OB Rag

SD Community Coalition Bulletin:

City Council To Hold Special Meeting Just Before Mayor’s State-Of-City Speech

In an interesting development, the San Diego City Council has posted notice that it will hold a special meeting about the Mayor’s 2026 “State of the City” address on Thursday, January 15, at 1:00 p.m. in the Council Committee Room. The Mayor’s address is scheduled for 3:00 p.m. Thursday in the Council Chambers.

This link contains instructions for submitting a written comment before the meeting. The Council will begin the meeting by taking public comment in person and virtually.

This is a developing story, so please circle back for updates later this morning.

Land Use and Housing Committee Meeting: Preservation and Progress Package A Approved to Move Forward for Review by the Full City Council

By South OB Girl

On Wednesday January 14, the Preservation and Progress Package A went before the San Diego City Council Land Use and Housing Committee.  Package A involves controversial proposals regarding preserving and protecting San Diego’s historic housing ideals and districts. Council Member Sean Elo-Rivera was absent.  This left a LUH Committee of three: Committee Chair Kent Lee and committee members Stephen Whitburn, and  Vivian Moreno.

There were 49 speakers in Council Chambers downtown –a mix of those in favor and those opposed, and many in attendance ceded minutes to others who were speaking.  Bruce and Alana Coons spoke, representing Save Our Heritage Organization (SOHO).  Mission Hills Heritage also spoke, as did local OBceans including Kathy Blavatt and Coastal Caretakers.

“You’re going to Lexington? Don’t go. You’ll only play into their hands — and that’s exactly what they want. And then they’ll really call you a ‘domestic terrorist.'”

In Minneapolis and other cities where federal agents have led immigration crackdowns, residents have formed loose networks to track and protest them.

By Julie Bosman / New York Times / Jan. 14, 2026

It began in Los Angeles, in Signal chats and strategy sessions on Zoom. Last year, as immigration raids proliferated throughout the city, Latino activists and neighbors began organizing a response, monitoring for Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents along sidewalks and in Home Depot parking lots and texting their networks when they spotted an arrest underway.

By late summer, activists in Chicago were trained and ready. Before the Trump administration had announced a crackdown called Operation Midway Blitz, immigrant rights organizations had handed out orange whistles for volunteers to use as a public warning system, formed “rapid-response” groups and advised people to report sightings of ICE agents and memorize their own legal rights. Chicagoans, even many without formal ties to protest groups, showed defiance against ICE with “Hands Off Chicago” signs adorned with the city’s beloved starred-and-striped flag, placed prominently in windows of restaurants and bungalows.

And in recent weeks in Minneapolis, the latest focus for a Trump administration surge of immigration enforcement, a loose but growing network of neighborhood volunteers has shown up near reported arrests, yelling at agents and recording them on iPhone cameras. Some gathered near hotels where agents were believed to be staying, pounding drums and making noise.

By Jeanette Quezada and Shelby Bremer / 7SanDiego / January 11-12, 2026 

Video of San Diego police officers hitting a man as they arrested him in Southcrest over the weekend has led to an investigation.

The incident happened at 38th Street and National Avenue on Saturday night. Police and witnesses say a man blocked his ex’s car in with his own, and she called 911.

[Go to original for video.]

Aurora Morales, who lives across the street, said that she was inside her home when she heard what sounded like an argument between a man and a woman. When she looked out the window, she saw what appeared to be a man trying to hit the woman’s car window.

“It seemed like he wanted her to get out of the car,” Morales said.

She said she then heard the man telling the woman he was going to pull something out of the car. That’s when Morales saw the man grab what appeared to be an iron tool to break the window.

Witnesses say there were more than a dozen squad cars but just a few moments captured on video have now prompted an investigation.

There are concerns tonight from some people about the way San Diego police officers handled an arrest last night in Southcrest. Video shared on social media is prompting questions about whether the officers involved used “excessive force.” We do want to warn you, some may find the video graphic. NBC 7’s, Jeanette Quezada, talked with witnesses today about what happened.

Please join Ocean Beach Historical Society, for A View From My Trike, Thursday evening, January 15, 2026 at 7:00 pm, at Water’s Edge Community, 1894 Sunset Cliffs Blvd.

OBHS Board Member and talented writer Mercy Baron presents an engaging selection of her stories from the San Diego Reader.

This fun and lively presentation will kick off Ocean Beach Historical Society’s 32nd season of free monthly programs.

By Harry Litman / The New Republic / January 13, 2026

The stunning resignations on Monday of four senior career officials from the Criminal Section of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division confirm that DOJ has gone profoundly off the rails in its handling of what increasingly appears to be one of the gravest federal excessive-force cases in decades.

The resignations reportedly had multiple causes, but the central one was the sidelining of the Criminal Section from the investigation of the January 7 fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jonathan Ross.

In any normal, professionally run Department of Justice—Democratic or Republican—a shooting that looks this serious on its face would trigger a searching civil rights investigation by the Criminal Section, the Department’s long-standing unit for prosecuting unlawful uses of force. That has been true whether the assailant was a state officer, as in the Rodney King case, or—more rarely—a federal one, as at Ruby Ridge. (I served in the department during both and worked on the King case.)

ICE has steadfastly maintained that the shooting was justified because Ross reasonably believed that Good was attempting to run him over. But multiple bystander videos and visual analyses have seriously undermined that self-serving account. I put the point in that lawyerly, hedged way because, for present purposes, it is more than enough to establish beyond any cavil that this case demands the most thorough investigation the federal government can muster.

That is the very opposite of what happened here.

By David Helvarg /  Op-Ed LA Times / Jan. 8, 2026

Recently, while sailing with friends on San Francisco Bay, I enjoyed the sight of harbor porpoises, cormorants, pelicans, seals and sea lions — and then the spouting plume and glistening back of a gray whale that gave me pause. Too many have been seen inside the bay recently.

California’s gray whales have been considered an environmental success story since the passage of the 1972 Marine Mammal Protection Act and 1986’s global ban on commercial whaling. They’re also a major tourist attraction during their annual 12,000-mile round-trip migration between the Arctic and their breeding lagoons in Baja California. In late winter and early spring — when they head back north and are closest to the shoreline, with the moms protecting the calves — they can be viewed not only from whale-watching boats but also from promontories along the California coast including Point Loma in San Diego, Point Lobos in Monterey and Bodega Head and Shelter Cove in Northern California.

In 1972, there were some 10,000 gray whales in the population on the eastern side of the Pacific. Generations of whaling all but eliminated the western population — leaving only about 150 alive today off of East Asia and Russia. Over the four decades following passage of the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the eastern whale numbers grew steadily to 27,000 by 2016, a hopeful story of protection leading to restoration. Then, unexpectedly over the last nine years, the eastern gray whale population has crashed, plummeting by more than half to 12,950, according to a recent report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the lowest numbers since the 1970s.

Today’s changing ocean and Arctic ice conditions linked to fossil-fuel-fired climate change are putting this species again at risk of extinction.

By Gustavo Solis / KPBS / Jan. 12, 2026

Local privacy advocates are raising concerns about an obscure database managed by the San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG) that might be allowing President Donald Trump’s deportation forces to circumvent state and local immigrant sanctuary laws.

For an annual fee of roughly $200,000 SANDAG grants immigration enforcement agencies, including Customs and Border Protection (CBP), access to the database, which is known as ARJIS.

The database contains information from every law enforcement agency in San Diego County — which includes traffic citations, arrest records, field interviews, a local jail census and some driver license records.

Local police agencies have shared data with their federal counterparts through ARJIS for decades. But now, the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement tactics are raising new questions about what exactly is being shared with the federal government.

“It is not always great to share data because sometimes you don’t know what the motivations of those people might be,” said Seth Hall, a privacy advocate with the TRUST SD Coalition.

By Jennifer Velez / The Coronado Times / Jan. 10, 2026

For a man who doesn’t drink coffee, Luis Madrid sure knows his beans, and has parlayed that knowledge into a new location for Coronado Coffee Company at 1180 Rosecrans Street, Suite 101, in Point Loma.

Well known around Coronado, Luis actually got his start in the coffee business at age 14, making $5 pushing the Café del Sol coffee cart and setting it up outside the former Bay Books location before school every morning. He then made an additional $5 putting it away after school.

“I gave my mom that money to buy groceries to feed our family, and I was happy to be helping,” he shares. By age 17, he was getting $7 an hour as a barista at the cart. Two years later, the owner Steve was moving and selling the business, so Luis took his entire savings of $22,000 and went all in to buy it and renamed it Café Madrid. Luis has built a reputation for serving delicious coffee, tea, smoothies, acai bowls, and pastries, but more importantly he is known for his connection with his customers. I experienced this firsthand when I moved here eight years ago and I remain loyal for the best mochas on the island and the friendliness he and his staff exude.

From Grokipedia

Editordude: Here’s a sampling of what’s available at Grokipedia about the nearly 50-year old OB Community Garden in northeast Ocean Beach.

The Ocean Beach Community Garden is located at 2351 Soto Street in the Ocean Beach neighborhood of San Diego, California, ZIP code 92107, situated in a residential area proximate to the Pacific Ocean beaches and local landmarks such as Ocean Beach Pier.[1]

This positioning integrates the garden seamlessly into the coastal community, enhancing accessibility for nearby residents while reflecting the neighborhood’s laid-back, beach-oriented character.[1]

Originally an empty lot acquired in 1978, the site has been transformed into a productive green space spanning approximately one-quarter acre, dedicated to community cultivation.[4] The overall dimensions allow for organized gardening amid the urban coastal setting, with the transformation emphasizing sustainable land use in a formerly underutilized area.[1]

The garden’s layout features 51 individual plots arranged in a grid-like pattern to optimize space and sunlight exposure, complemented by communal pathways for easy navigation and shared green areas for collective use.