Category: Civil Rights

‘I Should Know — I’ve Been Trying to Find Out for Over a Year’

Originally published in the San Diego Union-Tribune on June 26, 2026

By Danna Givot

If San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria and the City Council care — or even just wonder — why they’ve lost the public’s trust, they need look no further than their so-called “Technical Working Group” for Neighborhood Homes for All of Us.

What is the Technical Working Group? A secret group of “experts” hand-picked to develop site plans and four building designs (with up to 10 units each) for “single-family” zoned lots in San Diego’s neighborhoods.

[Please go to the original for any links here.]

Three years ago, the planning commissioners rejected San Diego’s Senate Bill 10 (SB 10) proposal, which would have allowed single-family homes to be replaced by 10-unit apartment buildings. To their credit, the commissioners recommended that community stakeholders have seats at the working group table when crafting the next iteration of infill housing in our single-family neighborhoods. I asked the Planning Department to give Neighbors For A Better San Diego a seat at that table but received no response. This was after two members of the Technical Working Group told me they were in the group, although the city’s deputy planning director told me days later that it had “not been formed.”

By JW August / Times of San Diego / Sept.18, 2026

Attorneys are racing against the clock to speed the processing of certain green card applications, months after President Donald Trump’s shutdown of a long-running visa program.

The Diversity Visa (DV) program, also known as the Green Card Lottery, was halted in December when federal officials ordered a comprehensive “hold and review” of the program’s screening and vetting procedures.

The processing of lottery applicants reopened this week following an intense legal fight – one that is set to extend to San Diego. Doubts remain, however, as to whether there’s enough time – or willingness from the government – to handle thousands of remaining applications before Sept. 30.

Because of federal law, State Department embassies have to stop processing this year’s applicants by the end of September, the conclusion of the federal fiscal year.  Many cases are on hold because of slower processing times and the ordered shutdown of the DV program.

The program makes immigrant visas available to natives of countries with low immigration rates.

By Paul Krueger

The Voice of San Diego recently shared its paywall-protected wisdom that District 4 challenger Martha Abraham “…seems to have built something of a coalition between conservatives, anti-development folks and southeastern San Diego residents that believe the area has never gotten its fair and equitable share of resources.”

I vehemently disagree with VOSD’s assertion that any of Abraham’s credible supporters (myself and all my colleagues included) are “anti-development,” and shared my reasoning in an email to Voice editor Scott Lewis and assistant editor Will Huntsberry.

Will’s response, which I’ll share at the end of this column, was disappointing in its brevity and reasoning. But, hey, it’s totally his (and Lewis’s) prerogative to reject audience input and double-down on their chosen narrative. In fact, these civil editorial disagreements are what we should most cherish and defend in a (still hopefully) free and open society that respects the First Amendment (despite — and perhaps because of — Donald Trump’s latest attacks on the media).

Here’s the portion of my email that responded to VOSD’s comment about “anti-development folks” and their support for Abraham:

“Calling any of Abraham’s supporters ‘anti-development’ is intellectually lazy and just plain wrong. In my six years of studying and speaking out on this issue as an activist freed from my obligations as a neutral journalist and observer, I have not encountered even one credible activist who can accurately be described as ‘anti-development’.

By Steve Rodriquez

Someone whispers, the circus is in town. A dark
caravan is seen parading down the road. We might expect
to see trained lions, and the trapeze artist;
death-defiers treading a tightrope balanced high above.

Instead, we are treated to a disappearing act. Sheer scale of magic
catches everyone by surprise. Scary clowns, wearing olive drab
outfits – complete with black masks, helmets, ICE cool military swag—
pour out of their armored vehicles. Under a big top canopy

of blue coastal skies, they form three-ring spectacles
in front of restaurants, Home Depot lots, and apartment complexes.
Resembling Death Star troopers arriving far too late
for this year’s Comic Con, they begin disappearing humans

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

Monday, September 28: Council Closed Session, 10:00 a.m.

Agenda:

Why it matters: Two of three litigation items involve damages associated with lack of city maintenance: a sidewalk trip-and-fall and a leaking water meter. Isn’t it less costly to fix problems than to pay for harm they cause? And these cases date back to 2022, 2023, and 2024. They should have been handled more expeditiously.

By Caitlin Rother / Substack / Sep 22, 2026

Until I found a flyer on my doorstep about a community meeting last night, I was not aware that the city of San Diego was updating the 1998 community plan for my neighborhood of Kensington-Talmadge and several others that are nearby but have completely unrelated interests and socio-economic demographics. Because I covered City Hall for many years when I was still a working investigative reporter for The San Diego Union-Tribune, I took my notebook to the meeting.

After we listened to two city planners present the highlights of the community plan update, Neil Winner, chairman of the Kensington-Talmadge Community Planning Group (KTCPG), summed up his group’s very measured response like this: the plan update “is not compatible” with the historic nature or the infrastructure and fire safety needs of our community. He said the KTCPG submitted an alternative plan to the city, but was told that it did not comply, without any discussion or the ability to challenge or resolve that conclusion.

Here’s my view: First, don’t hold back. What the city is proposing is a nightmarish crush of increased density, to fill our cute, historic neighborhood of well-maintained single-family homes in South Kensington with garrish apartment complexes looming six to eight stories, and three to five times the number of people living in that space as they are today. The plan allowing these new complexes, which would all be squished into the few square blocks surrounding my house, is envisioned to triple the community’s overall population and yet developers will not be required to provide any additional parking spaces because they will be built just blocks from a couple of bus routes, some of which are now slated for reduction or elimination.

Just take a minute to process that ridiculous lapse of common sense and logic.

By Angelo Haynes

On Thursday evening, Sept.24, challenger Martha Abraham and incumbent Henry Foster III met at a community forum at the St. Timothy Lutheran Church in Paradise Hills to engage in a moderated discussion on the issues affecting voters in District 4. The forum was organized and coordinated by the Paradise Hills Foundation (PHF), a non-profit organization dedicated to the beautification of the Paradise Hills neighborhood and to improving residents’ quality of life.

Projects for PHF include: neighborhood cleanup and hauling efforts, arts funding (e.g. public murals), improvements to the main street of Paradise Hills (Reo Dr.), garbage cans, signage improvements, and home exterior assistance to elderly or indigent neighbors.

Nichelle A. Wentz, the president of the PHF, was on hand and stated that while many other community concerns affecting District 4, such as policing, Foot note 7 and small business development seemed to garner greater attention, issues affecting the Paradise Hills neighborhood were neglected. The Paradise Hills branch library for instance hasn’t had a capital improvement from the city in over 40 years. For Wentz, this forum was an opportunity to bring attention to her neighborhood and give residents a chance to ask candidates questions before the election.

All public questions participants had at the venue were to be written down and submitted to forum organizers in advance; these questions would then be read to the candidates at the end of the session. PHF organizers stated that this method of questioning was intended to screen for repetitive questions and to organize community concerns into topics to ascertain any patterns or themes for voters in the community.

And here’s the second one on Thursday, October 1, at the Point Loma Library. This one is hosted by the Peninsula Community Planning Board.

by David Alvarez, Brian Jones and Darshana Patel / Times of San Diego / Sept. 17, 2026

The area known currently as the closed San Pasqual Battlefield State Historic Park belongs to the San Pasqual Band of Mission Indians. That is the first thing to understand about Assembly Bill 2770, a bill we authored which is awaiting Gov. Gavin Newsom’s signature.

It is not a new idea, but rather the fourth attempt by the tribe, spread across nearly two centuries, to secure what was already theirs.

The San Pasqual people have lived in the valley northeast of San Diego for generations, long before any government drew a line around it. In 1835, the Mexican governor of California formally recognized that fact, establishing San Pasqual as a civil pueblo: a self-governing industrious community with unique skills.

When a San Diego landowner named Bonifacio Lopez tried to take the valley in 1845, he dismissed its residents as “lazy and disreputable.” Yet the Mexican government refused his request.

The tribe’s second attempt to secure its land came after the Mexican-American War ended in 1848. The tribe’s leader, Panto Duro, presented American officials with the documents from Mexico confirming the San Pasqual people’s title to the valley, and in 1852 he signed a treaty guaranteeing the land under American authority. Unfortunately, the U.S. Senate rejected that treaty under pressure from Gold Rush settlers.

From Neighbors for a Better San Diego

We Asked.
The City Refused.
Now We’re Suing.
San Diegans deserve to know who the Mayor’s secret housing advisors are.

Earlier this year, we asked a simple question:

Who is helping shape the housing and density policies that could dramatically change San Diego’s neighborhoods?

Speaker Mike Johnson could block the seating of victorious Democrats in the House of Representatives on January 3.

By Marjorie Cohn / Truthout / September 23, 2026

After the 2020 presidential election that resulted in a clear victory for Joe Biden, Donald Trump tried mightily to overturn the outcome. He has persistently insisted to this day that he won and Biden lost. On January 6, 2021, Trump ordered then-Vice President Mike Pence to violate his constitutional duty to certify the duly elected electors before the joint session of Congress by counting only some of the electoral votes from certain states and returning the rest to state legislatures.

But Pence refused to obey Trump — and, in response, MAGA fanatics threatened him with execution by hanging. Court after court rejected Trump’s entreaties to reverse the results of the election.

Now it appears that Team Trump may be poised to undertake a similar tactic to prevent Democrats who prevail in the midterm elections from being seated in the House of Representatives.

In an explosive op-ed in The New Republic, former Judge Michael Luttig, a noted conservative, argues that the “catastrophic end [of U.S. democracy] could well come on January 3, 2027, when Trump and his Republican congressional allies wage the final battle in Trump’s determined war to corrupt America’s democracy and deliver a lasting political victory over the Democrats for his MAGA Republican Party.”