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Highways, Not Skyways Motivate Voters in SANDAG Polling for Ballot Measure

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In just a few short weeks, the Board of the San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG) will vote on placing a half-cent sales tax increase on the November ballot. At stake are billions of additional dollars for transportation projects in coming decades.

The regional government group has released results from a just completed Competitive Edge survey of 1201 local voters, weighted for voting history, survey mode, age, party, gender, and subregion.

The ‘Good News’ is that there appears to be enough of a consensus to reach the two-thirds majority required for passage. The ‘Bad News” is that the 68% supporting the idea dwindles to 62% once arguments against it are presented. (But the trend is in the right direction if you’re an optimist.)   [Read more…]

San Diego Latino Film Festival Highlights from Nicaragua, Argentina and Spain

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By Mukul Khurana

It isn’t often that we get to see films from Nicaragua. So, it makes sense to avail yourself of the opportunity to catch La Pantalla Desnuda (Nicaragua, 93 min. 2015) at the San Diego Latino Film Festival 2016. Part of the Viva Mujeres Showcase, this recent movie directed by Florence Jaugey, tells the story of Octavio and Alex (two friends from opposite ends of the social spectrum).

Octavio comes from a poor background. He is envious of his generous and charismatic friend Max, son of a landowner. The tension goes into drama when Max uses a cell phone to film himself making love to his girlfriend, Esperanza. The video gets leaked…
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Lorena Gonzalez Supports Bill to Nix Daylight Savings…

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… SUHSD Apologizes To Parents, and 4,400 Homes May Be Built Next To U.S.-Mexico Truck Crossing

Assemblywoman for the 80th Assembly District, Lorena Gonzalez, posted on her Facebook page that she will support AB2496 that proposes to establish a “United States Standard Pacific Time” within the state for the entire year.

The Assemblywoman wrote on her Facebook page on Saturday, March 12th: “Tonight, we will lose an hour of sleep. As a result, there will be an increase in traffic accidents and workplace injuries. Parents will struggle to get their kids out of bed, and students will be less alert. Time change is outdated, and needs to be changed. I’m happy to be co-authoring a bill with Assemblyman Kansen Chu to look at doing just that.”   [Read more…]

Border Activists At Friendship Park: John Fanestil’s Christian Service Turns Into Civil Disobedience

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By Barbara Zaragoza / South Bay Compass

“I think Americans project onto the border their fear and phobia and racism and then construct policies that are predicated on fear and phobia and racism. And so, in the long haul, apart from any legislative fixes for immigration reform, culturally and at a more existential or spiritual level, the only solution is to construct an alternative narrative. To construct a narrative of the border as a meeting place, the border as a place of encounter, the border as a place of friendship, the border as a place of communion where people actually figure out, despite their differences, how to get along.”   [Read more…]

Dan Watman’s Quest To Create A Binational Garden Led To Civil Disobedience

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By Barbara Zaragoza / South Bay Compass

Friendship Park, located at the most southwesterly point of the U.S.-Mexico border, exists thanks to a small group of men and women who have come together over time to call themselves Friends of Friendship Park. From about 2006 to 2011 their civil disobedience forced Border Patrol to negotiate access to this binational space, which the federal government would have preferred to keep closed.   [Read more…]

Fray Serra o Capitan Frémont

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Part Six of Six*, with translation. Source: History of San Diego by William E Smythe. All quotes are from this book.

Transcribed by John Lawrence / From the original San Diego Free Press, circa 1969.

Las festividades del se gundo centenario de California se iniciaron en la ciudad de San Diego con toda la pompa y alboroto disponibles. El proposito de dichas festividades se supone que es el de con memorar la fundacion de California en San Diego. Aquel historico evento fue efectuado por Fray Junípero en 1769.   [Read more…]

North of the Fence: Americans Flee Across Border, The Pope and Chula Vista Elections

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Is there an onslaught of American immigrants coming to Mexico? The story isn’t new. For decades Americans have been moving to Tijuana where the rent is cheaper. For local Tijuanese, this means Americans drive up their housing prices and create housing shortages.

How many Americans live in Tijuana, and in Mexico at large? The number is unknown. Guesstimates run the gamut from 5,000 to 500,000 Americans (in Tijuana alone). That’s a pretty big spread. Why don’t we know?   [Read more…]

Monarchs Help Solve Their Own Mystery

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By Besame / Daily Kos

Forty years ago Mexico’s monarch butterfly winter mirabilia were known only to those who lived among them. Campesinos who celebrate their arrival in late autumn, wondered where the billions of magical beings went every spring when the dense clusters separated into individual butterflies, flew off high mountain trees, and disappeared. Forty years ago, people in the U.S. and Canada wondered what happened to the orange and black skydancers when they lifted into the air and left every autumn.

Forty-one years ago both mysteries connected and in August 1976 the zoologist behind this effort published an answer, but withheld specific location details. As we know now, summer’s last monarchs fly south, leaving their northern homes, funneling into a stream to fly across the border and down the Sierra Madre mountains to over-wintering sites in Mexico.   [Read more…]

San Diego: Two Expeditions — Enter Father Serra

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Part Two of Seven. Part One can be found here. Source: History of San Diego by William E. Smythe. All quotes are from this book.

By John Lawrence / From the original San Diego Free Press, circa 1969

A land and sea expedition set out from Mexico in 1769. After major navigational difficulties, two ships, the San Antonio and the San Carlos, landed at San Diego on April 11 and April 29, 1769, respectively.

It seems that the incompetent Cabrillo had reported that San Diego was at 34 degrees latitude whereas actually it is at 32 degrees. The result of this bungling was that most of the sailors were sick or dying when they reached San Diego. In fact all the seamen on the “San Carlos” died except for one and the cook. We can see that the plight of sailors in San Diego hasn’t changed much in 200 years.   [Read more…]

The Impossibility of the Present: Collection Elias-Fontes at CECUT, Centro Cultural of Tijuana

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By Jill Holslin

If you haven’t been to Tijuana in a while, now’s the time to come for a visit. The show “Collection of Elias-Fontes Historia y Relato” (History and Story) at The Centro Cultural of Tijuana in Zona Rio, is an exhibition that asks serious questions about the role of the artist in the context of the relentless, pulsating vitality of contemporary capitalism.

Bringing together the work of a generation of northern Baja California artists, the work is remarkable for its variety of materials and forms: metal, industrial refuse, adobe, ceramic, fabric, found objects, and acrylic paint formed into collage, photography, video, sculpture, ready-mades and installation.   [Read more…]

Border Construction May Cause Flooding In Poor Tijuana Neighborhoods

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El Nido de Las Aguilas is a Tijuana neighborhood located where the U.S.-Mexico border fence abruptly ends. Residents can go back and forth between the two countries, but the steep mountainous terrain makes crossing pointless, if not foreboding. People live quietly here with a few small convenience stores and public transportation that runs through the main streets every fifteen minutes or so.

Homes in this neighborhood are constructed mostly of recycled materials, such as tin, wooden garage doors and car tires. In a few parts of the neighborhood the border is used as a fourth wall for residents’ homes.   [Read more…]

Friendship Park in 2015

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Making new meanings and memories through friendship

By Jill Holslin / Friends of Friendship Park

It has been a busy year for Friendship Park, the little park south of Imperial Beach where you can go to visit with people on the other side of the border wall in Tijuana. Friends of Friendship Park has continued with our mission this year: to maintain public access to the park on the border where friendships can blossom, and families separated by deportation, by mixed immigration status, and by the injustice of border militarization can come together and maintain family bonds.   [Read more…]

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