Editor’s Picks

Articles that our Editorial Board feel really stand out. We’re glad we didn’t miss them and want to make sure you don’t either!

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 The Starting Line – A Real Scandal! Activists Around the World to Protest Monsanto May 25th

The Starting Line – A Real Scandal! Activists Around the World to Protest Monsanto May 25th

by Doug Porter 05.15.2013 Activism

Balboa Park March & Rally, Mission Bay Overpass Light Brigade Events Expected to Draw Thousands

By Doug Porter 

While the oldstream media is obsessing on the current crop of Washington’s politi-dramas, an international protest movement is gathering steam. Activists in on six continents, in 36 countries, and in 47 U.S. states — totaling events in over 250 cities — are coordinating demonstrations to occur simultaneously at 11am Pacific time on Saturday May 25th under the general theme “March Against Monsanto”.

The St Louis-based biotech behemoth Monsanto has come under increasing attack from environmentalists, agriculturalists and average consumers in response to the company’s conduct in the realm of genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) and genetically-engineered foods.

Efforts aimed at forcing the company to engage in transparent business practices, like providing consumer information about products incorporating GMOs, have exposed a corporate culture willing to use raw power and virtually unlimited amounts of cash to protect their interests.

San Diego protest info here and here.  More details later on in story

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Thumbnail image for Do We Have the Will to Invest in Our Children? City Heights Youth Take the Lead for Free Mid-City Student Bus Passes

Do We Have the Will to Invest in Our Children? City Heights Youth Take the Lead for Free Mid-City Student Bus Passes

by Anna Daniels 05.15.2013 Activism

By Anna Daniels

Adults have historically established the parameters and content of public policies as they relate to children. The results in recent years have been ghastly as local and state governments have been starved of revenues by virtue of the economy. Conservatives are using the spending cuts necessitated by a weak economy to advance their ideology of small government, hoping to impose a permanent state of austerity on governmental entities.

One in five kids in this country lives in poverty. The ticket out of poverty has been access to quality education and the availability of jobs that provide economic security. Neither of these conditions are currently being met. The kids living in poverty now may very well spend their whole lives in poverty.

There has been an astounding sea change in City Heights as youth themselves have taken an informed and powerful lead in shaping public policy that affects their lives and their families. Mid-City CAN has been pivotal in mentoring and providing a platform for that leadership.

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Thumbnail image for Desde la Logan: All They Will Call You Will Be Deportees…No Longer

Desde la Logan: All They Will Call You Will Be Deportees…No Longer

by Brent E. Beltrán 05.14.2013 Columns

An Interview with Author Tim Z. Hernandez

By Brent E. Beltrán

On occasion I feel the need to write about issues outside of the comfy confines of Barrio Logan and San Diego. This is one of those times.

Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye, Rosalita,

Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria;

You won’t have your names when you ride the big airplane,

All they will call you will be “deportees”

     – Woody Guthrie, Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)

 The first time I heard those lines was in 1998. It was in Spanish on the CD Siempre He Estado Aquí by Teatro Campesino co-founder and Fresno residents Agustín Lira and his partner of many years Patricia Wells Solórzano. At the time I didn’t know that it was originally written by famed folk singer/activist Woody Guthrie. Later on that year I heard it in English by the Latin super group Los Super 7.

Since then I’ve heard Woody sing it and fellow folk traveller and activist icon Pete Seeger as well as other performers such as Bruce Springsteen, Concrete Blonde and recent Grammy award winners Quetzal. Many more have recorded and performed this classic piece of American music.

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Thumbnail image for The Golden Hill Vibe: Over Forty Years of Grit, Grace, and Gentrification

The Golden Hill Vibe: Over Forty Years of Grit, Grace, and Gentrification

by Jim Miller 05.13.2013 Columns

By Jim Miller

This week I move from interviewing a recent arrival to Golden Hill to a longtime resident.

Peter Zschiesche and his wife Pam Clark have lived in the Greater Golden Hill community since 1971 and have seen the neighborhood change quite a bit over the years. Peter was involved in anti-war movement politics in the early seventies and later became a leader in the Machinists Union and played a key part in the strikes at NASSCO in the 1980s. He is the Founding Director of the Employee Rights Center, which began in 1999, and he currently serves as Vice President of the Board of Trustees for the San Diego Community College District. Thus most of Peter’s adult life has been spent fighting for social justice in the service of workers, students, immigrants, and others in Golden Hill and San Diego at large.

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Thumbnail image for Community and Customers Rally for Ian Rey, Disabled Former Employee of Sprouts Point Loma

Community and Customers Rally for Ian Rey, Disabled Former Employee of Sprouts Point Loma

by Annie Lane 05.11.2013 Activism

By Annie Lane

Dozens protested Friday evening to show continued support for Ian Rey, a longtime Sprouts Farmers Market employee who said he was fired after 14 years for mistakenly taking a coworker’s jacket.

Rey was terminated from Sprouts on Monday, and has experienced an outpouring of support from the community and customers alike – many of whom say they won’t shop at the local grocery store anymore.

For some, Rey was simply a friendly face they’d come to expect to see over the years. For others, he was someone they would stand in a longer line just to say high to while he bagged their items.

“I’ve never met Ian on a bad day … I’ve never seen him not happy,” said Crystal Trignano, a special education teacher at Dewey Elementary who organized the evening rally. “It was always ‘What can I help you find?’ or ‘Is there anything you need today?’ It’s just not normal for people to care that much.”

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Thumbnail image for On a Slow Ride from Golden Hill to South Park

On a Slow Ride from Golden Hill to South Park

by Ernie McCray 05.11.2013 Culture

By Ernie McCray

Often when I tell someone I live in Golden Hill they say “Oh, yeah? Where?” 30th and Cedar is my reply and then they say “That’s South Park.”

“No, Golden Hill,” I say and they, like we’re in a debate competition, and they’ve got me on this one, start quoting passages from a map to prove that I’m not a Golden Hillian. And then I have to explain to them, in a nice friendly “home is where the heart is,” kind of way, that no matter what some chart has to say, I live in Golden Hill.

And I don’t say that out of any animosity towards them or South Park. Not at all. It will be a slow ride if it happens but I might claim to live there some day since I do “officially.” It’s just that I’m a Golden Hill O.G.

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Thumbnail image for The Greater Golden Hill Community Development Corporation: Striving to Emphasize Community over Corporation

The Greater Golden Hill Community Development Corporation: Striving to Emphasize Community over Corporation

by Jim Miller 05.06.2013 Activism

By Jim Miller

When we at the San Diego Free Press decided to turn our focus to the community of Golden Hill, one of the first people I thought it would be good to talk to was my friend, neighbor, union brother, and colleague Judd Curran.  Judd and his wife Victoria both teach at Grossmont College, live in Golden Hill, and sit on the board of the Greater Golden Hill Community Development Corporation Board  and are quite active in the community.  I know Judd and his wife as smart, progressive, compassionate people who want the best for their community.  Thus Judd is uniquely suited to speak to the issues of community identity, gentrification, and the past, present, and future of Golden Hill. 

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Thumbnail image for BLOG UGLY: SD Rostra’s Nostrums

BLOG UGLY: SD Rostra’s Nostrums

by Source 05.06.2013 BLOG UGLY

By Bob Dorn

In modern times nothing has been more effective in bringing down the Republicans than the Republicans.

Hubris it might be called. From Richard Nixon’s embarrassing proposal for a White House ceremonial guard dressed in musical comedy uniforms to Ronald Reagan’s naked affection for ranchero machismo to George Dubya’s endorsement of even faker ranchero machismo (he didn’t like horses and went awol from his national guard post); professed Republicans have tended to talk tough. And done poof.

They’re fantasists, of a particular variety.

Locally, there’s no better example of this commitment to the wet dreams of destiny than the website, San Diego Rostra.

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Thumbnail image for Golden Hill: “Tis a Picture Worth Seeing”

Golden Hill: “Tis a Picture Worth Seeing”

by Jim Miller 05.01.2013 Columns

By Jim Miller

May is Golden Hill month here at the San Diego Free Press where we will do our collective best to spotlight one of San Diego’s oldest and most dynamic communities. 

A particularly interesting question we will be engaging is how the imagined community of Greater Golden Hill that is shared by many long time residents as well as entities such as the Golden Hill Community Development Corporation conflicts with the official separation of Golden Hill from South Park.

The more narrow designation of Golden Hill’s boundaries sets Interstate 5 as the western border and 34th Street where A, B, and C Streets end as its easternmost limit.  To the south, the Martin Luther King Jr. freeway separates Golden Hill from its neighbors in ShermanHeights and Grant Hill while Russ Boulevard and A Street mark its northern border.

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Thumbnail image for Reagan’s Budget Director Excoriates Republican Economic Philosophy

Reagan’s Budget Director Excoriates Republican Economic Philosophy

by John Lawrence 04.29.2013 Business

David Stockman calls GOP economic policies “bubble finance” and “crony capitalism”

Part 1 of a multipart series

By Frank Thomas and John Lawrence 

David Stockman, an integral part of the Reagan administration, has produced a great book, “The Great Deformation,” in which he blames Republican Presidents starting with Richard Nixon for the sad state of the US economy, but he saves his worst invective for Ronald Reagan and George W Bush for their abandonment of sound economic policy and their wild “deficits don’t matter” spending.

He indicts the Reagan administration for a needless, wasteful military build-up and the creation of what he calls the “warfare state.” He also condemns the fiscal profligacy of Republican economic policy for condoning any and all tax cuts for any reason whatsoever, for coddling Wall Street and for decades of money printing and market rigging by the Federal Reserve.

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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 San Diego For Free: Brews & Views at Alcohol-Friendly Public Spaces in San Diego

San Diego For Free: Brews & Views at Alcohol-Friendly Public Spaces in San Diego

by John P. Anderson 04.25.2013 Culture

A weekly column dedicated to sharing the best sights and activities in San Diego at the best price – free! We have a great city and you don’t need to break the bank to experience it.
By John P Anderson

Address: Many locations across the city

Date and Time: Varies but generally either 8 AM – 8 PM or 12 PM – 8 PM

Best For: Beer drinkers, coping son-in-laws, well-behaved college students, responsible citizens and visitors of all stripes

San Diego is known for many things. Some prominent ones are sun, surf, an ideal climate, and beer. (If you enjoy reading about beer, read this article from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer that is the best list of top U.S. beer cities I’ve read.)

Once upon a time you could enjoy all of these things together but today we inhabit a safer, tamer, lamer, more responsible world and despite the love many San Diegans have for our local (and non-local) breweries it is not advised to consume their offerings whilst lounging on the golden sand of the Pacific. A ban on beach drinking was passed in San Diego a few years ago.

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Thumbnail image for A Freeway Runs Through It: A City Heights-Barrio Logan Conversation

A Freeway Runs Through It: A City Heights-Barrio Logan Conversation

by Anna Daniels 04.24.2013 Activism

Resistance, Vision and Community

By Anna Daniels

Chicano Park exists in Barrio Logan because of the construction of the San Diego-Coronado Bridge and the loss of property and displacement of lives that it caused. The community responded in a powerful, unique way. Residents couldn’t stop the construction, but they did lay claim to the land beneath the immense concrete pillars that enabled travelers above to make their way across the Coronado Bridge, oblivious to the transformation occurring below them. The land that was being readied for a California Highway Patrol substation was re-claimed as a long promised park. The reclamation began as a twelve day occupation that involved hundreds of people.

City Heights was likewise changed forever when eight city blocks along 40th Street- people’s homes and businesses–were scoured from the face of the earth in the early 1990′s to make way for the last connecting link of I-15, which extends from Canada to Mexico. City Heights would become a scorched earth community divided by an enormous ditch in keeping with Caltrans signature construction style.

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Thumbnail image for Parts of Barrio Logan Have No Sidewalks – Does Anyone Care?

Parts of Barrio Logan Have No Sidewalks – Does Anyone Care?

by John P. Anderson 04.24.2013 Editor's Picks

Voice of San Diego doesn’t want to make judgment calls on that issue

By John Anderson

Voice of San Diego (VOSD) has been operating a Tumblr site featuring the damaged state of sidewalks across San Diego coined The Stumblr.  San Diegans are encouraged to send in photos from their neighborhood and the images are added to the site.  It’s a great idea to bring a public issue to light and has even received some love nationally including a nod from The Atlantic.

In preparation for our SDFP focus on Barrio Logan, fellow writer Brent Beltran noted the poor (read: non-existent) status of sidewalks in parts of the neighborhood, specifically along Harbor Drive.  Brent has a young son and mentioned he, and other Barrio residents, would like to be able to walk up to Seaport Village, the bayfront, Convention Center, and other destinations in the south-western part of Downtown.  No surprise – that area of Downtown is popular with locals and visitors alike and is a great place for a stroll, picnic, or throwing a frisbee.

I was already familiar with the area, but am usually on my bicycle and not paying particular attention to sidewalks.  I went out to specifically check out the area and take some photos.  There are large distances with nary a bit of cement sidewalk.

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Thumbnail image for Federal Government Should Carefully Consider Whether Aid Warranted in West, Texas

Federal Government Should Carefully Consider Whether Aid Warranted in West, Texas

by Andy Cohen 04.23.2013 Business

Texans want limited government, their wishes should be fulfilled in West.

The explosion in West was ultimately caused by a failure of oversight in deference to private industry. This was a private company acting irresponsibly, not a natural disaster. The explosion was caused by an excessive amount of ammonium nitrate on the site. Ammonium nitrate is a primary component of some large bombs used by terrorists, including the bomb used by Timothy McVeigh to blow up the federal building in Oklahoma City.

The plant also reportedly had no automatic shutoff system, no firewall, and no sprinkler system. Safety for the workers and the surrounding community was obviously not any kind of priority.

It stands to reason, then, that the owners of the private West Fertilizer Company should be held responsible for the damage they caused, not the taxpayers. After all, that’s what the Conservatives in Texas want—for business to be able to do what business does best. That also means, however, being held entirely accountable when they screw up, which is not something Conservatives have been very good at. Apparently it’s not in the Republican lexicon.

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Thumbnail image for The Starting Line – Koch Brothers’ Coachella Failure-fest Set for this Weekend

The Starting Line – Koch Brothers’ Coachella Failure-fest Set for this Weekend

by Doug Porter 04.23.2013 Arts

By Doug Porter

This weekend (Apr 28-29) hundreds of business executives and wealthy conservative donors will descend upon the Coachella Valley, hoping to forge a strategy to turn last fall’s drubbing of conservative candidates into future victories. I imagine the crowd will be considerably different from what locals have seen over the past two weeks.

Since 2003 billionaire industrialists David and Charles Koch have been hosting regular retreats at luxury resorts seeking to focus the resources and energy of wealthy and politically ambitious conservatives in the US.

Their latest invitation-only gathering, originally scheduled for January, was postponed.

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Thumbnail image for Desde la Logan: Chicano Music Legends Join Forces to Play Adams Avenue Unplugged

Desde la Logan: Chicano Music Legends Join Forces to Play Adams Avenue Unplugged

by Brent E. Beltrán 04.23.2013 Arts

I’ve known Chunky Sanchez of Los Alacranes for at least fifteen years and worked with him on numerous occasions including organizing a fundraiser in 2007, called Musicians Helping Their Own, for local Latin jazz trumpet player Bill Caballero who was stricken with cancer and on a project in 2009 called Deportation Nation: Musical Migrations that featured a concert with Los Alacranes, Quino (of Big Mountain fame) and Son Sin Fronteras where the three groups at the end of the night jammed together on the Woody Guthrie classic Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos).

Los Alacranes and Los Lobos go way back.

As a matter of fact the first time Los Lobos played in San Diego was at the Centro Cultural de la Raza at the invitation of Chunky. And usually when the baddest band out of East LA plays a show in San Diego they give a shout out to Chunky y Los Alacranes. These two groups started out during the same era and continue to share a musical brotherhood.

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Thumbnail image for Corporate Education Reform Goes to College Despite Flunking Out in the K-12 System

Corporate Education Reform Goes to College Despite Flunking Out in the K-12 System

by Jim Miller 04.22.2013 Columns

By Jim Miller

Things haven’t been going too well for the corporate education reform forces lately.  In Chicago there is great controversy surrounding and parent resistance to school closings as a result of the efforts of over zealous reformers. This shameful turn of events puts yet another black mark on former Obama Administration chief of staff and current Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel’s heavy-handed reign of error over his city’s schools.

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Thumbnail image for Part One: Why Bomb the Boston Marathon?

Part One: Why Bomb the Boston Marathon?

by Source 04.22.2013 Editor's Picks

Islamic Totalitarians, the Apocalypse, and Terrorism

Editor’s Note: Since most of the news media ‘experts’ have no clue what they’re talking about when it comes to the backgrounds of the Boston Marathon bombers we’re publishing this detailed backgrounder by researcher Chip Berlet. Part One explains the genesis of Islamic terrorism, the apocalyptic viewpoint likely connected to the Boston bombing, and a quick primer on how the history of Chechnya fits into this story.

By Chip Berlet / Talk to Action

Walk a mile in the shoes of those who claim to honor God and yet cheer the bombing of the Boston Marathon. They represent only a tiny fraction of the Muslims on our planet, yet they see themselves as carrying out the will of God. Fanatics such as these can be found in many of the World’s religions. They shoot abortion providers in the United States; blast apart buses in Israel; and murder Muslims in India (and vice versa).

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