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Medical Marijuana Activist Arrested, Faces Five-Year Sentence
Pirate Radio Comes to San Diego
Finally, San Diego will be breaking the chains of the corporate (Clear Channel) monopoly on the airwaves! Starting this Sunday, 20 October, San Diegans will be able to listen to the only pirate radio station in San Diego! A few radicals have come together to form the 96.9FM Free Radio San Diego "Pirate" radio station. This radio station will function in direct violation of the FCC as an independent outlet for real news, independent music, and subculture. Check out the schedule for the show on 20 October; this Sunday evening beginning @ 7:00pm. Also, please send your feedback to 96.9FM regarding audibility in your area, etc.
It's business as usual in SD
October 6 Next Big Local Protest Against Iraq War
Students Against Sweatshops Protest at Hillcrest Gap
Over 300 Turn Out for Rally Against Anti-Queer Hate Crimes
Arab-American Attorney Warns U.S. Democracy in Danger
Queer Democrats Stiff Labor-Backed Candidates
Medical Marijuana Activists Give Medicine Away; Government Destroys It.
Later, over 200 people turned out in the Pepper Grove of Balboa Park for an early-evening commemoration of last year’s terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C. Sponsored by the San Diego Peace and Justice Coalition, the event was billed as an “Alternative Memorial” whose purpose, according to the leaflet advertising it, was to “mourn those who have died and truly honor their memory by calling for peace and justice.”
What Americans have learnt - and not learnt - since 11 September
One activist said that "we must raise our awareness even more, and we must educate people about war and its implications." When asked what Americans should remember about this event, San Diego IWW member Nick McInnes said: "Americans should realise that until they take an active role in politics and recognise what their government's foreign policies are doing to the people of the world, incidents-- such as what happened on 11 September-- will continue to occur." Recently (10 September) Anarchist professor of linguistics, Noam Chomsky, commented on the climate of the American people in recognising the fascist state of this country since the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre one year ago. ...It may be comforting for Americans to pretend that their enemies "hate our freedoms", as President Bush stated, but it is hardly wise to ignore the real world, which conveys different lessons...
Alternative 9/11 Commemorations in San Diego, L.A., S.F.
Release on San Diego's Alternative 9/11 Commemoration (pdf)
San Diego Free Press Hosts Successful Summit
Longshore Union In the Fight of Its Life
IWW's Support Leaflet for ILWU ILWU Involved in Anti-Bush Protest in Portland Labor's Militant Voice Critiques ILWU Strategy
Michael C. Ruppert Speaks in San Diego
Exclusive from LA IMC: Reports from Johannesburg
The LA IMC's Adalila Zelada has filed three reports (1, 2, 3) from Johannesburg, South Africa this past week. The World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), which runs from August 26 through August 31 in Johannesburg, is the largest U.N. conference in history. Dubbed RIO+10, the WSSD marks the 10th anniversary of the Global Environment conference in Brazil, at which the groundwork for the Kyoto Protocols were laid. Ten years on, and the conference has expanded to cover issues of global economic development as well as global environmental concerns. Adalila's first report from Jo'burg summarized expectations at the start of the WSSD. Adalila's second report introduces the Global People's Forum, the "counter-summit" that is also taking place in Jo'burg simultaneously with the WSSD and that has attracted tens-of-thousands of activists and representatives of NGOs from around the world. Adalila's most recent report exposes how international Big Business has made a concerted effort, more-or-less successful, to co-opt the U.N. leadership. For more coverage of the WSSD, the Global People's Forum, and other related events/actions go to South Africa indymedia, Joburg Media, or www.indymedia.org.
Organizing Summit - San Diego Free Press - Friday Night!!
Get in on the ground floor! If you are looking for something fun and exciting to do tonight, Friday Aug. 30th, you have got to attend the San Diego Free Press Kick Off Summit! We have invited many different groups and placed ads around town. Look for the ads in the San Diego City Beat and Zenger's Newsmagazine. You are invited to join with other activists to help break the corporate news monopolly in San Diego. San Diego Indymedia along with other local, alternative media and activists groups will be hosting a summit meeting to establish a progressive newspaper for San Diego. 6:30pm - 9pm at the Joyce Beers Community Center (map in Hillcrest)
San Diegans Protest Bush in L.A.
As Bob McCubbin (of San Diego ANSWER) notes in the article: The San Diego delegation composed just a small fraction of the national protests which "have hounded Bush at every stop of his Western tour." For many this as seen as "great news. But let's keep up the pressure." (read more) (Make a COMMENT on this Feature or view the links below for more information on West Coast actions against Bush and his war.)
Italian Anarchists Murdered by the U$ Government
Friday 23 August, 2002 marks the 75th anniversary of the executions (or premeditated murders) of Italian-immigrant Anarchist/activists Sacco and Vanzetti, who were convicted on fradulent charges, simply because they were "filthy Anarchists!", as their judge noted. Sacco and Vanzetti fought for a society without the State, without the Church, without Capitalism - a classless society where everyone can live free - at a time when the State was declaring war against any foreigner who dared to express such beliefs. Today we are fighting for the same things: An end to the "war on terrorism." An end to the death penalty. An end to borders that keep people out but let multinational Capitalists go wherever they please. The working-class and Anarchist struggle is not over! There will be actions all over the (dis)United $tates today, and all over the world. (View feature as an article to comment.) << Page 4 | Page 2 >> |
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Medical-marijuana patient and activist Steve McWilliams was arrested by local and federal law enforcement October 11 and charged with marijuana manufacture and aiding and abetting — a direct attack on his activism on behalf of other medical marijuana users, he and fellow members of his Shelter From the Storm organization say. The arrest occurred five days before the San Diego City Council's Public Safety and Neighborhood Services (PS&NS) committee approved and sent to Council a set of recommended guidelines designed to shield medical marijuana patients in San Diego from arrest and the confiscation and destruction of their medicine — guidelines bitterly opposed by police chief David Bejarano and so-called "prevention" activists whose message to people needing medical marijuana is: "Suffer, so our kids don't get the wrong idea about drugs."
Census 2000 reported that 20% of all of San Diego County's tenants spend 50% or more of their earnings on rent. In some areas of the county like City Heights, Logan Heights and East Village 66% of the tenants are spending at least 50% of their earnings on rent. The average monthly rent in the county climbed from $643 in 1990 to $1043 earlier this year. That's an average of 5.2% in rent increases per year.
Help stop the war against Iraq before it starts! The next major protest in San Diego is this SUNDAY, OCTOBER 6, 2 p.m. in front of Horton Plaza, 4th and Broadway downtown. This feature also contains info on the ongoing protests in North County (pictured) against pro-war Congressmembers Cunningham and Issa, and on the nationwide protests scheduled for October 26 in San Francisco and Washington, D.C.
Friday, September 27 -- SDSU Students Against Sweatshops gathered on 5th Avenue in front of the GAP for an organized demonstration. The goal was to educate passers-by of the luridly inhumane labor practices and environmental destruction the GAP (companies associated with the GAP) is responsible for. This feature also contains a story on the current boycott/protest campaign against Burlington Coat Company for using slave labor in sweatshops in Burma.
Over 300 Queer people and supporters turned out for a rally and march outside the Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgender Community Center in Hillcrest September 27 to protest three recent hate-related assaults against Queer men in Hillcrest and North Park. The event was sponsored by the Center and the Queer student group at San Diego State University and featured hate-crime victim Bernie Canotal (pictured) as one of the speakers. But neither City Councilmember Toni Atkins, who represents the district where the attacks occurred, nor any other elected officials bothered to show up, though Atkins and some others sent staff people.
Randall B. Hamud, Arab-American attorney in San Diego, spoke to the Peace and Democracy Task Force of the First Unitarian-Universalist Church in Hillcrest September 24. He accused the U.S. government of a "take no prisoners" attitude towards Arab and Muslim Americans, aimed more at driving them out of the country than actually catching the handful of them who might be engaged in planning terrorism. Hamud also argued that his community is being racially profiled, and that both the war against Iraq and internal repression under the PATRIOT Act are part of a long-term plan to replace the American republic with a dictatorial empire on the model of ancient Rome.
At their September 14 Freedom Banquet fundraiser, the predominantly Queer San Diego Democratic Club paid lip service to organized labor as a key coalition partner for the Queer community. But at their regular meeting 12 days later, the club refused to support two progressive, labor-backed candidates in this November's election -- Jeff Lee for San Diego Unified School District board seat B and Mary Salas for Mayor of Chula Vista -- and instead endorsed their more conservative, business-backed opponents. Feature also includes the Freedom Banquet speech by openly Queer State Senator Sheila Kuehl (pictured).
As part of a statewide campaign of solidarity with the embattled medical marijuana activists in Santa Cruz, Steve McWilliams and other members of Shelter From the Storm staged an action at the Community Concourse outside San Diego City Hall September 17. They handed out half-gram quantities of marijuana to patients who displayed letters from doctors authorizing them to use marijuana medicinally under California's Proposition 215. NEW!
On September 11, nine white-clad 'Lady Liberties' strolled through San Diego as part of an art-action, "Honor and Question". 
Tired of all the war-mongering, pseudo-patriotic hype surrounding September 11? Want a chance to commemorate and honor the lives that were lost in the terrorist attacks without buying into the U.S. government's use of them as a justification for its own slaughters of innocent civilians? Then check out the events listed below, including the San Diego celebration at the Pepper Grove on Park Boulevard in Balboa Park at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, September 11, 2002. 
Over 60 people turned out for the August 20 organizing summit of the San Diego Free Press, a new community publication scheduled for launch by the end of the year. The idea is to create a truly people-oriented publication which will cover stories and offer points of view unrepresented in mainstream corporate media like the San Diego Union-Tribune, the Reader and San Diego’s electronic media. Among the issues discussed were how the paper should be edited, financed and governed so it truly reflects the will of the people involved and not a traditional top-down hierarchical ownership. Meanwhile, another group of activists in Ocean Beach are reviving another 1960's-era paper, the O.B. Rag, to highlight the particular issues of their community.
Since 1934, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) has been in the forefront of progressive unionism in the U.S. Now ILWU members are in the fight of their lives, not only against employers seeking to mechanize operations and cut jobs, but also against the Bush administration, which has threatened to invoke the Taft-Hartley Act to keep the workers from striking and even to draft military personnel to work the West Coast docks as scabs. Progressives have rallied behind the ILWU even as some have questioned whether the union is being militant enough to win their struggle. 
A year ago Kristi Laughlin was just another young woman in San Francisco. Today she’s the main organizer for the Afghan Victims’ Fund of Global Exchange. At a forum at the First Unitarian-Universalist Church in San Diego August 27, she discussed her trip to Afghanistan as part of an interfaith group organized by Global Exchange. While Laughlin condemned the U.S. for attacking Afghanistan, especially for using cluster bombs with their long-range destructive capability similar to landmines, she came back cautiously hopeful that the Afghani people can build a decent future if (and it’s a big “if”) the U.S. and other Western countries come through with the aid they promised last October before the attacks.
L.A. cop turned whistleblower Michael C. Ruppert came to San Diego July 15 with what he calls "a new map" for understanding the September 11 tragedy. Controversial even within progressive circles for his insistence that the Bush administration and the U.S. government knew in advance that the 9/11 attacks would occur and deliberately did nothing to prevent them, Ruppert has documented the business ties between the Bush and bin Laden families and is calling for a truly independent investigation of 9/11.
