San Diego Free Press

Grassroots News & Progressive Views

The Starting Line — Trash from Foreclosed House Deposited at Bank of America Branch in San Diego

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Residents from southeast San Diego’s Mountain View neighborhood took matters into their own hands yesterday; cleaning up garbage accumulating at a foreclosed property owned the Bank of America, and “depositing” it outside a nearby branch office of that financial institution. The doors were locked at B of A’s 36th and National location as reporters and TV camera crews watched community members, led by the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, unload furniture, appliances and litter gathered from the shuttered, but uncared for, property currently owned by the bank.

The dramatic protest was staged to call attention to the proposed Property Value Protection Ordinance, under consideration by the San Diego City Council.  The law would require banks to register homes in the city upon the filing of a notice of default, with a $100-a-day fee for failure to obey the act. If lenders register a distressed home but fail to properly maintain the property (leading to blight), the bank would be subject to a fine of up to $1,000 a day. This, proponents say, would help the city cover the true cost of neglected properties.   [Read more…]

What Congress Doesn’t Know About The City Heights Post Office

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It was stinking hot walking from the 40th Street transit stop on University Avenue to the City Heights Post Office four blocks away. Cumulus clouds, a sure sign of summer rain everywhere else I have ever lived, were piled up in the sky directly above me. They deflated before my eyes, as if whatever rain they held had been sucked right out of them in one thirsty gulp. There would be no sudden refreshing rain shower.

A rain shower would not have been well received by the fifty or so adults sitting on the low wall outside of the Church of the Nazarene, or standing on the sidewalk and leaning against the wall of the building in the adjacent alley. It wasn’t 2:30 yet and the church would not begin its weekly food distribution for another half hour. Most of the people were elderly. A long line of their collapsible walkers with a seat and basket awaited the box of food that would be forthcoming.   [Read more…]

Why We Need More Poetry in Our Lives

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By Karen Kenyon

“We are hungry for the secret news about life,” said former poet laureate, the late Stanley Kunitz. He was speaking of the news that poetry delivers.

Most Americans just don’t get this deep soulful daily news.

We don’t know the names of our great poets.

We don’t pay our great poets much (the majority of poetry anthologies pay in copies — most very accomplished poets teach at universities or other schools, in order to survive). Poets’ paychecks are either nil or less than even an outfielder in a minor minor league. Even our Poet Laureates are only given a stipend of $35,000. They are not household names.

Thousands don’t fill a stadium to hear a poet here in America — unless that poet is also a musician — say, Dylan or John Lennon. It’s a different story in many other countries.

The poets often speak, or spoke, for the people.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – It’s a Bad Day for San Diego’s Little People

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San Diego Schools Busing Program Gets Ugly…Yesterday’s snail mail brought myself and the parents of 22,000 other school aged children in San Diego a letter from the SDUSD Transportation Services Department demanding payment for the coming year’s busing within the next couple of weeks—or else. Dated July 31st (Yesterday was Aug 6th) and signed by Gene Robinson, “Director of Transportation and Distribution Services”, the letter also incidentally mentions that transportation fees for a single student will rise from last year’s rate ($420) to $500. A family’s second child gets the discounted rate of $250; additional children are not charged. The “or else” part of the letter is that, if you don’t happen to have that much cash laying around, your child will not be riding the bus this year. Programs allowing for monthly payments or by the semester have have been eliminated, so it’s all or nothing.

“Payment in full for each student must be received by the Transportation Department no later than August 24, 2012.”

Parents of students who are exempt from transportation fees, like those who are in certain classes of Special Education programs and Free or Reduced Lunch categories, still have to obtain certification and submit it to the Transportation Department by the August 24th deadline. I wish all those parents good luck in getting SDISD to process their paperwork prior to the deadline. Apparently different divisions within San Diego Unified are incapable of talking with each other.
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Mr. President : Legalize Marijuana and You’ll Get the Youth Vote and Win the Election.

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A Majority of Americans Support Legalization of Marijuana Now for the First Time

This is an Open Letter to President Barack Obama Calling on him to legalize marijuana.

If you legalize marijuana, Mr. President, you’ll get the youth vote and win the 2012 Presidential election. It’s as simple as that. However you do it, Mr. President, if you legalize cannabis, you’ll then do for the young of this country what you did for the Mexican-American and Latino populations, and then what you did for the gay and lesbian communities earlier this year.

How is this so?

It just so happens, that here in the midst of campaign 2012, the issue of marijuana legalization and the status of medical cannabis have perhaps paradoxically both become highly charged topics. Legalization initiatives are on three state ballots, there’s a whole array of other reform measures up for vote, and there’s polls that show a majority of Americans support straight-out legalization of pot – all that makes this year 2012 an historic year for marijuana reform.
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ACLU Sends Warning to US Attorney Duffy: “Stop the Threats” of Del Mar City Workers

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By Marcus Boyd/ Americans for Safe Access / August 6, 2012

San Diego, CA – In an ever increasing waste of federal funds to circumvent state medical marijuana laws, last month US Attorney Laura Duffy fired off this threatening letter to City of Del Mar employees. In response late last week the American Civil Liberties Union of San Diego & Imperial Counties (ACLU) posted an article on their blog titled; “U.S. Attorney Shouldn’t Be Threatening to Prosecute City Employees” and fired fired this letter back to the US Attorney.

On their blog, the ACLU writes:

“The San Diego U.S. Attorney is treading dangerous legal ground with a legal opinion that seems to be threatening Del Mar city employees with prosecution if they comply with an ordinance on medical marijuana up for a vote in November.”

Duffy’s intensified war against the civil liberties of sick and dying patients caught the attention of ACLU Legal Director, David Loy, after the director received an email blast and supporting materials from San Diego ASA detailing Duffy’s attempts to threaten lawmakers with federal prosecution for adopting ordinances that regulate dispensaries.   [Read more…]

East County Communities Want Answers from SDG&E on “Mitigation Grants”

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Meeting August 7 in Deerhorn Valley on fire mitigation funds

By Kim Hamilton / East County Magazine / August 6, 2012

Deerhorn Valley–We are now well into a perilous fire season. SDG&E, in its guise as the “Sunrise Powerlink Fire Mitigation Group,” has notified some 1,300 at-risk homeowners along the Powerlink that they are “potentially qualified to receive grant funds for the creation of defensible space or structure hardening…” Up to $2,000 per parcel is being made available on a yearly basis.

Make no mistake: this is not done out of the goodness of their hearts. Nor will it eliminate the increased danger we now face from Powerlink. It was simply a requirement for approval. A “partial mitigation.”

We, the at-risk and soon-to-be-crushed (as our Governor threatened last week), need answers to some serious questions about these “grants”:
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Back here in the reality based reality….

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“Papa Doug’s” UT San Diego Editorial Board pens a fantastical version of existence with no connection to the world we live in.

In politics, just like in life, we have choices to make. Some of us choose to make those choices based on the facts as they exist, some of us make choices based on the facts as we wish them to be. For the better part of three decades now, the Republican Party has based their decision making process on the latter. From their near maniacal belief in supply side economics (or “trickle down” economics, or my favorite “voodoo economics” as then candidate George H. W. Bush called it) to their insistence that they’re party represents a “higher morality,” there seems to be little connection with the reality the rest of us live in.

Last weekend San Diego’s esteemed daily fishwrap ran an editorial entitled “Romney in a Landslide.” It reads more like a religious proclamation than a bold prediction; a fantasy conjured up in the halls of the Mission Valley fortress newly rededicated to Republican virtue.   [Read more…]

The Dark Side of the Rainbow

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by Kit-Bacon Gressitt

Writing about prejudice can be a challenge. I was born into a happy little privileged space. I’m basically a nice white gal, a daughter of the hegemonic norm. What the hell do I know from prejudice, right? There’s racism, homophobia, misogyny, classism, ageism, a vast spectrum of “otherisms” — the dark side of the rainbow — all of them designating certain groups of people as “other.” And I write a lot about them, 25% of my columns, I just figured out, despite my pallid skin, humdrum heteronormativity, and prissily privileged class.

That’s not to say that one must be victimized to crave justice for all; neither does it suggest that I’ve never been the target of prejudice. My body parts of the female persuasion make me a daily bull’s-eye for the slings and arrows of misogyny. My advocacy for LGBT civil rights makes me a target for car window bashers. I once married a Puerto Rican and was promptly removed from several invitation lists (omissions admittedly devoid of disappointment). And I’ve witnessed the resulting issue of that union, my daughter, struggle with the rampant prejudice so freely expressed by the otherists in our Southern California community.   [Read more…]

Homelessness: Man’s Inhumanity to Man

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There is no question that every political issue has at least two sides – the pros and the cons. Issues involving homelessness are no different. However, when weighing the impact of both sides of homelessness issues, often one side appears to have a greater impact upon humanity than the other. In other words, in analyzing the issues of homelessness, the sides are not necessarily even. In fact, sometimes the impact of the political decisions relating to homelessness can be cruel.

For example, there are municipal ordinances in many cities prohibiting sleeping on public land, including beaches and parks. On the positive side, these laws protect public property from overuse – an important goal so that members of these communities can continue to share open spaces. However, homeless people may experience the impact of these laws as depriving them of a legal place to sleep.   [Read more…]

Bulletin: Alleged Sikh Temple Shooter Former Member of Skinhead Band

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by Mark Potok / Southern Poverty Law Center Hatewatch
The man who allegedly murdered six people at a Sikh temple in suburban Milwaukee yesterday, identified in media reports as Wade Michael Page, was a frustrated neo-Nazi who had been the leader of a racist white-power band.

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A Quick Trip to Costco (Morena) to Buy Gas

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A member of my widow support group, Irene, came over this morning because we were both feeling lonely, and I was making breakfast – “Dutch Babies” for my students and thought she’d like to join us. After eating, we decided to go up to Ft. Rosecrans and “see” our husband’s and tell them what they missed. They were waiting for us in their little “niche” and we bawled them out for leaving us when they did. (Interestingly enough we did not know Irene and Johnny; Irene and I met in our support group, but the “wall” that Bob and Johnny are in are very close to each other and we presume that they “meet” often and discuss the dirty trick they played on us, their wives.

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