OB Rag

From the San Diego Labor Council:

National Day of Mobilization for the Unemployed and for Jobs

Thursday, December 8, 2011
Vigil and Silent March
5 p.m. – Civic Center, 1200 3rd Avenue (3rd & B)
Downtown San Diego, 92101

Unemployment insurance is set to expire on December 31, 2011. If Congress doesn’t act before the end of the year, the lifeline for jobless families and local economies that are already struggling will be cut-off.

By Robert Johnson / Business Insider/ Dec. 5, 2011

The U.S. military has some of the most advanced killing equipment in the world that allows it to invade almost wherever it likes at will.

We produce so much military equipment that inventories of military robots, M-16 assault rifles, helicopters, armored vehicles, and grenade launchers eventually start to pile up and it turns out a lot of these weapons are going straight to American police forces to be used against US citizens.

Benjamin Carlson at The Daily reports on a little known endeavor called the “1033 Program” that gave more than $500 million of military gear to U.S. police forces in 2011 alone.

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt / Excuse Me, I’m Writing / Dec. 5, 2011

We are so frequently exposed to violence in the United States, most of us probably figure that, like pornography, we know violence when we see it. Enemies go to war, and we watch the carnage live on TV’s 24-hour news cycle. People physically harm each other on our streets and in our homes, and we tally their numbers with the rest of the tidy crime statistics. We replicate violent imagery in film and television, in music and video games, and eagerly consume it as entertainment. Yes, violence is pervasive, and most of us probably figure we have it pegged. But we’d be wrong.

By Lucas O’Connor / Two Cathedrals / December 5, 2011

With the state budget poised to dramatically under-deliver and trigger large budget cuts for schools across the state, local media has spent a couple months wading into the looming financial crisis at San Diego Unified for a while now. And while the immediacy of the local challenges makes it crucial to cover well, it isn’t like this is a crisis in a vacuum.

Any discussion of the budgetary straitjacket in Sacramento that’s made this budget crisis inevitable has been strikingly absent, aside from the perfunctory ‘state’s broken’ before getting into mitigating the effects.

Ocean Beach – December 2, 2011.

There was a wonderful turn-out for the OB Holiday Parade this year! Our good friend Jeffrey Stone sent us a slew of great photos to share with you. Click on one to see a larger version and peruse them at your leisure, if you identify someone you know leave a comment under the photo. Enjoy!

Come inside to see them all. And thanks Jeff!

Help defend families facing foreclosure and support filling empty, bank-owned homes with those in need.

By Dave Lagstein, ACCE

Last week thousands made a pledge to defend our homes and communities from the big Wall Street banks that have been on a three-year-long foreclosure binge, kicking struggling families out of homes all across the country.

The 99% is saying “No” and fighting back against the big banks in a big way. Community members nationwide are rallying to stop foreclosures, keep families in their homes, and fill vacant homes with displaced residents.

Earlier Monday, December 5th, UCSD students had forced open the doors of one of the shuttered libraries on campus and many of them pushed inside to claim the space in order to study for final exams. The library had been closed earlier by administrators during the summer, one of three the university closed in response to drastic cuts in funding from the state. Usually, it been left open 24/7 during finals week.

And the students had given the administration until 11 a.m. this morning to respond to their demand that the library be opened for studying during finals week. When there was no word from the Administration, one group of students came from inside and opened the doors for those outside.

In their continuing harassment of Occupy San Diego demonstrators, Police arrested nine more at the Civic Center Plaza, early Monday morning – the 5th of December. 7 were taken into custody for “illegal lodging”, one for allegedly “resisting arrest” and the ninth for “vandalism”.

San Diego Police have kept up their constant monitoring and harassment of San Diego’s version of Occupy Wall Street since October 14th. Their unstated goal – doubtlessly ordered by Mayor Jerry Sanders – is to rid City Hall of any sign of the occupiers, and they have been doing this with a drumbeat of arrests and citations for very minor offenses.

While nightly hundreds of homeless people sleep on sidewalks in tents and tarps all over downtown San Diego, the demonstrators have been prevented from using tents, tarps, sleeping bags and for sleeping in and around the Civic Center Plaza.

Coastkeeper’s free event explores low impact development as solution to urban runoff

SAN DIEGO, Dec. 5, 2011 – San Diego Coastkeeper, the region’s leading environmental nonprofit protecting inland and coastal waters, will host its quarterly Signs of the Tide public forum tomorrow from 6 p.m. – 8 p.m.

The event at the Electric Ladyland Art and Music Center located at 4944 Newport Ave., San Diego, CA 92107, includes a panel of experts to introduce low impact development (LID) and how it can save our rivers, bays and ocean from further pollution.

Coming to a Theater Near You: The Greatest Water Crisis in the History of Civilization

By William deBuys / TomDispatch.com / Dec. 4, 2011

Consider it a taste of the future: the fire, smoke, drought, dust, and heat that have made life unpleasant, if not dangerous, from Louisiana to Los Angeles. New records tell the tale: biggest wildfire ever recorded in Arizona (538,049 acres), biggest fire ever in New Mexico (156,600 acres), all-time worst fire year in Texas history (3,697,000 acres).

The fires were a function of drought. As of summer’s end, 2011 was the driest year in 117 years of record keeping for New Mexico, Texas, and Louisiana, and the second driest for Oklahoma. Those fires also resulted from record heat. It was the hottest summer ever recorded for New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana, as well as the hottest August ever for those states, plus Arizona and Colorado.

The media is reporting that a man believed to be in his 50s was arrested late last night (Sunday) for allegedly stabbing another guy, believed to be in his 20s. This all occurred outside a taco shop in Ocean Beach, on the 5000 block of Newport Avenue, the main business drag. The stabbing is said to have happened sometime just before midnight.

On Saturday, December 3, Occupy San Francisco united with San Franciso Housing Rights organizations to oppose evictions, foreclosures and other housing injustices across the city. The day began with actions in the Bayview, Mission, Castro and Tenderloin, and culminated with a mass march from the Occupy SF site through the financial district to confront banks that put up the bucks that fuel these abuses.

A statement from a flyer promoting today’s action declared:

“From the subprime mortgage crisis that began our current recession, to bank bailouts, the rising rates of homelessness and policies like the Ellis Act that prioritize profit over people, housing has been central to the occupy movement in San Francisco, and around the country.”