San Diego Free Press

Grassroots News & Progressive Views

Convention Center Expansion Facing Ballot Box Challenge as Costs Rise

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By Doug Porter

When it was decided that San Diego needed more convention space, local politicians and hoteliers came up with a creative funding plan bypassing the need for public electoral input. Now changes in the economy and delays in the construction are forcing consideration of “certain adjustments” that could end up increasing costs beyond what funds are expected to be available via that scheme.

Attorney Cory Briggs, along with good-government advocates Diane Coombs and Pedro Quiroz, Jr., have filed paperwork needed to launch an initiative to hold San Diego’s mayor and city council fully accountable for the cost overruns on the proposed Convention Center expansion.

NBC7 News reports city financial experts are deeply concerned over rising costs as construction is held up by legal challenges to the financing scheme make their way through the appellate courts. Those concerns were expressed to the City Council via a little noticed March 25 memo from CFO Mary Lewis and Tony Heinrichs Deputy Chief Operating Officer, Public Works/Ulilities.   [Read more…]

Who Gets the Last Laugh?

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By Norma Damashek / NumbersRunner

Watch the short video embedded in this story (inside).  It showcases our city’s top politicians strutting their stuff as hotshot Top Gun naval aviators.

It’s a droll skit.  You’ll chuckle watching the honorable men I recently wrote about as they bond in a boys-will-be-boys ritual.

But most of all, this doozy of a video spotlights why — in the hands of our current politicians and the people who prop them up — San Diego is destined to stagnate as an underachieving, plodding, uninspired, also-ran kind of city.   [Read more…]

Poem of the Day: “The End of Tracks (One Poet’s Journey Across America by Rail)” by Ishmael von Heidrick-Barnes

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Taking trains
across country
looking through myself in windows
sky-scraping clouds rolling past
wheeling clocks
ticking off time
engineers can’t keep

I am many stations of being
departing arriving
shut down boarded up
erupting main streets in small towns   [Read more…]

Distract, Deny, Distort and Deceive: The Fight Against A Minimum Wage Hike for San Diego

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By Doug Porter

City Council President Todd Gloria appeared before the press yesterday to announce a proposed November ballot initiative increasing San Diego’s minimum wage, along with a path for workers to accumulate paid sick days.

Gloria’s role in pushing this measure dates back to his call for a “meaningful” increase in the minimum wage during the State of the City speech in January. The big unanswered question for local scribes was “how much” would constitute “meaningful.” We now know the magic number to be $13.09, achieved in three stages by July 2017, should voters approve. But it’s negotiable.

In keeping with Plato’s dictum, “those who tell the stories also hold the power,” UT-San Diego (owned by a hospitality industry magnate, whose business model depends on low wages and government subsidies) is all over this today with a front page story, an “explainer” and, (ta-da!) an editorial denouncing Gloria and blaming California Democrats for the leftovers of the Great Recession.   [Read more…]

San Diego Doctors, California’s Nurses Announce Support of Propositions B & C

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June 3 ballot measure saves Barrio Logan’s community plan, improves community health

By Mia Bolton

Yesterday at the UCSD Medical Center in Hillcrest, a group of doctors, nurses and healthcare advocates announced their endorsement of the Yes on B & C campaign to protect children’s health in San Diego.

California Nurses Association members were there to support Yes on B & C that, if approved, will uphold the community and business supported, City Council approved Barrio Logan Community Plan Update.

In the first public media appearance by the campaign, the healthcare professionals reflected on Earth Day and the environmental health effects of polluting businesses next to schools, playgrounds and residences.

“Environmental health and justice in San Diego is being threatened,” said Georgette Gomez, of Environmental Health Coalition. “Kids in Barrio Logan have the same right to clean air and healthy neighborhoods as every other community in San Diego and the entire city should support Propositions B & C to protect all of our children’s health.”   [Read more…]

Obama May Grant Clemency to Thousands Convicted of Drug Violations

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The Obama Administration continues to rollback oppressive sentences for those with non-violent drug convictions

By Cliff Weathers / AlterNet

An unnamed White House official has told Yahoo! News that President Barack Obama is preparing to grant clemency to “hundreds, perhaps thousands” of people who have been imprisoned for non-violent drug violations.

This news comes a few months after the administration’s announcement that it has encouraged defense attorneys to suggest inmates who should be considered for early release from prison. This indicates that the Obama administration will continue in its efforts to curtail severe penalties in low-level drug cases.

Late last year, President Obama commuted the sentences of nine people serving time in federal prison for non-violent offenses involving crack cocaine, saying that they had been sentenced under an “unfair system.” There is a huge disparity in sentences handed down between crack and powder cocaine offenses. This has been reduced somewhat by the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010, which brought a long-sought reduction in the penalties for crack cocaine.   [Read more…]

Poem of the Day: “Vato Loco de la Maravilla” by Manuel J. Vélez

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By Brent E. Beltrán

In 1997 I co-founded the Chicano literary publishing company Calaca Press. In 1998 Calaca Press published it’s first book, a collection of poetry called Bus Stops and Other Poems by Manuel J. Vélez. Inside this sixty-four page tome, which included amazing artwork by Chicano Park muralist Victor Ochoa, was a poem called “Vato Loco de la Maravilla.” The poem, using caló (a code-switching hybrid language of Chicanos using English and Spanish in the same sentence and sometimes within the same word), highlights life inside the barrio and how stereotypes of barrio youth can be used to justify negative perceptions by “the judge, the news, and us.” Since the book came out the author has become a tenured Associate Professor of Chicana/Chicano Studies at Mesa College. Bus Stops and Other Poems may no longer be in print but the poem “Vato Loco de la Maravilla” remains with us in video form.   [Read more…]

Toxic Contaminant Releases in Barrio Logan Confirmed – Another Reason to Support the Community Plan

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By Doug Porter

The release of a statewide list of census tracts most impacted by pollution by the California Environmental Protection Agency (CEPA) will add to the controversy surrounding two ballot measures presented to San Diego voters in the upcoming election.

A story in today’s Los Angeles Times, along with a scalable map, provides a dramatic assessment of impacts by types of contaminants within neighborhoods throughout the state. The CEPA report gives advocates for the Barrio Logan Community Plan hard evidence supporting their contentions concerning health problems caused by the current mix of industrial and residential uses.

Opponents of the Community Plan have dismissed health claims about industrial pollution as the cause of asthma and other health problems, blaming nearby freeways for contaminants. The CEPA study clearly indicates a serious problem with the release of toxic contaminants– as opposed to diesel particulates– into the air specific to the Barrio Logan area.   [Read more…]

San Diego City Works Press Celebrates Its 10-Year Anniversary!

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By Staff

Ten years ago, Jim Miller and Kelly Mayhew co-founded City Works Press, a nonprofit publisher that they edit in concert with the San Diego Writers Collective. Both Jim and Kelly are well known to the San Diego Free Press community.

Jim has written a weekly article for his Under the Perfect Sun column since we launched the site in 2012 and prior to that he submitted articles to the OB Rag, our sister publication. Kelly wrote a series of articles about Golden Hill restaurants when SDFP provided a neighborhood focus on that community. Throughout the years this couple has hosted myriad events that benefit progressive organizations in San Diego. This Saturday, April 26, they will be hosting a celebration and fundraiser for City Works Press, the only press of its kind in San Diego.
  [Read more…]

California State Assembly Bill AB 1513 Will Take Away Tenants’ Rights

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By Michelle Luellen/ALC

Just as we start to think that maybe foreclosure crisis is beginning to improve in California, the California State Assembly threatens to pass AB 1513. If passed, AB 1513 would create a legal loophole for extra- judicial eviction. Property owners would no longer have to take people to court to have tenants removed from their houses.

Under changes to law proposed by AB 1513, a property owner who claims that the house was empty of residents at the time they came to own it, can remove all residents who are not specifically named on a lease simply by declaring them to be “Unlawful Occupants,” claiming that they do not have permission to be there.
  [Read more…]

Poem of the Day: “Ode to a Composting Toilet” by Sharon Olds

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“Poetry is the music of being human.”

By Anna Daniels

Sharon Olds has the ability to write poetry about “unpoetic” life events with a provocative boldness. Her poem The Pope’s Penis immediately comes to mind. The results are nevertheless quite poetic in their use of form and language. She is also known for her versatility. Her poems about familial relationships can sizzle and crackle with rage and anxiety. Olds’ poems about sex are about more than what bodies do, although she describes that. Sex is wrapped in often disjunctive raw emotions. It is that coupling of body and feeling that shocks.   [Read more…]

Happy Earth Day! I’ll Take Some Carbon Emissions with a Side of Hate

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By Doug Porter

I remember Earth Day back in 1970. It was a bi-partisan affair – Democrats AND Republicans. It even included hippies AND radicals (a big divide back in those days), although lefties were a little suspicious that this national event focusing on the environment was a plot to sap the the energy of the anti-war movement.

Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson (D) and California Congressman Pete McCloskey (R) were the public face of the movement which was focused on a day of national teach-ins. The idea was to make environmental protections part of the national consciousness. It worked.

The events around the country on Aprill 22, 1970 spurred the creation of the United States Environmental Protection Agency and passage of the Clean Air, Clean Water, and Endangered Species Acts.   [Read more…]

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