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GUEST: SAN DIEGO’S DONNA FRYE
PRIVATIZING PUBLIC LAND
Donna Frye: Mission Bay Park Is Not “Surplus” Land
A successful business owner with a bachelor’s degree in business, Donna Frye served the public and City of San Diego as a Councilmember from 2001 to 2010. During her tenure, Frye distinguished herself as an independent thinker who fought relentlessly for an open and honest government that was accountable to the public.
Frye believes the role of government is to serve the public and improve the quality of life for all members of the community and used her leadership skills to help open the doors of government.
Her 2004 boycott of closed session meetings served as the catalyst to reform the rules to allow for greater public access and more transparency of those meetings. She also worked with Californians Aware to rally public consensus around a tough open-government City Charter ballot measure that passed with 82 percent of the vote.
Frye’s advocacy on behalf of the public and its right to know what its government is doing began more than 30 years ago. Prior to her election, she was best known for her environmental activism and her commitment to clean water. She founded Surfers Tired of Pollution, which helped initiate efforts to establish uniform statewide water monitoring standards and require the posting of warning signs in front of discharging storm drains to warn the public about the pollution. Frye received the 2011 Sunshine Award from the San Diego Society of Professional Journalists.
Isn’t it wiping out our jobs, stealing our creativity, blurring fact and fiction with deep fakes, and pushing us into a dystopian future that will suck the humanity out of us all? Are we doomed?
For historian Yuval Harari and would-be politician Andrew Yang, AI will create self-driving trucks that will decimate the working-class. Peter Truchin, the mathematical historian, seriously imagines a future in which AI robots are used to colonize asteroids with new weapons that will allow a few powerful men, or maybe just one, to rule the universe.
Getta grip!
While inflammatory prognosticators predict that hundreds of millions of jobs will be gobbled up by AI, only 10,000 jobs were cut due to AI in the first seven months of 2025. That sure-to-be-slaughtered trucking industry is expected to experience an 11 percent total increase, not decrease, in truck drivers through 2030. It’s not at all clear that more jobs will be destroyed than created as AI spreads. Predictions of the unemployed roaming the streets due to automation haven’t yet occurred even during rapid periods of technological change. Why should this time be different?
Nevertheless, it’s entirely possible that a wide range of jobs will be dramatically impacted by AI. This wouldn’t be the first time. World War II also ushered in an amazing array of new technologies and production techniques to compensate for and cope with the vast needs of a war economy that was missing 17 million workers in the armed forces.
But then, as opposed to now, Wall Street didn’t run the country, and we had a powerful labor movement that understood that vast productivity increases could lead to increased wages and shorter workweeks, not just job destruction.
Today, things are more than a little different. We seem in total awe of AI, falling on our knees before its vast power, while experiencing no power of our own to change the course of events. As a result, we aren’t even discussing how AI could and should be used to create a four-day work week without reduced pay.
Imagine for a moment that AI does have the potential to eliminate one fifth of all jobs without new jobs filling the breach. Going to a four-day work week would make certain that unemployment would remain low, while tens of millions gain more time away from work without loss of pay. Mind-numbing work could be replaced. Work and home life could be enriched.
That kind of dream was alive and well when labor unions represented more than one out of every three private sector workers, instead of about one in 20 today. During and after WWII, labor unions were a force to be reckoned with. Government and corporate leaders understood that the fruits of productivity needed to be shared with working people or there would be big trouble in the form of mass strikes.
In October 1955, a congressional committee held hearings on “Automation and Technological Change,” to deal with the unease the country felt about technological change. The report said what was obvious then but is totally absent from today’s AI hysteria.
“The prevailing workweek in manufacturing today, as is well known, is about 40 hours per week compared to about 45 in the mid-1920s and about 60 at the turn of the century. The hope is frequently expressed that the fruits of automation may permit us to reduce this still further to 30, 32, or 35 hours per week in the not-so-distant future.”
Not so distant future? That was written 70 years ago.
We no longer think these thoughts. We no longer have these discussions. We no longer imagine having enough power to make such substantive changes to our collective work lives. We expect the fruits of productivity to go entirely to the corporations and Wall Street – their reward for their great insights and ingenuity. (With the exception of Professor Juliet Schor, who is conducting research on the value of a four-day work week and helping corporations try it.)
And why? Because we have lost our collective will to power as expressed by labor unions. And our political representatives have allowed Wall Street to run wild all over us.
At this very moment, Wall Street and large corporations like Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple are killing tens of thousands of jobs to finance stock buybacks, the tool of choice to enrich the largest shareholders and richest executives. (For the data to prove that point see Chapter 11 of Wall Street’s War on Workers.)
Leveraged buyouts and stock buybacks have been killing tens of millions of jobs, not AI. And they will continue to do so until we have a political movement with the guts to take on high finance and protect the needs and interests of the rest of us.
As I will show in more detail in upcoming Substacks, the Democratic Party is not it. Working people want something new….and soon.
Les Leopold
After graduating from Oberlin College and Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs, Les Leopold co-founded the Labor Institute in 1976, a nonprofit organization that designs research and educational programs on occupational safety and health, the environment, and economics for unions, worker centers, and community organizations. He continues to serve as executive director of the Labor Institute and is currently working to build a national economic educational train-the-trainer program with unions and community groups.
Tune in to Friendly Fire to hear retired USA Colonel and A&M professor Greg Daddis discuss his latest book, Faith and Fear: America’s Relationship with War since 1945.
WHEN RELIGIOUS MAFIA AND RIGHT WING EXTREMISTS TAKE OVER with ROLLO ROMIG
The 2017 murder of Gauri Lankesh, an Indian journalist and activist, is indicative of the expanding tide of authoritarianism worldwide that is now infecting the United States.
One of the most stark examples of the expanding tide of authoritarianism worldwide was the 2017 murder of Gauri Lankesh, an Indian journalist and activist, allegedly assassinated by a far-right religious group in India for her fearless journalism.
Romig chronicles the rise of Hindu nationalist extremism in India, linking it to India’s current authoritarian policies under Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The group accused of Lankesh’s assassination, Sanatan Sanstha, operates on the vision “of making India an officially Hindu country and, equally importantly, relegating all non-Hindus to second-class citizenship and ostracizing, particularly, Muslims from Hindu society,” according to Romig.
Much like in the United States, Romig and Hedges argue that such fringe groups serve a strategic purpose of mainstreaming extremist ideologies that ultimately benefit the ruling class. Gauri’s work represented a threat to far-right political movements in India and she was often subjected to fierce intimidation campaigns, including, as the title of Romig’s book suggests, being placed on murder hit lists.
CALL IN WITH QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS: 619-790-KNSJ (5675)
Mike’s Guest is KIM MOORE, Education and Training Director with the United Domestic Workers Labor Union in San Diego
United Domestic Workers is a statewide union representing over 200,000 home care and child care providers in California.
Kim Moore has been a community organizer for 20 years in San Diego working on various campaigns related to policing, mass incarceration and immigration. In 2018, she co-founded the San Diego bail fund with several other local organizers.
Kim has spent the last 11 organizing workers through her job at UDW, where she is the Education & Training Director.
Labor Day is only a few weeks away. Mike and Kim will be in conversation about the history of labor, the strength in organizing, having a seat at the table, the responsibilities of domestic workers, and more.
STOP & TALK with Grant Oliphant and Crystal Page Fri 8am
Thoughtful conversations and a good way to start the day! STOP & TALK dives deep into the themes of purpose and opportunity, guided by the insights of leaders in the arts and culture, health, philanthropy, finance, and innovation fields. Together, we celebrated local achievements and envisioned what’s possible in San Diego County.
NEWS AND INTERVIEWS ABOUT WHAT IS GOING ON IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOODS.
Tonight Patricia is in conversation about UNRESTRICTED BUILDING IN SAN DIEGO
Patricia talks to Pamela Begeal, Current Administrator, ADU Bonus.
______ ABOUT PAMELA______
I have been a resident in the City of San Diego since 1965.
In 2025 segments started appearing on television and articles in print media about egregious sized apartment complexes being built in the back of single family homes in our City.
Calling themselves accessory dwelling units, ADUs or granny flats as they were commonly known
However no one had ever heard of 10, 12 or 18 being built in backyards but the pictures of what was springing up was undeniable.
After some investigating I found that starting back even before Covid, City and State planners were looking at increasing housing in the State of California by loosening restrictions on building and passing laws favorable to these larger developments.
In October 2020, the City of San Diego created the ADU BONUS program and the race was on. Developers quietly started buying up single family homes in anticipation of these more relaxed building laws. Commercials started appearing on television stating we will buy your home, no closing costs, etc.
In 2023 some of these smaller ADU bonus projects started appearing as 4 or 5 units in a backyard. By 2025 the floodgates were opened and these massive 10.12, and 18 units in backyards started appearing and citizens like myself noticed.
Grass roots organizations like Neighbors For A Better San Diego had been sounding the alarm since 2020, but now there was no longer any way to ignore it as these were going in on residential streets, two stories high, ruining neighbors’ privacy and creating absolutely no parking on already minimal parking area streets like cul-de-sacs.
Neighbors to these egregious projects were being bullied by the developers and turning to our City for help fell on deaf ears.
That is when I started ADUBONUS.org to help people who are fighting right now for their home’s value and their neighborhood.
We have information on how to contact the City and contractors with issues and complaints, map to show where the next set of large backyard complexes may be built, what to do before, during and after construction, neighborhood groups forming, protests and lawsuits.
KNSJ MONTHLY INTRODUCTION AND COMMUNITY MEETING THURSDAY, 8/7, 6:30 PM
THURSDAY, 6:30 PM, ON ZOOM. WE ARE LOOKING FOR YOU TO JOIN KNSJ TO HELP RUN A VOLUNTEER RADIO STATION. CALL 619-283-1100 FOR ZOOM INFO.
YES, YOU! ALL AGES (WELL, ALMOST). SCHOOL STUDENTS TO ???
NO EXPERIENCE NEEDED, JUST A PASSION FOR RADIO AT THE GRASS ROOTS LEVEL, COVERING NEWS FROM YOUR NEIGHBORHOODS, OUR RICH HOMETOWN CREATIVE ARTS COMMUNITY, SOCIAL JUSTICE, SCIENCE, THOUGHTFUL CONVERSATIONS, POP CULTURE AND ??? YOU LET US KNOW WHAT YOU THINK NEEDS TO BE COVERED IN YOUR COMMUNITY. KNSJ, INDEPENDENT RADIO BROADCASTING IN SAN DIEGO, THE BORDER REGION, RURAL COMMUNITIES, FEATURING VOICES AND STORIES NOT HEARD ON STATIONS CONTROLLED BY MEGA CORPORATIONS WHO HAVE NO TIES TO OUR NEIGHBORHOODS.
JOIN US ON ZOOM THURSDAY, AUG. 7, 2025, AND FIND OUT ABOUT VOLUNTEERING WITH US FROM THE GROUND FLOOR, ADMINISTRATIVE, SOCIAL MEDIA, VIDEO, NEWS, INTERVIEW OPPORTUNITIES, WORKING ON A RADIO A SHOW WHETHER TALK OR MUSIC (DID I MENTION THAT WE HAVE A FANTASTIC MUSIC BLOCK AT NIGHT WITH LOCAL DJs?), AND A LOT MORE OPPORTUNITIES. AND, THE BEST PART, HAVE FUN WHILE MAKING A DIFFERENCE IN YOUR COMMUNITY. CALL 619-283-1100 FOR THE ZOOM INFORMATION.
NEIGHBORS FOR A BETTER PACIFIC BEACH with Guest Merv Thompson
Patricia and her guest talk about the growth of housing in Pacific Beach, congestion, traffic, air pollution, the environment, proper management of development in, and protection of, San Diego neighborhoods, concept of ADUs, destruction of an important Kumeyaay village, neighborhood communities speaking up to city officials. and more.
