Category: History

By Marcela Salas Cassani / La Prensa / Originally published Jan. 13, 2012

La Prensa Ed.’s Note: Desinformemonos.org, an “autonomous, global communications project” and sister organization to the Americas Program, covers grassroots movements throughout the world and the ideas and aspirations behind them. Its team has been in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas reporting on an international seminar there to commemorate and reflect on the 18th anniversary of the Zapatista uprising. In collaboration with Desinformemonos, the Americas program presents this summary in English of their coverage of the event.

Hundreds of activists and academics from around the world gathered at the International Seminar “Planet Earth: Anti-Systemic Movements” to discuss the importance of the 1994 Zapatista uprising on its 18th anniversary. In the context of the popular insurrections that have emerged this year across the globe, the seminar held from Dec. 30 to Jan. 2 in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico, concluded, with Portuguese sociologist Boavent-ura de Sousa Santos, that seen in retrospect Zapatista influence has been so strong that “one cannot view the left or the struggle against capitalism without this point of reference.”

By Lorena Gonzalez

Local elections rarely matter to the rest of the state. We all are facing so many challenges in our own regions, that paying attention to another part of the state is often just an after-thought. But, once in a while, there is a local politician with such dangerous beliefs, tactics and immense corporate backing, that it warrants statewide attention. Such is the case in San Diego today.

I came of age as a young San Diegan at the same time Pete Wilson left our City Hall to become a U.S. senator, and then governor of California. And, as harmful and antagonistic as a Governor Pete Wilson was, he was mild compared to Carl DeMaio, one of four high-profile candidates vying for San Diego’s top spot this June.

By Marjorie Cohn / ZNet / Januay 16, 2012

Travelers to Cuba and music lovers are familiar with the song “Guantanamera”— literally, the girl from Guantánamo. With lyrics by José Martí, the father of Cuban independence, Guantanamera is probably the most widely known Cuban song.

But Guantánamo is even more famous now for its U.S. military prison. Where “Guantanamera” is a powerful expression of the beauty of Cuba, “Gitmo” has become a powerful symbol of human rights violations—so much so that Amnesty International described it as “the gulag of our times.”

That description can be traced to January 2002, when the base received its first 20 prisoners in shackles. General Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, warned they were “very dangerous people who would gnaw hydraulic lines in the back of a C-17 to bring it down.” We now know that a large portion of the 750 plus men and boys held there posed no threat to the United States. In fact, only five percent were captured by the United States; most were picked up by the Northern Alliance, Pakistani intelligence officers, or tribal warlords, and many were sold for cash bounties.

The Ocean Beach Historical Society Presents:

PHOTOGRAPHER JOE EWING

“THE SEQUEL”

Thursday, January 19th, at 7 PM

P.L. United Methodist Church,

1984 Sunset Cliffs Blvd., O.B.

You won’t want to miss the Jan. 19th OBHS’s program by Ocean Beach Photographer Joe Ewing. We’re happy Joe’s back for the second year. Last year we were blown-away by Joe’s incredible O.B. photos with fascinating stories and tips on photo- graphing. He had so many images he couldn’t fit them all into one program. You’re in for a treat with this sequel of Joe’s current photos.

After positioning myself on the median along Harbor Drive near the very front of Sunday’s Martin Luther King Day Parade, I watched the entire event and took over 160 photos of the marchers, floats, bands, and collections of people participating.

And I can say this without hesitation: the Martin Luther King Day Parade is dominated by law enforcement and the military. There were more of these groups than civic organizations, churches or sororities.

The San Diego Police Department, the Border Patrol, the Harbor Patrol, ICE, Homeland Security, the San Diego Sheriffs, the ROTC marchers, and even the FBI marched in this parade that honors a man of peace and justice. I mean the FBI persecuted Martin Luther King to the hilt – its leader, J. Edgar Hoover believed King was the most dangerous man in America. The Border Patrol, ICE, and Homeland Security all routinely violate peoples’ rights.

Come inside for the photo gallery!

Local Radio Heralded Counter-Cultural Seventies Series Called “The O.B. Ranger Rides Again!”

Editor: We received this article from Jay Allen Sanford, who has been a San Diego Reader columnist and cartoonist (Overheard in San Diego, etc) for around 20 years. Sanford lived on Abbott Street in the late ’70s and early ’80s, and his first professional cartoons (ie paid) were for OB’s Strand Theater ads and newsletters (he’s working on a lengthy Strand article now).

By Jay Allen Sanford

“We were going after the progressive rock or the album rock crowd,” says radio DJ and programming vet Gary Allyn about his early seventies on-air gig in San Diego.

“We wanted an independent attitude of not giving a damn about anything because we could get away with a lot of that in Mexico. So our IDs and buffers had things you couldn’t say on American radio. We did quasi drug references. Like ‘It’s time for the scores’ – and the scores would be ‘four keys, two lids.’ With stuff like the O.B. Ranger routines, there was always that underground go-against-society undercurrent. Of course O.B. was the center of the hippie movement in that period, flower power and the drug culture and all that.”

By Dave Good / SanDiego.com / Jan 10th, 2012

The roots of the San Diego Zoo lie in Ocean Beach, California. That there is even a zoo here at all, world famous or not, is largely due to a chain of events that began in 1913 at the foot of Voltaire Street. On July 4th of that year the doors to the Wonderland Amusement Park were officially opened to the public.

In its time Wonderland must have been spectacular. Protected from the sea by high walls with exotic turrets it spanned eight acres of what is now dog beach.

Every year for over three decades, there has been a Martin Luther King Day Parade in San Diego, and this year’s is the 32nd such event.

During its first years, the Parade was a great outpouring from the African-American community in this area and their supporters who believed in King. It was the Black community of San Diego’s annual presentation of King’s words and values, and an event in honor of his leadership in overturning the Jim Crow laws of the segregationist South, and in showcasing the racism of the North and the West.

Recent Police Crackdowns Mirror Infamous San Diego 1912 Free Speech Fight

January 2012 named “Free-Speech Month”

100 years after the San Diego City Council infamously suppressed free speech in downtown San Diego, Occupy San Diego will commemorate this historic event by naming January 2012 as “Free-Speech Month,” and by proposing a ballot measure to amend the City’s municipal code to improve the respect of free speech in San Diego. This amendment will create an explicit exception to the current encroachment law (SDMC 54.0110) to allow for “peaceful picketing, lawful labor activities and peaceful political activities.”

“As San Diego gears up to commemorate the now infamous Free Speech Fights of 1912, Occupy San Diego will present the San Diego City Council with the choice to protect free speech or to repeat the mistakes of a hundred years ago and continue to allow the arrest and imprisonment of peaceful citizens exercising their First Amendment rights in San Diego,” said Martha Sullivan, an active San Diego community volunteer and supporter of Occupy San Diego.

San Diego Events Set to Commemorate Historic Struggle That Resonates Today With Clamp-down on the Occupy San Diego Movement

From San Diego Free Speech Fight

January 2012 is the 100-year anniversary of the San Diego Free Speech Fight, one of the most important moments in the history of the city of San Diego.

During the winter and spring of 1912, members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and their allies in labor and the community engaged in a pitched battle against a city ordinance that banned public speaking in the area around 5th and E Streets in downtown San Diego.

Senators Al Franken, Bernie Sanders, Rand Paul along with 8 others voted against the National Defense Authorization Act

By Felicia Sonmez / Washington Post / Updated: Thursday, December 15, 2:41 PM

A sweeping defense bill that sparked a heated debate over the handling of terrorism suspects passed the Senate on Thursday afternoon and is headed to President Obama’s desk, bringing to an end weeks of wrangling that included a veto threat from the White House.

The $662 billion defense authorization bill was approved by the Senate on an 86 to 13 vote one day after the White House withdrew its threat to veto the measure over several controversial detainee provisions that it said infringed on its executive power. The bill overwhelmingly passed the House on Wednesday night on a 283 to 136 vote.

Time mag’s annual “Person of the Year” is The Protester this time around. The image by Street artist Shepard Fairey is of Sarah Mason, a member of Occupy LA, and a resident of Highland Park. Fairey took Mason’s photo during a November 17th protest outside the Bank of America tower in the financial district.

At that action, she was was arrested with dozens of others. Plus Mason was present when LA cops moved in and cleared the Occupy LA camp outside City Hall less than two weeks later. She told a reporter that she left the park at City Hall because she didn’t want to risk another arrest. She was upset that she had walked away from her protesting companions and was angry at the city for closing the camp.