I lost a friend today
I do not know why,
He didn’t explain it to me
When he said “Good Bye.”
I held my own until I was out the door,
And then I let go with a big cry.
Bringing an End to State Sanctioned Sexual Assault, Rape Culture and Law Enforcement Impunity
By Cathy Mendonça / United Against Police Terror
The San Diego police department’s scandal involving officers accused of preying on women who they came in contact with while in uniform and on duty needs to be addressed.
First, former officer Anthony Arevalos is serving an eight year sentence for molesting female drivers during traffic stops in the Gaslamp quarter from 2009 to 2011. As a result, Chief William Lansdowne implemented changes within the department to help uncover the potential for other rogue officers to go unnoticed.
Then, on Feb. 9, Officer Christopher Hays was booked on criminal charges in connection with inappropriate pat downs that prosecutors allege were done for his sexual gratification. [Read more…]
City Attorney Jan Goldsmith: The Leviathan for San Diego’s Civic Netherworld
According to demonology, the Leviathan is the gatekeeper among the seven princes of Hell. It is believed that hell is the kingdom of Satan by many Christians. — ask.com
By Doug Porter
If there’s one commonality to all the indiscretions of San Diego politics in the 20 months I’ve been writing this column, it’s City Attorney Jan Goldsmith. Now, facing increased scrutiny in light of his actions, he’s fighting a desperate rear guard action to avoid public examination of the behind the scenes machinations at City Hall.
Contrary to what many of my progressive friends might believe, he’s not an ideologue, bound to the socially conservative mantras of the far right. In looking over his actions as City Attorney, I’ve come to believe he’s merely a dedicated functionary for the (largely Republican) economic interests that have ruled the roost in San Diego for decades. It’s all about the money.
According to a story by Dorian Hargrove in the San Diego Reader, Goldsmith is now fighting a court battle seeking to have public officials declared above the law when it comes to the California’s Public Records Act. A February 27th legal brief filed by the City Attorney in San Diego Superior Court makes the claim that the law only requires “local agencies,” a “city,” or a “municipal corporation” to turn over documents, not individuals, officials, or employees. [Read more…]
Too Many Years of Inbreeding
By Norma Damashek / NumbersRunner
To misquote Shakespeare’s Hamlet: Something is rotten in the state of our Denmark …our city. Most likely it’s the result of too many years of inbreeding.
Take a look at appointees to San Diego boards, commissions, committees, and political organizations like United Way, the Chamber of Commerce, and Red Cross. You’ll discover that San Diego is an epicenter of incestuous comings and goings. (Incestuous: repetitive, indiscriminate, unwholesome, unnatural, intimately intertwined, endogamous co-mingling of self-serving individuals)
Look at the staffers roaming City Hall. They occupy a hermetically-sealed world – punctuated by narrow loyalties, a tendency toward inflated egos, frequent dalliances, and more revolving doors than in an Abbott and Costello meets Frankenstein movie. Individuals who recently worked for (we assume it was for) former-mayor Bob Filner are now lodged in the office of Filner’s nemesis, councilman Todd Gloria. Some have leapfrogged to other council offices or elsewhere in the bureaucracy… marbles in a game of Chinese Checkers. [Read more…]
Neoliberalism and Its Discontents: What’s Left Beyond More Impoverished Choices?
By Jim Miller
The debate rages on. Last week after I spent the final part of my column addressing Adolph Reed’s provocative Harper’s piece on the dismaying state of American politics, “Nothing Left: The Long, Slow Surrender of American Liberals, the argument just kept going across the national progressive media landscape.
In a sharp rebuttal to Reed in The Nation, Michelle Goldberg attacked what she characterized as “Electoral Nihilism” by essentially dismissing what she called his “left wing disappointment” and reasserting the very strategy that Reed so adeptly critiqued in his article:
So yes, for liberals, there is only one option in an election year, and that is to elect, at whatever cost, whichever Democrat is running. The rest of the time, those who find the current choices intolerable should join in the long, slow groundwork that would allow for better ones.
Goldberg points out some current signs of hope for progressives nationwide, particularly a wave of progressive new mayors in places like New York and concludes that this makes it a “bizarre moment” for Reed to put forth his argument. [Read more…]
Kevin Faulconer: Full Circle in San Diego
By Gordon Clanton /Del Mar Sandpiper
The March 3 inauguration of Kevin Faulconer as mayor takes San Diego back to where it was before Bob Filner, back to where it always was for as long I have lived in these parts: Moderate Republican mayors whose allegiance is to downtown business interests, always favoring business over labor, big business over small business, development over environment, downtown over other neighborhoods, cronyism over inclusion, plutocracy over democracy.
True, Maureen O’Connor was a Democrat by family history, but she married into great wealth and was mentored by and allied with Republican mayor (later senator and governor) Pete Wilson. Roger Hedgecock was a different type of moderate Republican but he, like Filner, was forced from office.
The last Democrat prior to Filner and O’Connor, Frank Curran, was replaced by Pete Wilson 44 years ago. The most recent Republican mayor, Jerry Sanders, went from city hall to running the Chamber of Commerce and never missed a beat. [Read more…]
Honoring Academic Legacies of Diversity Panel at Mesa College
Discussion on understanding and value of Chicana, Chicano and Black Studies
By Dr. César López, Ph.D.
The San Diego Mesa College Chicana/o Studies Department and the Black Studies Department are hosting a panel discussion on student equity and diversity on campus this Friday, March 14, from 9AM-12PM in room H-117/118. The event is entitled “Honoring Academic Legacies of Diversity at San Diego Mesa College and Beyond: Equity and Valuing Critical Contributions of Chicana/o Studies and Black Studies Departments.” The campus community and the general public is invited to attend this important discussion.
The goal of the panel is to recognize the over 40 year histories of each of these departments on the San Diego Mesa College campus; educate the campus and community about issues related to understanding and valuing the critical contributions of Chicana/o Studies and Black Studies Departments in Higher Education; and highlight local, state and national legislative educational policies that have and will impact the future success of all students, with a focus on students of color and first generation students. [Read more…]
Dr. Sanjay Gupta: “I Am Doubling Down On Medical Marijuana”
Cannabis prohibition is a “Draconian system where politics override science”
By Paul Armentano / NORML
CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta is “doubling down” in his advocacy for patients to have legal access to cannabis as a therapeutic agent.
In a commentary featured on the CNN website today, Gupta writes: “I am more convinced than ever that it is irresponsible to not provide the best care we can, care that often may involve marijuana. I am not backing down on medical marijuana; I am doubling down.”
Last August, Gupta authored a commentary apologizing for his past opposition to medical cannabis, stating, “We have been terribly and systematically misled for nearly 70 years in the United States (in regards to cannabis), and I apologize for my own role in that.” [Read more…]
Staying in the Barrio – Affordable Housing in Barrio Logan
Video by Media Arts Center San Diego’s Teen Producer’s Project
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, Staying in the Barrio – Affordable Housing in Barrio Logan, documents the challenges of attaining affordable housing in Barrio Logan as downtown slowly creeps closer. Comm22, the affordable housing complex discussed in this video, is in full building mode and will soon bring quality apartments, low income apartments to the Greater Logan area. [Read more…]
Chilean Activists Meet with UCSD Students
Provide a history of radical Chilean student movement
By Daniel Gutiérrez
Chilean delegates from Librería Proyección, Periódico Solidaridad and La Alzada Acción Feminista Libertaria (La Alzada Anarcha-Feminist Action) met with students and community members at UCSD, Monday, March 3rd. The delegates met as part of a tour sponsored by the Black Rose Anarchist Federation and the IWW at UCSD to spread word of the student movement in Chile.
The delegates rooted the current education crisis in Chile in the massive reforms made under the US-backed Pinochet dictatorship. Through state repression and intervention, the dictatorship was able to demobilize and dismember the popular movement in Chile. It was during the 1980s that a series of reforms took place that changed the education system to this day. Under these programs, education became two-tiered, in a system where the poor went to private universities and the rich went to public ones. [Read more…]
Geo-Poetic Spaces: A Collection of Poems
A collection of video poems by local author Ishmael von Heidrick-Barnes from his award-winning book, Intimate Geography. [Read more…]
Israeli Company Contracted to Build U.S.-Mexico Border Fence
By Aaron Cantú / Alternet
This week, the Israeli company Elbit Systems Ltd. announced that its subsidiary won a contract from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Customs and Border Protection to produce and install surveillance systems along the U.S.-Mexico border. The company is famous for providing “intrusion detection systems” and other infastructure support for the Israeli West Bank barrier.
The subsidiary was awarded a $145 million contract for a project called the Integrated Fixed Tower (IFT), which is to be built on the Mexico-Arizona border over the next year. The contract also guarantees eight years of infrastructure support from Elbit Systems.
The project outlines the construction of an undisclosed number of observation towers at the border by Nogales, Arizona, a town about an hour south of Tuscon. Additional towers could be built at five other areas along the state’s border. [Read more…]
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