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5th and E Street. The Exact Corner Where It All Started Is Site of the 100th Year Commemoration of the Free Speech Fight – And It’s Still Going On

By Nadin Abbott / Special to the OB Rag / February 9, 2012

Last night members of Labor, Occupy Women San Diego, and San Diego Occupy celebrated the hundred years of the Free Speech Movement at 5th and E by recreating some of the events that happened a hundred years ago. There were plenty of soap boxes where speakers stood and gave speeches on the nature of the anniversary, and the state of Free Speech today. At the height of the event there were about two hundred people at the corner listening to Wobbly music, and speeches by activists.

(EDITOR: The event was marred by the arrest and citation of Damien Tyrone, a union activist, for apparently not moving fast enough when police cleared the intersection after about an hour of speeches and music.)

Union presence was strong, with members of the Laborer Union, the AIFT, the Teamsters, the UFCW, the Building Trades, the Boiler Trades. the Letter Carriers, the Machinist Union, and watching everybody’s safety, the Police Officers Association. The latter closed traffic and made sure things staid safe for all.

According to Bobby Pineda, President of the Laborers Local 89, they came to support free speech. They believe it is critical to all.

Editor: Our good friend and fellow Ragster Doug Porter has not been feeling so hot these last couple of days, and so hasn’t dropped off his daily column “First Cuppa Coffee” for a couple of mornings. So, we have enlisted the last minute assistance of one of our regular readers and commenters, OB Joe, in the first of his irregular columns, “Wake and Bake”.

By OB Joe / Special to the OB Rag

Hey, all – ol’ buddy Doug is down, so I’m stepping in to fill his shoes – just for this mornin’ – ‘course if you like it, maybe the Rag editors will let me do it more often … just sayin’. Anyhoo, my style is a little more free flowin’ than Porter’s so I hope it doesn’t distract from the news. And BTW, don’t get upset if I’m using a lot of links to our local fishwrap, the U-T. The Rag editors called me freakin in the middle of the morning, before I had my first bong. So Wake and Bake – fellow OBceans and other denizens of the world!

Who will pay for SDG&E’s screw-ups and all that 2007 fire damage? The U-T is reporting that Sempra Energy – SDG&E’s parent – is assuring investors that its San Diego-area utility customers – that’s us – will pay for nearly all of an estimated $463 million in costs not covered by insurance from the catastrophic 2007 wildfires that were triggered in large part by its power lines. My emphasis. Let’s keep this mind.

by Jared Quient / Two Cathedrals / February 8, 2012

I am all for pension reform. Clearly our city’s budget needs work and we need to do something. But just because I believe the system is broken and it needs fixing doesn’t mean I support the Comprehensive Pension Reform (CPR) ballot measure that Carl DeMaio and his allies has been trying to sell me for the past year. Because once you look closer at CPR, it reveals itself to be a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

CPR is being sold to San Diego voters as the answer to our city’s fiscal problems, and the centerpiece of CPR is a provision that transitions all new employees from a defined benefit pension to a 401k individual retirement plan. Proponents claim that passing CPR and making the switch over to 401k plans for new employees will save the city billions of dollars. But that’s a fair bit of creative license.

MercuryNews.com / Feb. 7, 2012

SAN DIEGO—Five out of every six calls to San Diego County seeking food stamps or other benefits don’t get through, and those that do face an average wait of more than 30 minutes, according to an internal county report obtained by U-T San Diego .

More than 350,000 calls don’t get answered every month because the county’s Health and Human Services Agency hasn’t hired enough workers or installed enough phone lines, according to a newspaper review of the report in a story published online Tuesday.

When Power is Unaccountable

by Brian J. Trautman / CounterPunch / Originally published Jan. 18, 2012

Each year, Congress authorizes the budget of the Department of Defense through a National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The NDAA of 2012, however, is unlike any previous ones. This year’s legislation contains highly controversial provisions that empower the Armed Forces to engage in civilian law enforcement and to selectively suspend due process and habeas corpus, as well as other rights guaranteed by the 5th and 6th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, for terror suspects apprehended on U.S. soil. The final version of the bill passed the House on December 14, the Senate the following day (ironically, the 220th birthday of the Bill of Rights). It was signed into law by President Obama on New Year’s Eve. With his signature, for the first time since the Internal Security Act of 1950 and the dark days of the McCarthy era that followed, our government has codified the power of indefinite detention into law.

By Kali Kat / Special to the OB Rag

Now with its fourth month anniversary, Occupy San Diego continues to make a presence in the San Diego community, this morning challenging a proclamation by the City Council that the City of San Diego is re-committed to protecting the rights of free speech expression in San Diego.

The proclamation was in response to the 100 year anniversary of the Free Speech fight in San Diego during which the 1912 San Diego City Council passed Ordinance No. 4623 banning free speech or assembly in a 49 block radius of downtown San Diego.

By Howard Mintz /MercuryNews.com / February 7, 2012

A federal appeals court on Tuesday struck down Proposition 8, finding that California’s ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional because it deprives gay and lesbian couples of the equal right to wed.

With a decision that pushes the gay marriage issue a step closer to the U.S. Supreme Court, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld former San Francisco Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker, who invalidated Proposition 8 in 2010 after conducting an unprecedented trial.

“Proposition 8 serves no purpose, and has no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California, and to officially reclassify their relationships and families as inferior to those of opposite-sex couples,” Judge Stephen Reinhardt wrote, joined by Judge Michael Daly Hawkins.

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt / Excuse Me, I’m Writing / February 7, 2012

The picture is a delightful and humorous celebration of women’s anatomy. It’s been posted all over the ‘net’, including multiple Facebook pages — including mine. But this morning it was gone! And it’s gone from every other Facebook page I know of that had posted it.

Facebook stole the cupcakes!

Yet, countless Facebook pages continue to be littered with content that celebrates rape as humor. If you want to post rape jokes on public Facebook pages, all you have to do is label them as “humor” or “satire“ and you can rap on rape to your heart’s content. Search for “You know she’s playing hard to get when” and you’ll see that Facebook’s policy is

Media Invited on Coastkeeper’s Boat to Tour “King Tides” Tuesday Feb. 7

Last of seasonal high tides to demonstrate potential impacts of sea level rise

SAN DIEGO, Feb. 6, 2012 – On Feb. 7, some of the year’s highest tides will breach San Diego’s shorelines, providing a glimpse of what the region can expect as sea levels rise in the coming years.

According to The San Diego Foundation’s Regional Focus 2050 Study, increases in sea level in San Diego could be 12 – 18 inches by 2050.

The king tides on Monday, Feb. 6 through Wednesday, Feb. 8 are predicted to raise water levels five to eight inches above normal.

San Diego Coastkeeper and Tijuana River National Estuarine Reserve invite media for a boat tour of the San Diego Bay to learn more about sea level rise in San Diego and how king tides demonstrate potential

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt / Excuse Me, I’m Writing / February 6, 2012

Last week, a person I admire wrote, “I hate people.” Without missing a beat, I emailed back, “I love that you wrote that.” And that gave me pause. Earlier in the week, I had read a chapter from Maythee Rojas’ Women of Color and Feminism. Rojas wrote about love’s being the fuel of feminist activism, a force for social change. It is through love — of oneself and others — that we build the necessary bridges between the great global diversity of women and their issues, uniting us in action and visionary change. In her book, Rojas made a clarion call for love, but I was feeling hate.

By Emilie Astolat

Talking about sex isn’t as easy as it seems, even in a laid-back town like San Diego. I mean, I’m a grown, almost-married woman who engages in the act quite frequently, and yet I still feel awkward as I sit in front of this computer screen typing, despite the cloak of anonymity.

That says something about the American culture, doesn’t it? It’s no secret that people have sex. Right now in San Diego, for example, there are countless people doing the deed. But, shhh! Sex should be kept behind closed doors at all times!

It really shouldn’t though.

By Eric W. Dolan / The Raw Story / February 1, 2012

Five Republican lawmakers from Washington state have introduced legislation that condemns the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) of 2012 for controversial measures regarding the detainment of terrorism suspects, according to the Tenth Amendment Center.

The $662 billion defense spending bill contained a controversial section that required terrorism suspects to be detained by the military without trial, regardless of where they were captured.