San Diego Free Press

Grassroots News & Progressive Views

University Avenue: The Best Opportunity to Show What Cycling in San Diego Can Be

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North Park – Mid-City Bicycle Meeting – Tues., June 25 6pm

SANDAG seeks community input for selection of route and infrastructure to make East-West bicycle connections

By John P. Anderson

Tuesday evening SANDAG (San Diego Associations of Governments) will host the 3rd Community Advisory Group Meeting to discuss the North Park – Mid-City (NPMC) Bicycle Corridors Project.  Members of the public are invited to attend and voice their opinion on which routes would be best and which type of infrastructure is preferred (sharrows, bicycle lanes, cycle tracks, etc.).  The meeting will be held from 6:00 PM to 8:30pm at 5450 Lea Street, San Diego, CA 92105 (Teen Challenge Center).   [Read more…]

Rush to Judgment in San Diego: The City Attorney’s ‘Performance Art’

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By Doug Porter

The significance of the struggle between City Attorney Jan Goldsmith and Mayor Bob Filner continues to become more apparent with each passing day.

Last week Goldsmith released edited transcripts purporting to show Filner as an irrational angry man who used his ‘taxpayer funded bodyguard’ to expel an ‘innocent attorney’ (how’s that for an oxymoronic word combo?) from a closed hearing of the San Diego City Council. By playing on the Mayor’s well-known unwillingness to suffer fools, Goldsmith and his cronies have sought to add to a undercurrent of resentment over the mere fact of Bob Filner occupying the top job.

For those of you unfamiliar with all the machinations of this high profile ruckus, the short version of what’s going on here is that all these headlines are symptomatic of a much larger behind the scenes battle between a progressive Mayor and downtown special interest groups used to dictating policy at City Hall.   [Read more…]

Field of View: 1 Year Anniversary Potluck for the San Diego Free Press

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By Annie Lane

Well, we certainly know how to party! On Sunday, the San Diego Free Press celebrated its one year anniversary with a potluck at Golden Hill Park. It was a wonderfully windy-sunny day filled with great food, interesting conversation and, of all things, croquet.

Of course, it must be noted that most of the success of the San Diego Free Press is due to the wonderful friends, contributors, readers and supporters who have been right here beside us this past year. Thanks for your tireless reinforcement. We need every single one of you.

On June 4, 2012, the San Diego Free Press officially launched. We have since published nearly 1,700 articles, more than 7,200 comments and average 1,600 unique visitors every day. The end, thankfully, is nowhere in sight.   [Read more…]

Corporate Censorship in 2012: All the News They Didn’t Deem Fit to Print

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By Jim Miller

In last week’s column, I discussed Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman’s propaganda model and noted how it was even more relevant today than it was when they first published Manufacturing Consent in 1988 as the concentration of media ownership they decried in the eighties has only continued to increase dramatically.  I ended that column by referring to Project Censored, an organization that has been monitoring the news media and putting out a list of the top 25 “censored” stories of the year since 1976.

Recently when I mentioned this project to a former journalist friend of mine he objected to the use of the word “censorship” because he didn’t think it applied to the news media, a group of people who, in his estimation, are far more driven by market forces than by the desire to monitor ideas.  With that objection in mind, let’s consider Project Censored’s definition of the term “censorship”

We define Modern Censorship as the subtle yet constant and sophisticated manipulation of reality in our mass media outlets.

Eds. Note: Originally Posted December 10, 2012. We’re re-running some of the best of his columns while Jim takes this ‘vacation’ thing we keep hearing about.   [Read more…]

Join Us This Afternoon for a Pot-Luck BBQ in Golden Hill!

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Come out and meet the Editors and Contributors, the people who edit, manage and write for the only all Volunteer-Run Progressive Daily Publication in San Diego.

We’ll have the grills and coals and some of the goods, but please come on out – bring something to grill or other food, bring a chair – join us for good vibes, a Raffle and croquet!

From noon to 4pm.

Take Route 94/MLK Freeway to 25th Street, go North to the end of 25th Street – there’s a park! We’ll be in the best location, on the west end.   [Read more…]

Seven Jaw-Droppingly Dumb Things Republicans Think About Science

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Masturbating fetuses is just the start. From trees causing global warming to fetuses in your Pepsi, here are some of the battiest things Republicans have said about science.

By Evan McMurry/AlterNet

It was Texas Representative Michael Burgess’ turn on the GOP’s Bullhorn of Crazy this week. “You watch a sonogram of a 15-week baby, and they have movements that are purposeful,” Burgess said during a congressional debate on the House Republican’s absolutely pointless bill outlawing abortions past 20 weeks. “They stroke their face. If they’re a male baby, they may have their hand between their legs. I mean, they feel pleasure, why is it so hard to think that they could feel pain?”   [Read more…]

Tío Emilio and the Secrets of the Ancestors: Chapter 5 — Brujo

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“Many mothers and fathers y abuelitos want to teach their children our traditions, our culture, and also about the ancient knowledge of our ancestors. But … some have fears of what they call ‘the old ways.”  Tío Emilio

By Richard Juarez

I was trying to make out bits and pieces of the phone conversation my mother was having with Tata. I don’t usually try to listen in, but this time she was almost arguing with him, which she never does. My sisters and I were playing monopoly in the sala on Saturday afternoon. I never liked the game much—it always took too long, and my mind tended to wander between turns. No wandering this time, however. I could tell from the look on the girls’ faces that they were as surprised as I was about what we heard coming from the dining room. I didn’t understand all of what was said, but I did make out that it had to do with me somehow, and she kept saying no to him, over and over, raising her voice. Then she got quiet, and it seemed like they came to some kind of agreement, as she ended the conversation with a few buenos. When she got off the phone she called to me.

“Vincent, they want you over at Tata’s. Tío Emilio is down from Los Angeles. You go put on a decent shirt and get right over there. And … he wants you to bring that leather cover.”   [Read more…]

Readers Write: Education

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By Tom Hunter

I’m an old hippy, who would have been a member of UCSD’s class of 69 if I’d stayed around for another year.  I had two great teachers in four years – Herbert Marcuse and David Fate Norton. I had three brilliant roommates and I was at the first march on La Jolla when that bastion of liberality first realized they had been traduced.

La Jolla has never recovered.  Even the birds do little but shit on the place.

I was a C student, although I was in four different departments in four different years.  Physics, Biology,  Philosophy and finally Art.  I was very young for my age and I worked 20 plus hours a week at the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries (my office building is currently trying to do a header off the cliff above Scripps).

I may be somewhat tainted in my memories, but I’m fairly sure I got a well rounded education – for nearly fucking free.  Cut to UCSD of today.   [Read more…]

What the Food Industry Is Doing to Keep Americans Hooked on Junk

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By April M. Short / Alternet

With the exposure of troubling obesity rates, outrage over undisclosed genetically engineered wheat (and other) crops, the successful worldwide March Against Monsanto effort in May and statewide bans of GE crops that followed, the US citizenry is expanding its awareness and concern about food health. The junk food industry is responding by getting sneakier in its tactics to entice, exploit and beguile people into consuming its concoctions.

Here are a few of the most disturbing deceptions the industry is using to keep Americans hooked on its junk.   [Read more…]

The Stench in Mission Valley: UT-San Diego’s Open Warfare on Mayor Filner

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By Doug Porter

What started out as sour grapes over their preferred candidate losing last fall’s mayoral contest has now become an all-out jihad.  Frequent insolent editorials and a newsroom motivated by the need to prove their worth to a management team driven by desire to impose their agenda upon San Diego will no longer suffice.

Now it’s open warfare. Any pretense of the fairness hoped for by traditionalists in the public for the daily newspaper are gone. Now it’s yellow journalism– stinking, piss yellow– invective rolling off the presses at UT-San Diego.

Three examples will suffice for today, although there’s plenty more to be had lurking in the recent archives of the paper.   [Read more…]

A Mindful Walk Through the Mayor’s Office

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By Norma Damashek

Turns out that mindful walks aren’t guaranteed to be soul-soothing.  But one thing’s for sure — they’re invariably eye-opening.  Once you start noticing, you’ll find plenty of things you never noticed before.

You’ll remember that last week I walked the walk in La Jolla.  A few days ago it was Mission Valley.  Yesterday it was downtown.  But I’m putting aside downtown and Mission Valley for the time being and inviting you to keep me company on today’s mindful walk… through the mayor’s office… figuratively speaking, that is.

Picture us on the 11th floor of City Hall.  Take a seat alongside me in the outer vestibule of the mayor’s suite.  Notice the elevators and toilets to our left.  Notice the worn carpeting and sullen lighting.  Now follow me into the inner sanctum.

Be mindful how you walk.   [Read more…]

Chunky Sanchez, a Living Legend Hero of Mine

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By Ernie McCray

Ramon “Chunky” Sanchez is a hero of mine and the why to that is because I love people who work to make the world a better place and that’s all I’ve ever seen him do, all over the place, ever since the late 60’s – right beside all us other “radicals,” carrying a guitar in his hands and songs in his imaginative mind filled with humor and bite and a Vato smile on his big round face – and we all went about the business of dealing with the problems in our communities, rising enrollments in gangs, cops cruising our streets with looks on their faces that didn’t do justice to any notions of “protecting and serving” that was detectible to the naked eye, schools waving white flags, lack of adequate social services and safe places for our children to play. The usual societal sins.

And it brought a tear or two rolling down my cheeks when I read the other day that in September this noble man with a heart of gold, this gifted musician who plays too many instruments to mention, will be honored with a National Endowment for the Arts’ National Heritage Fellowship. To borrow words from a classic Johnny Mercer tune, this is “just too marvelous, too marvelous for words.”   [Read more…]

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