Lorena Gonzalez has been a visible face of the San Diego labor movement’s resistance against anti-worker initiatives. In a city that is seeing its demographics change due to Latino immigration, labor foes are grasping at the straws of an anti-union establishment that ran the city as if the middle-class never mattered. One sign of desperation is an onslaught of ballot measures designed to eliminate public employee pensions and Project Labor Agreements in construction. Signature gatherers, paid by developers and contractors, are repeatedly misleading voters to get initiatives on the June 2012 ballot.
But, these fraudulent actors are finding it increasingly difficult to lie in the face of Gonzalez's extraordinary campaign to inform the voters about the nature of the petitions, no matter where they go. This battle for workers is being fought in the streets, in public gatherings, in radio ads, and in front of every major store in the eight largest city in America.
As a result of bungled paid signature gathering efforts (kudos to the barrel-bottom cheapness of their approach), two major initiatives in San Diego have collapsed in one year. Still, two remain, hence Lorena’s ferocious determination to stop the initiatives. She is one of the last lines of defense against the dominion of the anti-union establishment in this and other metros in America.
The result? Online threats, intimidation, and a brick through Gonzalez's window.
According to her account:
Yesterday, a "private investigator" who serves as the Republican Party Secretary and has warned me for months on twitter that I "was being watched," even going so far as to say he was watching what was being served for breakfast, posted a "tell all" on a San Diego Republican blog describing my so-called hypocritical lifestyle. He noted that according to the Labor Council's IRS filings that if you include family health care, retirement contributions and salary, I make a little over $117,000 a year. He went on to document the fact that I live in a very nice neighborhood - and imagined that I am lounging in my million dollar neighborhood eating caviar and drinking organic gourmet coffee. He went so far as to pinpoint the area where I live (which is easily findable on the Internet).
Then, at about 10:30 last night - while my kids and I were settling in for the night - we heard what can only be described as a large crashing sound that drove me and my daughter from our rooms, thinking the other was in danger. Luckily, my neighbors came out and had actually witnessed what had happened. A sports utility vehicle had come down our very quiet street, turned out its lights, a couple young men in the vehicle stopped in front of my house (which was well lit and hard to access due to parked cars directly in front of my house) got out and threw objects at my house until they shattered the front large living room window. A heavy rock was found on my living room floor along with glass.
Lorena Gonzalez is a single mother with two children. People who know her know that as much as she works for workers she works for her family. Thankfully, no one got hurt...physically. But was this vandalism a mere coincidence? Police are investigating, so we will find out. What we do know is very troubling. This happened within days of a right-wing blogger publishing the details of the Gonzalez residence. And this happened within hours of her debating another right-winger on using felons for signature gathering.