San Diego Free Press

Grassroots News & Progressive Views

Raise Up San Diego – Do the Right Thing About the Minimum Wage

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By Jim Miller

These are still tough times for most working people in the United States. We are in the midst of a new Gilded Age of historic economic inequality. The rich are carving out a bigger slice of the pie at the expense of nearly everyone else in America. As I noted in my column last week, corporate profits are at their highest level in 85 years and employee compensation is at the lowest level it has been in 65 years.

And this is happening despite the fact that the average American worker is more educated and more productive than ever before. The result of all this is a declining middle class, economic instability, and the hijacking of our democracy by moneyed interests.

Here in San Diego, we have one of the highest costs of living in the United States, and the picture for workers at the bottom end of the economic spectrum is grim. More than 300,000 households in our city have incomes too low to meet basic expenses, and our tourism industry has the largest number of employees with incomes below the Self-Sufficiency Standard with more than half of those workers failing to make ends meet.
  [Read more…]

Poem of the Day: “Just Another Day” by Sandra María Esteves

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Introduction by Anna Daniels

Sandra María Esteves is a madrina–founder– of the Nuyorican poetry movement that began operating out of East Village cafés in the 1970’s. She describes herself as a “Puerto Rican-Dominican-Boriqueña- Quisqueyana-Taino-African-American,” born and raised in the Bronx. Her explorations of identify are as informed by the Civil Rights and liberation movements of minorities and women as by her own personal heritage.   [Read more…]

My Mellow Birthday

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By Ernie McCray

I like my birthdays mellow and this year’s was just that, a little time with my querida and some of my family at her house and before they arrived I stretched out in my easy chair and listened to Lila Downs sing corridos in ways only she can. Oh, that voice of hers was born in some special place.

Lila warmed my insides and made me want to dance, so I got my 76 year old body up and put some Maceo on. The Maceo James Brown used to call out to when he yelled to the beat, “Macio! Hit me! Take me to the bridge!” when he wanted to take the jam to a different groove, making everybody want to move.

And Maceo had me getting down like I was the hippest coolest stepper in town. My mood, at this point, was easy and sweet, and that directed how I moved my feet, as I enjoyed my special day.

  [Read more…]

Lies and Deceit: One Neighbor’s Deportation Sheds Light on the Inhumanity of US Immigration Enforcement

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By Daniela Maria Ugaz / Upside Down World

I remember jolting awake at 6 AM. Still dark. Someone was banging on my neighbors’ door. I could hear whispering, then screaming. When I opened my eyes, just like that, I made out two, three, four distinct voices.

Months later, my neighbor, who I’ll call Beto, told me there must have been 10 to 12 police officers at his door that morning. They were definitely police and not Immigration. The squad car parked in front was stamped with the LAPD logo and the officers’ uniforms were neatly labeled POLICE. And yet this was an immigration raid. It had all the trappings of an immigration raid, from the hour it was conducted, to the defining fact that Beto, along with many other migrants in our LA neighborhood, were targeted that day for being in the country illegally. But we didn’t realize this until much later.   [Read more…]

“A Moment of Silence” by Emmanuel Ortiz

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By Emmanuel Ortiz

On the first anniversary of 9/11 activist poet Emmanuel Ortiz released a poem that went around the world and back. It starts by asking for a moment of silence for the victims of 9/11 and then goes on to ask for moments of silence for victims of American aggression. “This is not a peace poem,/Not a poem for forgiveness./This is a justice poem,/A poem for never forgetting.” Emmanuel Ortiz’s poem is an indictment of American foreign policy and it is reposted by San Diego Free Press.   [Read more…]

Psychedelic Mushrooms Could Cure Anxiety for Cancer Patients

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A New York University study is using psilocybin to help patients overcome the fear of death.

By April M. Short / AlterNet

When O.M. was 21 he was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma. He was a pre-med student at the time. His first reaction was denial, followed by an overwhelming and lasting anxiety, as described in an April 22 Atlantic article by Roc Morin. Even after six rounds of chemotherapy helped O.M. kick the cancer, he was plagued with a devastating fear that the disease might return. He checked his lymph nodes so often to see if they’d grown that he developed callouses on his neck.

He experienced this debilitating end-of-life anxiety from the moment he was diagnosed until the day he ingested psilocybin, extracted from hallucinogenic mushrooms while laying on a psychiatrist’s couch during a New York University study. O.M. is one of 35 study participants, all of whom suffered from severe anxiety due to cancer.

The double-blind, placebo-controlled pilot study, which is still ongoing, looks at the potentials for psilocybin to treat anxiety and other psychological distress stemming from  advanced cancer. The second half of the study will look at the effect of psilocybin on “pain perception, depression, existential/psychospiritual distress, attitudes toward disease progression, quality of life, and spiritual/mystical states of consciousness.”

O.M. told the Atlantic that when he ate the mushrooms, it was “like a switch went on.”   [Read more…]

A Difficult Decision: Saying Goodbye to My Dog Buddy after a Wonderful Ten Years

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By Judi Curry

As a mother, an Office Manager, a School Principal I have been called on to make some difficult decisions. But no decision has been more difficult that the one I had to make this morning. The heartache and grief supersedes anything I have  ever had to do.

I have had the most wonderful companion for over 10 years.  He was born on my birthday many years after I came into this world.  He was always so happy to see me; he always had a smile on his face; he never questioned decisions I made; never argued with me, and made me feel better after having a difficult day.  That is why this decision is so hard to make.  Of course I am talking about my Golden Retriever.   [Read more…]

Poem of the Day: “Ajo Trabajo” by Laurie Macrae

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By Anna Daniels

Ajo Trabajo is from Laurie Macrae’s chapbook Your Place or Mine? published in San Diego by Geronimo Press. This collection of New Mexico poems conveys specific geographical settings which are often filled with shifting light and unexpected bursts of color. The tonal quality of the poems derives from the poet’s personal connection to the landscape. In some of the poems that connection derives from memory and longing. In Ajo Trabajo that connection is gloriously in the moment.   [Read more…]

Orca Profiles in Captivity: No. 3 of the San Diego 10

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Third in a Series

 By Cara Wilson-Granat / OBRag

“Lots of people talk to animals. Not very many listen, though. That’s the problem.” –Benjamin Hoff, The Tao of Pooh

This is the third in a series of ten in which we meet one of the San Diego 10 orcas and hear from an advocate who continues to be one of the voices of these imprisoned voiceless, never stopping until the whole world listens. (Here are Orca Profile #1 and #2.)

Prisoner #3: Ulises
Age: About 36

Ulises, the oldest male orca in captivity, and the second largest (the largest being Tilikum, 12k pounds) is also a good candidate for a full return to the ocean. This hefty, Icelandic orca is 19 feet 6 inches (5.94 m), weighing 9,200 pounds (4,200 kg). Easily discernible, one can recognize him as not only being the largest captive whale imprisoned in Sea World San Diego, but he has the tallest dorsal; it stands straight up and droops ever so slightly to the right at the top.   [Read more…]

What We Lose When We Rip the Heart Out of Arts Education

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The course was speech, taught by Mr. Brannon. I was a freshman at a junior college just 15-20 miles from my home. Despite the college’s close proximity to my home, my father insisted I live on campus. But that class and those first two years of college were more than living on campus; they were the essential beginning of my life.

In one of the earliest classes, Mr. Brannon read aloud and gave us a copy of [in Just-] by E.E, Cummings. I imagine that moment was, for me, what many people describe as a religious experience. That was more than 30 years ago, but I own two precious books that followed from that day in class: Cummings’ Complete Poems and Selected Poems. Several years later, Emily Dickinson‘s Complete Poems would join my commitment to reading every poem by those poets who made me respond over and over, I wish I had written that.

But my introduction to Cummings was more than just finding the poetry I wanted to read; it was when I realized I was a poet. Now, when the words j was young&happy come to me, I know there is work to do—I recognize the gift of poetry.   [Read more…]

Post Office Privatization Deal in the Works: Activists Take to the Streets

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The Postal Service plans to replace well-paid postal workers with low-wage Staples employees.

By Jodie Gummow / AlterNet

“U.S. mail is not for sale!” This was the hard-hitting message of hundreds of local activists who joined forces across the country in a national day of action protesting a privatization deal between the U.S. Postal Services and Staples.

The USPS pilot program establishing unsecured postal counters in more than 80 Staples stores in four geographic areas began late last year.

In response, American Postal Workers Union (APWU) members and associates rallied outside Staples stores around the country demanding an end to the deal which they say is aimed at replacing good, living-wage postal jobs with low-wage, high-turnover jobs filled with untrained Staples employees. They say it may eventually lead to layoffs and the closing of post offices.   [Read more…]

San Diego’s Maritime Industry Calls the Cops on Peaceful Protestors

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Five Barrio Logan residents and supporters stand their ground

By Brent E. Beltrán

I wasn’t planning on writing a column today but since maritime industry called the cops on my two year old son, his grandma, two others and myself, I changed my mind.

On Thursday morning I got up early. The day before, I found out that maritime industry was going to hold a press conference at 10:30am at R.E. Staite Engineering near the shipyards. This was only about 6 blocks or so away from my Barrio Logan apartment.

I’ve been itching to do a protest against maritime industry and their opposition to the Barrio Logan Community Plan Update. With them holding their presser within walking distance I knew I had to do something.

With the press conference taking place on a weekday morning, and less than a day’s notice to quietly get the word out (catching them off guard would be key), I knew there would not be a large turnout. Nonetheless, I had to do something, even if it was just my son Dino and myself.   [Read more…]

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