June 8 Election Endorsements
by MARK GABRISH CONLAN, Editor
Copyright © 2010 by Mark Gabrish Conlan for Zenger’s Newsmagazine • All rights reserved
It’s been a long-standing Zenger’s tradition to make a full — or nearly full — slate of endorsements for every local election. Here are ours for the June 8 primary and a rationale for each one.
Governor: JERRY BROWN
It’s really pathetic that the California Democratic Party can’t do any better for a gubernatorial candidate than this 1970’s retread, but his fundraising advantages and connections with organized labor gave him the clout to drive the truly interesting and innovative candidates, John Garamendi and Gavin Newsom, out of the race. Even though his first gubernatorial tenure (1975-1983) was a lot more conservative, especially on fiscal issues, than it’s remembered, he’d still make a better governor than either of the major Republicans, Meg Whitman or Steve Poizner, whose tit-for-tat attacks on each other on their self-financed TV commercials are the sort of thing that would lead any self-respecting kindergarten teacher to call a time-out on both of them.
Lieutenant Governor: GAVIN NEWSOM
We’ve always been a little wary of Newsom because he cut his political teeth in San Francisco by bashing homeless people, but he’s at least partially atoned for that with his leadership role on marriage equality for same-sex couples. The only other major Democrat in the race is lackluster Los Angeles City Councilmember Janice Hahn, and Newsom — an aggressive politician with executive experience — is clearly preferable.
Secretary of State: DEBRA BOWEN
An incumbent with a proven record of leadership, especially in resisting the pressure to rush untested, dubious electronic voting systems into use. She deserves another term.
Controller: JOHN CHIANG
In person he’s a non-toxic alternative to Sominex, but he’s proven he knows his way around a balance sheet and he courageously stood up to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger during the most recent state budget crisis. Keep him.
Treasurer: BILL LOCKYER
Another proven Democrat with a good track record in office, even though I’ve wondered for decades why California needs both a treasurer and a controller.
Attorney General: KAMALA HARRIS
The Democratic primary in this race has seven major candidates, an embarrassment of riches that so flummoxed the San Diego Democratic Club they couldn’t agree on a single candidate and ran out of a quorum before they could even consider an endorsement. At least two candidates are to be avoided at all costs: Rocky Delgadillo, whose dubious term as Los Angeles city attorney doesn’t deserve to be rewarded with a promotion; and the slimy Chris Kelly, who’s put out so-called “push-poll” calls (they pretend to be taking a survey but they’re really dishing the opposition) with Republican-style arguments against Harris in particular. (Kelly is also the former head of the privacy department at Facebook, which sounds to me like being the chief of virginity at a strip club.) As city attorney of San Francisco, Harris has been an aggressive defender of same-sex marriage equality; she personally lobbied the San Diego City Council to join the lawsuit against Proposition 8, and her office provided by far the best presentation to the state supreme court in the case.
Insurance Commissioner: DAVE JONES
Another race where there are several progressive Democrats running, but Jones is an especially eloquent champion of the individual against corporate corruption and greed — and that’s what being insurance commissioner is all about.
Superintendent of Public Instruction: TOM TORKLASON
Another embarrassment of riches for progressive Democrats, but Torklason, an Assemblymember and former classroom teacher, showed enough of a grasp of the basic issues involving education to win the endorsement of the San Diego Democratic Club, and we’re going with them on this one.
State Board of Equalization, Third District: MARY LOU FINLEY
A long-time local activist with the Peace and Freedom Party, especially committed to anti-war and economic justice issues. With no serious Democrat in the race, this is an appropriate race for a conscience vote.
U.S. Senator: BARBARA BOXER
They try, and try, and try, but the Republicans can’t come up with a candidate that can stand anywhere near the physically diminutive but intellectually giant California junior senator. Her opponents this year include Tom Campbell, iconoclastic Republican who authored Governor Schwarzenegger’s budget strategy; Carly Fiorina, who ran the Hewlett-Packard company into the ground until the founding family fired her; and Chuck DeVore, darling of the tea-party crowd until it turned out he exaggerated his record in the U.S. military and (like Democrat Bob Blumenthal in Connecticut) claimed combat experience he never had.
House of Representatives, 49th District: HOWARD KATZ
House of Representatives, 52nd District: RAY LUTZ
Two Democrats running in dead-goat districts — the kind where a dead goat would win as long as it had an “R” on the end of its name — who deserve support as much for the sheer courage it takes to run against the Republican incumbents (Darrell Issa and Duncan D. Hunter — whose father handed him the seat as if it were an inheritance) as their issue positions.
House of Representatives, 50th District: TRACY EMBLEM
With all due respect to Francine Busby, who took on Randy “Duke” Cunningham before he crashed and burned from his own corruption, her Democratic primary rival, Tracy Emblem, is a stronger candidate and, more importantly, would make a better Congressmember.
House of Representatives, 51st District: BOB FILNER
A thoroughgoing progressive ever since he risked life and limb on the Freedom Rides against racial discrimination in the South in the early 1960’s, Filner has been a stalwart champion of progressive causes in Congress and has even won the respect of veterans, who may not like his anti-war politics but have to admit he goes to bat for them when their benefits are threatened.
House of Representatives, 53rd District: SUSAN DAVIS
A reluctant endorsement: Davis is a moderate Democrat representing a progressive district, but there isn’t any meaningful challenge to her either within the Democratic party or outside from the Green or Peace and Freedom parties. She’s screwed the progressive community on trade issues and had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the fight against “don’t ask, don’t tell,” but she’s done enough things right — including her initial vote against the Iraq war — to deserve to stay in office.
State Senate, 40th District: MARY SALAS
A battle between true progressive Salas and Republican-in-Democrat-clothing Juan Vargas for the nomination in a solidly Democratic district. An easy call.
State Assembly, 76th District: TONI ATKINS
She hasn’t always been as progressive as we’d like, either, but for the most part she’s been there, not only on Queer issues but on medical marijuana (on which she really stuck her neck out while on the San Diego City Council) and affordable housing (ditto) — and her past as director of the Womancare feminist health clinic indicates solid pro-choice credentials.
State Assembly, 78th District: MARTY BLOCK
Even when we’ve disagreed with him — like his refusal to join the court challenge to Proposition 8 — he’s at least had rational reasons for his positions. A solid progressive at a time when we need them in the state legislature.
State Assembly, 79th District: PEARL QUIÑONES
Like the Salas/Vargas race, this is a battle between a progressive outsider and a machine politician, Ben Hueso, for the soul of the local Democratic party. She’s got our vote.
San Diego County Board of Supervisors, District 4: STEPHEN WHITBURN
While we bemoan the lack of a marquee-name Democrat in this race — Lori Saldaña announced for it and then backed out, Toni Atkins decided to run for Assembly instead, and Donna Frye dithered and finally decided not to run — we’ve seen Stephen Whitburn “up close and personal” at the San Diego Democratic Club. He’d make an excellent replacement for the disappointing Ron Roberts, who instead of being a voice of moderation among his fellow Republicans on the current board has generally gone along with their anti-labor, anti-environment, anti-social service schemes.
San Diego County Assessor/Recorder/Clerk: DAVE BUTLER
A rarity in San Diego county government — a Democratic incumbent — and a 34-year veteran staff member in the assessor/recorder/clerk’s office who deserves election.
San Diego County Sheriff: BILL GORE
We were reluctant to make an endorsement in this race — especially an endorsement of former sheriff Bill Kolender’s hand-picked and pre-appointed replacement — but radical-Right candidate Jay LaSuer’s denunciations of him and the third man in the race, Jim Duffy, for daring to regard Queer people as people, and the more recent attacks on Gore by the racist-nativist-xenophobic anti-immigration crowd as “soft” on “illegals” make him our choice.
San Diego City Council, District 2: PATRICK FINUCANE
This should really be a Democratic seat, but a corrupt, abusive prosecution drove Democrat Michael Zucchet out of the race and installed the man he’d beaten, Republican Kevin Faulconer. Once again we lament that the Democrats (or anyone to their Left) aren’t mounting a stronger candidate against Faulconer, but Finucane has our support.
San Diego City Council, District 4: TONY YOUNG
While he hasn’t always been as progressive as he should be — especially on sticking up for the prerogatives of the City Council against the Mayor — he’s as sympathetic to Queer issues as we can expect from an African-American officeholder and his record on other issues has been solid if unspectacular.
San Diego City Council, District 6: STEVE HADLEY
While we have a great respect for his principal Democratic rival, Howard Wayne — and we’re frightened by the Republicans’ front-runner, Lorie Zapf — our choice is the chief of staff of termed-out incumbent Donna Frye. A quiet, thoughtful man, Hadley may not share Frye’s gutsy, extroverted style but he shares her principles and commitment to progressive ideals, and that’s the key to our endorsement.
San Diego City Council, District 8: DAVID ALVAREZ
Unlike the Mary Salas-Juan Vargas and Pearl Quiñones races, this isn’t a grass-roots progressive running against a machine candidate — this is a grass-roots progressive running against two machine candidates, Felipe Hueso (incumbent Ben Hueso’s older brother) and Nick Inzunza (brother of former District 8 Councilmember Ralph Inzunza, driven out of office in the same scandal that snared Michael Zucchet — only he deserved to be). Strike a blow against nepotism and elect someone new in this district.
San Diego Unified School Board, District B: KEVIN BEISER
The city’s math teacher of the year and a personable candidate and an aggressive campaigner, he’s the right choice to get rid of lackluster incumbent Katherine Nakamura.
Mayor of Chula Vista: STEVE CASTAÑEDA
A strong progressive Democrat and a candidate with a good chance of unseating current Mayor Cheryl Cox — wife of County Supervisor Bill Cox. Strike another blow against nepotism.
Superior Court Judge, Office 14: LANTZ LEWIS
Superior Court Judge, Office 21: ROBERT LONGSTRETH
Superior Court Judge, Office 27: DE ANN SALCIDO
Superior Court Judge, Office 34: JOEL R. WOHLFIEL
These four judges are being targeted by a Right-wing cabal organized around a Web site called “Better Courts Now” — by which they really mean “More corporate-friendly, anti-labor, anti-environment and anti-Queer courts now.” The people behind “Better Courts Now” have made no secret that this is a pilot project and if it succeeds, they’re going to bankroll more challenges until they’ve got rid of all fairness and justice in the court system and aligned it as totally with the business community and the radical Right as the courts in Texas have become through similar campaigns. I’ve long believed that no judge should ever have to stand for election in any way, shape or form — the framers of the U.S. Constitution got it right when they guaranteed federal judges life tenure except for misconduct gross enough to justify impeachment — but as long as we’re stuck with the whole obscene idea of the judiciary as an elective office, the least we can do is support objective judges against this loathsome partisan challenge.
Democratic Central Committee, 75th Assembly District: DEREK CASADY, PHYLLIS McGRATH, GERRY SENDA
Democratic Central Committee, 76th Assembly District: MATTHEW CORRALES, KEVIN DAVIS, JONATHAN GOETZ, BILL IRVINE, GLORIA JOHNSON, LORI SALDAÑA
Democratic Central Committee, 78th Assembly District: MAGGIE ALLINGTON, JERI DILNO, PAT WASHINGTON
Democratic Central Committee, 79th Assembly District: KELLY KING, MICHELLE KRUG
You can vote for up to six candidates in each of these races. All the above are long-time progressive activists in San Diego and most are members of the San Diego Democratic Club. They deserve your support.
State Propositions:
13 (Limits on Property Tax Reassessments for Seismic Retrofitting of Existing Buildings): YES
We’re subjected to at least one of these in virtually every state election. The original Proposition 13 capped property taxes at 1 percent of assessed valuation and triggered an automatic reassessment every time a property is sold. This is the latest in a series of fix-its that is needed to make sure people who improve the earthquake safety of their buildings — and thereby make them worth more — aren’t penalized for it with a dramatically higher tax bill.
14 (Nonpartisan Primary Elections): YES
This ballot measure would eliminate partisan primaries and allow every voter to vote for every candidate in every election. The top two vote-getters would then compete with each other in the general election. It’s a long-overdue reform which will allow voters in districts heavily skewed towards one major party or the other — which is most of them in California, thanks to decades of relentless gerrymandering by legislators determined to give California voters as little choice as possible — recourse against the highly partisan candidates that now dominate California legislative elections. It’s being opposed not only by the Republican and Democratic party establishments but by alternative parties as well — which is a major mistake, because the only California elections in which members of the Peace and Freedom, Green, Libertarian or American Independent parties are now able to compete and actually have a chance of electing people are the already nonpartisan elections for local office. This is a long-overdue reform that, along with the drawing of state legislative districts by an independent commission rather than the legislators themselves, gives us the chance of having a legislature that truly represents US, not party bosses or special interests.
15 (Public Financing Option for Secretary of State Election): YES
This is a baby step towards another desperately needed electoral reform — creating a so-called “clean elections” option of public financing so candidates who can’t raise mega-bucks from corporations or other special interests can still compete. In Maine, Arizona and other states that already have this, here’s how it works: you collect enough petition signatures and $5 contributions from ordinary voters to qualify, and then the rest of your campaign is paid for by all of us through our tax dollars as long as you agree to take no more money from private sources. This initiative applies to only one office — the California secretary of state (whose main job is to oversee the election process itself) — but it’s a baby step towards a system that has worked in other states and deserves to be applied here.
16 (2/3 Voter Requirement for Public Power): HELL NO!
This is one of the most vile, cynical initiatives ever put on the ballot by a major corporation — in this case Pacific Gas & Electric, who are using the initiative process to insulate themselves forever from competition by cheaper, more reliable public power services. It’s hard to exaggerate the evil of this measure — all its so-called “independent” supporters have been recruited and financed with PG&E’s money — but to make just one point, PG&E’s ads for it have implied that local taxpayers stand to lose millions of dollars if their cities take over their electric utilities. The truth is exactly the opposite: the publicly-owned Los Angeles Department of Water of Power is making so much money the city government is depending on it to bail them out.
17 (Auto Insurance Rates): NO
Another cynical initiative in which a corporation — this time, Mercury Insurance — is trying to buy at the ballot box a result they couldn’t achieve in the legislature. Reject it.
County and City Propositions:
A (East Otay Mesa Landfill): NO
We agree with the San Diego CityBeat’s opposition to this proposition: “This thing would grease the skids for an expanded solid-waste landfill and recycling center in eastern Otay Mesa. The county hasn’t assessed its waste-capacity needs since 2005, and this measure would allow the developer to skirt certain regulatory processes. We might need more landfill space, but this is the wrong way of going about getting it.”
B (Board of Supervisors Term Limits): NO
Term limits for elected officials are a lousy idea. Under term limits, the California state legislature has gone from one of the most competent, most respected in the nation to one of the least. When people in the private sector hire for a job, experience is usually considered a good thing. We can understand the motives of the Service Employees’ International Union (SEIU) and other backers of this proposition — the San Diego County Board of Supervisors has been a solid phalanx of anti-labor Republicans since 1994 — but it was wrong for Republicans to use the ballot box to impose term limits on the Democratic-dominated state legislature in 1990 and it’s wrong now for Democrats and their union backers to use the ballot box to impose term limits on the all-Republican Board of Supervisors now. Besides, the term limits won’t apply to the current incumbents but they will apply to any Democrats who might win election in the future. Scott Brown’s tenure in the U.S. Senate is the result of a similarly short-sighted trick pulled by the Democrats in the Massachusetts legislature in 2004 — they wanted to deprive Republican Mitt Romney of appointing John Kerry’s replacement if he had defeated George W. Bush in that year’s presidential election. Let’s not make the same stupid, short-sighted mistake the Massachusetts Democrats did.
C (Veterans’ Preference for City Employment): YES
San Diego has one of America’s largest military establishment — and one of its largest percentages of residents who are returning veterans. So does the city government go out of its way to give preferences to veterans who are seeking city jobs? Only if they served so long ago that they were drafted. When City Councilmember Todd Gloria showed up at the San Diego Democratic Club and explained why he was sponsoring this proposition and why it was necessary, I sat in stunned disbelief that such a no-brainer was even needed. But it is.
D (Making Strong-Mayor Permanent and Adding Ninth San Diego Councilmember): NO
The theory behind San Diego’s switch from a city-manager to a strong-mayor form of government in 2004 was that city government would be more accountable if it were being run directly by an elected official than an appointed manager. The truth has been the other way around; under the strong-mayor system, the City Council has been reduced to virtual rubber-stamps for the mayor, with little or no access to information other than what the mayor chooses to give them. According to City Councilmember Donna Frye, who’s served under both forms, it’s gotten harder for her to get the data she needs to make responsible decisions under the strong-mayor system, and several times she’s had either to sue the city or threaten to just to get information out of the mayor and his staff. San Diego’s city charter could use some basic rethinking, but the current mayor successfully hijacked the charter review process and now they’re pushing this measure — which would make the mayor’s office even stronger and add a ninth City Council seat, at a cost of $1-1.5 million in an already strapped city budget — to solidify their control and turn San Diego into even more of a mayoral dictatorship than it is now. Reject this.
G (Banning City-Required Project Labor Agreements in Chula Vista): NO
The question posed by Proposition G is simple: do you believe that city governments have an obligation to make sure that local developments hire local workers at living wages and thereby make sure the money they’re paid returns to the local economy as they buy goods and services from local businesses; or do you think cities should be forced to outsource contracts to out-of-town firms that hire on the cheap and take their swollen profits somewhere else? If you believe that a decent community protects its own workers and businesses, vote no on G.
Monday, May 24, 2010
Changes
by MARK GABRISH CONLAN, Editor
Copyright © 2010 by Mark Gabrish Conlan for Zenger’s Newsmagazine • All rights reserved
In April 1994 I realized a long-standing dream of mine and published the first issue of my very own newsmagazine. After a long apprenticeship in community journalism I thought I was ready to create a publication that would not only tell the stories, both within and outside the Queer community, I felt weren’t being told and should be, but that I would be able to make it pay for itself and even earn a living from it. That part of the dream never materialized — Zenger’s was always a money-loser, kept in business by the generous love and support of private sponsors and subscribers and out of my own pocket — but for the past 16 years I have lived a dream of being able to say whatever I wanted, write about whomever I pleased, and give space to other writers of a similarly independent bent, subject only to the rules of libel and journalistic ethics generally.
Zenger’s has been a wild ride for 16 years. In a way I see myself as a pioneer of a new kind of journalism that’s become all the rage now with the rise of the Internet (something I’d never even heard of when the first issue of Zenger’s was published), which allows people to put their information and opinions before the world without the heavy expense of printing a paper publication. In the later years of Zenger’s I sometimes described it as “a blog in print,” and in 2006 I bowed to the inevitable and launched the Zenger’s blog, http://zengersmag.blogspot.com, thereby being able to put before the public important stories I didn’t have room for in the print edition as well as longer versions of the stories that did make it to paper.
It’s been a pretty wild ride. I’ll remember the deadlines that sometimes kept me up until 3, 4 or 5 in the morning, anxiously getting the publication ready and in final form for the printer. Sometimes I could get pretty nasty to those around me — notably my long-suffering husband, Charles Nelson, who has put up with Zenger’s and its competing demands on my time and money since 1995, almost as long as Zenger’s itself has existed. I can remember on more than one occasion issuing a shame-faced apology, telling whoever I’d been less than kind, cordial or even basically polite to, “Wait until my deadline is over. Then I can be a human being again.”
So it is with a heavy heart that I am hereby announcing the indefinite suspension of the print edition of Zenger’s Newsmagazine. I intend to keep contributing to the Zenger’s blog and to invite others to do so. I will also continue to publish a special newsletter edition of Zenger’s on paper to fulfill currently outstanding subscriptions and sponsorships. I will not be accepting new sponsorships or subscriptions.
Why am I bowing out? A recent health crisis led me to this decision, though it wasn’t the only reason. I recently had the third hernia operation of my life, following ones in 1977 and 1997. In surgery, re-dos are always more complicated than original operations, and this one forced me to stop working my basic job as a home care aide for six weeks. I twice had to delay the operation — which was originally scheduled for late January, then early February, and finally took place in early April — and though I got out what turned out to be the final print version of Zenger’s during that time, the delays nonetheless unsettled me and forced me to re-evaluate whether continuing what increasingly seemed like a vanity project was worth the time, energy and money I’d been putting into it for 16 years.
Also, Zenger’s has become increasingly difficult to sustain at the level of quality and commitment I wanted to maintain. Subscriptions and sponsorships had fallen off. The expenses of publication have continued to increase while the income has steadily declined. At least partly due to the economic crisis, it’s become harder and harder even to find places both willing and able to allow Zenger’s to be distributed — and the harder it is to find a copy of a paper, the harder it will be to read it. And, as the saying goes, I’m not getting any younger: anxieties about my own employment future and my likely need for more health care, in a society that doggedly continues to regard health care as a luxury item rather than a basic human right, means I have to husband my money a lot better than I’ve been doing and that’s not consistent with continuing my dream of putting my name and thoughts before the public in print form.
People often asked me if I did Zenger’s all by myself — as if I could possibly have sustained it this long without help. I have a lot of people to acknowledge as having assisted me over the years, without whom either there would never have been a Zenger’s or it would have been a considerably inferior product. Foremost on my honor roll is Charles Nelson, my husband and partner of 15 years, who has always been there for me and I am sure will continue to be in my future endeavors. Whether it’s been driving to a printer at 3 a.m. with the layout boards of an issue, putting up with my deadline moods or just being there with moral support, Charles has been invaluable not only to maintaining Zenger’s but keeping me on whatever fragile hold of sanity I still have.
Next I would like to thank Leo E. Laurence, who for most of Zenger’s existence has been my associate editor and who has written more of Zenger’s than anyone except myself. Leo is a living legend, present at the creation of the Queer liberation movement in San Francisco in March 1969 — over three months before the Stonewall Inn riots in New York City where it supposedly all began — and he is now what he was then: fiercely independent, energetic and totally committed to alternative journalism and the rights of a community he — in one of the few disagreements we’ve had on an ongoing basis — still feels uncomfortable calling “Queer.” I regard Leo as a close friend and admire his commitment, dedication and drive. I’ve strived to make Zenger’s worthy of his association with it.
Also I would like to thank John Timothy Gallagher, whom I was dating at the time Zenger’s launched and whose knowledge and interest in graphic design was instrumental in starting the paper off with a bang. I would like to thank all my long-term sponsors and subscribers for their ongoing support in maintaining the publication — I couldn’t have done it this long without you — and also all the local business owners who have allowed Zenger’s to be distributed in their locations.
I’m proud of what I accomplished. I feel I created a publication that had its roots in two communities of great importance to me — the Queer community (a word I made the standard reference in Zenger’s largely because I can’t stand the acronym “LGBT” and I wanted a term that conveyed both inclusiveness and boldness) and the progressive political community — but that transcended both and brought insights about one to the other. I’ll be proud of the wide variety of people I featured in interviews and cover stories, many of whom I genuinely consider to be heroes. I’m particularly proud of having offered alternative information challenging the conventional wisdom about HIV and AIDS and giving space to scientists who argue that AIDS is a long-term breakdown of the immune system from various toxins and other causes, not an infectious disease caused by a single agent.
Zenger’s Newsmagazine has lasted longer than all but two other Queer publications in San Diego’s history, the late, lamented Update and the current Gay & Lesbian Times. It’s been a great run, and for those who are worried about the loss of the print version I assure you I will continue to publish my stories to the Zenger’s blog and look for other media outlets with which to share what I’ve learned and discovered to be important. I remember a 1976 political rally and concert in San Francisco at which I heard a singer named Betty Kaplowitz, who when she broke her string in the middle of a song just started an a cappella chant with only one line of lyric — “Nothing is lost but it changes” — and got the audience to sing it without her to give her time to re-string her guitar.
That’s how I feel about the Zenger’s transition: nothing is lost, but it changes. I’m proud of having taken this journey and I want to thank all of you for taking it with me.
by MARK GABRISH CONLAN, Editor
Copyright © 2010 by Mark Gabrish Conlan for Zenger’s Newsmagazine • All rights reserved
In April 1994 I realized a long-standing dream of mine and published the first issue of my very own newsmagazine. After a long apprenticeship in community journalism I thought I was ready to create a publication that would not only tell the stories, both within and outside the Queer community, I felt weren’t being told and should be, but that I would be able to make it pay for itself and even earn a living from it. That part of the dream never materialized — Zenger’s was always a money-loser, kept in business by the generous love and support of private sponsors and subscribers and out of my own pocket — but for the past 16 years I have lived a dream of being able to say whatever I wanted, write about whomever I pleased, and give space to other writers of a similarly independent bent, subject only to the rules of libel and journalistic ethics generally.
Zenger’s has been a wild ride for 16 years. In a way I see myself as a pioneer of a new kind of journalism that’s become all the rage now with the rise of the Internet (something I’d never even heard of when the first issue of Zenger’s was published), which allows people to put their information and opinions before the world without the heavy expense of printing a paper publication. In the later years of Zenger’s I sometimes described it as “a blog in print,” and in 2006 I bowed to the inevitable and launched the Zenger’s blog, http://zengersmag.blogspot.com, thereby being able to put before the public important stories I didn’t have room for in the print edition as well as longer versions of the stories that did make it to paper.
It’s been a pretty wild ride. I’ll remember the deadlines that sometimes kept me up until 3, 4 or 5 in the morning, anxiously getting the publication ready and in final form for the printer. Sometimes I could get pretty nasty to those around me — notably my long-suffering husband, Charles Nelson, who has put up with Zenger’s and its competing demands on my time and money since 1995, almost as long as Zenger’s itself has existed. I can remember on more than one occasion issuing a shame-faced apology, telling whoever I’d been less than kind, cordial or even basically polite to, “Wait until my deadline is over. Then I can be a human being again.”
So it is with a heavy heart that I am hereby announcing the indefinite suspension of the print edition of Zenger’s Newsmagazine. I intend to keep contributing to the Zenger’s blog and to invite others to do so. I will also continue to publish a special newsletter edition of Zenger’s on paper to fulfill currently outstanding subscriptions and sponsorships. I will not be accepting new sponsorships or subscriptions.
Why am I bowing out? A recent health crisis led me to this decision, though it wasn’t the only reason. I recently had the third hernia operation of my life, following ones in 1977 and 1997. In surgery, re-dos are always more complicated than original operations, and this one forced me to stop working my basic job as a home care aide for six weeks. I twice had to delay the operation — which was originally scheduled for late January, then early February, and finally took place in early April — and though I got out what turned out to be the final print version of Zenger’s during that time, the delays nonetheless unsettled me and forced me to re-evaluate whether continuing what increasingly seemed like a vanity project was worth the time, energy and money I’d been putting into it for 16 years.
Also, Zenger’s has become increasingly difficult to sustain at the level of quality and commitment I wanted to maintain. Subscriptions and sponsorships had fallen off. The expenses of publication have continued to increase while the income has steadily declined. At least partly due to the economic crisis, it’s become harder and harder even to find places both willing and able to allow Zenger’s to be distributed — and the harder it is to find a copy of a paper, the harder it will be to read it. And, as the saying goes, I’m not getting any younger: anxieties about my own employment future and my likely need for more health care, in a society that doggedly continues to regard health care as a luxury item rather than a basic human right, means I have to husband my money a lot better than I’ve been doing and that’s not consistent with continuing my dream of putting my name and thoughts before the public in print form.
People often asked me if I did Zenger’s all by myself — as if I could possibly have sustained it this long without help. I have a lot of people to acknowledge as having assisted me over the years, without whom either there would never have been a Zenger’s or it would have been a considerably inferior product. Foremost on my honor roll is Charles Nelson, my husband and partner of 15 years, who has always been there for me and I am sure will continue to be in my future endeavors. Whether it’s been driving to a printer at 3 a.m. with the layout boards of an issue, putting up with my deadline moods or just being there with moral support, Charles has been invaluable not only to maintaining Zenger’s but keeping me on whatever fragile hold of sanity I still have.
Next I would like to thank Leo E. Laurence, who for most of Zenger’s existence has been my associate editor and who has written more of Zenger’s than anyone except myself. Leo is a living legend, present at the creation of the Queer liberation movement in San Francisco in March 1969 — over three months before the Stonewall Inn riots in New York City where it supposedly all began — and he is now what he was then: fiercely independent, energetic and totally committed to alternative journalism and the rights of a community he — in one of the few disagreements we’ve had on an ongoing basis — still feels uncomfortable calling “Queer.” I regard Leo as a close friend and admire his commitment, dedication and drive. I’ve strived to make Zenger’s worthy of his association with it.
Also I would like to thank John Timothy Gallagher, whom I was dating at the time Zenger’s launched and whose knowledge and interest in graphic design was instrumental in starting the paper off with a bang. I would like to thank all my long-term sponsors and subscribers for their ongoing support in maintaining the publication — I couldn’t have done it this long without you — and also all the local business owners who have allowed Zenger’s to be distributed in their locations.
I’m proud of what I accomplished. I feel I created a publication that had its roots in two communities of great importance to me — the Queer community (a word I made the standard reference in Zenger’s largely because I can’t stand the acronym “LGBT” and I wanted a term that conveyed both inclusiveness and boldness) and the progressive political community — but that transcended both and brought insights about one to the other. I’ll be proud of the wide variety of people I featured in interviews and cover stories, many of whom I genuinely consider to be heroes. I’m particularly proud of having offered alternative information challenging the conventional wisdom about HIV and AIDS and giving space to scientists who argue that AIDS is a long-term breakdown of the immune system from various toxins and other causes, not an infectious disease caused by a single agent.
Zenger’s Newsmagazine has lasted longer than all but two other Queer publications in San Diego’s history, the late, lamented Update and the current Gay & Lesbian Times. It’s been a great run, and for those who are worried about the loss of the print version I assure you I will continue to publish my stories to the Zenger’s blog and look for other media outlets with which to share what I’ve learned and discovered to be important. I remember a 1976 political rally and concert in San Francisco at which I heard a singer named Betty Kaplowitz, who when she broke her string in the middle of a song just started an a cappella chant with only one line of lyric — “Nothing is lost but it changes” — and got the audience to sing it without her to give her time to re-string her guitar.
That’s how I feel about the Zenger’s transition: nothing is lost, but it changes. I’m proud of having taken this journey and I want to thank all of you for taking it with me.
Saturday, May 08, 2010
“Innocents Abroad” Trek from San Diego to Gaza
Break the Blockade, Bring In Supplies Despite Egyptian Opposition
by MARK GABRISH CONLAN
Copyright © 2010 by Mark Gabrish Conlan for Zenger’s Newsmagazine • All rights reserved
PHOTO, L to R: Larry Hampshire, Faith Attaguile, Hany El-Saldany
They called themselves “innocents abroad” when Larry Hampshire, Faith Attaguile and Hany El-Saldany of the Free Palestine Movement (www.freepalestinemovement.org) spoke at the First Unitarian-Universalist Church in Hillcrest Thursday, May 6. When they joined an international caravan of over 100 people almost literally on the spur of the moment — “Faith said, ‘I’m going to Gaza, would you like to come?’” Hampshire recalled — and set out last December on their trip, they really didn’t know what they were getting into. They’d see enormous public support not only in the Arab countries they went to but throughout Europe as well — British Member of Parliament George Galloway was the prime mover in organizing the caravan — and they’d also see horrific opposition, mostly coming from the government of Egypt.
That’s right: Egypt. In case you’re wondering why the Arab world’s most populous country — and the only nation on earth besides Israel that has a land border with Gaza — would be doing the bidding of Israel in helping blockade Gaza and starve it into submission, Hampshire, Attaguile and El-Saldany would reply with the classic words of the Watergate informant “Deep Throat”: “Follow the money.” It’s well known that Israel is the largest single recipient of American foreign aid; it’s less well known that the second largest recipient is Egypt. But that aid comes with a price, Hampshire said; Egypt gets it only “as they’re nice to Israel.” Not only has Egypt fully cooperated with Israel in blockading Gaza, they’re extending the long-standing wall on the Egypt-Gaza border 20 feet down to stop the Gazans from digging tunnels with which to smuggle badly needed goods.
“We had many roadblocks, mostly from the Egyptian government, including a police riot,” Attaguile recalled. Noting the broad-based support of the effort, she said, “There were a lot of different religions represented, including Muslims, Jews — including three Orthodox rabbis — and humanists. Many of the vehicles from the U.K. were paid for by donations from communities like Manchester, Bristol and Cambridge. I drove an ambulance from London to Istanbul, Turkey, where most of the Americans joined. In 10 days we went through 11 European countries, then traveled across Greece to Turkey. According to Attaguile, the support they’d received in Europe was nothing compared to the reception that greeted them at the Turkish border. “Two hundred people were waiting with flags and hugs,” she said.
Hampshire explained that their convoy was the third in a series of efforts to get vehicles and supplies to Gaza. The first was a convoy George Galloway organized right after Israel’s massive attack on Gaza. The second took place in July 2009 and the third, the one they went on, started in December and — mostly because of delays caused by the Egyptian government — didn’t get to Gaza until January. Hampshire said “the convoy in July tried to get 55 trucks in. The Egyptian government said O.K. — and then confiscated them. A Turkish group was allowed to ship the trucks out of Egypt, but the Egyptian government lied and the trucks never did come.”
“As we were moving along, we were received as heroes,” El-Saldany said. “People did receptions in the streets, bands were doing music for us and there was a lot of food. In Turkey we were joined by seven vehicles and 200 volunteers, including members of the Turkish parliament.” They reported they also got a more tangible source of support from the Turkish government: they were given access to a sports arena and allowed to sleep there, in sleeping bags, on the floor — a much better accommodation than the leaky tents they’d had to use at rest stops during much of the European leg of the trip.
Thanks to the Egyptian government’s opposition — or, rather, their bizarre and unpredictable alternation between grudging tolerance and outright opposition — the caravan had to take a circuitous route from Turkey through Syria to Jordan, then back to Syria, then on a plane to Egypt and only then into Gaza — and even then their actual crossing had to wait a week and they were only allowed to remain in Gaza for a day and a half. “In Syria and Jordan we stayed in hotels some nights,” El-Saldany recalled. “In Syria we had lots of press coverage. Faith was interviewed with the governor of Hamman [a Syrian province].”
Things were harder for the group in Jordan. “When we arrived in Amman, the police started a roadblock and tried to change our route,” El-Saldany said. “So we blocked the freeway for three hours. We kept going until we reached Aqaba, Jordan, where we were supposed to cross the Red Sea into Sinai. But the Egyptian government stopped us for five days and insisted we ask for Israeli permission to enter Gaza” — which they knew the Israelis would never give. The Egyptians imposed two other conditions on the group: that they turn over all their vehicles and supplies to the United Nations instead of giving them directly to Gazans (which they didn’t want to do because Israel confiscates most aid given to the U.N. on behalf of Gaza) and that they backtrack 120 miles back to Syria and then fly into Al-Ansh, Egypt on the Egypt-Gaza border.
“By now we were adept at demonstrating and protesting,” Attaguile recalled. “We had a protest in Aqaba and the people were so supportive the police had to block the intersection. We had a fantastic experience at the Shveiki Hotel.”
“We had the support of the governments of Syria and Jordan, but most of all we had the support of the people,” Hampshire recalled. “When we left Istanbul and got into a town at 3 a.m. people were standing in the rain, waiting to greet us.”
Hampshire also mentioned the fantastic experience at the Shveiki Hotel. Tired of the al fresco accommodations — when they first went to Aqaba they were put up in a mosque — “I said to Faith, ‘Let’s get a hotel.’ The visitors’ center said there was a whole street of hotels and gave us directions. We went to the first one and said, ‘We need a room for three or four days.’ The desk clerk said, ‘Are you with the convoy?,’ and gave us five rooms that could each hold four people — at no cost. Then other people wanted to come in and we agreed we’d all chip in for extra rooms, and the hotel manager said, ‘You’ve got more people. Go and look at the rooms.’ The manager said he’d talked to the owner, and the owner, who looked like Boris Karloff in a robe, said, ‘We’ll take as many people as you have, for as long as you need, for free.’”
According to Hampshire, the hotel owner apologized to the group for having to put them up on such short notice he couldn’t give them a proper meal that night, but he said, “Tomorrow I shall have a feast for you prepared by the fingers of my very own wife” — an Arab proverb meaning a meal made with extra-special loving care. “People were always coming up to us expressing their support for what we were doing,” Hampshire said. “It was really amazing and moving. … People would come up very often and say, ‘You’re very brave to do this.’ I’d say, ‘The really brave ones are the ones in Gaza. We’d have 7 to 10 kids talking to each other and they came up and gave us two pieces of hard candy covered with nice, tasty lint. They gave 100 percent of what they had.”
“We stayed in the refugee camps [for Palestinian families whose ancestors were displaced from their lands by the formation of Israel in 1948] with 7,000 people, and they were so forthcoming they would give us coffee for free, shake our hands and wish us well.”
El-Saldany said that the convoy had started on December 6 but didn’t get to leave Aqaba until December 29 — largely due to roadblocks from the Egyptian government. “They said they would let us in if we went back through Syria,” he explained.
“In Latakia [the Syrian city from which they were to fly to Egypt], we met up with the 47 vehicles the Egyptian government had impounded from the previous caravan in July, and they released them and they were loaded by the Turkish charity IHH,” said Attaguile. “The plane was chartered by the Syrian government. If they hadn’t, a lot of us wouldn’t have been able to make it because some of us were running out of money. We got into Al-Ansh and the Egyptian government threw up a blockade and confiscated our passports. So we demonstrated for eight hours until they got sick of us and gave them back.”
Attaguile explained that Al-Ansh is “a beautiful port” but it can be turned into a virtual prison at a moment’s notice; it’s surrounded on three sides by walls and there’s an iron gate the authorities can close any time to lock people inside. While the convoy members were being held there, she said, “the Egyptian government decided they wouldn’t let us bring in 59 vehicles unless we went through Israel. At 2 p.m. the Egyptian negotiators walked out, and we were stuck there with no food and water. Larry and I and 10 other people got authentication to go into town and eat. The negotiations had broken down, and 200 riot police and 200 plainclothes police with sticks came in with a water cannon. Three trucks came in loaded with large rocks and dumped them in piles behind everything. They brought in seven holding vans. People were very upset and started peacefully demonstrating on the other side of the gate. The police attacked.”
“We went to dinner and then sat at a sidewalk restaurant while there was a riot going on,” Hampshire recalled. “We got two cabs and hit the back end of this big commotion. We couldn’t see the rocks and we were immediately surrounded by plainclothes police with blackjacks and clubs. Faith, a 16-year-old, a 20-year-old woman and I locked arms, so when they grabbed me we pulled back.” Hampshire said the police attacked with rocks — some of which members of their group threw back at them — as well as the water cannon and a “dust machine” the cops were also using. “They pushed us in 100 yards,” Hampshire recalled. “We were in an alcove and the rocks stopped, and George Galloway and three people from our side came out. Four people from their side came out and the four of us slipped out.”
“About 40 people were injured by the rocks, and they weren’t prepared to be attacked,” Attaguile said. “The next day, negotiations began again. The Turkish prime minister and some members of the Turkish parliament were involved, and they still didn’t allow the 47 trucks from July to go into Gaza — but they said we could donate them to refugee camps in Syria. Seven of our people were arrested. We still had 150 vehicles, and the Egyptian authorities insisted on checking out each one for five minutes” — which meant the process took well over an hour. Ironically, Attaguile said, “we felt like we were leaving prison in Egypt and being free in Gaza.”
Hampshire stressed how crowded and small Gaza is; its 1.5 million people are crammed into a land mass one-twenty-ninth the size of San Diego County. “When we got to Gaza, the streets were lined with people,” Attaguile recalled. “They had flowers and were cheering us. The joy washed over us and the people hadn’t had their spirits broken in the least” — despite incessant bombing raids from Israel, which were going on while the group was there. “We had won,” Attaguile boasted. “We had broken the siege of Gaza and done what we set out to do. But we found a lot of devastation.”
The devastation, the group members explained, came not only from the Israeli’s continual bombing raids on the civilian population of Gaza but also from their blockade, which keeps the Gazans from getting wood, cement, rebar or anything else that would allow them to rebuild the homes and other buildings the Israeli bombs destroy. “The U.N. has seven large building projects in Gaza and they can’t get supplies in,” Hampshire said. “They can’t clear the wreckage because there’s nothing with which to rebuild.” Hampshire said that while they were there the Israelis targeted a graduation ceremony for the Gaza Police Academy, killing 98 people and showing the Gazans “that they live at the Israelis’ pleasure.” Ironically, one reason Israel gives for continuing the bombing and blockade of Gaza is that they’re allegedly unable to maintain security.
“When we were getting the vehicles ready, we heard three big explosions,” Attaguile said. “Two people were killed in the 36 hours we were in Gaza. We had to leave early because the Egyptian government was making trouble. One young man said that on January 15, 2009 he had awakened to the sounds of explosions. The Israeli F-16’s [an American plane, supplied to Israel as part of U.S. foreign aid — our tax dollars at work] were bombing again and had completely destroyed a house, killing 11 people, including his six-month-old baby sister. One boy died at his computer, and another was helping his mother in the kitchen. He said, ‘We will continue to challenge the occupation. They will not steal our joy or our freedom.’”
“I never had so much fun or laughed so much,” Hampshire said. “The people were just so great — the people on the convoy and the people we met — and we did break the siege. When we left, seven of our people were arrested at the Egyptian border, and we demonstrated against the Egyptians and Israelis until they were released.” Hampshire said that the IHH, the Turkish charity who helped the convoy, is sponsoring a fleet of large boats to get supplies into Gaza by its one border besides Israel and Egypt: the Mediterranean Sea. A previous attempt to do that with one boat from Greece in the summer of 2009 ended when the Israelis rammed the boat and confiscated it — but the IHH is hoping that they can do with an entire fleet what the Greeks weren’t able to do with one boat, and land steel, cement and other building materials to give the Gazans a fighting chance to rebuild what the Israelis have destroyed.
The audience questions and comments after the presentation ranged widely, from people asking why the event organizers hadn’t invited pro-Israel speakers as well to debate on both sides of whether a separate Palestinian state alongside Israel is either politically or economically feasible. Hampshire said that Hamas, the political party which won the 2006 elections in Gaza — a victory which sparked the current crisis after the U.S. and Israel refused to accept their win because they have a military arm which the U.S. and Israel consider a terrorist organization — would, contrary to popular belief in this country, agree to accept Israel’s existence. He cited a remarkable article by the head of Hamas’ political bureau, Khalid Mish’al, published January 31 in the British newspaper The Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/jan/31/comment.israelandthepalestinians) and also in the Los Angeles Times (a rare crack in the usually solid pro-Israel, pro-Zionist line of the U.S. corporate media).
Mish’al’s piece suggested that Hamas would never recognize the “right” of Israel to exist — since that would mean accepting the “justice” of Israel driving the Palestinians off their land in the 1947-48 conflict — but might accept the fact of Israel’s existence and negotiate on that basis. “We shall never recognize the right of any power to rob us of our land and deny us our national rights,” Mish’al wrote. “We shall never recognize the legitimacy of a Zionist state created on our soil in order to atone for somebody else’s sins or solve somebody else’s problem. But if you are willing to accept the principle of a long-term truce, we are prepared to negotiate the terms. Hamas is extending a hand of peace to those who are truly interested in a peace based on justice.”
Local activist Nasser al-Barghouti said he and his group, Al-Awda — which promotes the right of the Palestinians to return to their homelands, even if they lie within the United Nations-recognized pre-1967 borders of Israel — made it clear that under no circumstances will he support the creation of a separate Palestinian state alongside a Zionist Israel which still defines itself as a “Jewish state.” “People who support the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish nation are saying they support an ethno-religious state,” al-Barghouti said. “In this country, we support equal rights for everybody regardless of race or religion. Why do we accept that Israeli Jews, because of the tragedy of the Holocaust, should be separated from the Palestinians?”
Al-Barghouti argued that Palestine is one country, not two, and should be treated as such. “If you look at the land, it is impossible to build a Palestinian state,” he explained. “There are 450,000 Israeli settlers on the West Bank, and they’re armed. Trying to get rid of them would start a civil war in Israel. There are also the five million Palestinian refugees who were driven out of Israel. Ethnic cleansing was involved in the creation of Israel. Hany came from Jaffa and I come from Ramallah, and we’re being told to forget our common heritage. Wouldn’t it be better to have a multi-ethnic, multi-racial state in Palestine like we have in the U.S. or Canada? Is what happened to the former Yugoslavia a good example for Palestine? Don’t get stuck with what the politicians are thinking.”
“We lived as Palestinians, not Christians or Jews or Muslims, until 1948,” said Nasser — a different one, who identified himself as from Nablus. “My father had a friend who was a rabbi. The idea that ‘these people have been fighting over this land for thousands of years’ is a myth.”
Other questions centered around the recent report by Judge Richard Goldstone, a South African Jew and Zionist who was commissioned by the U.N. to study Israel’s 2009 attack on Gaza and determine if either side committed war crimes. Goldstone’s report, issued on September 15, 2009, said they both did, but he devoted far more space to Israel’s — and for that Israel’s advocates attacked not only the report but Goldstone personally. “From what I saw and read, the Goldstone report was right-on,” Attaguile said. “The U.S. Congress voted not to accept the Goldstone report and President Obama called it ‘flawed,’ but no one has ever picked out what’s supposedly wrong with it.” Attaguile said the U.S. is partly to blame for Israel’s abuses because “as long as we give money and aid to Israel, they’re going to use it to take people’s land.”
“Gaza is a prison,” said al-Barghouti. “The people have nowhere else to go, so they have no way to flee when the Israelis attack. Goldstone said the Israeli army intentionally punished civilians to bring down the Hamas government and destroy infrastructure, including a school built by Americans. The former Israeli foreign minister wouldn’t allow her plane to land in Britain because she feared arrest for war crimes by the British government. Here’s a Zionist Jewish judge charging Israel with war crimes. That’s why it’s so crucial that the report. The U.S. government is killing it — with the complicity of the Palestinian Authority,” which is dominated by Hamas’s arch-rival, the U.S.- and Israel-favored Fatah party.
One of the last remarks at the meeting came from Jim Brown of the San Diego chapter of Veterans for Peace. “I know Faith has been interested in issues all her life, but going to Gaza?” Brown said. “This is better than any book you could read or TV show you could watch. War is usually forced upon us. Today I bear witness for it.” Brown recalled that in the war he actually fought, the Viet Nam war, “we unleashed overwhelming force against a country that didn’t have an army, and they got rid of us and straightened their country out. Overwhelming force creates an imbalance in an area. Israel was also a country formed as a result of a war, and it’s been festering ever since. I think it’s going to end horribly, but people like Larry, Faith and Hany bear witness and give us both sides of what’s going on. Far more people are dying of the aftermath than of the bombs.”
Hampshire, ironic to the end, noted what he called “two really bright spots in this.” The first one was that the U.S.’s staunch support of Israel has left us diplomatically isolated in the world community. He noted that every time there’s a United Nations vote on Israel and Palestine, the General Assembly overwhelmingly votes for the Palestinians and only the U.S., and maybe one or more of the South Pacific Islander countries that are nominally independent but really under U.S. control, votes with Israel. The second bright spot, he said, is that “the U.S. is going broke. We’re fighting wars we’re not taxing to pay for, and we’re going to go the way of all empires.”
Tanja Winter, organizer of the Peace and Democracy Action Group that presented the program on the convoy — and has been doing presentations on peace and justice issues since it was formed in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on the U.S. on September 11, 2001 — added a stark personal note at the end of the meeting. “I’m Jewish, and my father died in the Holocaust,” she said. “But I don’t think this issue is about Jews or Arabs. It’s about justice.”
In the Streets for Human Rights: A People Without Borders
commentary by MARK GABRISH CONLAN
Copyright © 2010 by Mark Gabrish Conlan for Zenger's Newsmagazine • All rights reserved
Two of the most inspiring of the many political demonstrations I’ve taken part in have centered around the issue of immigration and human rights for undocumented (so-called “illegal”) immigrants in the U.S. One took place in April 2006 and was part of an unprecedented mobilization of Latino Americans and their supporters of all colors in response to a bigoted bill in the House of Representatives sponsored by Republican Congressmember James Sensenbrenner (“Senselessbrenner” might have been a better name for him). The other was on May 1, 2010 and consisted of a rally in Chicano Park and a quite long march to the Federal Building downtown in opposition to an equally obnoxious bill — one that actually became law in the state of Arizona — called SB 1070.
Immigration is one of those issues where the debate has become so polarized it’s hard to remember that many Americans have positions that fall somewhere between the two extremes. No doubt much of the hysterical rhetoric denouncing “illegal aliens” and calling for their mass deportation is covertly racist — sometimes overtly racist, as when anti-immigrant author Peter Brimelow published his National Review articles and his book Alien Nation, in which he openly called for severe restrictions on documented as well as undocumented immigration in an effort to preserve the U.S.’s “ethnic mix” — in other words, to keep this a white-majority country. At the same time, I think many Americans are good-hearted and sympathetic to the desires of Mexicans and other Latin Americans to come to this country, work hard and claim a piece of the American dream — but are also concerned about the possibility that an influx of impoverished people willing to work cheaper than U.S. citizens or documented residents will drive down opportunities for employment in an already recession-crippled jobs market.
There are darker fantasies, too — fears carefully cultivated by the relentless anti-immigrant, anti-Latino propaganda of talk radio, Fox News and the other outlets of the radical-Right wing of the corporate media. Many of those fears were openly cited by Arizona legislators as reasons they voted for SB 1070 — including the idea that undocumented immigrants are more likely to commit crimes than citizens or documented residents (statistics from unbiased sources indicated they’re actually less likely to commit crimes; as immigration through Arizona has increased, the state’s crime rate has actually gone down); that allowing immigrants will bring the violence associated with the Mexican drug cartels to the U.S.; and that, whatever their reasons for coming here, the mere presence of undocumented immigrants on U.S. soil constitutes a “crime” for which they should be punished by prison, detention or deportation. A sign carried by counter-protesters at the Federal Building made clear the hateful mind-set of these people: “Illegal Aliens Aren’t Immigrants: They’re Criminals.”
The U.S. and Mexico have a long and sordid history in which the two countries’ governments and business elites have cooperated in the exploitation of the people of both countries. In 1846-1848 the U.S. invaded Mexico and conquered and annexed half its territory — including the current states of California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Wyoming — in a war which Abraham Lincoln, then a Congressmember from Illinois, quite rightly denounced as an imperialistic adventure pushed by the Southern slaveocracy to expand the slave-holding territory (Mexico had already banned slavery) and fulfill what America’s imperialists called our “Manifest Destiny” to rule the North American continent outright. Between 1876 and 1910 U.S. corporations took advantage of a sympathetic Mexican dictator, Porfirio Diaz, to take over most of the Mexican economy – and between them. American and Mexican capitalists did such a good job of impoverishing the Mexican people that they fought a bloody revolution from 1910 to 1917 (with the U.S. openly intervening on the side of the counter-revolution) to get rid of us and regain control of their own economy.
But U.S. designs on Mexican resources and labor continued. In 1942, desperate for farm labor with so many American men either serving in World War II or working in defense plants, the U.S. government contracted with Mexico to import farm laborers, called braceros. The bracero program lasted 22 years — far longer than the U.S. involvement in World War II — and did such a good job keeping farm labor wages low that César Chávez didn’t even try to organize his United Farm Workers union until it finally ended in 1964. One of the biggest shocks I have ever experienced in my life was when I met elderly Mexicans at the 2006 immigrant-rights demonstrations who introduced themselves as former braceros who were still owed money they’d earned but hadn’t been paid — for work they’d done over 42 years earlier.
Mexico’s exploitation by the United States got even worse in the early 1990’s, when corporate elites in both countries and in Canada as well pushed through the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). NAFTA required the Mexican government to remove the carefully constructed system of subsidies to their own farmers that had been put in place as a result of the 1910-1917 revolution. U.S. agribusiness companies flooded the Mexican market with cheap corn, selling it at prices below the cost of producing it in Mexico. As a result, millions of Mexicans were forced off their land — and many of them headed north to look for jobs as farm laborers here. The same year as NAFTA went into effect, 1994, the U.S. government also instituted “Operation Gatekeeper” in California and similarly named “operations” in other border states to make border crossings harder — which paradoxically forced undocumented immigrants to stay within the U.S. rather than live here when work was available and return home in the off-season. It also drove immigrants from established crossings like San Diego’s to high-risk routes through the desert — leading to the deaths of up to 10,000 undocumented immigrants — and it created a booming business in so-called coyotes, smugglers who help undocumented immigrants cross for a high price, often transport them under unsafe conditions that kill them, and blackmail them by threatening to turn them in to U.S. authorities for deportation if they can’t pay.
The United States may have a legal right under international law to enforce its borders, but it has long since forfeited the moral right to do so given how relentlessly we have exploited the Mexican economy. The undocumented immigration problem would virtually disappear if we didn’t keep it going. Instead, we continue vicious “free trade” policies like NAFTA which make it impossible for Mexico to protect its citizens against the exploitative practices of U.S. corporations. We also do little more than token enforcement of the laws against employers hiring undocumented immigrants; Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents occasionally stage raids in workplaces and do mass deportations of the undocumented immigrants who work there, but have you ever seen the officials of the corporations that employ them doing a perp walk? Didn’t think so! Even the existence and violence of the drug cartels in Mexico is largely the responsibility of the United States; it’s our people who fund them by buying their drugs, and it’s our lack of effective gun control that allows them to arm themselves to the teeth with lethal weapons they cannot buy in their home country.
The simple fact is there is no moral authority undergirding the U.S. immigration laws, especially as applied to immigrants from Mexico and Latin America in general. And since there is no moral authority behind these laws, they are unjust laws and people who have been impoverished by U.S. policies have every moral right to break them. As the most popular chant during the May 1, 2010 demonstration put it, we are “un pueblo sin fronteras” — “a people without borders.” If we’re sincerely worried about a flood tide of undocumented immigrants from a poor neighboring country crossing a border that is already more militarized than any on earth between two countries that aren’t actually at war with each other, we need to think outside the box and look for solutions that empower the working people of both the U.S. and Mexico, including renegotiating NAFTA to make it a true instrument of free trade instead of an economic weapon of U.S. corporate bullies against the Mexican economy.
The speakers in Chicano Park on the morning of May 1 said some fine and noble things. It was particularly impressive, after all the propaganda about how people of color were supposedly more likely to vote for the anti-marriage equality Proposition 8 than whites, to hear Bruno Remiano of the May 1 Coalition, co-organizers of the action, boast that his group had “a very broad participation of people from all these different movements: immigrant rights groups, community organizers, students, teachers, anti-war activists, feminists, LGBT groups, homeless, based on humanitarian groups.” It was even more inspiring when Remiano, a native of Brazil, read the Coalition’s five demands and they included — along with legalization of all undocumented immigrants “without conditions,” jobs and housing for all, funding for education and social services instead of war, repeal of SB 1070 and a boycott of Arizona until the bill is history — was one for “immigration and full rights for LGBT partners. As a Gay man legally married to my partner of over 15 years, I felt included in this demonstration in a way I haven’t always felt in other progressive actions.
At the same time there was, as in so many other progressive organizations and demonstrations, a palpable sense of disgust at the Obama administration. “There were more raids, more deportations and more families broken up in the first year of Obama than in the last year of Bush,” said the rally’s MC. (He said it in Spanish but it wasn’t hard to figure out.) He’s absolutely right; on immigration enforcement — as on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Guantánamo and torture in general, the rule of law in dealing with suspected terrorists, the military’s bigoted “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy of excluding openly Queer people and the “drill, baby, drill” energy agenda of more offshore oil drilling and more development of earth-destroying coal and nuclear energy — Obama’s term has been a continuation of Bush’s policies.
During Obama’s first year in office, the U.S. deported 380,000 people — not only undocumented immigrants but, in some cases, their U.S. citizen children — more than in any previous year in our history. According to an internal ICE memo published in the Washington Post, ICE officials lamented that even that number had fallen short of their “quota” of 400,000 deportations for the year. The law passed by Congress and signed by President Clinton in 1996 gave ICE the authority to deport instantly any undocumented immigrant convicted of a crime, no matter how minor — and according to a 2009 Department of Homeland Security, ICE has been using that authority to deport people who haven’t been convicted of any crime at all. In 2009, nearly 60 percent of the people deported under the so-called “Criminal Alien Program” had no criminal convictions — and in the first quarter of fiscal year 2010 ICE deported 56,853 people with criminal convictions … and 60,397 without them.
One can’t understand the persistence of so-called “illegal” immigration as an issue without realizing how many purposes it serves the American ruling class. By allowing undocumented immigrants in and building up the mythology that they “take the jobs Americans won’t work” (they actually take jobs Americans won’t work at the piss-poor wages offered — or in some cases, like much farm labor, they take jobs Americans can’t work because the skills involved have largely disappeared from our citizen population), the ruling elites in this country get an ultra-low-paid work force that they can use to undercut prevailing wages — and whom they can get deported if they try to organize into unions or do anything else to stand up for their rights. At the same time, the ruling elites also get an all-purpose scapegoat that — especially in times of general economic hardship, like now — they can use to blame America’s economic problems on and keep America’s working class focused on imaginary “enemies” below them in the class structure instead of their real enemies above.
And certainly the rhetoric of the anti-immigration crowd is incessantly ugly. Just listen to Roger Hedgecock or any other anti-immigrant talk-radio host rant against “illegals” and do a thought experiment. Every time they say “illegals,” substitute the word “Jews.” All of a sudden they’ll sound like Hitler and Goebbels — which doesn’t necessarily make them Nazis or fascists, but it does illustrate how unvarying the rhetoric of racists really is. There’s a proven recipe for demonizing people by portraying them as a somehow dangerous “other” that Hitler used in Nazi Germany; that Lenin, Stalin and Mao used to sustain Communist governments; that Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia and Franco Tudjman in Croatia used to get people who’d been living peacefully with each other for centuries to hate and kill each other; that the government of Israel and its apologists, especially in the U.S., have used to demonize the Palestinians (as the 19th century German-Jewish poet Heinrich Heine said, “Those to whom evil has been done do evil in return”); and as the American Right has been doing to a whole series of all-purpose scapegoats (“illegal” immigrants, people of color, Queers and counter-culturalists of all sorts) since the late 1960’s to boost their popularity, support and votes.
A solution to the issues raised by so-called “illegal” immigration will require a massive campaign on all fronts. It will mean boycotts not only against Arizona and any other states that pass repressive, hateful, fascistic “let me see your PAPERS!” laws like SB 1070 but also against the merchants of hate on talk radio and TV news and the corporations that sustain those shows by advertising on them. It will take unprecedented mobilization by labor advocates both within and outside the existing structure of the union movement. Ultimately it will take building a realization that wealth and poverty cannot exist side by side — not between countries like the U.S. and Mexico, and not within a single country either — without destroying the souls of the haves as well as the have-nots. Gross extremes of wealth and poverty, along with the disappearance of virtually anything in between, produce a desperate underclass that will do literally ANYTHING to survive and a clueless overclass that will run their country into the ground with the insane extravagance and foreign adventurism of pre-1789 France.
That parallel came to my mind some years ago when I attended a long San Diego City Council hearing to discuss a proposed living-wage ordinance. The arguments of the opponents were so desperate — particularly the one who said we shouldn’t apply living-wage standards to jobs at fast-food restaurants because these were “fun jobs” worked by students seeking a little extra income — I couldn’t help but think of the similarly transparent euphemisms used by the defenders of clueless royalty in the 18th and 19th centuries. I even coined a phrase afterwards, the “Marie Antoinettization of America,” to describe how clueless our ruling class has become, to the point where they can no longer even do capitalism right — how they’ve poured the money they’ve got from outright subsidies and favorable tax treatment not into investments that actually produce jobs and useful goods and services, but on the ever-more abstruse financial speculations — credit default swaps, collateralized debt obligations, synthetic collateralized debt obligations and all the other ill-understood “derivatives” which recently came close to crashing our economy totally — that make them richer and decimate the productive economy.
Finding a solution to immigration — like finding a solution to financial regulation, health care and the other domestic issues that bedevil us today — is easy compared to finding the political will to implement it and the backbone to take on the corporate octopus that is strangling the American economy and politics. Through a system of legalized bribery euphemistically referred to as “campaign contributions,” American corporations go to legislatures, governors and presidents and order self-serving policies with the same certainty as a McDonald’s customer orders lunch. As long as millions of Americans fall for the lies and propaganda tales of the corporate media — that private companies are always more “efficient” than government or public agencies; that the interests of giant corporations are the public interests and all others are “special interests”; that their economic and social status is being destroyed by those below them (so-called “illegal” immigrants and people of color) rather than those above them (the giant corporations that are systematically and effectively destroying the American middle class in pursuit of short-term profits; and that there’s no such thing as global warming and there are huge remaining supplies of fossil fuels we can keep drilling, baby, drilling, without fear of running out or trashing the environment in the process — we will remain vulnerable to propaganda setting up an unending succession of scapegoats and we will keep electing politicians who enthusiastically support the policies that are destroying us.
The End of “HIV/AIDS”?
Government Backs Off from Treating AIDS as Communicable
by D. B. MURRIETA
Our government just ruled on November 2, 2009, effective Jan. 4, 2010, to exclude HIV/AIDS from the list of communicable diseases and not require HIV testing in applying for a U.S. Visa. Further to this, and in another publication, Senator John Kerry called for lifting of the ban against Gays donating blood in his Op-Ed this last month.
What is going on? How did we advance to this point? There must have been something, we all missed. Looks like a meltdown of untold magnitude in the HIV/AIDS paradigm.
Apparently the mandatory release of documents under the Freedom of Information Act made all the difference. The documents marked “Top Secret” and sealed 25 years ago were Robert Gallo's evidence in which he claimed proved the hypothesis; HIV was the virus that caused AIDS. The fact is, these documents did not prove anything. There was nothing in them that stood up to scrutiny — no paper, no studies, no lab research or equations; Only his notes, which were overwritten with added handwritten notes to make them appear to address the question. In the opinion of our Greek constituents who obtained them sealed and exposed them to the public, there was nothing in them but utter garbage and bombast (my words).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CDRaNPqFlY&feature=related
So what happens now? It looks like everyone is still sleeping.
We must free the prisoners, the enslaved and the repressed. Stop the tests and eliminate the anti-retroviral drugs. Expose all the thieves and liars — especially those that profited and knew the truth.
I'm not saying that people should go to jail. But they must, at least, admit their error before they go on to further mislead. Fines and penalties might be imposed if these culprits want to be difficult and remain in opposition. Monetary amounts received could go to compensate all those who suffered and also may have died from the drug treatments or stigma of the syndrome. Even those who refused treatment and were dissidents, should receive token amounts. The overall range of awards could be from $1000 to $10,000 per plaintiff. This would amount to “pocket change” for the pharmaceuticals. (Their last bill in 2007 to the government was $350,000,000. The total over the last twenty-six years amounted to hundreds of billions.) This does not begin to calculate the loss of human spirit and life.
In the mean time, we must gather all pertinent testimony of the CDC and/or government agencies that brought about the “Final Rule.”
http://travel.state.gov/visa/laws/telegrams/telegrams_4631.html
How do we proceed? Do we get lawyers on a contingency or pro bono? Who among us will take the initiative? Who will lead? Do we mount a class action suit?
By the way and maybe a little understated here, I want to share the good news: we won!!!
Disclaimer: The above is my opinion and does not include any other individual's or group's view. I'm sure that a properly researched paper is required and must be pursued. Hopefully, my e-mail will get the ball rolling faster on this auspicious day in the 27th year of the HIV/AIDS lie.
Government Backs Off from Treating AIDS as Communicable
by D. B. MURRIETA
Our government just ruled on November 2, 2009, effective Jan. 4, 2010, to exclude HIV/AIDS from the list of communicable diseases and not require HIV testing in applying for a U.S. Visa. Further to this, and in another publication, Senator John Kerry called for lifting of the ban against Gays donating blood in his Op-Ed this last month.
What is going on? How did we advance to this point? There must have been something, we all missed. Looks like a meltdown of untold magnitude in the HIV/AIDS paradigm.
Apparently the mandatory release of documents under the Freedom of Information Act made all the difference. The documents marked “Top Secret” and sealed 25 years ago were Robert Gallo's evidence in which he claimed proved the hypothesis; HIV was the virus that caused AIDS. The fact is, these documents did not prove anything. There was nothing in them that stood up to scrutiny — no paper, no studies, no lab research or equations; Only his notes, which were overwritten with added handwritten notes to make them appear to address the question. In the opinion of our Greek constituents who obtained them sealed and exposed them to the public, there was nothing in them but utter garbage and bombast (my words).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CDRaNPqFlY&feature=related
So what happens now? It looks like everyone is still sleeping.
We must free the prisoners, the enslaved and the repressed. Stop the tests and eliminate the anti-retroviral drugs. Expose all the thieves and liars — especially those that profited and knew the truth.
I'm not saying that people should go to jail. But they must, at least, admit their error before they go on to further mislead. Fines and penalties might be imposed if these culprits want to be difficult and remain in opposition. Monetary amounts received could go to compensate all those who suffered and also may have died from the drug treatments or stigma of the syndrome. Even those who refused treatment and were dissidents, should receive token amounts. The overall range of awards could be from $1000 to $10,000 per plaintiff. This would amount to “pocket change” for the pharmaceuticals. (Their last bill in 2007 to the government was $350,000,000. The total over the last twenty-six years amounted to hundreds of billions.) This does not begin to calculate the loss of human spirit and life.
In the mean time, we must gather all pertinent testimony of the CDC and/or government agencies that brought about the “Final Rule.”
http://travel.state.gov/visa/laws/telegrams/telegrams_4631.html
How do we proceed? Do we get lawyers on a contingency or pro bono? Who among us will take the initiative? Who will lead? Do we mount a class action suit?
By the way and maybe a little understated here, I want to share the good news: we won!!!
Disclaimer: The above is my opinion and does not include any other individual's or group's view. I'm sure that a properly researched paper is required and must be pursued. Hopefully, my e-mail will get the ball rolling faster on this auspicious day in the 27th year of the HIV/AIDS lie.
Monday, April 26, 2010
Queer Democrats Oppose Strong-Mayor Proposition
Back Castañeda for Chula Vista Mayor, Butler for County Assessor/Recorder/Clerk
by MARK GABRISH CONLAN
Copyright © 2010 by Mark Gabrish Conlan for Zenger’s Newsmagazine • All rights reserved
PHOTOS, top to bottom: Donna Frye & Chris Ward, Todd Gloria, Steve Castañeda, David Butler
“This is the second time my opponents have refused to debate me,” said San Diego City Councilmember Donna Frye to the predominantly Queer San Diego Democratic Club at their April 22 meeting. She was there to persuade the club to oppose Proposition D on the June 8 primary ballot, a San Diego city measure that would make the strong-mayor form of government permanent, add a ninth seat to the San Diego City Council and raise the threshold for the Council to override a mayoral veto from a simple majority (five of eight) to two-thirds (six of nine). The club had originally invited an advocate of the strong-mayor system, former San Diego Charter Review Committee member Adrian Kwiatkowski, to debate Frye, but he had pleaded a “family emergency” and backed out at the last minute — so the club drafted a volunteer, Chris Ward, to present the case for strong-mayor and serve as a devil’s advocate for the ballot measure.
Though Kwiatkowski didn’t make it to the Democratic Club, he’d delivered an impassioned presentation on the subject at a meeting sponsored by San Diego Common Cause in City Heights on February 13. At that meeting he’d argued that the superiority of strong-mayor over San Diego’s previous system of government — in which the mayor sat on the City Council and had only one vote, while the Council appointed a professional city manager to run the city’s day-to-day operations — was that it shifted principal responsibility for city government from an appointed official to a directly elected one. “Before 2004 [when strong-mayor first passed for a five-year trial period] every one of you didn’t get to elect the chief executive of the city, and now you do,” Kwiatkowski told Common Cause. “There are people here in favor of having the voters lose that power. Why would you think that would empower the people?”
Frye’s presentation to the San Diego Democratic Club was largely an attempt to answer Kwiatkowski’s rhetorical question. Having served on the City Council both under the city-manager and strong-mayor systems, she said it’s actually become more difficult to get needed information out of the mayor’s office since strong-mayor passed. Under the city-manager system, Frye explained, the mayor had to attend City Council meetings and was therefore available for questions and comments not only from Councilmembers but from the public. “Making strong-mayor permanent means less accountability because the mayor can make decisions behind closed doors,” Frye argued. “The mayor needs to come back and be the leader of the City Council so you can come to a City Council meeting and talk to your elected official, not just see the mayor during staged public ‘events’ and spin sessions. Right now there is no discussion [between the mayor and Council], only edicts.”
Asked whether the strong-mayor system had ever kept her from getting the information she needed to make responsible, informed decisions as a City Councilmember, Frye was eager to quote chapter and verse. “I can tell you about the Public Records Act request to get results on a city survey,” Frye said. “I can tell you about the contract on which the mayor overspent by $2.7 million for a program the City Council didn’t even authorize, and another contract that went similarly. There is no remedy under strong-mayor for the City Council to force or compel the mayor to provide any information he does not want to provide. The only remedy I had was to sue the city.”
Other issues the club discussed about making strong-mayor permanent included the cost of creating a ninth City Council seat — which the original argument for the ballot measure estimated at “zero to $1 million,” the zero figure apparently based on the idea that the mayor would fund the new Councilmember’s office by cutting the budgets of the existing Councilmembers, until Frye and others went to court and successfully got the language changed to acknowledge that an additional Council seat would cost the city money. Frye also praised one innovation in San Diego’s governance since strong-mayor — the 2007 creation of an independent budget analyst which, she said, “is not going to go away no matter how you vote on Proposition D.” But speakers at the February 13 Common Cause meeting — including John Gordon, Frye’s appointee to the Charter Review Committee, who also attended the Democratic Club meeting April 22 — said that the budget analyst is still dependent on the mayor’s office for providing the numbers he or she crunches for their “independent” analysis.
The club members who debated Proposition D framed it largely as a battle in the ongoing war for control of San Diego’s government between downtown business interests, who favor citywide elections and a strong mayor because that makes big-money campaigns more important; and neighborhood activists who favor district elections and a strong City Council because that returns power to the grass roots. The original strong-mayor initiative “was drawn up in the back room of San Diego by the old-boys’ network that controlled city hall before the passage of district elections [for City Councilmembers] in 1988, when people with money controlled who got elected,” said former San Diego Democratic Club president Craig Roberts. “This is their end run around district elections. They don’t need to worry about the City Council; they only need to control one office, the mayor.”
Club secretary and former city employee Brad Jacobsen said he was against strong-mayor in 2004 and was even more strongly opposed to it now. “There is no communication between the mayor’s office and the City Council,” he said. “I had to meet with City Council staff members privately because every request for an official meeting had to go through the mayor’s chain of command.” Eventually the club voted to endorse No on Proposition D with only one dissenting vote.
Another city proposition turned out to be an even easier sell for support than Proposition D was for opposition. This was Proposition C, presented by Third District City Councilmember Todd Gloria as a way to reform San Diego’s hiring practices by giving a meaningful preference to veterans. Amazingly, despite San Diego’s reputation as a military town and the large number of servicemembers who decide to settle here after discharge, San Diego hasn’t revised its city charter provisions on hiring veterans since the 1970’s — and the existing charter gives preference only to veterans who served due to “conscription.” That means a draft — and, as Gloria pointed out, the U.S. hasn’t drafted anyone into the military since 1973.
“San Diego is the largest point of discharge for people in the military,” Gloria explained. “We have more people coming back to the county [from military service] than ever, including 27,000 who have already returned from Iraq and Afghanistan. We also don’t have a special consideration for people who were disabled in the military. Proposition C will strike the word ‘conscription’ and add another point [on the city workers’ exam] for a service-connected disability of 15 percent or more. We should be able to have a policy to help our military. Many people are leaving San Diego after discharge. The unemployment rate for veterans is one in four, 10 percent above the general rate in San Diego.” Gloria got what he came for: the club’s unanimous support for his ballot measure.
On the five propositions on the statewide June 8 ballot, the club took the same positions as the ones of the California Democratic Party. It endorsed yes votes on Proposition 13, which allows people to have their homes retrofitted for earthquake safety without triggering an automatic reassessment, and resulting property tax increase, under the original Proposition 13 in 1978; and Proposition 15, which allows for direct public financing of elections for the office of secretary of state. It opposed Proposition 14, which would eliminate party primaries and replace them with a system in which the two top vote-getters in the primary, regardless of party, would be the candidates in the general election. The club also voted to support no votes on Propositions 16 and 17 after speakers pointed out that these were sponsored by single corporations — Pacific Gas and Electric for 16 and Mercury Insurance for 17 — to protect their incomes against legitimate government regulations and actions.
The club also heard from two candidates for office. One was County assessor/recorder/clerk David Butler, a rare Democrat in a countywide office in San Diego. He started as a staff member in that department 34 years ago, worked his way up and was considering retiring when he was appointed by the all-Republican County Board of Supervisors to replace the previous officeholder, Gregory Smith, when Smith retired. “I’d like to think it’s because I’m the most qualified candidate, but I think it was because they were hoping I’d serve out the rest of Greg Smith’s term and just retire instead of running for a full term of my own,” Butler joked. He described the office as “a technical position” and said one of the reasons he was running was to bring electronic data recording to the office.
As the only serious Democratic candidate in the race — there’s one other registered Democrat seeking the office, but Craig Roberts described him as “a perennial candidate who ran for the Board of Supervisors a few years ago and came to the County Democratic Central Committee and was unspeakably bad” — Butler won a unanimous endorsement.
The other candidate the club heard from on April 22 was Chula Vista City Councilmember Steve Castañeda, who’s running for mayor of his city. The club never endorsed in a Chula Vista mayor’s race until 1998, when it backed Steve Padilla — who, ironically, beat out another Democrat, Mary Salas, both for the club’s endorsement and the office itself. Padilla subsequently came out as Gay and lost his re-election bid to a Republican — Cheryl Cox, wife of San Diego County Supervisor Bill Cox. In presenting his candidacy, Castañeda pointed out that Chula Vista is the second largest city in the county and that 43 percent of its registered voters are Democrats, to 30 percent Republicans and 26 percent “decline to state” (California election-speak for people who don’t register with any political party).
Like Donna Frye and the opponents of Proposition D in San Diego, Castañeda cast his election as a battle between entrenched business interests and new grass-roots neighborhood-based sources of support. “What we’ve seen over the last 20 years is the establishment folks running Chula Vista,” he said. “In 2004 I started to look at ways we could be neighbors to city hall. Back then we had no neighborhood groups in Chula Vista; now we have four. We need to do more with respect to opening our government. I want to make those changes; the current mayor wants to run the city like it was 30 years ago.” Castañeda won his endorsement, with no opposition and only one member abstaining, but his own campaign wasn’t the only issue he addressed before the Democratic Club.
Castañeda also spoke out against Proposition G, an initiative on the June 8 ballot in Chula Vista that would allow voters there to ban Project Labor Agreements (PLA’s). According to Craig Roberts, PLA’s “force municipalities to hire local businesses and make sure they pay living wages.” Without them, PLA supporters argue, a contractor building a project for a city could bring in out-of-town workers and low-ball their pay — thus saving the city money at the expense not only of its working people but of its own economy. Local Right-wingers like San Diego City Councilmember Carl DeMaio and County Republican Party chair Tony Krvaric have made banning PLA’s a major political priority, and initiatives eliminating them will be on the June 8 ballot not only in Chula Vista but Oceanside as well.
According to Castañeda, Proposition G “is so poorly written the Chula Vista city attorney said he couldn’t figure out what it meant. It is being pushed by people outside of Chula Vista to attack labor unions. As a City Councilmember and an individual, I’m going to have to go home and tell people what’s going to happen to the bayfront development, the university we’re seeking and all our other plans. Give us the opportunity to help our citizens and our future.” The club voted to oppose Proposition G with no one against and only one abstention — but it declined to set aside the notice requirements in the club’s bylaws to vote on opposing the similar initiative being voted on in Oceanside. Ironically, Bill Irvine of the Uptown Democratic Club pointed out that neither Chula Vista nor Oceanside has ever approved a PLA as part of a city development.
Finally, an attempt by several club members to make an endorsement in the primary for California attorney general petered out when former club president Doug Case questioned whether there still was a quorum. Before that, members had split on the question of whether to take up this hotly contested race, with seven candidates seeking the Democratic nomination. Roberts and Matt Corrales had seen the candidates at the Democratic party’s recent statewide convention, but came to opposite conclusions as to whether the club should endorse. Roberts called on the club to avoid a potentially divisive primary endorsement and instead get solidly behind the primary winner for next November’s general election; Corrales said he’d left the state conventions with his own preferences in the race and wanted to discuss them. But Case’s quorum call — which revealed that there were only 24 club members in the room, eight short of the number needed to conduct business — short-circuited any discussion of the race and left club president Larry Baza with nothing to do but adjourn the meeting.
Friday, April 02, 2010
Over 50 Turn Out for Whitburn Fundraiser in Hillcrest
Candidate Faces Unfair Attacks from Both Straight and Queer Media
by MARK GABRISH CONLAN
Copyright © 2010 by Mark Gabrish Conlan for Zenger’s Newsmagazine • All rights reserved
Stephen Whitburn, former San Diego Democratic Club president and San Diego City Council candidate, brought his current campaign for the District Four seat on the San Diego County Board of Supervisors to Hillcrest March 28 with an early-evening fundraiser at the Bamboo Lounge restaurant in Hillcrest. Over 50 people attended the event, in which Whitburn introduced his campaign team and laid out the issues he intends to raise in his challenge to incumbent Ron Roberts.
“It is so important that we win this seat,” Whitburn said. “Fundamentally, it is time that government work for people in San Diego County. I was down at the County Board on Tuesday to speak against the gifts Supervisors receive from the organizations to which they give taxpayers’ money. In the case of Ron Roberts, over the years he has given more than $850,000 to a nonprofit organization that promotes trade with Asia. And in turn, that organization has sent Ron Roberts on six all-expense-paid trips to China — junkets to China. Now, to me that seems improper.”
Whitburn also upbraided Roberts for calling for a second supervisorial vote on the controversial Merriam Mountains development proposal near Escondido. The developer sponsoring the proposal planned to blow off the top of a mountain, flatten it and build thousands of homes atop the denuded mountain. The County Board of Supervisors first voted on the proposal on December 9, with Roberts absent, and the board deadlocked 2-2, killing the plan. But Roberts insisted that the board schedule another vote so he could be there — leading to speculation that he supported the project and wanted to see it go through — though when the second vote came on March 24, he opposed Merriam Mountains.
At his fundraiser, Whitburn said he’d attended the March 24 meeting “and Ron Roberts would not look me in the eye. He didn’t want to look like he wasn’t paying attention, so he looked past me, so he could look like he was looking at me but not look at me.” Whitburn told the Supervisors they should vote down Merriam Mountains, and he asked the audience at his fundraiser “if you think it is a good idea to consider blasting off mountaintops and building homes in fire-prone areas without an evacuation plan.”
Whitburn also ridiculed the all-Republican County Board of Supervisors for their lack of interest in social service, which along with development and land use is one of the primary responsibilities of county government in California. “The County Board will not lift a finger above and beyond what is absolutely mandated by the state to help the people who so very much need government to serve them,” Whitburn said. “That $850,000 that went for trade with China could have provided assistance to a whole lot of working people who are struggling to pay their bills and need more food to feed their families.”
According to Whitburn, “The County Board has huge responsibilities, yet many people don’t even know what it does.” He attributed that to the fact that Roberts and his four fellow Supervisors are all “like-minded Republicans” who “decide the issues amongst themselves” with little or no public debate. “Without debate, there isn’t much media coverage of the County Board of Supervisors,” Whitburn explained — “and without media coverage, there isn’t very much public attention to it. And without that kind of public attention, people aren’t very plugged into what’s going on.”
What Whitburn says he has to do to win is get the public agitated and wanting change. “I was a reporter for 18 years,” Whitburn recalled. “I love to find out what’s going on and tell people what’s going on. And you’d better believe that as a County Supervisor, I’m going to be a strong voice, not only for what we believe but for communicating to the public exactly what the priorities of the County Board ought to be; what is not being done that ought to be; and what we need to be doing to make things better for people.”
Whitburn admitted he has an uphill battle. He first has to get through the June 8 primary and hope his three Democratic rivals split the vote enough to deny incumbent Roberts the 50 percent plus one he would need to win re-election outright, then he has to be the top vote-getter among the four Democrats (including one, San Diego Unified School District board member Shelia Jackson, who unlike Whitburn has actually served in elective office). But he said if he can do it, he hopes it will be an inspiration for other Democrats to challenge Republican incumbents in the South Bay and coastal districts and win a majority on the Board of Supervisors the way they have on the City Council.
“This starts here tonight,” Whitburn said. “It starts with all of us. … It starts with our fellow warriors for civil liberties. It starts with our fellow warriors for social and economic justice.” Whitburn pointed with pride to his endorsements from State Senator Christine Kehoe, City Councilmember Donna Frye and former City Councilmember Toni Atkins — “real leaders,” he called them — and added, “It starts with you. You are my friends. You’re the ones who know me as a person, and you are the ones who will most effectively communicate to other people how important this is, and why not only do we need to win, but we will win this race.”
Whitburn closed the event by introducing his campaign team: campaign manager Don Mullen, consultant Jennifer Tierney (who ironically represented Whitburn’s successful opponent, Todd Gloria, in the 2008 election for the District 3 seat on the San Diego City Council), field organizer Fernando Lopez, Web designer Matt Ferris and the hosts for his March 28 event, David Higgins and David Miles, He also thanked “government watchdog” and former San Diego City Council candidate Ian Trowbridge, event volunteer John Logan and longtime community volunteer Mel Merrill.
Since the March 28 event, Whitburn has taken some surprising hits in the media. San Diego CityBeat sent a reporter to the fundraiser but, instead of writing an actual story, ridiculed it in their “Turds & Blossoms” column. They called the event “disheartening” and made fun of Mullen and the two other Whitburn supporters who tried to get a chant of “Stephen! Stephen” going at the end — ignoring the enthusiastic response of the crowd earlier, when Whitburn asked them to back up his opposition to the Merriam Mountains development and Roberts’ junkets to China.
And the April 1 edition of the Gay & Lesbian Times ran a vituperative editorial attacking Kehoe and Atkins for supporting Whitburn. Once beyond the terms of personal abuse (the editorial writer said the two pioneering Lesbian politicians “need to take a shower and use some deodorant”), the Gay & Lesbian Times seemed to be saying that because Roberts endorsed both Kehoe and Atkins in their City Council races, he deserves their support in perpetuity. For a candidate who was a journalist for 18 years, Whitburn arguably has received a lot of unfair treatment from people who share his former profession — including some who also share his sexual orientation.
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