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Atheists Take a Stand in East County

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Atheist Groups Sponsor Billboard in Lemon Grove

Right alongside 94 East is a new bill board in Lemon Grove. It’s quite a shocker if all you’ve ever seen are commercial ads, for this one is about religion – in a way.

It states very clearly:

Atheism – A personal relationship with reality.

The new billboard is sponsored by a coalition of groups that adhere to atheism and it went up at the end of January. The billboard is east and near the Federal Blvd freeway exit off 94. The groups include The San Diego Coalition of Reason and American Atheists, who spent $4,000 on the billboard – which did not appear lit up at night.   [Read more…]

Graffiti and Shattered Glass on 45th Street: Unknown Causes, Unclear Remedies

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A few days ago I was sipping my morning coffee and heard loud voices in front of our little house on 45th Street in City Heights. I walked outside to find two neighbors gathered around the broken windshield of a car parked there. Their voices were strained and angry. Then they would go quiet for a few shocked moments before resuming the conversation.

This is the third time that the windshield of this particular car has been smashed. James poked around in the plants outside my fence and found a large triangular rock that fit the bill for the weapon used to smash the windshield. I learned that this particular car has also been hit in the past with graffiti and its tank filled with sugar.

The conversation changed to one of speculation about motives. Was there something about the owner of the car that engendered these acts of vandalism? This is City Heights, so the first question is whether the vandalism was gang motivated, right?   [Read more…]

Greetings From the Cusp of TijuanDiego!

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A Voice of Hope from the Place of Everywhere and Nowhere

By Michael Cheno Wickert

I’ve been trying to write my introduction for the San Diego Free Press for days now, but despite my ability to ramble on and on about so many topics, sitting down at a keyboard to write about myself is difficult. Therefore, I’ve decided to simply state that I am a father, a husband, and a teacher from Chula Vista. After many years of college and hard work as teachers, my wife and I were able to buy a nice house for our family. Now all the relatives can come and stay here without sleeping on the floor, and that’s a good feeling.

We sometimes refer to our home as the Refugee Camp because like our dogs and cats, our children were adopted. An unlikely bunch, we came together somehow and it is beautiful, but not always easy. Like the rest of our family, my wife and I were somewhat making it through life with the help of great people, but neither of us had a partner to fulfill that promise of happiness every morning as the sun rose and every evening as we drifted into sleep.

Our lives were not shipwrecks, they were more like messages in bottles bobbing up and down, following the currents until we came together; and little by little our little island grew into a home and then a family. Out of this wilderness, we found security in each other.   [Read more…]

Desde la Logan: Las Monthly Ondas February Edition featuring The HeART of Loteria

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If you’re of Mexican descent then at some point in your life you have probably played the ubiquitous game Loteria. For those who are not Mexican Loteria is somewhat similar to Bingo except you use numbered playing cards with iconic images on them such as La Calavera, El Borracho, El Catrín, La Luna, El Diablito, La Muerte and many others instead of numbered balls.

Ruben Torres, who I wrote about in a previous column called Love Thy Neighbor. It’s Not About Charity, It’s About Humanity, has teamed up with a collective of creative Southern Cali folks to curate a massive art exhibit, to be held at the Centro Cultural de la Raza, called The HeART of Loteria.

Ruben told me that “the opening reception is meant to celebrate a family tradition through art, performance, food and Loteria game play. It is meant to be an experience that is rich with Loteria inspired imagery and art. There will be about 200 art pieces that will be featured, created by artists from all walks of life. There will be two main experiences – inside and outside.   [Read more…]

Public Hearing Today on Gregory Canyon Landfill in Escondido

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A public hearing is being held today – Thursday, Jan. 31 – at 6pm on the Gregory Canyon Landfill, and it will be at the California Center for the Arts in Escondido.

The site proposed Gregory Canyon Landfill would negatively impact a sacred site of the Luiseño tribes of Pala Indians. San Diego County’s environmental impact report for the landfill admits that these impacts cannot be fixed. The proposed landfill site is also on a natural aquifer and near the San Luis Rey River, both important sources of drinking water for North County.

Landfills are an outdated way of handling waste. With higher recycling rates than ever and improved waste reduction strategies, the county does not need another place to bury its trash.

The hearing is at the California Center for the Arts, at 340 North Escondido Blvd. in Escondido.   [Read more…]

Parties Cry Foul at Public Uitlities Commission’s Investigation of San Onofre Nukes

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By Women’s Energy Matters

Parties to the California Public Utilities Commission’s (CPUC) investigation of the San Onofre nuclear generating station outage are crying foul over ongoing procedural delays and a narrow Scoping Memo issued Tues. Jan. 28th.

Women’s Energy Matters, the Coalition to Decommission San Onofre, United Public Workers For Action and Michael Aguirre charge that both seem designed to force southern California customers to pay even higher rates in the next couple of years to fund Edison’s reckless plan to restart one of its severely damaged reactors —instead of getting immediate refunds for the year the nuclear plant has been offline. Parties ask CPUC to stop paying for these lemons now, and plan for permanent replacement resources instead.   [Read more…]

State Hits Walmart Contractor with Wage Theft Ruling

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from Warehouse Workers United/Frying Pan News

The state of California has ordered a Southern California warehouse that processes merchandise for Walmart and other retailers to pay 865 workers more than $1 million in stolen wages.

The California Division of Labor Standards Enforcement issued the citations Monday, Jan. 28 against Quetico, LLC, a large warehouse complex in Chino, California. Back wages and unpaid overtime total more than $1.1million and in addition the state issued about $200,000 in penalties.

“Quetico is strict when it comes to enforcing its rules with workers so it is only fair that the state enforce the laws that the company broke,” said Abraham Guzman, a warehouse worker who has been at Quetico for about two and a half years. “I am satisfied that the law will now be followed and workers have won justice.”   [Read more…]

Digging Tunnels Under the 30 Foot Height Limit – Part 1

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Height Limit Critic Sparks Debate But Important Exemptions Need to Be Acknowledged

This is the first part in a two-part series on the latest debate about the 30 foot height limit.

New Year’s confetti and the champagne glasses used celebrating the end of 2012 – a year that marked the 40th anniversary of the 30 foot height limit in San Diego – had barely been cleaned up when the assault on that height limit began. It all started in a January 3rd Voice of San Diego article questioning any positive attributes of the 30 foot limit.

Not exactly like a “D-Day” type assault, but more like a tunnel being dug – a tunnel designed to undermine the coastal height limit of 1972, writer Andrew Keatts questions the basic character of the height limit, declares that its essential rigidity will be necessarily and periodically questioned by a city yearning to break free, and gives voice to its critics. The critics believe that because of the 30 foot height limits, all kinds of problems plague San Diego, with rents and property values at the coast being too high.
  [Read more…]

The Battle for the Soul of the Democratic Party Continues

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In the wake of President Obama’s electoral victory and inauguration much of the political analysis has been about the continued chaos inside the Republican Party. With some establishment conservative figures openly questioning whether it was good for the party to continue to be dominated by the hard right, some in progressive circles have been downright giddy, as they have watched the circular firing squad proceed. While this is surely entertaining sport, the more important battle may be happening inside the Democratic Party.

As Politico recently observed, “almost as soon as the echo of Obama’s inaugural address fades and he instantly becomes a lame duck, Democrats are going to have to face a central and unresolved question about their political identity: Will they become a center-left, DLC-by-a-different-name party or return to a populist, left-leaning approach that mirrors their electoral coalition?”   [Read more…]

Shout-out at the PB Corral – Residents Fight for Conditional Booze Permits

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By sub-committee

The corral for easy police DUI checkpoints, and multi-other crime/infractions, from public urination and vandalism, to armed robberies and violence, (sponsored the city penal industry) due to the alcohol party ambiance that been the sustained reputation of Pacific Beach for the past 20+ years , has become the focus for a grassroots citizen protest in the form of, yes, a good old PUBLIC PETITION to request/demand the city and the state to establish local control of alcohol licensing, in the form of the “C.U.P.” (Conditional Use Permit).

“After years of protest to the officials in both state and local agencies, including our own judicial forum, and getting no responsible answers from them to a problem that was getting worse and worse, we have decided to organize THE PEOPLE,” said Scott Chipman, one of the chief organizers of this grassroots endeavor.   [Read more…]

Obama’s Organizing for Action: A Boost for Progressives

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by Randy Shaw/BeyondChron

President Obama’s second inaugural address struck a populist tone, but the real news for progressives came last Friday when it was announced that Obama’s campaign organization would continue under a new name, Organizing for Action. Headed by Obama 2012 campaign manager Jim Messina, the new organization will initially focus on three key progressive issues: gun control, immigration reform, and climate change. The decision to use the Obama campaign base to mobilize around issues reverses the mistake made after the 2008 victory, when the huge Obama for America grassroots base was cut adrift from mobilizing behind the President’s first term agenda.

  [Read more…]

A Different Kind of Listening: John Cage on 45th Street

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It is only half past January and I have had it up to here, estoy harta, with the right wing rage and whining that followed the election; enough, basta already, to the manufactured misery of the fiscal cliff and debt ceiling threats that immediately shut out the voices of citizens who made their intentions and desires known in the November election. There is a ringing in my ears from the dreadful noise, and I worry about my ability to hear what is really important and stay focused. …
  [Read more…]

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