X

Migrant rights defenders on Thursday cheered a federal court ruling ordering U.S. Customs and Border Protection to stop holding undocumented minors in squalid open-air detention sites in Southern California and to transfer all children held in such locations to “safe and sanitary” spaces.

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) contended that people held in the open-air detention sites (OADS) are not yet in U.S. custody. However, Judge Dolly Gee of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California in Los Angeles issued a 12-page ruling that found migrant children are entitled to protection under the Flores Settlement Agreement, which established national minimum standards for the treatment of detained minors.

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Migrant Drownings in Pacific Soared 3,200% After Trump Raised Border Wall: Study

The Trump administration nearly doubled the height of the border barrier as part of its “zero tolerance” immigration agenda.

By Brett Wilkins. Published 3-8-2024 by Common Dreams

Border Field State Park / Imperial Beach, San Diego, California. Photo: Tony Webster/Wikimedia Commons/CC

The number of migrants drowning in the Pacific Ocean while attempting to enter the United States from Tijuana, Mexico skyrocketed by 3,200% after the Trump administration dramatically increased the height of the border barrier extending into the southern California sea, a study published Thursday revealed.

The study—published in JAMA, the American Medical Association’s journal—found that 33 people drowned while trying to swim across the southern border between 2020-23, compared with just one death in the previous four years. Researchers tied the soaring fatalities to the Trump administration’s decision to raise the height of the border wall from 17 feet to 30 feet as part of its “zero tolerance” immigration agenda.

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Company That Makes Rent-Setting Software for Apartments Accused of Collusion, Lawsuit Says

 

Texas-based RealPage worked with some of the nation’s largest landlords to create a cartel to raise rents, says a lawsuit filed just days after ProPublica published its investigation into the company.

by Heather Vogell for ProPublica,  Published 10-21-2022

ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.

Renters filed a lawsuit this week alleging that a company that makes price-setting software for apartments and nine of the nation’s biggest property managers formed a cartel to artificially inflate rents in violation of federal law.

The lawsuit was filed days after ProPublica published an investigation raising concerns that the software, sold by Texas-based RealPage, is potentially pushing rent prices above competitive levels, facilitating price fixing or both.

The proposed class-action lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in San Diego. Continue reading

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Warmer in Alaska Than San Diego This Week as Temperature Record ‘Pulverized’

“Climate change continues to push the envelope on what is possible all over the globe,” said one meteorologist.

By Brett Wilkins.  Published 12-29-2021 by Common Dreams

On December 26, 2021 the town of Kodiak in southern Alaska hit 67°—seven degrees warmer than the daytime high in San Diego—and shattering the December record for Alaska by nine degrees. (Photo: Scott Duncan/Twitter)

As parts of Alaska obliterated high-temperature records earlier this week, meteorologists and climate scientists warned that extreme heat and rainfall are the new normal in the nation’s largest state and other Arctic and subarctic zones.

On Sunday, the town of Kodiak in southern Alaska hit 67°F—seven degrees warmer than the daytime high in San Diego—and shattering the December record for Alaska by nine degrees, according to the National Weather Service. The town also broke the local December record by more than 20 degrees. Continue reading

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Attorneys and Reporters Interrogated at Border About Political Beliefs In ‘Outrageous’ Violation of Rights

“This is intimidation and violates the Constitution.”

By Julia Conley, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 3-19-2019

U.S. Border Patrol Checkpoint, Tucson, Arizona, Screenshot: YouTube

Rights advocates are issuing fresh warnings of intimidation and repressive tactics in the wake of new reporting about U.S. border patrol agents detaining and interrogating journalists and immigration lawyers, including questions about their political beliefs.

NBC News reported Monday that at least one journalist and four immigration lawyers were stopped at Customs and Border Protection (CBP) stations near the border in Texas and Arizona in an apparent attempt to identify individuals in the area who oppose the Trump administration. Continue reading

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