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The Starting Line – A Day to Celebrate: Filner in as Mayor, Xolos in as Champs

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It’s a day for underdogs to celebrate. After three decades of Republican rule, Bob Filner’s ascension into San Diego’s top spot marks the start of a new era in San Diego politics. At long last our city’s neighborhoods, long considered a red headed step-child in terms of urban planning and economic development will be given the opportunity to have their needs and desires given a fair shake. We hope, anyway.

Meanwhile, in the “missing half” of our metropolis, more than 100,000 residents of Tijuana took to the streets in neighborhoods throughout that city to celebrate victory for Club Tijuana Xoloitzcuintles de Caliente as that team emerged as champions in Mexico’s highest level of soccer.

The nay-sayers are already jumping on both these stories.   [Read more…]

Shame on US – Palestine’s First Step to Statehood and Liberation (but where were we?)

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Watching the television last week, I came close to tears several times. Seeing the victims of Israel’s indiscriminate bombing in Gaza was almost too much to watch. But watch I did. Not as some ghoulish entertainment. No, I watched as a witness. I watched just as my parents before me watched the horrific images of the death camps, evidence of the Nazi genocide of Jews, the disabled, gypsies and homosexuals some 67 years ago. And just as my parents will never deny the atrocities of Nazi Germany, I will never deny the same by the Israeli government.

I do not pretend to completely understand the 5000 year history of Mideast. To characterize it as complex is such a vast understatement, it is disingenuous. I do know from world history classes, biblical study (both Jewish and Christian), wading into the Holy Qur’an and just reading a newspaper over the past fifty some odd years, it is a region which has been locked in constant turmoil.   [Read more…]

Immigration: Renewing The Battle For Family Unity

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By 

The election is over.

Time to get back to work.

Back to immigration reform.

Real immigration reform.

Let’s start with family unity.   [Read more…]

Anti-Nuke Events Proliferate as the Holiday Season Approaches

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It may be the season for shopping for consumers. It may be a time to recharge for political campaigners. But for the anti-nuclear activists in the region it’s time to intensify their efforts. Inside are a half dozen programs, protests and events compiled by the Peace Resource Center for the coming days. Remember to make your holiday season about more than a trip to the mall.
  [Read more…]

The Starting Line – Congressman Darrell Issa’s Plan to ‘Save’ the Internet

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Reddit’s AMA (Ask Me Anything) feature, where people of influence open themselves up to questions posed by Redditors, can get pretty wild. Conversational threads, where remarks build upon other comments and spark new lines of inquiry, can spin off into areas far removed from their starting place.

Yesterday Congressman Darrel Issa climbed to the virtual dais on Reddit to explain (as much as you can in the AMA format) and get feedback on his proposed legislation that would bar ‘new regulations or burdens on the internet for two years’. This broad shouldered bit of legalese really is all about keeping Federal regulators from doing anything (good or bad) for the duration of the 113th Congress.
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Celebrating the 30 Foot Height Limit As It Turns 40

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The room was packed, standing room only the other night as the OB Historical Society led all of us in a celebration of the 40th anniversary of the 30 foot height limit. The downstairs community room of the Methodist Church on Sunset Cliffs Blvd. opens its doors every month to the OBHS presentations, and the night of November 15th was no exception as Society president Pat James welcomed the crowd.

Nearly 50 OBceans and friends had come to hear speakers and presentations on this historic fight four decades ago to preserve San Diego’s coast, and I saw many people in the audience who had waged their own battles to save OB over the years.

After a few brief announcements, Pat introduced the main speaker, Alex Leondis, who was one of the main organizers in the effort to place the thirty-foot limit on coastal construction onto conservative San Diego’s ballot – way back in the early 1970’s. The initiative did pass in 1972 – marking this year as its 40th birthday.   [Read more…]

Readers Write: San Diego Community and Workers Stand Up and Speak Out Against Walmart

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This article was submitted to us via our Facebook Page.

On Friday, November 23, 2012, the day after Thanksgiving, the biggest shopping day of the year, community members and workers protested outside of several Wal-Mart locations throughout the country.

In San Diego the community focused on ten locations including one located in the College Grove shopping center.  As shoppers came into the store community members greeted them with stickers for shoppers to wear inside the store that read “We Support Wal-Mart Workers”.  Many of the community were very supportive and one shopper said “she would wear the sticker proudly and ask management why they retaliated against it’s own employees”.   [Read more…]

Christmas on Earth? Try Buying Nothing

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Here we go again: the day after Black Friday was filled with the now all-too-familiar news of shopping mayhem.

There was the man who threatened to stab his fellow shoppers for pushing his kids outside a Sacramento K-mart, the melee of frenzied Georgia shoppers mauling each other to get at a stack of cell phones in a Walmart, the trampling that followed after a man brandished a gun in a line outside a Sears in Texas, the gang fight in a Michigan mall, arrests of hysterical consumers in Florida, the vicious brawling over lingerie, etc. etc.

This ritual has come to define us as much or more than Thanksgiving.   [Read more…]

The Sun Peeking through the Clouds

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I’m still riding high as a result of the elections. It was so great seeing so many propositions that I like pass, so satisfying having the president remain where he is, so refreshing having a mayor who is a friend. I mean, hey, I’ve been voting since 1959 and this has been a real new experience for people of my voting kind.

  [Read more…]

Walmart Retaliates Against Black Friday Activists

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By Adele M. Stan / Alternet / Nov. 22, 2012

As Black Friday approached, the honchos at Walmart, the largest employer in the United States, found themselves at a loss to respond to a nationwide rebellion within the ranks of their near-captive workers — people who work for an average wage of $8.81 per hour, according to The National Memo, often in areas where Walmart is the only game in town for a job if you don’t have a college degree (or even if you do). And so it seems they started making stuff up, and pulling strings — in at least two locations — to get local police to do their bidding.   [Read more…]

The One Infographic You Need To See for Black Friday

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Catherine Ruetschlin at Demos

With more than 15 million workers in the sector, and leverage over workplace standards across the supply chain, retail wields enormous influence on Americans’ standard of living and the nation’s economic outlook. It connects producers and consumers, workers and jobs, and local social and economic development to the larger US economy. And over the next decade, retail will be the second largest source of new jobs in the United States.

Given the vital role retail plays in our economy, the question of whether employees in the sector are compensated at a level that promotes American prosperity is of national importance. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the typical retail sales person earns just $21,000 per year. Cashiers earn even less, bringing home an annual income of just $18,500.   [Read more…]

An Open Letter to President Obama

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By Michael Moore 1/19/2012 MichaelMoore.com

Dear President Obama:

Good luck on your journeys overseas this week, and congratulations on decisively winning your second term as our president! The first time you won four years ago, most of us couldn’t contain our joy and found ourselves literally in tears over your victory.

This time, it was more like breathing a huge sigh of relief. But, like the smooth guy you are, you scored the highest percentage of the vote of any Democrat since Lyndon Johnson, and you racked up the most votes for a Democratic president in the history of the United States (the only one to receive more votes than you was … you, in ’08!). You are the first Democrat to get more than 50% of the vote twice in a row since Franklin D. Roosevelt.   [Read more…]

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