San Diego Free Press

Grassroots News & Progressive Views

Statement by Ed Harris, Candidate for San Diego Mayor

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Progress, Not Politics

By Ed Harris

Kevin Faulconer is a nice enough guy. He’s worked hard to build an image as a down-to-earth problem solver. His political handlers claim that polls show he’s viewed favorably by most voters. In fact, they say he’s done such a good job that he’s now a contender to be California’s next governor. So an obvious question is, why am I running against him for mayor in the June 7 primary election? The reason is that Mayor Faulconer’s carefully burnished image is at odds with his actual performance.
  [Read more…]

Bonds are Like Manure: The Flood Gates are Opening

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By William Richter / Focus On Chula Vista

Bonds are basically huge loans which are advertised as needed to repair crucial infrastructure or build new construction but are, unfortunately, often misspent. Some misspending comes from gold-plated projects, and/or contractors who are able to change the costs easily after they get the contract. Regrettably, there is no accountability for the misspending after the money has already been spent and the elected officials have already moved on.   [Read more…]

Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence and Improv Street Theater in San Diego

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“We’re here to comfort those who are disturbed and disturb those who are comfortable.”

By Barbara Zaragoza

The Sisters, above all, are a spiritual group. Their work has a calling. As Sister Kali explains, “We function within our community as the sacred clown. We go out and by acting contrary through our various means, we give the community an opportunity to find its own answers, their own questions even…We can define the extremes so that people know where the middle ground is and that way they feel a little bit more comfortable in that space.”   [Read more…]

La Migra: A Chicano Historical Perspective

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By Herman Baca

If the so-called U.S. immigration issue is a historical labor issue as Chicano/Mexicanos activists, historians, scholars & academicians claim, what then has been the historical role of the U.S. Border Patrol (BP)? To answer that question one has to study the U.S.’s historical addiction to free and cheap labor. That started when white supremacists created the Afro-American slave labor system in Jamestown, West Virginia in 1619.   [Read more…]

City Council Races Beg the Question: When is a Democrat Not a Democrat?

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Are there candidates running for City Council in Districts 3 and 9 supported by interests with a history of backing Republicans really Democrats? Do campaign donations define a public official?

Is Bernie Sanders a Democrat? Is Hillary Clinton just a Republican in drag? How about Congressman Scott Peters after his votes on refugees and trade? Are people who used to be Republicans ever to be trusted? Where do you draw the line?

Today I’ll explore these questions as they impact a couple of local contests…   [Read more…]

South Bay, San Diego’s California State & County Representatives

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By Barbara Zaragoza

The June 7th Primaries are almost here. Yesterday, I covered our candidates for the Senate and U.S. House of Representatives. Today, I take a look at our California races.

The California Secretary of State Alex Padilla predicts a major surge in voter turnout. That’s good news for getting our voices heard. The most important races to understand for the June primary are: the State Assembly and Proposition 50. Here’s a little primer:   [Read more…]

Change We Can Believe In

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By Ernie McCray

Obama first sold young people
on “Change we can Believe In”
and now Bernie
has them thinking along those lines again
in deeper ways
and I love watching their faces
at his rallies when he says to them
“Change comes from the bottom to the top.”
Their faces light up
as he teaches them how
they might best proceed
as they strive to meet
their world’s desperate needs.   [Read more…]

The San Diego Chargers Convadium – Part 1: 110 Pages of Gobbledygook

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On Saturday, April 2, the Chargers published a whole section of the San Diego Union-Tribune devoted to their proposal to build a football stadium for the Chargers combined with a non-contiguous expansion of the Convention Center. The title of this section was “Notice of Intent to Circulate Petition.” Right off the bat I found several things wrong with this proposal. But before I go into that I want to discuss the MAJOR thing wrong with this proposal.

You see the Chargers think combining a Convention Center Expansion with a new stadium will make it more palatable to San Diego voters especially if the tax that will be raised to pay for it will be a tax on visitors not on locals. This will make it possible to wring money out of hotel tax increases to pay for a third of their stadium. But not only that, the $1.15 billion in bonds that the City (actually a subsidiary of the City – a Stadium Authority) will issue will pay the entire cost of the convention center annex. I don’t think a better combination of a football stadium with $600 million of affordable housing ever even crossed their minds.   [Read more…]

Will the Trump Campaign Wipe Out in California?

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The candidates running for the Republican presidential nomination are looking to the June 7th California primary to be the final showdown. One hundred seventy-two delegates are up for grabs, and there is a big-money push underway in the nation’s most populous state.

Donald Trump is now mathematically unable to seal the deal until the last day of the primary calendar. Senator Ted Cruz, who is holding rallies in Orange County and San Diego today, is ahead of the other candidates in terms of grassroots organizing and campaign infrastructure.

The contest to be the next GOP nominee has entered the professional political realm, as California is just too big to win with bluster and bullshit. To make matters worse, The Donald has seemingly gone into hiding after getting trounced in the Wisconsin primary and routed in the race for delegates in Colorado and South Carolina.   [Read more…]

Here’s to the Folks Who Demanded the Impossible and Brought Us the $15 an Hour Minimum Wage: The Labor Movement

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Time to give credit where credit is due. It was not the noblesse oblige of individual politicians or the Democratic Party that brought us the $15 dollar an hour minimum wage, it was the labor movement. Surely, the governors of New York and California and their fellow Democrats in those statehouses deserve credit for listening to the cry for economic justice and having the good sense to do the right thing, but the historic victory of the Fight for $15 that we have just celebrated would never have come to pass without the bold vision and prolonged struggle of working people standing together and demanding what many called impossible.

As Steven Greenhouse rightly noted in the New York Times, back in 2012 when the Fight for $15 began “many scoffed at their demand for $15 an hour as pie in the sky.” Nonetheless the labor movement led by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) pushed long and hard, starting at the local level.   [Read more…]

Immigrants Shouldn’t Be Locked Up for Being Poor

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By Michael Tan, Staff Attorney, Immigrants’ Rights Project, ACLU

In the federal criminal bail system, judges are required to consider someone’s financial ability to pay a bond and determine if alternative conditions of supervision — check-ins, travel restrictions — are enough to get the person to show up for court.

But such protections don’t apply to immigrants locked up in detention centers. The result is that people like Cesar Matias, a gay man from Honduras, end up jailed simply because they’re poor.

Matias fled to the United States more than a decade ago to escape the persecution he suffered because of his sexuality. He worked as a hair stylist and in a clothing factory in Los Angeles, renting a small, one-bedroom apartment.   [Read more…]

South Bay! Do You Know Who Your Federal Candidates Are?

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The June 7th election is coming soon and we in the South Bay want to know who’s running our government. First up, our federal government. Who will you see on the ballot?

Here’s a primer for the federal candidates…   [Read more…]

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