Month: May 2019

By Mike James / Impeach on the Beach

By joining IMPEACH on the Beach you will be a part of history. The right side of history.

We are at the crossroads of determining whether our republic will be ruled by laws or by a demagogue who believes he is above the law.

At every turn the Trump administration and the Republican leadership has attempted to obstruct investigations into his “high crimes and misdemeanors”.

The impeachment process was created by our founders as a safeguard against tyranny and corruption, for moments in history like this.

Editordude: On May 13, 2019, a California jury awarded plaintiffs Alva and Alberta Pilliod a verdict of $55 million in non-economic and economic damages in addition to $1 billion each in punitive damages against Monsanto, for cancer ( lymphoma) caused by ingredients in their product Roundup.

The plaintiffs – through their experts – proved Monsanto made glyphosate – the active ingredient in Roundup – fifty times more toxic in its formula, making it easier for glyphosate to penetrate the skin leading to quick dispersion to the bones, where lymphoma originates.

Roundup – the herbicide the City of San Diego uses in our parks, beaches and playgrounds – is a topic for discussion at the upcoming Ocean Beach Town Council meeting on Wednesday, May 22.

By Carey Gillam / U.S. Right to Know

After less than two full days of deliberations, a California jury ordered Monsanto to pay just over $2 billion in punitive and compensatory damages to a married couple who both developed non-Hodgkin lymphoma they say was caused by their many years of using Roundup products.

by Ernie McCray

Looking at students,
“The Hornets,”
from the mic
at Lincoln High,

I could feel
my journey
in the city
rising in my memory,

my history
as a San Diegan,
arriving, August, ’62,
with a wife,
three kids,
lacking the money
between us
needed to visit the San Diego Zoo,

There has been concern expressed by our community members about the use of Round-Up pesticide by the City of San Diego.

Non Toxic San Diego will be offering an informative presentation about the use of these Chlorpyrifos pesticides at our next public meeting. Q and A to follow.

Please join the Ocean Beach Town Council, Wednesday, May 22nd 7:00pm at the Masonic Lodge-1711 Sunset Cliffs Blvd.

By Geoff Page

The Peninsula Community Planning Board meeting on Thursday, May 16, experienced something that was probably a first in its history when one of its members distributed his legal complaint against the PCPB and the City of San Diego. What he handed out was a draft but he actually filed the suit the following day on May 17.

The whole PCPB meeting was devoted to hearing two complaints against board members Margaret Virissimo and Donald Sevrens filed by community members, including this reporter. Briefly, this is what happened.

The way the complaint process works is that the complaint is reviewed by board officers and they decide whether to dismiss it or to pass it along to the full board. In the case of the two complaints, the officers decided to bring them both before the full board but they did not recommend an action, leaving that decision to the board.

The Virissimo complaint was discussed first. Suffice to say, it was a scene man.

We’re going to do it again! Spell out “Impeach” with our bodies – as hundreds of OBceans and San Diegans did on March 4, 2017.

Another human banner is being organized for Dog Beach in Ocean Beach on Saturday, June 1st. There will be simultaneous Human IMPEACH Banners in Ocean Beach, San Francisco and Ocean Beach, San Diego.

We’re meeting up at 11:00am near Dog Beach. We’re asking everyone

• Bring a towel or a blanket.
• No signs please.
• Please bring $1 donation to cover drone services and miscellaneous supplies. Excess money will be donated to future resistance efforts.

The Ocean Beach Pier will re-open this week, with an official ceremony on Thursday, May 23 at 8 am.

The symbol of OB has been closed since it was heavily damaged during storms in January. It was so damaged that many pieces of the railings washed up on shore – only to be carted off as souvenirs by locals and tourists alike.

More than 2,200 feet of guard rail, electric, water and sewer lines had to be substantially repaired or replace. Repairs estimated at $430,000 were made to the pier, which has definitely become the icon image of the seaside village. Many OBceans and other San Diegans have expressed their sadness and frustration over the pier’s closure.

For a better part of this past Sunday, San Diego police came to Ocean Beach and Point Loma with their citation books out as part of a crack-down on jaywalkers and wayward drivers and bicyclists. They also went to Hillcrest – all part of a city-wide effort by the SDPD to focus on those violations that often cause crashes with pedestrians and bicyclists.

It is assumed but has not been confirmed that part of the crackdown was on wayward scooter riders.

The police do something similar at least twice a month, according to a spokesman.

In OB and Point Loma, it began at 10 am and went till 6pm as police centered on those trouble spots

By Geoff Page

For the past two years, Point Loma resident Michael Winn has been working on creating something Point Loma does not have, a town council. OB, Mission Beach, Pacific Beach, La Jolla, and many other communities have town councils – but not Point Loma.

It has been a tough road because the reception by existing community groups has been chilly, to say the least. Some of this was made apparent by a special event Winn organized on Tuesday, May 14 at a private home in Point Loma.

The invitation-only event was attended by a collection or people from Point Loma, Clairemont, La Jolla, and downtown. This was an immediate indication that the event was not solely about the Point Loma Town Council Winn has been working to create.

Hundreds of San Diegans – including a whole bunch of OBceans – turned out in the rain to “Walk Against Hate” in Liberty Station on Sunday, May 19.

Sponsored by a number of local organizations, including the Anti-Defamation League, the demonstration was in response to the rise of anti-Semitic incidents here and around the country, with the recent Poway outrage clear in the minds no doubt of the marchers.

Wayne Starker was there and took these photos.

By Jim Miller and Kelly Mayhew

The war on women is on.

Alabama, Georgia, Ohio, Missouri, and, soon, Louisiana, will join several other states to enact draconian legislation aiming to criminalize abortion, and, by extension, women’s reproductive freedom. The purported endgame is to wave a red flag under the noses of the Supreme Court to get them to overturn Roe v. Wade and abolish legal abortion in the U.S. once and for all.

As Michelle Goldberg put it in the New York Times :

“You can see, in the anti-abortion movement, a mood of triumphant anticipation. Decades of right-wing politics have all led up to this moment, when an anti-abortion majority on the Supreme Court could end women’s constitutional protection against being forced to carry a pregnancy and give birth against their will.”

By Terry Francke / Californians Aware / May 14, 2019

As reported this past weekend, on Friday the San Francisco Police Department sent an armed detail to sledgehammer its way into a journalist’s home and office, handcuff him and cart off his phone, computer hard drive, notebooks and other documentation. The police sought to learn who had leaked their report about the death of the city’s public defender to selected local media, which disclosed that this widely admired official fell ill in the apartment of a woman not his wife and had traces of alcohol and cocaine in this system.

Those raids, following a storm of accusations against the police for allegedly releasing the report to smear their longtime nemesis, were authorized by search warrants obtained by either misrepresentation by the police or a judicial disregard for the law protecting journalists’ confidential sources.