San Diego Free Press

Grassroots News & Progressive Views

Working Mother’s Day

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By Robert Reich / RobertReich.org

My mother went into paid work soon after my father’s clothing store was flooded out in a hurricane, almost wiping him out. She had no choice. We needed the money.

This was some two decades before a tidal wave of wives and mothers went into paid work.

For the few with four-year college degrees the transformation was the consequence of wider educational opportunity and new laws against gender discrimination that opened professions to well-educated women. But for the vast majority it was because male wages were dropping, and wives and mothers had to get paid jobs in order to prop up family incomes.   [Read more…]

Community and Customers Rally for Ian Rey, Disabled Former Employee of Sprouts Point Loma

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By Annie Lane

Dozens protested Friday evening to show continued support for Ian Rey, a longtime Sprouts Farmers Market employee who said he was fired after 14 years for mistakenly taking a coworker’s jacket.

Rey was terminated from Sprouts on Monday, and has experienced an outpouring of support from the community and customers alike – many of whom say they won’t shop at the local grocery store anymore.

For some, Rey was simply a friendly face they’d come to expect to see over the years. For others, he was someone they would stand in a longer line just to say high to while he bagged their items.

“I’ve never met Ian on a bad day … I’ve never seen him not happy,” said Crystal Trignano, a special education teacher at Dewey Elementary who organized the evening rally. “It was always ‘What can I help you find?’ or ‘Is there anything you need today?’ It’s just not normal for people to care that much.”   [Read more…]

On a Slow Ride from Golden Hill to South Park

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By Ernie McCray

Often when I tell someone I live in Golden Hill they say “Oh, yeah? Where?” 30th and Cedar is my reply and then they say “That’s South Park.”

“No, Golden Hill,” I say and they, like we’re in a debate competition, and they’ve got me on this one, start quoting passages from a map to prove that I’m not a Golden Hillian. And then I have to explain to them, in a nice friendly “home is where the heart is,” kind of way, that no matter what some chart has to say, I live in Golden Hill.

And I don’t say that out of any animosity towards them or South Park. Not at all. It will be a slow ride if it happens but I might claim to live there some day since I do “officially.” It’s just that I’m a Golden Hill O.G.   [Read more…]

Should We Have Saved AIG and Other Wall Street Banks?

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Frank Thomas: The Rescue of AIG in 2008 was the Right Decision

Part 2 of a multipart series, Frank will continue his “Yes” answer in Part 3, John will give his “No” answer in Part 4. Part 1 can be found here

by Frank Thomas and John Lawrence

In his book, The Great Deformation, David Stockman presents a broad “no prisoners taken” indictment of our systemic social-financial-political maladies or ‘deformations.’ I share his view we have descended to a gamed, distorted system where almost “nothing is working”coherently that can save it from the next Boom-Bubble-Bust implosion unless there is fundamental change.   [Read more…]

The Continuing Long Hard Slog for Streetlights in City Heights

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By Anna Daniels

There isn’t any mystery as to why residents expect to have streetlights in their respective communities. It’s important to be able to see where you are walking at night; streetlights are an essential element of crime deterrence; and they contribute to our perceptions of personal safety.

City Heights is a transit dependent community and residents don’t tend to work bankers hours. Many of my neighbors go to work while it is still dark or return home when it is dark. Many of these commuting workers are women working in the hospitality and food service industries or providing in home personal care.

This is also a community that sustains elevated incidents of assault, robbery and break-ins. City Heights should be one of the best lit neighborhoods in the City of San Diego simply on the basis of need and yet it is unfunded $26 million for streetlights.

The City of San Diego does not get a free pass on this issue because of the economy. City Heights was starved of streetlights twenty five years ago when I moved here and it is still starved of that critical infrastructure investment. That real story here has little to do with the economy.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – All is Not Clear on the Low Wage Front: San Diego Fundraiser for a Walmart Strike Fund Planned

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By Doug Porter

Years of growing inequality have taken their toll on low-wage workers over several decades even as workplace productivity has increased. A minimum-wage income in 1968 was higher than the poverty line for a family of two adults and one child. Even into the 1980s the minimum wage was high enough to lift a single parent over the federal poverty line. Today’s minimum wage, however, is not enough for single parents to reach even the most basic threshold of adequate living standards.

The latest census figures show 46.2 million people living in poverty in the US. Companies that pay low wages leave their employees no choice but to rely on public assistance programs like food stamps, Medicare or the earned income tax credit.  So, in effect, these companies are being subsidized by government.

Today CEOs in the country’s S&P 500 companies make, on average, 319 times more than the average American worker. Back in the 1970s, that ratio was 30 to 1.  Walmart CEO Mike Duke makes better than a thousand times more than the median worker pay at the one of his stores.

So it’s little wonder than 47% of Walmart employees are less than thrilled about their jobs. And despite a workplace environment where many employees are pitted against each other in a desperate struggle for survival, here are signs of unrest that are increasing around the country.   [Read more…]

City Attorney Launches Lawsuit Against Water Board, Owners of Tank Farm

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Toxic plume of gasoline has contaminated Qualcomm Stadium property for 27 years.

by Andy Cohen

San Diego City Attorney Jan Goldsmith announced yesterday that the City of San Diego has filed a lawsuit against the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board and Kinder Morgan Energy Partners of Houston, Texas, the owner of the massive gasoline tank farm adjacent to the Qualcomm Stadium property, over contamination of Murphy Canyon Creek, the San Diego River, and ultimately, San Diego beaches.

It’s a suit nearly 27 years in the making, since the first plumes of gasoline began leaking from the tank farm in 1986.

“The City of San Diego is the victim here,” said Goldsmith in making the announcement. “Justice has not been done for this victim.”

Goldsmith was joined by City Council Members Sherri Lightner, Kevin Faulconer, Marti Emerald, and Scott Sherman. “We’re here today unanimous in support of the city to say ‘enough is enough!” said Faulconer.   [Read more…]

Book Review: In Praise of Tomatoes A Year in the Life of a Home Tomato Grower

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A Golden Hill Vegetable Chain Letter that Knits the Neighborhood Together

By Anna Daniels

…It is Shepherd’s passion for growing tomatoes, resulting in his tomato patch close to the sidewalk in one of San Diego’s mid-city neighborhoods, that provides the framing “story” for his book. The story encompasses numerous connections that begin with soil and seeds and soon include family, neighbors, friends, a neighborhood and strangers past and present whose interests have also been ignited by the tomato.   [Read more…]

Death is Preferable to Life at Obama’s Guantanamo

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By Marjorie Cohn / Common Dreams

More than 100 of the 166 detainees at Guantanamo are starving themselves to death. Twenty-three of them are being force-fed. “They strap you to a chair, tie up your wrists, your legs, your forehead and tightly around the waist,” Fayiz Al-Kandari told his lawyer, Lt. Col. Barry Wingard. Al-Kandari, a Kuwaiti held at Guantanamo for 11 years, has never been charged with a crime.

“The tube makes his eyes water excessively and blood begins to trickle from the nose. Once the tube passes his throat the gag reflex kicks in. Warm liquid is poured into the body for 45 minutes to two hours. He feels like his body is going to convulse and often vomits,” Wingard added.

The United Nations Human Rights Council concluded that force-feeding amounts to torture. The American Medical Association says that force-feeding violates medical ethics. “Every competent patient has the right to refuse medical intervention, including life-sustaining interventions,” AMA President Jeremy Lazarus wrote to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel. Yet President Barack Obama continues the tortuous Bush policy of force-feeding hunger strikers.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – Special Ed Student Used as “Bait” in School Drug Bust After Parents Refused Permission

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By Doug Porter

We’ve seen an up tick in stories recently about drug busts in schools in the region.  While no parent wants to see their kid on the wrong side of the law, it turns out that at least one of these ‘stings’ wasn’t quite the law enforcement coup touted to the news media.

The San Diego Sheriff’s Department’s ‘Operation A Team’ spent a year posing as students at four county high schools, scoring drugs at Poway, Mission Hills, and Ramona High Schools. The busts were announced with much fanfare recently, and the UT-San Diego even garnered an undercover interview with one of the agents.

Last fall undercover officers enrolled at Temecula high schools rounded up 22 ruffians in a similar investigation.

Yesterday the Press-Enterprise ran a story regarding a special education student recruited by a Temecula school official over the objections of his parents to pose as ‘bait’ in an on-campus sting. And it turns out this isn’t the only case involving a special education student and drug stings in the Temecula Valley Unified School District.   [Read more…]

Free Barrier-Breaking College Prep Program in Barrio Logan to Expand

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The Barrio Logan College Institute Moves in with Monarch School

By Frances O’Neill Zimmerman

From late afternoon to early evening daily, a bilingual team of eight devoted staffers works throughout the week with 200 committed barrio kids — some as young as Grade 3 — establishing curriculum, coordinating tutors, arranging for in-house speakers and field trips, setting up collaborative learning experiences, conferring with parents, interfacing with students whose names and histories they know well.

This is Barrio Logan College Institute (BLCI) where students absorb what an old teacher friend of mine used to call “the culture of school.” Learning how to study. How to shake hands in greeting and goodbye, with an abrazo here and there. Tutorials in language arts and math. Goal-setting. Learning about self-organization, follow-through, discipline, promptness. How to be resilient when there’s disappointment.

BLCI students will be the first in their families to go to university, knowing they are following patterns set by these mentors on the staff. Development director Luis Murillo, 30, has for now set aside an earlier interest in law school, saying, “I love what we do here.”   [Read more…]

Desde la Logan: Our Focus on Barrio Logan for-the-Month “Wrap Up”

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By Brent E. Beltrán

In April many of us here at San Diego Free Press focused our journalistic efforts on my community of Barrio Logan. Twenty three articles were written about this vibrant, working class neighborhood.

They were stories that broke the old stereotype of Barrio Logan being a violent, gang infested place where people are scared to go to. I’m proud that our little website that could helped advance the image that Barrio Logan is a beautiful place to not only live but visit and enjoy.   [Read more…]

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