San Diego Free Press

Grassroots News & Progressive Views

Lifeguard Ed Harris to Replace Kevin Faulconer on City Council

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By Doug Porter

Three Republican members of the San Diego City Council joined two of their Democratic colleagues to appoint Point Loma resident Ed Harris yesterday to serve out the remaining eight months of newly elected Mayor Kevin Faulconer’s term.

Harris, who heads the city’s lifeguard union, received support from council members Lorie Zapf, Mark Kersey, Scott Sherman, Sherri Lightner and David Alvarez. Democrats will now have a 6-3 majority, theoretically giving them enough votes to override any vetoes from San Diego’s Republican mayor.

The appointed councilman was sworn in immediately following the vote. Harris is prohibited by the city charter from running for election to the seat, so he must step down when his term ends in early December.   [Read more…]

It’s Equal Pay Day! Republican Incoherence, Executive Orders and How to Get a Raise

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By Anna Daniels

Republicans have been having a hard time stringing words together when it comes to explaining why they don’t support pay equity for women. It’s a straightforward concept–equal pay for equal work. Yet it takes women until April 8 to catch up with men’s earnings from the previous year. The median earnings for a woman working a full time job is about 77% of a man’s. That figure drops for women of color and it hasn’t budged in more than a decade.

President Obama’s first action upon assuming office in 2009 was to sign the Lily Ledbetter Fair Wage Act. This act restored protection against wage discrimination that was stripped away by the Supreme Court’s decision in Ledbetter v Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. The act extended the period of time for employees to file claims for wages lost because of discrimination. Yet wage discrimination on the basis of gender continues to exist.   [Read more…]

The Wild Widows Return to Old Town Part 2: Cygnet Theatre

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By Judi Curry

Following our breakfast at O’Hungry’s, Irene and I left Ro and went up to Ft. Rosecrans to visit our husbands. Irene made the comment that the only good thing about our husbands passing was that we met each other. When it is our time to leave this earth, Irene and I will be only a few rows apart and will be able to still converse with each other.

Following our visit to the cemetery, we went back to Old Town to the Cygnet Theatre to see the play Spring Awakening. Ro was the House Manager on this particular day and could not watch the play with us but will see it at a later time.

Spring Awakening is a winner of 8 Tony Awards including Best Musical. It is based on a play that was originally written in 1891, but it is so contemporary it could have been written in our time.   [Read more…]

Poem of the Day: “Homage to My Hips” by Lucille Clifton

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The Poet as Mentor and Model

By Staff

A poet’s audience often includes other poets. If you want to write good poetry, you need to read good poetry and a lot of it. Then you need to read more. It’s not just about the writing. Poet and short story writer Aafa Michael Weaver wrote this about Lucille Clifton:

Rooted in that vernacular consciousness and endowed with an encompassing intelligence and supremely keen intuition, Lucille was also as originally American as the blues and jazz. She resisted the homage to western tradition with its Athenian origins. In her work, antiquity is African but not Afro-centric. In the distinctness of her poetic project she gave us a black woman’s confessional lyric that is as celestial as it is earthbound. She wrote openly of the female body, openly and defiantly, and she wrote about the pressurized space of a black woman as a survivor of childhood trauma. In doing so she gave me a model that would take me two decades to know, and the process of “knowing” is the key to that pressurized space. … “Two Puffy Afros Going Down the Road: On Lucille Clifton’s Influence,” The California Journal of Poetics.   [Read more…]

McCutcheon, the Majority, and the Challenge of Our Time

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The McCutcheon ruling points us to the defining struggle of today’s generation.

Richard Eskow / AlterNet

The Supreme Court’s McCutcheon ruling will be remembered as a decisive battle in a determined and wealthy minority’s war against the popular will. It is not the first such battle, nor will it be the last. And the people will continue to lose — unless and until the rules of engagement are changed.

One compelling way to look at this ruling is by contrasting its immediate and long-term effects with the American people’s aspirations for their government. They are at cross purposes. Even before this ruling, 64 percent of those polled believed that our country’s economic rules unfairly favor the rich. This ruling will rig the game even further.   [Read more…]

Poem of the Day: “This Is Not a Poem” by Will Falk

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First, there’s the world. Then, there’s poetry.

By Will Falk

Editor’s Note: Will Falk contacted San Diego Free Press back in December of 2013. He wrote that he had recently moved to San Diego and was interested in submitting essays and poetry. Since that first contact it is unusual for a week to go by without receiving a submission from Will in one genre or the other. His essays have attracted a wide readership; they are often picked up on reddit and reposted on other sites. It is often harder however for poets to discern the extent and nature of the audience for their poems. So we asked Will why his first passion is to write poetry. His response is in his poet’s manifesto below. This is Not a Poem follows.

First, there’s sunshine, clouds, empty skies, and lightning storms. First, there’s wind kissing your breast, chills chapping your lips, and dew on your sleeping bag before the dawn. First, there’s salmon swimming upstream, heron stalking bluegill, and grizzly bear brothers wrestling. First, there’s quick clean water chasing over pebbles, ice cracking under a spring sun, and sand dragging over desert floors.   [Read more…]

At the Behest of the Dirty Food Lobby, Congressman Peters Joins GOP in 55th Attempt to Sink Obamacare

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By Doug Porter

Congressman Scott Peters and seventeen other Democrats responded to the clarion call of the dirty food lobby last week by joining with House Republicans in their 55th attempt to to scale back or repeal the Affordable Care Act.

Following intensive lobbying and publicity events by the American Hotel and Lodging Association (hotels won’t be able to provide 24 hour service any more) and the National Restaurant Association (we’ll simply cut employee hours) the House of Representatives voted last week 248 to 179 to change the law’s definition of full-time work from 30 hours a week to 40 hours.

A report by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says about one million people would lose employer-backed coverage and the number of uninsured would climb by nearly 500,000 if the law’s work definitions were changed.   [Read more…]

Supreme Insanity: How the High Court is Killing Your Democracy

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By Jim Miller

Last week was a very bad week for American democracy. With the McCutcheon v. FEC decision, the Supreme Court of the United States dealt a sweeping blow to existing campaign finance laws that seek to limit the influx of money in American politics.

In the wake of the Citizens United case that opened the door for big spending by Super PACS and dark money, this ruling takes another step towards plutocracy by striking down overall limits on campaign contributions. By doing so McCutcheon rudely thrusts us further into a new Gilded Age where our economy and our politics are thoroughly dominated by a small minority of the opulent.

Senator Bernie Sanders put it best when he observed that, “The Supreme Court is paving the way toward an oligarchic form of society in which a handful of billionaires like the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson will control our political process.” And that’s why it’s increasingly hard to get anything good for everyday people done in Washington D.C., even when a healthy majority of Americans approve of a given policy.   [Read more…]

Dear Parents, You Are Being Lied To

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By Jennifer Raff / Violent Metaphors

In light of recent outbreaks of measles and other vaccine preventable illnesses, and the refusal of anti-vaccination advocates to acknowledge the problem, I thought it was past time for this post.

Dear parents,

You are being lied to. The people who claim to be acting in the best interests of your children are putting their health and even lives at risk.   [Read more…]

Poem of the Day: Touch/Palpar by Octavio Paz

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By Anna Daniels

During National Poetry Month, San Diego Free Press will be publishing a poem of the day. San Diego has poets, some very familiar and others not so familiar. We will be posting their works on Saturday and Sunday, while you are enjoying late coffee and oranges in a sunny chair.

During the week we will draw upon poetry from other places and times. Thursdays however, are reserved for Ishmael von Heindrick- Barnes video/poem series for SDFP called Geo-Poetic Spaces. We will also keep our eyes open for poems from SDFP contributor Will Falk.

Today we bring you Octavio Paz. The one hundredth anniversary of Octavio Paz’s birth was this past March 31st. The Mexican born poet was a prolific poet and essayist. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1990.   [Read more…]

The Wild Widows Return to Old Town Part 1: O’Hungry’s Restaurant

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By Judi Curry
For those of you have read my articles before you know that I belong to two support groups that I joined after my husband died. Strangely enough, today (April 5th) was Irene’s birthday; it was Ro’s anniversary, and it was also my anniversary. Rather than stay home and feel sorry for ourselves, we decided to make a day of visiting Old Town – as we did several months ago. This is a synopsis of our visit.

We were on our way to the Old Town Mexican Café when we crossed the street in front of O’Hungry’s. It looked virtually empty – strange for 11:00am on a Saturday morning, so we decided to stop in and eat there. I’ll tell you – it is hard to beat the prices of their breakfasts.
  [Read more…]

Poem of the Day: “Wake in Rage” by Viet Mai

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By Staff

It’s National Poetry Month. SDFP is recognizing San Diego poets this month. Viet Mai has been performing spoken word around San Diego since 2001. As a member of the 2013 ELEVATED! Slam Team, Viet represented San Diego to rank 4th place at the National Poetry Slam in Boston/Cambridge/Sommerville, MA.

Drawing upon his formal studies at UCSD in Ethnic Studies and Music as well as his interest in Hip-Hop lyrics, Viet’s mission is to collaborate with community members to educate, motivate, and inspire the youth through spoken word, art, and culture.   [Read more…]

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