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More Port District Pollution Threatens Barrio Logan

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Joy Williams / Environmental Health Coalition

While Port District plans a massive expansion of its operations and diesel emissions from the Tenth Avenue Terminal, the neighboring community of Barrio Logan has been ranked even higher in the newest draft of California’s environmental justice screening model, CalEnviroScreen.

The new draft version three of CalEnviroScreen, released September 6, confirms the pollution hazards and social vulnerabilities in the Barrio Logan/Logan Heights area.

Barrio Logan was already at the very top of the state in version two of CalEnviroScreen – the highest five percent of all 8,000-plus census tracts in the state. The newly released draft version shows diesel hazards a full 15 percentile points higher than previously estimated for this area.   [Read more…]

The Financialization of America: Wall Street Doesn’t Help Homeless

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The Business of America is No Longer Business – It’s Finance

The rich today are making money not from making things, but by manipulating money. This is being done in such a way that it is driving the inequality process. It is ruining the middle class while exporting their jobs. The tax structure of the US engineered by Ronald Reagan, Alan Greenspan and their Republican followers has incentivized the creation of great wealth in a few hands while driving the majority of people into poverty.

So-called trickle down economics has only spurted up. While the rich have many ways of escaping paying taxes, middle class people are stuck paying them to a larger and larger extent. The government needs money to operate, and, if the rich don’t pay their fair share, the middle class has to make up for it. US tax policy makes sure that it does.   [Read more…]

This National Boss Day, Recognizing Bosses Who Put Their Employees First

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By Mikey Knab, Meza Family Restaurant Group

On National Boss Day each October 17, some employees show up to the office with an extra coffee, or flowers, or maybe a “#1 Boss” mug, hoping to build a little extra good will with management. Others simply avoid the marking on the calendar and hope nobody notices. It’s difficult to deny that National Boss Day can be a holiday that’s observed out of obligation.

As Director of Operations at Meza Family Restaurant Group, you may expect that I’m hoping for a little extra appreciation from my staff at Ponce’s Mexican Restaurant and Rocio’s. But that’s not how I’m celebrating. This year, I’m turning the holiday upside down and marking Monday, October 17, as the day to honor bosses in San Diego who truly live up to the “#1 Boss” name.   [Read more…]

From Mission to Microchip: An Interview with California Labor Historian Fred Glass. Part 2

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In my Labor Day column, I gave a shout out to Fred Glass’s seminal new labor history of California, From Mission to Microchip: A History of the California Labor Movement. As Glass notes in his introduction, his history of working people in the Golden State is much broader than a narrow chronicle of unions…

…To learn more about this story and what about it is most important, I am pleased to present the second installment of my three-part interview with Fred Glass, author, teacher, union member, and long-time Communications Director for the California Federation of Teachers.   [Read more…]

From Coal to Climate: the Evolution of an Activist

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By Mark Hughes / SanDiego350

So, here is a question: what’s about as likely as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Bill O’Reilly jointly admitting they’ve been wrong and dedicating their lives and fortunes to fighting sexism, racism, white supremacy, homophobia, and misogyny?

Answer: that a guy like me would end up volunteering for a grassroots, climate action group.

I grew up in Kansas, famous for Dorothy, sunflowers, and reliably voting against your best interest. I remember my father vehemently wishing he could vote against Ted Kennedy. My mother railing against the Equal Rights Amendment, saying she liked having men open doors for her. Umm, I guess chivalry was banned in the bill’s text somewhere? Both of them mourning angrily after Carter was elected that the country was ruined. Ruined!   [Read more…]

Dr. Bronner’s Announces Resignation from the Organic Trade Association

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Continues Focus on Minimum Wage, Cannabis Reform and Animal Welfare Ballot Measures

Dr. Bronner’s, North America’s leading natural brand of soap and organic body care products, has resigned from the Organic Trade Association (OTA), citing the association’s betrayal of the consumer-led GMO labeling movement, and general drift away from the core principles that drive the organic movement.

Following the resignation, [ Vista, California based] Dr. Bronner’s has pledged to instead use its organizational resources to help power consumer, farmer and industry organizations that more authentically and courageously represent the vision of regenerative organic agriculture, versus the disaster of soil destroying industrial agriculture.   [Read more…]

An Insider’s Story About Scams at Wells Fargo Bank & Ashford University

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By Anon / OB Rag

You’ve seen the new recently regarding for-profit education scandals (Corinthian, ITT Tech) and Wells Fargo sales scandal. The following is my account of my employment experiences at two San Diego companies: Ashford University and Wells Fargo.

I have always wanted to help people financially and help them achieve success in their endeavors. I assumed my good intentions would eventually lead me to actually helping people financially. How naïve and wrong I was.   [Read more…]

From Mission to Microchip: An Interview with California Labor Historian Fred Glass. Part 1

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In my Labor Day column , I gave a shout out to Fred Glass’s seminal new labor history of California, From Mission to Microchip: A History of the California Labor Movement. As Glass notes in his introduction, his history of working people in the Golden State is much broader than a narrow chronicle of unions:

California labor history doesn’t begin and end with union membership. Forming and maintaining unions is one part of a broader story, repeated countless times–in coastal seaports, the Central Valley farms, the southern oilfields, and the Sierra foothills, in financial high-rises and bungalow classrooms—of workers journeys from isolation and powerlessness to community, strength, and hope. Their toolbox contains unions, to be sure, but also lawsuits, legislation, election campaigns, community murals, songs, demonstrations, and a mountain of dedication by ordinary people to shared ideas of fairness and social justice.

To learn more about this story and what about it is most important, I am pleased to present the first installment of my three-part interview with Fred Glass, author, teacher, union member, and long-time Communications Director for the California Federation of Teachers.

  [Read more…]

Keeping San Diego Seafood Local

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Sustainable Seafood / Slow Food Urban San Diego

The Port of San Diego envisions redeveloping the “Central Embarcadero” an area that includes Tuna Harbor, where the majority of San Diego’s active commercial fishermen dock their boats. “Tuna Harbor is central to San Diego’s cultural history as a fishing community,” says Pete Halmay, San Diego sea urchin fisherman. “It was the hub of San Diego fishing for a 100 years and is central to our local industry today.”

Today, San Diegans have little access to locally-caught seafood, even though we are a waterfront city. The U.S. imports over 90% of its seafood and San Diego fishermen are hard pressed to sell their catch locally. The redevelopment represents an opportunity to invest in our local fisheries and reconnect with our local seafood system. It’s up to the San Diego to commit to this.   [Read more…]

Buddhist Economics: Economics as if People Mattered

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Economics Should Be About People, Not Wall Street

In Buddhist economics there is the concept of “right livelihood.” Work is considered an essential component of human life just as play and leisure. Work of a craftsmanlike nature, work which is satisfying–not work that is stultifying, of an assembly-line nature. Work that nourishes the soul; this kind of work results in right livelihood.

By the same token, there is “right consumption.” This is as contrasted with the unlimited consumption advanced Western societies and pushed on their citizens through advertising and other means in order to have economic “growth” and to increase GDP.   [Read more…]

Vote Yes on 61 – Big Pharma is the Scum of the Earth

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Originally published with the headline: “Dispatches from the drug war: Or, why are Americans subsidizing the Europeans?” Given all the ads trying to scare voters into paying more for lifesaving drugs lately, we’ve retitled this story along with some of big pharma’s anti-Prop 61 propaganda for readers to contrast and compare.

By Susan Grigsby / Daily Kos

Let’s talk about other drug war: The one being waged against the American consumer by the pharmaceutical companies who benefit from our tax dollars that fund basic scientific research and make up the difference in the tax relief they receive for their own research and development.   [Read more…]

Happy Labor Day, California Style

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Last year my Labor Day column, “Happy Labor Day?: The Jury is Out,” began by starkly pondering the potentially devastating effects a bad Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association ruling at the Supreme Court might have had not just on public sector unions but on the labor movement as a whole. Later, in the same column, I looked more hopefully at the potential for organizing contingent workers, like those involved in the Fight for $15 movement.

The twelve months that followed that column brought good news for labor on multiple fronts. First, with the long, strange journey of the Friedrichs case that came to the Supreme Court with a good chance of passing before everything was turned upside down by Justice Scalia’s death, a 4-4 split decision that was a victory for unions, and finally the Court’s refusal to rehear the case.   [Read more…]

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