OB Rag

Amikas, a San Diego non-profit organization that helps house homeless U.S. military veteran women, will be raising crucial funds with a fundraising twist on an old-fashion idea – the quilting bee. On Veterans Day, San Diegans who care about our veteran women will have the opportunity to view and bid on antique quilts, provided by Martha Sullivan. There will also be a unique silent auction of quilt squares that will be assembled at the event into a crazy quilt to be displayed in the first Amikas home for female veterans and their children.

My thanks to the San Diego Occupiers who attended the City Council meeting on October 25^th, to abbajerry for the video and Rocky Neptun for his commentary. The mic check and call for a resolution at the morning meeting was truly thrilling! Although I was not present at the meeting I did watch the two non agenda item public comment segments that are available in the City’s online video archive (the opening credit incorrectly displays Monday’s date of October 24th). The last comment period came at the end of the 4 hour session, late in the afternoon. I applaud the dozen or so occupiers who stayed there in order to provide public testimony on behalf of the movement.

Tents have returned to the Occupy San Diego protest at the Civic Center Plaza. During the night time General Assembly held Tuesday, Oct. 25, tents began to appear. By last count there were eight new tents erected, and was described as “a direct action” event by those who pitched the tents on the concrete in the shadow of City Hall. The tents appeared to be newly purchased and several had “99%” written or painted on their sides.

The new tents visibly added to the tension and the daily/ nightly drama at the Plaza, as tents had been banned by the San Diego Police earlier during the occupation. Tents had been banned at the Plaza on Thursday, October 13th, in a memo delivered to the protesters.

By Maureen Magee / SignOnSanDiego / October 26, 2011

Facing an angry crowd of parents, students and teachers, the San Diego school board talked doom and gloom Tuesday night, taking on dire issues that have stirred unrest for weeks — fiscal insolvency, campus closures and selling off district property among them.

Tuesday, Oct 25:After spending almost an hour discussing an illegal scheme to transfer even more wealth to downtown hotel owners using taxpayers’ money; the San Diego City Council literally turned tail and ran from the council chambers when a coalition of community groups joined the Occupy San Diego movement in asking council members to support their rights to free speech and assembly within the city.

About 60 citizens marched from Children’s Park just before the 10 a.m. Council session and met up with the several hundred young people camped at the Civic Center Plaza. Ignoring the police demands to stay on the sidewalk, protestors took to the streets the entire route.

According to @occupyarrests, as of yesterday, 2,428 people had been arrested nationwide since the start of Occupy Wall Street.

Around 5:00 am this morning (10/25/11) hundreds of riot gear clad Oakland police stormed the Oakland Occupy Wall Street encampment. Reportedly using flash grenades, rubber bullets and tear gas they cleared the area of tents and arrested 70 people. According to legal observer Marcus Kryshka (see Marcus’ video), the police came in very quickly and denied media and legal observers access to the area.

See video inside…

Occupy San Diego activists will march on City Hall tomorrow, Tuesday, October 25, to request that the City of San Diego adopt a resolution similar to the one adopted by Los Angeles, to support the Occupy San Diego protests and are requesting your help by marching with them and signing a petition (which will be presented to the council) to show your support.

You do not need to be a resident of the city to sigh this petition.

Town Hall Meeting on School Closures / Realignments at 7pm at Dana’s Jackson Hall

By Point Loma Cluster Schools Foundation

The Point Loma Cluster Schools Foundation (PLCS) is hosting a Public Town Hall Meeting Monday, October 24th at 7pm.

(Please note: The location of this meeting has been changed from Point Loma High to Dana Middle School’s Jackson Theater.)

The Town Hall Meeting is an opportunity for stakeholders to learn more about the District fiscal crisis, our cluster schools, demographics and the District’s proposed realignment / school closure recommendations. Time will be allocated for public discussion and input. San Diego Unified staff and School Board Member Scott Barnett will be present.

Recently, Clare Crawford of the Center on Policy Initiatives noted that, “Even three full-time minimum wage jobs don’t make enough to make ends meet in San Diego County.” Crawford was responding to the release of a report by the Insight Center for Community Economic Development that documented how it now costs a family of three nearly $63,000 to make ends meet in San Diego.

This is according to the 2011 California Family Self-Sufficiency Standard and the grim news is that more than one million San Diegans are living in households earning less than that threshold. That’s close to a third of all San Diegans, much higher than the fifteen percent of San Diegans who fall under the official poverty line.

The music video for Guns ‘N’ Roses’ “You Could Be Mine” concludes with a classic moment where Arnold Schwarzenegger, playing his Terminator character, considers assassinating singer Axl Rose.

When the Terminator’s computer brain deems Rose a “waste of ammo,” Arnold lowers his weapon and walks away, presumably to engage a more worthy target.

In 2010, employing a similar thought process as governor of California, Schwarzenegger changed small-time possession of marijuana from a misdemeanor to an infraction carrying a $100 fine.

From Tehran to Scotland, from Hong Kong to the always fiery, militant youth of Rome, the Occupy Wall Street movement has spread across the globe. Tired and angry over decades of corporate owned capitalism, where wealthy stockholders and huge multi-national corporations set the agenda for political and economic policy decisions, plunging millions of middle-class families into poverty, exacerbating the conditions of the already destitute, and forcing millions of youth into either wage slavery or no future at all; the world’s 99% have taken to the streets.

The First Amendment and the obligation to peacefully disrupt in a free society.

By Naomi Wolf / Reader Supported News / Oct. 22, 2011

Mayor Bloomberg is planning Draconian new measures to crack down on what he calls the “disruption” caused by the protesters at Zuccotti Park, and he is citing neighbors’ complaints about noise and mess. This set of talking points, and this strategy, is being geared up as well by administrations of municipalities around the nation in response to the endurance and growing influence of the Occupation protest sites. But the idea that any administration has the unmediated option of “striking a balance,” in Bloomberg’s words, that it likes, and closing down peaceful and lawful disruption of business as usual as it sees fit is a grave misunderstanding – or, more likely, deliberate misrepresentation – of our legal social contract as American citizens.