Racial Emergency: The 2007 San Diego Fires

The mainstream media in San Diego, in California as well as at the national level, "celebrated" the fires that hit California several weeks ago, as a sort of "anti-Katrina." The comparision is stupid and self-serving, but ultimately boils down to simply, where so many things went wrong in New Orleans, so many things went right in San Diego.

The rosy image of the fires down here, can in large part be attributed to the complicity of the news media in portraying only the good parts of the story of the fighting of the fires, and not delve into the racism that many communities experienced in terms of not receiving warnings, not receiving supplies, or even being cracked down upon while fleeing the fires.

For those interested in learning this other story of the San Diego fires, which was less than stellar for Native Americans, working class and migrant worker communities and large number of Latinos, please check out the links below.

By the way, I'm pasting below my latest video on Youtube, which is just less than a minute of film from a rally I went to during the fires to support undocumented and poor communities who were largely forgotten during the crisis.





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Racial Emergency: The 2007 San Diego Fires from an Ethnic Studies Perspective.
A Panel Discussion featuring, UCSD Ethnic Studies Faculty and Graduate Students (Denise Da Silva, Roberto Alvarez, David Pellow, Pat Washington and Jose Fuste)

Trival Volunteers Tackle Blaze by Scott Gold from the Los Angeles Times

Qualcomm vs. Superdome: Evacuees vs. Refugees by Paul Harris from the OB Rag

The Collision of Capitalism and Nature by Mike Davis from Znet

The Forgotten Victims of the California Wildfires: Undocumented Migrant Workers from Democracy Now!

Fire Days by Maile Arvin on her blog the maile vine

Divided by Fire: Two San Diegos Emerge from the Flames by Justin Akers Chacon

Burn Baby Burn: The California Celebrity Fires by Greg Palast from Znet

A Tale of Two Stadiums by Sharon Smith from Counterpunch

Border Patrol at Qualcomm from Indybay

The Making of a Model Minority in the Midst of a Racial Emergency by Michael Lujan Bevacqua from his blog No Rest for the Awake - Minagahet Chamorro

Rapture Rescue 911: Disaster Response for the Chosen by Naomi Klein from The Nation

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