Category: Labor

OCEAN BEACH, CA. As litter never ends and graffiti tagging seems endless along sections of Sunset Cliffs, another clean-up happened on Friday, August 14th.

As this one was organized by a group calling themselves “The Cliff Dwellers”, and headed up by long-time local and cliff expert, Larry O’Brian, a bunch of us OB Ragsters joined them after work at the foot of Santa Cruz Avenue.

by Frank Gormlie

There is an insurgent reform movement within the union that represents most of the County of San Diego’s employees. The candidate for president on the reform slate is Monty Kroopkin, an old friend of ours.

SAN DIEGO, CA. Monty Kroopkin appears to be an unlikely candidate for president of SEIU Local 221. With his salt and pepper beard and pony-tail, and glasses tipping off his nose, he appears to be more suited for some intellectual post at a local university, or perhaps polishing and working on his Harley.

Yet he and his fellow reformers are running against the status quo in Local 221 …

Editor: OB Rag blogger Jon Carr and local photographer Jim Grant are heading up a clean-up of the Veteran’s Memorial at the foot of Newport Ave this Saturday morning. The Memorial was grossly soiled by marshmallows thrown two weeks ago on July 4th.

The clean-up is at 1:00 pm and volunteers are asked to bring appropriate cleaning implements.

As San Diego County supervisors seek to privatize more services, public officials elsewhere are reading the danger signs and starting to move in the opposite direction.

Like many other local and state governments desperate for budgetary quick fixes, the county board fell back on the old knee-jerk assumption that private companies can perform public services “better, cheaper and faster.” The facts show that quite often the opposite is true.

by Anna Daniels

Dear Karin Winner, Editor:

Ms. Winner, I just canceled my 15+ year subscription to the Union-Tribune. I asked to speak to a supervisor who would convey my reason for doing so to the appropriate individuals within the company. The reason I gave to Hector was the U-T’s recent decision to publish all City employee names and salary information on signonsandiego.com.

by Gary Gilmore

There’s more to our little Street Fair than chili, music, beer & good times.

What makes this whole extravaganza tick is money. That’s right, crass as it may seem, it’s money that makes the Street Fair go ‘round.

All 250 vendors (give or take a few) with their colorful booths, … had to fork over $365 bucks each …

by Gregg Robinson

Yesterday roughly 150 people showed up at the California State building on Front Street to demand rejection of Gov. Schwartzenegger’s draconian cuts to state services. Rally attendees heard speakers from religious, trade-union, and community groups speak out against the cuts.

With nearly one million children threatened …

People United Against Cuts is a local coalition formed to oppose the Governor’s recent “All Cuts” budget. The Governor’s proposed…

OCEAN BEACH, CA. Saturday, June 20th, was the first (for some) Great Graffiti Paint-out for Sunset Cliffs, marred by countless taggings. About twenty people showed up bright and early and proceeded to paint clean the entire stretch from Orchard north to the Pier. Special thanks go out to Ed Baer, Lou, and Jon Carr for making this happen. Cheers to you!

In the early Seventies, the battle for the future of Ocean Beach grew very intense, as the different warring sides squared off around the original OB Precise Plan – the urban design for the community sponsored by the elite and powerful. The OB Community Planning Group published an 8-page leaflet that was so effective, that it convinced the community to join and support the organization.

One in nine Americans are using federal food stamps to help buy groceries as the country’s deep recession forced another 591,000 people onto the federal anti-hunger program at latest count.

The unemployment rate raced to 9.4 percent, the highest since a matching rate in July 1983, from 8.9 percent in April. This reading beat the peak in the jobless rate during the 1973-1975 recession that lasted 16 months.

Some call it the “Tiananmen Square Massacre,” others say the “Tiananmen Square Crackdown,” and in China it is known merely as an “incident,” the “June 4th Incident,” or as the Chinese say, “liù-sì shìjiàn”.

No matter how you refer to the 1989 democracy protests in Beijing and the brutal response by China’s military, on Thursday, June 4th, the world marks the event’s 20th anniversary.