Month: June 2017

Editor’s Note: The San Diego Free Press is five years old this week. This is one in a series of posts reflecting on the paths we’ve traveled.

By Jim Miller

This week marks the fifth anniversary of the San Diego Free Press and that’s something to celebrate. I first started writing for the OB Rag and then subsequently became part of the birth of the SD Free Press because I loved the way that those outlets both paid homage to the legacy of San Diego’s countercultural press and continued its legacy into the digital age.

As part a key part of the local New Left and counterculture in the sixties and early seventies, Doug Porter, Frank Gormlie, and others offered a space for radical voices and cultural threads that were not acceptable in the mainstream, commercial media of the time.

There is a petition that has just been started for a new lifeguard station for Ocean Beach. Councilmember Lorie Zapf began the petition on change.org very recently, and asks for people to sign the petition in support of her motion for $200K that would pay for a design process for a new facility.

She states:

“The final step for approval will occur on Monday, June 5th at 2 PM, when the City Council will be asked to approve this allocation as part of this year’s Budget Revision Process.”

The big news coming out of Ocean Beach today is that 9 hedgehogs were rescued from an Ocean Beach trash can on the 4600 block of Voltaire Street.

County Animal Services were called out – by someone who thought they might be possums – and the CAS officer made the discovery about 10:15 a.m. on Thursday, June 1. Nine of the 15 hedgehogs survived. They are now in the care of County Animal officials.

Upon arriving at the trash can, the responding officer found several of the mammals loose inside the trash can, then noticed a sealed plastic garbage bag that was moving. When the officer tore open the bag, more of the animals were inside, but 5 were dead.

By Dave Patterson

Summer is around the corner in San Diego and many of us look forward to the annual traditions, like the Miramar Air Show.

This wildly popular event with perhaps 500,000 attendees brings people from all over the world to see the pilots demonstrate their precision flying and perhaps line up purchases of weapons.

Corporate chalets are available where the weapons vendors can “use their company logo and message to reach 500,000 Air Show Attendees, while the military people risk their lives to entertain the crowd.

More sinister is the promotion of war to our youth …

By Frank Gormlie

There are gray storms brewing over Mission Bay – or rather over the future of Mission Bay. And in particular, over the future of the northeast corner of Mission Bay, the largest aquatic park on the West Coast.

In a nutshell, there are conflicting visions over what should happen to the area at issue between the City of San Diego’s development plans versus what is envisioned by environmentalists, led by the San Diego Audubon Society.

Activists in San Diego are decidedly fed-up with what’s been going on inside the White House. They have joined a nation-wide campaign to march for truth, and have organized a March for Truth San Diego for this Saturday, June 3rd to be held in Mission Bay Park.

The following is info from March for Truth San Diego facebook.

Co-sponsored by INDIVISIBLE San Diego, this march is a non-partisan call to Congress to commission an independent investigation into the Trump Campaign/Administration’s ties to Russia.

Library Budget Crisis Only Partially Averted – OBceans Asked to Attend City Council Budget Hearing – Monday, June 5th

Monday Afternoon, June 5, 2:00 pm – San Diego City Council votes on final FY 2018 budget modifications.

Where & When: 2:00 pm, 12th floor of City Hall (202 C Street, San Diego, CA 92101)

The City Council has restored $100,000 (of the $500,000 proposed cut) for the Library’s programs budget for Fiscal Year 2018. Library hours, books, and material spending were preserved. However, funding might change up to the final City Council vote on Monday, June 5th. Friends of the Library from all over San Diego are headed to this meeting. If you are interested in going, call or leave a message for ,,,

By Ernie McCray

I don’t know about y’all but, with all the Three Stooges kind of shenanigans going on in the White House, I feel like we’ve entered the Trump Zone.

It’s definitely not the Twilight Zone, that’s for sure. The Trump Zone’s stories go way beyond any episode I’ve ever seen on the Twilight Zone.

No character in the Twilight Zone comes close to the main character in the Trump Zone, an orange faced villain with hair a scarecrow would refuse to wear, a man who, wherever you look, he is there.

Grassroots climate advocacy group SanDiego350 is calling for people to protest President Trump’s widely expected decision to pull the U.S. out of the international Paris Climate Agreement.

A demonstration is set for 5:30-7pm today (Thursday, June 1) at the Federal Building (880 Front Street) in downtown San Diego.