I started working at Voice of San Diego in March, and boy, has time flown by.
We were there to capture some of San Diego’s biggest moments, from brave students protesting the removal of bus routes, to asylum-seekers fighting for their rights at the border.
Here are some of our favorites.
Thousands of women across the country participated in the Women’s March this January. A diverse group of speakers at San Diego’s Waterfront Park shared their stories and several made the point that the struggle for gender equity predates the election of President Donald Trump.
“Oppression did not start with this administration,” said City Councilwoman Monica Montgomery.
You don’t see this every day: Strippers protested outside Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez’s downtown San Diego office in February with signs that read “stripped of our independence” and “make stripping great again.”
The group was upset about AB 5, a measure written by Gonzalez that limits when employers can classify workers as independent contractors. The bill was eventually signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom, but the fight over it is far from over.
That brings us to March, when Andrew Keatts reported that four men had accused San Diego Unified trustee Kevin Beiser of sexual misconduct and abuse.
Protesters outside of the district office urged Beiser to resign from the school board. Soon after, the board unanimously passed a resolution asking him to step down. He hasn’t. Beiser’s term runs through 2022.
Photo by Megan Wood
The closure of the Plaza Hotel downtown means the city’s SRO stock is dwindling even further.
Earlier this year, city housing officials rushed to aid dozens of residents who would soon be booted from the property. It was one of the latest single-room occupancy hotels set to shut down.
Greg Florey, a desk clerk and resident at the hotel, showed us what living there was like.
Tijuana continued to adjust to its place as “the waiting room” for asylum-seekers hoping to enter the United States this year. The unofficial list of those hoping to request asylum had grown to 10,000 people in August, up from 4,800 just three months earlier.
Adriana Heldiz snapped this photo of names being called from the list at El Chaparral.
Maya Srikrishnan spent a week in and around San Pedro Sula, Honduras – the city where the large migrant caravans that journeyed through Mexico to our border last year launched from.
A Honduran photographer, Melvin Cubas, accompanied her along the way. He took this photo showing the waiting room in a public hospital following protests over government proposals to privatize health care and education.
Former Bonita High School student Gabriel Huerta shared with us the devastating details about how his former teacher had sexually abused him for years.
“In the moment I felt special; I felt like I had a friend for the rest of my life; I felt like this person has my back; I felt like I was starting to feel love,” said Huerta.
This year, San Ysidro High School parents and students had a concern bigger than buying school supplies: How would students get to school safely?
The Sweetwater Union High School District announced in July that it would be cutting 20 bus stops designated for San Ysidro High. Students who couldn’t find a ride to school or afford to take public transit were forced to hike up and down a steep hill every day. After months of protest, students, along with Madres Unidas de San Ysidro Chapter, got the district’s attention and persuaded officials to add two more bus stops.
Jose Luis Perez, a sophomore at San Ysidro High, was one of the students impacted. Adriana Heldiz joined him on his six-mile journey to and from school.
Finally, we end on this photo of Gonzalez at a campaign rally for presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren at Waterfront Park in October. It’s just a good photo.