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Flying Lessons: Centenarian Bill Gibbs’ Path from Logan Heights to Montgomery Field

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By Maria Garcia and Connie Zuniga

Bill Gibbs loved airplane flight so much that by the age of twenty-two he had developed barren scrub land in San Diego into his own airport and established a flying service there. Bill, who grew up in Logan Heights, recounted a remarkable story to us at his Mt. Soledad home. He spoke of family hardships during his youth, of hard work and how his passion for flying ultimately led him to develop what is now known as Montgomery Field Airport and a flying service that continues to operate today.

Bill’s story is also a remarkably long one– he will be 105 years old in October.   [Read more…]

Meanwhile, in REAL News

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Activist-Photographer Fred Lonidier’s Photos of 1972 Anti-War Protest Part of Museum of Contemporary Arts Exhibit

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Staff / OB Rag

Way back in the late 1960s and early 1970s, there were very active social movements stirring in San Diego – and across the country. Here in San Diego, from the student-based anti-Vietnam war movement to episodes of local labor struggles, there was always this one guy whom some considered the “movement photographer” on the scene. And it was Fred Lonidier, with his long-lens camera dangling from his neck, always there to record it all with his lens.

There was one particular and historic event in May of 1972 where 88 students and supporters were arrested for peacefully sitting down in front of the local Naval District HQ in protest of the Vietnam war. A good number of anti-war activists from OB were there that day, as OB was a center of anti-war activity in those heady days.   [Read more…]

Fear and Loathing in El Cajon – 1,000 People in the Streets for Alfred Olango

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el-cajon-wed-sitinHundreds of demonstrators took to the streets of El Cajon Wednesday, September 28th, in protest of the fatal shooting of Alfred Olango by police Tuesday afternoon. And on several occasions, the non-violent demonstrators faced off with helmeted police, as night fell and tensions mounted. This is my accounting of the protest that swept through the suburb of San Diego over a 7 hour period.

I had returned home a couple of hours earlier from a press conference and rally in front of the El Cajon Police station Wednesday morning, when I was shocked to see live-stream video on CBS8 of the protests that had continued – unbeknownst to me, as it had not been announced earlier.

Apparently, after the rally at the PD headquarters, at least a hundred demonstrators had walked back to the site of Olango’s shooting, at Los Panchos taco shop on Broadway, and over the course of the next couple of hours had managed to block several different intersections along Broadway.

  [Read more…]

Many People Are Saying Trump’s Economic Proposals Don’t Add Up

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Republican Donald Trump gave a speech on economic policy before the Detroit Economic Club on Monday. The appearance was supposed to constitute a reboot of his flagging campaign, recently beset by blunders, bluster, and bullshit.

The candidate mostly stayed on script, reading on despite fourteen interruptions by protesters at pre-planned intervals. There was little actual news in the content of the address unless you want to call out revising his tax cuts to match the ones House Speaker Paul Ryan has been proposing.

Trumpian economics consists of triggering a trade war, drastically increasing the deficit and a massive transfer of wealth to the to already rich, while the rest of us wait for tax deductions we can’t use, along with the same old promises about deregulation/trickle-down as the road to prosperity.

“I want to jump-start America,” Trump said, “and it won’t even be that hard.”   [Read more…]

World of Wakanda: A New Marvel Comic Series

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By South OB Girl / OB Rag

While thousands of people were attending Comic-Con last week, Marvel Comics announced the release of a new comic book series on Friday July 22. The superheroes will be women. And the series is being written by women. George Gene Gustines, writing in The New York Times July 23rd issue, did an interesting review of the series, entitled, “Marvel Shines a Spotlight on Women.”

Wakanda is a fictional African country, and the world of the Marvel series, Black Panther. World of Wakanda will be a companion series. And will premiere in November.

The current Black Panther series is written by Ta-Nehisi Coates, author and a national correspondent for The Atlantic. The new comic will be written by two women, who are writing comics for the first time: the feminist writer Roxane Gay and the poet Yona Harvey.   [Read more…]

On Love and Meritocracy – Part 1

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We Don’t Need Another Gadget

What the world needs now is love… so wrote Hal David in 1965 with music by Burt Bacharach. It was true then and even truer now. We don’t need another gadget, we don’t need another smartphone, we don’t need another IPO which only increases the economic divide between the 1% and the 99%.

Economic progress has utterly failed us. It won’t prevent the world going up in flames and/or being flooded out due to global warming. It hasn’t prevented war and violence crowding out every other story on the evening news and getting worse by the day.   [Read more…]

Attacks on San Diego’s Homeless Continue

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Volunteers Offer Relief – ‘Troll Bashers’ Promote Fear and Loathing

There has been yet another early morning attack on a homeless human in San Diego.

Local TV news outlets are reporting on an attack occurring at 10th Ave. and G Street around 6 a.m. The man was taken to the hospital. The extent of his injuries, caused by what was said to be a hammer blow to the head is not yet known. The assailant was described as a white male and was seen riding off on a blue mountain bike.

This latest act of violence comes just two days after the San Diego Police Department released 36-year-old Anthony Padgett, who’d been accused of a series of early morning attacks that left three people dead, because of new evidence challenging the case put together by detectives.   [Read more…]

A Tale of Two Stabbings in San Diego

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Media use of the term “transient” — when and why

The local news recently carried two short articles about stabbings that had taken place. The headline of one article identified a woman as the victim while the other identified the victim as a transient.

Why did 10News choose to use gender in one description and the victim’s lack of housing in the other, instead of using a gender description in both? Does this journalistic decision matter?   [Read more…]

Did San Diego Police “Overreact” During Anti-Trump Protests or Did They Simply Follow “The Zimmerman Plan”

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Police presence at San Diego Trump rally, May 27, 2016

Is it true that San Diego Police overreacted during the anti-Trump protests in downtown last Friday, May 27th, or did they simply follow Chief Zimmerman’s plan to corral demonstrators and push them into Barrio Logan where they could make arrests – arrests made out of the lens of the national media?

I attended the protests and was downtown for about 6 hours that day a week ago. The following observations and opinions are my own. What I did see and experience has led me to believe that the police manipulated the anti-Trump protesters in order to declare an illegal assembly – which then gave them the authority to make mass arrests – arrests police made largely out of sight – and in the ethnic Chicano- Mexican-American community of Barrio Logan.
  [Read more…]

Lies, Threats, and Clickbait on the 2016 Campaign Trail

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With less than a week left before the June 7th California Primary elections, the chickens are coming home to roost.

Community activists in San Diego called out the Faulconer administration’s willingness to use a shotgun to kill a fly following a massive show of force ending in the Barrio Logan neighborhood.

The Trump campaign has begun its formal descent into the netherworld with an endorsement by North Korea, a full-on attack on the media and revelations about the real estate education scam run by the Donald.

And the ugly side of social and faux media is manifesting itself in ways unimaginable just a few years back…   [Read more…]

Joe DiPietro’s “Hollywood” at the La Jolla Playhouse

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By Mukul Khurana

In 1922, a popular Hollywood director was murdered. His name was William Desmond Taylor. Most of us don’t recognize that name, but his murder ushered in a new era—the Hays Era.

The Hays Production Code changed the way business was done in Hollywood—what could be shown or not shown. Except, Taylor’s murder did not directly usher in the Hays Era. That’s known as “artistic license” and has happened since time immemorial.

Be that as it may, Hollywood written by Joe DiPietro and directed by Christopher Ashley is a smart and sexy “Theater Noir” with a true story at its core. Beside the murder, the play delves into censorship issues—and morality. What was Hollywood about and what is it now?   [Read more…]

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