Frank Gormlie

Thumbnail image for San Diegan Wins National Award From Military Women’s Advocacy Group

San Diegan Wins National Award From Military Women’s Advocacy Group

by Frank Gormlie 05.22.2013 Activism

Kathy Gilberd – a counselor for the Military Law Task Force here in San Diego – has just won an award from a national military women’s advocacy group, SWAN – Service Women’s Action Network.

Gilberd – a long-time counselor for vets and others with problems in registration and draft issues – , was flown back to Washington, DC to accept the award last month for being one of the “service providers of the year” for 2013, for her “outstanding pro bono legal service to veterans and service members.”

SWAN was formed several years ago by ex-military women and supporters, and now is the lead national group doing work around women’s issues in the military especially around sexual assaults and sexual harassment. The organization takes women’s cases, and also does lobbying and policy work, and public education. The awards were presented during SWAN’s 2nd annual summit in DC.

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Thumbnail image for It’s a Sad Day in America When the Navy Launches a San Diego-Built Drone off a Carrier

It’s a Sad Day in America When the Navy Launches a San Diego-Built Drone off a Carrier

by Frank Gormlie 05.16.2013 Culture

It’s a sad day in America. The US Navy launched the first carrier-based drone off its deck the other day, off the coast of Virginia. It’s an even sadder day for us in San Diego, as the drone was manufactured – in part, at least – by plants and engineers right here in our own city.

The launching of the drone off that deck demonstrates clearly that as drones become more and more integrated into becoming the armament of the nation’s military, they are becoming more and more accepted – here domestically, back in the good ol’ US of A.

And as drones become more and more prevalently utilized, not just by our armed forces overseas, but by law enforcement, border patrol, and local police departments here within our very own borders, American citizens are more and more subjected to a high-tech surveillance that is quite unlike anything we’ve known in the past – a surveillance that is becoming so pervasive, that it challenges our basic civil rights, freedoms and privacies.

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Thumbnail image for School Board Okays Controversial Sale of Prime Mission Beach School Property – Despite Mayor Filner’s Plea

School Board Okays Controversial Sale of Prime Mission Beach School Property – Despite Mayor Filner’s Plea

by Frank Gormlie 05.16.2013 Economy

By Frank Gormlie/ OB Rag

On Tuesday, May 14th, the San Diego Unified School District board authorized the sale of the former Mission Beach Elementary School property to private developers – despite objections by Mayor Filner, residents and community activists.

The 4 to 1 vote by the Board was the culmination of the process to cement the controversial sale of 2.23 acres of prime public school land, a half block from the Pacific Ocean and mere yards from Mission Bay. Mayor Filner, community planners and civic activists, as well as residents pleaded with the Board to keep the land in the public arena, and work with either the City or developers on alternatives.

The site was sold for $18.5 million to a duo of developers, doing business as McKellar-Ashbrook LLC, registered in La Jolla.

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Thumbnail image for Video of Mission Beach Cigarette Citation Goes Viral and Lights Up National Debate Over Cellphone Videos

Video of Mission Beach Cigarette Citation Goes Viral and Lights Up National Debate Over Cellphone Videos

by Frank Gormlie 05.02.2013 Culture

See Video Below

By Frank Gormlie / OB Rag

A video by a guy on the Mission Beach boardwalk who was being given a citation for smoking a cigarette has gone viral. The incident involved Adam Pringle who refused to shut off his cellphone while videoing the San Diego police officer – and now Pringle’s video of part of the incident has sparked a conversation that has gone national over the rights of people using the video on their cellphone (or other cameras).

Pringle – from Escondido – was smoking a cig on the boardwalk at Mission when he was approached by San Diego Police on bicycles. As the officer began writing up a citation, an infraction, Adam Pringle began using his cell phone to video the officer.

The officer then asks Pringle to shut off his cellphone. Pringle refuses – saying it was his right. The officer asks him at least one more time – and Pringle continues to video the officer.

Pringle then told the press that his cellphone was then slapped out of his hand and then tackled to the ground by the same officer who was writing the ticket. He was then arrested for disorderly conduct.

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Join U-T Poll On Whether San Onofre Should Be Shut Down

by Frank Gormlie 05.02.2013 Activism

San Onofre nuke plant

The UT-San Diego has a poll for its readers going right now on whether you think the San Onofre Nuclear Power Plant should be shut down.

Yesterday, May 1, “Yes” was winning but as of today, it has swung the other way.

C’mon San Diegans. Vote to shut it down. We have the link right here so you can vote.

Here’s the link to vote

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Thumbnail image for Victor Ochoa – Mural Maestro of Chicano Park

Victor Ochoa – Mural Maestro of Chicano Park

by Frank Gormlie 04.26.2013 Activism

By Frank Gormlie

As we were sitting in Victor Ochoa’s studio garage in Golden Hill the other day, I realized that even though we’d been friends since the late 1970′s, I didn’t know a whole lot about his earlier life before those heady days of the Seventies decade. I was wondering whether he remembered that I had helped arrange for him to be hired to paint murals at the Che Cafe up at UCSD – way back in in 1980 and 81. He did but he had a few different details.

“This is my favorite garage,” Victor said, as we settled in for our talk. Surrounding us on three sides inside the garage were painting materials and large plastic bins holding more painting stuff stacked up on shelves, brushes, cans of paint piled on each other, cans of spray paint in a shallow closest. There was a gas-powered airbrush machine that looked like a cross between a lawn mower and a Mars Rover.

In one corner, he had set up a type of shrine to his past, his family, his culture, with various memorabilia of his life. On another wall were posters of Pancho Villa and of more recent Chicano heroes, like Corky Gonzalez, and local activist Marco Anguiano. And along part of one of the walls were the books, the notebooks, the 3-ring binders, paper records, the manuscripts, the slides.

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Thumbnail image for The Best Bicycle Ride Around Mission Bay

The Best Bicycle Ride Around Mission Bay

by Frank Gormlie 04.25.2013 Culture

A Tour of the Best Bicycle Route Around San Diego’s Aquatic Playland

By Frank Gormlie

This started out as a chronicle – complete with a photo journal – of the best bicycle ride around Mission Bay. I had planned to post nearly one hundred photos with complete descriptions and commentary – but due to a glitch in our programs, I was having too many problems to present all the pics. So, I temporarily shelved that idea and gravitated to a briefer version, this one. (As you peruse the photos, be sure to click on them for larger versions to view.)

The tour I now present around Mission Bay is a great one and it is a ride that has been honed by me and a few riding friends over the last three decades – since the early Eighties.

It is a ride along a route that has a minimum of traffic and street exposure, and it is a route that is practically 13 miles round trip from the Ocean Beach Skateboard Park in Robb Field.

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Thumbnail image for Tuesday the Ninth 45 Years Ago – an Historic Day for the San Diego Free Press

Tuesday the Ninth 45 Years Ago – an Historic Day for the San Diego Free Press

by Frank Gormlie 04.09.2013 Activism

By Frank Gormlie

When it finally dawned on me that today was Tuesday, the ninth of April – I began immediately having flashbacks – not hallucinogenic ones – but ones that surrounded another Tuesday the 9th – a Tuesday the ninth of April exactly 45 years ago. It’s a date that has poignancy for us at the San Diego Free Press and for all of our readers and contributors.

For it was this day 45 years ago – itself just a few days after Martin Luther King was assassinated – that students at UCSD decided once and for all to begin publishing an underground newspaper, called the San Diego Free Press.

If we go back four and a half decades to that time, you’d find me as a new sophomore at the University of California at San Diego – totally unpoliticized, walking around in a daze, a definite neophyte in the land of politics. I had just left the US Army and had transferred right into the bowels of left-wing radicalism as I began taking classes from philosophy professor Herbert Marcuse. He and his graduate student assistants were beginning to fill my brain with all kinds of new thoughts – but I was still new to it all, still very wet behind my ears, more interested in completing my courses than in understanding what was going on across the country in 1968.

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Thumbnail image for The Southern California Major Dailies Failed Miserably in “Commemorating” the 10 Year Anniversary of the Iraq War

The Southern California Major Dailies Failed Miserably in “Commemorating” the 10 Year Anniversary of the Iraq War

by Frank Gormlie 03.27.2013 Editor's Picks

The LA Times and the U-T San Diego Continue the Deception of Ten Years With Their Failure to Discuss the War

Southern California is home to two major daily newspapers – each from the major cities in this part of the country: the Los Angeles Times and the U-T San Diego.

In a review of their coverage of the ten year anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq, I found them to be woefully inadequate in any discussion about “lessons learned” on the war, the invasion, or the run-up to the conflict.  I especially searched to see whether they went further and exposed the falsehoods and lies that the Bush administration told the public to convince us to go to war.

Those of us who suffer the U-T would not be too surprised to learn that the Manchester daily would not get too involved with a critique of the Bush’s deceptions and misrepresentations.  However, one would have thought the LA Times – once the bastion of liberalness on the West Coast – would have at least attempted to put together some kind of journalistic endeavor in examining all the ways that the American people were misled a decade ago.

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Thumbnail image for The North Park Main Street – Interview with Executive Director Angela Landsberg

The North Park Main Street – Interview with Executive Director Angela Landsberg

by Frank Gormlie 03.22.2013 Business

Walking into the office of the North Park Main Street, the main business association for the commercial area of the North Park community centered around University Avenue, I immediately recognized Angela Landsberg, its executive director. She was at her desk in the back, just finishing up in time for our interview. Everyone else had gone home at 3076 University Avenue. I was here to interview her for the San Diego Free Press focus during March on the community of North Park.

“I’ve been to meetings all day,” she declared. “I was out of the office for 3 hours and I now have 62 emails – not junk either – these all have to be responded to,” she said, signing off on her computer. I laughed, and we hugged. I’ve known Angie since she was a teenager, oldest daughter of my ex, and we’d lived together for a couple of years way back in the late Eighties.

And now she was the head of this North Park business group. Actually, North Park – a huge area, in fact, has several business groups, as there’s the El Cajon Boulevard Business Improvement Association, and another one south of Angela’s area. Her North Park Main Street area goes from the Georgia Street Bridge or Florida Street to the west, all the way to the 805 on the east, but it’s only 2 to 3 blocks wide, from Upas to Howard on the north.

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Proposed City of San Diego Medical Marijuana Dispensary Regulations with Map of Proposed Zones

by Frank Gormlie 03.21.2013 Activism

San Diego MedMJ map zonesMayor Filner Proposed 2% tax, $5000 annual licensing fee, and collectives / cooperatives in limited commercial and industrial zones; Full Council Votes March 25th

From Americans for Safe Access / March 15, 2013

Over the years, medical marijuana patients in San Diego have endured a lack of representation in local governments, raids, lawsuits, eradication efforts, federal interference, and outright misinformation about the issue. Fortunately, now we have a new Mayor who sides with compassion instead of ignorance and is willing to move forward with regulations.

After attending the January San Diego Americans for Safe Access Meeting, where he promised to move forward with regulations, Mayor Bob Filner began working on a proposal to bring to council.

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Thumbnail image for 10 Years of Lying About the Iraq War Has to Stop Now – Bush and Cheney and Co. Must Be Held Accountable for the Sake of America

10 Years of Lying About the Iraq War Has to Stop Now – Bush and Cheney and Co. Must Be Held Accountable for the Sake of America

by Frank Gormlie 03.20.2013 Activism

From the OB Rag

Ten years of lying about the Iraq war has to stop now – immediately. The government – our government – lied to us, the America people, about the reasons they said it was necessary to go to war with Iraq – a country that was not threatening us. One decade ago to this day, their lies produced action: the “shock and awe” “bunker-busters” unleashed on the capital of Iraq, March 19th, 2003.

They lied to cover up their invasion of Iraq a decade ago to this day.

And now ten years later, after more than 4400 Americans killed, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed, 30,000 Americans injured, after we have spent over $3 Trillion dollars, we have come to the realization that, if America is to be honest with itself, we must now demand that someone be held accountable for these lies and the wastes of lives and resources.

Those to be held accountable, of course, must include the leaders of our government at that time: George W. Bush, President, and Dick Cheney, Vice-President and those who demanded the war which includes then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.

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Thumbnail image for Bad News Environmentally Elsewhere Is Good News for San Diego

Bad News Environmentally Elsewhere Is Good News for San Diego

by Frank Gormlie 03.14.2013 Business

Bad news for the environment in other locales can be good news for San Diego.

Today, two offerings by the media – one on how hot and dry the City of Phoenix is getting due to climate change, and the second about the loss of Monarch butterflies in Mexico – is good news for us.

In an Op-Ed piece in the Los Angeles Times, entitled “Phoenix Too Hot Future”, we learn:

In Phoenix, the convergence of heat, drought and violent winds is creating an ever-more-worrisome situation. … [High] temperatures, however, are child’s play in Phoenix, where readings commonly exceed 100 degrees for more than 100 days a year. In 2011, the city set a record for days over 110. There were 33 of them. … It goes without saying that Phoenix’s desert setting is hot by nature, but humans have made it hotter. The city is a masonry world, with asphalt and concrete everywhere. The hard, heavy materials absorb daytime heat more efficiently than the naked land, and then give it back more slowly after the sun goes down, preventing the cool of the desert night from providing much relief.

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Thumbnail image for Tunnels Under San Diego’s 30 Foot Height Limit in the Coastal Zone – Part 2

Tunnels Under San Diego’s 30 Foot Height Limit in the Coastal Zone – Part 2

by Frank Gormlie 02.19.2013 Activism

At the risk of encouraging the critics of the height limit by continuing the discussion of the effects and value of the 1972 citizens’ initiative, this is meant then to demonstrate to those same critics the tunnels that have already been dug in and around and under the 30 foot standard, as well as informing the fairly new generations of citizenry and those uninitiated observers of San Diego development.

Height limit MB monsterIn Part One, I discussed how some of these tunnels have been dug underneath the height limit on San Diego’s coastal areas over the decades, outlining several serious breaches of the seemingly sacrosanct restrictions on building heights. Feeling that the ongoing online discussion on the issue with Voice of San Diego (see part 1) wasn’t complete without some kind of acknowledgement of how tunnels have already been dug under the 30 foot limit.

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Thumbnail image for PUC Delays Vote on SDG&E’s Proposed Fossil-Fuel Power Plants – Again – and the Sierra Club Is Pissed Off!

PUC Delays Vote on SDG&E’s Proposed Fossil-Fuel Power Plants – Again – and the Sierra Club Is Pissed Off!

by Frank Gormlie 02.14.2013 Activism

During a period of time when the nuclear power station at San Onofre has been disabled for a year now, there are renewed calls, according to the U-T, to allow SDG&E to proceed with their plans to build two fossil-fuel power plants. Yet, when the California Public Utilities Commission sat down to vote on the utility’s proposals yesterday, Feb. 13th, they refused to take a vote and instead delayed their decision – again – and this time for the fourth time

The San Diego Chapter of the Sierra Club – who has opposed these plants – is pissed off, and they’re demanding answers – and rightfully so. The Chapter head, Lori Saldana, called it “unacceptable.”

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Thumbnail image for Atheists Take a Stand in East County

Atheists Take a Stand in East County

by Frank Gormlie 02.06.2013 Activism

Atheist Groups Sponsor Billboard in Lemon Grove

Right alongside 94 East is a new bill board in Lemon Grove. It’s quite a shocker if all you’ve ever seen are commercial ads, for this one is about religion – in a way.

It states very clearly:

Atheism – A personal relationship with reality.

The new billboard is sponsored by a coalition of groups that adhere to atheism and it went up at the end of January. The billboard is east and near the Federal Blvd freeway exit off 94. The groups include The San Diego Coalition of Reason and American Atheists, who spent $4,000 on the billboard – which did not appear lit up at night.

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Thumbnail image for Digging Tunnels Under the 30 Foot Height Limit – Part 1

Digging Tunnels Under the 30 Foot Height Limit – Part 1

by Frank Gormlie 01.28.2013 Activism

Height Limit Critic Sparks Debate But Important Exemptions Need to Be Acknowledged

This is the first part in a two-part series on the latest debate about the 30 foot height limit.

New Year’s confetti and the champagne glasses used celebrating the end of 2012 – a year that marked the 40th anniversary of the 30 foot height limit in San Diego – had barely been cleaned up when the assault on that height limit began. It all started in a January 3rd Voice of San Diego article questioning any positive attributes of the 30 foot limit.

Not exactly like a “D-Day” type assault, but more like a tunnel being dug – a tunnel designed to undermine the coastal height limit of 1972, writer Andrew Keatts questions the basic character of the height limit, declares that its essential rigidity will be necessarily and periodically questioned by a city yearning to break free, and gives voice to its critics. The critics believe that because of the 30 foot height limits, all kinds of problems plague San Diego, with rents and property values at the coast being too high.

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Thumbnail image for Grassroots Democracy Takes Patience at the Ocean Beach Planning Board

Grassroots Democracy Takes Patience at the Ocean Beach Planning Board

by Frank Gormlie 01.07.2013 Activism

The meeting room at the Ocean Beach Recreation Center was quickly filling up last Wednesday night, the 2nd of January, as the monthly meeting of the Board was about to begin. No “OB-time” here, as the Chair, Jane Gawronski, gaveled the meeting to order right at 6:00 pm. In the audience was a “who’s-who” of the community’s merchant establishment and friends, and it included the heads of the OB Town Council; the merchants’ group, the Mainstreet Association; the local non-profit OB Community Development Corporation.

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Fun and Gloating at Bob Filner’s Inauguration

by Frank Gormlie 12.04.2012 Activism

When we awoke this morning – for the first time in history – Bob Filner is the mayor of San Diego, the eighth largest city in America. Yesterday, Monday, December 3rd, was his official inauguration. (Please see Annie Lane’s wonderful photo spread of the event.)

Representing progressive media in town, I accompanied my good friend Doug Porter to the Balboa Club in Balboa Park to be witnesses to this historic event. Filner is only the second Democratic mayor in the last forty years in this town – and decidedly it’s most liberal. And Filner wasn’t the only politician being inaugurated, as there was an entire shelf of them waiting around when we arrived at the Balboa Club – all those veterans who had been elected, selected and rejected by the voters were going to be there.

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Thumbnail image for Celebrating the 30 Foot Height Limit As It Turns 40

Celebrating the 30 Foot Height Limit As It Turns 40

by Frank Gormlie 11.28.2012 Activism

The room was packed, standing room only the other night as the OB Historical Society led all of us in a celebration of the 40th anniversary of the 30 foot height limit. The downstairs community room of the Methodist Church on Sunset Cliffs Blvd. opens its doors every month to the OBHS presentations, and the night of November 15th was no exception as Society president Pat James welcomed the crowd.

Nearly 50 OBceans and friends had come to hear speakers and presentations on this historic fight four decades ago to preserve San Diego’s coast, and I saw many people in the audience who had waged their own battles to save OB over the years.

After a few brief announcements, Pat introduced the main speaker, Alex Leondis, who was one of the main organizers in the effort to place the thirty-foot limit on coastal construction onto conservative San Diego’s ballot – way back in the early 1970′s. The initiative did pass in 1972 – marking this year as its 40th birthday.

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