Category: Columns

Today I received the following letter from the San Diego Branch of the Susan G. Komen For The Cure:

We have a very small office here in San Diego – so that the majority of the money we raised can go right back to the community. Last week’s political firestorm shook each of us to the core. It may also have rocked you. For the first time in my six years here, the integrity of this organization was questioned. Even after we took responsibility for the mistake and moved quickly to fix the problem, some said they would never have anything to do with Komen again.

Okay. I understand that. Everyone needs to make decisions that they can live with and feel good about.

But here’s the truth. While some may leave us, we will never leave you or the uninsured women that we fight for every day here in San Diego.

Commemoration on Wednesday at 6pm at 5th and E Streets – the Original Soapbox Site

This year, we commemorate the 100-year anniversary of a city ordinance that banned public speaking and assembly in the area around 5th and E Streets in downtown San Diego and the subsequent battle that followed. During the course of this struggle, many people were arrested, beaten and even killed for asserting their rights to simply stand on a soapbox and speak. Today, anyone who enjoys the right to assemble, protest, and speak in public in San Diego has the Free Speech League of the Progressive Era to thank for fighting to maintain basic rights for all San Diegans

The 100-year anniversary of the San Diego Free Speech Fight is a celebration of the legacy of local labor and civil rights activism and a reminder that if we are not vigilant in the protection of our rights, we can certainly lose them.

There’s this book ban
in Arizona
which is supposedly
in the USA
where book banning
isn’t supposed to take place
but they went on and did it anyway.
And it happened “quicker than
you can say,
Jack Robinson,”
an idiom from a long ago day.

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.

In my last article, I discussed my experience of getting back into the dating world. I ended by saying that I would do some more research, purely in the interest of helping other widows find lasting happiness in an otherwise lonely situation.

I only signed up with one dating service, initially. If you remember it was a site for seniors, yet my first date with my “boy toy” was with a man younger than my youngest daughter – 27 years younger than me. He was sexy, well toned, and either after my money (sic) or my bed. Maybe both. That relationship ended with him hanging up on me.

As a good researcher, I decided that I really needed to be signed up with more than one dating site, so I signed up with three more. I used the same profile; the same pictures, and the same physical description. I thought about reducing my age – but wanted to be honest. Why? Who knows?

(Note from Ernie: This was written in memory of Diana Gail Shipley, a dear friend and educator who was an inspiration to many people throughout San Diego. She lost a courageous battle with pancreatic cancer on January 5, 2012. I submit it here so that readers could just get an inkling of what a remarkable human being she was.)

When Diana arrived in heaven,
I can imagine the Almighty looking at her going:
“Diana.
Hm, hm, hm.
My Sister, my Sister, my Sister.
I know how you battled what ailed you
so I forgive you for arriving CP time
but I just want to tell you
that I’m so glad to greet you
because you were just what I had in mind
when I came up with this whole idea of Humankind.”
I mean wasn’t someone like Diana what a Creator must have wished for among His creations, someone:

Oh, Mighty Sonoran,
I fight back tears
for what they’ve
done to God’s Brown Children,
Sonorans for hundreds of years,
for how they’ve
banned their studies,
lied about their heroes,
stolen books filled with their histories
like purse snatchers
abusing passers-by
on dangerous urban streets
while they cried in their classroom seats.

Who has made MAN the guardian of women’s rights? Who has sanctioned other women telling other females that they are wrong because they want to have an abortion. Did you hear a candidate for President of the United States of America say, when it involves a woman pregnant from a rape, “Make The Best Out Of A Bad Situation”. Yes, that is what candidate Rick Santorum said when he commented on his opposition to abortion.

A woman’s body is her own. It does not belong to anyone else except that woman. No one should be able to tell a woman what to do with her body. Not her family; not her husband; not her significant other; not her religion. What she decides to do with it should be between her and her doctor. No one else.

Missed the opening of the San Diego Free Speech Centennial Exhibition in the Centro Cultural de la Raza on January 6th?

Not to worry. The celebration of the 100-year anniversary of the San Diego Free Speech Fight continues this Thursday, January 26th at the Saville Theatre (where 14th Street meets C in downtown) on the City College campus from 7:00-9:00 PM.

This event will feature music by Gregory Page and the Proles; a reading from my IWW novel Flash; a special Voices of Peoples’ History presentation focused on the free speech fight by City College students; and the premiere of a short documentary on this important piece of local history. Before and after the performances you can view Golden Lands/Working Hands, the California Federation of Teachers’ mobile labor history exhibit. This event is free and open to the public.

Hey, there’s people
out there stressin’
going”What’s up with all this ‘Occupy?'”
Well, I tell you one thing
and this ain’t no lie.
Occupy
as a concept,
ain’t something
that just dropped from the sky.
Unh. Unh.
Not even a close try….

Married at the age of 17; divorced at the age of 27; remarried at the age of 27, didn’t give…

Sitting reflecting
on my lifetime.
And, man, I’ve ridden
the currents
of many kinds
of times:
times when I’ve danced in the street
like when Mandela was set free
as though he was ever really imprisoned,
if you hear me;
times when I didn’t want to open my eyes,
knowing the ugliness that was in front of me;
times when life was just a flatout mystery,
like George W. Bush
twice winning a presidency
in the land of the freakin’ free,
do you hear me?;
times when they played my song,
“Ernie, Ernie, he’s our man
if he can’t do it nobody can!”