OB Rag

Protestors want Centre City Coffee and Brooklyn Dogs to reopen and set new business records Occupy San Diego will not…

Occupy San Diego to Promote Bank Transfer Day, November 5 – Group plans to march through downtown San Diego

SAN DIEGO, Calif. – Saturday, November 5th at 10:30 AM, Occupy San Diego is holding a Big Banks Funeral March from the Civic Center to Petco Park to Bank of America, to stand in solidarity with National Bank Transfer Day and to encourage people to switch from large Banks to Credit Unions. TARP bailouts, illegal foreclosures and government bribery are out of control and the Occupation Movement is sending a message that American citizens will not take it any longer.

“SDG&E exemplifies the hypocritical worst of the One Percent: higher profits, higher rates and disregard for lives.” – Kim Hamilton, Deerhorn Valley Antler editor

By Miriam Raftery / East County Magazine / November 3, 2011

Rural East County residents are furious over a power-shut down yesterday while a 600-acre wildfire in Mexico threatened to jump the border. The night before, some residents received a warning from SDG&E that the utility intended to shut off power due to a red flag alert signaling severe fire danger.

Editor: The following piece by Ernie McCray ran in today’s Op-Ed section of the San Diego U-T, as Ernie is a member of their Community Dialog partnership. Yet, we couldn’t find it online today.

More and more people are assessing the “Occupy Movement” with statements like: “We don’t think their way is working” or “There’s no single leader” or “It’s anti-capitalism.”

Now who can say at this stage of the movement what’s working or not working? Besides, there wasn’t a single leader in the Great Civil Rights Movement until Martin came along. And how does pretty much labeling something as Un-American promote positive social change?

But, we might consider that all the finite organizing that some think the movement should be doing, with clear goals and objectives and the like, under the guidance of some master leader who can, without bashing capitalism, articulate that we simply need a little more justice and decent paying jobs – well, maybe this is not for Occupy to do alone.

The City’s position is pretty damn clear- Occupy San Diego is a threat to business and business must be protected at all costs and above all other things such as protected freedom of speech and the right to assemble. While City Council President Tony Young has not responded to Occupy San Diego’s request for a resolution despite three weeks of an Occupy presence at council and myriad phone calls, the City has moved remarkably quickly to “help vendors displaced by Occupy San Diego.”

by Alex Kreit / Two Cathedrals / November 4, 2011

As you may have seen, Bonnie Dumanis issued a statement Wednesday “clarifying [her] position on medical marijuana.” (This was linked to a page on Ms. Dumanis’ website that has since been removed) The statement articulates a reasonable — even admirable — position that seems designed to appeal to the moderate voters she’s trying to court. In it, Dumanis claims that she “absolutely support[s] the legitimate, legal use of marijuana for medicinal purposes” and even cites personal examples of “known friends suffering from debilitating, and sometimes fatal, diseases whose only relief from nausea or lack of appetite was marijuana.”

Unfortunately, Dumanis’s actions on this issue do not match her words. To put it mildly.

Donna Frye, the angel of San Diego’s environmentalists and eco-savy surfers, has come out and endorsed Bob Filner for San Diego mayor. Donna told Voice of San Diego that she is not running for the office. Frye’s endorsement should help Filner, as now the deck is cleared for him to run for the office as the only known Democrat.

Frye coming out for Bob raises another question that some are bold to ask:

Where are the other big-name Democrats and why haven’t they come out to endorse Filner?

People like former Member of Congress Lynn Schenk (she endorsed Bonnie early on), Assemblymembers Toni Atkins, Marty Block and Ben Hueso, as well as former Assemblymember Howard Wayne, and San Diego City Councilmember Todd Gloria?

by Liam Dillon / Voice of San Diego / November 4, 2011

Former San Diego City Councilwoman Donna Frye has definitively ruled out a run for mayor in 2012 and endorsed Democratic candidate Bob Filner.

By Roger Showley / SignOnSanDiego / November 1, 2011

The takeover of parks, plazas and other public spaces by the “Occupy Wall Street” movement is a good thing, said a panel of landscape architects on the future of cities Tuesday at the American Society of Landscape Architects convention meeting in San Diego.

“I am so thrilled that we have reclaimed these places as places of protest and how important they are,” said Maurice Cox, former mayor of Charlottesville, Va., who now teaches urban design at the University of Virginia.

It certainly would be the pits if upon arriving home to your unit in an OB apartment building, you’re barred from getting into it because there’s been a fire in an upstairs apartment. And now you find out you’ll be displaced for awhile.

It would be even worst if you find out that a firefighter who came into your apartment to check on fire damage had also found marijuana.

But oh, you have a prescription for medical marijuana?

Doesn’t matter. You get arrested anyway

Filner and several Congressional colleagues write President Obama to back off medical marijuana

By Christopher Cadelago / SignOnSanDiego / Originally published November 2, 2011

Rep. Bob Filner and several congressional colleagues are urging President Barack Obama to reclassify marijuana as a legitimate controlled substance for medicinal purposes under federal law.

By Lucas O’Connor / TwoCathedrals / November 2, 2011

It’s been a heady couple of weeks for OccupySD, indeed for the entire national Occupy effort. The dynamics of the movement and the importance of the issues being raised provide plenty to chew over for a long time yet, but even more immediately, its interactions with police have raised a number of questions that the public deserves answers to. None of these issues are raised with any presumption that the SDPD will be unable to provide a good explanation — I both expect and hope that they will. But that’s different than not caring if those answers are ever provided. It’s still necessary to raise these questions and require a meaningful process of accountability.

Today is proof that despite all its problems – the disarray and the disenchantment of officialdom – Occupy San Diego is still focused on the banks; its attention is still occupied by the banks – as the source of the country’s economic woes. Today saw a march and rally in front of the Wells Fargo branch on B Street. There is another march and rally against Bank of America being planned on Saturday, November 5th.

With the help of a kick-off rally at the Civic Center Plaza initiated by the San Diego Labor Council at noon, several hundred demonstrators marched east to “bank central” – the intersection of B Street and 5th Avenue, where a middle-of-the-street impromptu rally was held.