To get involved resisting the upcoming BIO conference. The next meeting and craft party is Thursday, May 22nd at 7:30pm at the City Heights Free Skool, 4246 Wightman St, San Diego, CA 92105.

On June 19th, there will be a "Say Goodbye to Biotech" party in the park across the street from the convention center from 1-6pm, including a Really Free Market, workshops, performances, music and free food from Food Not Bombs!

Another paramilitary group is working on setting up shop in San Diego, Blackwater. Of course, these are far more real paramilitaries than the Minutemen, with far more resources, more government support and much more dangerous. Blackwater has also recently tried to setup a training facility in Ohio, having expressed their hope to become the new paramilitary force on the US borders, backing up the border patrol, adding to the unjust harassment, detention and murder of innocent people trying to migrate.

In San Diego, a large network of organizations, coalitions and people has come together to keep Blackwater from setting up shop here. So far, they’ve been successful, helping to mobilize the city of Potrero and kicking Blackwater out. Though while that was going on, Blackwater was secretly working on setting up a training facility in Otay Mesa, right near the border crossing in San Diego, getting permits under other names and operating in secret. This facility recently came to light and was planned to open in June...

This week, city council was flooded with people concerned with stopping Blackwater, asking who gave them their permits, what other names Blackwater is using and if city council is encouraging San Diego to be a breeding ground for paramiltary violence. Yesterday, the City Attorney issued a statement saying that Blackwater’s permits were insufficient and today the mayor issued a work stoppage on the Blackwater site. Again, this is another major victory for the large network of people in San Diego working to stop Blackwater. Congratulations and way to go!

We can see the effects that paramilitary forces have had on social justice in places like Colombia and Chiapas, Mexico. While local police forces, massive governments and transnational corporations are already, in this day, almost impossible to hold accountable, paramilitary forces become an extreme expression of that unaccontability. In Iraq, Blackwater contractors have killed countless numbers of civilians, just as paramilitary forces in Colombia and Mexico who have committed numerous massacres. It is hopeful to see that while this decentralization of violence is happening, the decentralization of resistance is effectively countering it right here in San Diego. Let’s keep building on this momentum and continue changing this border city from a defense bunker to a laboratory of possibilities of resistance.

This is closely tied to the upcoming resistance against the BIO conference in San Diego, with people taking an active role in asking what we want this city to be and stepping up to challenge the corporate forces shaping the city, raising sustainability and ethical concerns and holding local officials accountable. A large network of organizations has come together to challenge the agenda of the conference: bioweapons, genetically engineered food and corporate medicine, and to present a better world being slowly created in our community including organic community gardening, taking our health into our own hands and joyous resistance to biotechnology.

To get involved, check out http://cityheightsfreeskool.org. The next meeting / work party is Thursday, May 22nd at 7:30pm at the City Heights Free Skool, 4246 Wightman St, San Diego, CA 92105. If you can donate money or art supplies, please do! Bring them by the house or mail a tax deductible check made out to Activist San Diego, clearly marked for biotech resistance.

The conference is happening from June 17-20th and already lots of actions are being planned, so there isn’t much time and there’s a lot to do. San Diego is the second largest concentration of biotech in the world and just as with blackwater, we need to resist their control over our communities and our lives. So join us and take part in understanding what’s going on in our city and asking hard questions about biotech.

Below is the Union-Tribune story about the Mayor’s work stop order against Blackwater.

City Attorney Aguirre finds fault in permits for facility
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Sanders halts work at Blackwater site
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*By Tanya Mannes *
SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
May 17, 2008

OTAY MESA – Mayor Jerry Sanders yesterday ordered work to stop on Blackwater Worldwide's proposed military training facility in Otay Mesa.

The mayor was prompted by a legal opinion issued earlier in the afternoon by San Diego City Attorney Michael Aguirre. The opinion found problems with Blackwater's permits.

A Blackwater vice president responded last night by accusing Sanders and
Aguirre, who are running for re-election June 3, of political posturing in an election year.

Blackwater, based in North Carolina, has drawn protests and scrutiny for its work in providing security for officials in Iraq. In March 2004, Iraqi insurgents in Fallujah killed four Blackwater employees, and in September 2007, Blackwater guards killed 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad.

The company has leased a 61,600-square-foot warehouse in a business park three blocks from the U.S.-Mexico border near Brown Field. It's installing a shooting range, a simulated Navy ship and classrooms.

San Diego's Development Services Department issued permits in March for
Blackwater's interior improvements. The site was zoned for a vocational school, and city staff members decided that Blackwater's training qualified.

The permits were obtained through two companies with which Blackwater does business: Southwest Law Enforcement and Raven Development Group.

Once people heard of the company's plans, Rep. Bob Filner, D-San Diego,
organized a rally with San Diego City Council President Scott Peters and
Councilman Ben Hueso. They said Blackwater tried to keep its plan secret.

On May 5, Sanders sent a memo to the city's chief operating officer asking for an investigation into the permits and requested a report by May 23. Bill Harris, a mayoral spokesman, said yesterday that Sanders will re-evaluate the proposal once the investigation is complete.

Aguirre's opinion called for a stop-work order and a more rigorous application process.

He said the Municipal Code requires City Council approval, as well as a state environmental review, for most firearms use within city limits.

Also, Southwest Law Enforcement did not provide accurate information in its permit applications, Aguirre said. It listed several purposes for the warehouse in permit applications, he said. One said it would be a training facility, another an indoor firing range, and another application said the warehouse would continue to be used for storage.

In a statement last night, Brian Bonfiglio, a Blackwater vice president, said, "Every person involved with the project identified themselves as representing Blackwater."

Bonfiglio said that the Navy needs the training the company would provide and that the city needs "all the taxpaying businesses it can get."

"It is tragic that City Attorney Aguirre is driving Mayor Sanders to turn our troops and the San Diego economy into unwilling pawns in an Election Year game," he wrote.

In March, Blackwater abandoned a proposal for an 824-acre center in Potrero, citing noise tests that showed gunfire would exceed local standards.