San Diego Free Press

Grassroots News & Progressive Views

Otay Water District Proposes Pipeline from Rosarito Desalination Plant into U.S.

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Serge Dedina says, “…before any U.S. government agency or any U.S. water agency gets a permit to suck desal water from the most polluted coast in North America and sell it back to U.S. consumers, they need to prioritize cleaning up this coastline.”

In Mexico, when sewage is collected, much of it is sent to a place called San Antonio de Las Buenos or Punto Banderas just 6 miles South of the Border.

WildCoast and Surfrider estimate that the sewage being discharged in the ocean each day “could be anywhere from 30 to 50 million gallons a day depending. No one’s really counting. We think it’s grown exponentially because of the increase in development that’s, in theory it’s a primary plant, but they don’t actually treat the sewage, they just put it through some ponds and then dump it in the ocean right on the beach,” Dedina says.   [Read more…]

2016 Summer Chronicles 6: Outside Spaces, the Bold Vista of Ocean Beach, and Other Wonders

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One of the great pleasures of my life to date was having access, for a period of several years, to a dingy little studio by the sea in Ocean Beach. It was so small that when you rolled out the futon, it took up the entire room. The kitchen was too tiny for a dinner table, the hot water frequently didn’t work in the bathroom, and the constant noise and pot smoke from the neighbors streamed through the cracked, paper-thin walls.

It was paradise.   [Read more…]

Looking Back at the Week: July 17-23

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This week’s edition of Looking Back at the Week features articles, commentaries, columns, and other work by San Diego Free Press regulars, irregulars, columnists, at-large contributors, and sourced writers on: SDFP winning a bucketful of SPJ awards, the Repug convention, exposing hate in America, Pride 2016, the BLM march, keeping Fiesta Island wild, SD’s plastic bag ban, power and direct action, and lots of other inspiring, grassroots news & progressive views from San Diego’s friendly, neighborhood, all volunteer, slightly funky, community news site.   [Read more…]

Geo-Poetic Spaces: Remind Me

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Remind me
it’s a larger room
than the beam of light
exposes

Remind me
who is behind the lamp
what interest they gain
when I forget to look   [Read more…]

Christian Anti-Communist Crusade: Schwarz on Marcuse

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The Hanalei Hotel in San Diego was the scene for a dinner meeting of the Long Beach based Christian Anti-Communist Crusade on Friday April 18. Fred Schwarz, President of tie Crusade, delivered a speech on “one of the world’s leading destructive revolutionaries,” Herbert Marcuse.

In his invitational letter, Schwarz had promised to cover such topics as the “biological details of the life of Marcuse.” Indeed, it was an enormous let-down when he rehashed the biographical details instead.

Schwarz admitted that he had undertaken the “onerous task”of reading all the books Marcuse has written.   [Read more…]

San Diego Free Press Takes Home Nine SPJ Awards

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As we enter our fourth year here at the San Diego Free Press, there could be no greater gift than to be the platform that allows eight volunteer writers worthy recognition among a Society of Professional Journalists. We are intensely proud to be working with these incredibly talented and passionate people.

The San Diego Free Press itself was also recognized for its role in online journalism.

The awards are as follows:   [Read more…]

New Pedestrian Border Crossing Deemed ‘Imminent Danger’ to Users …

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… Deported Veterans Refused Re-Entry, and Coronado To Sue Imperial Beach for Sewage

The new pedestrian crossing at the San Ysidro Port of Entry (POE) opened to great fan-fare last Friday. By Wednesday, according to a comment on a San Diego Reader article, it had to be closed.

Why?

As writer John Kitchen explained in his Reader article, the new facility on the Mexican side has no roads leading to it, preventing buses or taxis to get anywhere close. Sandra Dibble at the San Diego Union Tribune reported similar complaints of the pedestrian crossing, which is located next to the Las Americas Outlet Mall.   [Read more…]

Power and Direct Action: A Primer

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This year’s Fourth of July week grew in horror as it passed. Each day brought new nightmares that struck me at a dizzying pace. By the end of the week, after I decided I was sick of weeping, I turned off the television, shut my Facebook tab, and remembered that the best antidote for despair is action.

My week started hopefully enough in Eugene, Oregon where I participated in a training hosted by members of Deep Green Resistance called Extraction Resistance: A Three Day Training in Direct Action. One of the goals of the event was to normalize direct action tactics, and I was asked to write a primer on the topic. This is that primer.

When I got home from Eugene, I found a video news story from Karachi, Pakistan showing men digging mass graves in anticipation of the number of heat-related deaths caused by soaring summer temperatures. The ghosts of people not yet dead climbed from trenches dug in the dry Pakistani dust. I could almost see the bodies piling in the grave-diggers’ shadows.   [Read more…]

Demand Sustainably Produced Cut Flowers

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Flowers add color and gaiety to any special occasion and are a time-honored way to say thank you or beautify living spaces. However, cut flowers have become a multi-billion dollar global trade industry with a not so pretty underbelly rooted in where and how they are grown.

Historically in the U.S., flowers were first grown in greenhouses in Eastern states and later in Western and Southern states when commercial air transportation made preserving freshness possible. In the 1970’s, the U.S. grew more cut flowers than it imported, only a small fraction originated in Colombia.

However, new market forces were unleashed in 1991 when the U.S. suspended import duties on flowers from Colombia to curb growing of coca for cocaine and to bolster the Colombian economy.   [Read more…]

Humanizing the Maestro: Hershey Felder as Leonard Bernstein

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By Yuko Kurahashi

Hershey Felder’s Maestro (directed by Joel Zwick), one in a series of solo shows on famous composers, was staged at the San Diego Repertory Theatres’ Lyceum Stage from July 6-17, 2016. Capturing key moments in Leonard Bernstein’s life, Felder offers a truly memorable piece that humanizes the world-famous American conductor and composer. It gives voices to people who influenced Bernstein directly or indirectly, including his parents, George Gershwin, Aaron Copland, Demitri Mitropoulos, Serge Koussevitzky, and his wife of 27 years Felicia Cohn Montealegre.

Highlighting key events in Bernstein’s life, Hershey focuses on: Bernstein’s Jewish heritage, his encounters and relationships with world-renowned composers and conductors; his marriage to Felicia and homosexuality, his ambitions and successes as a composer, and failures as a composer. He ties these all together to his love of music and life   [Read more…]

Trumponomics: Prison Guards for Hillary Clinton, Brownshirts for the Rest of Us

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The Republican National Convention continued yesterday, giving official approval of the Trump/Pence ticket and promising to jail Hillary Clinton at the first opportunity.

The question to answered now is whether we’re watching the implosion of a political party past its prime or the formal dissolution of the democratic process in the United States. Like watching a train wreck, it’s hard to look away.

The concept of a day at the GOP convention focused on jobs and progress–officially titled Putting America to Work Again–was left by the wayside on Tuesday as speaker after speaker sought to gain recognition as being the best at demonizing Hillary Clinton.   [Read more…]

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