Next Club Meeting: 
July 9 - Via Zoom

Kimberley Best Roubidoux

America & Immigrants: A Symbiotic Relationship

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Right now, MAGA supporters feel like they’re losing their country and their identity. They feel like they’re being displaced by communities of color, by feminists and by immigrants. These people are motivated by what they see as an existential threat to their way of life, and are preyed on by leaders who compound these fears to get votes. But are immigrants really the cause of the issues facing America today.  

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Kimberley, a Partner with WR Immigration, is a well-respected immigration law attorney in San Diego. Kimberley’s expertise and skill has been recognized by her peers and clients as evidenced by her listing in Who’s Who Legal: Corporate Immigration, The Best Lawyers in America (Best Immigration Lawyer in San Diego 2020), Southern California Super Lawyers, San Diego Business Journal’s Best of the Bar and The International Who’s Who of Corporate Immigration Lawyers, and others. 

Kai Guzman's Team will be speaking on the city ordinance "Preventing Overpolicing Through Equitable Community Treatment (PrOTECT)"

Kai is the North County organizer with the ACLU of San Diego and Imperial Counties.

See the meetings page for more details.

Ted Eytan from Washington, DC, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

In the final days of the current session, SCOTUS has handed down decisions that make clear they value guns over women, essentially giving individual states permission to treat women as second-class citizens, while ruling that states can do nothing to quell increasingly horrific acts of gun violence.

We knew this was coming, with the unprecedented leak of a preliminary decision draft from the desk of Justice Samuel Alito. But now the SCOTUS, as configured by Mitch McConnell and "TFG," has made clear in their 5-4 decision that they are determined to undermine decades of social progress. With the Dobbs (Roe) decision, a deeply flawed opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito in what attempts to characterize "Originalist" perceptions about basic rights in this country, opens the gate to reversing other hard-won legal battles such as gender, marital, and even racial equality. In a concurring opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas explicitly spoke of revisiting such earlier decisions. It's clear now in fact that Chief Justice Roberts, as conservative as he is, has lost control of the court to a group who seem unconcerned with logic and consistency in their pursuit of the MAGA agenda.

Reaction was Swift

Marches and demonstrations in reaction to the Dobbs decision sprang up around the country and the world. Some of these are ongoing. Given the connection to the LGBTQ community, some of these spontaneous actions merged with planned Pride Month activities. 

Within days politicians and office-holders weighed in to the discussion with their own position statements, some for but most against the rulings. Speaker Pelosi condemned the Dobbs decision in a blistering statement Friday. On Monday, she said the House would take up legislation to codify other matters decided by the high court and would again consider the Women’s Health Protection Act, a sweeping abortion rights bill that passed the House and failed in the Senate.

What People Are Doing

Responses to the world-changing decision on women's rights have thus far fallen into two categories: 1) Meet the political challenge head-on by pressuring lawmakers into encoding those rights into law or finding some other Constitutional basis to write new law covering the issues in more generic terms, and 2) discussing ways to overload or otherwise circumvent the new state-based abortion bans. A new 'Underground Railroad' may emerge, helping women who have few means to deal with their situation alone. 

...And The Executive Branch?

Words have been few from Biden's office so far, though Vice President Kamala Harris has been quite vocal that something does need to be done. As far as what CAN be done, there's an excellent summary here. A couple of highlights are making pregnancy termination medicines available OTC so that they could be purchased online without prescription, or using federal properties for clinics in or adjacent to states where abortion is now illegal.

May 7th Meeting

The club got together at Alga Norte Park for a live meeting.

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- Mike Levin, who is running for re-election to the U.S. House of Representatives, spoke regarding his campaign.  Following his speech, there was a question-and-answer session about the Supreme court and the midterm possibility of democrats winning. Colby Rogers, speaking for Mike Levin’s campaign, spoke regarding ways in which to assist the campaign, including helping at the campaign event on May 28th by assisting with phone banking and other ways.

- Joy Lyndes, candidate for Carlsbad City Council, District 3, spoke regarding her campaign.  

- Cipriano Vargas, candidate for mayor of Vista, spoke regarding his campaign.  

- Matt Rubel, who is working on Catherine Blakespear’s campaign for State Senate from district 38, spoke regarding her campaign.  .

- Dave Myers, who is running for San Diego County Sheriff, spoke regarding his campaign.

- Sam Ward, candidate for Carlsbad City Council, District 1, spoke regarding his campaign.  

- Lela Panagides from Rapid Response Housing Solutions, spoke regarding their mission and accomplishments of her organization.  Its a volunteer, non-denominational, community-based organization fully dedicated to helping those who are at the greatest risk of being unsheltered in North County San Diego.. Following her presentation, there was a question-and-answer session.

New York Times, May 26, 2022

This loss is unimaginable, and yet it is real.

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Please Vote. Vote Blue, and elect

representatives who will finally address: Sensible gun laws

Women's Health Protection

Voting Rights

Climate change

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#VoteBlue