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San Diego Monsanto Protest Draws Big Crowd to Balboa Park

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By Doug Porter

I wasn’t too surprised by the lack of coverage of San Diego’s demonstration against Monsanto this past Saturday. If you read Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, you’ll realize that successful protest movements rarely get proper credit or acclaim for their influence.

Our local daily fishwrap, aka UT-San Diego, couldn’t be bothered to send an actual reporter to Balboa Park on Saturday. They relied instead on an Associated Press account in Sunday’s paper that mentioned Los Angeles and perhaps there were some other protests…yada, yada, yada… The Los Angeles Times coverage at least mentioned that there was a protest in San Diego.

Come inside for more San Diego coverage and photos from around the world   [Read more…]

Welcome to Golden Park Heights: “A Journey of 1000 Miles Begins with a Single Step”

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By Kelly Mayhew and Jim Miller

For those who know progressive politics in San Diego, Carlos and Linda LeGerrette are local legends. Starting with their roles in founding MEChA at Mesa College in the sixties and flowing through their deep involvement with Cesar Chavez and the farmworkers movement to their local community activism and fine work with the Cesar Chavez Service Clubs in our schools, the Legrettes’ great hearts and regard for their neighbors is boundless.

No one has done more for their community than Carlos and Linda LeGerrette, and they are greatly loved and respected by all those who they have touched over the years. It was our absolute pleasure to interview them on their lives, work, and deep roots in a place they jokingly call “Golden Park Heights.”   [Read more…]

High School Drop-Out Earns $250 Million

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This guy didn’t get the memo about dropouts having no future

By John Lawrence

High school drop-out David Karp just sold Tumblr to Yahoo for $1.1 billion. His share of the take was a cool $250 million. I guess nobody ever told him that high school drop-outs are doomed to high unemployment and low wages.

Defying every societal stereotype, none of this propaganda from the education-industrial complex deterred him from going ahead and doing what he wanted which was being a software developer.

Karp is 26 years old. Having not wasted a bunch of time in high school and college, (Karp dropped out of high school at age 15) he instead got on with life, which only goes to show that, if you really know what you want to do in life, high school and college are mainly a waste of time. You can become an expert in any field without having a degree or a diploma.
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Tío Emilio and the Secrets of the Ancestors: Chapter 1 — Along For The Ride

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“With friends like this, who needs enemies?”  Henry Youngman

By Richard Juarez

I didn’t want to get in. Tony and I were already halfway home. We didn’t need a ride. Not with them. It seemed like every time I was around these guys, something bad would happen. I didn’t need more trouble, and I certainly didn’t want to hear more yelling from my mother about hanging out with these guys again.

“Get in, cabrón!” yelled Eddie, “I ain’t gonna sit here all day waiting for you to decide.”   [Read more…]

Field of View: A Journey Through the Golden Hill Historic District

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Written by Jim Miller; Photos by Annie Lane

To walk in Golden Hill is to wander through a patchwork quilt of history and wonder.  As a renter in a community full of grand old houses that I’ll never be able to afford to buy, I frequently think of Thoreau’s ruminations on ownership in Walden: “As long as it is possible, live free and uncommitted.  It makes little difference whether you are committed to a farm or the county jail.”

Indeed, the grand old houses of Golden Hill may now be well beyond the reach of most folks in the neighborhood to ever buy, but, if they have eyes to see, they can, as Thoreau says of the poet who truly sees the landscape, own the whole neighborhood.  And I think of that as I watch the working class families out for walks with their kids, apartment dwellers strolling with their dogs, halfway house residents stretching their legs, or even my homeless neighbors lounging on the steps by the manicured lawn and lush garden of some lawyer’s office.   [Read more…]

Excavating Golden Hill: The Mansion on the Hill

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By Jim Miller

Coming up Broadway from downtown, it’s the one thing you can’t miss: the Quartermass/Wilde house, the Xanadu of Golden Hill. In the heart of a district of historic homes, this one serves as a monument to the elite status of Golden Hill in the beginning of the last century. One of the biggest of the remaining Victorian mansions in the city, it is also one of San Diego’s most spectacular historic structures.

With its marvelous rococo towers, Doric columns, and stunning domed cupola, the Quartermass/Wilde House looms atop the hill. This gorgeous Queen Anne Victorian mixes in elements of classical revival style as it sits above the street on stone retaining walls amidst a beautifully landscaped yard featuring a huge Star Pine. When one approaches the house from the intersection of Broadway and 24th, the stairway of the unique corner entrance beckons like Gatsby with the promise of unspeakable wonder.

Once inside, one is greeted by an ornately carved stairwell, walls covered with wood paneling and elaborate tapestries, stained glass windows on the landing, a wine cellar, and 8800 square feet of elegant domestic space. Built in 1897 by department store owner Ruben Quartermass, this mansion spoke the status that was the elite enclave of Golden Hill.   [Read more…]

District 4 City Council Race: Character Matters

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San Diego City Council runoff election boils down to a question of the character of the two candidates.

By Andy Cohen

Today is election day for the San Diego City Council District 4 special election. It has been quite a wild ride, particularly since Myrtle Cole stormed to the top of a very crowded primary field. The favorite from the get-go, Dwayne Crenshaw, the longtime San Diego politico and a familiar face in City Hall circles finished a surprisingly distant second, but due to the sheer number of candidates in the primary field, Cole still managed to finish with less than 50%+1 of the vote, triggering today’s runoff.

Both candidates are highly qualified for the office. Both candidates are likely to side strongly with the Democratic bloc of the City Council, and both candidates are likely to be more supportive of Mayor Bob Filner’s agenda than some of the more “centrist” current Democratic members of the City Council. I know, I know…..the San Diego City Council is officially supposed to be non-partisan, but that’s not the reality, and the fact that today’s special election will restore a one vote majority to the Democrats on the council is significant.

But that’s not the issue here. The real issue is one of character. Character matters. In fact, I would argue that character is the one thing that matters most when voters choose their elected representatives to government. If we can’t trust our elected officials to hold true to their word and to work in the best interests of the communities who hired them in the first place, then we cannot trust our government, period.   [Read more…]

Spanking in the Name of the Lord

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When Children are Maltreated by Religious Groups

By Dave Rice

Child sexual abuse cases in the Catholic Church have repeatedly rocked the nation for more than a decade now, and in 2010 spread locally to reach the San Diego Diocese. The so-called “Satanic Panic” of the 1980s and early ‘90s brought the prospect of harm to children through mysterious and violent rituals to the forefront of the nation’s attention (though such focus turned out to be largely overblown), while periodically stories reach the news involving the tragic death of a child raised by a family of religious separatists. Incidents such as the aforementioned remind us that institutions of faith are capable of inspiring misplaced trust that can bring harm to the most vulnerable amongst us: our children.

These stories, however, just scratch the surface of a more widespread problem concerning the mistreatment of children in the name of religion, says Janet Heimlich, author of Breaking Their Will: Shedding Light on Religious Child Maltreatment.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – University of California Hospital Strike Looks Like a Reality

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By Doug Porter

More than 2,000 hospital workers at UC San Diego are planning on staying home from work for a couple of days (May 21 & 22) this week. Vocational nurses, respiratory therapists, pharmacy technicians, bus drivers and custodians will go on strike Tuesday following nearly a year of failed negotiations. Their last contract expired in September.

Depending on who’s talking, the 30,000 workers at five University of California health centers are about to walk off the job (or honor the picket lines of those who do strike) are motivated by demands that the UC Medical System stop prioritizing profit over quality patient care OR a refusal by the union to agree to UC’s pension reforms.

The pending strike is NOT just about higher pay, as is being reported in the mass media. Demands by management that workers increase their contribution to pensions funds have been countered by the union’s complaints about soaring executive compensation in the UC system.   [Read more…]

Heroes and Villains: Does US Foreign Policy Understand the Difference?

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By Joseph Howard Crews

For 60 years the most celebrated and revered African in history was listed as a terrorist threat to the people of the United States. Who decided this? Why did Americans allow this, and what does it say about what we are?

In 2008, former South African President Nelson Mandela was finally removed from the U.S. terrorism watch list. Mandela and other members of the African National Congress had been placed on the list because of their fight against South Africa’s apartheid regime — a system of legalized racial segregation enforced by the country’s National Party between 1948 and 1994.

Yet it was just days ago that former dictator Efraín Ríos Montt — a man once lauded by President Ronald Reagan — was convicted of genocide after a Guatemalan court found him guilty for his role in the slaughter of 1,771 Mayan Ixils in the 1980s. In fact, a total of 200,000 Guatemalans were killed or “disappeared” during the conflict, making it one of Latin America’s most violent wars in modern history.   [Read more…]

It’s a Sad Day in America When the Navy Launches a San Diego-Built Drone off a Carrier

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It’s a sad day in America. The US Navy launched the first carrier-based drone off its deck the other day, off the coast of Virginia. It’s an even sadder day for us in San Diego, as the drone was manufactured – in part, at least – by plants and engineers right here in our own city.

The launching of the drone off that deck demonstrates clearly that as drones become more and more integrated into becoming the armament of the nation’s military, they are becoming more and more accepted – here domestically, back in the good ol’ US of A.

And as drones become more and more prevalently utilized, not just by our armed forces overseas, but by law enforcement, border patrol, and local police departments here within our very own borders, American citizens are more and more subjected to a high-tech surveillance that is quite unlike anything we’ve known in the past – a surveillance that is becoming so pervasive, that it challenges our basic civil rights, freedoms and privacies.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – A Real Scandal! Activists Around the World to Protest Monsanto May 25th

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Balboa Park March & Rally, Mission Bay Overpass Light Brigade Events Expected to Draw Thousands

By Doug Porter 

While the oldstream media is obsessing on the current crop of Washington’s politi-dramas, an international protest movement is gathering steam. Activists in on six continents, in 36 countries, and in 47 U.S. states — totaling events in over 250 cities — are coordinating demonstrations to occur simultaneously at 11am Pacific time on Saturday May 25th under the general theme “March Against Monsanto”.

The St Louis-based biotech behemoth Monsanto has come under increasing attack from environmentalists, agriculturalists and average consumers in response to the company’s conduct in the realm of genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) and genetically-engineered foods.

Efforts aimed at forcing the company to engage in transparent business practices, like providing consumer information about products incorporating GMOs, have exposed a corporate culture willing to use raw power and virtually unlimited amounts of cash to protect their interests.

San Diego protest info here and here.  More details later on in story

  [Read more…]

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