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San Diego Burning: The Facts We Hate

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By Jim Miller

It was a little bit of hell on earth. With searing heat in the triple digits replacing May gray and fires sprouting up all over the county, San Diego’s mellow vibe turned menacing last week. As many of us, this author included, worried about the safety of friends and family members in harm’s way, it was hard not to be struck by a painful sense of déjà vu. We’ve been here before—three times in a little more than a decade. But not everybody felt that way.

The immediate response from County Supervisor Bill Horn was to raise the specter of arson when he said, “I’ve never seen anything like this in 20 years, and I’ve had one or two fires but never anything like this.”

Upping the ante on Horn’s uninformed speculation, the far right fringes of the Internet jumped straight to conspiracy mode, sounding the alarm that our most recent firestorm could be the act of Islamic terrorists.   [Read more…]

My Maria and SDSU’s CBB Multicultural Community Counseling and Social Justice Education Program

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By Ernie McCray

She’s really something, my Maria. Maria Nieto-Senour. College professor by way of the Mexican barrios of San Antonio and Austin and the inner-cities of Detroit. Mo-Town.

At any moment she’ll be retired which means she gets to hang out with me more. I can’t wait because she’s fun to be around and she’s about as loving a human being as one could be.  

That loving nature of hers has served her well as the Director of a master’s degree program at San Diego State University called CBB (Community-Based Block).

  [Read more…]

A History of Neighborhood House in Logan Heights: Jane Addams and the 1930’s

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SDFP exclusive series The History of Neighborhood House: From 1918 to the occupation in 1972

By Maria E. Garcia

Jane Addams was born in 1860 to a prosperous Northern Illinois family. As a young child she had tuberculosis of the spine. This health problem would affect her the rest of her life. Her father was a founding member of the Republican Party. Her dream of becoming a doctor died after her first year of medical school due to health problems and a nervous breakdown. So why would this woman who wanted to be a doctor and came from a rather wealthy family have any role or influence in San Diego, California? Why would she have any roots in a settlement house in the middle of a Mexican Barrio?

In 1887 she read a magazine article about a settlement house. It became her dream to establish one. She and her close friend Ellen Gates opened Hull House in Chicago. Many women who came from wealthy families and were in the college in the 1920’s developed a similar interest and involvement. College had made them progressive in their thinking. They had a sincere interest in social issues as well as a desire to help immigrants and the less fortunate.

This social philosophy took root in San Diego among various educated, wealthy women who included Helen Marston.
  [Read more…]

Memory Against Forgetting: The May 1970 Peace Memorial at UCSD

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Editor: the following is based on a speech delivered by the author, Niall Twohig on last Friday, May 9th, in front of a group of fifty gathered in Revelle Plaza at UC San Diego to unveil The May 1970 Peace Memorial. The Memorial is dedicated to George Winne, who immolated himself and died as a protest against the Vietnam War in May of 1970, plus it’s dedicated to those students who carried on the May 1970 Student Strike.

By Niall Twohig

Why a memorial for May 1970? Why a memorial for peace? Why now?

To suggest some answers, I want to ask you, the reader, to take an imaginative leap back in time to May 1970.

In order to make this leap, we have to remember that the U.S. was waging an unpopular proxy war in Southeast Asia, made all the more unpopular after the invasion of Cambodia at the end of April.

If we found ourselves transported to May 1970, this would be all too apparent. We would see the images?the aerial views of bombs upon bombs pulverizing the Vietnamese countryside, images of GIs burning huts, footage of badly burnt villagers running from the firestorm of napalm, photos of rows upon rows of mutilated bodies scattered in the fields and anonymous soldiers packed away in coffins draped in stars and stripes.   [Read more…]

Dumanis, Schall and Dronenburg: Three Bad Apples Needing to Be Voted Out of Office

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The Fifth and Final Installment of  A Progressive Procrastinators 2014 Primary Guide  

By Doug Porter

In a perfect world we’d all be voting FOR candidates in elections. Instead, we voters are all-too-often mesmerized by the aura of incumbency. A figurative wink and a familiar smile replace judicious judgement. Sometimes it becomes necessary to take a stand, using the power of the ballot box to say ‘enough!’ This is one of those times.

In the upcoming June 3rd primary there are three incumbents who I believe ought to be voted out of office: District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis, County Assessor/Clerk/Recorder Ernest J. Dronenburg, Jr. and Superior Court Judge Lisa Schall.

The particulars on each these bad apples differ, but the thing they all have in common is that they’ve misused the powers vested in them by the voters. Today, in the fifth and final installment in this series I’ll examine their records and offer up some better choices.   [Read more…]

Latest Right-Wing Propaganda Ploy: Bullies of the Christian Right Pretend They’re Oppressed

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They act like they’re the real victims.

By Amanda Marcotte / AlterNet

The religious right has many potent weapons in its arsenal—sanctimony, bigot-pandering, and dishonesty rank right up at the top—but lately, pretending to be victimized seems to top the list. We have a soundbite-driven, points-scoring political culture that resists deeper analysis of the issues, making it perfect for bad actors to muddy up the issues. All you do is accuse your opposition of doing what you, in fact, are actually doing. If you want to oppress people, claim you’re being oppressed. If you want to deprive people of their rights, whine about how your rights are supposedly under attack. The idea is to confuse audiences about who is actually oppressing who long enough that they give up actually bothering to learn the truth. Unfortunately, it can be devastatingly effective propaganda.   [Read more…]

Pilots Come Clean: Drone Warfare Is Riddled with Tragic, Bloody Errors

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Imagine if the drone wars going on in Pakistan and Yemen had a human face all the time.

By Pratap Chatterjee / AlterNet via Tom Dispatch 

Enemies, innocent victims, and soldiers have always made up the three faces of war. With war growing more distant, with drones capable of performing on the battlefield while their “pilots” remain thousands of miles away, two of those faces have, however, faded into the background in recent years. Today, we are left with just the reassuring “face” of the terrorist enemy, killed clinically by remote control while we go about our lives, apparently without any “collateral damage” or danger to our soldiers. Now, however, that may slowly be changing, bringing the true face of the drone campaigns Washington has pursued since 9/11 into far greater focus.   [Read more…]

Remember the Folks Who Brought You the 8-Hour Day?

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By Jim Miller

Last week, May Day came and went and, while there was a small march downtown, most people barely noticed. Indeed most Americans don’t know much about May Day and if they do, they associate it with the state sponsored holiday in the former Soviet Union.

The truth of the matter is, however, that May Day has deep American roots. It started in 1866 as part of the movement pushing for the 8-hour day.

In the course of this effort, the nationwide American labor movement was born. Workers joined together in the service of the principle that, in the emerging industrial age, they should have a say in their economic lives and a voice in our politics—neither of which would come without a struggle.   [Read more…]

Orca Profiles in Captivity: No. 5 of The San Diego 10

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By Cara Wilson-Granat / OB Rag

This is the fifth in a series of ten in which we meet one of the San Diego 10 orcas and hear from an advocate who continues to be one of the voices of these imprisoned voiceless, never stopping until the whole world listens.

This week’s Prisoner Advocate is Doni Lantow. (After reading about Prisoner #5, Keet, please scroll down this article and “meet” one of the top San Diego 10 Prisoner Advocates.) [Here is Prisoner Orca Profile #1 and #2, #3 and #4.]

Prisoner #5: Keet

Age: 21

Born on February 2, 1993, at Sea World San Antonio, Keet (his name is Tlingit Indian for “orca”) is known for being the grandbaby of Shamu, and also for being one of the most heavily transported orcas in captive history. It’s amazing this beautiful orca has such a gentle nature considering how disruptive his entire life has been.

Barely 18 months old when he was separated from his mother, Kalina, Keet was left behind when she was moved away from him to Sea World Orlando, pregnant with another calf. Remember, in the wild, orcas generally live in close-knit family pods consisting of several females, calves, one or more males and/or juveniles.   [Read more…]

For the Mid-City Community: Three Decades of Broken Promises

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By Sam Ollinger  / bikesd.org

In late 1972, the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) released a report detailing the impact that would result after the construction of I-15 (from I-805 to I-8, approximately 3 miles) through the heart of Mid-City, specifically the neighborhood of City Heights:

The project is in an urban area. Potential impacts are mainly on people, air quality and noise. Another issue is the use of land from the area known as Park de la Cruz.

The selected freeway design will displace about 650 apartment units or homes [Ed. note: displacing 2,000 people plus about 63 commercial units affecting 110 jobs and $1.5 million in annual taxable retail]. The impact of displacement is borne by the people in the path of the freeway. For some, moving will mean a disruption of life patterns. Others would have been moving away. For many, the Federal Uniform Relocation Assistance and Real Property Acquisition Policies Act of 1970 will bring economic benefits as high as $15,000 for moving costs, replacement housing payments and interest differential payments.

  [Read more…]

Earth Day with Trumpet Player: Mr. F Doesn’t Race Jaguars, and Bret Knows The End is Near

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By Bob Dorn

Separated from each other by temperament — and some 30 or 40 minutes — Mr. F and Bret find their ways to a place in the park I don’t normally choose for my practice sessions. The car was out of gas, and the benches out front of our condo were empty, so… The thing is, it’s Earth Day, and how long will I be left to myself?

Mr. F (not his name, by the way) is shy and awkward (despite the hearty urban male fist bump he’ll be offering once he’s comfortable) and it takes him three or four minutes to get within some 10 feet of me – clearly inside the inter-personal radius — and he can’t make eye contact as he circles.

He was wearing a showy stadium jacket, altogether appropriate for the chilly Earth Day morning, with Jaguar racing emblem and crew designation and other racing signs. I asked him if he raced Jaguars; he looked away and murmured something. The competition between his behavior and his strange camouflage is causing noticeable dissonance. He has approached and retreated.   [Read more…]

Wealth Creation for Dummies

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By John Lawrence

Now that Thomas Piketty has clued us in with his book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, that the upper one percent is making all the money and that the middle class is getting screwed, as if we didn’t already know that, the question remains what should we do about it?

Paul Krugman seems to think that government should redistribute money from the wealthy to the poor, and this would be a good solution, one that is achieving good results in Europe, but, since the US government is owned by the wealthy, one that is unlikely to be manifested here any time soon.

Piketty points out that income is derived from two sources: labor and return on capital or wealth. Capital and wealth are essentially synonymous by the way.   [Read more…]

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