Month: November 2011

By Roger Showley / SignOnSanDiego / November 1, 2011

The takeover of parks, plazas and other public spaces by the “Occupy Wall Street” movement is a good thing, said a panel of landscape architects on the future of cities Tuesday at the American Society of Landscape Architects convention meeting in San Diego.

“I am so thrilled that we have reclaimed these places as places of protest and how important they are,” said Maurice Cox, former mayor of Charlottesville, Va., who now teaches urban design at the University of Virginia.

It certainly would be the pits if upon arriving home to your unit in an OB apartment building, you’re barred from getting into it because there’s been a fire in an upstairs apartment. And now you find out you’ll be displaced for awhile.

It would be even worst if you find out that a firefighter who came into your apartment to check on fire damage had also found marijuana.

But oh, you have a prescription for medical marijuana?

Doesn’t matter. You get arrested anyway

Filner and several Congressional colleagues write President Obama to back off medical marijuana

By Christopher Cadelago / SignOnSanDiego / Originally published November 2, 2011

Rep. Bob Filner and several congressional colleagues are urging President Barack Obama to reclassify marijuana as a legitimate controlled substance for medicinal purposes under federal law.

By Lucas O’Connor / TwoCathedrals / November 2, 2011

It’s been a heady couple of weeks for OccupySD, indeed for the entire national Occupy effort. The dynamics of the movement and the importance of the issues being raised provide plenty to chew over for a long time yet, but even more immediately, its interactions with police have raised a number of questions that the public deserves answers to. None of these issues are raised with any presumption that the SDPD will be unable to provide a good explanation — I both expect and hope that they will. But that’s different than not caring if those answers are ever provided. It’s still necessary to raise these questions and require a meaningful process of accountability.

Today is proof that despite all its problems – the disarray and the disenchantment of officialdom – Occupy San Diego is still focused on the banks; its attention is still occupied by the banks – as the source of the country’s economic woes. Today saw a march and rally in front of the Wells Fargo branch on B Street. There is another march and rally against Bank of America being planned on Saturday, November 5th.

With the help of a kick-off rally at the Civic Center Plaza initiated by the San Diego Labor Council at noon, several hundred demonstrators marched east to “bank central” – the intersection of B Street and 5th Avenue, where a middle-of-the-street impromptu rally was held.

Withdrawal Wedne$day Rally

November 2 at 12pm

Meet at Civic Center

3rd and B Street, San Diego

It is time to take the power and our money back from the BIG Banks.

Join the Labor Council and Occupy San Diego as we take part in the national movement to transfer funds from the BIG Banks to our local credit unions.

By Randall Erickson / Special to the OB Rag

PARIS. Recent events have caused me to add a preamble to this dispatch. These concern the very idea of democracy. The Greek prime minister announced that he would call for a referendum on the agreement he reached with the members of the Euro Zone on the management of the Greek debt and austerity program. This was too much for the powerful financiers and their stock markets which immediately plunged. So they have already voted against the democracy of the people. Can’t let the people decide on their own futures, you need the capitalist oligarchy and technocracy to do that.

It was a “Say what?” moment if there ever was one, you know one of those moments where the words coming through your ears reach a brain that can only go: “Did I hear what I thought I just heard? Are you kidding me?”

I don’t recall what I was doing when the moment arrived but it was the first “Say what?” moment of my life, but being a six-year-old boy, all boy, as they say, and the year being 1944, I was probably chasing bad guys, ala “Geronimoooo…!” or “Hi-Yo, Silver, Away!” But, in the midst of whatever I was doing I heard my mother say: “We’re moving away.”

By Cecily Burt, Kristin Bender, Sean Maher, Thomas Peele / Oakland Tribune – MercuryNews.com / Nov. 2, 2011 – updated 09:29:24 AM PDT

OAKLAND — Occupy demonstrators turned their ire on big banks Wednesday by marching, blocking traffic and chanting — and in some cases, defacing ATMs and pounding on doors at Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Chase and Citibank branches around downtown.

Thousands of people from all walks of life poured into downtown Oakland from points east, north, south and west, with more heading in every minute to lend their support and their voices to the general strike, the first of its kind in Oakland since 1946. For a time large crowds split off in separate marches, with some staying at the Occupy Oakland camp at 14th and Broadway, and others marching and protesting at various banks located near the Kaiser Center at 20th and Webster streets.

For the third time in as many weeks, Occupy San Diego activists attended the Tuesday San Diego City Council meeting in efforts to elicit support from the Council. They did this by making comments during the “Public Comment” period looking for a resolution from the City’s legislative branch in favor of Occupy San Diego’s efforts – such as the LA City Council took for Occupy LA.

Organizers spoke about the recent late-night police raids during which 51 occupiers were arrested, about the people injured during those raids, and particularly about the manner in which police made subsequent arrests – producing an extremely negative image for the City.

UPDATES inside

Police confiscated a large amount of personal property when they swept through the civic Center Plaza early friday morning, and many people have expressed concern over how or if they would be able to get any of it back.

As posted by Matthew Hall, a rough list of items confiscated from OccupySD

• 4 big pop up tents
• 7 big trash cans full of miscellaneous stuff (ie. skateboards, blankets, clothing, sleeping bags, tents, tarps)
• 15 chairs
• 1 shabby chic yellow nightstand
• 8 tables
• variety of cardboard signs
• 7 bikes
• 30 backpacks/carts/roller suitcases
• 9 boxes labeled games, dvds/books, toys, helmets, lunch boxes, blankets
• 1 bucket labeled OC and mace remedy and prevention, containing vinegar and imodium AD
• 3 coolers
• 4-5 cameras
• 10 plastic crates full of stuff
• Also: 16 individual lots of property impounded from specific arrestees (backpacks, purses, tents, etc.)

SOURCE: SDPD

We are not camping. We are assembling peaceably to petition the government for a redress of grievances. This is our permit. The Bill of Rights – Article 1.