Month: June 2020

by Ernie McCray

In these times of social distancing and isolating I’ve managed to still find something to celebrate. Like high school graduations.

I take my hat off to a brilliant descendant of mine, Alonzo (A.J.) Morgan, my great-grandson, who just moved his tassel from the right to the left at San Diego’s Lincoln High.

And I’m particularly proud that he’s following my path by accepting an athletic scholarship at my alma mater, the University of Arizona in Tucson, my hometown. Sixty-four years after me.

Different sport, though. I played basketball during my college days and he’s going to make his way on the gridiron.

We, however, both played each other’s sport. I could cut a figure on a football field and he can play some hoops – and we both have played a number of other sports. But we both dedicated time and effort to our favorite sport, the one we wanted to really excel in.

I can’t even begin to express how stoked I am in his decision to go to my school.

Tonight at this month’s OBTC Public Meeting we are excited to host guest speaker Genevieve Jones-Wright for a discussion about San Diego’s criminal and social justice systems. Genevieve serves on the Board of Directors for the David’s Harp Foundation, is Vice President of the Earl B. Gilliam Bar Association, and is a volunteer attorney for the California Innocence Project. Genevieve is also an adjunct professor at Point Loma Nazarene University.

Please join us on Facebook Live, Wednesday June 24 at 7:00 pm, for an interactive Q&A and the opportunity to leave comments and suggestions.

By Norma Damashek / NumbersRunner / June 23, 2020

Part I: Complete Communities

Over the past six months, the international scientific community has been working its tail off to subdue the coronavirus scourge wreaking havoc on the world population.

Meantime, Americans are taking to the streets demanding the annihilation of other malignant viruses infecting our nation–namely, racist violence by the police and the embedded racism that underlies too many of our country’s institutions.

How are San Diego leaders responding to this pandemic moment of economic, political, and life-threatening upheaval? The answer won’t make you proud. It could make you angry.

Throughout these past months of social turmoil, racial reckoning, and a deadly health crisis, San Diego’s Mayor, along with city planners and the development industry, have laser-focused their efforts on fast-tracking an extraordinary proposal called “Complete Communities: Housing Solutions and Mobility Choices Initiative” which:

Volunteer Board Grapples With How to Fill Vacant Seats

By Geoff Page

It is interesting to see the lengths people are going to today, in their efforts to establish a modicum of normalcy. The reasons for this are varied. For many it is a serious worry about money. For some, who may not have a money worry, it is a chance to get back to making more money. And some, like many celebrities out there in front of laptops, are starving for attention.

The volunteers on the Peninsula Community Planning Board want to resume their business, which has been on hold since their last meeting in February of this year. While it may not be the motive for everyone, most of the sitting members expressed the same sentiment, a genuine concern that the work for the community the board normally does was not getting done.

The kick-off effort to restart their work, Thursday, June 18, was an on-line meeting using used a popular on-line meeting software called Zoom.

By Thomas Ultican / Tultican / June 21, 2020

Education professionals throughout America are feverishly engaged in preparing for the first school year in the unprecedented Sars-Cov-2 era. Simultaneously, demagogues are pushing an often uninformed agenda.

For example, congressmen Jim Banks of Indiana and Tom Tiffany of Wisconsin have introduced legislation to force all schools to open with in-person classes by September or else lose federal funding.

At the same time McKinsey and Company, the 74 and other school privatization friendly groups are loudly proclaiming that an education gap disaster will devastate Black and Brown children if we do not reopen brick and mortar schools immediately.

Education Leaders are Getting Ready for Fall

Across California and the whole of the US, parents, students, teachers and administrators are involved in intense school reopening discussions with less than two months to go in some cases. County Health Departments in both Los Angeles and San Diego have indicated that masks will be mandatory for all students and school personnel.

California’s second largest school district, San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD),

By Colleen O’Connor

President Trump’s “Comeback Tulsa Rally” flopped. Over a million reserved tickets, but only 6,200 attended, which proves several alarming facts.

First, the nation’s much vaunted intelligence community and the President’ campaign “genius” were both AWOL.

Big question: Why didn’t anyone tell Trump?

His nominees head the CIA, the FBI, local and national Republican party apparatus. They remained silent? How about his “digitally superior” campaign team. They stayed mum? All too cowardly to inform the president that a disaster loomed? He shoots the messengers?

How in the world was the President of the United States allowed to get on a plane and fly to Tulsa without any knowledge that the overflow stage for a massive outdoor crowd was being torn down, due to no crowds, and that the arena itself was not even half-full?

“Behind the aloha vibe was the other vibe — a locals-only, whites-only vibe,” said Sharon Schaffer, the first African American female pro in the U.S.

By Dennis Romero / NBCNews / June 21, 2020

One day 40 years ago, actor and stuntwoman Sharon Schaffer returned to her SUV after riding the waves at Silver Strand Beach in Oxnard, California, to find a racial epithet written in dirt on its windows.

In surfing, “there was always the good, aloha vibe,” she said recently, “but behind the aloha vibe was the other vibe – a locals-only, whites-only vibe.” “I shrugged it off,” said Schaffer, of Los Angeles and celebrated as U.S. surfing’s first African American female professional. “But I don’t think I would shrug that off so easily today.”

U.S. surfing, still viewed as largely white and advantaged, may be undergoing a new awakening

By Marjorie Cohn / Jurist / June 19, 2020

That’s not a chip on my shoulder.
That’s your foot on my neck.
– Malcolm X

On May 25, a Minneapolis police officer tortured George Floyd to death in what his brother, Philonise Floyd, called “a modern-day lynching in broad daylight.” Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in all 50 states and Washington D.C.; the anti-racist uprisings continue.

Why do a majority of people in this country now support the Movement for Black Lives? Why have calls to defund and abolish the police entered the mainstream discourse? Why are people risking the deadly coronavirus to join the protests? And why are we seeing what may be the broadest popular movement in the history of the United States?

You have to picture this scenario – a beautiful tall tree, with huge green leaves, and at the top of the tree an aerie – (crossword answer for “nest”).

In that nest are two baby birds, and hovering over those baby birds are three of the biggest crows you have ever seen in your life. (Well…maybe not in your life, but, relatively speaking, very large.)

As life evolves, a sad thing happened to those baby birds – they both fell out of their nest as they were beginning to learn how to fly. One died on impact; the other one tried to move around but its parents could not get it up to the nest again. Enter the “Mr. X” – the man of the house closest to the tree and crows’ nest.

“Mr. X” saw the two babies; knew that the nest was too tall for him also and hoped that the parents would be able to save him. The baby moved over to the garage, and the parents watched him move.

By Jim Miller

Hope is in the streets. In the midst of a pandemic that brought an economic collapse during which a series of police murders inspired an international wave of protests, a new era is being imagined, one that would rise out of the ashes of a dying, corrupt order. And it’s a beautiful thing.

Yes, the ugliness is still very much with us in all its myriad forms, but amidst the teargas, rubber bullets, fascist tweets, and posturing, the young are demanding the impossible. What is wonderful about this is the fact that they don’t care what those who “know better” are telling them. They don’t care about what’s realistic or likely to move the needle in the November election. And they certainly don’t care whether you approve of their rhetoric and demands.

Locals, neighbors and Ocean Beach tree-lovers had feared it for months. Now, it’s official. The Torrey Pines on the 4600 block of Saratoga are dead.

A press statement from Jen Campbell’s office made the announcement. And we post it below. A couple of things. It was on behest of the city that Torrey Pines on that block were chopped down back in 2016. (See the “Sordid Saga of the Saratoga Torrey Pines.”) And in fact, there’s been so many efforts by the city to remove the Torreys in OB, that a group formed to “save Peninsula trees.”

The Torreys in question are at 4605 Saratoga Ave.

By Artie Ojeda / 7SanDiego / June 17, 2020

Young adults between the ages of 18 through 34 now make up 44% of positive COVID-19 cases in California. The figure is up from 29% compared to one month ago. The age group represents the largest share of COVID-19 cases in the state.

The new data is provided by Bay Area epidemiologist George Lemp, who crunched numbers provided by the California Department of Public Health.

There is no definitive reason as to why there is a marked increase in positive cases in the age group. But it coincides with the reopening of many businesses, including bars and restaurants in the state. There’s also been an increase in the availability of testing.

“In general, younger people feel like they’re invincible. They move away from the mitigation strategies, the masking, and social distancing,” says Dr. William Tseng, MD, with Kaiser Permanente in San Diego.