San Diego Free Press

Grassroots News & Progressive Views

Vladimir P’s Got Nothing on Bonnie D – Spin to Win Charged in Deputy DAs’ Unanimous Endorsement

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By Doug Porter

Vladimir Putin may know how to rig an election, as his minions probably did in pulling off 97% approval for Crimean secession from the Ukraine this past weekend, but District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis know how to spin one: don’t bother with actual votes, just claim a unanimous victory.

Following a February vote from the San Diego Deputy District Attorneys Association, the Dumanis campaign issued a press release declaring, “Deputy District Attorneys Announce Unanimous Endorsement of DA Bonnie Dumanis, ” followed by “BREAKING: Deputy DAs unanimously endorse Dumanis” on Twitter.

UT-San Diego ran with a story saying that the board of the Deputy DAs Association unanimously endorsed the incumbent.   [Read more…]

Putting Our Financial Well Being Above Our Children’s Ability to Survive a Warming Planet

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By John Lawrence and Frank Thomas

Each year there are more extreme weather events not only in the US but all over the world. Most scientists agree that, as more carbon dioxide is pumped into the air and the gaseous composition of the atmosphere is changed, extreme weather events are more likely to happen.

As the earth warms due to greenhouse gasses (GHGs), polar and glacier ice melts and more moisture is held in the atmosphere which is deposited in torrents of precipitation. The Arctic permafrost and subsea waters contain over 1.7 trillion tons of methane which will be released as the earth warms further. This could lead to deadly injections of highly toxic methane reserves into the atmosphere in the relatively near future.

Just a 3% release over a short time, or 50 billion tons of methane, is the equivalent of 1 trillion tons of CO2 emissions … sufficient to ecologically destroy Mother Earth.   [Read more…]

Haven’t We Met Before?

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By Norma Damashek

In response to requests I received for the names of people I alluded to in last week’s commentary Too Many Years of Inbreeding I’m providing a list of Mayor Kevin Faulconer’s recent appointees, plus a brief description of who they are.

Many names will be familiar to those of you who have been following city affairs over the years.  For others, the people on this list may not ring a bell; like the city’s water and sewer pipes they tend to operate beneath the surface.  But their organizational interconnectedness and crossovers are readily identifiable by one and all.   [Read more…]

My Hometown as a Basketball Town

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By Ernie McCray

I just finished a nice read, Tucson a Basketball Town. It was written by Arizona hoop legends, Bob Elliott and Eric Money.

They, in a nice informative way, remind Arizona basketball fans that before Lute Olson came along and took the program to somewhat unbelievable heights that there was an era, in the 70’s, their era, that Tucson became a basketball town.

They’re so right and the man who made it all happen from the coaching end was one of the most charismatic and self-confident human beings I have ever had the privilege of knowing: Fred “The Fox” Snowden, the first black coach for a major school in a major NCAA conference. He brought in players like Bob and Eric and others who collectively played basketball at a level that had never been seen in my hometown.   [Read more…]

More Emphatically Pro-Choice With Every Pregnancy

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By Molly Westerman / First the Egg

Safe, legal, affordable abortion access is something I’ve felt strongly about since I was a child. I don’t remember quite what brought twelve-year-old, southern, Catholic me to feel that way: it was not exactly taught at my school! But it felt big in my heart, a revulsion at the idea of forced pregnancy and at the rhetoric of the “pro-life” movement around me.

Many years later, I have had two babies. I have held my breath hoping not to miscarry two very-much-wanted pregnancies, hoping to have healthy little humans join our family, and I have been so lucky to avoid unwanted pregnancies and to have unambiguously healthy planned ones. I have felt two beloved fetuses moving inside my body.

It’s interesting to me to hear how individuals’ gut feelings and beliefs about reproductive justice–and specifically about abortion and fetuses–are affected by personal experiences of pregnancy. People seem to expect for folks who’ve birthed babies to question whether terminating a pregnancy is acceptable, at least at an emotional level, as a reaction to All the Love and All the Cute (of which, certainly, there is a great deal).   [Read more…]

The Sound of One Fin Flapping – San Diego’s SeaWorld ‘Debate’

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By Doug Porter

A couple of weeks back Assemblyman Richard Bloom introduced AB 2140, legislation that would put a stop to the practice of using orcas as performers, along with ending captive breeding programs and trafficking of the species in California.

SeaWorld, which has been in major damage control mode since release of the Blackfish documentary last fall, has seized upon this opportunity to bring its story to the media. There has been a virtual blitzkreig of coverage about the many wonderful accomplishments of this salt water-based amusement park.

Given that the San Diego City Council will most likely be declaring March to be “Sea World San Diego’s 50th Anniversary Month” later this week, we’ll take a look at some of the local reportage and commentary on this subject today.   [Read more…]

Rebel Green and Bacchanalia: Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

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By Jim Miller

Today lots of people will try to skip out of work early to grab a pint of Guinness at a bar or perhaps find something green to wear whether they are Irish or not. St. Patrick’s Day, for most of us, is just a fun day to party, watch a parade, or listen to some Irish music. For better or worse, even if we aren’t getting drunk, we don’t think that much about it. Nonetheless, there are still some interesting bits of history behind the holiday.

The actual origins of the “Wearing of the Green” are political, dating back to 1798 when Irish soldiers wore green uniforms on March 17th to signal solidarity with the Society of United Irishmen whose aim it was to end British rule in Ireland. That’s when the song and the color green became synonymous with both rebellion and St. Patrick’s Day.

Before that in the United States, the first official St. Patrick’s Day came to be when George Washington proclaimed the holiday as a way to thank Irish soldiers fighting for the cause of American Independence in 1780. But there were celebrations before that in the United States dating back to as early as 1756 when the first St. Patty’s bash was held at the Crown and Thistle tavern in New York City.   [Read more…]

Escondido Charter Proposal Offers Few Benefits, Many Hazards

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By Rick Moore /Escondido Democratic Club

City charters offer few benefits and many hazards, according to Kyle Krahel-Frolander, who spoke to Escondido Democrats at their March 2014 meeting. Krahel-Frolander is a Community Outreach Coordinator for Smart Cities Prevail, a California non-profit that provides information, research and education on how prevailing wage standards on public construction projects benefit taxpayers, local governments and working families.

Krahel-Frolander, who hails from Oceanside and worked as an aide to Council member Esther Sanchez when that city changed to charter status, monitors charter city proposals in Southern California.

Most California cities are created under state law and are known as “general law” cities. About one-third of California cities, including most larger cities, switched to charter city status in the past, when there were significant differences between the powers granted to charter cities.   [Read more…]

Mesa College Chicana/o Studies to Dedicate Gracia Molina de Pick Glass Gallery

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Third Annual Feminist Lecture Series to Follow

By Brent E. Beltrán

On Thursday, March 20 the Mesa College Chicana/o Studies Department will unveil and dedicate the Gracia Molina de Pick Glass Gallery and present their third annual Gracia Molina de Pick Feminist Lecture Series. The glass gallery and lecture series are named after the co-founder of Mesa’s Chicana/o Studies Department.

In 2013 Mrs. Molina de Pick donated $80,000 to Mesa to create the Gracia Molina de Pick Endowment Fund in support of advancing the campus’ Chicana/o Studies Department. Since then the department has created the lecture series in her honor and will now dedicate the glass gallery in the G-Building Rotunda in her name.   [Read more…]

Overcoming Environmental Discrimination in San Diego’s Barrio Logan

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Video by Journey to Planet Earth
Intro by Brent E. Beltrán

With the battle looming over the future of Barrio Logan, due to Maritime Industry’s refusal to accept the Barrio Logan Community Plan update, I feel it is necessary to give voters of the city of San Diego a little history of Barrio Logan and highlight the issues residents face. In June, eligible San Diego voters will go to the polls to vote on wether to approve the community plan or reject it.

Over the next few weeks I will post a video on Sundays that highlights the community of Barrio Logan and the beauty within San Diego’s most historic barrio.

This week’s video, Future Conditional: Overcoming Environmental Discrimination in San Diego’s Barrio Logan, is narrated by actor Matt Damon and documents the challenges Barrio Logan residents face when trying to overcome environmental discrimination in their community.   [Read more…]

UCSD Graduate Student Workers Call Strike

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By Daniel Gutiérrez

Graduate students affiliated with United Auto Workers Local 2865 at UC San Diego have announced a two-day strike for Wednesday, April 3, and Thursday, April 4. The dates selected for the strike fall on the first week of the school’s Spring Quarter.

The UAW Local 2865, which represents over 12,000 graduate student workers across the campuses of the University of California, voted and passed the strike. UAW Local 2865 has been in contract negotiations with the University of California for nearly a year. Union representatives have been meeting with labor-relations delegates for months trying to secure better wages for graduate student workers and improve work-place conditions.

The University has been hostile towards any advancement in workers’ rights, despite ever-growing expenditures on management. Despite the fact that many of the school’s graduate student-workers receive poverty wages, the UC administration continues to treat its own like royalty.   [Read more…]

I Didn’t Beware the Ides of March (and I’m Grateful)

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Desde la Logan columnist reflects back on an incident 25 years ago.

By Brent E. Beltrán

Twenty-five years ago today my existence changed forever. My physical self was torn asunder whereas my socially conscience self was just beginning on the journey that I am still on. That fateful day in 1989, the ides of March that the Soothsayer warned Julius Caesar about, was the start of my new life. A life that eventually lead me to Barrio Logan and the San Diego Free Press.

In 1989 I was an eighteen year old recent graduate of Clairemont High School. At the time I was attending my second semester at Mesa College and had been working at Vons (now Keil’s) at the Clairemont Village shopping center since I turned sixteen.

I was a typical aimless youth of the era. I worked and went to school but had no real sense of what I wanted to do with my life (who really does at 18?). I was a good worker and I assumed that I would eventually work my way up the ranks of Vons.   [Read more…]

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