OB Rag

The Ocean Beach Library has a new branch manager: Helene Idels.

Here is what the Friends of the OB Library reported in their April 2021 newsletter:

People looking to use ride-hailing services such as Lyft and Uber may have had some difficulty on Wednesday, July 21, as many drivers conducted a one-day strike for better pay and status under the law.

Rideshare Drivers United — an independent association of U.S. rideshare drivers founded in Los Angeles — organized the strikes in a number of cities across the United States, including San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Austin, Boston, Cleveland, Las Vegas, Pittsburgh, Denver, and Baltimore.

The group had a rally at San Diego’s Lyft driver center at 1 p.m. Wednesday.

They say the companies have:

Reporter Geoff Page will be giving a talk on the “OB Pier – Past, Present and Future” this Sunday, July 25 at the Point Loma – Ocean Beach Democrats zoom meeting.

Here is what the Club announced:
Regular contributor to the OB Rag, Geoff Page, will bring us up to speed on the saga of the OB Pier.

Geoff Page has contributed several articles on the state of the pier to the OB Rag, who broke the story that engineering reports commissioned by the city in 2004, 2016 and 2019 highlighted the state of the pier and recommended keeping

By David Helvarg / The Progressive / July 20, 2021

In June, record heat waves hit Russia, Northern Europe, Canada, and the United States. When these increasingly common weather phenomena began killing hundreds of people, the U.S. media focused its coverage on a single record breaking 116-degree day in Portland, Oregon.

When unprecedented flooding in Germany and Western Europe had killed more than 100 people by July 16, I watched as three U.S. network news shows rolled that report into coverage of the West’s wildfires and California’s worst drought in 1,200 years. Yet, none of the three main TV news outlets—NBC, CBS, or ABC—mentioned climate change,

by Ernie McCray

Since the age of three every book I’ve read has influenced me in some way as I’m very much an empathizer.

But no book has resonated with me more than Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed.

As I absorbed his words I felt as though he was writing directly to me. I mean his declaration that education systems were designed to produce passive non-critical thinking learners, especially those relegated to the lower classes in our society, validated my very thoughts as an educator, making me feel not so alone in a school district that was standardized to its very core.

My man, Paulo, let me know that I was on to something as I indulged my students with notions of justice, wanting them to know how their country operates so they could transform it.

By Colleen O’Connor

Most recognize those shorthand text and radio signals.

“BOLO” is the police code for “Be On the Lookout” for villains escaping on roads, in the air, and everywhere.

“YOLO” the younger set’s call to quit work as in “You Only Live Once” so ditch that dead end job and go places.

I don’t know if this shorthand code already exists, or not, but it is time for the Democrats to embrace it ASAP: “You’re On Your Own.” The Texas Democrats who left their state, arrived in D.C.,

Neighbors near the Sunset Cliffs Natural Park and other are complaining they are seeing more and more rogue bikers all over the park. The bicyclists are destroying the newly re-vegetated areas, damaging the trails they are not allowed on. They are also a serious safety hazard to the visitors to the park.

As one neighbor told the OB Rag:

The City recently spent millions of dollars on the park and have failed to maintain it or supervise activity in the park. The illegal riders are there every morning and evening and often all day.

On August 3, the City of San Diego will declare the Sports Arena area as surplus land to comply with the state’s Surplus Land Act. This will set off a new, legal process of opening up the bidding for the redevelopment of the 48-acre site.

And for the first time, there is a very real chance the process will require the construction of affordable housing at the Arena tract. Neither Faulconer’s initiative nor Measure E which passed last November required affordable housing to be included.

Declaring the Sports Arena area as surplus land, the first step

On Tuesday, July 13, the San Diego City Council authorized the San Diego Housing Commission to build up to 78 affordable housing units on the 5-acre parcel in Famosa Canyon. The council entered into an agreement with Bridge Housing Corporation to design housing units at the southeast corner of Famosa and Nimitz boulevards.

The decision appears to resolve the controversies over the site, one of the last open spaces in Point Loma and used by kids on bikes for generations. Many in the community have fought this development for years, at the grassroots level and at the local planning board level. But it appears to no avail.

Opponents of the development have been characterized as “NIMBYs” and even “racist” by its advocates,

by Ernie McCray

America.
I’ve so had it with
your evil ways,
especially the way
you make us Black folks
slave away
to just prevent you
from taking our right to vote away,
over-and-over-again
ad nauseam.

And what pisses
me off the most
about this is

By Thomas Ultican / Tultican

Founded in 1897, the ubiquitous PTA has been a long time powerful voice in legislative halls. With their many victories, they have developed enemies especially among school privatization advocates. However, the reports of their imminent demise have proven inaccurate. PTA’s robust 2019 tax form (EIN: 36-2169155) and a reported membership of more than 4 million indicates they will be viable for some time to come.

Radical Right Opposes another American Institution

One of the first big hit pieces on the PTA came from the Brookings Institute in 2001. Thomas Toch claimed that the PTA was floundering because they were “out of step with many parents’ demands for change in public education.” Toch also claimed that the PTA was working with teachers to slow the pace of reform,

Talent Abounds in Ibraham Al Nashashibi

By Judi Curry

I have been an educator for over 40 years and have never met a more talented person than Al. I have never met a more talented person that is so unassuming about his talent. If you have ever met this man you are almost immediately aware of the great attributes that he has to offer, for he is the owner of Fairouz Café on Midway Drive. But this article is not about the restaurant; rather it is about the man that created it and showcases the tremendous talent he has to offer to the world.

Al was born in Jerusalem, and among the various occupations he has tried, besides being a restaurateur,