San Diego Free Press

Grassroots News & Progressive Views

ReWild Mission Bay Unveils Options for Wetland Restoration

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8 Restoration Options for Mission Bay Evaluated by More than 100 Community Members

Based on News Release from ReWild via OBRag

On September 27th, ReWild Mission Bay – a project of San Diego Audubon and its partners – unveiled eight possible options to enhance and restore up to 170 acres of wetlands in the North East corner of Mission Bay.

Based on community suggestions from two public workshops earlier this year, the draft plans were presented to more than 135 community members to collect input. To view the potential alternatives, click through to the full article.   [Read more…]

Skyrocketing Rents, Same Old Housing Stock in City Heights

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Seventeen hundred dollars. Seventeen hundred dollars has become the standard monthly rent for a two bedroom apartment in City Heights. Over the past six months many residents who were paying around fourteen hundred dollars a month for a two bedroom apartment saw their monthly rents suddenly increase– by hundreds of dollars.

The increase in rents does not reflect a sudden investment by the property owners in additional amenities associated with gentrification. Property owners are raising the rent simply because they can. It’s the same housing stock, sometimes poorly maintained, at rental prices that are out of reach in a community with an average household income of thirty-three thousand dollars per year.   [Read more…]

Thinking of Old Badgers in the Autumn of Our Years

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Looking at an autumn scene, with trees changing colors, overlooking a lake of cold water, signifying the last season of a year, I thought of how I’m in the autumn of my years.

And from that I couldn’t help but think about the Class of ’56 of Tucson High, people whom I hold dear, old “Badgers” celebrating a time when we were classmates 60 years ago.

Our hair, like the leaves in the picture of the trees, has thinned and its color has changed as has a host of other things.   [Read more…]

Props 59 & 60 – Dirty Money and Filthy Sex

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Why are these measures even on the ballot?

The Constitution of the United States begins with “We the People.” It doesn’t say “We the Corporations” or “We the Fat Cats.”

I get it. Every person who believes in our representative democracy should be appalled by the Supreme Court (Citizen’s United) decision giving corporate entities the power to fund elections thru super-Pacs under the guise of “free speech.” This needs to change.

Proposition 59 asks California’s elected officials to work to overturn Citizens United, through supporting a constitutional amendment or other means. And if they don’t like what Prop 59 asks them to do, that’s okay, because it’s simply advisory in nature.   [Read more…]

“What Would You Do If Trump Is Elected?” Results From Our Survey

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Back a few weeks ago, during a particularly “bad week” campaign-wise for Hillary Clinton, it looked like Trump could actually be elected President. It was during that period that the OB Rag asked a number of activists and progressives what they would do if Trump was indeed elected.

Today, still, Trump winning is not a far-fetched concept, for as recently as last night – Monday, October 3rd, Rachel Maddow of MSNBC made the plausible case that there could be an electoral college vote tie between Clinton and Trump and it all may end up in a divided US Supreme Court.   [Read more…]

As Trump’s Shadow Grows — Let’s Plant the Seeds of Revolution

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Last month the OB Rag had a survey asking what people would do if Trump is elected president. Since my husband’s parents were from Mexico, and we have friends in Baja, we have had conversations about moving across the border, even before the possibility that Trump could become our next president was considered anything but ludicrous. Now, that possibility is neither far-fetched nor funny.

A year ago our reason to consider leaving San Diego was more for financial reasons and for now, at least, we have under control. Mexico might be more affordable, but are plenty of other issues that convinced us to take a move there off the table. Now, it’s back.

There is a conversation in JRR Tolkein’s “Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring”, in the second chapter (The Shadow of the Past) where Gandalf explains that The Shadow has returned and this time it is Frodo who must confront it:   [Read more…]

Fossil Fuel Extraction Producing Earthquakes in Oklahoma

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Oklahoma Now Earthquake Capitol of US

The chickens are coming home to roost. A state that has thrived from oil wells is now being destroyed by them. The practice of forcing waste water from oil drilling down other wells has made Oklahoma the earthquake capital of the US.

Between 1978 and 2008 Oklahoma averaged about two magnitude 3 or above earthquakes per year. Then in 2014 the total zoomed up to 585, 3+ magnitude earthquakes, more than the number of 3.0+ magnitude earthquakes from the previous 30 years combined. In 2014, there were over twice as many earthquakes recorded in Oklahoma as in California, making Oklahoma the most seismically active state in the contiguous United States by a substantial margin.   [Read more…]

ACLU Seeks Answers in Arrests at Vigil after Alfred Olango Killing

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San Diego ACLU troubled by “community reports of aggressive police response” and “potentially unlawful arrests” at peaceful vigil

Ferchil Ramos / San Diego ACLU

In response to a video post by a community member at what appears to be a peaceful vigil at the site of the killing of Alfred Olango, the ACLU of San Diego & Imperial Counties sent a letter requesting information from the El Cajon Police Department (ECPD) concerning the arrests of individuals at the vigil on the evening of Saturday, October 1.

While no video necessarily tells the complete story, the available information raises serious questions that the arrests were unlawful. One of the factors in declaring an unlawful assembly is whether there is a clear and present danger of imminent violence.   [Read more…]

Prop 58 – Righting a Wrong Thru Local Control of Bilingual Education

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When Proposition 227 Passed in 1998, Only Homosexuality Was Less Tolerated Than Bilingualism by Middle-Class Americans

California’s Proposition 58, being marketed as the LEARN Initiative, represents yet another step towards righting the wrongs growing out of a wave of anti-multicultural sentiment during the 1990s.

The nativist wing on the Republican Party eventually led that organization into irrelevance in California, and a generation of Latino political activists is now an ascendant force in state politics.

By allowing local public schools to decide on how best to teach English learners, this measure effectively undoes the statewide immersion-is-best mandate of the English Language in Public Schools Statute, also known as Proposition 227.   [Read more…]

Why Spanos is Only Trying for a >50% Vote to Get a Downtown Stadium

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An important bit of misinformation has been circulating about Measure C – the Spanos ballot referendum to raise the hotel tax (transient occupancy tax – “TOT”) in the City of San Diego from 12.5% to 16.5% to build a $2 billion-plus downtown combined stadium and convention annex.

Most news stories and conventional wisdom have it that 2/3 of the city’s voters must vote in favor of it in order for it to pass. While some of these articles acknowledge that there is a potential second path to passing Measure C via litigation, it is mentioned only as something that is remote, uncertain, and difficult. As a result, some opponents of the measure have had a somewhat lackadaisical attitude.   [Read more…]

Greening Your Wardrobe

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What typically comes to mind when contemplating our personal environmental footprint is the energy efficiency of the car we drive, how religiously we recycle, and maybe whether or not we have a water thirsty lawn. However, everything we do and own has impacts on the environment, and that includes the choices we make in dressing ourselves.

This point was driven home in a smart little book published in 1997 titled, “Stuff: The Secret Lives of Everyday Things,” which describes the planetary impacts of everyday material goods. One chapter details what goes into producing a wardrobe basic, the cotton/polyester blend T-shirt.

A few highlights include the overseas extraction of the crude oil from which polyester is synthesized, the energy and pesticide intensive process of growing and harvesting cotton, and transporting milled fabrics abroad and back again so they can be sewn into T-shirts by cheap foreign labor.   [Read more…]

Angst Over Police Shootings Rocks California Cities

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Community unrest over the deaths of black people at the hands of police in California continued unabated throughout the weekend. And it wasn’t just in El Cajon/San Diego.

Alfred Olango died in El Cajon on Tuesday. A composite video taken from a security camera and a bystander’s cellphone was released on Friday. Carnell Snell Jr. died in Los Angeles on Saturday, the second police-involved death in two days. And a particularly grotesque video of the July 11th death of Joseph Mann in Sacramento surfaced showing police officers trying to run him down before chasing him down and firing 14 shots into him.   [Read more…]

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