San Diego Free Press

Grassroots News & Progressive Views

The Dark Side of the 2015 Balboa Park Celebrations

by

By Doug Porter

A non-profit group set up by the city to create a world class year long celebration of the centennial of the 1915 Panama-California Exposition  in Balboa Park hasn’t produced much of anything concrete to date, despite spending millions of dollars in public monies. And they’re making the claim that their lack of progress is nobody’s business.

Citizen activist David Lundin’s inquiries into the machinations of the group responsible for planning the Balboa Park Centennial Celebration have stirred up quite a fuss. After reading reports about difficulties and missed deadlines by the entity (Balboa Park Celebrations, Inc) he filed a series of requests for documents (ala Public Records Act).

The resulting exchange was simply stunning in its arrogance and hostility. My response from reading the email exchange between Lunkin and the group is that something must be seriously amiss with this group.

  [Read more…]

Ghosts of City Heights Past: Chaos, Wonder, and Love

by

By Jim Miller

In my first novel, Drift, there is a passage where the main character, Joe, is driving through City Heights pondering the poetry of the streets.

He notes the “funky majesty” of a store front church sandwiched between a pharmacy and a liquor store and revels in the cacophony of signs in Vietnamese, Spanish, English, and more while he loses himself in the street life passing by as “everything bled together seamlessly in the twilight and became part of the mystic fabric of impending night.”

Joe’s musings mix with music on the radio as he contemplates the “blue feeling” of minimarts to jazz and rolls by massage parlors, 99-cent stores, and the Tower Bar. When I read this passage back in 2007, I had the pleasure of being accompanied by Gilbert Castellanos on trumpet and his melancholy solo lent the perfect air of blues dignity to the piece. It was, of course, a love song to my old neighborhood and the present hard-edged marvel that is City Heights.   [Read more…]

One Woman’s Thoughts on ‘A Day of Honor’

by

By Judi Curry

At the risk of alienating a lot of people, I am absolutely incensed by the City Council naming a day after Peggy Shannon for the “harassment suffered by the mayor of San Diego.”  A day in her honor? For what?  What did she do that was so honorable?  Stop a thief? Adopt orphan children; Save people from a burning building? Fund a scholarship for children that can’t afford to go to college?

She is having a “day of honor” so that the city does not have to pay out any money from the harassment of the former mayor?  She is having a “day of honor” because she told the world about the mayor’s flirting with her? She is having a “day of honor” because she “. . . had butterflies in her stomach because she didn’t know what was going to happen the next time the mayor came to her desk”?   [Read more…]

Bikes & Beers: Promoting Bike Friendly Neighborhoods and San Diego’s Craft Brews

by

SDFP’s occasional contributor John P. Anderson has joined up with other enthusiasts to start what they hope will be an annual trek through our city’s bike-friendly neighborhoods combined with visits to craft brewers along the way.

They’ve dubbed it Bikes & Beers SD, plotting out a 26-mile bicycling course taking participants through many of San Diego’s most dynamic urban neighborhoods and to some of the region’s most beautiful natural sights. The inaugural event will take place Saturday, March 29th, starting at 9:30 am with following groups at 10, 10:30, and 11.

Starting and ending in North Park, the event course will go through Hillcrest, Ocean Beach, Point Loma, Downtown, East Village, Golden Hill, and South Park. Cyclists will enjoy vistas of the San Diego River, Pacific Ocean, San Diego Bay, Petco Park, and Balboa Park.   [Read more…]

Remembering Our Past – History of Barrio Logan

by

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. 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.   [Read more…]

Why Surging Support for Marijuana Is Hurting the GOP and Will For Years to Come

by

Don’t expect a major turnaround from the GOP on cannabis, just electoral pain across America.

By CJ Werleman / AlterNet

As the movement to expand access to marijuana grows across the country, the Republican Party, with the exception of its kooky libertarian wing, has a bad case of reefer madness. Gov. Rick Perry, who’s no stranger to moments of mental madness, equated marijuana use to murder, while Gov. Chris Christie has more or less said he’d prefer dead kids to stoned kids. During the 2012 election, Mitt Romney promised to “fight tooth and nail” against pro-marijuana legalization.

While national polling shows more than 55% of Americans support pot legalization, Republicans remains strongly opposed, and in fact, more than two-thirds of Republicans voted against legalization in Colorado and Washington.   [Read more…]

More Lies Leveled Against Raising the Minimum Wage — This Time by the Federal Govt. Itself?

by

The truth: economists say raising the federal minimum to $10.10 would lift somewhere between 4.6 and 6 million households above the poverty line.

By Joe Conason / AlterNet

In the midst of a crucial political debate that plainly favored proponents of a higher minimum wage, the Congressional Budget Office dropped a bombshell headline this week. Increasing the minimum to $10.10 an hour — as demanded by President Barack Obama and Democrats on Capitol Hill — would “cost 500,000 jobs.” At a moment when employment still lags badly, this assertion was potentially devastating.

Almost lost in much of the predictable media coverage was the CBO report’s estimate that a minimum-wage increase would lift at least 900,000 workers and their families out of poverty — and boost incomes for at least 15 million more.

But as top economists have repeatedly pointed out, such damning employment numbers are fuzzy and unreliable, while the CBO poverty numbers probably underestimated the positive impact of a higher minimum.   [Read more…]

Venezuela Beyond the Protests

by

The Revolution is Here to Stay

By Eva Golinger / Postcards from the Revolution

For those of you unfamiliar with Venezuelan issues, don’t let the title of this article fool you. The revolution referred to is not what most media outlets are showing taking place today in Caracas, with protestors calling for the ouster of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. The revolution that is here to stay is the Bolivarian Revolution, which began in 1998 when Hugo Chavez was first elected president and has subsequently transformed the mega oil producing nation into a socially-focused, progressive country with a grassroots government. Demonstrations taking place over the past few days in Venezuela are attempts to undermine and destroy that transformation in order to return power to the hands of the elite who ruled the nation previously for over 40 years.

Those protesting do not represent Venezuela’s vast working class majority that struggled to overcome the oppressive exclusion they were subjected to during administrations before Chavez. The youth taking to the streets today in Caracas and other cities throughout the country, hiding their faces behind masks and balaclavas, destroying public buildings, vehicles, burning garbage, violently blocking transit and throwing rocks and molotov cocktails at security forces are being driven by extremist right-wing interests from Venezuela’s wealthiest sector. Led by hardline neoconservatives, Leopoldo Lopez, Henrique Capriles and Maria Corina Machado – who come from three of the wealthiest families in Venezuela, the 1% of the 1% – the protesters seek not to revindicate their basic fundamental rights, or gain access to free healthcare or education, all of which are guaranteed by the state, thanks to Chavez, but rather are attempting to spiral the country into a state of ungovernability that would justify an international intervention leading to regime change.   [Read more…]

Obama Administration Announces Banking Guidelines for Marijuana Business

by

By Phillip Smith / Stop The Drug War

The Obama administration Thursday afternoon announced new guidelines that will allow financial institutions to provide services to marijuana businesses in states where it is legal. The guidelines will apply to both medical marijuana and legal marijuana states.

Some 20 states and the District of Columbia allow for medical marijuana, while two states, Colorado and Washington, have legalized marijuana commerce for adults.

Banks and other financial institutions have been increasingly unwilling to deal with marijuana-related businesses for fear of breaking federal laws. That has led to an untenable situation where marijuana businesses are forced to deal in large amounts of cash.   [Read more…]

Geo Poetic Spaces: Encounter In Peñasquitos Canyon

by

By Ishmael von Heidrick-Barnes

A diamondback stream
winds out of river scales
where rainwater ran off trails
stripping vegetation from roots

Debris kneels into rocks
damming what should have been
swept to sea   [Read more…]

It’s Health Care, Not Software

by

The initial and temporary difficulty millions of Americans suffered when they first tried to sign up doesn’t matter.

By Mitchell Zimmerman / Other Words

So the Affordable Care Act didn’t exactly deliver the greatest website. What did we get after all those years of haggling?

Only health insurance for 9 million people (and counting) who didn’t have it before. Only an end to pre-existing medical conditions keeping you from getting health coverage. Only insurance for young adults under their parents’ policies, a requirement that your health policy cover preventive care, and health insurance plans that don’t cost any more for the vast majority of Americans — and are somewhat more expensive for a tiny minority who are, in exchange, getting better health coverage.   [Read more…]

‘Jim Crow’ Campaign Against Gays Goes National

by

By Doug Porter

A 33-27 vote in the Arizona House last night sent legislation to GOP Gov. Jan Brewer allowing business owners in the state to assert their religious beliefs to refuse service to persons who they believe to be homosexual. The state that brought us openly racist anti-immigrant laws four years ago has once again taken the lead in defending bigotry.

Conservative Christian groups and their Republican allies are desperate to stop the clock. The handwriting is on the wall.  Sexual orientation as a criteria for full participation in society is on its way out. In state after state, the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government are chipping way at policies that enforce discrimination based on who you love.

Lest you think this Arizona legislation is an aberration caused by too much time in the sun, be aware that even more heinous legislation was promoted by GOP pols in Kansas, Idaho, Oregon, South Dakota, and Tennessee. Furious public opposition has stalled those efforts for now, but there’s always next year.   [Read more…]

©2010-2017 SanDiegoFreePress.org

Code is Poetry