San Diego Free Press

Grassroots News & Progressive Views

A Surprise Candidate for City Council in District 1

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The future makeup of San Diego’s city council took an interesting turn yesterday as Bruce Lightner declared his intention to run for the District 1 seat being vacated by termed-out Sheri Lightner, who just happens to be his wife.

Sheri Lightener is a Democrat, who at times has been willing to play nice with Republicans on the council. Bruce Lightner is a Republican, who has an adversarial history with Ray Ellis, the other GOP candidate in the race along with others in the party hierarchy. In short, he’s a wild card.

Prior to this announcement the contest for D1 was shaping up to be the battle for partisan control of the council. When Joe LaCava dropped out of the race in January, Democrat Barbara Bry was left with a one-on-one contest headed into the June primary, which historically has brought out more right-leaning voters. Republican Ellis was raising and spending more money.   [Read more…]

Imperial Beach OKs Medical Marijuana …

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Imperial Beach again OKs medical marijuana to be cultivated by certain individuals for certain patients, while continuing to ban commercial production and local dispensaries. IB’s sister cities of National City and Chula Vista in recent months also voted against medicinal marijuana shops.   [Read more…]

When Does the Violation of Women’s Bodies Become a ‘Red Line’?

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If people divide their understanding of militarized violence into normal and not normal, acceptable and not acceptable, it makes a terrible kind of sense: violence against women has been “normalized.”

By Lauren Wolfe / Common Dreams

Two years ago I was on vacation in Maine when I started getting really, really mad. I’d been working to track sexualized violence in the Syrian war for a long time and had gotten very little response from policy makers despite many meetings with those in our government and the UK’s and at the UN.

Cases piled up, and response remained nil. And now suddenly President Obama was responding—but not to cases of rape, or torture, but to the possible use of chemical weapons. It was his so-called “red line”—the thing that would make him do something.   [Read more…]

What’s at Stake in Apple’s Privacy Fight

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By John Kiriakou / OtherWords

Civil liberties fans in the United States recently got an unlikely champion: the CEO of Apple.

In a high-profile spat with the White House, Tim Cook has emerged as a leading spokesperson against the Obama administration’s efforts to weaken Americans’ constitutional protections and civil liberties.

In particular, Cook is fighting a federal order that would force Apple to create software to bypass the iPhone’s security features — and give the FBI access to the phone and everything on it. He sent a letter to all Apple users explaining the company’s position and promising to keep up the fight.   [Read more…]

Trumpaggedon: The Right Confronts Its Love Child

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The annual Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) conference is underway. Billing itself as the largest conservative conference in the country, it has in past years served as a political fashion show for politicians of the right wing persuasion.

This time it’s different. CPAC amounts to a day of reckoning for conservatives. Will they pledge allegiance to The Donald? Or will they fight on? A history of generous donations to the sponsoring American Conservative Union has apparently greased the wheels for a Trump appearance on Saturday morning.   [Read more…]

Vertigo

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Spinning a web,
a wisp, a hair, a thread,
flings from her matted head
spinning, spinning,
nauseous with terror,
I watch helplessly
as her skin
slides along that sliver that binds us.   [Read more…]

Dolores Huerta Joins Educators to Appeal Meritless Vergara Ruling

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By Steve Smith / Labor’s Edge

This morning (Thursday, February 25th) in Los Angeles, civil rights icon Dolores Huerta joined teachers and parents to appeal the flawed ruling in the Vergara case that would undercut public education to the detriment of the state’s 6 million students.

Stating that Judge Treu’s decision striking down five California Education Code provisions “is without support in law or fact,” the speakers predicted that Treu’s numerous errors will be clearly visible to the appeals court, and the earlier Superior Court judgment will be overturned. Treu’s decision was stayed pending appeal. But if upheld it would cause great harm to public education.

Huerta, renowned civil rights leader, founder of the Dolores Huerta Foundation and co-founder of the National Farm Workers Association, talked about the importance of teachers’ having a strong voice for students and described how the backers of the Vergara case, a group deceptively named Students Matter, misrepresented details of the case in an attempt to get her support.   [Read more…]

Cable News Now: All White, All the Time?

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MSNBC pulls plug on Melissa Harris-Perry show

By Thandisizwe Chimurenga / Daily Kos

Cable network MSNBC might be going back to “all white, all the time.” That’s what the Washington Post seems to be implying with their headline, “#MSNBCSoWhite.” Unless you’ve been under a rock, you should know that Melissa Harris-Perry, the professor and author most recently known for her news and public affairs show on MSNBC, has effectively ended her relationship with the network.   [Read more…]

Occupy Hillary Clinton’s Wall Street Speeches

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By Marjorie Cohn / Common Dreams

Hillary Clinton refuses to make public the transcripts of her speeches to big banks, three of which were worth a total of $675,000 to Goldman Sachs. She says she would release the transcripts “if everybody does it, and that includes Republicans.” After all, she complained, “Why is there one standard for me, and not for everybody else?”

As the New York Times editorial board , “The only different standard here is the one Mrs. Clinton set for herself, by personally earning $11 million in 2014 and the first quarter of 2015 for 51 speeches to banks and other groups and industries.”

Hillary is not running in the primaries against Republicans, who, the Times noted, “make no bones about their commitment to Wall Street deregulation and tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.”

She is running against Bernie Sanders, “a decades-long critic of Wall Street excess who is hardly a hot ticket on the industry speaking circuit,” according to the Times.   [Read more…]

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? San Diego Democrats Set to Shoot Themselves in the Foot Again

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News of a credible Democrat entering the race for mayor of San Diego barely made it onto social media yesterday before intra-party sniping began. The political party with majority registration in America’s Finest City couldn’t even field a candidate, and now its past bad behavior is threatening to sabotage a chance at salvation.

This should have been a serious bump in the road to Kevin Faulconer’s primary coronation, namely that a third well-known candidate made the 50%+1 threshold more difficult, with former City Council member Ed Harris jumping into the mayoral race, according to papers filed with the city clerk.

Running as a Democrat, Harris joins independent activist and former state legislator Lori Saldaña as a second major candidate running against the incumbent mayor. The long time lifeguard and union leader was appointed to the council representing District 2 in 2014 following Faulconer’s ascension to the top job in a special election.   [Read more…]

How the Little People Crushed a Corporate Bully

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Preserving Carlsbad’s Future the Right Way

Citizen activism triumphed over corporate greed last week when Carlsbad voters defeated Measure A. If approved it would have transformed the quiet beauty of one of the city’s three pristine lagoons into the home of a Los Angeles-style shopping center/tourist magnet.

The 53 percent voter turnout surpassed SD County’s 45 percent in the 2014 gubernatorial election. The Citizens for North County activist group opposing the measure raised $115,000 in donations to produce 20,362 NO votes. That’s less than $6 per voter.
  [Read more…]

Berkeley Votes To Boost Co-op Economy In The Face Of Gentrification

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A growing number of cities are investing in co-ops to keep money local and neighborhoods affordable.

By Araz Hachadourian / Yes! Magazine

In 1971, the owners of The Cheese Board turned their Berkeley, California, mom-and-pop shop into a co-op, where they became worker-owners alongside their former employees. Over the years, more co-ops branched out from the bakery, forming the Arizmendi Association of Cooperatives, a group of six bakeries and a development and support collective in the San Francisco Bay Area. Today, The Cheese Board Collective, as it’s now called, has an espresso bar, a pizzeria, a menu of nearly 400 cheeses, and dozens of well-paying jobs.

Cathy Goldsmith has worked as a baker there for 21 years. Like the other worker-owners, she also has duties in human resources, accounts receivable, and community relations. She estimates that she makes about twice as much as she would make at other local bakeries where her responsibilities would be more limited.   [Read more…]

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