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After the Wars, City Heights

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A reminder of San Diego’s refugee resettlement in a time of terror

Why does City Heights physically look the way it does and why does it have such distinctive demographics? The case can be made that City Heights has been shaped both by design–the adoption of the Mid-City Plan in 1965– and by happenstance in the form of the fall of Saigon one decade later.

The Mid-City Plan provided a blueprint of sorts for stimulating business and commercial growth that is reflected in the built environment.  The fall of Saigon and the subsequent resettlement of Southeast Asian refugees in City Heights also became a blueprint of sorts for influencing the ever changing demographics of the individuals who would move within the built environment.   [Read more…]

War and Peace Week at the San Diego Free Press

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By Anna Daniels

Almost one hundred years ago President Woodrow Wilson declared in vaulting prose that World War I was the war to end all wars, that it would make the world safe for democracy.  The vaulting prose came to naught– the war to end all wars didn’t.

The reality is that the United States doesn’t wage peace with anywhere near the same commitment that it wages war. The veterans who march in the Veterans Day parades this week, as well as those who consciously choose not to, will represent  a constant succession of wars, declared and undeclared, since World War II.

The Cold War. The Korean War. The Vietnam War. The Gulf War. The War in Afghanistan. The Iraq War.   [Read more…]

The Day after the Elections: Same as It Ever Was?

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By Anna Daniels

Wednesday dawned in City Heights much like every morning here, with the cough and sputter of cars starting, the occasional twitter of birds, a siren shrieking on El Cajon Boulevard. Kids will pass by the house on their way to school.

There is no indication on 45th Street that four billion dollars had been dumped into national and local elections nor that a majority of the electorate– close to 70% in California– had decided to sit this one out.   [Read more…]

November 2014 Election Ballot Drop-Off Locations in San Diego County

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Designated locations will accept ballots through November 3

By Anna Daniels

If you haven’t already mailed your vote by mail ballot, you still have a number of options to make sure your vote is counted in this election.  This year, the County of San Diego has designated 14 drop-off locations.  Here in the city of San Diego there are 3 locations– Pacific Beach Library, North Park Library and the Registrar of Voters. These locations, with the exception of the Registrar of Voters, are not early voting locations. You can only drop off your ballot during the location’s regular business hours.   [Read more…]

MTS Ad Policy: Incoherent, Inconsistent and Anti-Democratic

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San Diego’s publicly funded transit system bites the hand that feeds it

By Anna Daniels

MTS- you are a craven, pathetic mess. When Alliance San Diego launched a non-partisan effort to increase awareness about elections in communities with historically low voter turnout like my community of City Heights, they approached San Diego Metropolitan Transit System (MTS) with the intention of buying printed bus ads.

The ads would include the message Vote for San Diego, along with the date of the election. Images of native San Diegans were included with motivational messages such as “Vote for what’s best for your community.”

Did I say that Alliance San Diego’s intention was to buy bus ads? They weren’t asking for a public service freebee. MTS declined the request and herein lies the tale of how our publicly funded, public benefit agency proceeded to simply make sh*t up.   [Read more…]

An Abbreviated Voter Guide to Electing Judges

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By Anna Daniels

Does this sound familiar? ” I’m filling out my ballot and there are 14 judges. Who do I vote for and specifically not for?”  The usual means at our disposal for choosing  voter nominated candidates and propositions are noticeably absent when voting for judges.  It is therefore easy to blow off this obscure exercise in democracy until you wake up one day to find out that you have been Kreep’d, as in San Diego Superior Court Judge Gary Kreep.

Gary Kreep is the conservative activist judge elected in 2012 who has since been “banished” to traffic court for his distinctly idiosyncratic approach to the practice of law.  He is best remembered  for being an Obama birther who openly flew his freak flag before the election.  So shame on us and no, we don’t want this to happen again.
  [Read more…]

Moonstruck! Watching the Lunar Eclipse in San Diego

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By Anna Daniels

Did you see the moon earlier this morning? At 3 am, when I rousted myself out of bed, it was already Part Deux of San Diego’s total lunar eclipse –the moon glowed a reddish umber behind the earth’s shadow. It was mysterious and somewhat confusing –the “rabbit” in the moon that was so clearly visible when I went to bed earlier had disappeared.

Holding coffee cups in one hand and binoculars in the other, My Beloved and I sat on the side of the house craning our necks upward. Watching an eclipse from start to finish is the cosmic equivalent of watching paint dry–long moments of nothing seeming to happen, then voila! the moon is occulted. Or it is whole again, a shining coin pulled from night’s pocket.   [Read more…]

Beating the War Drums: Beware the Advice of Mission Creeps Cheney and Kissinger

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Are we getting our war on?

By Anna Daniels

Nothing like starting the morning with the Wall Street Journal headline “Cheney Is Still Right” followed by a New York Times correction to their own article in which Dick Cheney was described as “President.” The media has chosen unprosecuted war criminal Dick Cheney as the warm up act for President Obama’s address to the American people this evening, Wednesday September 10, and it does not bode well.

It is impossible to expect any encouraging news tonight about the US’s continued presence in the political and moral quagmire of Iraq and anticipated involvement in the same in Syria. We elected a president–twice– who promised to a war weary citizenry a withdrawal of the US presence in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Now he is assuring us that we will not be involved up to our collective necks (again) in the complicated geo-politics of the region, only up to maybe our knees or waist.   [Read more…]

Video Pick: Which Side Are You On?

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Wanted:  A Living Wage

By Anna Daniels

It is useful exercise to remind ourselves that the battle for an increased minimum wage/sick leave benefit in San Diego is not a new one. Peel back the right wing maker versus taker meme and you get Howard Zinn, placing today’s minimum wage struggle firmly in our collective history of bitter class conflict between the rich and the poor and working class.

In 1944, when Franklin Roosevelt was running for his third term, he emphasized the need for an economic bill of rights as a vehicle for addressing the limitations of the political Bill of Rights. This economic bill of rights would have constitutionally guaranteed that workers have a living wage, would not have to work more than a certain number of hours and that the people would be entitled to vacations and healthcare. An economic bill of rights never materialized. Today, here in San Diego, we are experiencing the results of this omission.   [Read more…]

Video Pick: More DIY with Hobby Lobby and The Snatchel Project

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By Anna Daniels

The fallout from the supposedly “narrow” Supreme Court decision regarding Hobby Lobby was immediate. Similar cases making their way to the Supreme Court at the same time were returned to the lower courts. One of those cases requests an exemption from providing any form of birth control and it is likely that it will be granted.

A few days after the Hobby Lobby decision, the Court granted a waiver to Wheaton College. The issue was not the provision of birth control–Wheaton, a religiously affiliated institution was exempted. Instead, the men of the Court saw fit to waive their requirement of filling out the federally mandated form to receive the exemption, which Wheaton deemed onerous. Justices Sotomayor, Ginzberg and Hagan and were not amused and wrote a scathing dissent.

It is misleading and a mistake to define the Hobby Lobby decision in terms of religious based restrictions that can be exercised by certain employers over a woman’s access to birth control.   [Read more…]

SDFP Turns Two: Celebration Time!

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A growing SDFP community continues to write the people’s history

By Anna Daniels

On Sunday June 1, San Diego Free Press editors, contributors and supporters celebrated our second year anniversary. There was much to celebrate. Since our inception on June 4, 2012, we have published over 3,000 articles and provided original content seven day a week through an all volunteer effort. New writers with unique perspectives and interests have joined us in the past year and editor Doug Porter of The Starting Line fame published his 500th article. Our growing readership tells us that we have been able to consistently provide relevant content.

The articles we publish run the gamut of news, analysis, opinion, personal interest stories and the arts. What sets SDFP apart from other media is that these articles are all provided by citizen journalists. These citizen journalists often provide information about communities that are ignored, stereotyped and marginalized. We are essentially writing a people’s history of San Diego in which we are not only observers but becoming agents of change too.   [Read more…]

Remembering Maya Angelou

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By Anna Daniels

SDFP contributor Ernie McCray wrote a moving tribute to Maya Angelou following the news of her death on May 28th. His poem makes reference to her 1969 autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.

You said, of a caged bird,
that it “stands on the grave of dreams,”
singing of what’s unknown
but still singing of someday
being free –
and you’ve helped me believe
that we can, …

For many of us, that autobiography was our first introduction to the works of Angelou. It provided a glimpse into the circumstances which would shape her life as an intellectual, civil rights activist and writer.

  [Read more…]

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