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Disturbing Images Show Border Agents Encouraging Children to Shoot at Migrant Effigy

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Use-of-Force Policies Called to Question as the Agency’s Culture of Violence is Unabashedly Taught to Children
By Ricardo Favela / San Diego Immigrant Rights Consortium

Different images shared by an anonymous source and found online depict Border Patrol staff showing children of various ages how to use paintball guns to shoot at a target wearing clothing with the border fence in the background.

Pedro Ríos, Chair of the San Diego Immigrant Rights Consortium, states, “The target is dressed to resemble a migrant and is located within 100 feet from Virginia Avenue where actual persons have been killed by Border Patrol gunfire.”

Mr. Ríos continues, “While encouraging children to use guns to shoot at a migrant effigy is unconscionable, it is also symbolic of the agency’s unabashed culture of violence which has grown from a lack of accountability, oversight and unprofessional standards that rebuke best practices in situations involving use-of-force.”   [Read more…]

Gardening Is the New Front Porch in America

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By Susan Taylor

Gardening is the new front porch in America. Scratch not too deeply and we all have agricultural roots from someone, somewhere. San Diego is growing veggies in the front yard, the back yard, a community garden or even on someone else’s property. The “new” hot landscaping is called edible landscaping. Take a walk and look around. See any lettuce, chard or grapevines next to the sidewalk, near the front door?   [Read more…]

Why Downtown San Diego Pedestrians Stop for Cars More Than Any Other City and What to do About it

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San Diego is lucky to have some of the country’s best planning minds.  The trick is getting their input implemented.

By Bill Adams / UrbDeZine.com

San Diego’s downtown street grid and its small blocks make continuous walking difficult, especially for people trying to go in a straight line. Jogging is even more difficult. The blocks are 200 by 300 feet. Among major cities, only Portland has smaller blocks at 200 by 200 feet.

So depending on walking direction, pedestrians generally must stop every 200 or 300 feet to wait for traffic.

While this may not be troublesome for people on vacation or on a day-off, for residents and downtown workers who use their feet for more utilitarian purposes, it is an impediment not experienced in many other cities nor even in the suburbs.   [Read more…]

This Is What Climate Change Looks Like

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California isn’t experiencing cold weather this winter, but it’s as vulnerable to the deepening climate crisis as the rest of the country

By  / OtherWords

“It’s been a bit cold here,” my dad told me on a recent phone call. He lives in Chicago; I’m in San Diego. The next time I turned on the news, I saw headlines screaming “Polar Vortex!” with sub-zero temperatures across the Midwest.

Dad’s known in our family for his stoicism and even keel, but his understatement about the weather was a bit much, even for him. Surely he’s noticed that the weather has taken a turn from its normal Chicago standard of freezing and windy to hypothermia-inducing temperatures so cold that even the polar bear at the zoo couldn’t take it anymore.

I realize that, in such times, we San Diegoans are universally hated by most of the rest of the country. Nobody sheds a tear for me when I complain about there being only a few days in the 90s amid our normal wintery perfection of 70s and sunny.   [Read more…]

Pete Seeger: A Man Who Surrounded Hate with Love

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By Ernie McCray

With Pete Seeger having passed away I can’t pass up an opportunity to share my sentiments about him.
I once sang on stage with this incredible loving human being and other master musicians and singers. Peggy Watson with her crisp and pretty voice. Sam Hinton. Folklorist, artist and founder of the San Diego Folk Song Society. Joe Glazer, “Labor’s Troubadour.” It was a sing-along (if you’re wondering how I belonged). We were there to honor John Handcox, a friend of mine who just happened to have written major labor anthems like “Mean Things Happening in this Land” and “Roll the Union On.”

Pete had been singing John’s songs for years. He had no idea that he was alive. But when he found out that he was, indeed, still on earth, in an inner-city San Diego community, he reached out to him and took him on a few tours so that audiences could see and hear the man whose words had rallied them for so long in various labor movements – a man who had been a sharecropper in Arkansas where he made up songs as a way of organizing the Southern Tenant Farmers Union, a man run out of the state by the Klan.
  [Read more…]

District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis Becomes Focal Point for Campaign Contribution Scandal

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By Doug Porter

San Diego County’s District Attorney is getting a lot of heat as reporters continue to unearth new details about a campaign finance scandal spanning the last couple of years.

Prosecutors have determined that more than $200,000 was illegally funneled into independent campaign committees in support of her failed mayoral candidacy in 2012.  UT-San Diego ran a front page story claiming candidate committees directly under Dumanis’ control received $13,250 connected to three persons connected with the ongoing investigation.

Calls for an additional investigation are mounting.  The District Attorney has returned $1,400 in contributions to her current re-election campaign since the scandal unfolded and is refusing to re-open earlier campaign committees to give back monies from earlier contests.   [Read more…]

Wyatt’s Wish Turns One – Helping the Homeless in San Diego, One Care Package at a Time

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This 10-year-old has done more to help the homeless in the last year than most people do in their entire lives.

By Eva Posner

From the time he was in preschool, Wyatt Phillips, 10, has had an intense amount of compassion for the homeless.

“Whenever I see a homeless person it just makes me very sad,” he says. “No person should have to go through that. I just want to do something to help them.”

His mother recalls when he was three years old, he saw a homeless man on the side of the road.

“We had just gone through the drive through at Wendy’s. He said to me, ‘Mommy, turn around. I want to give him my food.’ And he did. He handed a perfect stranger his kid’s meal. I was astounded.”   [Read more…]

LGBT Leaders to Call for San Diego County Clerk’s Resignation

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By Doug Porter

Leaders of the local LGBT community will call for the resignation of County Clerk Earnest Dronenburg on Tuesday, presenting documentation they say proves he overstepped his legal authority, violated his oath of office and imposed his religious views on marriage into his non-partisan office.

Following the US Supreme Court decision that effectively overturned California Proposition 8 (banning same sex marriages) last summer, Dronenburg petitioned the state supreme court to issue a a writ of mandate requesting that the state hold off on issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

Dronenburg said he wanted remove “uncertainty,” telling a reporter from UT-San Diego “I still have a reservation about what happens if in the final decision, the court decides that gay marriages aren’t legal,” he said. “Then we’ve set up all these people to having to tell them that their marriages aren’t legal. I just wanted a time-out.”

Except that wasn’t what was really happening.   [Read more…]

Pressure to Raise Pathetic Minimum Wage Is on the Rise Across the Land

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A growing coalition of progressive organizations is pushing hard to get the minimum wage on 12 state ballots.

By Steven Rosenfeld / AlterNet

After years of hard times and recent organizing by growing coalitions of worker organizations and progressive groups, 2014 may see some of the biggest state minimum wage increases in years.

In 2013, 13 states and handful of cities raised the legal hourly minimum wage after those locales saw campaigns uniting low-wage workers, unions, clergy and Democrats. While most of these increases did not raise wages above the $9 rate for hourly workers, they still increased paychecks for an estimated 4.5 million workers—mostly women—and should inject an extra $2.7 billion into their pockets this year, economists said.

This year a mix of elected Democrats and seasoned organizers are seriously pushing for even bigger increases in a dozen states including Massachusetts, Maryland, Hawaii, Illinois, Arkansas, Alaska, South Dakota and California. According to analysts, these and other states are likely to raise their minimum wages, either from legislative action in coming months or from votes on statewide ballot questions where Democrats are betting that the issue will lead to higher turnout and be a factor in congressional races.
  [Read more…]

Restaurant Review: El Cuervo Taco Shop

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By Judi Curry

Restaurant Review
EL CUERVO TACO SHOP
110 West Washington St.
San Diego, CA 92103
619-295-9713

Several weeks ago I did a restaurant review of “Ortiz’s” in Pt. Loma.  Michael, one of the readers of the review wrote that he thought that “El Cuervo” was one of the best Mexican restaurants in town.  In fact, he said, “ . . . El Cuervo Taco Shop in Hillcrest.  Everything cooked to order and prepared as if grandmother was in the kitchen.   The Veggie Burrito ROCKS!!!  The Carnitas Burrito and the Pibil Burrito are both excellent too.  Have fun.”

“Go.  Now.  Eat!”   [Read more…]

Wildfires: San Diego’s Ecological Elephant in the Room

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By Lawrence A. Herzog

If the unusually hot, dry January weather in San Diego was not enough to remind us of global warming, interim Mayor Todd Gloria recently doubled down in his State of the City address when he vowed that “San Diego will be a global leader in addressing climate change.”

It’s good news that Gloria and others are advocating for policies that will make San Diego more sustainable, from zero waste, bicycle friendly streets, and building retrofits, to recycled water and alternative transit. However, there is one glaring ecological threat that hovers over our region’s policy makers: wildfires.

Consider our recent history: over the last decade or so, we’ve had two of the most frightening and environmentally devastating wildfires in the nation. The 2003 and 2007 mega-fires burned several million acres of land, destroyed thousands of homes, and caused over one half million people to be evacuated from their residences. We all remember the white soot suspended over the regions for days, even along our normally breezy shores. We recall the thick, acrid air that kept us indoors.   [Read more…]

Apple Pie and the Economy: Enough is Enough

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By Will Falk

I hope the economy doesn’t recover.

There. I said it. And it feels really good.

We are in the midst of the Earth’s sixth mass extinction and it is not being caused by volcanic eruptions or asteroids– it is being caused by human activity. And yet, it seems every time we flip-up our computer screens, read a newspaper, or turn on the television, people everywhere are bemoaning the state of the economy.

Not me. I am celebrating. So are salmon, redwoods, polar bears, Torrey pines, and tigers.   [Read more…]

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