San Diego Free Press

Grassroots News & Progressive Views

Black History Month: Reflecting on Moments Filled with Hope

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By Ernie McCray

There are moments when I want to sing out loud, “I’m Black and I’m Proud” and just get up and dance in my joy, doing the do like James Brown used to get us to.

I felt like that the other day as I listened to Harold K. Brown, a hero of mine,  reminisce about when he and other San Diego activists marched and chanted and sat-in and demanded an end to the practices that various organizations and companies utilized, in town, to keep folks like me down.

The pleasure I was feeling in those moments certainly wasn’t based on Harold’s recollections of being jailed or called names and dodging feces tossed by the most hateful of God’s creatures – no, my glee came as I looked around me into the faces of so many people who have over time honored what Harold brought to us and have strived to keep hope alive. Folks who still have their eyes on the prize.   [Read more…]

Restaurant Review: Fred’s Mexican Cafe- Too Hot and Not-So-Hot

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Fred’s Mexican Cafe
Old Town Location
2470 San Diego Ave
San Diego, CA 92110
619-858-TACO (8226)

By Judi Curry

Frequently we get into a rut by going to the same restaurant time and time again because we like the food, the atmosphere, the price, etc.  Every few months or so members of my support group attend the play at the Cygnet Theater in Old Town – thanks to one of our members ushering there often – and we always go to lunch (or dinner) before – or after – the play.

Sunday we saw the 3pm performance of Maple and Vine and decided to have lunch before the play.  (BTW – the play was an interesting one; the plot different than most plays put on by the Cygnet, and quite enjoyable.)

Ro, one of our members who just happens to be the reason for our theater outings, had a discount ticket at “Fred’s Mexican Café” and we decided to go there instead of the regular places we usually eat.   [Read more…]

NFL On Cusp of Having First Openly Gay Player

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Draft prospect from Missouri will test the sports world’s readiness to join the rest of us in the 21st Century.

By Andy Cohen

By now you’ve probably heard that former Missouri defensive end Michael Sam came out to the national press yesterday as gay.  Sam is an NFL prospect—projected by some to be picked as high as the third round—hoping to earn a paycheck as a professional football player next Fall, and should he make an NFL roster, he will become the first openly gay player in any of the major pro sports in the United States (sorry, the MLS doesn’t count quite yet).

Sam’s draft stock will be the topic of conversation from now until the NFL season begins next September.  Attitudes are changing about the LGBT community; acceptance of LGBT people is now almost a given, something unthinkable 10 years ago.  Poll after poll show that by a large majority Americans now accept the rights of gays to marry, with 17 states having legalized gay marriage, the federal government having disavowed the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), and Attorney General Eric Holder having recently announced that the DOJ will fully recognize same sex couples, ensuring them the same rights as heterosexual couples.   [Read more…]

Alvarez vs Faulconer: It Ain’t Over ‘till You’ve Voted

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Here’s all you need to know: “Politics is like driving. To go backward put it in R. To go forward put it in D.”

By Doug Porter

As the mayoral election campaigns enter their final days of campaigning there is unanimity on one point- the election results will be determined by turnout.

After all the in-person campaigning, all the advertising and all the debates, it’s going to comedown to how motivated voters are. Media reports say the mail-in ballots already received (but not counted) seem to favor Kevin Faulconer (counting districts he carried in the last election). The Alvarez camp’s ground game, on the other hand,  is as good as it gets in San Diego politics.

While Kevin Faulconer has been advertising on Facebook for paid canvassers, hundreds of David Alvarez volunteers have been going door-to-door advocating for their candidate. Polling sponsored by mass media organizations indicates a dead heat. A “sixteen point gap” in earlier surveys has disappeared.   [Read more…]

In The Battle for the Soul of San Diego David Alvarez Stands for All of Us

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By Jim Miller

San Diego is on the national stage again.

As the final week of the dead heat mayoral showdown unfolded, Politico reported on “the battle for San Diego,” the Sacramento Bee’s Dan Walters pondered whether the race would be a harbinger of things to come in California politics, and the New York Times  covered “a battle of ideology in a city unaccustomed to that sort of election,” astutely noting, as I did here at the San Diego Free Press during the primary, that this contest is “a test of whether yet another big-city Democrat can be elected by riding a wave of populism, much as Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York did last fall.”

And that test is happening because last November David Alvarez defied the pundits and political insiders and beat the prohibitive favorite, Nathan Fletcher, in the race to face Kevin Faulconer in the run-off to be San Diego’s next mayor. This was a seminal moment for San Diego—perhaps the biggest political upset in the history of the city.   [Read more…]

The Women of the San Salvador

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Eager volunteers work long hours recreating Cabrillo’s galleon at Spanish Landing

By Judi Curry

The Maritime Museum of San Diego is building  a $5 million replica of San Salvador, the galleon Cabrillo guided here in 1542 when he became the first European to explore what is today known as San Diego Bay.  The museum has dedicated  a construction site for the ship which was donated by the San Diego Port District on public land at Spanish Landing, 2 miles from where its main collection of historic vessels are docked on North Harbor Drive.

Thirty-five months have passed since the keel was first laid in March of 2011. This  three-masted galleon, totaling 88 feet of beautiful wood will weigh 200,000 tons when completed.  Plans call for the ship to open as a paid attraction in 2014, when it joins the museum’s other ships at the nearby embarcadero.

Who is building this large replica of the San Salvador, you ask?  There are some ten paid workers, and  many volunteers that devote a goodly part of their week to watching history taking place.    [Read more…]

Higher Education: When is Enough Going to Be Enough?

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When is enough going to be enough? When are we as a nation going to get our priorities straight about higher education? When did it become the rule that the cost of higher education was lifelong indebtedness?

Via Occupy*Posters, a group that says it speaks with and not for Occupy Wall Street we present a handy-dandy cartoon (inside) that pretty much says it all about how our system of higher education is failing.

Here’s the About section of their website. There’s lots more great stuff where this came from:

Born of solidarity with the Occupy Movement’s grievances during its earliest September 2011 days, the straightforward, high-contrast designs and impact-filled visual messages of Occupy* Posters have helped change national conversations. Occupy* Posters has contributed hundreds of well-received visual messages to activists, numerous of which have become iconic images speaking to recent times. 

Dozens of Occupy* Posters have gone insanely viral on the Internet, some with millions of shares. Some have also been featured on the BBC, Current TV, the Huffington Post, Upworthy, MoveOn.org, DailyKos, and more. Some even appear in brick-and-mortar museums, and one is in a major college textbook.    [Read more…]

Community Radio Coming Soon to the Greater Logan Heights Area

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Radio Pulso del Barrio will focus on arts and education

By Brent E. Beltrán

For the past few months there have been meetings at various locations throughout the Greater Logan Heights area to implement a public art project called Open Spaces. Open Spaces is a two-year public art initiative that is funded by the James Irvine Foundation through the San Diego Museum of Art to create a community based art project.

This is the second Open Spaces project in San Diego. The first is ongoing in Lincoln Park.

“Open Spaces goes out into communities and allows community members and residents to be the decision makers on what public art should look like in their area. And that would be content, medium and location,” says project coordinator Irma Patricia Aguayo Esquivias.  “Coming into these communities we never know what it is going to be. We have no idea until we are actually participating in the community meetings then people start to voice what they’d like to see.”   [Read more…]

After The Plantones: Looking Back On An Autumn Of Struggle In Mexico City

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By David Martinez / Upside Down World

The papers on every news kiosk in Mexico City in late August, 2013, blared denunciations: “Imagine – Mexico Without Soccer!” screamed one newspaper. Pictures of crying children stuck outside of a stadium clutching the colors of their favorite team were plastered on the front page of another paper.

The target of the media’s ire was the National Coordinator of Education Workers, or CNTE, Mexico’s nationwide teachers’ union, who had the previous day shut down a soccer match by surrounding the stadium. For weeks, crowds of teachers had been disrupting anything they could in Mexico’s capital, including the massive Benito Juarez International Airport.

The teachers were out in force to protest against President Enrique Pena Nieto’s (or EPN’s) proposed changes to the country’s education system, political system, and petroleum. Named the “Pacto Por Mexico” (Pact For Mexico), an eerie echo of the U.S. Republican Party’s 1990’s “Contract With America”, these “reforms” were widely seen as blatant neoliberal attacks upon the Mexican body civic.   [Read more…]

How Kevin Faulconer Made Barrio Logan United

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By Steve Galindo III / La Prensa San Diego

My older Brother and I have the tendency of texting each other whenever we hear news about our childhood neighborhood, Barrio Logan. Lately, we’ve had lots to text about, thanks to the Mayoral race and our Homeboy David Alvarez.

Last September, my brother sent me a text message. It was a photoshopped picture of Nathan Fletcher in Chicano Park. Next to Fletcher were these words: “I’ve never been seen in this neighborhood but I want their votes anyway.” I responded to this text as any text savvy person does nowadays; with an LOL, and with a few laughing Emoji’s. I than responded with, “There’s a Mexican guy running named David Alvarez, he’s the Councilman of District 8, he lives in Logan I think.” My brother’s response: “He won’t win though.”

My Brother’s sentiments were echoed by many the day that Alvarez announced his candidacy for Mayor. And not just from residents North of Interstate 8, a few people and politicians South of I8 had doubts as well. That became evident when a few select, so-called, “Activists” from the neighborhood decided to endorse Nathan Fletcher in the the primary.   [Read more…]

President Obama Endorses David Alvarez for Mayor

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“[T]here is no question that David is the right choice to be San Diego’s next mayor…”

By Brent E. Beltrán

In what may turn out to be the closest race in San Diego mayoral history David Alvarez on Saturday got a big bump by receiving the endorsement from none other than the President of the United States himself, Barrack Obama.

In a statement released by the Alvarez campaign President Obama said, “As a native San Diegan, David Alvarez has been a fierce advocate for his city, and on the Council, has led efforts to build a strong middle class, put neighborhoods first and expand opportunities for kids in and out of school.  Today, with the city’s economy and neighborhoods poised to make progress there is no question that David is the right choice to be San Diego’s next mayor and I am excited to support him.”   [Read more…]

It’s Getting Harder For the Feds To Lie About Marijuana and Get Away With It

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By Paul Armentano / AlterNet

Publicly lying about pot isn’t as easy as it used to be.

That’s the lesson White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (aka the Drug Czar’s office) Deputy Director Michael Botticelli learned earlier this week when he testified before U.S. House Subcommittee on Government Relations. Armed with what appeared to be crib notes from the days of Reefer Madness, Botticelli’s spurious anti-pot testimony immediately became the subject of Internet video fodder and mainstream media criticism. Even more tellingly, Botticelli’s comments drew stern rebukes from federal lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.

In past years, public testimony from an anti-drug official before a relatively obscure federal subcommittee would have gone largely unnoticed; at best, reporters, pundits, and lawmakers alike would have responded to Botticelli’s reefer rhetoric with a collective yawn. But that was then and this is now. Today, 58 percent of the public nationwide endorses legalizing marijuana and the President of the United States publicly acknowledges that the herb is demonstrably safer than alcohol. Twenty states and the District of Columbia permit the use of medicinal marijuana. Two states regulate the use, production and retail of cannabis to those over age 21 and others are poised to do so before year’s end. In this environment, espousing pot propaganda from past years’ playbooks just isn’t going to cut it.   [Read more…]

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