Free Speech Struggles – San Diego, Then & Now

 

Last September, some friends and I on the Education Committee of DSA San Diego made this video about the history of the 1912 San Diego Free Speech Fight.

To see a timeline and an extensive bibliography click here.

Petition circulates to have Andrew Jackson Post Office in San Diego renamed

This is way better than getting a letter to the editor published!

Read the story online at CBS8.com. 

Check out my petition to rename the Andrew Jackson Post Office in Rolando, San Diego!

UPDATE: 6/23/2020

Dave Summers from NBC 7 showed up at my door so I couldn't turn him away.

I don't look my best but I tried.  As of about noon today, the petition has just under 500 signatures.

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More UPDATES below:

On June 24th, 2020, I managed to get on KUSI-TV:

In March 2021, I was contacted by Charles T. Clark, a columnist at the San Diego Union-Tribune who did half an Op-Ed about the petition to rename my post office. Read the column here.

On November 18, 2022, my Congressmember Sara Jacobs introduced bill H.R. 9308 to change the name of the  Andrew Jackson Post Office to the Susan A. Davis Post Office.

On November 29, 2022, the bill H.R. 9308 passed the House by a majority voice vote, "...the ayes have it."

On December 19, 2022, the bill to rename my post office passed the Senate.

According to ABC News, POTUS signed the bill to rename my post office into law on December 27, 2022. It is now a violation of federal law to refer to it as the Andrew Jackson Post Office in any official document.

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In March 2023, I was invited to participate in the campaign to rename Clay Park and Henry Elementary across the street from the Post Office Formerly named after Andrew Jackson. Please sign the petition here. 

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On July 6, 2023, Sara Jacob shouted out my name at the dedication ceremony, and it got into the San Diego Union-Tribune. 

Thus sayeth the King of Funny Faces.

Sarah Rapelje

Before last month, I thought my oldest known ancestor was Stephanus Terhune, a sheriff who worked for King George during the American Revolution and went on trial after the Colonists won the war.

Read more. 

That was until I found out that he was a fifth-generation descendent of Hans Hansen Bergen and, apparently, Sarah Rapelje, the first European Christian female born in the colony of New Amsterdam in what is now New York.

Her family founded Brooklyn and Queens and she is the 9th great-grandmother of Humphrey Bogart.

See a resemblance?

You might not see that much of a resemblance because Bogart is a descendent of her youngest son, whom she had with her second husband after my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather died. Yeah, so that was a pretty interesting thing I found out today. 

Oh yeah, one more thing, Sarah and I share a birthday 350 years apart.

UPDATE: found this:

They Make Good Films These Days (Just Not in Hollywood) - #23

The Act of Killing (2012)


Nominated for Best Documentary? It's sure to win, but that's it? Is that all? Why was this masterpiece not nominated for Best Picture? Why doesn't someone create a new category: Best Film of All Time?

If ever a film could literally save the world, this is it. That's not hyperbole. I mean what I say.

I really wish my best friend, the great filmmaker Venkatesh Veeraraghavan, were still alive to watch this with me.

It is the epitome of what all documentary film, all psychodrama, all humanity should aspire to be.

So Sayeth The King of Funny Faces!

The Story of Funny Faces

I only saw my father cry twice.

He was crippled up with Progressive Supra-Nuclear Palsy both times. The worst kind of Parkinsonism you can get. That wasn’t why he was crying though. Muhammed Ali’s neurologist said my father’s PSP had two features worse than just regular PSP. Most people with that severe PSP don’t survive for more than a year. My Dad lasted eight.

He could take that. The first time he really cried was when his best friend’s son died in a plane crash. He cried so hard. He was so upset it really startled me. It made me think of how much more he would cry if I had died. That is when I knew, really knew that my father loved me.

The second time I saw him really break down was about two months after September 11, 2001. He had read a story in a magazine about a little girl whose father died in the towers. She said she would never see his funny face again.

When I spoke about all this in his eulogy after he died in 2003, I told about how much my Dad loved to make Funny Faces with his kids. It was his favorite thing to do. The last thing I said was that he was the “The King of Funny Faces.”

Sometime around 2008, I realized this:  

The King is Dead! Long live the King of Funny Faces!

Phil Ochs: There But for Fortune

About the Documentary




Watch the Full Documentary

Watch Phil Ochs: There But for Fortune on PBS. See more from American Masters.

Humorous phases of funny faces

I googled "of funny faces" and this is what I found. Neat!

9/11/11

I was with my father 10 years ago today. I was getting ready for work upstairs when I saw the towers begin to fall. I ran down crazily to tell him "The twin towers are collapsing." He couldn't believe it until I turned on the TV and there they were. He told me to go to work. I worked in Secaucus, New Jersey, just across the river. My shift started at 11 am. Many of my co-workers watched the second plane hit from their window. I never made it to work, though. The roads were closed. I went to a Blood Bank to see if I could donate blood, but the line was already 40 or 50 people long, so I decided just to go to a car dealership and get some work that needed to be done on my car since I had the day off. I sat in the waiting room watching the news by myself for a long time.

A few weeks later, I remember walking in on my dad. He was crying terribly. I learned that he had just read a story in a magazine or something about a little girl who was never going to see "daddy's funny faces" again. I mentioned this as part of his story at my father's memorial service. It is the origin of the phrase "The King of Funny Faces".

They Make Good Films These Days (Just Not In Hollywood) - 13

Example #13: Flame and Citron

So Sayeth the King of Funny Faces!

The Death of Marat

One Year Ago Today the King of Funny Faces Got a Tattoo



It's a thin, one inch, teardrop shaped black stab wound under my right collarbone.



It looks like the wound in "Death of Marat" by David.



Enjoy the rest of this program about the French painter:

BBC's The Power of Art - David p4

BBC's The Power of Art - David p5

BBC's The Power of Art - David p6

They Still Make Good Films These Days (Just Not In Hollywood) - #7

Example #7: Cropsey

I don't know what is scarier: the images of the mental patients from inside Lakewood State School, the idea that somebody must be responsible for the disappearance of seven children between 1972 and 1987, or the way all the police and family members look like they are lying twenty years later.

Geography Minor

When I was a Geography Minor at West Chester University, I used to love looking at historical maps. Now I love looking at this video. I wish it would have a date ticker or something, though.

Viva la France!

"The majority of the guns fired on the British at Saratoga were French. Four years later, when the British set down their muskets at Yorktown, they surrendered to forces that were nearly equal parts French and American, all of them fed and clothed and paid by France, and protected by de Grasse's fleet. Without French funds the Revolution would have collapsed; by a conservative estimate, America's independence cost Franch more than 1.3 billion livres, the equivalent of $13 billion today."
-Stacy Schiff

And how do Republican lawmakers repay them?

The End of the Combat Mission in Iraq

The Daily Record of forgot about this.

Nothing is the cause of it.

   When a ripe apple falls, What makes it fall ? Is it gravity , pulling it down to earth ? A Withered stalk ? Drying The action of the sun? Increased weight ? A breath of wind ? Or the boy under the tree who wants to eat it?
Nothing is the cause of it. It is just the coming together of various Necessary Conditions for any living , organic, elemental event to take place. And the botanist who finds That the apple has fallen Because of the onset of decay in its cellular structure, and all the rest of it , will be no more right or wrong Than The boyunder the tree who says the apple fell Because he wanted to eat it and prayed for it to fall.

Leo Tolstoy . War & Peace. Chapter III, Part I, Chapter I.

My Therapists' Office

So I'm walking along Macculoch Avenue in Morristown this afternoon and this guy trying to sell me a historic walking tour points across the street and says: "That's Thomas Nast's house! He was the cartoonist who created the democratic donkey and the republican eleph-" I said, "Yeah, yeah, I know who he is." He created Uncle Sam and made Santa Claus jolly image famous.He brought down the Tweed ring, and the Nast in Conde-Nast Publishing (i.e. The New Yorker, Harpers Magazine, Atlantic Monthly I think, etc.) is named after him. And do you know what house this guy was pointing at?

My first therapists' office. That made my day.

What kids need these days is a sense of place, a sense of belonging.

Not medication. Not mandatory therapy.

Warm Regards,

Erik B. Anderson
Independence Township, New Jersey

Check out The Nast Collection at Macculloch Hall Historical Museum!

James Baldwin v. William F. Buckley Jr. Debate

This is awesome.

James Baldwin and I have something in common.
We both whooped WFB, Jr. in a debate.

Subject: "Has The American Dream Been Achieved at The Expense of the American Negro?"
 Full version available here.

Komfo Anokye Sword

When I was in Ghana, my brother Padmore showed us the Komfo Anokye Sword in Kumasi:

Komfo Anokye's Sword
Photo taken by Erik B. Anderson
Kumasi, Ghana, 1995

Read more about it from Ghana Expeditions.

Komfo Anokye Sword
Just behind the Okomfo Anokye Hospital, one will find the Okomfo Anokye Sword. It is named after a famous traditional priest who, in the 17th century, was said to have conjured the ""Golden Stool"" from the sky. Legend states that as high priest of the Akan kingdoms, he drove his sword into the ground with such force that it has remained there ever since, marking the site of the new imperial city, Kumasi, which unified the Akan kingdoms. The site is revered by all as a sacred shrine.

The unmovable Sword of the Komfo Anokye remains in the grounds of the Okomfo Anokye Teaching Hospital, where he pushed it. It is believed the Komfo pronounced that no one would be able to remove the sword, and so it has remained in spite of many attempts.

In October 2008, I sent a photo of the B. Bruce Anderson Memorial Flag to Governor Corzine. On the back of it, I wrote something like this:

October 2008

Dear Governor Corzine:

As long as the B. Bruce Anderson Memorial Flag remains in the Ground, our nation will remain strong!

Sincerely,

Erik B. Anderson
Independence Township, New Jersey
Established 1892

The B. Bruce Anderson Memorial Flag - Established 2006

The King of All NJ Monthly Letters To The Editor

New Jersey Monthly Magazine - February 2010 - On The Stands Now!



Click Here to Read All of Page 12

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Rooooots Bloody Rooooots!

Erik Worked for the Chester County Historical Society

CCHS Promo - w. Erik's hand in it
Originally uploaded by Erik B. Anderson

I was a Public Relations Intern, a Museum Tour Guide, a Receptionist and a Library Attendant for about six months at the Chester County Historical Society for about six months in 1996.

I really enjoyed it.

I solicited bids from web developers to create CCHS's very first "web site". I also made a lot of phone calls, updated press contact info and I like to say I "got my hand in" the pamphlet (right). You can see my 21 year old hand pointing to one of the exhibits in the picture in the middle.

The Chester County Historical Society is located on North High Street in West Chester, Pennsylvania. There are two main buildings. One of them used ot be an Opera House built by Thomas U. Walter, the architect of the United States Capitol Dome. He built six other structures in West Chester in the 19th Century. They are all very impressive.

Here are some other facts about the history of Chester County:

• Bayard Rustin was born in West Chester. He was the man who introduced Martin Luther King, Jr. to Gandhi's ideas. They recently named the High School after him. Parents complained because he was gay and he was a communist. He was a great author (I recommend Down the Line) and organizer of the civil rights march in 1963.

• Frederick Douglass spoke publicly for the last time at West Chester University, where I was a sociology student while I worked at the museum.

• The Battle of the Brandywine, which was called the "bloodiest battle of the Revolution", was fought not far from West Chester.

• Chester County was known as the "Mushroom Capital of the World." There was a whole exhibit about the mushroom industry when I was there.

They have a library with a vast genealogical archive. They have a children's playroom and a vast auditorium where speakers often come to talk.

If you can go visit, I think it would be worthwhile.

Warm Regards,

Erik B. Anderson
The King of Funny Faces
Independence Township, New Jersey
Established 1782