San Diego Free Press

Grassroots News & Progressive Views

Make Earth Day Every Day: How to Fight Climate Change Year Round

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By Hutton Marshall / SanDiego350

Last month’s annual Earth Day reminded people all over the globe of the importance of our planet’s health to everyday lives and to survival of future generations. Locally, thousands swarmed Balboa Park to celebrate the popular Earth Fair San Diego.

Earth Day plays a larger role than sending a powerful message about the necessity of environmental protection and sustainability. More directly, it attracts countless volunteers in San Diego and beyond to spend the holiday working toward creating a healthier planet and pushing back against forces that are rapidly changing our climate.

Unfortunately, for many volunteers, Earth Day may be the only day of the year we get out and work to combat climate change, despite widespread understanding of the need for action.   [Read more…]

Nuclear Shutdown News – April 2016: Chernobyl + 16 – It’s Far From Over

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Chernobyl + 16: It’s far from over

By Michael Steinberg / Black Rain Press

On April 26, 1986, a nuclear disaster began at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the Ukraine, then ruled by the USSR. Thirty years later, that disaster is far from over.

In their 1990 book, Deadly Deceit: Low Level Fallout, High level Cover-Up, authors Jay Gould and Benjamin Goldman devote an entire chapter to the Chernobyl debacle. The doomed Chernobyl nuke was one of 4 reactors operating at the site at the time. It took until 2000 for the other 3 to be permanently shut down.
  [Read more…]

America’s Finest City Preparing for a Visit from Donald Trump UPDATED – Postponed for Now

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5pm: 10 News is reporting Trump’s trip has been postponed, for now.

Officials in San Diego are preparing for as yet unannounced visit on Sunday, May 8th by presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump, according to a report broadcast on 10News Tuesday night.

This column will function as a live blog, constantly updated throughout the week. We’ll report on official preparations, plans by local activist groups and media coverage as it happens. The most current news will be posted at the top of the page (inside) as often as needed. Please feel free to add your comments at the bottom of the piece.

(See our comment policy: we have no patience for trolls and provocateurs)   [Read more…]

Is Affordable Housing in the City of San Diego an Oxymoron? Part 3

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The City Needs to Build and Own More Affordable Units

According to a recent Zillow report: “Denver, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose, and San Diego are unaffordable for both renters and buyers. … Looking forward, the picture doesn’t look bright for renters. Rents will likely keep rising at roughly their current pace for at least the next few years, which will lead to a continued affordability crunch unless wage growth significantly improves.”

Enter the San Diego Housing Commission (SDHC) whose job is to redress the balance of unaffordable rents to make it possible for San Diego to be inhabited by other than rich folks.

The San Diego Housing Commission (SDHC) does a variety of projects to assist low and moderate income folks. From their website, it would seem that they are doing a lot, but is it merely tokenism or are they using all available resources to build affordable housing as quickly as possible? After all, there is a declared emergency in terms of the increasing numbers of the homeless population that aren’t being taken care of.   [Read more…]

The Millenia Project: San Diego County’s New Downtown

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By Barbara Zaragoza

Last week, I spent a lot of time explaining the vast expansion taking place in eastern Chula Vista. Eleven villages total mean about 60,000 new residents will move into the area within the next twenty years. So far, villages 1, 5 and 7 are built out. Village 2 is underway. That leaves villages 3, 4, 8, 9 and 10 still under development.

According to the Otay Ranch General Development Plan, the idea of the village was to “provide a sense of community and social cohesion in a “small town” way, and reduce dependence on the automobile for local trips.” (pg. 10)

Today, I want to go over the heart of the development called “Millenia.” This will become the center piece of Otay Ranch plan, a new downtown with an office & retail district.   [Read more…]

A Call for Ocean Beach to Celebrate 40th Anniversary of Huge Vote that Established Planning Board and First Popular Community Plan

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Thousands of OB Residents, Property and Business Owners Took Part in Historic Election of May 4, 1976

By Frank Gormlie / OB Rag

There are a lot of important anniversaries these days, it seems, like the 50th anniversary of the Ocean Beach Pier, and like the 50th Re-Union of the Point Loma High School Class of 1966.

But there’s one significant anniversary for Ocean Beach that has as of yet been highlighted for its deserved respect and celebration.

And that’s the 40th Anniversary of the popular vote on March 4, 1976 that established both the Ocean Beach Planning Board and the first OB Community Plan (then called the “Precise Plan”).   [Read more…]

The Massive, Tragic Trashing of Our Oceans: Is There Still Time to Do Something About It?

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For sure there is sobering news about marine health. But it is not too late to change our behaviors.

By Reynard Loki / AlterNet

It’s impossible to overestimate how critical the oceans are to the overall health of life on Earth. For one thing, tiny marine plants called phytoplankton provide up to 85 percent of the world’s oxygen, according to EarthSky.org. But the oceans don’t just give us good stuff like oxygen; they take away bad stuff, like carbon dioxide. A 2011 international study led by the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England, estimated that the oceans absorb 27 percent of the CO2 produced by the fossil fuel combustion.

Sadly, humans have treated the oceans abominably. Overfishing is pushing the world’s fisheries to collapse. “The global fishing fleet is 2-3 times larger than what the oceans can sustainably support,” warns the World Wide Fund for Nature. “As a result, 53 percent of the world’s fisheries are fully exploited, and 32 percent are overexploited, depleted or recovering from depletion.”   [Read more…]

Papa Doug Donation Rocks D3 City Council Contest (There’s More!)

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The narrative about the contest for the Third District City Council seat, namely that leading candidates Chris Ward and Anthony Bernal weren’t all that different, ended yesterday.

Voice of San Diego’s Andy Keatts wrote about a growing controversy stemming from donations to the Bernal campaign by former UT-San Diego publisher ‘Papa Doug’ Manchester and wife.

Support from a major contributor to the campaign against same-sex marriage in California is likely to be toxic in a council district whose politics have been dominated by LGBTQ activists in recent decades.   [Read more…]

Puerto Rico is the Next Greece

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It‘s the Same Old MO: Entice With Money, Then Foreclose

It’s deja vu all over again as Yogi Berra would say. Another country that went down the road of debt accumulation just to pay for essential public services. Since Puerto Ricans are born American citizens, you’d think that Puerto Rico could just declare bankruptcy as Detroit, Birmingham and San Bernardino did. But no, US law forbids that.

On May 2, a bond payment of $422 million was missed, and a $2 billion payment comes due in July. There’s no way Puerto Rico can pay. Puerto Rico is begging Congress for debt relief. But no debt relief is in sight.

Here are the facts: Puerto Rico is $70 billion in debt. 45% of the people live in poverty. The unemployment rate is over 12%.   [Read more…]

The Death Gap

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The richest Americans now live 10-15 years longer than the poorest.

By Sam Pizzigati / OtherWords

Rich people live longer than poor people. No big news there — we’ve known that health tracks wealth for quite some time now.

But here’s what we haven’t known: The life-expectancy gap between rich and poor in the United States is actually accelerating.

Since 2001, American men among the nation’s most affluent 5 percent have seen their lifespans increase by more than two years. American women in that bracket have registered an almost three-year extension to their life expectancy.

Meanwhile, the poorest five percent of Americans have seen essentially no gains at all.   [Read more…]

Nothing But Misery for a Sinking California GOP

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Trump Trumped by Protests

I spent the weekend in Los Angeles, doing the kinds of thing Angelenos like to brag about in selling their city as a tourism destination. I went to a Keith Jarrett concert, dropped in on the Last Book Store, and caught a glimpse of the Daytime Emmys, which just happened to be staged at our hotel.

I posted vacation pictures on Facebook, ate some amazing meals, and walked more than six miles in one day as we explored the heart of the city. There was, however,  no escaping the politics of the era.

Thousands of SEIU janitors jammed up traffic on the day we arrived, demanding higher pay, better working conditions and an end to unfair labor practices. Their chants echoed up the towers of our hotel. A Saturday stroll through the park ended up at a Bernie Sanders rally. And a last-minute decision to check out an exhibit at the Getty Room of the LA Public Library ended up being a cautionary tale about the Rise of the Donald.   [Read more…]

Getting Sandbagged by SANDAG: San Diego’s Failure of Imagination

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Last week Kevin Faulconer got some good press when, “under pressure from environmental groups,” he voted no to putting SANDAG’s deeply inadequate tax measure on the ballot citing San Diego’s Climate Action plan as one of the factors in his decision. Faulconer’s opponent, Ed Harris, was quick to point out that Faulconer’s vote was less about climate change and more about pleasing his anti-tax Republican base…

Harris is clearly right about Faulconer’s opportunism when it comes to the SANDAG plan, and he adeptly points out that the mayor had a very different position not that long ago. With regard to the SANDAG plan, however, he is way off the mark…

The real problem with this political stalemate is that the Democrats on the SANDAG board and too many other Democrats in San Diego county are satisfied to pursue business as usual and act as if they are still committed to progressive values with regard to the environment. By insisting that the current political hegemony in San Diego is unchangeable they are suffering from a profound failure of the imagination…   [Read more…]

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