Month: February 2012

There’s a new Pew study out about the rise of bi-racial or bi-ethnic newlyweds in America. Overall, the study found that “about 15 percent of new marriages in 2010 crossed racial or ethnic lines, double the rate from three decades ago. Intermarriages comprise 8 percent of all marriages now, up from just 3 percent in 1980.” (Washington Post)

And in the Western states, “about one-in-five (22%) of all newlyweds … married someone of a different race or ethnicity between 2008 and 2010″. This compares with 14% in the South, 13% in the Northeast and 11% in the Midwest. The highest rate was in the state of Hawaii with more than four-in-ten (42%) being bi-racial.

Editor: Here’s an article that should concern all OBceans, surfers, all swimmers, scuba divers and anyone else who plays or works in the ocean. Federal monies for water testing are being cut. So much for a “smaller government” – eh, you conservatives who see government as the problem. Enjoy yours and your kids’ next visit to the beach.

The EPA plans to cut $10 million in grants it gives annually. Water quality advocates worry that swimmers and surfers will be at even greater risk of illness.

By Tony Barboza / Los Angeles Times / February 16, 2012

Health testing at beaches in California and across the nation is at risk of being cut under a plan to eliminate federal funds for monitoring whether the water is too contaminated to swim in.

UPDATE: See inside

A Correia student, 14 years old and under suspicion by police of being in possession of a stolen iPod, was tasered twice by officers as they attempted to arrest him this morning at the school.

School police had been notified of a theft of $5000 worth of iPods and were in the process of questioning several students, when one of them began to resist their efforts to take him into custody. Police had allegedly found one of the stolen iPods on the student and proceeded to arrest him when he fought them. Police tasered the student, he pulled out the taser barb and then they tasered him again for a second time, and arrested him.

NBC reports that “two school police officers had minor knee injuries following the incident. The teenager is facing charges of theft and assault of an officer.”

Occupy San Diego Throws the ‘Bat Signal’ Up While Democrats Convene at the Party Convention

By Eugene Davidovich / Special to the OB Rag

SAN DIEGO – There are dozens of commercial buildings in San Diego with large flat windowless surfaces which most people would consider an eyesore. But for Occupy San Diego (OSD), during the weekend of the Democratic Party State Convention, many of those buildings including the convention center itself, served as a canvas for the OSD ‘Bat Signal’.

The ‘Bat Signal’ or guerrilla projections; images shown in public without any necessary approvals or permits, have gained steam in recent years in art communities across the world, and are seen on buildings and landmarks from Los Angeles all the way to London.

With the accelerated growth of the Occupy movement, protesters wishing to send a strong, visible, and defiant political message have also begun to employ this tactic in cities across the nation. The first Occupy ‘Bat Signal’ was cast by Mark Read, an artist and activist with Occupy Wall Street, who threw an image of ‘99%’ and the names of different Occupies across the world onto the Verizon building in New York City on November 17th of last year.

What will become of the bulldozed bike park that local OB and Point Loma kids developed? That is the question.

Will locals be galvanized and convince the City and the Housing Commission that it’s okay for the park to be “re-opened”?

Our friend Judy Swink took the following photos – before and after – of the bike park off Nimitz Boulevard.

Here’s what Judy wrote in her email to us when she sent these photos:

The two “before” photos are of the simple track for younger kids and the more complex one Channel 5 videotaped as it was destroyed. The third photo is the more complex one wiped out.

Wouldn’t you know it? OB is so far ahead … It was an Ocean Beach couple who were first in line to obtain a marriage license at the County clerk’s office on Tuesday, hoping to be wed on Valentine’s Day. And they brought twenty supporters too. By the end of the day, 96 couples had been wed on the celebrated lovers’ day.

But Jersey Deutsch and Lauren Parish – both of OB – were denied a license. Being a same-sex couple, they were told that “Marriage is between a man and a woman,“ by Sandra Banaga, the clerk assistant division chief. “I have to follow the law,” commented Banaga, who also said that she had no option but to deny the young women a license. She did tell them to return if the issues was resolved in their favor.

Editor: Author and radical observer Chris Hedges has opened up a current dialogue and debate within the Occupy Wall Street movement, in the shadow of last month’s confrontations between Occupy Oakland and the Oakland police. He points the finger at what he calls “the Black Bloc anarchists” and calls them the “cancer in Occupy.” In response to Hedges, David Graeber’s article below asserts that Hedge’s rhetoric is inaccurate and even “dangerous”.

The Cancer in Occupy

by Chris Hedges / TruthDig / Posted on Feb 6, 2012

The Black Bloc anarchists, who have been active on the streets in Oakland and other cities, are the cancer of the Occupy movement. The presence of Black Bloc anarchists—so named because they dress in black, obscure their faces, move as a unified mass, seek physical confrontations with police and destroy property—is a gift from heaven to the security and surveillance state. The Occupy encampments in various cities were shut down precisely because they were nonviolent. They were shut down because the state realized the potential of their broad appeal even to those within the systems of power. They were shut down because they articulated a truth about our economic and political system that cut across political and cultural lines. And they were shut down because they were places mothers and fathers with strollers felt safe. …. (Come inside for the remainder of this article.)

By David Graeber / n+1 / Posted Feb. 9, 2012

I am writing this on the premise that you are a well-meaning person who wishes Occupy Wall Street to succeed. I am also writing as someone who was deeply involved in the early stages of planning Occupy in New York.

I am also an anarchist who has participated in many Black Blocs. While I have never personally engaged in acts of property destruction, I have on more than one occasion taken part in Blocs where property damage has occurred. (I have taken part in even more Blocs that did not engage in such tactics. It is a common fallacy that this is what Black Blocs are all about. It isn’t.)

I was hardly the only Black Bloc veteran who took part in planning the initial strategy for Occupy Wall Street. In fact, anarchists like myself were the real core of the group that came up with the idea of occupying Zuccotti Park, the “99%” slogan, the General Assembly process, and, in fact, who collectively decided that we would adopt a strategy of Gandhian non-violence and eschew acts of property damage. Many of us had taken part in Black Blocs. We just didn’t feel that was an appropriate tactic for the situation we were in. … (Come inside for the remainder of this article.)

Here is the agenda for the OB Planning Board’s Project Review Committee hearing on February 15th. The meeting will be held at the OB Rec Center at Santa Monica Ave. and Ebers. The Project Review Committee reviews all incoming proposed projects and sends on a recommendation to the full Board. The full Board meets the first Wednesday of every month.

In a sign that the economy is improving, there are a number of proposed projects up for review:

• Action Item #1 concerns 4689 Santa Monica;
• Item #2 is for 2231-2233 Ebers;
• Item #3 is for 1615 Ocean Front St.;
• and Item #4 is the more controversial action item concerning the Inn at Sunset Cliffs located at 1370 Sunset Cliffs Boulevard.

A bike park that young Point Loma and OB kids used and built by themselves – with some help – over the last several weeks was bulldozed over by the City of San Diego.

A vacant and hilly, undeveloped area along Nimitz Boulevard had been made into a kids’ bike park by the kids themselves – with some help from adults and parents. Some called it a makeshift BMX park. An adult, Keighan Christianson, initiated the idea of building bike ramps on the land.

For some of the kids, this was heaven – a place to coast and jump – a place away from concrete, cars and television.

Medical marijuana patient in unambiguous compliance with state law, faces second prosecution attempt by San Diego District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis. Jury selection begins Feb. 14.

By Eugene Davidovich / San Diego ASA / Feb. 9, 2012

In the summer of 2009, Benjamin Gasper, along with two other seriously ill medical marijuana patients rented a warehouse space in the Sports Arena area of San Diego, a heavily commercial district far from residences and other “sensitive uses,” and began to collectively cultivate medical marijuana for personal medical needs.

All three members of the collective, as court documents have shown, signed an agreement in which they entered into a contract to “associate collectively or cooperatively to cultivate marijuana for medical purposes.”

The agreement went as far as stating that “all members of our medical marijuana collective will contribute labor, funds, or materials, and all will receive medicine.”

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt / Excuse Me, I’m Writing / February 12, 2012

Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, seems to have been widely misquoted last Friday, after the Obama administration announced a compromise to the campaign-season conflict between religious liberty and women’s contraception coverage under health insurance plans provided by Catholic employers (hospitals, universities and other agencies, but not churches). With the compromise, responsibility for funding contraceptives was shifted to the insurers, and Dolan purportedly said the resolution was, “a first step in the right direction.”

But, oh no, no! What Dolan surely said was that the resolution was “a first step in the right direction — to hell!” and that was made clear when the bishops slammed the compromise later in the day.

The response to the small Occupy/anti-National Defense Authorization Act protest at the Democratic convention was indicative of where we are politically in many ways. Some delegates fearfully scurried away from the protesters, others angrily told them they were protesting the wrong party (although Obama did sign it), and others, still, stopped and expressed solidarity with Occupy.

As one activist who was there holding a Millionaires Tax banner outside the hall reported:

“It was like a Rorschach test. You could tell where folks were on the political spectrum by how they reacted. The thing that stood out to me was how the slickest suits in the crowd just walked by like we didn’t exist.”

Sitting at the Millionaires Tax table inside the hall at the Hilton (ironic no?), I overheard voices ridiculing Occupy, expressing dismay at being protested, or saying they were headed over to check out and/or join the action. As activists there to promote the Millionaires Tax initiative I/we were both inside and outside the event.