OB Rag

Community Power Affecting Budget Decisions that Impact Our Neighborhoods

by Anna Daniels / San Diego Free Press

It is highly unusual for a group of strangers to smile broadly at each other and enthusiastically confess that the workshop they had just attended on how to read the City’s Capital Improvement Budget had been really interesting and very worthwhile.
That is exactly what happened a few weeks ago when I got into the elevator with a group of people with whom I had just attended the Community Budget Alliance‘s hands on budget workshop held in City Heights. It’s budget season…
(Come inside for insight into the City’s Budget.)

Some lawyers talk a lot when serving their clients – and now an Ocean Beach lawyer is walking a lot.

OB’s Justin Brooks, a law professor at Cal Western School of Law, is leading a 600 mile march from San Diego to Sacramento, on behalf of his clients. He’s walking with other lawyers and supporters of the California Innocence Project.

In a contentious meeting last night, May 1, the OB Planning Board voted 6 to 3 with 1 abstention to support the application by the Inn at Sunset Cliffs to permit a deck that was covered over with asphalt two decades ago. Some Board members and many in the packed room were in opposition to the permit and said the vote would legitimize ten years of illegal practices by the Inn.

Here is the language of the motion: …
(See inside for more.)

The UT-San Diego has a poll for its readers going right now on whether you think the San Onofre Nuclear Power Plant should be shut down.

As of yesterday, May 1, “Yes”was winning – but as of today, the “no’s are ahead.

C’mon OBceans and San Diegans – Vote to shut it down. We have the link right here so you can vote.S

Here’s the link to vote

Here are some events and marches and actions occurring today – May First, May Day – that are happening in San Diego County.

May 1 @ 2pm
May 1st Day of Action on International Worker’s Day
Workers of the world, unite! Join numerous organizations interested in supporting the working class with a march from Downtown San Diego to Chicano Park. Rally begins at 2pm at the Civic Center. The march to Chicano Park begins at 3:30pm with a rally there to close out the demonstration.
Civic Center
3rd & B St. Downtown
For more info visit

A Brief History of the Origins of the Modern May Day and the Movement for a 8-Hour Day

May Day Connections

By Neale Towart / Workers Online

May Day as a modern working class celebration and commemoration began from the 1886 events in Chicago where workers were demonstrating for an eight hour day. But the day already had special significance for working people before then.

Pre-Industrial May Day and Working People

As a working peoples celebration its origins go back much further, with connections to Ancient Roman rituals. In pagan Europe it was a festive holy day celebrating the first spring planting. The ancient Celts and Saxons celebrated May 1st as Beltane or the day of fire. Bel was the Celtic god of the sun.

In the 1700s the Churches banned the pagan rituals, just as bosses today want workers to forget any traditions of solidarity and celebration of workers rights, but many peasants continued the tradition.

By Ernie McCray

Just turned 75.
As I think about being a year older,
my first thought is
I’m so glad to be alive.
No jive.
On my list of priorities,
breathing is most high,
as I want to take all that I’ve seen,
over the years, with these old eyes,
all the bits and pieces of life
that are memorialized
and analyzed
and crystallized into my being’s archives
and use these experiences
in a constant quest
to stay wise –
because I dare to surmise
that there is no point in being 75
if you’re not wise.

By Robert Scheer / Truthdig

A recent article in The Wall Street Journal by Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, “The Dark Side of the Digital Revolution,” makes for very scary reading. It is not so much because of what he and co-author Jared Cohen, the director of Google Ideas, have to say about how dictators can use new information technology to suppress dissent; we know those guys are evil. What is truly frightening is that the techniques of the totalitarian state are the same ones pioneered by so-called democracies where commercial companies, like Google, have made a hash of the individual’s constitutionally guaranteed right to be secure in his or her private space.

The dictators, mired in more technologically primitive societies, didn’t develop the fearsome new implements of control of the National Security State. Google and other leaders in this field of massively mined and shared information did.

This is a chronicle – complete with a photo journal – of the best bicycle ride around Mission Bay. It is a ride that has been honed by the author – along with a few friends – over the last three decades – since the early Eighties.

It is a ride along a route that has a minimum of traffic and street exposure, and it is a route that is approximately …. 13 miles round trip from the Ocean Beach Skateboard Park in Robb Field.

Originally posted on April 30, 2013

Every OBcean knows – as well as every Point Loman and anyone who lives just west of San Diego’s airport – about plane take-offs.

They usually go right over the Peninsula. And have for years. I grew up on Point Loma and went to Point Loma High School and clearly remember many classroom instructions being interrupted by the low-flying giant aircraft directly overhead or slightly over. People in OB call it “the OB Pause” – when all conversation or listening is muted by the roar of aircraft engines over your head.

A video by a guy on the Mission Beach boardwalk who was being given a citation for smoking a cigarette has gone viral. The incident involved Adam Pringle who refused to shut off his cellphone while videoing the San Diego police officer – and now Pringle’s video of part of the incident has sparked a conversation that has gone national over the rights of people using the video on their cellphone (or other cameras).

Pringle – from Escondido – was smoking a cig on the boardwalk at Mission when he was approached by San Diego Police on bicycles. As the officer began writing up a citation, an infraction, Adam Pringle began using his cell phone to video the officer.

The officer then asks Pringle to shut off his cellphone. Pringle refuses – saying it was his right. The officer asks him at least one more time – and Pringle continues to video the officer.

The Campaign to Get Big Corporations Out of Our Constitution and Big Money Out of Our Elections The OB Rag…