Articles by Anna Daniels

I left a moribund Western Pennsylvania mill town the year that Richard M. Nixon was not impeached for crimes against the American people, and set off in search of truth, beauty, justice and a beat I could dance to. Here I am.

Anna has written 170 articles for the OB Rag!

The Long Road to Equality for Women – ‘Time to Pass the ERA’

March 8, 2021 by Anna Daniels

ERA old photo 1920

Originally posted September 29, 2010

By Anna Daniels

“Feminism is doomed to failure because it is based on an attempt to repeal and restructure human nature.” … “What I am defending is the real rights of women. A woman should have the right to be in the home as a wife and mother.” Phyllis Schlafly

“Schlafly’s discussion reveals a paradox. She was able to have it all: family and career. And she did it by fighting those who said they were trying to get it all for her.…” Pia de Solenni

When I walked into the unisex bathroom at the Livingroom coffeehouse, I deftly threw a kung fu kick, successfully lowering the toilet seat from its upright position with a soul satisfying BANG! accompanied by my hissed words “Here’s to you Phyllis Schlafly!”

Schlafly spear headed the anti-Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) movement in 1974, maintaining that the ERA’s passage would lead to compulsory military service for women, same sex marriage and (drum roll please…) public unisex bathrooms!

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Bob Dorn: Rest in Power!

December 3, 2018 by Anna Daniels

Last week, on November 28, Bob Dorn’s wife Deborah sent a brief email to the San Diego Free Press editors:

Very sad news….Bob had severe heart attack… basically cardiac arrest after a wonderful evening at a jam where he played with friends…..he passed today in a place he loved .Didn’t suffer at all….so sorry to tell you guys this way.
Love
Deborah

The news blindsided the SDFP editors who have been winding down our beloved publication, with all the emotions that engenders in each one of us. Bob’s death feels like a particularly incomprehensible blow, yet another grievous loss. We had imagined that our community would remain vital and connected after we ceased publishing, and then Deborah’s email informed us that our community had been diminished. Just like that.

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Chaos and Cruelty at the San Diego Border

November 26, 2018 by Anna Daniels

We have become the barbarians at the gate
By Anna Daniels / San Diego Free Press

As if ripping children from their parents’ arms, locking them up in cages or sending them to facilities on the other side of the country weren’t the absolute low point of the Trump administrations response to immigrants seeking asylum, we are now tear gassing children.

Let that sink in for a moment. We are tear gassing children, who were reported as running screaming and crying from the tear gas canisters shot into Mexico, a foreign country, by US Border Patrol. (Imagine this situation reversed, with Mexico lobbying canisters into the US.)

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With Labored Breath: The Polluted Legacy of the Steel Mills

September 4, 2018 by Anna Daniels

By Anna Daniels / San Diego Free Press

For the children of steel
The Atlantic recently ran an article about the long term impacts of the now largely defunct steel industry in Braddock, Pennsylvania. Braddock resident Tony Buba has produced a short documentary about the environmental racism that has created an overlooked health crisis among residents in the area, particularly among African Americans who were segregated in neighborhoods closest to the mills. The incidences of cancer and lung disease are shocking.

For those of us who lived in any one of the mill towns dotting the Monongahela River (Mon Valley) in southwestern Pennsylvania and lost loved ones to those diseases,

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No Supreme Court Appointment While Trump Under Criminal Investigation

June 28, 2018 by Anna Daniels


Time for Democrats to go on the offense
By Anna Daniels

Remember how Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell Merrick Garlanded Obama’s Supreme Court pick? Let’s do McConnell one better:

Any Trump SCOTUS pick is void while he and his campaign are under a criminal investigation for obstruction and conspiracy against the United States.

Imagine the scenario in which criminal charges are brought by Mueller and the case ends up before the Supreme Court. Now imagine the loyalty oath which Trump would extract in some form from his pick for Supreme Court justice to replace Anthony Kennedy. Any question in your mind that Trump not only has his thumb but both feet on the scale?

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‘From Where We Sail’: Six and a Half Years Navigating 3 Oceans and the Human Heart

April 3, 2018 by Anna Daniels

“If you can sail to Catalina,” someone once said to me, “you can sail around the world.” — From Where We Sail

Editor: Here’s a wonderful review by Anna Daniels of the sailing memoirs of our friend and Point Loman Dianne Lane, who recently released her book, From Where We Sail.

By Anna Daniels

The road trip is a well-established genre in America’s literary cannon, and Point Loman Dianne Lane’s recently released memoir From Where We Sail is an engaging narrative within this literary tradition. The full title of the book includes the additional description: A Family’s Six and a Half Year Journey Around the World on Sorcery.

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‘Teresa Gets a Boyfriend’ at Saville Theatre

February 22, 2018 by Anna Daniels

By Anna Daniels/ San Diego Free Press

When Teresa Gunn performs her one woman show Teresa Gets a Boyfriend at City College’s Saville Theatre on Saturday, February 24, she will take on the universal and oftentimes worn themes of looking for love, finding love and trying to keep love.

Creative storytelling makes old stories new and Teresa Gunn is a consummate storyteller.

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For Susan L. Taylor: The Green Fuse Drives the Flower

December 27, 2017 by Anna Daniels

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.

Dylan Thomas

Editor’s Note: Susan Taylor, who wrote gardening columns for the OB Rag and San Diego Free Press, passed in mid-December.

By Anna Daniels / San Diego Free Press

Susan Taylor began writing columns about gardening for the OB Rag and San Diego Free Press in February of 2014. The biography that she provided to append to the end of her articles is quintessential Susan—direct, spirited and humorous. It deftly conveys details of an intriguing past, establishes the commitments of her heart and intellect and reflects her whimsical optimism about the future.

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After Charlottesville: Swift Resistance

August 17, 2017 by Anna Daniels

By Anna Daniels

The response to Trump’s total moral failure to reckon with what happened in Charlottesville last Saturday prompted an immediate response from citizens all over the country. Over 700 rallies and marches were held in the aftermath, including here in San Diego.

Also in San Diego, the Horton Plaza pavement plaque commemorating the Confederacy was removed–quickly. According to the petition that was circulated yesterday

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Need for Police Accountability and Transparency After La Jolla Shooting

May 8, 2017 by Anna Daniels

“It is possible to be in debt, to be lovelorn, and to be racist. They are not mutually exclusive.”

By Anna Daniels / San Diego Free Press

The recent shooting rampage at the La Jolla Crossroads apartment complex in University City left one person dead and seven persons wounded. This is indisputable.

We also know that the dead victim and wounded were all African Americans and the shooter, who was subsequently shot by the police, was white.

Local news coverage of the event has unsurprisingly focused on the possible motives for San Diego’s scene of American Carnage.

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The Science of San Diego Mastodon Bones, Time and Human Habitation

April 27, 2017 by Anna Daniels

Mastodon San Diego

By Anna Daniels / San Diego Free Press

Who knew that the Cerutti Mastodon site along SR54 in San Diego may be “the oldest in situ, well-documented archaeological site in North America and, as such, substantially revises the timing of arrival of Homo into the Americas”? And what does that actually mean?

San Diego has been a rich source of paleontological discoveries. A 300,000 year old mammoth was excavated during the construction of the Thomas Jefferson School of Law in downtown San Diego. Additional excavation ten feet below the skull and tusks of the mammoth revealed the 500,000 year old skeleton of a California Gray Whale.

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A Freeway Runs Through It: How City Heights and Barrio Logan Fought Local Political Machines to Save Their Neighborhoods

April 25, 2017 by Anna Daniels

chicano park parque chcano

Editor: The following is a retelling of how the San Diego communities of Barrio Logan and City Heights fought CalTrans and the local political machine to save their neighborhoods. (Originally published April 24, 2013.)

Resistance, Vision and Community

By Anna Daniels

During the month of April, San Diego Free Press has been providing extensive coverage of Barrio Logan. Much of that coverage has focused upon Chicano Park–its history, its national historical designation and its deep spiritual and community connections.

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San Diego Volunteers Raise Roof Beams for Emergency, Very Affordable Housing

March 17, 2017 by Anna Daniels

Amikas Emergency Housing Expo March 15 – 26

By Anna Daniels /San Diego Free Press

The super bloom of wild flowers in the most inhospitable of places–the Anza Borrego desert– has captured the attention of San Diegans, who are flocking to get a glimpse of this short lived phenomenon.

Closer to home, an equally remarkable blossoming takes the form of the cluster of cabins that has sprung up like wild flowers at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in North Park. San Diego has been the most inhospitable of places for enacting solutions to our growing humanitarian crisis of homelessness. Volunteer activists from Amikas have stepped into the leadership vacuum, displaying what can be done to address the immediate housing needs of the most vulnerable among us.

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Trump’s Long Shadow Falls on San Diego Immigrants, Refugees, Muslims

February 2, 2017 by Anna Daniels

From City Heights Town Hall to Airport Protest

By Anna Daniels / San Diego Free Press

“Tell me what democracy looks like!”

“This is what democracy looks like!”

The chant ran up and down the whole length of Terminal 2 of San Diego’s Lindbergh Airport, up and down the opposite side of the terminal and could be heard on the second floor walkway. Three lines of cars ran between the two and those cars honked their horns while passengers waved flags and held signs outside of the windows.

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Protect San Diegans’ Obamacare – Call to Action!

January 6, 2017 by Anna Daniels

no obamacare repeal

By Anna Daniels / San Diego Free Press

The 115th Congress convened for the first time earlier this week. After their disastrous behind closed doors attempt to gut the Office of Ethics went down in flames, they decided that it was time to concentrate on the number one priority–Repeal and Replace Obamacare.

Repeal and Replace Obamacare has been the Republican mantra since 2009. Their call for repeal of the Affordable Care Act is gratuitous, but it has kept the base hopeful if not happy. Repeal is infinitely easier than proposing a replacement and Republicans have nothing to offer in its place.

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Why Don’t OB and San Diego Restaurants Add ‘Free Market’ Surcharges to Customer Bills?

January 5, 2017 by Anna Daniels

High-end Ocean Beach and San Diego Restaurants Poised to Add Surcharge for “government mandated” Costs to Business

By Anna Daniels

Over the past ten years consumers have absorbed higher costs at the check-out counter for all manner of goods. Remember when gasoline costs spiked and affected more than gas at the pump?

Everything from the potted plants at the local nursery to grocery items reflected an attendant price increase. Remember when the cost of coffee went up? What about the shortage of cheese and how that was reflected in higher consumer costs?

These consumer cost increases reflect everything from volatility in the commodity market to shortages caused by natural disasters to price fixing. We weren’t handed restaurant checks or grocery bills with a surcharge added for “free market” or “act of god” or “corporate greed.”

So why are some San Diego restaurants considering a surcharge on bills to cover the most recent “government mandated” wage hike which raises the minimum wage to $11.50 an hour?

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AARP’s Spineless Response to Social Security, Medicare Privatization Threat

January 4, 2017 by Anna Daniels

By Anna Daniels

AARP, the American Association of Retired Persons, recently sent a call to action letter to its members about the need to secure future Social Security benefits. That opening line should have generated a sigh of relief from AARP’s 37.8 million members over the age of 50 who have been following the rumblings from the new Republican Congress to privatize Medicare and Social Security.

Read a little further and you find out that AARP is not alerting us to the potential unraveling in 2017 of two wildly popular and essential components of our social safety net–but rather the potential insolvency of Social Security in 2034. Imagine that your house has been doused in gasoline and an arsonist is standing close by with a box of matches but you are being told that your problem is that you aren’t saving enough money to tent the place for termites seventeen years into the future.

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Left Behind: Myrtle Cole’s Committee Appointments and Neighborhoods South of 8

December 30, 2016 by Anna Daniels

By Anna Daniels / San Diego Free Press

Myrtle Cole

San Diego City Councilwoman Myrtle Cole’s contentious election as Council president last week culminated with her appointments to the various City Council committees.

Few of us know that these committees exist or what they do, but by the time issues are brought before the full City Council for legislative action they have been discussed and pretty much finalized in a committee.

Cole’s appointments to the Public Services and Livable Neighborhood (PS&L) committee denies a seat at the table for those of us who live in communities south of 8. Her selection of Council members Chris Cate (chair), Lorie Zapf (vice chair), Barbary Bry, and Chris Ward is enraging, deeply concerning and unacceptable. Here’s what PS&L does:

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Historic Marston House Hosts Book Release of Maria Garcia’s ‘La Neighbor’

December 28, 2016 by Anna Daniels

By Anna Daniels / San Diego Free Press

Maria Garcia recently release her long awaited book based on the award winning San Diego Free Press series The History of Neighborhood House in Logan Heights. The site of the book release—the historic Marston House—was no accident.

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A Call for Mayor Faulconer to Halt San Diego’s Confiscation of Blankets and Tents of the Homeless

December 23, 2016 by Anna Daniels

Editor:We received a report of police confiscating the blankets of OB homeless at the beach, we commented recently about Park and Rec crews removing homeless sleeping material from a tree in Robb Field, and below is a post by Anna Daniels who lives in City Heights with an accompanying video of trash workers removing tents and belongings of homeless. (If you cannot view the video, go to the original store at San Diego Free Press.)

Finally, at the end of the article is a petition being circulated calling upon Mayor Faulconer to confront the nightmare of homelessness. They are demanding Emergency Humanitarian Action to stop criminalizing homeless people in San Diego. It would be very Christian of him.

Did You Wake Up this AM in a Warm Home? Thousands of San Diegans Didn’t

By Anna Daniels / San Diego Free Press

The first of two storms expected to move through the San Diego region this week arrived last night with steady moderate rainfall here in City Heights. It was sixty degrees on the porch at 6:00 am this morning. The cats had taken shelter there and were curled up in loosely strewn bedding. I was still bed warm and savoring the first cup of coffee. Then I remembered this:

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One Person, One Vote: Time to Eliminate Electoral College

December 20, 2016 by Anna Daniels

By Anna Daniels / San Diego Free Press

Yesterday, December 19, electors cast their votes in the Electoral College against a backdrop of protests across the country, including here in San Diego.

For the second time in some of our memories, the winner of the popular vote lost the Electoral College vote.

Democrats howled after Al Gore’s loss in 2000 and agreed that something must be done about the Electoral College. All of the sound and fury ultimately signified nothing–here we (Democrats) are again.

A useful thought experiment is to imagine what would have happened if Trump had won the popular vote and not the Electoral College. Do you seriously think that we would be hearing about anything except how the election was stolen from Trump?

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Do I need a California ID to vote? Where is my Polling Place? The OB Rag Quick and Easy Guide to Election Day

November 7, 2016 by Anna Daniels

Here are some frequently asked questions about election day voting in San Diego County. In order to vote, you must be a U.S. citizen and you must already be registered to vote. There is no same day registration in CA.

For info on candidates and issues on the 2016 general election ballots in San Diego, go here.

OB Rag and San Diego Free Press Progressive Voter Guide here.

When are the polls open?

Polls are open on election day Tuesday, November 8, 2016 from 7am to 8pm. If you are in the line at the polling place prior to 8pm, you have the right to vote.

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Illumina, Inc.: Wealth Creation – San Diego Style

August 30, 2016 by Anna Daniels

By Anna Daniels

black-hole-money1Around this time last year, the city of San Diego signed an Economic Development Assistance Agreement with Illumina, Inc.

It was approved on August 7th, 2015 as a “Consent Item” without pre-hearing noticing. The ten year deal included a promise to rebate $1.5 million in sales and use taxes in return for retaining “over 100 middle-wage manufacturing job opportunities” in San Diego.

SDFP editor Doug Porter wrote at the time:

Illumina is in the genomics business, and it is exactly the kind of company the city should be encouraging to put down roots and prosper here. This deal made by the Faulconer administration, however, is exactly the kind of governance the city doesn’t need.

So how is Illumina doing one year later? What has the public received in return for its largess?

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The Day after San Diego Homeless Awareness Day

August 18, 2016 by Anna Daniels

Photo by Anne Haule

What has changed?

By Anna Daniels / San Diego Free Press

Yesterday, August 17, twenty of San Diego’s media outlets participated in a focused effort to call attention to the tremendous human, financial and societal costs associated with homelessness in San Diego.

If we were writing about another country, we would be referring to the humanitarian crisis posed by a growing number of Internally Displaced Persons (IDP), but this is sunny San Diego.

It remains to be seen whether the well greased wheels of San Diego politics and commerce are altered in any way after yesterday’s concerted effort, but I can speak with some certainty about a few things that haven’t changed today.

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‘Honey, Don’t Worry about Me. We’ll Find a Place Soon.’

August 17, 2016 by Anna Daniels

By Anna Daniels

Photo: Wikipedia Commons

Halina is dead.

The effervescent petite blonde with the ebullient smear of sky blue eyeshadow above her sky blue eyes died in a residential hotel earlier this year.

I met Halina over a decade ago while I was working at the information desk of the old Central Library downtown on E Street. She was in the library searching for information on how to replace a lost ID. On a return trip she was looking for the address of her daughter Jessica.

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City of San Diego Ballot Proposals Promote Police Transparency, Human Services

June 13, 2016 by Anna Daniels

Women Occupy San Diego address Citizens Review Board
on Policy Practices inadequacies (again);

Democratic Woman’s Club advocacy for City of San Diego
Department of Public Health and Social Welfare

Women Occupy San Diego

By Anna Daniels / San Diego Free Press

Keep an eye on some of the new ballot proposals that have been filed recently with the San Diego City Clerk.

These proposals reflect focused citizen participation that offer correctives to the city’s Citizen Review Board on Police Practices (CRB) and the county’s meager health and human services. These small “d” democratic efforts also happen to be spearheaded by women.

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Peering into the Heart of Darkness: Why I Oppose Mayor Faulconer’s FY’17 Budget

May 25, 2016 by Anna Daniels

homeless w signBy Anna Daniels / San Diego Free Press

The following is the public testimony that I provided at the May 16 budget hearing before the San Diego city council.

Good Evening. My name is Anna Daniels and I am a resident of City Heights. I have attended close to a decade of budget hearings, always as an advocate for our library system.

But this year is different. I stand here before you as a person of conscience who has been witnessing first hand a burgeoning and permanent underclass of the dispossessed in City Heights and San Diego.
homeless sign vet one in 4

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City Attorney Candidate Forum and San Diego’s Fault Line

May 17, 2016 by Anna Daniels

Pinnacle Tower from Island Avenue Photo credit Jay Powell

Land use, wealth and the smart city

By Anna Daniels

The League of Women Voters and community radio station KNSJ hosted a city attorney candidate forum at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law in downtown San Diego on Saturday May 14.

I had been asked to participate as a media representative on the panel asking questions of the candidates.

The 94 freeway exit that my husband and I took downtown to the event dumps cars on a surface street on the fringe of East Village.

We drove through a convulsed urban landscape created by CalTrans engineering, deteriorating Victorian era houses, new apartments and temporarily re-purposed vacant lots. This entry point reflects how San Diego’s decision makers have approached land use and development in the area over many decades and to wildly different effect.

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‘Always Fly Away’ : Teaching Children to Be Smart, Strong and Safe

April 25, 2016 by Anna Daniels

Author Milena (Sellers) Phillips

By Anna Daniels

Milena (Sellers) Phillips’ book “Always Fly Away” is not the work of someone who has made a career of writing books for children. This brightly illustrated book written for elementary school children is a reflection of how the author herself has come to understand the world as much as it is a children’s story.

“Always Fly Away” acknowledges the necessary transition that takes place when young children want to start exploring the world with an ever growing degree of independence. It also helps to develop the critical judgement that young children need to recognize when a situation doesn’t feel right and what to do when this happens.

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Housed to Homeless in San Diego: Could It Happen to You?

April 11, 2016 by Anna Daniels

By Anna Daniels / San Diego Free Press

homeless make devilQuick— imagine a homeless person.

Did you conjure up the image of an utterly ordinary looking seventy year old white woman attending classes at SDSU? or a neatly dressed young Latino waiting at a bus stop? or a pregnant African American woman passing by your house? or a neighborhood kid who disappears and reappears and seems disconnected, rootless?

We don’t hear much about these men and women, young and old, who are homeless. Instead, we read about the uptrodden who have to deal with homeless people crapping on the sidewalk in front of their expensive condos downtown or the bad optics and shabby aesthetics of the tents and battered pieces of cardboard where the homeless visibly bed down every night, also downtown.

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