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Short-Term Rentals Get a Short Leash from San Diego’s City Council

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After 5 plus hours of public testimony, a bi-partisan majority of the San Diego City Council today, Monday, July 16, halted Mayor Faulconer’s proposal on short-term vacation rentals and approved by a vote of 6 to 3 Councilwoman Barbara Bry’s proposal to limit the rentals to “primary residence” and onsite granny flat.

In the end, 4 Democrats (Bry, Myrtle Cole, Georgette Gomez, Chris Ward  ) and 2 Republicans (Lorie Zapf and Mark Kersey) voted for the so-called “Bry Proposal”. In essence, the Bry plan limits short-term rentals to the primary residence – and if there’s an accessory unit, a so-called “granny flat” – the host is allowed to rent that out as well, as that still meets the requirement for the host to be on the property during the visit.

Faulconer’s proposal went down on a 3 to 6 vote, with only Cate, Sherman and Kersey voting for it.   [Read more…]

Southwest High School Students Create Climate Awareness Through Murals

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By Michelle Roberts

In late May/early June, a number of my students at Southwest High School gathered in Biology Room 501 to embark on a climate murals project. Their goal? To help change the mindset of San Diegans.

I became involved in the murals project through volunteering with SanDiego350, who got input on the concept from local artist and muralist, Joanne Tawfilis, of the Muramid museum, Oceanside. SanDiego350 contacted Tawfilis and she got us started with some helpful insights on this type of project. Our volunteers then brainstormed on how we could adapt her concept so local kids could create murals relating to climate change.

SanDiego350 volunteer and artist, Anne Mudge, refined the concept in a Climate Murals PowerPoint presentation. Anne believes:

“Giving children and the youth a way to express themselves creatively as they explore the consequences of our actions gives them a sense of agency in a totally fun and community-building way. The images they create can be powerful motivators for the rest of us. Who isn’t moved by the hopes and visions of the ones who will be living in the world we hand off to them?”

  [Read more…]

Summer Chronicles 2018 #5: Gentrifying Dystopia in Bombay Beach

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There’s something compelling about desolation, about lost places filled with traces of forgotten histories both personal and collective.  That’s why I’ve always had a penchant for little towns around the Salton Sea, the vast, dying body of water I describe in my first novel, Drift:

It was a mistake, the product of a vulgar utopia gone awry.  At the turn of the century, they dreamed of transforming the desert into a garden by bleeding nature of more than she readily offered.  When they sought to divert the waters of the Colorado, they flooded downhill and formed the Salton Sea. In the wake of this disaster, they dreamed of turning the floodwaters into their own depraved version of Eden, a haven for real estate boosters, businessmen, and all the hungry failures who had lost out on the golden dream in Los Angeles and San Diego.  But everything went wrong, and all the detritus of the dying dream flooded into the sea—all the pesticides, toxics, organic compounds, and salt, salt, salt mixed together to form an ocean of poison that is killing even the harder corvina, who survived, like those who transplanted them, by eating all the smaller fish. Now the fish lie rotting by the shore, easy prey for the birds that scoop them up hungrily and die in large numbers.

And when you drive through places like Salton City or Bombay Beach it feels like the end of the world.  As the main character of Drift muses, “This is where you go when you stop wanting . . . Occupy the wreckage of a dead dream.  If the world pushes you too hard, just stop pushing back.”
  [Read more…]

The Taboo on Talking Climate Change

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How often do we talk about climate change to family, friends or coworkers? Probably next to never if we’re like most people.

Yale’s national polling reveals that the majority of Americans accept that global warming is happening (73 percent) and are worried about it (63 percent). Even more want carbon dioxide, or CO2, regulated as a pollutant (81 percent).

Given these stats and the warning of scientists that the time window to prevent the worst impacts of climate change is closing fast, what keeps us from openly discussing it?

The answer is complex. For starters, many of us were raised in a bygone era where talking politics (and religion) was considered simply impolite. That climate change has become such a politically divisive issue adds weight to the interpersonal risk people naturally experience in bringing up any sensitive topic, even with intimates.   [Read more…]

Persist With Pride, Even Though the World is Crazy | Progressive Activist Calendar July 13 – 23, 2018

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As we survey the admittedly depressing landscape of politics in this country, this weekend provides the opportunity to observe some of the accomplishments of the past few decades by activists and allies in the LBGTQ movement.

San Diego Pride festivities have grown from a small grassroots march for equal rights in the 1970s into the largest civic event in the region, with activities spanning a full week. The organizers of San Diego Pride have donated over 2.5 million dollars to LGBTQ-serving nonprofits and runs multiple year-round education, advocacy, and community service programs.

This year’s theme is Persist With Pride, a slogan that should serve to remind all of us of the long and winding road we’re traveling.   [Read more…]

Activist Actions in San Diego Keep Up the Pressure on Border Enforcement Issues

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Ongoing injustices require ongoing resistance. Such is the case with efforts to call public attention to the plight of immigrants and asylum seekers along the southern border of the United States.

The mass demonstrations of June have given way to July’s protests near locations with literal or symbolic connections to the Trump administration’s enforcement mechanisms.

Despite the court rulings saying Zero Tolerance and its kindred sadism aren’t legal, authorities are stalling and/or proceeding as though some draconian solution will eventually prevail.   [Read more…]

SB 237 Threatens Community Choice Energy

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By Laura Sisk-Hackworth

SB 237, authored by California State Senator Hertzberg (D-18), threatens to increase the use of fossil fuels in California by undercutting Community Choice Energy (CCE) programs. The bill would allow businesses to circumvent CCE providers and buy electricity directly from suppliers. These suppliers would be subject to the state’s required minimum on renewable content of the electricity – whereas CCEs consistently exceed those minimums. Therefore, this bill would reduce the use of renewables, hurt renewable energy job growth, and likely bankrupt all current CCEs. This bill would effectively end existing CCE programs and halt their future expansion throughout California.   [Read more…]

August 26, 2018: A National Day of Action Opposing Trump’s Supreme Court Nominee

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By Julia Conley / Common Dreams

While President Donald Trump said Tuesday morning that the nomination process for his Supreme Court pick Brett Kavanaugh would be a “beautiful thing to watch” over the coming weeks, progressive advocacy groups say they will leverage their collective political will—and the tens of millions of their outraged members—to stand against the president’s far-right and extremist choice.

Calling Trump’s nomination of Kavanaugh a “five-alarm fire,” NARAL Pro-Choice America, MoveOn.org, Color of Change, and other groups announced a mass mobilization against the right-wing judge’s confirmation, including a nationwide day of action planned for August 26.   [Read more…]

Zapatista Food Forests | Seeds of Rebellion, Part I

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“If the Malanga is split at the top, or tears easily, it’s poisonous.” Seizing the tip in his hands, Armando tried to rip the leaf along its central axis. Three feet long and nearly two feet across the translucent green leaf lives up to the plant’s alternate name, elephant ear. “This is a good one. If you cut the root into thin strips you can boil or fry them. Malanga is rich in potassium and provides three times the nourishment of the potato; and it tastes better.”

We’re inside the Schools for Chiapas building in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Mexico, walking through the experimental heart of a project that’s recreating the Mayan perennial food forests destroyed by enslavement in Spanish encomiendas (roughly equivalent to plantations in the U.S. South) and “development”. Jointly sponsored by Schools for Chiapas and educators from Morelia, one of five autonomous zones, or caracoles, run by the Zapatistas, the food forest project seeks out ancient earth-based wisdom by using the latest technology to connect with farmers, herbalists and healers all over the world.

[Updated 2108-07-18]   [Read more…]

Watch Tearful Migrant Families Reunite After Weeks of Separation | Video Worth Watching

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Some good news, courtesy of Mother Jones, on the reunification of families separated at our borders.   [Read more…]

Smart Activism: Not Every Protest Or Petition is Worthy of Your Time

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Amy Siskind has published a weekly list of specific news stories representing eroding norms in the United States since Donald Trump took office. It’s a depressing read, and in recent weeks it’s gotten longer and more intense.

Over the weekend, we learned about an administration effort to quash a UN resolution encouraging breastfeeding. This wasn’t just a “hey, we disagree” situation; representatives of the U.S. Government threatened backers with trade sanctions and cuts to military aid. Outrageous.

Our taxpayer dollars also paid for a successful effort at this World Health Assembly meeting removing suggestions of introducing a soda tax from a document advising countries on fighting high rates of obesity.

This week in San Diego, mass trials for people charged with immigration violations, aka Operation Streamline, are starting up. Lawyers for the accused get a few minutes to speak with their clients in a courthouse garage, with US Marshalls standing nearby.   [Read more…]

The Immigrants Deported to Death and Violence – The Backstory – The New Yorker | Video Worth Watching

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A grim reminder of what is at stake for many of the asylum seekers that make it to our border and why they U.S. government needs to treat the issue of asylum deadly seriously. Back in January of this year The New Yorker’s Sarah Stillman reported on people who fled their home countries fearing for their lives, and the tragic consequences when they were sent back. This video provides some of the back story. The original New Yorker story from January is here.   [Read more…]

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