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Amnesty: A Path To Citizenship?

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Immigration! Problem & Solutions? A Chicano Historical Perspective

Reprinted from the Herman Baca UCSD Archives / Part 2

All past and current immigration plans submitted by U.S. presidential administrations, and Congress’ both Democratic and Republican have since the 1970’s included amnesty proposals. The proposals basically stipulate that undocumented persons must; “establish a responsible pathway to earned citizenship–that includes passing a background check, paying taxes and a meaningful penalty, learning English and going to the back of the line (up to 24 years) behind the folks trying to come here legally.”   [Read more…]

Excerpt From Sunshine/Noir II: Coming Into San Diego

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By Jimmy Santiago Baca

How stunning the morning desert was to Vito. His heart burst with pleasure and a desire for his childhood days when the sun radiated one tiny ray of faith on his life, a ray that had weight, one he could toss from hand to hand and hold up and carry in his pocket and embrace before sleep and kiss at daybreak.

Fields steamed dew as the pickers arrived. Men, women, and children humped in the furrows, picking. Carmen slept the whole way. He was thinking bad thoughts as her chest rose and fell. He looked away, told himself to stop thinking of touching her. He told himself to shake it out of his head, he could control his mind, he was a trained boxer, he could discipline his body and mind, he could fuck any chick he wanted, but something else was pulling him.

In the miles that stretched out before them he wished Carmen wasn’t engaged to his brother, that she was like so many he’d had—a free-loving chick who just wanted to fuck all night. But no, he was on a mission, and he would never betray his brother.

Still, he reached out and his fingers grazed her cheek and the sweetness of her sleeping face and her breath made something in his chest tighten.   [Read more…]

The Lessons of Porter Ranch

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By Nicola Peill-Moelter, Ph.D. / SanDiego 350.org

The massive leak at the Southern California Gas Company (SoCalGas) Aliso Canyon natural gas storage facility is a stark example of why natural gas is a significant health and safety risk and not a bridge fuel to our clean energy future. The facility, the second largest in the U.S., stores vast amounts of natural gas at high pressure in underground wells once used for oil extraction more than fifty years ago.

On or about October 23rd a rupture in a 60-year old injection well pipe a thousand feet underground initiated the leak. At its peak the leak had an estimated rate of one-hundred twenty-five thousand pounds of methane per hour. To date, the cumulative emissions from this single source is equivalent to 25% of the state’s annual methane emissions from major sources like agriculture and landfills, equivalent to the annual climate pollution of almost half a million cars.

  [Read more…]

Nuclear Shutdown News – January 2016

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By Michael Steinberg / Black Rain Press

On the last day of last year San Diego’s NBC 7 TV ran a story “Portions of San Onofre May Be Contaminated.”

The San Onofre nuclear plant unexpectedly and permanently shut down in 2013. Southern California Edison is the major owner, with San Diego Gas and Electric its minority partner.

According to NBC 7, the utilities have been leasing the shoreline land from the US Navy. The lease is supposed to end in 2023, but Edison and SDG&E want to end it earlier now that San Onofre is shut down for good.
  [Read more…]

Little Landers, the Utopian Agricultural Commune, Washed Out By 1916 Flood

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Editor’s Note: On this day, January 27, 1916 at 5:05pm, the Lower Otay Dam broke, sending torrents of water into Otay, Sweetwater and the Tijuana river valleys. The flood caused the largest devastation in San Diego history.

By Patricia Maxwell / This is Part III of a Series

Little Landers was an idealistic, cooperative farming community built in the Otay river valley by a couple of visionaries who advocated that anyone could sustain himself on a “little land.” The flood of January 27, 1916 swept the land into San Diego bay.

“The raging waters, spreading widely over the flat lands of the valley in the night, rendered twenty-five families homeless and most of them lost everything. Two women were drowned. Boats and improvised rafts were necessary to bring marooned people to safety. Some few of these attempted to resume operations, either where they had been or on higher ground. Most of them simply quit and moved away.   [Read more…]

Opposition to Monuments Based on Misinformation

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Shaun Gonzalez / Mojave Desert Blog

A majority of Californians have expressed support for three new monuments proposed for California’s desert and under consideration by the President. Voices opposing the designation of new national monuments, however, appear to be driven by misinformation and a distorted faith in Congress to act as a responsible steward of our wildlands. They claim that conservation has run amok, that monument designations will lock out the public, and that only Congress should decide which lands to protect.

Tyrannical Conservation Designations?

The first claim – that conservation is some oppressive land management regime that has run amok – is relatively easy to dispute. National Parks, monuments, and wilderness areas – wildlands that are protected from most types of industrial development – account for about 4% of the total land area of the United States. With that number in mind, consider that we are in the midst of the sixth mass extinction of wildlife species on Earth.   [Read more…]

A Beach, Burb, and Billionaire “Citizens’ Plan” for San Diego’s Urban Neighborhoods

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Editor’s Note: Some months ago Attorney Cory Briggs and others rolled out the “Citizens’ Plan for the Responsible Management of Major Tourism and Entertainment Resources,” better known as the Citizens Plan. They are hoping to have this on the November 2016 ballot as an alternative to the current tourism/development scheme, which is dominated by hotel industry’s financial interests. 

UrbDezine’s Bill Adams raises serious questions in the article below about just what it is would be accomplished should the Citizen’s Plan be adopted. Cory Briggs is writing a response we hope to publish next Monday. What is important about this debate about the future of San Diego’s downtown is that neither author is assuming the status quo is acceptable. I urge you to read both essays before passing judgment. 

By Bill Adams / San Diego UrbDeZine

They’re calling it the “Citizens’ Plan” initiative. Like all such initiatives, the name is misleading. Said citizens are an alliance of a billionaire and a few advocates for a limited selection of  public interests. Not included are the citizens who are most impacted nor the economic interests of the City’s working populace. Citizen Kane Plan might be a more appropriate name for the way it attempts to manipulate public opinion into believing it is a grassroots plan.   [Read more…]

Excerpt From Sunshine/Noir II: Living and Working In Poverty

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Grim Reality in “America’s Finest City”

By Susan Duerksen

“Living in poverty” is one of those shorthand terms that rolls easily off the tongues of news anchors and politicians before they turn to the next topic. We all tend to glaze over the full meaning of the phrase, the grinding day-to-day misery of hunger, worry, discomfort, exhaustion, and despair.

In the city of San Diego, the proportion and number of people living in poverty edged up in 2013. It should have gone down. Instead, 7,000 more people in the city live in poverty now, in addition to the 202,000 who remain in that dire situation from the previous year.

Statistically, it was a small increase, nothing drastic. When the Center on Policy Initiatives reported it in an analysis (63) of data from the U.S. Census Bureau, the main response from local media and others was a yawn.

But consider what that statistic means. It counts only the people whose household income is below the federal poverty threshold, an absurdly low measure in high-cost places like San Diego. The threshold is the same everywhere in the U.S. and varies only by family size; for example, it’s about $12,000 for a single person and about $24,000 for two adults with two children. That’s per year.   [Read more…]

When Rain Comes: Charles Hatfield’s Secret Formulas

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By Patricia Maxwell

In today’s world where landing a government contract is a labyrinthian process of being vetted, investigated and scrutinized, one wonders how the San Diego council chose Charles Hatfield, a rainmaker, to fill the nearly empty Morena Reservoir with water. Life was different in 1915, but one thing was similar and that is that it pays to have someone promote you.

Charles had Fred Binney, a man who jumped onto the rainmaking wagon after losing two-thirds of his citrus orchard in Otay to a drought. As early as 1912, Binney had approached the City Council about hiring Hatfield, but was turned down. By 1915, the Council was ready to listen.   [Read more…]

Immigration! Problem & Solutions? A Chicano Historical Perspective

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Immigration or Labor Issue?

by Herman Baca / Reprinted from the Herman Baca UCSD Archives

To date it never ceases to amaze me that in the U.S. after the economy & terrorism issues, that the foremost issue for the great-great-great grandchildren of immigrants is, IMMIGRATION? I can readily understand if Native Americans were stating the above, but the great-great-great grandchildren of immigrants??

Since I first became politically involved with immigration in 1970 (45 years ago) I have witnessed (politically) every administration from President Nixon (Republican) to President Obama (Democrat) proposing the same old solutions… law and military enforcement, guns, barbed wire, false amnesty, never enforced employer sanctions, slave Bracero programs and calls to increase the “Gestapo” Border Patrol to supposedly secure the U.S./Mexico border. Costing U.S. taxpayers billions of dollars; has it worked? I doubt that anyone in their right mind could honestly state (today) that the U.S. is anywhere near in solving the so-called immigration issue.   [Read more…]

The Impossibility of the Present: Collection Elias-Fontes at CECUT, Centro Cultural of Tijuana

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By Jill Holslin

If you haven’t been to Tijuana in a while, now’s the time to come for a visit. The show “Collection of Elias-Fontes Historia y Relato” (History and Story) at The Centro Cultural of Tijuana in Zona Rio, is an exhibition that asks serious questions about the role of the artist in the context of the relentless, pulsating vitality of contemporary capitalism.

Bringing together the work of a generation of northern Baja California artists, the work is remarkable for its variety of materials and forms: metal, industrial refuse, adobe, ceramic, fabric, found objects, and acrylic paint formed into collage, photography, video, sculpture, ready-mades and installation.   [Read more…]

Teleconference: Roland S. Martin Explains Why Black Media Matters

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Gwen Pierce / The Chocolate Voice

Roland S. Martin, host and managing editor of News One Now held a teleconference on January 8, 2016, with “The Chocolate Voice” and a select group of other Black media outlets. Martin shared his insight and analysis on covering stories that are largely ignored by mainstream media.

The award winning journalist was at the top of his game in covering the most impactful stories from 2015, and is looking ahead to being at the forefront of covering hot stories in 2016.   [Read more…]

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