Month: May 2011

Yesterday, a bright, sunny Sunday, I hopped on the trolley to 25th and Commercial and made my way to Chicano Park to join the festivities celebrating International Workers Day in San Diego. I was greeted by the sound of music from the awesome mariachi band who were entertaining the crowd from the stage. I’m sorry to say that my spanish is lousy, but as a middle-aged gringa who has lived her whole life in San Diego, mariachi has long been a favorite music style for me.

There were several hundred people in Chicano Park (I later heard an estimate of about 400, and I agree on that count), where people gathered for games, face painting, music and the playground equipment was packed with kids.

A couple of weeks ago local Republicans held their unity night at the Kona Kai Resort where notables such as Jerry Sanders and Kevin Faulconer cheered as Carl DeMaio asked if they were ready to make San Diego “the Wisconsin of the West.” They, along with the Chamber of Commerce, the Taxpayers Association, the Lincoln Club and other luminaries of the local right were getting fired up and ready to go for a ballot initiative that would undermine collective bargaining rights for unionized public sector workers in San Diego.