Category: Culture

The Guardian, UCSD’s student newspaper, has printed a statement that it says was written by the student who hung a noose in the campus library last week.

The student — who remains anonymous — claims that last Tuesday, two days before the noose was found, a friend of hers fashioned it from a piece of rope she had found on the ground, “without thinking of any of its connotations or the current racial climate at UCSD.” She herself then carried the noose with her to the library “and ended up hanging it at my desk.” It was, she says, “a mindless act and stupid mistake.” When she left the library hours later, “I simply forgot about it.”

No one knows what history will make of the present — least of all journalists, who can at best write history’s sloppy first draft. But if I were to place an incautious bet on which political event will prove the most significant of February 2010, I wouldn’t choose the kabuki health care summit that generated all the ink and 24/7 cable chatter in Washington. I’d put my money instead on the murder-suicide of Andrew Joseph Stack III, the tax protester who flew a plane into an office building housing Internal Revenue Service employees in Austin, Tex., on Feb. 18. It was a flare with the dark afterlife of an omen.

What made that kamikaze mission eventful was less the deranged act itself than the curious reaction of politicians on the right who gave it a pass — or, worse, flirted with condoning it. Stack was a lone madman, and it would be both glib and inaccurate to call him a card-carrying Tea Partier or a “Tea Party terrorist.” But he did leave behind a manifesto whose frothing anti-government, anti-tax rage overlaps with some of those marching under the Tea Party banner.

Local OB Rag staffer Nate Hipple captured these shots this morning…

Ocean Beach, Sunday 8:00 am.

Moments after this photo was taken, this bicyclist was knocked to the pavement by rushing water and dragged several meters along Newport Ave. After the water receded, he brushed himself off and made jokes about being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Between cloud bursts, sixty San Diego progressives sang songs during the counter rally to the Tea Party gathering today near the Star of India.

Activists with the OB Rag and other local groups had tried to mobilize one hundred progressives to stand witness to the rally of Tea Party factions. But Mother Nature decided to drench the county and undoubtedly many stayed away due to the rain. Still, many stubborn people showed up today between 10:30 and noon just west of the County Administration building to show opposition.

Meanwhile, approximately 320 Tea partiers gathered across Harbor Drive.

Meandering west along Voltaire Street I begin to notice of how truly “walkable” this area of our community is. The towering trees provide much needed fresh air and shade; the sidewalks clean and lit at night by brightly painted light poles; there are virtually no traces of doggie doo anywhere; many shops have their doors open with business in full swing. From all appearances, Voltaire Street is alive and well in this current economy.

As I approach Mindy Pellissier’s shop, Dog Beach Dog Wash, at 4933 Voltaire, I notice large coolers of fresh water perched atop custom made semi-circular wooden benches out front. They hover directly above clean dog water bowls that rest on green outdoor turf. It’s only a matter of moments before the first of many passing pooches stops for a refreshing drink of cool water.

Editor: Check this out. The Coffee Party movement has begun – an answer to the Tea Party movement. One of our bloggers last week in his post called for a “coffee grounds” movement. Well, his call has been answered. It is official, San Diego will have its own Coffee Party and it will form from these pages. Sign up here.

By Dan Zak /Washington Post / February 26, 2010

Furious at the tempest over the Tea Party — the scattershot citizen uprising against big government and wild spending — Annabel Park did what any American does when she feels her voice has been drowned out: She squeezed her anger into a Facebook status update.

by Earl Ofari Hutchinson/ Huffington Post / February 23, 2010

University of California, San Diego chancellor Marye Anne Fox, the president of Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity, UCSD student leaders, and a bevy of civil rights leaders, and black and minority California lawmakers leaped over each other to lambaste the now infamous Compton Cookout at UCSD as racially insulting, insensitive, and demeaning. On February 24, days after the furor broke, UCSD officials held a campus racial sensitivity teach-in to quell racial tensions on the campus.

The Compton cookout, of course, was the boneheaded stunt by a handful of white and non-white students at an off campus to mock, poke fun at, and revel in what’s presumed to be the sway and swagger of ghetto life. There’s a problem, actually, two problems with this.

SAN DIEGO — Student protesters have taken over the offices of University of California San Diego Chancellor Marye Anne Fox as a third racially charged episode has brought a new wave of outrage.

Students are protesting atop desks and countertops throughout Fox’s suite, except for her own sanctum. They are chanting, “Real pain, real change.” Some are playing drums.

Fox has twice addressed students today, once outside the library where a noose was found last night and once in a eucalyptus grove outside her office. Students remain upset with the pace of the administration’s response to their demand for action over ongoing racial strife.

“You can’t imagine how pained we are, we are heartsick,” Vice Chancellor Penny Rue told the students on a bullhorn.New Update: UCSD campus police and president of the regents have reported that the woman student said she had two accomplices.

Some professors have called off their classes for the day and have called for a strike and “disruptive demonstrations” at the campus in protest of the now three racial incidents.

Campus police at the University of California San Diego are questioning a student who admitted she hung a noose on the seventh floor of the university library Thursday night.

This year, the city of San Diego was obliged to trim 3.8 million dollars from the library budget. 3.8 million dollars. To put that in perspective, that’s roughly 760,000 used books off of Amazon. That’s one library, right there.

The Ocean Beach library seemed particularly vulnerable to these cuts, given its proximity to the larger but less centrally located Point Loma Library. Throughout the past few years of budget cuts and closing scares, the Ocean Beach community has spoken quite loudly and clearly against the closing of the small Ocean Beach branch on the corner of Santa Monica and Sunset Cliffs.

The OB Town Council is holding a meeting tonight at the Masonic Temple,which includes a candidate forum for candidates of the OB Planning Board, plus a public forum on homeless.

Two of our bloggers, Cindi and Lane, are texting us and we will be sharing with you what they report:

7:23 pm LANE: handful of PB candidates that sit on TC as well –

7:16 – there is a woman speaking … she says she handles homeless issues like vandalism, drunk in public, … insinuating that only homeless do these things.

7:11 – they are allowing the homeless youth to submit speaker requests! they are going to hear our voice!

7:10 pm – talking about housing workshop, student loan workshop, but my thought is what about the homeless shelter workshop?

7:08 pm – The meeting just started !

Thousands of students and administrators attended a “teach-in” at UC San Diego Wednesday to address a recent ghetto-themed party intended to mock Black History Month and the racial unrest it sparked on campus, but the event was disrupted when the bulk of students in attendance walked out.

About an hour into the event at the university’s student center, two female students with the Black Student Union stood up and blasted the teach-in, with one saying, “The university and our community will not be fixed by a two-hour teach-in.”

Saying the university was doing little to address racism on campus, the pair urged their fellow students in the packed auditorium and overflow room to march out of the event, and the vast majority complied. The students filed out of the auditorium, loudly chanting “Whose university? Our university!”

The TV cop show, Terriers, is currently filming in OB. And they are looking for local extras. They are filming a pilot plus a second episode. This all according to Ted, the owner of Old Town Restaurant on Newport.