Local
Saturday, August 23, 12noon-5pm, Whetstone Park, 3901 N. High St.
Come celebrate the nature of Columbus!
Food trucks, music, vendors, guided nature tours, art, a children’s area, plants for sale, and non-profits from all over the city! Visit columbusarborfest.com to learn more.
Hosted by Columbus ArborFest and Green Columbus.
The Ohio Coalition to End Qualified Immunity (OCTEQI) is advancing its historic citizen-led initiative to amend the Ohio State Constitution. After overcoming a prolonged series of administrative and legal battles, the campaign has now entered its critical statewide signature-gathering phase, aiming for placement on the November 3, 2026, general election ballot. The coalition is a unified effort of multiple civil rights and accountability organizations, led by the Heartbeat Movement Inc. The initiative’s Ballotpedia page can be viewed here.
Homeowners rush to install solar
Homeowners are rushing to install solar before the December 31st expiration of the 30 percent tax credit.
The surge in consumer activity follows the passage of HR1 on July 4th of this year, and its elimination of the residential Investment Tax Credit (ITC) at the end of 2025. Homeowners have through December 31st, to have their systems installed to claim the 30 percent federal tax credit, which represents an average of $9,000 in savings on typical installations, according to EnergySage Intel data.
Overall, EnergySage saw a 59 percent month-over-month increase in registrations from potential customers from June to July and a 205 percent year-over-year increase in homeowners actively working with installers.
Solar installers are being dramatically impacted by the urgency to go solar. A recent survey conducted by EnergySage found that 35 percent of solar installers expect to stop taking new customers before October 1st, and around 9 percent indicated they have already reached capacity for 2025.
The bill would specify that persons who are unlawfully present in the United States are not “privileged” from arrest. This bill has already passed the Ohio Senate (6/18/2025). It was introduced in the House (6/23/25), but has not yet been referred to a committee. More information in this OCJ article and this analysis.
What can you do now?
An ethical journalist acts with integrity. As I sat in my first ever journalism class, staring at the sentence scrawled on the chalkboard, my heart soared with the conviction that I was entering a field defined by truth.
But just two months later, as Israeli bombs reduced the streets of Gaza to rubble, I watched Western media justify the countless Palestinian lives stolen, as though my people’s suffering was disposable. Each death fractured my heart, while media organizations played a cruel game of linguistic gymnastics to avoid recognizing the depravity of genocide. Stories were told without context, headlines stripped of humanity, and the integrity I had been promised felt like an illusion. My faith in journalism collapsed, reduced to rubble alongside the buildings of my homeland.
Now, in the first journalism class of my junior year, I find myself staring at the same words again. Only this time, it doesn’t feel inspirational, it feels empty.
In a landmark decision on Tuesday evening, August 19, Whitehall City Council unamimously passed an ordinance that simultaneously bans conversion therapy for minors and legalizes LGBTQ+ inclusive non-discrimination protections. This makes Whitehall the 37th location in Ohio to pass an LGBTQ+ inclusive non-discrimination protections and the 14th location to ban conversation for minors.
This critical step ensures legal protection from discrimination in the City of Whitehall for all residents, including those who are LGBTQ+, and it ensures that LGBTQ+ youth in Whitehall will no longer be subjected to the harmful and discredited practice, which has been widely condemned by medical and mental health professionals.
This article first appeard on Rachel Coyle's Substack
Late last week, The Ohio State University announced its newest policy to prevent students from voicing their political opinions on campus:
Wednesday, August 20, 6-8pm
Seventh Son Brewing Co., 1101 N. Fourth St.
Mark your calendars for August 20 from 6pm to 8pm for “August Green Drinks” at Seventh Son Brewing Co. At this “Green Drinks,” speakers from SWACO and Circular Thrift will discuss their new textile recycling pilot program. Attendees are encouraged to bring end-of-life clothing to this event to recycle. Please use this link to check what clothing items qualify as end of life. Hope to see you all there.
Hosted by Green Columbus.
This article first appeared on Simply Living.
At 91, Ellen Baumgartner speaks with a quiet grace and a deep well of wisdom that comes from a lifetime of caring for people, for community, and for the Earth. As one of Simply Living’s early founding members, Ellen helped shape the organization’s spirit of grassroots action and connection.
Roots of Compassion
Ellen grew up in Montclair, New Jersey, where her father served as a Congregational minister. Diversity was a natural part of her childhood — a third of her graduating class in 1952 was black, and prejudice was never part of her family’s values.
On Sunbury Road, where the city begins to thin and green again, the Agler Freedom House sits modestly behind a line of trees. Its windows are plain, the white clapboard siding unadorned. The casual passerby might miss it entirely. But the ground beneath it carries a memory older than the city of Columbus itself.
In the mid-19th century, this house stood on a quiet stretch of road that was far from quiet in its purpose. Runaway slaves – men, women, and children – moved through here at night, guided by whispered directions and the promise of safety. The Agler family, white abolitionists in a hostile state, took them in. Basements became bunkers, kitchens became waystations.
The people who stopped here weren’t simply “runaways” – they were fugitives under federal law, risking life and limb for the radical act of freedom. They were also freedom seekers, part of a network of the defiant and the determined that would come to be called the Underground Railroad.
More than 150 years later, another kind of traveler found his way to the same door.