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Still Only a Halfpipe Dream – Skate Parks for City Heights

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“I am here to reiterate to you the importance of investing in our youth, who are our future. Youth in the Mid-City area face many challenges of public safety, broken infrastructure, and inadequate services. They should not have to deal with cars, pedestrians, and cyclists when they are out skateboarding. They should be provided with a skate park to be active freely and safely. This is a commitment to them as individuals and citizens of our fair city. Recreation facilities and services need to be a priority and skate parks need to be made a reality for our communities…” Mark Tran, Mid-City CAN Youth Council, addressing the City City Council budget meeting 5/14/12

Mark Tran and the other speakers from Mid-City CAN left an impression on the council members. They also left an impression on those of us in the audience from all over the city who were advocating for the restoration of meaningful public services that have been cut over the past six years. The issue of a skate park immediately went onto my “worth fighting for and doable list.”   [Read more…]

San Diego Planning Commission to Vote July 19th on Power Plant Near Mission Trails Park

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The folks at the Save Mission Trails applaud the San Diego Planning Commissioners for their diligence and the votes which opposed initiation of regulation changes to site the Quail Brush power plant. One more vote is needed on July 19th, 9 AM at the Planning Commission (PC) Hearing to finalize their opposition.

County residents are asked to immediately step-up written notes of opposition by sending each a message to the San Dieog Planning Commission, San Diego City Council and the California Energy Commission (CEC). (See this sample message). Residents are asked to their thoughts about why open space in the Mission Trails Design District of East Elliot is too valuable to convert to industrial uses. The Mission Trails Task Force will also be considering this issue on July 19th at 1 PM.   [Read more…]

City Council Approves Jacobs Plan

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Seven-and-a-half hour City Council marathon ends in 6-1 vote in favor of Balboa Park overhaul.

Update: Statement from Scott Peters

The most controversial decision in the San Diego City Council since the Chargers ticket guarantee finally came to a head last night at around 9:30 pm, and when the council had completed its vote, the Irwin Jacobs plan to transform Balboa Park had its official go ahead. The $45 million plan to eliminate vehicle traffic from the Plaza de Panama, build the “Centennial Bridge” that will circumvent the centerpiece of the park itself, and lead into a brand spanking new $16 million parking structure that will introduce paid parking into Balboa Park for the first time in the park’s history got the City Council’s official go ahead.

Despite overwhelming public opposition to the perceived privatization of San Diego’s crown jewel, the City Council voted 6-1 to approve the plan pushed by the billionaire founder of Qualcomm, the eighth largest employer in San Diego, with even the council’s most liberal members giving the plan the green light.   [Read more…]

Billionaire Philanthropist Gets His Way!

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By John P. Falchi
It was good to have spent Monday downtown on one of the hottest issues of our time, the preservation of the historic integrity ofBalboaPark. For some time now the behind the scenes machinations of our local power elite have been working their way toward this day of decision on the part of our S.D. City Council Members. Many members of fine organizations like dan Soderberg’s Neighborhood Coalition to saveBalboaPark, Bruce Coon’s organization,SOHO, and Jeanne Brown’s League of Women Voters, have been fighting the good fight, and were there with members of their groups, yesterday. I was also impressed by the turnout of young people, many from the Occupy Together Movement, locally, who came to lend their support to those who chose to speak against the Jacobs-Sanders Campaign to fundamentally changeBalboaPark.   [Read more…]

Carrie Christie’s “Dear Kamala” Postcard Campaign Brings Attention to Sex Trafficking Victim Sara Kruzan

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Story by Ron Logan / East County Magazine

July 7, 2012 (San Diego) – This Independence Day promised the usual smell of barbecued burgers and dogs, the taste of chilled drinks, the glisten of suntan lotion, the sound of children playing, and the smoke, the lights and the crackle of pyrotechnics. Across the nation, families celebrated their independence, partied with friends, and enjoyed the freedoms that we far too often take for granted.

But this Independence Day meant much more for Sara Kruzan – a woman who has never known independence, has never enjoyed freedom, and has fallen through the cracks of our society.

While we celebrated our freedom, Kruzan remained imprisoned, having served the last 18 years of her life in a cell in Chowchilla, California.

East County activist Carrie Christie saw this Fourth of July as an opportunity to bring attention to Kruzan’s case. Due to Christie’s efforts, this July 4th marked a day of action for Kruzan’s supporters in the form of a postcard writing campaign to California’s Attorney General Kamala Harris and Chief Assistant Attorney General Dane Gillette.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – ‘Foreclosure Storm’ Set to Hit San Diego Social Media Today

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July 10, 2012- At long last….The Property Value Protection Ordinance (PVPO) will come before San Diego’s Land Use and Housing Committee tomorrow (July 11th) at City Hall, 202 C Street (12th floor) starting at 2pm. The act is aimed at reducing the negative impacts of foreclosures on surrounding neighborhoods by requiring banks to register with the city when they take action to foreclose a home and fining them $1000 a day to recover costs to the city and taxpayers when they fail to maintain their foreclosed properties.

Supporters of the measure, including the Center on Policy Initiatives (CPI) and the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE), are cooking up a “social media storm” today between 5:30 and 6:30pm on Twitter (hashtag: #StopBankBlight) and Facebook (RSVPhere). The idea is to send positive messages to Land Use and Housing committee members Lori Zapf, Sherri Lightner, Todd Gloria and David Alvarez. For more information on the costs to neighborhoods and taxpayers caused by blighted foreclosures, visit: StopBankBlight.org.   [Read more…]

Local Coalition Staged March Against TPP Negotiations on Saturday

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Story & Photos by Nadin Abbott

July 7, 2012 (San Diego)– The mood at the Civic Center was defiant. The marchers were getting ready to take to the streets once again. They were protesting the Trans Pacific Trade Negotiations (TPP) happening at the Bayfront Hilton Hotel.

Among them was Kathy Mack-Burton, a resident of La Mesa, who told me, that she was “interested in stopping this secret negotiation that is not in the interest of the American people.” This treaty will come to a surrender of our sovereignty. Given the Finance Chapter that was leaked to Public Citizen has found arbitration will indeed move away from regular court systems, this fear is not unfounded.

She was not alone. According to Kim-Holmgrin of the Green Party, “the TPP pushes advantages away from the common person and expands corporate power. It even weakens our sovereignty.” He added that the Greens are also “really concerned about environmental and global warming,” and that the tribunals will be a violation of International Environmental treaties. He added that labor is at risk as well, with the weakening of labor standards.   [Read more…]

Obama 2012: Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss

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After a flurry of anxiety that Mitt Romney was surging it appears that the Obama campaign has righted the ship, leading handily in a recent Bloomberg poll and by narrower margins in other polls. More importantly, Obama appears to be doing quite well in most of the battleground states as his campaign hits Romney hard as the “outsourcer in chief.” Certainly, it doesn’t hurt Team Obama to be running against a guy who at times seems to be trying to mimic the cartoon capitalist in the board game Monopoly.

The bottom line is that Romney is a laughably terrible candidate, so distanced from the average Joe that he wouldn’t know what to do if he had to sit next to him during a game of “sport.” His presidency would be an unmitigated disaster for the country, a full-court press effort to further reward the plutocrats at the expense of everyone else while dishing out a few reactionary social policy moves to appease the rubes in the Tea Party and the Christian Right. But he will be the recipient of untold millions of dollars of help from the Koch brothers et al and stranger things have happened than Americans electing an unthinkably horrible President.   [Read more…]

#Yosoy132 Leads Protests Aimed at Vote Buying and Fraud in Mexico

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Mexicans turned out in twenty cities throughout that country on Saturday to protest against the electoral victory of president elect Pena Nieto. They accuse Nieto’s party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), of buying votes; some carried banners saying “Not another fraud”. He was declared the winner last week after a recount of nearly half the votes and denies the allegation, as he has with repeated scandals that threatened his career. It turns out he’s quite the cad, with extra baby mommas and recreational hookups galore–Ashleymadison.com, the dating website for married people, proudly put Peña Nieto on a billboard in Mexico City, saying, “Unfaithful to his family. Faithful and committed to his country.”

Numerous videos have emerged of Mexicans claiming they received gift cards in exchange for voting for the PRI; some even claim they are coming forward because they were shortchanged. Aljazeera cites Eduardo Huchim, formerly a senior official with the Electoral Institute of Mexico City, and currently a monitor with Civic Alliance, a UN-funded watchdog, as telling the Reforma newspaper that the July 1 election was “perhaps the largest operation of vote buying and coercion in the history of the country”. Voters inMexico City, an opposition stronghold, have been posting pictures via Twitter of alleged ballot tampering.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – It’s D-Day for Balboa Park as the San Diego City Council Votes on Parking Garage

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Today’s the Day…. The San Diego City Council will vote this afternoon at 2pm on the Irwin Jacobs sponsored proposal to building a by-pass roadway coming off the Cabrillo Bridge and a fee based parking garage.  Should the anticipated revenues from the parking structure fall short of expectations, city taxpayers will be expected to pony up for day-to-day operating costs and payments for bonds used to finance the deal. As part of its on-going campaign to support the use of taxpayer dollars for big and shiny structures that pump up the egos of our City’s mega-rich, the local daily paper has endorsed the plan, with editorial page editor William Osborne tweeting “A big opportunity that won’t come again. Don’t let it slip by, San Diego.”

There are plenty of people opposed to the Balboa Park plan, despite its promise to remove traffic congestion from Plaza de Panama.  Congressman/Mayoral candidate Bob Filner has promised to speak out against the plan at today’s hearings. A protest outside City Hall is scheduled for noon and preservationist groups are urging people to attend the hearing and speak out against the proposal.  Additionally there is a petition against the plan circulating that you can sign here. Additional coverage in the San Diego Free Press can be found here.   [Read more…]

NAFTA on Steroids

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San Diego In World Spotlight Due to Trans-Pacific Partnership Negotiations

By Lori Wallach / The Nation (Article appeared in the July 16-23, 2012 edition)

While the Occupy movement has forced a public discussion of extreme corporate influence on every aspect of our lives, behind closed doors corporate America is implementing a stealth strategy to formalize its rule in a truly horrifying manner. The mechanism is the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Negotiations have been conducted in extreme secrecy, so you are in good company if you have never heard of it. But the thirteenth round of negotiations between the United States and eight Pacific Rim nations will be held in San Diego in early July.

The TPP has been cleverly misbranded as a trade agreement (yawn) by its corporate boosters. As a result, since George W. Bush initiated negotiations in 2008, it has cruised along under the radar. The Obama administration initially paused the talks, ostensibly to develop a new approach compatible with candidate Obama’s pledges to replace the old NAFTA-based trade model. But by late 2009, talks restarted just where Bush had left off.   [Read more…]

Labor Calls Out Scheme to Sabotage Living Wage Ordinance

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By Nadin Abbott
July 5, 2012 (San Diego)– When the San Diego City Council spun off the Convention Center to the San Diego Convention and Visitor’s Bureau (CONVIS), labor leaders feared that CONVIS would try to maximize profits by getting around provisions such as the living wage ordinance. These fears came to fruition when item 5:8 of the contract “struck out the provision that SDCVB shall comply with the City of San Diego Living Wage ordinance.”

According to Lorena Gonzales, Secretary-Treasurer/CEO of the San Diego and Imperial Counties Labor Council, “we must have a discussion on quality of life.” Gonzales also emphasized that workers on minimum wage are subsidized by the rest of us, since we have to pay for food stamps, section eight housing and Emergency Room visits, and turn over is higher as well.

What we need, Gonzales added, “are good jobs for all San Diegans.”   [Read more…]

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