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Ten Reasons the San Diego Planning Commission Should Save Mission Trails Park on July 19th

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Editor: On July 19th, the full San Diego Planning Commission will vote on whether to deny an amendment to Open Space land to accommodate a power plant being proposed very close to Mission Trails Regional Park. A local citizen – Stephen Goldfarb – sent a letter to the Planning Commission and some elected officials outlining ten reasons to deny the amendment. The content of that letter is as follows:

Preface. I was in the audience at the Planning Commission June 28, 2012 meeting. I would like to comment on several matters. I am also writing in anticipation of the July 19, 2012 Planning Commission meeting when a vote will be completed as to denying implementation of an amendment to zone land dedicated to Open Space conservation to heavy industrial use to accommodate a power plant.

It is unclear at this time whether only the two Commissioners who were not present at the June 28 meeting will vote, or whether all Commissioners may vote anew.

Introduction. The issue of denying the applicant initiation of an amendment to install a large power plant on environmentally conserved East Elliott land is unusual for several reasons.   [Read more…]

“No more Fukushimas” Rally in Tokyo Draws 200,000

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The following is a report from Doro-Chiba Quake Report about a huge anti-nuke protest rally in Toyko on Friday, the 29th of June.  “No more Fukushimas” was their rally cry.

On Friday, June 29, 200 thousand people inundated the streets around the Prime Minister’s Office and Residence, the Parliament Building and other facilities.

Around 5:40 PM, the “protest on the sidewalk” spilled over to the streets. Around 6:50 PM, all the six traffic lanes of the street from the crossing in front of the Prime Minister’s Office through the Ministry of Finance were completely occupied by workers and people, young and old, who held makeshift placards. Other streets nearby were also full of protesters. It was a Tahrir Squar in Tokyo.

The huge crowd of people began to move toward the PM’s Office, chanting “Saikado hantai” (“Stop Restart”). The panic-stricken police moved dozens of armored police vehicles and built a wall with them and stopped the march of protesters at the last minute.   [Read more…]

Photos From The San Diego Stop TPP Rally

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I went down to the Bayfront Hilton on Monday and snapped a few pictures. There were a couple of hundred people there and plenty of press. Speakers included Lorena Gonzalez, Congressman Bob Filner, the Citizens Trade Campaign, the Machinists Union, the Longshoremen, United and Friends of the Earth addressed the crowd. Meanwhile, the six hundred lobbyists and their friends were inside the hotel plotting in secret to create a Pacific Rim Trade Agreement.   [Read more…]

The Supreme Court Upheld Corporate Health Care Reform – Universal Health Care Still Elusive

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Not allowing the perfect to be the enemy of the good, progressives should be happy that the Supreme Court dealt the Neanderthal right a huge blow by upholding the constitutionality of health care reform. Now 30 million more Americans will have access to health care, parents will be allowed to keep their adult children on their policies longer, and those with pre-existing conditions can no longer be excluded from coverage among other good results. This is a real, tangible win for scores of Americans, but not all of us.

On the political front, years of insane ranting about death panels, the end of American liberty, and creeping socialism got slam dunked by a conservative judge who joined the liberals in affirming the lion’s share of the provisions of the Affordable Care Act. This will not stop the bullshit machine at Fox News and elsewhere from cranking out more lies, but it will most likely help more than hurt Obama’s campaign for a second term. With no alternative to offer, all the right has, as Paul Krugman wrote last week, is prevarication and cruelty. Not an attractive combination even when being presented by the ever-so-suave Mitt Romney.
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The Starting Line – Reps Filner, Davis Call for Transparency in (TPP) Trade Negotiations; Big Tobacco in San Diego for the ‘Free Trade’ Confab

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July 2, 2012—Two Members of San Diego’s Congressional delegation are among 130 Representatives who have signed a letter calling for an end to the secrecy surrounding negotiations for the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) Free Trade Agreement. Delegates from nine pacific rim nations are meeting in San Diego this week for the 13th round of negotiations on the pact. The letter cites “reports [that] indicate the agreement is likely to repeat, rather than improve upon, the existing trade template—including the weakening of Buy America provisions, providing extraordinary investor-state privileges, and restricting access to lifesaving medicines in developing nations, to name a few.” The trade pact meetings at San Diego’s Bayfront Hilton, which begin today, are expected to be the target of protests throughout the week,

Big Tobacco to join the negotiations… According to a report in the San Diego Reader, lobbyists from Phillip Morris and other big tobacco firms will be in attendance at the (TPP) negotiations, hoping to encourage trade rules to circumvent or overturn public health measures designed to reduce smoking. Activists from the Center for Policy Analysis on Trade and Health released a statement saying: “Big Tobacco is coming to San Diego, one of the most anti-smoking cities in the U.S., to push their ‘Merchants of Death’ agenda through the Trans Pacific Partnership.”   [Read more…]

Monday, July 2nd,12pm– Fair Trade Not Free Trade Rally!

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Labor and the STOP TPP Coalition Sponsor a Kick-Off Press Conference / Protest Rally / Street Theater

Today begins a week of protests and teach-ins aimed at raising public awareness about the negotiations taking place at San Diego’s Hilton Bayfront Convention Center concerning a the 13th round of negotiations on a proposed trade pact called The Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP).  The nations involved are the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, Brunei, Chile and Peru. Japan, Mexico and Canada have indicated a desire to join. The economic power of this group is more than 40% larger than the 27-nation European Union. While the claimed purpose of TPP is to promote development and create jobs, protesters say this meeting is one of the final conclaves to secretly negotiate the economic structural adjustments necessary to appease the world’s largest multinational banks and multi-unit corporations.

Today’s events include a kickoff protest/press conference at noon in the park across from the Bayfront Hilton and the first of six days of a Better World Conference featuring speakers on Worker’s Rights, Outsourcing, Walmart, and Gentrification at the Logan Heights Branch Library starting at 6:30.   [Read more…]

WE DON’T HAVE TO SHOW NO STINKING PAPERS! Supreme Court Immigration Ruling strips 50 million Chicanos/Latinos of Rights!

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Immigration or a Historical Labor Issue?

By Herman Baca

To this date, it never ceases to amaze me that the biggest problem/issue (the war in Afghanistanand economy) for the great-great-great grandchildren of immigrants who immigrated to the U.S.is…. immigration? This week, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Arizona’s (Nazizona) draconian SB 1070’s main provision, “show me your papers.” The court left standing SB 1070’s most controversial provision requiring Sheriff Joe Apario type, “state and local police to check the immigration status of anyone that they suspect is in the country illegally; if that person was initially detained for other legitimate reasons.”

There can be no mistake that the ruling was aimed solely at persons of Mexican ancestry and their rights, whetherU.S.born, legal or undocumented. The unanimous ruling by the Supreme Court Justices’ (including Sonia Sotomayor) brings the U.S. closer to a police state, legalizes racial profiling, revives the segregationist “Jim Crow” system, and sanctions a South African apartheid state for this nation’s fastest growing (50 million Chicanos/Latinos) population.   [Read more…]

What Winning Looks Like in Reproductive Rights

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The fight for Women’s Reproductive Freedom has been going on in every country around the world. Jane Cawthorne has been a long-time advocate for women’s rights in Canada. She is the writer of the play “The Abortion Monologues”. The play, according to Vicki Saporta, President and CEO of the National Abortion Federation,“…gives a voice to the perspectives of real women who are all too often missing from the public debate. These powerful monologues have the potential to change the way people talk about abortion.”

In the following article, Jane asks us to take a moment to appreciate what our work can accomplish.

By Jane Cawthorne

Calgary, Alberta – These days with women’s reproductive rights under constant attack, especially in the United States, it’s sometimes hard to remember our true goals are in the reproductive justice movement. While we are busy trying to explain what’s wrong with legislating mandatory transvaginal ultrasounds for women seeking abortions, or explaining why it’s unacceptable and unethical for doctors to be forced to lie to women about their pregnancies so they won’t consider abortion, or fighting to make sure women facing poverty can access contraception, we might need a reminder of what winning really looks like when it comes to reproductive rights.

In Canada, a recent report describes how teen pregnancy and abortion rates in Canada dropped 36.9% between 1996 and 2006. This is an incredible achievement. The study is from the Sex Information and Education Council of Canada and Alexander McKay, one of the reports’ authors, credits this incredible decline to Canada’s “balanced, sensible approach to adolescent sexual health.”   [Read more…]

Power Plant Hearing Draws Strong Opposition from Community and Environmental Groups

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Community and environmental protection groups including the Sierra Club and Save Mission Trails lauded the results of an over-five-hour San Diego Planning Commission hearing held Thursday, June 28. Commissioners were being asked to begin a process to convert land designated as open space near theMissionTrailsRegionalParkto an industrial site for a fossil fuel burning electric power plant.

The power plant applicant Cogentrix, LLC, a subsidiary of the banking giant Goldman Sachs, has already initiated a process with the California Energy Commission to license a 100 MW plant that would require eleven 100 foot tall smokestacks on lands that have been designated as open space for decades in what is known as the East Elliot Community Plan area north of the park.

Over 150 opponents of the proposed power plant including energy engineer Bill Powers, Santee Councilmember John Minto, health professionals and parents provided testimony as to why the power plant is not necessary to meet San Diego’s energy needs, how it increases greenhouse gas emissions and is a highly inappropriate use for the proposed site.   [Read more…]

July 2 – 7: Week of Protest of Trans-Pacific Partnership Talks Being Held in San Diego

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No to NAFTA on Steroids

Coalition to STOP TPP Announces Week of Protest

and an International Community-Based Conference

From June 30 to July 8, the secret, super-treaty negotiations known as the 13th Round of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Negotiations are being held here in San Diego at the Hilton Bayfront Hotel. The Coalition to STOP TPP hereby announces a week with rallies, a march, various other protests, and a week-long international community-based People’s Conference: A Better World Is Possible!

The 11 nations involved in the talks are the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, Brunei, Chile, Peru, Mexico, and Canada. Japan has indicated a desire to join. The economic power of this group is more than 40% larger than the 27-nation European Union. The claimed purpose of TPP is to promote development and create jobs. But their reality is different. Though the contents of these negotiations are secret, what is not a secret is that the impacts of the TPP on these Pacific Rim nations, on peasants, on farmers, on workers, on their natural resources, on the environment, will be devastating. Some people describe the TPP as “NAFTA on Steroids.”
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The Starting Line: Pension Proposition Proponents Required to Pay Legal Fees; Filner Scores on MSNBC

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June 27, 2012- You can’t have it both ways… The San Diego City Council yesterday refused to fund legal representation for city employees who may be called to testify in lawsuits challenging the recently approved Proposition B, a measure that seeks to fundamentally restructure the city’s pension system. This decision means that Mayor Jerry Sanders, Councilman Kevin Falconer and Councilman Carl DeMaio, who campaigned for and contended that their support of the Pension Proposition was as private citizens, will have to pay their own legal fees. A handful of other city employees were also affected by the decision.

San Diego is facing lawsuits from its unions and the state Public Employment Relations Board, who claim officials violated the Meyers-Milias-Brown Act by failing to negotiate terms of the initiative with labor prior to placing it on the ballot. Since the mayor and these councilmen were among the primary boosters of the measure, the unions contend that their actions amounted to city sponsorship.

Filner’s on fire… Congressman (and mayoral candidate) Bob Filner appeared on Rachel Maddow’s NSNBC program last night to talk about veterans’ issues.  He didn’t mince words in his criticisms of the Veterans Administration, saying that their health care system is ‘so bad,’ vets are dying or even committing suicide while waiting for adjudication of claims.   [Read more…]

Local Residents to Ask Oceanside City Council: ‘Is Our Community Prepared for an Accident at San Onofre Nuclear Power Station?’

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Oceanside, CA – On Wednesday, June 27, 2012, residents from Oceanside will attend the Oceanside City Council meeting and request that the Council place the issue of the safety of their community should there be an accident at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station on a future Council Agenda for in-depth discussion and presentation by experts.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission met in San Clemente on June 18th and pledged that San Onofre will remain shut down until a solution is found to fix the problem (a release of radioactive steam and unexpected, accelerated tube wear) which precipitated the emergency shutdown on January 31, 2012.
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