Funding environmental justice projects
Good Morning, I’m Debbie Cruz….it’s Wednesday September 6th. A new center is aiming to connect environmental justice projects with fundingMore on that next. But first... let’s do the headlines….
The family of a man who died of an overdose in jail is filing a wrongful death lawsuit against the county.
31-year-old Chaz Guy Young-Villasenor died at the San Diego Central Jail in May of 20-22.
His family alleges other inmates provided him with meth and fentanyl that ultimately lead to his death.
The family also alleges that jail staff saw him collapse and quote “grovel” on a cell floor for several hours.
When jail staff found Villasenor, naloxone was administered along with CPR.
Villasenor was among 19 people who died in San Diego County jails last year.
Eleven have died thus far in 2023.
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You may notice street vendors returning to city of San Diego parks and Beaches soon.
A summer moratorium on the vendors operating in those areas was officially lifted yesterday (Tuesday).
The city outlawed street vendors from selling during the summer months.. In Balboa Park and parks near Ocean Beach, Mission Beach, Pacific Beach and La Jolla.
The ordinance was passed by the city council last year.
Even though the moratorium was lifted, operators still need to get a permit and if selling food have the proper certification.
Vendors operating illegally could be subject to fines ranging from 200 dollars to one-thousand-dollars.
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The Padres baseball season will soon be over, but team officials are preparing to bring another sport to the ballpark.
The first ever Rodeo will be held at Petco Park in mid-January.
Tickets will go on sale in about two weeks.
The Padres say the three day event will bring top cowboys competing for over half a million dollars in prize money.
San Diego County is no stranger to rodeos, with smaller events held in areas like Poway, Ramona and Lakeside.
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From KPBS, you’re listening to San Diego News Now.Stay with me for more of the local news you need.
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SDSU IS OPENING A NEW HUB IN SAN DIEGO TO GET FUNDING FOR ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE PROJECTS INTO THE RIGHT HANDS.
REPORTER KATIE HYSON LOOKED INTO THE CENTER, WHICH LAWMAKERS SAY IS THE FIRST OF ITS KIND.
SOT :13 I'm standing in National City on what's known as a brownfield. A plot of land that was polluted by industry and then abandoned. Making it environmentally safe and usable again is one project with which the new center could assist.
It’s called the Center for Community Energy and Environmental Justice. It’s one of 16 launching across the country. It will serve states and territories as far as Guam.
Representative Juan Vargas says it’s one step on a long journey.
SOT :15 Layers of history and events of the past have caused certain communities, like here in National City, to be way more burdened than others with environmental health and justice issues . . . and it will take enormous efforts to peel away each of those layers.
Zoning laws funneled racial minorities into areas with more pollution and less support. Resulting in worse health issues – like high asthma rates in Barrio Logan – and lower property values.
More federal funding was directed recently to projects that address these disparities, but it can be hard for organizations to access. To know where to find it, how to apply, and who can help. The center is meant to bridge that gap.
Katie Hyson, KPBS News
Another local university is looking at the growing role of artificial intelligence in wildfire detection.
UC SAN DIEGO AND ITS SUPERCOMPUTER CENTER HAVE IMPROVED THEIR SYSTEM, CALLED SMOKEY-NET.
BUT SCI-TECH REPORTER THOMAS FUDGE SAYS RECOGNIZING SMOKE FROM FIRES REMAINS A CHALLENGE.
Smokeynet has been connected to a series of about 100 cameras across San Diego county that search for fires and fire smoke. Now computer scientists have added satellite images and weather data to the information it monitors as well. AI researcher Mai Nguyen, with the supercomputer center, says both speed of detection and accuracy have improved. But the system still misses some fires that occur and 12 percent of fire detections are false positives. She says spotting fire smoke remains challenging for people and computers.
“Smoke is very difficult. It can be very transparent. It can be very amorphous, right, it has not clear border. It can change shape.
The good news is that artificial intelligence can learn from mistakes. Fire officials say SmokeyNet and programs like it have spotted fires before any human reports them. SOQ.
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TWO YEARS AFTER THE CHAOTIC WITHDRAWAL FROM AFGHANISTAN, SAN DIEGO MARINE UNITS ARE AMONG SEVERAL RECEIVING THE HIGHEST UNIT-LEVEL AWARD IN THE MILITARY.
Here’s MILITARY REPORTER ANDREW DYER with more.
ON THE TWO-YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF THE DEADLY U.S. WITHDRAWAL FROM AFGHANISTAN DEFENSE SECRETARY LLOYD AUSTIN ANNOUNCED MARINE UNITS FROM CAMP PENDLETON AND MIRAMAR AIR STATION ARE RECEIVING PRESIDENTIAL UNIT CITATIONS.
PUCAWARD
THE AWARD IS THE HIGHEST AWARD A UNIT MAY RECEIVE AND IS USUALLY AWARDED FOR GALLANTRY IN COMBAT. ITS RANKING IS ON-PAR WITH AN INDIVIDUALLY AWARDED DISTINGUISHED SERVICE CROSS.
THE AWARDS WERE ANNOUNCED THURSDAY.
RECIPIENTS INCLUDE MARINES FROM 2ND BATTALION, 1ST MARINE REGIMENT AT CAMP PENDLETON WHO WERE SENT TO THE KABUL AIRPORT AS TENS OF THOUSANDS OF AFGHANS TRIED TO GET OUT AHEAD OF THE TALIBAN TAKEOVER.
ON AUGUST 26, 2021 A SUICIDE BOMBER DETONATED A BOMB NEAR THE ABBY GATE OF THE AIRPORT, KILLING 13 U.S. TROOPS AND AT LEAST 170 AFGHANS.10 OF THE TROOPS KILLED WERE BASED AT CAMP PENDLETON.
THE MARINES SAY SQUADRONS BASED AT CAMP PENDLETON AND MIRAMAR INVOLVED IN THE KABUL OPERATION ARE ALSO RECEIVING THE AWARD. IN TOTAL, MORE THAN 30 UNITS ACROSS THE MARINE CORPS AND ARMY ARE RECEIVING THE AWARD
ANDREW DYER, KPBS NEWS
Coming up.... A new program is helping foster youth transition into the workforce.. We’ll have that story and more, just after the break.
In San Diego County, there are currently over 2,500 youth in the child welfare system. The San Diego Workforce Partnership has a new program that will provide workforce readiness and other support for those young people. Reporter Melissa Mae has the story.
MM: The goal of the new Career Pathways for Foster Youth program is getting former and current foster youth into careers of their choice as they transition out of the system.
MM: The program is being led by people with lived experience in the foster care system. Sal Terrones (TER-own-es) the Foster Youth liaison for the San Diego Workforce Partnership is one of them.
ST (:17) “A lot of the issues that our youth are faced with in San Diego County or across the nation, it doesn’t happen at the interview table, it’s happening at home. A lot of our youth are faced with homelessness, food insecurities, they have children and can’t afford daycare, things in that sense.”
MM: This comprehensive program includes help with housing, mental health care, transportation and even childcare. But the main focus is on support for finding a job, paid internships, education and access to training programs. Melissa Mae KPBS News.
LONGER MUSIC BREAK
Tomorrow (Thursday) FilmOut kicks off its twenty third year as San Diego’s LGBTQ Film Festival.
The four-day event starts at the San Diego Natural History Museum and then moves to the Museum of Photographic Arts.
Aarts reporter Beth Accomando previewed two of the films with their directors.
We may live in the 21st century but sometimes it can feel like the dark ages in terms of attitudes about the LGBTQ+ community, says Israeli filmmaker Nitzan Gilady.
[00:13:31.250] - NITZAN GILADY …Society still puts us in boxes. Still society doesn't really give us the chance to live freely, look at what's going on in America here. The laws that are being presented. And these things really affect your soul, your whole being.
Gilady’s film In Bed opens with a joyous gay pride parade disrupted by a shooter.
CLIP gun shots
Gilady says such violence occurs in Israel. He drew on elements from another hate crime that happened in Tel Aviv where a man wearing a black mask and armed with a gun entered an LGBTQ youth bar and killed two people. But the murderer was never caught.
[00:11:39.600] - NITZAN GILADY … I started to think about what happens if he's someone that when you go and order a coffee, he's the one who actually served the coffee.
And it’s that idea that starts to unnerve the main character in his film, Guy.
[00:13:31.250] …I think, that it triggers his paranoia and it triggers everything that it's within him. His self-hate, his fear from meeting people, even interacting with other people.
But Gilady adds that his film is about the need for love even against a backdrop of hate and violence.
[00:09:46.330] - NITZAN GILADY …Because the three characters in my film, that's what they want. The reason what's wrong about them is that they're looking for love in the wrong places. They are really scared about having an intimate relationship. We still are talking about not being accepted. We still are dealing with the self-hate within ourselves. And it's a subject and it's a matter that we need to find a way to solve and to find a way how to get, at the end an acceptance, a full acceptance of us, and not just we ourselves, but also the people that surrounds us.
Filmmaker Sav Rodgers has been navigating his own journey of acceptance. The journey began when as a queer kid he saw the Kevin Smith movie Chasing Amy.
[00:00:01.290] - SAV RODGERS Because not only was I so moved by the grand romanticism in Kevin's work, but also I saw queer people getting to have full, realized lives for the first time in my life in this cinematic foray into that Chasing Amy, that lightning rod for me, but also a life raft when I really needed it. Struggling in school as a kid, as a queer kid who everybody else figured out was queer before I did, and I didn't really understand why I didn't fit in.
Now Rodgers explores how Chasing Amy fits into a bigger social context in his documentary Chasing Chasing Amy.
[00:00:01.290] - SAV RODGERS …I always thought that there was something special there about the story of Chasing Amy and the intersection with the LGBTQ community. What I did not have the foresight to see was that it was going to literally be my personal story with Chasing Amy that would really anchor the film emotionally.
The film begins as a fan doc about Rodgers’ love for Smith’s work. Then it morphs into a story about his changing relationship to the movie. Prompting that change is his interview with actress Joey Lauren Adams. She played the lead character who’s identified as lesbian.
CLIP The movie is amazing but whatever moved you has a dark side too.
[00:04:11.550] - SAV RODGERS … This is my dream movie in so many ways. And I get the thing that I didn't know that I wanted, which is this kind of forward push to really think deeper about my fandom with Chasing Amy, and also like, who do I want to be? Do I want to just live in this moment from when I was twelve or do I want to move forward?
His answer was he wanted to move forward, which meant he needed to address the fact that he also wanted to transition. So that becomes a part of the film too.
[00:01:34.110] SAV RODGERS …For me, in particular, the painful parts were exploring my transition because, as you can imagine, I was not terribly interested in preserving a part of myself that I wish that people generally wouldn't remember. But it's the story and it's what happened.
Rodgers’ ability to pivot as a director and see that his documentary needed to be something different than what he had originally imagined is just one reason why Chasing Chasing Amy is such a fresh, inspiring film. These are just two of the movies playing at this year’s FilmOut but hopefully they’ll entice you to seek out more.
Beth Accomando, KPBS News.
TAG: FilmOut kicks off tomorrow (Thursday) at the San Diego Natural History Museum and then continues through Sunday at the Museum of Photographic Arts.
That’s it for the podcast today. As always you can find more San Diego news online at KPBS dot org.. I’m Debbie Cruz. Thanks for listening and have a great day.
