The San Diego Mayoral Candidates That Didn't Bark (tags)
When A Better San Diego, a coalition made up largely of labor unions and their affiliates, sponsored a debate among the four leading candidates for Mayor of San Diego in next year's election, only two showed up. The no-shows were City Councilmember Carl DeMaio, whose whole campaign is based on targeting city workers as the source of San Diego's economic woes, and District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis, both Republicans. A third Republican, Assemblymember Nathan Fletcher, and Democratic Congressmember Bob Filner attended and differed on city workers' pensions, outsourcing city jobs to private companies and many other issues.
In one of the company's most bizarre recent actions, on December 1 Blackwater paratroopers staged a dramatic aerial landing, complete with Blackwater flags and parachutes--not in Baghdad or Kabul but in San Diego at Qualcomm Stadium during the halftime show at the San Diego State/BYU football game. The location was interesting, given that Blackwater is fighting fierce local opposition to its attempt to open a new camp--Blackwater West--on 824 acres in the small rural community of Potrero, just outside San Diego.
An analysis of how the recent fires in Los Angeles and San Diego counties demonstrates how much America has given up even lip service to the notion that "all men are created equal" and how this nation has evolved into an aristocratic society that judges people's intrinsic worth based on their wealth.
Wild Fires Burn Southern California Reservations (tags)
Saturday, October 27, 2007 : SAN DIEGO – Wildfires rampaging across Southern California have burned more than 17,200 acres of land on the Yuina, Rincon, La Jolla, San Pasqual and Pala reservations, according to Bureau of Indian Affairs official Jim Fletcher, reports Indian Country Today.
Racism and Anti-Immigrant Terror at Fire Evacuee Centers (tags)
The first story is a very detailed account of the police and immigration terrorism against African-Americans and immigrants at the fire evacuee centers. The second story is a call for volunteers, including interpreters.
Immigrants Neglected and Abused During San Diego Wildfires (tags)
It is important that people know that the government’s response to this has not been as benevolent as the news media has made it out to be. For immigrant families, this is in no way an ‘anti-Katrina.’ Immigrants in San Diego county are being neglected by emergency evacuators, put in danger by their employers, treated rudely by authorities and volunteers, refused aid at evacuation sites, and racially profiled by police and deported by the Border Patrol.
Money for Firefighting & Prevention; Not for War (tags)
The World Socialist Website has 2 excllent articles providing the details of the Southern California fire crisis and their relation to the neglect of our domestic needs in favor of war profiteering.
Malibu fires show class divide as rich evacuees get massages, yoga (tags)
Audio:3 min 23 seconds. The treatement of fire evacuees from places like Malibu, CA stands in sharp contrast to what happened after Katrina! audio: MP3 at 3.1 mebibytes