OB Rag

Nearly every chair was filled last night at the OB Town Council monthly general meeting. Many of the some thirty folks in the audience had come to hear Scott Himelstein speak about his group’s “reform” plans for City schools.

Himelstein had invited himself to deliver another spiel about “San Diegans 4 Great Schools” and was the night’s guest speaker. The group is going around town in an effort to get their message out to community groups. OB was the second stop on Himelstein’s rounds. Last week he had been in Tierrasanta.

Editor: The City broke ground yesterday on construction of the new Central Library in downtown San Diego. On hand for us as witnesses were Anna Daniels- a former City librarian – and her hubby Rich Kacmar toting a camera. Anna filed the following observations:
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To be honest, I never thought I’d live long enough to see a much needed new central library in this city. The City Council gave the green light last month to its construction but it wasn’t until we were all invited to this morning’s groundbreaking that I felt it was truly going to happen.

ALL LINKS AND DETAILS INSIDE:

Federal Judge blocks parts of Arizona’s new immigration law
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Antiwar Left Grows in Congress With Latest War-Funding Vote
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Michael Moore Is Right About Obama
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Bernie Sanders: No to Oligarchy

The San Diego City Council voted to award a $6.6 million contract to build a demonstration plant that will treat recycled wastewater and turn it into safe drinking water. This historic turn-around for the Council reflects a shift in their and the public’s thinking about recycled water. The Council voted 4 to 2 for the project, with Councilwoman Sherri Lightner and Councilman Carl DeMaio voting ‘no’.

Water treated at the demonstration facility, to be built at North City Water Reclamation Plant, will be added to the city’s graywater system and not be added to the drinking water.

On July 22nd, a meeting of the Dusty Rhodes park board was held and numerous locals attended with complaints of the recent rash of small dog mauling and deaths from larger dogs (see here for our earlier coverage). Monica Honoré 0f the City of San Diego Park and Recreation Department was in attendance.

Finally, the local board voted to approve a separate fenced area for small dogs. The city has obtained bids for the fencing. Enough money is available in the dog park reserve fund plus a recent allocation of $3,000 from Councilmember Faulconer’s office for fencing, a fountain, labor and the associated requirements of ADA compliance. ….

by Amanda Van West

I’m a 24 year old filmmaker from Santa Clara, California, currently finishing my MA degree in International Broadcast Journalism at Westminster University in London. I’ve worked on short documentaries in California, Mexico, Nicaragua, and London.

“California’s Cannabis Culture” is a short documentary that was created for my final MA project. I filmed everything around Northern California between May and June, and finished the documentary in London. It’s an exploration of the marijuana scene in California, in light of the upcoming possibility of Proposition 19 passing in November. California has long had a reputation of being marijuana-friendly, so I wanted to showcase a bit of the culture and investigate what changes might happen, if any, should it become fully legalized in November.

My wife and I arrived at Dusty Rhodes Park at about 6pm, to a friendly dance party that had apparently been underway for at least a couple hours. Close to 200 revelers — most in joyfully psychedelic costumes, were mingling and dancing enthusiastically under the overcast skies. A DJ spun energetic house music along with an occasional light-hearted, humorous track, like a remix of Surfin’ Bird (“The bird is the word”) featuring Peter from Family Guy.

Ocean Beach’s Miscellaneous Heathens were at it again.

The Revolution will be televised — or, rather, streaming live online.

Antiwar demonstrations in the Vietnam era were a regular feature of the nightly network news on NBC, CBS and ABC.

Today, protests against the war in Afghanistan are just as likely to be online as on TV, and in the form of damning documents or videos shown on WikiLeaks.

And lacking a Sarah Palin or Glenn Beck — figures that have rallied the nation’s Tea Party movement — peace activists are taking a different tack. They are connecting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and our sagging economy and poor jobs outlook.

For one day, the Heathens took over Ocean Beach. Here is a photo gallery of their day with all photos by Jim Grant. Check back real soon for a more complete accounting of the Heathen party and procession.

Melisa Shafer’s deal with her three children was pretty simple: spend 20 minutes Saturday morning helping restore a fragile coastal dune and marsh area in Ocean Beach and they could go to the beach. The kids didn’t know it, but the point of their work had little to do with the physical labor involved.

The natural world is important to us,” said Shafer, 36, as she and the children lined rocks along a footpath through sensitive native vegetation. “If we don’t teach the next generation about it, we’ll lose it.”

I went to see the doctor the other day because I’ve been so tired lately. “Are you depressed?” he asked me.

After weeks of seeing photos of the devastation in the Gulf of Mexico; watching YouTube videos of pelicans suffocating in an oily sarcophagus, marshes saturated in putrid, brown slime and what appears to be oily rain and a surf belching noxious gases; reading reports of outright incompetence in dealing with the situation, the application of millions of gallons of a chemical dispersant that no one seems to understand the environmental ramifications of using, news of a judge with a vested interest in the oil industry rescinding a ban on deepwater drilling” Good God, who wouldn’t be depressed!

On Saturday, June 26th, I took the bus to Ocean Beach with my husband and a friend, to participate in one of the “Hands Across the Sand” events. There was a hundred or so of us lined up on the beach.

Across the country, an unprecedented operation is developing at an accelerating clip, unseen and unknown by most Americans.

Until now, that is.

On Monday (7/19/10) The Washington Post launched “Top Secret America,” an ongoing report of the private intelligence operations—which the report calls “our 4th branch of government– that have surfaced in America since September 11, 2001. The project has been in the making for two years now.

“The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work,” reads the report’s introduction, spearheaded by long-time reporters Dana Priest and William M. Arkin.