San Diego Free Press

Grassroots News & Progressive Views

Desde la Logan: What Does Chicano Park Mean to You?

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By Brent E. Beltrán

Since I live across the street from Chicano Park I sometimes take its beauty for granted. I see it every day as I exit my apartment complex’s parking structure. I see it when I do laundry. When I walk to Las Cuatro Milpas for my tortilla fix. Whenever I return home from wherever I’ve been. I live within its shadows and those that helped create the space.

It’s an ubiquitous presence in my Barrio Logan life. It’s always there. Standing proudly in the background of my existence. Because of that sometimes it all blends together. But not this coming Saturday, April 20. The annual Chicano Park Day Celebration is when Chicano Park is at the forefront of people’s minds. It’s a time to remember and celebrate the occupation of land and a community fighting for its dignity. It’s a time when the park shines from within the shadows of the San Diego Coronado Bridge.

I know what Chicano Park means to me. But I often wonder what does it means to others? I thought I’d ask a few people that question. What does Chicano Park mean to you? Here are their answers, in their own words and in their own linguistic style. After reading please make a comment below and let me know what Chicano Park means to you.   [Read more…]

Restaurant Review – Las Cuatro Milpas

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Las Cuatro Milpas
1875 Logan Ave. (Cesar E. Chavez Pkwy.)
San Diego, CA 92113
619-234-4460

In a way, it grieves me to be writing this review because Las Cuatro Milpas is one of my very favorite Mexican Restaurants and it is already so busy I hate to know that others reading this review will want to get in their car and drive down to Barrio Logan immediately.

But before you do, check the time because they open at 8:30am and close at 3:00pm, UNLESS they run out of food and close earlier.

The first time I went to this wonderful, small – much smaller then than now – was in 1966.  My husband and I stood in line for almost 35 minutes, next to the then-mayor and Police Chief of San Diego. The line stretched almost around the block then – and still does today.(New people stand in line now – they served all the “old ones.”)   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – Coronado Oil Pipeline Conference Target of Protests

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By Doug Porter

Local environmental advocacy groups are bravely planning a public protest where protests rarely go: Coronado.

The American Petroleum Industry (API), the largest advocacy and lobbying group for the oil and gas industry, just happens to holding its 2013 Pipeline Conference at the Loews Coronado Bay Resort.  API is made up of nearly 400 members, including ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Dow Chemical Company, Halliburton, and Shell Oil. These companies provide funding for API, which in turn champions the industry’s interests in the government and through public outreach

Led by SanDiego350.org, with the support of Women Occupy San Diego, Tar Sands Action – Southern California, and the Sierra Club San Diego, local activists are readying to denounce API for ‘being the climate misinformation machine of the carbon industry and for migrating the science of climate change into a divisive, political conflict.’
  [Read more…]

The Starting Line – Who Didn’t Set Off the Bombs at the Boston Marathon

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For all we know it could have been the Penguin Liberation Front

By Doug Porter

The one thing we know for sure is most of the initial reports following yesterday’s tragedy were factually challenged. Or should I just say wrong?

Rumors flew. They got shot down.

First there were three bombs. Then there were five. Then there was a related explosion at Boston’s JFK library. Twelve people were dead, according to the New York Post. Authorities were questioning a Saudi man as a ‘person of interest’.

All those things turned out to be wrong.

The media’s self generated pressure to be ‘first’ with breaking news was only slightly less ridiculous than the rumors flying over Twitter.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – Are You Feeling Patriotic This Tax Day?

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By Doug Porter

It’s time to pay up, people.  April 15 is tax day and Uncle Sam is looking for his dough.

The IRS estimates that fifty million Americans (75% of whom will get refunds) will wait until the last minute to file their taxes this year.  The perceived agony of the tax paying process will dominate the news media scene today.

Here in San Diego we have several flavors of tax protests scheduled for today.

Tax evaders of the corporate kind will be the focus of the San Diego Light Brigade’s protest outside the Midway Post Office from 8 until 11pm this evening. Here’s the Facebook page for that demonstration.

Our local Tea Party types are having at least two protests today.   [Read more…]

Happy Tax Day—For Some More Than Others

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Prop 30 passed, the truth is that the poor still pay a heftier share of their income in taxes than the wealthy.  Last week, the California Budget Project (CBP) released their annual report “Who Pays Taxes on California?”,  and it appears that the post Proposition 30 landscape is far from apocalyptic for the top 1%.

By the broadest measure of revenue collection, “Taxafornia,” despite its largely progressive tax system, ranks 15th in the country in total “own source” revenue, and the poorest among us pay the highest share of their family income in taxes.

Indeed, as the CBP report outlines, “California’s lowest-income families pay the most in taxes, when measured as a share of family income.  This is true even after accounting for Proposition 30’s temporary personal income tax increases for very wealthy Californians, which took effect in 2012.   [Read more…]

Belly-whopping Off the Deep End

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By Norma Damashek

I know, I know, we’re only human.  We all make mistakes.  Everyone’s been known to lie or cheat or steal (only for a good reason, of course).  At times we’re devious or lazy.  Sometimes greedy.  Vindictive, too. 

Given our shortcomings, I ask  you this: is it fair to demand higher standards from our elected officials than we might impose on regular folk like you and me?  Here’s my answer: it’s more than fair; it’s self-evident common sense to hold out for brain-power and high ethical standards from politically-inspired individuals who climb into the public arena and vie for the prize of holding the public welfare in the palm of their hands.  

You look for professional standards and expertise from a dentist, don’t you? from your trainer at the gym? the butcher at Vons?  Does it make sense to accept anything less from your elected politicians who have the power to shape, improve, or make a mess of your daily lives and surroundings?   [Read more…]

I’m not Sure if I Adopted Barrio Logan or if It Adopted Me…

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By Letitia Rogers

I’ve moved around a lot. From where I was born, in El Cajon, to rural Oregon and even more rural Alaska. Wherever we lived, though, we were still San Diegans, listening to the Beach Boys Christmas album — even with snow outside. I spent 20 years in LA and never seemed to settle, always hinting at a return to San Diego.

In 2007 I made the move and while working downtown, my car got towed. The impound lot was near Barrio Logan. Uh oh. I’d never been there and only had vague stories of why not to go there. Danger was implied. We exited at Cesar E. Chavez and driving by old houses with bars on the windows, I wondered: who lives here?

That move didn’t stick and I ended up back in LA. While figuring out my next move after a film job ended, I got a call from a family friend in San Diego about an opportunity. Gayle is a caterer & chef and had decided to open a restaurant in Barrio Logan. Very little foot traffic and a down economy wasn’t ideal but she’d moved her catering kitchen to a building at Newton and Beardsley and taken over the old Guild restaurant space in the front.

She was going to give it a go. I was intrigued. It was to be friendly and relaxed with affordable, good food for the people working and living in the community. I think my ever-on-the-move brain only heard the word “community.” That’s what I was looking for and I said “Yes.”   [Read more…]

Restaurant Review – Chief’s Burgers & Brew

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Chief’s Burgers & Brew
Lomas Santa Fe Drive and Cedros
Solana Beach, CA
858-755-2599
www.chiefsburgersandbrew.com

By Judi Curry

Three of us took the Coaster up to Carlsbad Village for an excursion that we had talked about doing for months.  On our way home from Carlsbad, we stopped off in Solana Beach and one of the “natives” suggested that we have lunch at Chief’s. It was relatively close to the train station, and because the other restaurant that had been recommended was closed, we decided to go there.

  [Read more…]

A Modest Proposal for Reforming the Health Care System

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By John Lawrence

The best antidote for a degenerative disease is a regenerative lifestyle

The health care system, what I call the medical-industrial complex, is in reality a disease management system. It does little to promote health and makes money only when people get sick or injured. Doctors only make money when they treat a sick patient. They make nothing for keeping them well. This is the so-called fee for service model and it stinks. It drives up disease care costs. Pharmaceutical corporations create drugs and advertise them on TV in order to get as many people as possible hooked on them. Doctors do little to treat underlying diseases but willingly prescribe drugs to ameliorate symptoms. The big money is in surgery.

Obamacare, aka the Affordable Care Act, while it has placed into law important provisions such as disallowing rescission, disallowing kicking people off of health insurance policies due to preexisting conditions, providing for not quite universal coverage etc, it does little or nothing to actually make health care affordable. Hospitals charge exhorbitant rates according to their Chargemasters. In some cases they won’t accept a patient’s insurance coverage, demanding upfront payment in cash instead. Obamacare does little to keep pharmaceutical costs, health insurance costs or hospital costs down.

I have written a number of critical articles about the health care system. But I don’t want to leave the impression that all I’m doing is to just tear this leviathan down in a critical and negative way and have nothing positive to say regarding the health care system. I do have some positive suggestions about how it could be improved.   [Read more…]

A Ride to North County

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By Judi Curry

For the past few months members of my support group have talked about taking a ride on the ‘Coaster’ to North County. Only one of the members had been on the Coaster; the others of us had it on our ‘bucket’ list.

The first time we were to go it rained; the second time we were to go someone was sick; the third time it was raining again. This time we decided we would go regardless if it rained, or regardless if someone became ill. It was a “go” no matter what. And, wouldn’t you know, the weather forecast WAS for rain, but we decided unless a hurricane was in the offing we would still go. And then one of the people that was going to go with us became ill, but she encouraged us to go anyway, and we did. We are so glad that we did.   [Read more…]

The Dove and the Cockerel: Chapter 31

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“Joe, Sheila Masters thinks you killed her partner…” Scott Raines said.

“Wait a minute, Scott, I didn’t even fire my piece,” said Joe, defensively.

“I know that. Hell, we all know that. The fact of the matter is, she thinks you killed her friend, Tyrone. She said she will talk to you and give herself up to you alone.” Scott Raines paused. “She says she will kill someone else if she does not talk to you. Joe, you are off administrative leave. I am sending a patrol unit to pick you up. You must be at the office in fifty minutes to take her call.”

Joe was dumbfounded. Two minutes earlier, he had given up; nobody wanted him. Now Scott Raines stopped just short of begging him to come back.   [Read more…]

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