East-West Relations to Go--Hold the Mustard

Among the stunning specimens of American culture to be admired in San Diego this week by a delegation from Yantai, China, are an island concocted out of dredge spoils, an aging men’s beach game and the drive-in window of a Pacific Highway Jack-in-the-Box.

The muckamucks from southwestern China are in town until Monday looking for tips towards making Yantai the People’s Republic’s Finest City. Their visit includes a pilgrimage to Fiesta Island--a product of marshland dredging the delegates might try back home.

While there, the group is to hear about San Diego’s much-ballyhooed Over-the-Line tournament, staged there annually in a welter of raunchiness and char-broiled flesh. Termed primly “activity inappropriate for family participation,” it draws 150,000 spectators.

“But I would say the pivotal event and the one that will make the biggest difference in future Sino-San Diego relations will be the trip through the Jack-in-the-Box,” said Tim Larrick, spokesman for the visit, which was arranged by the San Diego-Yantai Friendship Society and includes many more traditional and edifying events.

“It’s unknown whether they’ll have the bacon cheeseburger or the chicken sandwich or what, but it will be their first-ever American fast-food restaurant,” Larrick said. “So there’s a lot of anticipation over that, of course.”

Put This in Your Pipe

Pat Wright thinks much of the “war on drugs” is so much hot air. To make his point, the Libertarian candidate for the 79th District state Assembly seat this week says he is sending marijuana pipes to his opponents “to demonstrate my complete disgust with the matter.”

“I had originally intended to send actual marijuana, but cooler heads and a limited campaign budget prevented this,” Wright wrote in one letter. “ . . . As far as I’m concerned, you are an adult and can smoke, drink and do whatever you please, so long as you harm no one in the process and respect my rights to do likewise.”

Response, so far, has been quizzical.

“What party is this guy?” asked Mark Sanchez, an aide to incumbent Assemblyman Pete Chacon. Sanchez said Chacon would have no comment. But the Rev. Robert Ard, the Republican candidate, said he agreed with some of Wright’s points but differed with his conclusions.

“When we talk about doing things that don’t affect anyone else, drug abusers do affect others,” said Ard, who supports making it criminal to sell or manufacture drug paraphernalia. “The people we presently refer to as victims must be held accountable. I think the best medicine for some of the abusers is a good dose of punishment.”

Wright’s letter, which was dated Sept. 12 but had not been received by Ard and Chacon, said the candidate was not minimizing the damage from abuse. But he said, “The problem is a symptom of a much greater malaise,” including underemployment, poor education and a declining standard of living.

“This is kind of an apple pie and baseball issue with the President,” Wright said in an interview late Monday. “But it’s sort of empty rhetoric, and the cost is civil liberties. . . . Us poor libertarians are sick about it.”

Lonely Battles

America Sosa tells a terrible story:

At age 14, her son Juan was arrested, tortured and accused of murder by the El Salvadoran National Police, she says. Imprisoned without trial, he was freed in seven months and won political asylum in Mexico. She has not seen him in four years.

Her husband, Joaquin, 49, disappeared in 1981. According to Sosa, he was a construction worker, never involved in politics. When he resurfaced, he was unable to walk, a victim of torture and mistaken identity. He was hospitalized and died 15 days later.

America Sosa, 47, is a representative of COMADRES, the Committee of Mothers and Relatives of Political Prisoners, Disappeared and Assassinated of El Salvador. She will be in San Diego on Oct. 5 to receive the first San Diego International Human Rights Award, aimed at focusing attention on human rights issues.

Also to be honored by the 8-month-old San Diego International Human Rights Awards Committee are the Rev. Richard Shanor, director of Metro, the United Methodist Urban Ministry, and a longtime advocate for refugees, the homeless and the disenfranchised. A government award will go to county Supervisor Leon Williams, celebrating the county Human Relations Commission and what the committee calls “his lonely fight for divestment of county holdings in South Africa.”

“A number of us who have followed that issue have been frustrated by the political debate,” Donald Cohen, a San Diego activist and member of the Human Rights Awards Committee, said of the war in El Salvador. “Everyone has opinions about what should be done and what shouldn’t be done. What’s being lost is what’s happening to the people down there.”