Part of our mission here at the San Diego Free Press is the reporting on and encouraging the reporting of news from neighborhoods around San Diego. For the next few weeks we’ll be focusing our energies on North Park.

We’ve been going through the process of building our contacts and coming up with story ideas for our coverage of North Park. It’s very incomplete, a work in progress. So we’d like to start our quest by inviting your participation. Got a story idea? Want to contribute? Drop us a line: contact@SanDiegoFreePress.org

Given that I happen to reside in North Park, the task of introducing this topic has fallen upon my shoulders. Most of what’s going on here isn’t ‘sexy’ stuff.

Yet this story line is a fine example of the kind  of involvement that’s necessary if we as citizens want to reclaim our lives and our futures from the demoralized and disenfranchised landscape that characterizes our society these days.

The future of feeling good about ourselves and doing right by our world starts by understanding, knowing about and becoming involved with the place where we live. It may seem counterintuitive, but as the world is becoming our oyster through trade and technology, our ability to cope with this expansiveness can best be enhanced by rooting ourselves where we live.

The solution to the Walmartization of our economy lies in building economic institutions dependent on loyalty and community pride; businesses that thrive because of their caring and commitment to the people around them. The mega-corporate retailers aren’t going to go away as long as we have sprawling housing ‘projects’ for the middle class.

Building community awareness starts by understanding history, builds by making the decision to actually look beyond the surface of what we ‘see’ every day as we go about our business and coalesces when enough people decide to reach out to participate in shaping the spaces around them.

This isn’t easy stuff.  It involves getting out of your (and our) comfort zone. But the potential rewards are worth it.

We hope you’ll join us in our exploration of North Park and (later on) other communities. We’re gonna miss stuff. We’re gonna screw up. We’re counting on you to set us straight.

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Doug Porter

Doug Porter was active in the early days of the alternative press in San Diego, contributing to the OB Liberator, the print version of the OB Rag, the San Diego Door, and the San Diego Street Journal. He went on to have a 35-year career in the Hospitality business and decided to go back into raising hell when he retired. He won numerous awards for his columns from the Society of Professional Journalists in 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017. Doug is a cancer survivor (sans vocal chords) and lives in North Park.

Latest posts by Doug Porter (see all)

• Last Call. Last Column. - December 14, 2018
• Which Presidential Candidate Will You Support in 2020? - December 13, 2018
• Mounting the Assault on Big Gay and Other Drivel From SDSU’s Minimum Wage Scrooge - December 12, 2018