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Letter to Mayor Faulconer on the Temporary Shelters in Barrio Logan, East Village

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By Barrio Logan Planning Group

Re: Temporary (Bridge) Homeless Shelters

Honorable Mayor Faulconer:

Learning of the intent of the City of San Diego to return the homeless shelter to 16th Street and Newton Avenue and Commercial and 14th Streets has raised grave concerns among those of us who live and work in Barrio Logan and East Village. While we understand the need to act to serve the needs of the growing homeless population in San Diego, community residents have a vivid memory of the impacts the last “temporary shelter” brought to Barrio Logan. …

It is understood that the bridge shelters are meant to be temporary while the City implements a permanent solution to housing the homeless in San Diego. Our natural concern is that having temporary shelters relieves the “pressure” on the City to find the permanent solution that is needed. We remain hopeful that this is not the case and a more permanent solution is on the horizon.   [Read more…]

Letter from Puerto Rico: ‘56 days after Maria and honestly everyone here is tired’

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By Jessica Carrera

Hola mi tia.

Well yeah there was another “blackout”. Which is funny because most of us don’t have lights anyway and are using generators. On Sunday my neighborhood got lights. We heard “llegó la luz llegó la luz,” turned our breaker on and we are pretty much the only house now on my block with no lights. I had a meltdown and could only sit and cry.

The electric company told Eduardo that it would be a few weeks before our lights come on because of the downed electric pole from the hurricane that is still on the patio. Which they didn’t remove! “Few weeks” in Puerto Rico time is months. No lights or cookies for Christmas.   [Read more…]

Readers Write: Another ‘Business As Usual’ Fixer at City Hall Won’t Help the Homeless

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By Martha Sullivan / San Diego Housing Emergency Alliance

Longtime mayoral fixer, Kris Michell, returns to San Diego City Hall this week as Deputy Chief Operating Officer. She seems to be Mayor Faulconer’s “Jared,” with a wide-ranging portfolio:

“Michell was announced Sept. 28 as a top city adviser on homelessness, special events, corporate sponsorships, the commission on arts and culture and the city’s redevelopment arm, Civic San Diego.”

Michell returns to City Hall after several years doing much of the same as the head of the Downtown Partnership — the Business Improvement District for downtown. This city-sanctioned partly-funded entity has been a primary tool for persecuting unsheltered San Diegans left with nowhere to live, after the city’s replacement of 10,000 low-income housing units with market-rate/luxury development (mostly downtown) since 2010. This devastation started during her six years as chief of staff for Mayor Jerry Sanders.   [Read more…]

One Veteran’s Dream – Kurt Vonnegut’s ‘War In Reverse’ | Video Worth Watching

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Kurt Vonnegut’s experience of surviving the fire-bombing of Dresden as a prisoner of war provided a fundamental component of the raw material for his novel “Slaughterhouse Five”. In this video Vonnegut reads a passage from the novel accompanied by remarkable imagery using archival footage in an unconventional way and suggests how Vonnegut may have longed for that history to have been rewritten.

(BTW, today, November 11th, is Vonnegut’s birthday)   [Read more…]

The New and Improved Armageddon 2000!

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Leonard Eiger / The Loose Nukes

Remember the Armageddon 2000? The Armageddon 2000 Nuclear Hardened Travel Trailer is the only travel trailer that you can enjoy all year long and, when the mushroom clouds start to appear on the horizon, instantly converts into a bomb shelter.

We introduced the Armageddon 2000 way back when President Trump was about to take office, and since then sales have gone through the roof. There is a one-year waiting period to get one (humanity should last that long)! And you can bet that all those people on the waiting list are getting nervous as Trump’s days in office seem to go on forever and his Tweets keep pushing the world closer to the coming Trumpocalypse.   [Read more…]

Two More Knees Need Attention

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Camp Lejeune’s history of poisoned drinking water causing illness, disease, birth defects, and death is one all Americans should hear about

By Nancee Kesinger

This tale of two knees is timely and true.  The first knee is mine, touching down to meet the cool tile floor of a hospital exam room a few weeks ago in mid-September.  Yes, I am the person kneeling, yet the story is not mine.

Far from stadium crowds and television cameras, under fluorescent clinical lights that render no warmth, I tilt forward out of my chair to approximate eye level with my loved one who is lying face down on the low table enduring the physical pain of a bone marrow biopsy and aspiration.  He has the pose of a day-dreaming sunbather with arms raised above his shoulders and hands casually crisscrossed under his head, but this beautiful black man doesn’t need a tan, and his relaxed position betrays some starker truths.

My taking a knee on this day is wholly in support of this glad-hearted and serene Marine—my partner of many years, my significant other, my mate—who is learning on this day the complete details of his alarming, week-old leukemia diagnosis (cancer of the blood and bone marrow).    [Read more…]

Protests Organized Against El Cajon Ban on Feeding Homeless

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The city of El Cajon has bought into the idea that harassing homeless humans will make the problem go away, and activists around San Diego are pushing back with actions possibly including civil disobedience starting on Sunday, November 19.

The East County city with nearly one in four people living in poverty and a soaring rate of homelessness has passed an emergency ordinance prohibiting food distribution on any city-owned property.

What this means is serving meals to groups of homeless people in parks and other public spaces is now against the law in El Cajon, along with panhandling, sleeping on the sidewalk and setting up encampments.   [Read more…]

The Underlying Agenda of Trump’s Tax Reform

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While there are convincing arguments being made about how the GOP’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act favors the rich and disses the poor, the real danger in this legislation lies in its underlying social engineering.

Forget about next year’s tax bill for a moment; this bill amounts to an assault on the aspirations and beliefs of most Americans.

The rich getting richer has broader implications. Our democracy is already in trouble, thanks to the Citizen’s United Supreme Court decision.  A small group of donors has become kingmakers, whose wealth drowns out other voices and induces politicians to live in a fundraising silo.   [Read more…]

‘I do not come to you as a complete stranger’, Nazi Rally, New York City, 1939 | Video Worth Watching

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“A Night at the Garden” contains archival footage of a 1939 “Pro-America Rally” held by the German-American Bund, in conjunction with demagogue Father Charles Coughlin’s Christian Front. An almost capacity crowd of 20,000 was in attendance that night at Madison Square Garden in New York City.

The main speaker is Hitler knock-off Fritz Kuhn, a naturalized German immigrant and head of the Bund.   [Read more…]

Candlelight Vigil for Peace Set for Shelter Island as Trump Heads for Korea on Tuesday

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“We will speak, sing, and pray for wisdom and grace in the face of nuclear holocaust.”

Starting a war with Korea is a really bad idea. What’s even worse are the people who think there would be a ‘winner’ in such a conflict. As President Trump visits the Korean peninsula on Tuesday, it’s almost a sure bet he’ll rattle the swords of war.

Indivisible San Diego and Interfaith Worker Justice of San Diego County are urging people to join them for a 7pm candlelight vigil for peace on Tuesday at Japanese Friendship Bell Park on Shelter Island (across from the Kona Kai).

  [Read more…]

Housing Law 101: What San Diego is Doing Wrong

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By Parisa Ijadi-Maghsoodi / UrbDeZine

Instead of taking concrete steps to address the growing housing affordability crisis, San Diego has done nothing for years.  Now, faced with nationwide criticism for its mishandling of a Hepatitis A outbreak that was caused by the mistreatment of a growing homeless population, City leaders are wondering what went wrong.  

First, San Diego gave its public housing authority, San Diego Housing Commission, free reign to opt out of following federal laws aimed at protecting housing subsidy recipients. As a result, San Diego Housing Commission has and continues to create policies that adversely impact the low-income tenants for whom it receives federal funding to protect. One example: SDHC’s Community Choices program encourages low-income families to spend 50 percent of their income on rent.   [Read more…]

On The Ground With The Rohingya Muslim Refugees Escaping Myanmar | Video Worth Watching

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The Rohingya Muslims are still facing ethnic cleansing in their homeland of Myanmar (Burma). AJ+ investigator Jason Motlagh documents the conditions facing the latest refugees and hears them relate their harrowing tales of persecution and flight.   [Read more…]

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