San Diego Free Press

Grassroots News & Progressive Views

The 2016 Mayoral Contest: Lori Saldaña Aims to Offer a Choice, Not an Echo

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If you buy into the notion, currently in vogue with supporters of Senator Bernie Sanders, of Democratic party orthodoxy as being little more than Republican lite, then Lori Saldaña would the logical choice to vote for in the upcoming San Diego mayoral primary.

The former assemblywoman has an activist pedigree, a history of hard-fought grassroots campaigns, and the enmity of the local political establishment.

In January Saldaña launched an independent campaign to challenge Kevin Faulconer, undaunted by a million dollar war chest (including PACs) and the advantages accompanying incumbency in America’s Finest City. The current mayor’s single greatest accomplishment thus far, in my opinion, has been directing the public relations players at his disposal in a non-stop symphony of praise for their leader, so it ain’t gonna be easy.   [Read more…]

From Hippies in Ocean Beach to Law Day in City Heights: How San Diego Libraries Reinvent Themselves

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Weekends in San Diego are always chock full of events that provide often competing opportunities to be entertained and informed and to spend time with friends and family. Two upcoming events on Saturday April 30 are particularly noteworthy because of the diverse topics and the venues–two City of San Diego public libraries in two unique communities.

Frank Gormlie, local political muckraker and gadfly, editor of our sister publication OB Rag and editorial board member of SDFP, will lead an hour discussion about Ocean Beach Hippies and how Ocean Beach became San Diego’s Haight-Ashbury, circa 1967.   [Read more…]

San Diego Homeless Advocates Rock the City Council

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Anatomy of a successful press event

Some days I marvel at the value of the network of good people that has grown in our community—people involved in so many different areas, all so critical, who come together to support one another in our various efforts. Without that, we could have never pulled off the very successful action on Tuesday April 19 in protest of the City’s reprehensible decision to fill an underpass in Sherman Heights where homeless people take shelter with rocks.

This was a case where all systems were running at peak performance. For the sake of all of those younger people who are just starting to dip their toes in the art of community organizing, here’s how it goes when you have a cadre of like-minded friends to call upon for a cause. (I’m using actual first names here because all of those people deserve the kudos.) In the end, that’s more valuable than a pile of money and hired hands.   [Read more…]

A Re-Visit to Liberty Public Market

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“Could I Have Been that Wrong?”

Holy Moly! I’ve been lambasted for reviews I have done before, but none like my first review of the Liberty Public Market in Point Loma. I call it like I see it, but with all the positive comments – forgetting the negative ones for a moment – that the Liberty Public Market has received on my comments, I decided it was time to go back and revisit it. If I made a mistake, I am certainly willing to admit it. (And I do that – look at an old article entitled “If you have to eat crow how do you cook it?”) I gathered a few women from my widow support group and we headed over to the market.   [Read more…]

A Look at Rebecca Traister’s New Book, ‘All the Single Ladies’

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By Susan Grigsby / Daily Kos

Rebecca Traister’s new book, All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation, opens with an examination of the treatment of Anita Hill by the Senate Judiciary Committee during the hearings on the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court.

Rather than refute any of her charges of what came to be known as sexual harassment, the conservatives on the committee and in the media attacked Ms. Hill. It was suggested that she suffered from erotomania or had certain “proclivities” (according to William Safire, this word, used by Senator Alan Simpson, was “a code word for homosexuality”).   [Read more…]

The 2016 Mayoral Contest: Ed Harris Takes a Stand Against Business as Usual

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“The City is a huge landlord. It has to quit giving away our own assets.”

Ed Harris wasn’t supposed to ruffle any feathers during his appointed term on the San Diego City Council.

The former marine and lifeguard union leader was supposed to be a bookmark, holding down the Second District seat vacated by now-Mayor Kevin Faulconer until election day rolled around. The city charter’s terms for this temporary tenure included a proviso barring him from actually running for the seat in fall 2014 election.

Then it came time for the kind of wink, wink, nod, nod agreement involving trading off public assets for political gain considered normal in America’s Finest City.  Harris surprised a lot of people by taking a principled and public stand against what he believed was a sweetheart deal involving proposed lease terms of Belmont Park to Pacifica Enterprises.   [Read more…]

Rule By American Dynasty Sinks Deeper Into Our Democracy

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By Frank Thomas

I’ve always thought it would be nearly impossible for Bernie to ultimately win over the establishment status-quo Democratic forces so typically fearful of genuine progressive change … so caught up in an incremental rearguard progress and presidential nomination campaign that is manipulatively, simplistically characterized as one of ‘idealism’ versus ‘realism.’ So, the message in short seems to be, vote for the candidate of “lowered expectations.”

Rule by American Dynasty appears to be sinking deeper into our oligarchical democracy led by the anointed-to-be queen, Hillary … empowered by a pervasive political network built up during Bill’s presidency and her time as an NY senator and Secretary of State; helped by the corruption of ‘Big Money,’ a plutocratic biased media, the premature, nefarious endorsements of 500 superdelegates BEFORE the nomination campaign began.   [Read more…]

The Great Eastern Expansion Into Chula Vista

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Chula Vista Is Set To Have An Influx Of 60,000 Residents

By Barbara Zaragoza

For decades community groups such as Crossroads II have noted that the City of Chula Vista is nothing more than a bedroom community. They explain that developers came into the region, created a mass of housing, but didn’t provide residents with essential amenities, such as jobs, adequate big box stores such as Walmart, smaller retail shops, restaurants, parks or hotels. In Crossroads II’s 2016 Annual Report, they wrote, “Because of the lack of commercial development, Chula Vista is second from the bottom in terms of sales-tax revenues per resident in San Diego County.”

The Chula Vista City Council has attempted to change this bedroom community into a bustling city where local and international tourists come to shop, eat and play. They’ve done it by attracting developers to the open stretch of land located in eastern Chula Vista known as Otay Ranch. Now, within the next twenty years or so, Chula Vista anticipates more than 60,000 new residents will flood into the area, including university students, Olympic quality athletes and Google-type executives. Their goal is to transition eastern Chula Vista into becoming a dense urban environment that is state-of-the-art in technology and also environmentally sustainable.

Excited? Convinced?   [Read more…]

Charles Koch Denounces His Creation, The Modern Republican Party

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By Joan McCarter / DailyKos.com

Charles Koch admitted on ABC’s This Week Sunday that he despises his own creation: The Republican party that spawned Donald Trump.

Koch gave a sort of backhanded endorsement of Hillary Clinton over Trump and Cruz, saying “it’s possible” Clinton would be a better alternative as president. Clinton immediately responded on Twitter, writing she is “not interested in endorsements from people who deny climate science and try to make it harder for people to vote.”   [Read more…]

Book Review Of Bill Walton’s “Back From The Dead”

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By Ernie McCray

I didn’t know until I read his book that he was a musician, but I’ve known for a long time that he’s someone who’s attracted to the sounds of music, that he has been a player in the Grateful Dead scene for decades. I’ve known that he’s a lifelong learner, a man who’s constantly growing and questioning and shining a light on things that need tending to in our world. And his writing details somewhat poetically how he’s “thrown it down,” all out, throughout his life, in spite of forever having to endure an almost unbelievable array of crippling injuries and intense pain.
  [Read more…]

The 2016 Mayoral Contest: Being Cool is a Full Time Job for Incumbent Kevin Faulconer

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Homeless advocates in San Diego have a special donation for Mayor Kevin Faulconer’s re-election campaign: a shopping cart full of rocks. At midday on Tuesday, they deliver them to City Hall, urging the mayor to try cementing the rocks on his mattress before going to sleep.

It’s a payback that’s symbolic on many levels. Earlier this month, they say, the city began installing rockscapes under bridges where local homeless people sleep.

“You can’t treat human beings like pests,” declared Amikas president, Jeeni Criscenzo. “These are human beings, not birds. They need to be treated with respect. This action is not only cruel and a waste of taxpayer dollars, it does nothing to solve the problem.”     [Read more…]

San Diego Historical Resources Board: Save the Historic Caliente Mural

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By Enrique Limón

On Thursday, April 28 at 1 pm, San Diego’s Historical Resources Board will hold a meeting to strip away any historical association to the Caliente mural located on the back wall of downtown’s California Theatre (included San Diego’s Register of Designated Historical Resources in 1990).

In December 2011, after news broke that a beer company was set to paint over the mural, a petition on Change.org garnered over 1,000 signatures and made sure city officials listened loud and clear. An independent historic report commissioned by the Save Our Heritage Organisation determined the mural itself was also of historical significance. Now, the city wants to make way for big development.   [Read more…]

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