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Boom! Sempra’s SoCal Gas Leak Gets More Dangerous by the Day

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The man made disaster in progress at Southern California Gas Co.’s Aliso Canyon underground facility is getting worse by the day. The company is a subsidiary of San Diego-based Sempra Energy.

According to the Environmental Defense Fund, the more than 80,000 tons of methane emissions since October 23rd have created the greenhouse gas equivalent on the Earth’s atmosphere of burning nearly 800 million gallons of gasoline.

Today’s Los Angeles Times says the attempts to plug the leaking natural gas well have created a crater 25 feet deep, 80 feet long and 30 feet wide, destabilizing the well-head and increasing the danger of a blowout.

Don’t Forget! Weekly Calendar of Progressive Events Inside   [Read more…]

Emergency Shelter for San Diego’s Most Vulnerable

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Using school data, we can prove that close to 10,000 families in San Diego County are homeless and are not included in the Point-in-Time Count (PITC) that is conducted every year throughout the country to determine how to allocate HUD funds for homelessness programs.

They are not being counted because single mothers, who for a myriad of reasons become homeless, will wisely prioritize their personal safety and the safety of their children over anything else. So while their male counterparts will often sleep “rough” on the streets or in the canyons, or compete for the few emergency beds in City and County shelters, 80% of the kids reported as homeless by the schools are spending their nights doubling up with “friends and relatives”.   [Read more…]

The Bedeviled Dictionary

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(Inspired by The Devil’s Dictionary, which Wikipedia says is “a satirical dictionary written by American journalist and author Ambrose Bierce. Originally published in 1906 as The Cynic’s Word Book, it features Bierce’s witty and often ironic spin on many common English words.”)

Three of the definitions here were written by Ambrose Bierce. Can you guess which ones?   [Read more…]

No, You Are Automatically Disqualified: DACA Should Be a Gateway

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By Leobardo Aviles

As I was about to graduate I realized there was no future.

Bringing me into this country for a chance at a better life was my parent’s mistake.

Growing up without ever thinking about what could stop me from receiving further education was mine. Regardless if all my schooling was done here, I have to throw my opportunity out the window for someone else to catch it, all because I am undocumented.   [Read more…]

The Rainmaker, Charles Hatfield, and the Flood of 1916

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By Patricia Maxwell

Today’s residents of Chula Vista have much in common with citizens of a hundred years ago. Make that a thousand years or more. Southern California has always been an arid land, with cycles of drought, interspersed with wet years every now and again. In December of 1915, San Diego’s city fathers tackled the issue from a completely different angle. They hired a rainmaker!

The impetus for their decision was the unfilled Morena Reservoir in the mountains sixty miles east of San Diego. A rock-filled dam had been completed in 1912, but the reservoir had yet to be filled beyond a third of its capacity. Other reservoirs in the area shared the same problem. None were filled and the city was growing.

The rainmaker, Mr. Charles Hatfield, said “I will fill the Morena Reservoir to overflowing between now and next December 20, 1916, for the sum of $10,000, in default of which I ask no compensation.”   [Read more…]

European Refugees Are Better Off Than San Diego’s Homeless

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Amy Goodman did a recent show about the refugees living in a camp in Calais, France. She walked around the camp interviewing several refugees all of whom spoke good English. Most of these people were sleeping in tents similar to the ones you see on the sidewalks of San Diego. Some had built simple structures. As she walked around, I began to notice some facilities that they had there which are nowhere to be found for the San Diego homeless. First I noticed a dumpster. There’s no dumpster for San Diego’s homeless. The trash just gets left on the street.

Then I noticed a whole row of Port-a-Potties. San Diego had one Portland Loo which they are getting rid of. Unlike San Diego’s homeless, the refugees in Calais, who are from all over the Middle East – Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan -everywhere the US has bombed, had a place, places, to go to the bathroom. There were other services. A barber and a restaurant were mentioned. A little later there was a guy doing laundry. There was running water – a sink with faucets. Are there facilities like this for San Diego’s homeless? No. Not at all.   [Read more…]

What Mayor Kevin Faulconer Bought Into When He Endorsed Marco Rubio

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You know things are getting bad when Howard Kurtz at Fox News says Republicans are freaking out over The Donald. The billionaire reality show host has disrupted the hopes of the conservative elite of a youngish version of Saint Reagan to preside over the final dismemberment of the New Deal.

Kurtz: “At family dinners and New Year’s parties, in conference calls and at private lunches, longtime Republicans are expressing a growing fear that the coming election could be shattering for the party, or reshape it in ways that leave it unrecognizable.”

Given that the rising popularity of Senator Ted Cruz is also distasteful to the party faithful, his colleague Marco Rubio is emerging as the next great white hope. To that end, coteries of conventional conservatives have been rolled out as campaign co-chairs in several states, including San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer as one of seven California surrogates for the Florida Republican.   [Read more…]

Supreme Court Case Impacts Teachers, Public Employees

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By Lindsay Burningham / San Diego Education Association

As an elementary teacher I consider it a privilege to work with the students of San Diego. When students are engaged by educators within a climate of trust, we share in their joy when those “light bulb” moments happen and students are achieving at their full potential.

As the president of the San Diego Education Association, I have had the opportunity to expand my professional learning through school site visits throughout the city of San Diego. Irrespective of the amazing work I see accomplished by outstanding educators, paraprofessionals and administrators in those schools every day, I also see the effects of an economic system that has swung out of balance. Hardworking parents of our students are finding it more difficult to get by, even as an economic recovery has increased the fortunes of those at the very top of the economic class.

Now the Supreme Court is poised to hear a case that seeks to make it even worse for workers who want to stand together to have a voice in their workplace.   [Read more…]

Excerpt From Sunshine/Noir II: The Future of Post-Bordernity

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The wall is the materialized representation of this idea of a border. In English people call it a “fence” and in the U.S. that fence means “defense”; something that in American minds brings protection. Interestingly enough you would have to ask them, “Protection from who or what?” And this same wall or barrier or fence means an “offense” to Mexicans.

—Norma Iglesias Prieto

By Perry Vasquez

The U.S./Mexico border is falling apart. Like Chipotle Swiss cheese, it is shot through with gaps, holes, lacunae, erasures, and stretches of emptiness. The border exists—but at times its existence seems to collapse beneath the weight of its own sovereignty.

How does the border both exist and not exist at the same time? How does it manage to appear in strategic locations and disappear in non-strategic ones? Why do we think of the border as having a fixed and permanent national identity instead of a contingent and temporary one?

Like every national myth, the U.S./Mexico border began life as a collective act of imagination.   [Read more…]

‘Benny Here’: A Tribute to Musician and Bandleader Benny Hollman 1940-2015

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By Connie Zuñiga

On December 12 2015, the feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Benny Hollman lost his years-long struggle with cancer, surrounded by family at his home in Mira Mesa.

A little over a week before Benny’s passing, I was at my neighbor Ronnie Stewart’s house for dinner. Ronnie is a drummer who knew Benny from back in the day and at one time played in Benny’s orchestra.

As I walked in the door Ronnie was on the phone talking to Benny. I was surprised because I knew Benny was gravely ill. When Ronnie passed the phone to me, I heard an extremely frail voice; I knew I would never speak with Benny again.

We spoke for a minute and I apologized for not following through on getting with him to document the history of Logan Height’s Latino musicians from the 20s through the 40s. There is a rich history there that needs to be documented for the Logan Heights Historical Society. Benny had an incredible wealth of information about these local musicians.
  [Read more…]

Hundreds Brave El Niño Weather on the Streets of Downtown San Diego

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Jeez…the weather. Can you believe it? I spent 90 minutes getting home yesterday after hunkering down in the basement of a building at UCSD as all hell broke lose. Rain –then hail– came down sideways, trees flopped back and forth like rag dolls, and then we saw the eerie greenish glow of the sky associated with tornado events…

…At least I wasn’t homeless in San Diego. El Niño’s arrival has ripped off the tarp local politicians had thrown over our homeless problem.

KPBS reported that there were 800 people in downtown San Diego hunkered down in tents and under plastic tarp. City Beat tells us that 91 people died from various causes on the streets of our city last year and the back-up foul weather shelter plan announced by the mayor earlier this year amounts to “an unfunded, re-wrapped package of Father Joe’s longstanding practice of opening its dining halls.”   [Read more…]

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