Month: February 2012

By Kali Kat / Special to the OB Rag

Now with its fourth month anniversary, Occupy San Diego continues to make a presence in the San Diego community, this morning challenging a proclamation by the City Council that the City of San Diego is re-committed to protecting the rights of free speech expression in San Diego.

The proclamation was in response to the 100 year anniversary of the Free Speech fight in San Diego during which the 1912 San Diego City Council passed Ordinance No. 4623 banning free speech or assembly in a 49 block radius of downtown San Diego.

A new poll out shows that in San Diego’s mayoral race, Congressman Bob Filner and City Councilman Carl DeMaio are in a statistical tie for first place, each with about a quarter of respondents’ votes.

The poll – conducted for KGTV by SurveyUSA between January 30 and February 3 – shows DeMaio with 25% and Filner with 24% – a tie as the poll of only 511 likely voters has a margin of error of 4.4%.

The other high-profile candidates include District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis who garnered 14% and state Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher who received 13%. Nearly a quarter of respondents picked “other” or were undecided.

By Howard Mintz /MercuryNews.com / February 7, 2012

A federal appeals court on Tuesday struck down Proposition 8, finding that California’s ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional because it deprives gay and lesbian couples of the equal right to wed.

With a decision that pushes the gay marriage issue a step closer to the U.S. Supreme Court, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld former San Francisco Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker, who invalidated Proposition 8 in 2010 after conducting an unprecedented trial.

“Proposition 8 serves no purpose, and has no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California, and to officially reclassify their relationships and families as inferior to those of opposite-sex couples,” Judge Stephen Reinhardt wrote, joined by Judge Michael Daly Hawkins.

This much is known: there was a stabbing last night, Monday, in Ocean Beach. Police found the victim, in his 30’s, lying on the ground in the alley between the Arizona Club and Winstons, and unconscious. The alley is between Newport Avenue and Santa Monica off Bacon Street.

San Diego Police Lt. David Rohowits stated to media:

“His abdominal organs had been eviscerated from a stab wound to the stomach. [As far as] our investigation right now, we’re certainly looking for witnesses, the victim was unconscious so we’ve been unable to get a statement from him.”

Today I received the following letter from the San Diego Branch of the Susan G. Komen For The Cure:

We have a very small office here in San Diego – so that the majority of the money we raised can go right back to the community. Last week’s political firestorm shook each of us to the core. It may also have rocked you. For the first time in my six years here, the integrity of this organization was questioned. Even after we took responsibility for the mistake and moved quickly to fix the problem, some said they would never have anything to do with Komen again.

Okay. I understand that. Everyone needs to make decisions that they can live with and feel good about.

But here’s the truth. While some may leave us, we will never leave you or the uninsured women that we fight for every day here in San Diego.

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt / Excuse Me, I’m Writing / February 7, 2012

The picture is a delightful and humorous celebration of women’s anatomy. It’s been posted all over the ‘net’, including multiple Facebook pages — including mine. But this morning it was gone! And it’s gone from every other Facebook page I know of that had posted it.

Facebook stole the cupcakes!

Yet, countless Facebook pages continue to be littered with content that celebrates rape as humor. If you want to post rape jokes on public Facebook pages, all you have to do is label them as “humor” or “satire“ and you can rap on rape to your heart’s content. Search for “You know she’s playing hard to get when” and you’ll see that Facebook’s policy is

It has leaked out: tomorrow, February 7th – the San Diego City Council will issue a proclamation commemorating and basically “apologizing” for what happened 100 years ago in regard to suppression of free speech during the infamous San Diego Free Speech Fight of 1912. The proclamation will be presented to ACLU at the City Council meeting (see below).

This is extremely important in light of the current suppression of free speech at the Civic Center – nicknamed “Freedom Plaza” by Occupy San Diego. OSD and their supporters, and other civil libertarians throughout the City are invited to attend this commemoration. As best we can tell, it will occur at the opening of the City Council meeting, which begins at 10:00 a.m. in the Council Chambers, 12th floor of City Hall.

Media Invited on Coastkeeper’s Boat to Tour “King Tides” Tuesday Feb. 7

Last of seasonal high tides to demonstrate potential impacts of sea level rise

SAN DIEGO, Feb. 6, 2012 – On Feb. 7, some of the year’s highest tides will breach San Diego’s shorelines, providing a glimpse of what the region can expect as sea levels rise in the coming years.

According to The San Diego Foundation’s Regional Focus 2050 Study, increases in sea level in San Diego could be 12 – 18 inches by 2050.

The king tides on Monday, Feb. 6 through Wednesday, Feb. 8 are predicted to raise water levels five to eight inches above normal.

San Diego Coastkeeper and Tijuana River National Estuarine Reserve invite media for a boat tour of the San Diego Bay to learn more about sea level rise in San Diego and how king tides demonstrate potential

As the first anniversary of the Fukushima disaster approaches, recent developments in the nuclear power world at locales thousands of miles apart once again teach us the high prices societies pay for depending on atomic power to generate their electricity.

Fukushima

Nearly a year after a devastating earthquake and catastrophic tsunami crippled the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in northeastern Japan, tens of thousands are still unable to return to their homes.

Children in the city of Fukushima were largely prohibited from going outside last summer.

Radioactive contamination has been found in local beef, rice, milk, vegetables and tea.

Most recently, the January 28 Mainichi Daily News reported, “Radioactive testing facilities have been inundated with requests to check gravel after it was revealed on January 15 that high radioactive levels were detected in gravel quarried near Fukushima Unit 1 and used in construction projects across [Fukushima] prefecture.”

Commemoration on Wednesday at 6pm at 5th and E Streets – the Original Soapbox Site

This year, we commemorate the 100-year anniversary of a city ordinance that banned public speaking and assembly in the area around 5th and E Streets in downtown San Diego and the subsequent battle that followed. During the course of this struggle, many people were arrested, beaten and even killed for asserting their rights to simply stand on a soapbox and speak. Today, anyone who enjoys the right to assemble, protest, and speak in public in San Diego has the Free Speech League of the Progressive Era to thank for fighting to maintain basic rights for all San Diegans

The 100-year anniversary of the San Diego Free Speech Fight is a celebration of the legacy of local labor and civil rights activism and a reminder that if we are not vigilant in the protection of our rights, we can certainly lose them.

There’s this book ban
in Arizona
which is supposedly
in the USA
where book banning
isn’t supposed to take place
but they went on and did it anyway.
And it happened “quicker than
you can say,
Jack Robinson,”
an idiom from a long ago day.

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt / Excuse Me, I’m Writing / February 6, 2012

Last week, a person I admire wrote, “I hate people.” Without missing a beat, I emailed back, “I love that you wrote that.” And that gave me pause. Earlier in the week, I had read a chapter from Maythee Rojas’ Women of Color and Feminism. Rojas wrote about love’s being the fuel of feminist activism, a force for social change. It is through love — of oneself and others — that we build the necessary bridges between the great global diversity of women and their issues, uniting us in action and visionary change. In her book, Rojas made a clarion call for love, but I was feeling hate.