Quisling Pride
By Mat Wahlstrom
Ever heard of “Cop City”? No, that isn’t the name for the unseemly rush to install surveillance cameras throughout Hillcrest before this coming weekend, in violation of the TRUST Ordinance — though there is a direct connection.
I don’t see that it’s been written about here before, so allow me to explain. Cop City is the nickname for the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, a project to bulldoze hardwood forest and historic structures to build a massive complex — the largest in the nation — for the sole purpose of training law enforcement as urban paramilitary, in a historically Black and unrepresented section of Atlanta.
In direct response to the Black Lives Matter demonstrations that erupted in 2020, the following year 150 acres of publicly owned property were proposed for this facility. Finally in 2023, 85 acres and $30 million of taxpayer money was ‘gifted’ to the private local police officers association by the mayor and city council of America’s “Black Mecca.”
This real estate deal was conceived behind closed doors despite previous promises to develop this land for community benefit, to redress a long history of racial violence. But despite years of protest, with dozens of arrests for domestic terrorism and a related police killing, it was approved 10–4 after 17 hours of overwhelming public testimony against it. (None of the four council members who opposed it returned to office.)
One might think that this was all because the mayor who secretly negotiated the deal and the complicit city council members were all white and Republican. Yet that mayor was a Black woman Democrat; and over half the council members are Black or non-white and the rest also Democrat.
Cop City could not have happened if it had been undertaken by a majority white and Republican leadership in this white-minority city. It would have been rightly shot down as the obvious throwback it is to the days of segregation and disenfranchisement before the Civil Rights Movement.
This brings us back to San Diego. (Which, like Atlanta, is one of the top economically unequal cities in America.)
All of our elected officials are registered Democrat; and our mayor and two of our nine council members are LGBTQ+. We should be the beacon of liberality they campaigned to promote. Yet even a cursory glance at their records in office reveals the same neoliberal Republican policies that have been trotted out for decades now dressed in Democrat drag.
Across the board, from the SDG&E franchise agreement to performative homeless policies to insider deals that reward their donors over voters, San Diego’s electeds are engaged in business as usual. The difference is the incense of sanctimony they waft over it.
The stench of that becomes overpowering the closer one gets to Uptown.
If someone had said ten years ago that Hillcrest, the nationally renowned “gayborhood” of San Diego, would be sold out specifically by a LGBTQ+ municipal leadership, people would have told them they were crazy. Yet that is exactly what is happening.
Of all the many developer-enabling densification plans in the pipeline, none is calculatedly punitive to a legacy population than ‘Plan Hillcrest’ is to the LGBTQ+ community.
First floated by Todd Gloria in 2015 when he was a councilmember and with a vengeance now as mayor, Plan Hillcrest is actually intended to accelerate the displacement of the LGBTQ+ community who reclaimed this area from urban decay in favor of those with more disposable income.
And as the dutiful spear-carrier he’s always been, the District 3 council member representing Hillcrest, Stephen Whitburn, always does what Gloria and their mutual campaign contributors tell him.
It will replace the long proposed Hillcrest historic district, “a common sense step,” with what is now being called a “cultural district.” But the shamefulness of this is even worse, as both Gloria and Whitburn know they were originally pitched this scheme by the Hillcrest Business Association as an “entertainment district.”
(Adding insult to this injury, this private business association has a history of excluding LGBTQ+ businesses, which is why it was necessary for our community to form what is now the San Diego Equality Business Association. That group has been excluded from Plan Hillcrest entirely.)
What tiny area that is still being considered for a historic district would be in name only, as development is allowed ‘by right’ — which is unheard of anywhere else and completely undermines preservation.
And with a middle finger to the everyone, Gloria had language added to Plan Hillcrest after public review, to promote “relocation of the DMV office from Hillcrest to a more auto-dependent location.” This is despite twenty years of effort by electeds from Christine Kehoe to Chris Ward to include affordable housing in the redevelopment of the DMV site.
The full City Council is set to rubber-stamp this plan on July 30, while the glitter is still visible on the pavement from this weekend’s celebration.
As the Civil Rights and other progressive movements have been co-opted to simply mean some of different color or sexuality or gender orientation are ‘represented’ to sit at the table, this has served to legitimate there even being a table — and an economic order that leaves everyone else to scavenge for scraps.
The only “progress” that has been made is that it’s now necessary to find members of a dispossessed community who, to further their selfish ambitions, are willing to be complicit in perpetuating that dispossession.
Equality should mean more than a right to be just as corrupt as our former oppressors.
The only difference between Atlanta and San Diego, as shown by the Cop City vote, is that they still have a few representatives willing to stand up against injustice.
Remember all of this when you see Todd Gloria, Stephen Whitburn and their LGBTQ+ accomplices shamelessly waving from on high in Saturday’s parade. Ask what, after 50 years of marching for Pride in San Diego, are they leaving for us to be proud?
[Note: The term “quisling” comes from the name for the Norwegian prime minister during World War II, who instead of opposing, invited the Nazis in to occupy and despoil his own country.]
This important and newsworthy post has been updated and now has all the links the author intended to provide readers. Thank you Mat!
¡Muchas gracias, Editordude!
Recently went to Portland. You’d think it was Todd’s dreamland. High rises, a renter’s paradise. Stayed at the west end of Harvey Milk, a very LGBTQ+ area (just a reference). Actually, some of their city park areas have underground parking below them. Buildings rated on their “green” amenities (capturing water or converting energy to heating water for example). More organized than San Diego in that regard. But despite the public transit and bike lanes, cars still drove around in gridlock, homeless still existed everywhere, a la the same issues existed as here, there, or any other city. The problems remain the same. We may think they’re unique to our area. They’re not. The solutions remain elusive.
But one solution is to terminate/fire Todd.
How you can want to stick a town for 30 years with a homeless shelter, and 30 mil a year, when your own shelf life is limited, shows how delusional getting that checked box on the resume is. Homelessness will not be fixed by this. Gutting affordable housing money and undermining your tax base will not work. Giving developers the easy path, eliminating fees, affordable housing requirements, and looking for special tax districts to finance the whole house of cards, will not work. In case you weren’t paying attention, the council voted to spend $10 million a year for 10 years to consultants, for the condition of our various dams in our area. We know they’re bad. We need them fixed. Even if it’s 1 or 2 right away could have mitigated some of the water rate increases being currently implemented.
Please this fall, fire Todd.
Having family in northwest, I used to drive up their every few years. I-5 all the way since I had a goal. The worst traffic, the worst congestion, the most sore left leg (stick shift) ever was always Portland. There are lots of things to like about Portland, like the Filson backpack company, but still they have the same love with the automibile like the rest of us.
Had a stick shift for years and know what ya mean.
…and remember this when voting for mayor!
Could not agree more! To paraphrase what someone wrote about Fraud Gloria with more elegance than I can recollect here, ‘If he did nothing at all, he would be doing more good for San Diego than he is now. Instead, he is working night and day to destroy it.’
News flash. Ego-Rivera caves on his tax.
https://timesofsandiego.com/politics/2024/07/19/sd-city-council-president-withholds-proposed-stormwater-funding-measure/
Been following this for years. They’ve ripped up a huge, beautiful, urban forest for this monstrosity. Then the cops MURDERED an unarmed protester sitting cross-legged on the ground with his hands in the air, and put 57 bullets into him because he was a ‘threat’ according to the police investigation because ‘he shot’ a cop. Which he didn’t do. It was another cop that did it. Of course no body cam footage of the attack by the multiple cops that did this was allowed to surface, and no cop was ever prosecuted. Another murder by cop goes unpunished.
Protesters have been charged with state and federal terrorism laws. People who were running a group effort to bail out protesters were arrested, and of course many have beaten etc etc. All the usual we’ve come to expect of our
‘peace officers,’ yes?
They have lied for years, and perjured themselves all to hell, and the politicians have done the same thing through their forked tongues in the press and on TV, did all the crooked things they do you would expect a Fascist police state does to get its way.
And of course ‘internal investigations’ cleared all cops of any possible charges. Does that surprise anyone?
Oh wait, it can’t happen here because we’re living in America the land of the free, right?
This is a militarized urban warfare training base for cops to learn how to kill everybody in a neighborhood which is exactly like the IDF training so many US cops sent to Israel have and are learning to do. Think about what the IDF is doing to Gaza right now happening in YOUR neighborhood. That’s the ugly reality of Cop City.
https://www.npr.org/2023/03/11/1162843992/cop-city-atlanta-activist-autopsy
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I’ve posted this link because it was quick and I don’t remember where other links are in my documents file. He did NOT shoot a cop, it was another cop. He WAS sitting on the ground with his arms raised. And not a single cop has paid for his murder.
But we’ve come to expect this, haven’t we? Ho-hum nothing to see here. And these are the troops Trump will have next January. Does this make anyone think about consequences?
sealintheSelkirks
Excellent and informative article Mat! Thank you!!
Equating “Cop City” in Atlanta to increasing density in Hillcrest is one for the ages, man.
Times change, cities change. The streets of San Diego and Manhattan are just about equally wide, and were planned that way for the same purpose: the future. San Diego won’t be Manhattan, but we can’t maintain the 1970s density and plan for a future.
It’s time to change. And change is not a villlan.
How you miss the point of the comparison is “one for the ages.”
The point is that political representation based on identity does not automatically translate into better representation; and as both cases show, it has instead led to worse outcomes.
No one said times and cities don’t or shouldn’t change. The issue is when that change is not organic and rational, but the direct result of private interests engaging in corruption with our representatives to allow them to profit from needless change that only benefits them.
In a democracy, nothing could be more villainous.
“Needless change” is in the eye of the beholder.
The incumbent owners in Hillcrest and Mission Hills sit on some of the most prime land in the country. Within walking distance to one of the most spectacular (and largest) public parks in the country.
It was planned to be more dense. It should be more dense. Hopefully it will be more dense. It’s time for change.
Sigh. It’s not that it wasn’t “planned to be more dense,” but when, why and how those plans were made. Plan Hillcrest makes no sense unless you’re a developer or someone they’ve deluded into believing that any housing more affordable than what exists already will result.
The ‘tell’ that you’re one of them is bringing Mission Hills into this.
I’m “one of them” meaning who?
A “sealion.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning
Is Balboa Park on the list of one of the “largest public parks in the country”?
For what it’s worth, Mission Trails Regional Park has 5,840 acres and is the 15th largest urban park in the country. It is also @ 5.5 miles from the very well-appointed Santee Transit Center.
I’ve lived in Hillcrest for 26 years and never has it been more exciting than now. Hillcrest is vibrant and thriving and light years away from the broken down place it was 10 years ago. The residential and commercial development so bitterly criticized here has turbo charged Hillcrest much for the better. Everyone I talk to here has the same opinion. We don’t want to live somewhere frozen in time.
As for this corruption allegation against the Mayor, I’ve yet to hear any real evidence to support it. It seems like a lot of Who Shot John?
Yes, Carl; we all know you’re a stalwart defender of your class. It would be a mystery why you bother to lord about it here except to feel smug.
Your constant posts about “everyone I talk to agrees” read like the comic about two eagles sitting in club chairs having brandy. One of them asks while reading a newspaper, “Has Mr. Hawk ever tried to harm you?” The other eagle replies, “No! Certainly not!” The first then says, “Me neither. I don’t know what Mr. Pigeon is going on about.”
“Everyone I talk to” is similar to the classic Trump insinuation. A faux truth.
“Everyone I talk to here has the same opinion.”
Uhh I seriously doubt that. That may very well be YOUR opinion and maybe SOME others you know, but unless you live in a different Hillcrest than I do then to say “everyone” is simply a big stretch.
Eloquently written Mat!
If Todd is doing this much continuous damage during an election season, let’s hope he is not re-elected. The damage this lame duck mayor can do the next four years to ‘Quack’ things up should be hair-raising. Let’s not allow it to become a reality.
Vote Larry Turner for Mayor in November and Terry Hoskins to District 9 City Council.
Those of us in District 3 will be stuck with Whitburn after November 5th but we still have the power of recall in June 2025.
Thank you; but I don’t see that Coleen Cusack has dropped out of the District 3 race against Whitburn? https://coleen4sd.com
I’m not saying Coleen isn’t a candidate, nor will I vote for Nitwit Whitburn.
But I believe that the local Dem Party will pour money into getting Steve re-elected. I hope I am wrong but I’m not sure that Coleen has the infrastructure in please to defeat Steve. That’s just my opinion. I am not disparaging Coleen.
Carl, you’re talking about an exciting time now, but get back to us in 10 years if you are still living in Hillcrest and let us know how things are thriving then after the development has taken place.
As for businesses thriving, talk with longtime businesses and they will tell you, they are leaving or are hanging on for dear life because rents are going way up and they are being priced out. But I guess that’s o.k. with you?
When Todd Gloria leaves office (hopefully in 2024) and has to scavenge for food; better know, by us ordinary folks as grocery shopping; I look forward to the day when Todd is driving to the Hub to shop and look for an available parking space.
If I am getting ready to leave, and see him, I will relock my car, turn around and go back to the store. Todd can look a little harder for a space to park in. Turn around will then be fair play; not pay to play.
Nobody will go to Hillcrest anymore because it will be too crowded.
#Iowa