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Readers Write: The Right Wing’s Sudden Love for France

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By Daniel Smiechowski

How soon we forget. Let truth be told in no uncertain terms and straight as an arrow.

Flashback to the dark days of late 2002 and early 2003 when “Bring em on,” and “Shock and awe” were all the rage. Americans rallied in the streets like a swarm of locusts in the Western Sahara. Down with the French pansies they chanted while pouring French wine down the gutter.

Former French President Jacques Chirac had admonished President Bush not to invade Iraq and called his decision the worst foreign policy blunder in all of America’s history.   [Read more…]

Readers Write: All I Want For 2015 Is a Better NFL

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By Raul Carranza

One of my earliest memories is from my Dad taking me to the hotel where the Broncos were staying for the ’97 Super Bowl. He is a lifelong Broncos fan and was probably hoping that his adorable disabled son would get him a few autographs from the players.

I was too young to really get the magnitude of the event. Everything I knew about football came from my Dad and I was excited because he was excited.

We weren’t the only people trying to get autographs, but, sure enough, we were able to cut to the front of many lines and get time with a bunch of the players and coaches. We even got to take a picture with the Head Coach, Mike Shanahan. Then my Dad tried to get us to meet John Elway, which not even my wheelchair could penetrate the posse surrounding him. Still, we were happy because we got to see the back of his head … in person.   [Read more…]

A Call for Councilwoman Zapf to Do the Right Thing

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When you were elected to the San Diego City Council 4 years ago, to represent my Clairemont neighborhood, I was willing to give you a chance.

After all, you claimed to be sensitive to working class issues, as asmall business owner. And you have mentioned having Mexican-American family members, which made me hopeful you would find common ground with the growing Latino community in my native Clairemont.

But this week, your staff’s comments about how she “wanted to shoot” the “… idiot” protesters at a City Council event displayed a shocking lack of awareness about public safety, civil disobedience, efforts to achieve social justice, and the constitutional right of Americans to use peaceful protest to communicate with elected officials.

And what makes this latest situation even worse: it was the SECOND time a member of your staff displayed this tone deaf, cavalier disrespect towards public protest.   [Read more…]

Working Tech for Good Causes and Loving It Every Day

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By Oliver James

I threw away a $100k+ a year career for my community. I live in City Heights, San Diego, California and I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else. And this is why I did it.

Let’s rewind a bit back to 2010. I was working for a marketing company providing design and marketing services to the financial industry. I was making around $65k a year and life was good (or so it seemed).

Don’t get me wrong $65,000 a year was great. But I wasn’t really, truly happy.   [Read more…]

Trailblazing Effort Needed on San Diego Climate Action Plans

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By Jeffrey Meyer

With the recent release of a new United Nations report on the global impact of climate change, we are given still another chilling warning that we are facing catastrophe unless we accelerate efforts to confront this crisis.

The release of this report comes on the heels of a court decision rejecting the San Diego County climate action plan and the ongoing development of this state-mandated plan by the City of San Diego. It raises the stakes for everyone and compels us to reach higher and dig deeper for community solutions to this crisis.

The warning from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is an urgent signal for our city and county officials to not only meet state laws on reducing greenhouse gas emissions but to explore higher standards.   [Read more…]

Defining a “Good Democrat”

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By Shannon Lienhart

This is a letter that I wrote in response to an email sent to me by a member of the Democratic Central Committee.  

In an earlier email exchange with members of DCC, I had referred to a “good Democrat”.  

I was then asked to define a what a good Democrat is.

Hi Richard –

I am so glad that you asked….   [Read more…]

Getting Past Facebook’s “Like” Button

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By Lori Saldaña

“You like me! You really LIKE me!”
(paraphrasing Sally Field, winning an Academy Award for her lead performance in “Norma Rae” in 1979, pre-Facebook)

I recently posted on my Facebook page about taking a sabbatical from clicking “Like.” I encouraged people to share it, not just like it, and had only a few results.

I suspect, as far as Facebook is concerned, I’m dead. I haven’t “liked” anything in weeks — but my human friends know otherwise.   [Read more…]

Readers Write: The Community Effort behind the Arrest of a Suspect in the North Park Assaults

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By Alan Bennett

North Park citizens were intimately involved in the arrest of David Angelo Drake, a 23-year-old male as a suspect in the sexual assaults on women in North Park over the past four months. The San Diego resident was scheduled to be arraigned September 11, 2014, at the downtown courthouse. Mr. Drake was taken into custody into custody near the corner of Fifth Avenue and Washington Street.

This was possible because a North Park resident took the time to get involved. The tipsters words to me were: “I did not expect that I would solve the puzzle, but I knew that I had to try and that I was going to keep at it until I figured it out.” Although bedridden, the tipster suspected having seen the emblem on the suspect’s Tee shirt caught on a closed circuit television. That image was vague but familiar. After four hours, searching Tee shirt websites, a match was made.   [Read more…]

Why Team Sports Are Bad for Society

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By Michael-Leonard

I really came out of the closet as a total sports NON-fan when I posted this rant as a comment to a column on SDFP last year:

[A]s a non-sports person, Chargers — and every other sports team — CAN continue to “play” in whatever place they now have. Unless the owners build a new one. Simple. Just like any other actual business that doesn’t receive public subsidies. You, and everyone else on this forum, know that those terrible money numbers are direct result of the disastrous contracts the city has allowed with Chargers — AND Padres! — for their “playgrounds”. How much is the continuing debt service on PETCO Park?

Many other much more valuable businesses have departed our fair city. You think we are gonna shell out any more to keep this bunch of thugs (owners AND players) around? I certainly hope not.

Furthermore, any and all non-monetary incentives that sports teams get that businesses and companies in other industries do NOT get, should be eliminated. These, too, are drains on the general public. It’s even less fair to me than it is to Judi; she wants to go to the games if she could afford it. I could care less about any of the sports. But, as a city dweller, worker and home owner, I hafta pay for them. NO public subsidy for Chargers!

 I don’t just mean ‘not a sports fan’ I mean a TOTAL opposite-of-what-a-fan is.   [Read more…]

Yazidi Moon

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By Nat Krieger

On the night of August 10th the people of San Diego looked up in the sky and saw exactly what thousands of Yazidi men, women, and children trapped on the slopes of Mount Sinjar saw: a supermoon, the moon closer to our planet than it will be for more than another year.

In the day leading to the super, or perigean moon, I searched the web trying to find something out about this people on the verge of extermination. There isn’t much. First the shock of learning that for nearly a thousand years a faith described as syncretic and nonviolent had withstood the never ending storm surge of monotheism spinning across the Middle East and Mesopotamia…

…Followed by the realization that, as with most religious minorities who don’t force their beliefs on other groups and rely on oral tradition to teach their children, the few written accounts of the Yazidis are nearly all by outsiders who offer mainly speculation as to when the religion started, or why, or what its roots are.   [Read more…]

Readers Write: Unlearning the Myth That Is America

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By Anna Prouty

In Ferguson, they’re spraying protesters with tear gas. In Ferguson, they’re forcing the journalists out of the streets, telling them to turn off their cameras and arresting them. In Ferguson, they have SWAT teams with guns trained on peaceful protesters. In Ferguson, they shot an unarmed black boy.

In 28 hours, somewhere in America, a cop or vigilante will shoot another black man. Then another. And another.

I would like to say I can’t believe this is happening in my country, but my country isn’t a place I recognize anymore.   [Read more…]

Readers Write: Alumni Appeal to Save UCSD’s Che Cafe

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Dear UCSD Activist Alumni,

The San Diego Free Press has published a fine article, written by the Che Cafe Collective. Please circulate it widely. SDFP editor, Frank Gormlie, is an alum of UCSD.

Alumni of the UCSD co-ops are mounting a call for all alumni to write to the University telling them we are cancelling the “planned giving” that we previously intended to do upon our demise, until and unless they back off and treat the Che Cafe and all the co-ops with proper respect.

As a union activist (SEIU steward and IWW San Diego Organizing Caucus and formerly, in my grad school days, Press Representative of my AFT TA local in Oregon), I am interested in working with people to try to get all the unions at UCSD (and the SD-Imperial Counties Labor Council) to issue support statements and consider donating money to the collective for legal expenses and for facility maintenance.   [Read more…]

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