Please contact your Assembly member and urge them to oppose Assembly Bill 715. AB 715, a bill designed to promote “educational equity, [stop] discrimination, [and lead to] antisemitism prevention” constitutes an insidious erosion of our First Amendment right to free speech.
Personally, I detest the occupation of Gaza by zealots; I have Jewish friends who agree with me. I abhor the war crimes that are being committed by Netanyahu and his criminal cohort; I have Jewish friends who agree with me. I despair at the news of journalists being killed, hospitals and food distribution locations being bombed, and children being starved because of powerful fanatics with deadly weapons, regardless of which government or theological cult is responsible. I reject our country’s myopic, irresponsible, and criminal aid in this destruction. Who would not agree with me?
Let’s face it: Wars are generational and are bound to continue unless and until those opposed to war speak out. AB 715 depresses our freedom to reject fealty and hatred. AB 715 attempts to direct discussion about “antisemitism,” but could lead to our inability to express any dissenting opinion.
Any law that targets to support or depress a specific theology is obviously ill-conceived and anti-constitutional.
Twenty years ago, I read Reading Lolita in Tehran. It is the true saga of the author, Azar Nafisi, who attempted to teach English literature to Iranian girls, in secret, in her home. The girls’ quest for education, forbidden by the reigning regime, forced them to exchange ideas and opinions and to discuss controversial topics covertly. Their teacher was complicit in a possibly deadly “crime.”
True democratic societies consider that the censorship of public discussion regarding challenging topics as “backward.” AB 715 pushes our citizens closer to a version of a shah’s repressive regime, where dissent is forced underground.
Dissent and disagreement, with respectful “listening,” leads to understanding, compromise, diplomacy, and solutions to our most challenging problems. I reject the silencing of my opinions by anyone, whether out of their fear, disagreement, or “political correctness.”
Perhaps a better Assembly bill would be to design and codify a legal definition of “hate speech,” so that those who commit it would be held accountable.
Please do not censor the education of our children, the future citizens of the world. Please oppose AB 715.
Gail Johnson
Morro Bay
This article appears in Aug 21-31, 2025.
“Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thought-crime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten. . . . The process will still be continuing long after you and I are dead. Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller. Even now, of course, there’s no reason or excuse for committing thought-crime. It’s merely a question of self-discipline, reality-control. But in the end there won’t be any need even for that. . . . Has it ever occurred to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?”
George Orwell
This is why I havent owned a television in decades and no one watches mainstream media anymore. Rachel Maddow? Yuck.
The bill would not be necessary if college administrators could be trusted to protect the rights of ALL students. But, in their eagerness to pander to the loudest, they have chosen to neglect the rights of others. For example, at UCLA they allowed pro-Palestinian protestors to shut off areas of the campus from other students, and to check ID’s for “Jewish names”. It is sad that legislation is necessary to make them do the right thing.
“The post-World War II economic expansion, also known as the “Golden Age of Capitalism,” was a period of unprecedented global prosperity from the late 1940s to the early 1970s, characterized by high growth, full employment, and rising living standards. In the United States, this boom was fueled by pent-up consumer demand, the GI Bill’s financing of education and housing, the transition of factories to civilian production, and the growth of new industries like electronics and aviation. The US emerged from the war with its industrial base intact, becoming the world’s dominant economic power and fostering a large middle class.”
Those of us born after 1970 are experiencing the reverse, downward mobility and scarcity. Opportunities are gone and our country is hollowed out. It’s a giant Potempkin village, it looks great on the outside but if you actually lift up the hood, you will see the rest of us getting nowhere. Boomers took it all and pulled up the draw bridge. It’s hopeless.
If you point out their culpability, Boomers refuse to take responsibility yet at the same time know damn well the legacy their parents generation left them, but the legacy of collapse they leave us, they point to the sky, their opposition party, “Putin,” and everyone but their generation who was in actual power and whom they voted for. As they do this, they count their coins and gloat at their own genius. It’s so disgusting and the sooner they get locked away in retirement centers, the better off we will all be.
Everything the Trump administration and the Gen-Xers near him are doing is to try and clean up the damage and excesses Boomers did. It’s a counter revolution and they need to do more, like taxing concentrated wealth very hard.
1972: A mind is a terrible thing to waste.
2025: A mind is a terrible thing.
I find it no coincidence marijuana was legalized around 2008, when the economy collapsed. Now there’s a brewery on every corner, it’s legal to take mushrooms or treat PTSD with MDMT and microdose. This is the same strategy the Romans employed to keep the masses distracted, free bread and circuses. Being sober is an act of resistance. Reading books are acts of resistance. Exercising is an act of resistance. Eating healthy is an act of resistance. The last thing the oligarchs that rule our country want is a sober, healthy, fit, well read, population. What they want is for all of us to be drunk, stoned, tuned out, and too obese through our poisonous food system, to get up and storm their gated communities and banks. Perhaps this is why they have yachts ready to sail away when the American working class reaches their breaking point and comes for their heads.
@Steve Felten:
1967: Do you mind if we get wasted?
2025: Shaken or stirred?…….https://ysph.yale.edu/news-article/the-lin…
2015: Obama is invading Texas! Take up arms!
2025: Trump is invading California. Send him more money.
“Well know our disinformation program is complete when everything the U.S. public believes is false. This chilling line is said to have been expressed by former CIA Chief William Casey.
Morpheus: “Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.” [The Matrix]
Solution? Contextualize the lies through a personal pursuit of education. Or, as Buddha said as he lay dying, “Be a light unto yourself, Ananda.”
Trust no one.
This, Steve, is why people are freaking out on both sides of the aisle. They are unable to rectify the collapse, decay, and entropy we can see all around us, with the propaganda they/we have been indoctrinated on. We’ve been told we are the greatest, most caring, tolerant, patriotic, open, rich, and noble country on earth. Yet we see oligarchs controlling everything, gorging on what should be the people’s wealth, America’s history of slavery and genocide of native Americans is common knowledge and not hidden, we’re finally booting 40 million illegal immigrants out, warfare is left to America’s underclass to fight, enticed by the GI Bill, millions of people living on park benches, the gutter, under bridges, and their cars, our roads and bridges are collapsing, no medical care without going into bankruptcy, and as in the case of Democratic staffer, Aidan Maese-Czeropski, in 2023, having such little regard for his own party and Congress, deciding to film himself engaging in same sex sexual activity in a congressional hearing room.
This, sir, is a truth too painful to admit. It’s just too easy to blame the other party even though each party and an entire generation are responsible for putting us here. Instead of being people to look up to, our elders might as well be a generation of Adolph Eichmann’s. Unlike Eichmann, they’ll never be tried in a court of law for selling us all out. No, like you, they’ll blame our choices in voting (as if we had real candidates) or perhaps indolence (as if we had real jobs).
At their core, people will do anything for money or power and if you ask me, the depravity is kind of interesting. Just look at the case of George Santos, lol, comedy gold. The lengths people will go to debase themselves for so little is breathtaking. It’s all around us, every day.
Steve, free yourself and look into the abyss.