Demonstrations San Diego

With the National Endowment for the Arts under siege over funding policy and much of the arts community trying to put its least controversial foot forward, you might think that four dissident artists who love to ruffle the status quo would be less public with their provocations.

It might be the first time that soaping down a supercherry 1953 Ford pickup truck rated as an act of political rebellion. But, hey, these are desperate times--at least for the high school pep clubs, church groups and other nonprofit and charitable organizations that depend on street-corner carwashes to raise money. And desperate times, well, they're enough to make you take to the streets, with chamois and garden hose in hand.

The Rev. Dorman Owens, the fundamentalist minister who along with six of his followers was arrested Thursday on charges of conspiring to bomb a clinic that performs abortions, is an open-collar preacher who is the antithesis of the telegenic, and often wealthy, religious leaders who frequently appear on television. For Owens, the test of religious faith is not met through the accumulation of wealth, large religious compounds or the damnation of evil. Rather, it is met through deeds and action.

Aida Mancillas was scared. She'd come to Dairy Mart Road, at the U.S. border, as part of a counter-protest against a campaign by conservative San Diegans angry at the rapid flow of illegal immigrants coming from Mexico. As she joined the line that night little more than a year ago, she held up a mirror and turned back the beams from hundreds of burning headlights toward the anonymous cars.

Even Ted Williams could not keep President Bush from being booed Tuesday night at baseball's All-Star Game. The President walked onto the field in the shadow of Williams, a member of baseball's Hall of Fame who received the honor of tossing out the first ball. Not only was Bush not asked to perform that ceremonial chore, he did not even get his own introduction. "Ladies and gentlemen, Ted Williams," said the stadium announcer, "accompanied by his good friend, George Bush."

When the Miss California Beauty Pageant debuted in San Diego three years ago, local politicos and hometown rah-rahs regaled the contest with the same kind of adulation a high school football team might heap on its homecoming queen. "I think I speak for all of San Diego when I say that this ceremony signifies the desire of more than 1 million San Diegans to take an active role in this contest," then-Acting Mayor Ed Struiksma told onlookers as he surveyed the 41 contestants gathered on the Community Concourse downtown.

A federal judge Friday ruled that the designated protest zone for demonstrators during the upcoming Republican National Convention is unconstitutional because it is too remote from the convention center. U.S. District Judge Rudi Brewster ruled that the three-acre lot about 625 feet from the center's entrance does not meet legal requirements that protesters must be able to be seen and heard by delegates.

Hoping to end a controversy involving free speech, city officials Wednesday announced a new "protest zone" for the Republican National Convention that is closer to the convention center than the site rejected by a federal judge. The site announced by City Manager Jack McGrory is 165 feet from the perimeter of the center where the Republicans will meet Aug. 12-15. A site 625 feet away was struck down last week by U.S.

Fifteen students and janitors were arrested Friday during a protest near UC San Diego in support of the janitors' demand for better pay and benefits. Ten men and five women were arrested without incident after refusing to disperse from a busy intersection adjacent to the La Jolla campus, a police spokesman said. The janitors work for a company that cleans buildings at the university. "I came here for justice and to make a difference," said student Rene Gube as he was handcuffed.

In what may be the harbinger of similar demonstrations throughout California, several hundred doctors and other medical personnel closed their offices for several hours Thursday to protest what they say is a dangerously deteriorating health care system. "San Diego has been on the cutting edge of medical advances and managed care," Dr. Edward Singer, a gastroenterologist and president of the San Diego County Medical Society, told a protest rally. "Now we are on the bleeding edge."