***If you are a Facebook user, please sign our Causes petition at http://www.causes.com/causes/795532-save-the-ucsd-crafts-center/actions/1689549***Please only sign one of the petitions***Thank you*** The recent closure of the UCSD Crafts Center has been detrimental to students, instructors, and the San Diego community. At the Crafts Center, individuals explore, experiment, research, discover, and engineer to create and innovate. This is how art is made, and it deserves a place among the highest in education. The Crafts Center has been a landmark on the UCSD campus since 1972. Beginning as a commuter lounge, the Crafts Center blossomed into a multidisciplinary facility, which included ceramics, jewelry, metal work, screen printing, glassblowing, flameworking, photography, graphics, music and poetry, stained glass, sculpture, weaving, neon, and even beer brewing. Ceramicist Ron Carlson, Director of the Crafts Center from 1976 to 2011, was instrumental in guiding its expansion. The Crafts Center has offered full courses, single day workshops, and available studio time, while maintaining a full-time Grove Gallery and week-long crafts exhibitions several times each year. The Crafts Center is one of the most conscientious institutions on campus. They provide three separate prices, for students, staff, and the community, to accommodate various needs. The Factory, an enterprise which offers screen printing services from the Crafts Center, was consciously designed to help offset some of the costs of the Crafts Center and has grown to provide many services to the campus community. The Crafts Center is unlike any other facility in San Diego. Over the past 40 years it has been a welcoming space for students to work on their own projects, obtain expert instruction, learn life-long skills, turn their craft into an occupation, and so much more. Arts education, of course, has recognized benefits, and is supported by many prominent organizations, such as Americans for the Arts, Association for the Advancement of Arts Education, and the Arts Education Partnership. A world-class university such as UCSD deserves a wide-ranging art program that rivals the research and science that happens on campus. UCSD is an extremely competitive academic environment, with a strong focus on science and engineering. In a society in which suicide is the third leading cause of death for youth aged 10 to 24 (CDC 2012), opportunities for stress relief are of prime importance. The Crafts Center is one of the few places on the campus that provides a creative outlet and source of stress relief for students, faculty, and employees. Individuals who participate in the Crafts Center’s not for credit activities do so solely because they love what they do, not because they are necessary for course requirements. Many of the Crafts Center’s students and instructors have received accolades for their work. Student Dot Kimura was featured in a San Diego Home/Garden Lifestyles Magazine article for her ceramics and jewelry. Jewelry instructor Tara Magboo regularly shows her jewelry and art at Comic-Con, among many other venues throughout San Diego and elsewhere, and is scheduled to have an exhibit at the museum at the Japanese Friendship Garden in Balboa Park in 2014. Jay Whaley began his own jewelry school, Whaley Studios. Yuseff Cherney started Ballast Point, a brewing company in San Diego. Clay Logan, a glass instructor at the Crafts Center, worked for Lino Tagilpietra, one of the most famous artists in glassblowing today (Stephens 2009). The late Ed Thompson, a ceramics instructor, was renowned for his exceptional work throughout the craft community, even being featured in major private collections. A retrospective of Thompson’s work was held at the Grove Gallery in 2011 upon his passing (Gonzalez 2011). Ceramics students Ahmet Ustunel and Helen Kagan created the “Art U Can Touch” month-long exhibition at the Grove Gallery, aimed at providing the visually challenged community an opportunity to experience art in a way not typically allowed in museums (Winger 2011). There are many other instructors and students who have made real achievements in their areas of craft and while it would be too many to mention, the impact that the Crafts Center has had on their lives and careers is immeasurable. The recent notification to the UCSD community of the closing of the Crafts Center has been devastating. Not only is the actual closure absolutely heartbreaking, but the handling of the closure announcement was so sudden that everyone was caught unprepared. Instructors were not given any notice whatsoever, nor were they even directly informed that their positions had been terminated. Many instructors only learned of the closure when their UCSD students notified them of the campus-wide email, to which most Crafts Center instructors are not privy. Furthermore, the Crafts Center website was summarily taken down, despite the fact that catalogues for the Fall q...

CONGRESS STOLE OUR RIGHTS!!! Imagine if you will, going about your daily life, be it work, school what have you…and you look for your purse or your wallet and discover that it’s gone…all of a sudden you realize your credit and debit cards, driver’s license and all other forms of precious personal information and things of value that you carry with you…are gone. That’s the shock I felt when I discovered that the U.S. Congress stole my right to federal review. It wasn’t just my “right” it was the right of every single American citizen in this country. What is the “right of federal review” you may ask? And that is a fair question because if you didn’t know you had a “right” of federal review, you of course would not have known it had been stolen from you. The “right of federal review” is one of the fundamental rights that the founding fathers insisted on including in the U.S. Constitution for all citizens of this country. The “right of federal review” would only come into play when you, a citizen, encountered an issue with one of the 50 state governmental entities and the outcome was against you and contrary to the protections contained in the U.S. Constitution and the laws formed under the Constitution. For instance, say you spent several years preparing yourself to go to medical school and after great effort and expense you are admitted to a medical school with AMA certification. You complete the course requirements and go on to your internship. Then it is time for your medical board examination. You prepare diligently, take the examinations and pass. Now comes licensing by a state agency. They deny you a license to practice medicine. Not because you aren’t competent but because they say you have a “character” issue. You appeal the ruling. It comes back against you. Then you discover, that this “character” issue is based on nothing more than conjecture and personal animosity of someone on the board that doesn’t like you or because someone made a political decision that you don’t look like a doctor or your accent is not understandable or there aren’t many of “your kind” in the medical field, or some other crazy notion that they can come up with. Whatever the reason for the absurd outcome, this type of decision would violate both the Equal Protection and Due Process clauses of 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. So you appeal the adverse decision to the State Supreme Court and to your great dismay, they refuse to hear your case or worse yet, the affirm the decision made by the state officials. The founding fathers of this nation knew all too well that the varied states were susceptible to tyranny against its own citizens in the same way as illustrated above. Therefore, to make sure that rights protected by the Constitution and laws of the United States were not washed away by state agencies and rubberstamped by judges and justices of the 50 different state courts, the “right of federal review” was included as a fundamental right of each and every citizen. This “right” gave every citizen of this nation, the unfettered “right” to have his or her case reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court when the highest state court had made a decision that violated the U.S. Constitution or laws created there-under. That was the fundamental “right” that Congress stole from the American People in June, 1988 and no one ever knew it. Not a word was uttered to let us know that they had “ripped us off” but they did it and every lawyer in America let it pass without a whimper. Every member of Congress that voted for this piece of legislation violated his or her oath of office to uphold, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. Every newspaper and 24 hour cycle of monotonous news, CNN, FOX, ABC, NBC, CBS, and none of the “talking heads” we see and hear constantly…no one told the American People that a theft of such monumental proportion had taken place. And how did this “theft” occur you may wonder? Through an innocuous bill entitled “The Supreme Court Case Selection Act of 1988.” I was dumbfounded because Article III, Section II defines the selection of cases for the U.S. Supreme Court. It reads in pertinent part as follows: “The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority;-…In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be a party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction….” Now wait a minute, why would Congress need to pass a law “selecting” Supreme Court cases when the U.S. Constitution has already set forth and established that criteria for them when the Constitution was drafted, debated, ratified and enacted into Law? The reasons offered seem even more unreal. It appears that somebody felt that the U.S. Supreme Court was being “overworked” and that its case load was far too ...

Save Alabama's Science in Motion Program.

I urge our County Supervisors and Planning Commissioners to support the SonomaIndependent.org and the Attainable Housing Coalition's proposal to create zoning and permitting variances and amend the forthcoming Community Separator Initiative to allow private landowners to build 15,000 units of small auxiliary housing units rent controlled for under $900, as well as 10,000 units of small houses costing under $200,000 in Community Land Trust clusters during the next 15 years.

Macon, Georgia Superior Court Judge Howard Simms, and Bibb County Georgia District Attorney David Cooke, Jr. must go, and Attorney Larry Fouche’ must be reprimanded with them. .

HELP PUERTO RICO OBTAIN DISASTER RELIEF POST HURRICANE MARIA

For 5o,ooo year Bluto brutish MEN have dominated to ruin all vital life systems for self gain. Moreover, we should see, after a hard day groping for mooola and smackin mama around after nooky, our forepappy brainiac cave dwellers was afraid of killer spooks at night to invent fool killer god. Bluto MEN been usin that to steal freedom by infecting kids with junk joo-joo BELIEF.

We the employees of Verizon and others against workplace bullying are asking you to please break your ties. This is the company you’re really in a partnership with. I request that you choose your partnerships with companies that actually have ETHICS.

I stand with any labor union that supports its members and works for equality and justice for all people. SEIU Local 1 Chicago only supports its own interests. They didn't protect me, so who do they protect? I worked many years in apartment building maintenance in the west burbs of Chicago. As a past local 1 union member, I can tell you first hand, when it came to the local 1 union supporting me when I needed them, THEY DID NOTHING. I filed and won my grievance with the union. My employer Mid America Management Corp. terminated me the same day I won my grievance. The SEIU #1 did nothing. . I feel I must do something to stop what I believe is criminal action. I wish the people responsible flushed out and dealt with in accordance with the laws of the United States of America. We as people must besiege fraud and Corruption and destroy it anywhere it is found and we must do this for each other. Over the years I have made countless attempts to bring this to the attention of the proper authorities, but either no one is listening or no one cares. I believe where there is smoke there is fire, I believe my situation is the smoke that marks a big fire of fraud and corruption in the SEIU Chicago union that needs extinguished in the worst way. Corporations of corruption have been putting good hard working union members and non-union members out of work for a long time; I have been shouting this since 2002 at the top of my voice. Please see; (facebook.com/notgrandfathersunion seiu) check out the grievance and subsequent letter of support from SEIU local 1 Chicago that got me immediately terminated from my job of 11 years... I believe SEIU local 1 Chicago allowed corporate power and influence to reverse the outcome of an already decided and documented grievance. I believe Representatives within the union conspired with Mid America management to circumvent not only my union rights, but also my civil rights in retaliation for filing a grievance and avoiding payment of back wages and benefits due me. I am calling for an investigation into this matter, requiring the restoring of my civil right. Please support my petition requiring SEIU local 1 Chicago to enforce the union contract my union and my employer agreed to. Require SEIU local 1 Chicago to complete the grievance process between Michael D. Daugherty and Mid America Management Corporation. A grievance process halted and circumvented by illegal termination and failure of representation Please stand with me and demand answers. God Bless America Thank You Michael D Daugherty

Establish the LaMont Dottin Law to standardize national process that requires "police to take reports of missing adults whenever the adult is reported to be missing". Love has no age limit and neither should the law. Everyone is somebody’s loved one...when a loved one goes missing ”silence is not an answer and doing nothing is not a solution."