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Having Fun Watching my Grandson Having Fun

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The other day, for some reason, a wonderful memory rose in my mind of times when my grandson, Marlon, was dancing on the stage at SCPA (School of Creative and Performing Arts) to the hooting and hollering sounds of girls who were swooning from the very sight of him.

As I remembered those days I couldn’t help but think about how I had never experienced anything like that. Ever. I mean I’ve wondered a few times how somebody in my bloodline came out looking as fine as he does.

Since those days, he’s evolved into ML Wilson, performer, rapper, actor, a hip-hop-beat-maker. Living in San Francisco, pursuing his showbiz dreams.   [Read more…]

City Attorney Candidate Forum and San Diego’s Fault Line

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Land use, wealth and the smart city

The League of Women Voters and community radio station KNSJ hosted a city attorney candidate forum at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law in downtown San Diego on Saturday May 14. I had been asked to participate as a media representative on the panel asking questions of the candidates.

The 94 freeway exit that my husband and I took downtown to the event dumps cars on a surface street on the fringe of East Village. We drove through a convulsed urban landscape created by CalTrans engineering, deteriorating Victorian era houses, new apartments and temporarily re-purposed vacant lots. This entry point reflects how San Diego’s decision makers have approached land use and development in the area over many decades and to wildly different effect.

  [Read more…]

The California Way of Poverty

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Last week, I pondered the obscene spectacle of holding a mega-concert catering to the wealthy in the Southern California desert town of Indio where a quarter of the population lives below the poverty line. The truth is that events like this that underline the contrast between the heedless luxury of the affluent with the deprivation of the poor are not the exception to the rule, but rather, a basic fact of everyday life in our era of historic economic inequality. It’s just the way we live now.

And in sunny California, San Diego in particular, the poor are accustomed to watching the party from the outside. As a community college professor at City College, I am particularly attuned to the painful realities of economic and racial inequality because I see the costs of poverty on a daily basis in the classroom and in the lives of my students who frequently struggle to balance the hard economics of survival and academic success. Sometimes the choice is between books and groceries or rent; in other instances, it’s between childcare and study time. The list goes on and on.   [Read more…]

Direct Action Journal: Overcoming Fear

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Another episode with anxiety knocks me to my bedroom floor. Rational thought forsakes me. My body shakes with the strangled sobs of a man ashamed of his tears. Alicia bends over me. Her dark brown eyes – normally calm with the consistent rationality characterizing her personality – are wide with concern and weariness. We’re only several nights removed from the last episode. She must think, “Oh god, not again.”

Alicia seeks to hold me. I find a deep comfort in her touch – and a deep revulsion. It’s not her. The contradiction is born from the lies fear instills in me. Somewhere in the darkness, a voice reminds me that I am unlovable. I crave love but the voice whispers my lack of reasons to be loved. The closer Alicia gets to me, the closer she’ll get, I fear, to hearing those whispers, too. The closer she’ll get to realizing a man who cannot love himself should not be loved by anyone.   [Read more…]

Feminism is Alive and Well in San Diego . . . but the Fight is Getting Harder

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On Mother’s Day, a group of about 30 women (and a couple men), some of the women mothers and some not, gathered at the Lyceum Theater to celebrate with champagne and listen to a panel of experts discuss “The (True) History of Feminism in San Diego”. The panel, assembled by the Women’s Museum of California, preceded a viewing of “Rapture, Blister, Burn”, a contemporary Pulitzer nominated play by Gina Gionfriddo – a funny and poignant feminist play running for another week that I highly recommend.

The panel, consisting of a politician, a research psychologist, both a professor and a masters student in women’s studies was moderated by Ashley Gardner, the Executive Director of the Women’s Museum.   [Read more…]

An Old Scumbag’s Take on Bernie and Hillary Unifying Their Party

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For not supporting Hillary Clinton, people like me, including millions of young people, millenials, our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, have been described as naive-unrealistic-shallow-thinking-delusional-idiotic-scumbags – and we’ve been compared to followers of Trump.

I didn’t see it coming, at all, as the insults have come from the kinds of people with whom I’ve been associated politically my entire voting life: 57 years.

I’m talking people who supported JFK, as did I. We waited patiently as he hemmed and hawed and finally got around, before his life was taken, to jotting down a few ideas that gave rise to the Civil Rights Act.

And then we joyously backed LBJ who got the act passed and then down the line we supported politicos who seemed most likely, at the time, to have our backs: Hubert Humphrey; George McGovern; Jimmy Carter; Walter Mondale; Michael Dukakis…   [Read more…]

Oligarchy Rocks at the Desert Trip Festival

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This easy life knows no pity.

Recently Nelson D. Schwartz of the New York Times did an interesting feature on luxury tourism on cruise ships, “In an Era of Privilege, Not Everyone is in the Same Boat,” that described the experience of travelers as “a money based caste system” catering to the rich rather than the unwashed masses. While there is clearly nothing novel about elite travel, the story noted that “What is new is just how far big American companies are now willing to go to pamper the biggest spenders.”

The remarkable thing about this trend is not what it says about cruise ships but what it reveals about where we are currently with regard to economic inequality and the way it has come to shape the way we live, work, and play—separately and unequal.   [Read more…]

Superior Court Judges Averse to Open Seat Contests

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Nobody cares much about judicial electoral contests. And apparently the current batch of judges in Superior Court would like to keep it that way. At least that was the conclusion I drew after talking with more than a dozen local attorneys and prosecutors.

The 2012 judicial elections, where birther lawyer Gary Kreep upset Deputy District Attorney Garland Peed, were a national embarrassment. Since that time, “open seat” judicial contests have all but vanished in San Diego.   [Read more…]

San Diego’s Crisis of Compassion: Scorn, Indifference Don’t Solve Homelessness

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It doesn’t take the recently released Point in Time Count report to know that the number of unsheltered people in downtown San Diego is exploding. Seeing every vacant lot encircled with blue tent and tarp encampments propped against chain-link fencing, has ceased to evoke alarm. It’s now the norm.

Last week, homeless advocates, including myself, confronted the mayor for authorizing installation of a $57,000 rock bed under an overpass where homeless people frequently camped. On social media, we were accused of being bleeding hearts who were giving aid and comfort to creatures who don’t deserve our concern. They called the ugly barrier that was built without a shred of effort to be attractive, a “rock garden”! When one of our group spoke at City Council about the inhumanity of using pest-control tactics to repel human beings, two councilpersons actually giggled!

When did we get to be so heartless and mean? When did it become acceptable to scorn those who are less fortunate and mock those who are compassionate?   [Read more…]

Is Affordable Housing in the City of San Diego an Oxymoron? Part 3

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The City Needs to Build and Own More Affordable Units

According to a recent Zillow report: “Denver, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose, and San Diego are unaffordable for both renters and buyers. … Looking forward, the picture doesn’t look bright for renters. Rents will likely keep rising at roughly their current pace for at least the next few years, which will lead to a continued affordability crunch unless wage growth significantly improves.”

Enter the San Diego Housing Commission (SDHC) whose job is to redress the balance of unaffordable rents to make it possible for San Diego to be inhabited by other than rich folks.

The San Diego Housing Commission (SDHC) does a variety of projects to assist low and moderate income folks. From their website, it would seem that they are doing a lot, but is it merely tokenism or are they using all available resources to build affordable housing as quickly as possible? After all, there is a declared emergency in terms of the increasing numbers of the homeless population that aren’t being taken care of.   [Read more…]

The Millenia Project: San Diego County’s New Downtown

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By Barbara Zaragoza

Last week, I spent a lot of time explaining the vast expansion taking place in eastern Chula Vista. Eleven villages total mean about 60,000 new residents will move into the area within the next twenty years. So far, villages 1, 5 and 7 are built out. Village 2 is underway. That leaves villages 3, 4, 8, 9 and 10 still under development.

According to the Otay Ranch General Development Plan, the idea of the village was to “provide a sense of community and social cohesion in a “small town” way, and reduce dependence on the automobile for local trips.” (pg. 10)

Today, I want to go over the heart of the development called “Millenia.” This will become the center piece of Otay Ranch plan, a new downtown with an office & retail district.   [Read more…]

Papa Doug Donation Rocks D3 City Council Contest (There’s More!)

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The narrative about the contest for the Third District City Council seat, namely that leading candidates Chris Ward and Anthony Bernal weren’t all that different, ended yesterday.

Voice of San Diego’s Andy Keatts wrote about a growing controversy stemming from donations to the Bernal campaign by former UT-San Diego publisher ‘Papa Doug’ Manchester and wife.

Support from a major contributor to the campaign against same-sex marriage in California is likely to be toxic in a council district whose politics have been dominated by LGBTQ activists in recent decades.   [Read more…]

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