Category: Civil Rights

On Friday, Oct. 31, a dozen of us crowded around a long table at NewBreak Cafe on Abbott Street in OB to discuss and learn how to support OB’s historical district, which is on the City of San Diego’s chopping block. All our eyes were on the presenters, Bruce and Alana Coons from SOHO (Save Our Heritage Organization) who had traveled all the way from Point Loma to teach us the basics and guide us through the process.

Formerly entitled the Ocean Beach Cottage Emerging Historical District — which has been around since 1999 — it was on the chopping block as a city staff recommendation because a little over a year ago, the San Diego Planning Commission voted to spare OB from a horrendous development project of 24 ADUs on Point Loma Avenue precisely because of the existence of OB’s historic district. And at the end of the hearing on August 29, 2024, one of the commissioners turned to staff and urged them to change the city’s Municipal Code to get rid of the district as a basis for exempting OB from some of the worse housing policies of Todd Gloria’s administration, called “Complete Communities.”

And a year later, the staff did just that: they came up a “fix”

Every Saturday at 10:30 am. San Diego Climate Mobilization Coalition Meetings
Every Saturday 10 am – 12 pm Peace Vigil for Palestine:

The San Diego River Park Foundation has volunteer opportunities in Ocean Beach: Point Loma Native Plant Garden Club on the 2nd and 4th Sundays

November 3rd Monday 12 pm – 1 pm Interfaith Vigil for Earth Justice

November 4th Tuesday Vote for Prop 50 and fight fire with fire, resist Republicans’ efforts at rigging 2026 electiion.

November 4th Tuesday Reject USDG Protest
November 5th Wednesday 7:20 am – 8:30 am 5pm Resist Trump Flash Banner Action Normal Heights
November 6th Thursday 9 a.m. Testify and / or support the OB Emerging Cottage Historic District at San Diego Housing Commission hearing,
November 6th Thursday 7 pm – 8:30 pm Oceans of Bach – A Science Music Experience  

‘Join me Monday morning to remind the City Council that providing constituents with basic info on government process is a core responsibility.’

By Paul Krueger

On Wednesday, October 29, someone placed an item about a City of San Diego legal battle on the City Council’s Closed Session Agenda for Monday, November 3.

On Thursday, someone took it off.

We don’t know who put the item on the agenda. And we don’t know who removed it. Neither the Mayor’s office, Council President Joe La Cava’s staff, nor the independently elected City Attorney’s office will answer any questions about the process.

This was not a routine item. The City is ready to double down on its continuing efforts to circumvent the voter-approved 30-foot height limit west of Interstate 5. And, as usual, it is operating in stealth.

In a strongly-worded unanimous decision issued October 17, California’s 4th District Court of Appeal said the city failed to produce an adequate environmental study of the negative impacts of high-density, high-rise development throughout the Midway District.

The Trump administration’s murderous strikes on small boats at sea constitute unlawful extrajudicial killings.

By Marjorie Cohn / Truthout / October 30, 2025

As the Trump administration continues to murder people in small boats on the high seas and mounts the largest U.S. military buildup in decades in the Caribbean, it is moving inexorably toward an all-out, illegal attack and forcible regime change in Venezuela.

Despite Team Trump’s feeble attempts to legally justify its ocean strikes, which have now killed 57 people since early September, those extrajudicial killings are also unlawful.

Donald Trump’s murderous campaign came into focus on February 20, when the State Department designated eight drug trafficking organizations, including Tren de Aragua, as foreign terrorist organizations. Although the administration has attempted — so far unsuccessfully — to use that designation to justify sending immigrants to a notorious prison in El Salvador, Trump is now invoking it in an effort to validate his illegal strikes at sea.

Moreover, on March 15, Trump issued “A Proclamation,” alleging that Tren de Aragua has been engaged, in association with Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, in “irregular warfare” in the United States, with no explanation of what is meant by irregular warfare. But on February 26, most U.S. intelligence agencies had made a finding that Tren de Aragua was neither controlled by the Venezuelan government, nor was it committing crimes in the United States on its orders.

This is yet one more post as part of the Rag’s response to a U-T commentary by Harry Bobbins about lifting the coastal 30 foot height limit.

By Geoff Page

Part of the “Argument For” Prop D as presented by the City Clerk in 1972.

“We hold the right of the public to use and reach their beach property to be greater than the right of a select few to build structures of unlimited height.”

How could anyone say it any better?

The opinion piece in the UT’s October 23 issue took the position that San Diego should do away with the coastal 30-foot height limit. The writer made several assertions, using deliberately inflammatory language, that were unsupported or wrong.

The curious question for the UT editorial board is, what qualified this writer, who has been in San Diego barely four years after a long career in New York, for this opinion piece?

The question is necessary because all the UT provided for the writer’s qualifications was “a former president of the La Jolla Community Planning Association” How do you assess the value of the writer’s opinion with only this qualification?

As it turns out, the UT did not identify the writer as an ally of Todd Gloria who appointed the writer to the city’s Mobility Board. Nor was the writer identified as a member of Bike San Diego. This provides an understanding of the writer’s bias. The city and Bike San Diego are in bed with the development industry.

Meeting for OBceans Set for Friday, Oct. 31

Members of SOHO (Save Our Heritage Organization) took their opposition to city staff’s package of “reforms” for San Diego’s Historic Resource Board — which included the decapitation of OB’s Emerging Cottage Historic District to the city-wide Community Planners Committee last night, October 28. This committee, or CPC, is the city-recognized body that has reps from every community planning group in the city.

The so-called reforms called for the elimination of OB’s Historic Cottage District as a basis for preventing the application of the city’s Complete Communities to new projects in Ocean Beach. It was this historic district that prevented The Point — 20 ADUs — to be built on Point Loma Ave last year.

And SOHO members told the Rag: “Great news — we had a unanimous rejection of Package A at last night’s CPC meeting!” It still has to go to the Planning Commission and the full City Council.

Presentation Set Up for OB Residents

By Paul Krueger

Mayor Todd Gloria and City Attorney Heather Febert have followed through on their effort to overturn an appeals court ruling that requires a thorough review of the environmental impact of high-density, high-rise housing throughout the Midway District.

They’re now asking the City Council to approve a long-shot and costly appeal of that ruling to the State Supreme Court.

This dispute broke loose on October 17. That’s when a panel of the 4th District Court of Appeal issued a unanimous, strongly-worded ruling faulting the city for preparing an incomplete analysis of the negative impacts of waiving the voter-approved 30-foot height limit and allowing intense, high-rise development throughout the Midway District.

The justices said voters were deprived of information about the impact of that development when they narrowly approved the controversial height-limit waiver.

“As Save Our Access (the group that sued to invalidate the election results) stated in one of its comment letters, ‘San Diegans deserve to know the complete picture’ of removing the 30-foot Coast Zone height limit,” the ruling states. “We agree that the California Environmental Quality Act requires as much.”

Proponents of smart, managed growth rejoiced at the ruling. They believe the City must prepare a complete analysis of the environmental impacts and share that information with voters, so they can make a fully-informed decision before voting yet again to approve or reject any effort to invalidate the 30-foot coastal height limit.

This is another post as part of the Rag’s response to a U-T commentary by Harry Bobbins about lifting the coastal 30 foot height limit.

By Frances Zimmerman

Like Union-Tribune commenter Harry Bobbins, whom I don’t know, I too have done time on the La Jolla Community Planning Association (LJCPA.)

I have lived here since 1970, first as a renter and then as a homeowner, in the flats, with no ocean-view, but near Windansea Beach. I don’t recognize Bobbins’ description of my neighborhood as “job-rich” and “well-connected.” I do know there are more and more home rentals and the beach is jammed and street parking is tough in the summer. But it’s easier off-season, and there’s no Miami-wall of high-rises between me and the water’s edge, for which I am grateful every day of my life.

LJCPA is like other “planning” groups throughout our City, comprised of a mix of well-meaning and opportunistic elected locals with zero policy clout over the physical configuration of their communities. Notably, LJCPA has been toothless to prevent villa-fication and mansion-ization of single-family neighborhoods. Smaller homes and lots regularly are sold and rebuilt bigger in every way, as new flat-roofed concrete behemoths that resemble either prisons or VRBO hotels loom over their neighbors.

Ruling will decide what, if any, limits exist to president’s use of military in the U.S.

By David G. Savage / Los Angeles Times / Oct. 25, 2025

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court is set to rule for the first time on whether the president has the power to deploy troops in American cities over the objections of local and state officials.

A decision could come at any time.

And even a one-line order siding with President Trump would send the message that he is free to use the military to carry out his orders — and in particular, in Democratic-controlled cities and states.

Trump administration lawyers filed an emergency appeal last week asking the court to reverse judges in Chicago who blocked the deployment of the National Guard there.

By Frank Gormlie, OB Rag Publisher/ Editordude

I want to extend my personal congratulations to Shane Harris, the new owner and publisher of the San Diego Monitor and Business Journal, and to warmly welcome him to the local news media community in this town.

Shane has a distinguished record of civic leadership and of advocacy for civil rights. He has been a powerful force for justice, and has spoken out for so many whose voices are too often silenced. Now he will become a force for the mission of journalism, which is to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable.

By Carlos Rico / The San Diego Union-Tribune / October 28, 2025

Teaching and helping innocent people, especially those from underrepresented communities, is the mission and passion of Justin Brooks, a criminal defense attorney, author and law professor at the University of San Diego.

Brooks has spent the last 26 years living in Ocean Beach, after growing up in the Bronx and Puerto Rico, and attending college in Philadelphia and law school in Washington, D.C.

What brought him to San Diego was an innocent Puerto Rican woman from Illinois who was facing the death penalty in 1995. While living and teaching criminal law in Michigan, Brooks read about this woman in a newspaper, drove down to meet her, and with the help of his students got her off death row and all charges dropped of a double homicide.

“As I worked on our case, I realized there are innocent people in prison who need help, and it’s the best way to train these students is to work on real cases,” Brooks said. “So, I told my wife (girlfriend at the time) I’m quitting my tenured faculty position and we’re gonna move to California cause that’s where they need an innocence project the most. It’s the biggest prison system in the United States. It’s got the death penalty, three strikes, mandatory minimums. And so I moved to San Diego and started it here and partnered up with another law professor who was interested in doing it too, and founded the California Innocence Project back in 1999.”

Brooks cofounded the California Innocence Project at the California Western School of Law in San Diego in 1999. He was its director until 2023. Under his leadership, the project freed 40 innocent people from prison, including former NFL player Brian Banks.

Rag Staff Report

The San Diego Community Coalition’s inaugural “Town Hall with a Newsmaker” forum on October 25 was a frank and productive conversation between District 7 City Councilmember Raul Campillo and community leaders from across San Diego.

The Coalition held the event because San Diegans rarely get a chance to engage their representatives in direct face-to-face talks. The unwritten rule at City Hall forums is that elected officials speak at length and on script while their constituents listen and are given scant time to ask questions.

For 90 minutes at the Linda Vista Library, a relaxed Campillo broke that rule and clearly enjoyed the spirited give-and-take.

Here are excerpts.

Scott Case, Middletown: We’re trying to understand where all the proposed and approved Complete Communities projects are. Development Services Department (DSD) told me the City does not make that information public. Perhaps the City Council could direct DSD to do that.

Campillo: If the Mayor wanted to release that information, there would be no problem. It sounds like what you’re looking for is a searchable and understandable database to learn what projects are going into what spots.