Category: Civil Rights

By Staff

The San Diego Community Coalition publishes this email bulletin to keep our members and the San Diego public informed about important Council hearings and other city public meetings.

Monday, November 9: City Council, 1:00 p.m.

Agenda:

• Item 600: Intention to Form Enhanced Infrastructure Financing District for Redevelopment of the Sports Arena
• Item 601: Midway Rising
• Item 602: Approval of Disposition and Development Agreement between the City and Midway Rising

Why it matters a lot:  As Donna Frye warned us in her compelling November 6 Rag post about Midway Rising, “there are more questions than answers” about a massive real estate deal that has the potential to be a bigger disaster than 101 Ash Street. The public needs to ramp up the pressure on the Council. This is far from a done deal.

Tuesday, November 10: City Council, 10:00 a.m.

Agenda:

Item 56: Amendments to Municipal Code Related to Prohibiting Smoking and Vaping in Outdoor Dining Areas

Monday, November 9, is a fateful day for San Diego as it’s the day that the City Council finally takes on Midway Rising, the massive redevelopment of the old Sports Arena area. It will be taken up at their 1:00 p.m. meeting.

Even though the huge project has been touted as ” the largest affordable housing project to be built on public land in state history,” it has experienced four years of controversy. This compendium of controversy includes evidence of corruption between the main developer and the mayor — a mayor who calls it his “legacy project”, two law suits, two public votes laying the groundwork that barely squeaked by, proponents that fail to admit conflicts of interest, a special bill just for Midway Rising, but most of all a public that has not been convinced that the project is worthy of the city in its current form.

Many residents of the region have been opposed to it, many construction trade unions have been for it.

Some, like the editorial board of the Union-Tribune, like Donna Frye and other opponents, fear the council has already made up its mind on the issue, and are now only praying for the best. Other opponents fear the fabled 2,000 units of affordable housing may never be built, like Neighbors for a Better San Diego, like the leadership of local planning groups.

La Prensa ran a recent poll of coastal residents and found this:

From Neighbors for a Better San Diego

Councilmembers:

Regarding the currently proposed Midway Rising project, Neighbors For A Better San Diego is concerned that the planned affordable units may not get built by the developer, and that, despite the intervention of the Legislature, further environmental review may still be needed.

Given that the Council is relying on recently-enacted state laws (SB 344 and SB 958, both authored by Sen. Akilah Weber Pierson) to proceed forward with the Midway Rising project,
Neighbors For A Better San Diego would like to raise concerns with these bills.

SB 344 creates clear expectations of the number of affordable units that will be built by the project:

21080.77. (a) The Legislature finds and declares all of the following:

(1) The City of San Diego has approved, or may approve, a mixed-use development project known as the Midway Rising project, consisting of approximately 4,254 new homes, of which 2,000 are deed-restricted affordable homes at or below 80 percent of area median income, up to 130,000 square feet of commercial uses, approximately 14.5 acres of public parks and open space, and a new 16,000-seat multipurpose entertainment center. [emphasis added]

By Donna Frye

It’s no wonder the public doesn’t have a lot of trust when it comes to big development projects in the City of San Diego. Too often, what we are told is not accurate.

On Monday November 9, the San Diego City Council is scheduled to hear the Midway Rising development project.

Items 600, 601 and 602. see link inside

From the beginning, the project has been promoted as a massive affordable housing project.

The proposed project is on 48.5 acres of public land and includes an entertainment center, 2,000 affordable housing units, 2,250 market rate housing units, between 123,500 and 130,000 square feet of retail space, 8.2 acres of parks, and 6.42 acres of public spaces.

One of the many documents the council will be voting on is the Disposition and Development Agreement (DDA).

The DDA is over 600 pages long and is a complex and complicated document to read, let alone understand.  It includes such things as the leases for the property and determines the order in which the development will occur.

The DDA was first made public one week before the City Council Land Use and Housing Committee meeting on October 16. The public has had very limited time to review all the documents and provide comments.

by Ernie McCray

I look at the election
that took place yesterday
and I can’t help but say
that “We the People”
kicked some serious ass,
making it so
that some folks
who have come close
to ending our democracy
will, in the near future,
be spoken of in the past.

Nicole Crosby is “cautiously optimistic,” she told the Rag this morning, the day after her apparent victory over former Republican Richard Bailey for the District 2 city council seat. Currently, she leads Bailey by 9 percentage points and by a little over 3,000 votes. Ballot counting continues.

Crosby leads Bailey 54.5% to 45.6%, with 18,188 votes to 15,218.

Crosby spoke to me this morning when I called to congratulate her. She sounded happy but exhausted.Yet she felt the numbers would hold. She also told me that Bailey had yet to call  her to concede or congratulate her.

Crosby:

“This race has always been about fighting for my neighbors in District 2. From the parents and teachers at my daughter’s school, to the librarians, emergency service workers and skilled trades workers in our community, we did this together. Working families are the backbone of San Diego and we deserve results from City Hall.

From ACLU

This election reaffirmed the power of people coming together to defend our democracy and the values we share. When the federal government sought to undermine voting rights and intimidate voters, Californians stood firm. And when asked to pass Prop 39 and add unnecessary hurdles to exercising the right to vote, California voters sent a resounding message to those who tried to roll back voting rights: hands off our elections.

ACLU-SDIC Executive Director Norma Chávez-Peterson said:

“Yesterday, California voters showed up at the polls to protect their voting rights and reject an anti-democratic agenda — and they succeeded. Prop 39 has been defeated, but the fight to protect our constitutional rights is far from over.

>Nov. 3rd:– the Day Americans Take Back Our Country

8:40 pm Democrats take the Senate

Democrats Clinch Senate as Voters Deliver Blistering Rebuke to Trump; Democratic candidates won races in Republican strongholds, flipping Senate seats in

• Kansas,
• Ohio,
• North Carolina,
• South Carolina and even
• Texas. On a night shaping up as a Democratic rout, President Trump told The New York Times that he would accept the election results.

8:14 pm Crosby and Abraham take early leads in San Diego City Council races 2 and 4 with 689,666 ballots counted overall county-wide

Nicole Crosby at this stage has a 9 point lead over Richard Bailey in District 2, 54.5% to 45.5%.

Martha Abraham is in a much tighter race with incumbent Henry Foster III with a 3.3 point lead, 51.7% to 48.3%.

8:05 pm Xavier Becerra is first Mexican-American elected as governor of California

Xavier Becerra, a Democrat and former Biden administration official, began the race for California governor with poll numbers so low that his own party chairman urged him to drop out. Now, Mr. Becerra will become the next governor of the nation’s most populous state, The Associated Press said on Tuesday, a rise that was considered improbable a year ago. Mr. Becerra, 68, is the first Latino elected as governor of California, a milestone that punctuates a decades-long demographic shift in the state.

By Natalie Hausmann / Democracy Docket / November 2, 2026
The Supreme Court swiftly rejected the Trump administration’s emergency bid to force California to segregate ballots from more than 20,000 people it alleges may be noncitizens. 

The decision hands the administration its third and final defeat in its effort to intervene in the state’s ongoing election.

The justices denied the administration’s emergency application without explanation, just hours after it was filed Monday. Justice Elena Kagan referred the request to the full Court, which rejected it with no noted dissents. 

By Lindsay Whitehurst / PBS – Associated Press / Nov. 2, 2026

Trump administration appeals to Supreme Court to sideline 20,000 disputed California mail ballots

See Below — Analysis: More than 40% of names on DOJ list of alleged noncitizens not on California’s voter rolls

President Donald Trump’s administration appealed to the Supreme Court on Monday — today, Nov. 2 — in its push to sideline thousands of disputed California mail ballots the day before the pivotal midterm elections.

The emergency appeal came after a divided appeals court rejected the request to set aside ballots from some 20,000 people the federal government suspects may not be citizens. It also came just hours before another federal judge ruled against the administration’s efforts to make last-minute changes in California’s election.

The federal government says those ballots should not be counted until the voters’ status can be verified. California officials say the list is highly unreliable and likely includes many people who are U.S. citizens.

The Republican Trump administration has prioritized identifying noncitizen voters this year, despite them being rare.

A district court judge had previously denied the Justice Department’s request and warned that the demand could disenfranchise citizens in Tuesday’s midterm elections to determine control of Congress.

Impeachment and court reform stand out as the most powerful accountability tools Dems will have

By Bill Blum / Common Dreams – Truthdig / Nov 01, 2026 Truthdig

It’s not enough for the Democrats to win the midterms. Whether they take back one or both chambers of Congress, their overriding objective must be to cripple the remainder of Donald Trump’s presidency and dismantle the MAGA movement he leads. Holding Trump and his key enablers to account for their lawlessness and corruption will be the standard for success. Without accountability, there will be no justice and no end to the growing threat of fascism in America.

Of all the accountability tools that will be available should the Democrats prevail on November 3, impeachment and court reform stand out as the most powerful. Both are implicitly on the midterm ballot, and while neither is a magic bullet for checking Trumpism, they can and must be deployed far more aggressively and urgently than in the past.

The road ahead won’t be easy, but the party may never get another opportunity.

Impeachment
The Supreme Court’s 2024 decision on presidential immunity (Trump v. United States), penned by Chief Justice John Roberts, has made it all but impossible to hold Trump accountable through ordinary criminal prosecutions. As legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin has noted, Roberts’ opinion contains language that “suggests the president cannot even be investigated for his official actions,” much less indicted.

Elections are always split in their results; Tuesday’s could be the same

By Bill Eddy / Substack /  Nov 01, 2026

Over the past few weeks, we have seen a flurry of rallies by President Trump around the country, including this weekend, in desperate support of his troubled Republican candidates. It’s tempting to see this effort as futile for him since his approval ratings have now sunk to 30% according to some polls. However, I believe quite the opposite: by making urgent intense emotional attacks on Democrats he will claw back some of his reluctant followers to turn out the vote and dampen any Democratic wave. Remember that his power is based on right brain emotions rather than left-brain logic. (See last week’s blog: Right Brain Politics II.)

How Splitting Works

In 2012, a psychologist friend, Don Saposnek, and I wrote a little book titled: Splitting America: How Politicians, Super PACs and the News Media Mirror High Conflict Divorce. I was working as a family lawyer at the time and we were struck by the similarities of people with high-conflict personalities in high-conflict divorces to some politicians who were entering politics. People with high-conflict personalities tend to have four key characteristics: blaming others, all-or-nothing thinking, unmanaged emotions, and extreme behaviors. “Splitting” is a psychological term for seeing some people as all-good and others as all-bad, which is common for people with high-conflict personalities. As we wrote then: