Month: June 2021

Today, Friday – with the sun directly overhead at noon – a coalition of different groups will be rallying to demand San Diego City Councilmembers reject the proposed SDG&G franchise agreement. The Council has a final vote on the 10-year contract on Tuesday, June 8. The initial vote in May approved the agreement, but a second vote is required.

The rally will be at City Hall, 202 C Street in downtown San Diego. The groups – which include public interest, racial justice, and environmental organizations – state:

The proposed franchise agreement would shackle residents and businesses in San Diego with the highest rates in the

by Ernie McCray

I owe an apology to L. Todd Wood.

I wrote about an article he had written in my recent OB Rag piece, “Wishing a Classmate Would Say ‘No to Racism.’”

His essay was sent to me via email by a high school classmate of mine who, as I wrote, is always trying to prove me wrong regarding race issues Black people face in America.

Apparently, my old school chum added information at the end of Wood’s writing that wasn’t the author’s.

Now, Mr. Wood wrote a lot about Black people that was alarming and concerning to me but he hadn’t written any of the things that I attributed to him after I wrote that he had brought “his rant to an end with an assessment of the benefits to our society if Blacks suddenly upped and left.”

Many progressive pundits, politicians, civil rights advocates and observers are calling this moment America finds itself in, a very dangerous one.

For instance, Robert Reich says:

The greatest danger to American democracy right now is not coming from Russia, China, or North Korea. It is coming from the Republican Party. … American democracy is at an inflection point.

Then there is this statement from over 100 scholars who express their deep concern regarding the assault on democracy:

Parks and Recreation Coalition (PARC) was notified yesterday by city officials that a new Parks Master Plan would be released on June 2 with an aggressive schedule without sufficient time for public review of hundreds of pages of text and analysis impacting more than a billion dollars in future park fees.

PARC includes former city planners, landscape architects, architects, and community planners who reviewed the initial draft and helped defeat it last November at City Council. The initial plan laid out arbitrary standards that would not provide the parks needed by a growing population and without an understandable park land standard.

The new draft, being released without a strike-out, underline version to aid public review, is not addressing the key problem identified by PARC last November — the promotion of a confusing and untested “points” system to replace the easily understandable land standard in use today.

On Tuesday, the OB Rag was sent an email by the Recall Campbell campaign announcing that the effort did not reach their goal of 14,000 signatures, “not enough to force the recall of Jennifer Campbell.”

Campaign organizers stated they did garner over 10,000 signatures, however. In their statement, the campaign said:

The pandemic combined with competing signature-gathering efforts for other political races and Jennifer Campbell’s low name recognition proved to be an insurmountable challenge.

They were up against “an establishment candidate backed by deep-pocketed special interests ….” and up against the editorial board of the San Diego Union-Tribune. The effects of the pandemic cannot be overstated.

All events are online and free unless stated otherwise.

Every Saturday at 10:30 a.m. Climate Mobilization Coalition Zoom Meeting. June 5th. 12th, 19th, 26th

June 8th Tuesday to June 21st Monday 7 pm WFFSD Film Series: Sisters Rising

June 9th Wednesday 6 pm – 7 pm 20 Years of Helping Homeless Youth: A Doors of Change Anniversary Symposium
June 9th Wednesday 5:30 pm – 6:30 pm Immigration Updates Webinar

June 9th Wednesday 6 pm – 7 pm Electric Vehicle Association San Diego meeting
June 10th Thursday Super Power: Economically, Socially, and Environmentally Superior
June 10th Thursday 5:30 pm Introduction to Redistricting & Mapping Your Communities

June 12th Saturday 9 am – 1 pm 6th Annual Zero Waste Fair
June 13th Sunday 9:30 pm – 2 pm Post-Pandemic Hike & Picnic
June 13th Sunday 11:30 am – 2:30 pm Marcha de Silencio – Stand Up for Friendship Park

Nuclear Shutdown News for June 2021

By Michael Steinberg / Black Rain Press

Nuclear Shutdown News chronicles the decline and fall of the nuclear power industry in the US and beyond and highlights the efforts of those working to create a nuclear free world.

Legacy Of Fukushima Disaster Haunts Olympics

On March 25 CNN reported that the Olympic torch for this summer’s Olympic games in Japan was lit and then circulated by runners in Fukushima Prefecture, site of the March 20ll nuclear disaster.

Some of the runners were survivors of the catastrophe themselves, and some of those had lost family members back then.

The date of this event , almost 10 years to the day after the massive earthquake and subsequent tsunami, followed by the meltdown of three nuclear reactors

by Ernie McCray

I got an email from an old high school classmate that read: “Here’s a really good look at the problem of race in America today” in reference to an essay written by L. Todd Wood.

I seriously doubted that it would be a “good look” at racial matters as my old school chum finds pleasure, for some reason, in sending me articles that “prove” how Black people go about trying to fit into American society in the “wrong way” – and every way we try is the wrong way.

But I read the writing anyway, a bit curious as to what an ex-special forces helicopter pilot with a degree from the Air Force Academy had to say. And right-away I could see where this man was heading

There was a twitter storm over the Memorial Day weekend about the massive show of force by San Diego police in Ocean Beach and their take-over of the Pier parking lot.

Reporter and OBcean Alain Stephens sent out a number of tweets calling the police take-over of the area “inappropriate”, “abnormal”, a display of what’s wrong with modern policing, and that the whole scene did not honor Memorial Day but tarnished it. Stephens, who is African-American, also criticized the police show of force and take-over as part of a historical trend to restrict access to beaches by people of color.

Not everyone agreed with him

By Geoff Page

The Ocean Beach Town Council held a meeting Wednesday, May 26 to talk about a single issue, the OB Fishing Pier. There was an informative presentation and a long public discussion. One surprise for many others was a public opinion that one option to dealing with the pier problem would be to remove it. Period.

The removal opinion was not just one person, although this was a small minority. But, this is why public forums are so important. Most folks were looking at the three proposals in the 2019 engineering report on the pier that The OB Rag revealed to the public for the first time. The three were: temporary repairs, a major rehabilitation, or remove and replace.

No one had considered just “remove,” and those who were of that opinion were looking at money spent on the pier,

The Ocean Beach Planning Board has a full agenda for its Wednesday, June 2 meeting.

It has 2 projects to review: ‘granny flat’ proposed at 4742 Niagara (it’s on the consent agenda and somehow includes 4743 Niagara as well, even though on other side of street – is that a typo?); and a granny flat conversion and 2 new units at 4636 Del Monte.

Plus the Board will hear an update about the dying Torrey Pine(s) on Saratoga and a presentation on housing bills currently considered in Sacramento. It will also review the tabled recommendations for OB parks and receive a request to name OB’s volley ball courts (how can a non-permanent volleyball court be named after anyone?)