OB Rag

By Roberto Camacho / Times of San Diego / April 7, 2025

A controversy about an op-ed in The San Diego Union-Tribune by a student at UC San Diego in the wake of violent responses to pro-Palestinian protests has stirred a conversation about free speech, its limits, and who has a right to speak — and about what.

For decades, universities have held themselves out as boundary-pushers at the forefront of societal metamorphosis and have served as conservatories for challenging ideas and conversations.

However, some ideas appear to be more palatable than others.

When “Mia,” a 21-year-old anthropology major at UCSD and a member of Jewish Voice for Peace, was invited to contribute an op-ed to the Union-Tribune to share the perspectives of Jewish students in support of Palestinians, she was elated.

However, a few days later Mia’s op-ed was removed from the U-T’s website without explanation, sparking a local outcry from educators, activists, and community members.

KPBS / April 7, 2025

At least five UC San Diego students had their F-1 visas “suddenly” revoked by the federal government, and a sixth student was allegedly detained at the border, denied entry and deported, Chancellor Pradeep Khosla said over the weekend.

Khosla said the university received the notification “without warning,” and that the federal government has not explained the reasons behind the terminations. The students have been notified and the school is working directly with them to provide support, he said.

Looks like Corey Bruins, the former president of the Ocean Beach Town Council, is in very big trouble. The DA’s Office filed felony charges in Superior Court on March 6, 2025, and at his arraignment on March 31, Bruins plead not guilty.

He is currently out on his own recognizance. By one account, Bruins has an upcoming preliminary hearing sometime in May 2025. According to the Superior Court website, Bruins’ case number is CD307110.

Bruins, as OB observers and local activists know, was forced to resign as OBTC president in January 2024, throwing the Town Council into turmoil and crisis.

As the Rag reported then:

The immediate upshot, as interim president Cameron Reid explained in the statement he read to the some 60 people in the audience, is that president Corey Bruins has been ousted and that the group’s financial accounts have been turned over to an independent auditor. The former treasurer, Connor Harrington, has also resigned. (See full BOD statement below.)

By Michael Moore / Substack / April 8, 2025

This weekend, MILLIONS OF PEOPLE took to the streets of America to protest Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and what this administration of dangerous idiots, creepy billionaires and outright white supremacist fascists are doing to this country.

MILLIONS OF PEOPLE! There were 1,500 registered protests and hundreds more that just sprung up spontaneously in places where nothing had been planned but people said… “F*ck it! Let’s just go down to the courthouse!”

You would think this would be front page news. This would be blasting every 20 minutes of “Breaking News” and “This Just In!” and “Happening Now in the Situation Room!”

But, according to CNN, it was “scores of people” and USA Today said it was “tens of thousands” which was at least more than FOX News which said it was just “thousands of people.”

They refused to believe that MILLIONS of everyday Americans left their homes and packed tens of thousands of streets — even though they knew in advance there were over 600,000 people who had already RSVP’d to rallies nationwide weeks before the protests even started! And if you’ve ever met any Lefties and Independents and Traditional Non Voters… we don’t sign up for ANYTHING. For every 1 person who RSVP’d there were at least 8 who said, “Dude, I’ll just show up, why do I have to RSVP? This isn’t a bridal shower!”

The election for the San Diego City Council is over a year and a half away, but already candidates are jostling for position for the District 2 race. Because current councilmember Jen Campbell is termed out, there won’t be an incumbent for new candidates to run against.

Those who’ve already declared — or near to declaring — are the following:

• Andrea Schlageter has been head of the OB Planning Board for years and also heads up the city-wide City Planners Committee;
• Point Loma neighborhood leader Mandy Havlik; she ran for the seat in 2022 and is involved in the Point Loma- OB Democratic Club; Havlik focused on maintaining the city’s 30-foot coastal height limit for development and fighting proposals for higher-density housing she argued would damage the character of beach communities;

Here are numerous photos of Saturday’s massive “Hands Off” protest in downtown San Diego. They’re from Byron Morton and Igor Goldkind in no particular order. There were so many great original signs brought by San Diegans that many of the photos focus on them.

Thousands of San Diegans rallied today, Saturday, April 5th, in downtown at the Civil Center Plaza. The massive crowd of perhaps 10,000 marched through downtown to the US Federal Building.

Cool heads have, for the moment at least, prevailed on the Mission Bay Park Committee. A majority of the city-backed committee has rejected spending $600,000 on an analysis of how best to divvy up the land known as South Shores between different recreational activities.

When the Committee met earlier this week on Tuesday, they voted 5 to 3 against spending “$600,000 creating a proposed map of amenities — called a general development plan by city officials — before studying which parts of South Shores are too toxic for the public to use,” as David Garrick at the San Diego U-T reported today. Garrick continued:

Committee members strongly support transforming the 100 acres of underutilized land into public amenities — but they said the city must first analyze the land’s history as a dumping site for trash and industrial waste in the 1950s. They said it makes no sense to spend $600,000 creating a proposed map of amenities — called a general development plan by city officials — before studying which parts of South Shores are too toxic for the public to use.

“People are walking around with knowledge there is toxic waste somewhere under the ground in South Shores,” said Jeff Johnson, the committee’s chair. “Before we do a GDP, we should spend money to do an objective study to find out where it is, what it is and how bad it is.”

by Ernie McCray

As I read it,
the 25^th Amendment of the Constitution
says, to put it in a layman’s term,
that if the president,
when it comes to
discharging
the powers and duties
that the job requires of him,
is lacking,
then that president can be sent packing,
which should get us to asking
why we haven’t let our president go
on his non-merry way
since there is no one on earth
who could be more inefficient
at leading a nation
than the one we’ve got,

From Becca – Neighbors of Encanto

Hello Neighbors,

I hope everyone is doing well! I wanted to send along some action items of things we all should be doing as the planning department is looking at amending the bonus ADU program. They need to hear from each and every one of you as to what you would like changed.

This is the time to be filling everyone’s inboxing with what we have been asking for the past few months. I have included the emails to send to at the bottom of this email. You can write one email to Heidi and the planning department and cc everyone else.

Here are some bullet points or items [from Encanto and San Diego generally] that you may like to include in your email to the planning department:

• I want a city park at the radio towers, as was described in the 2015 Community Plan for our district.  I want 20 acres allocated from Mission Gorge to our district in exchange.  I do NOT want 130 houses built there.
• I want the Bonus ADU program rescinded as ministerial projects. ONLY approve the state mandated adu and jr adu projects first, the projects over the state mandate should be under approval of the community planning groups.

Actual New Owners Also Plan to Build the Controversial 56-Unit Complex at 1004 Rosecrans

Back a week and half ago, the Rag ran a story about what company had bought the Cañon Street Marina Center for $8.2 million. Well, we screwed up and reported that an outfit named “NorthStar Homes, ” a family-owned and run company from Colorado purchased the properties. But actually a local company called North Star Homes had made the purchases. See the difference? One name joins the first 2 words in its name and the other doesn’t.

We got our configuration of the words in the company’s name from an online business platform, ReBusiness Online, as “NorthStar Homes” — which we then looked up — to find NorthStar Homes of Colorado. Opps. We apologize for the error and any confusion.

We were corrected by Robert Vardon at the Point Loma-OB Monthly, a publication of the Union-Tribune today with his report that “the Cañon Street Marina Center, a retail and office complex in Point Loma’s Village area, has been sold for $8.2 million to North Star Homes,” a limited partnership, that “plans to hold the property as a long-term investment and maintain below-market-rate leases ….” The retail and office complex “is expected to remain a commercial center.”

Vardon also confirmed that North Star “has generated controversy in Point Loma over its plans for a 56-unit apartment development at 1004 Rosecrans St., at Talbot Street.”

By Richard Schulte / Cool San Diego Sights