Local
This article first appeared on Rachel Coyle's Substack.
A budget is a moral document. It shows us your priorities.
For example, Ohio’s budget can fund programs that support children and families — or it can fund tax cuts for billionaires. It just depends on who our state considers important.
Right now, Ohio’s priorities should sicken us all.
Following is a statement from Lynn Tramonte, Executive Director of the Ohio Immigrant Alliance, after the deportation of Cincinnati teenager Emerson Colindres.
"They did it. The Trump administration deported Emerson Colindres. What kind of cold, callous heart do you have to have deport a young man like him, at the start of his future? Like his whole family, Emerson was on a path to a U visa. He lived most of his life here. His teachers love him, his teammates, his coaches. This didn't have to happen. The federal government could have made a different choice; they could have let him stay.
Since the return of Donald Trump to the White House, he and his Republican allies have worked to destroy the U.S. government’s overseas humanitarian aid programs.
This action flies in the face of the U.S. government’s lengthy record of humanitarian assistance to people of other nations whose lives had been blighted by war, poverty, and illness. From the Marshall Plan to rebuild war-devastated Europe, to Senator George McGovern’s Food for Peace project to feed the hungry, to massive international public health campaigns to eradicate global diseases, U.S. aid programs have played an important role in alleviating human suffering around the world.
Sunday, June 22 6-8pm
Ohio Statehouse, Broad and High Streets
As Trump launches war on Iran, risking millions of lives and pushing the world closer to World War 3, we must take to the streets and demand: STOP THE WAR ON IRAN! MONEY FOR PEOPLE'S NEEDS, NOT THE WAR MACHINE!
Trump’s win convinced local conservatives they too have a mandate to rid Columbus of immigrants, but their tactics amount to nothing more than spreading lies, and hopefully that’s all they do. But the anxiety-inducing damage inflicted by these rumors is ongoing.
ICE agents are increasingly witnessed in Columbus making arrests of non-criminals, this is fact. Putting them in ICE-contracted county jails for overstaying their visa, for instance, which according to the Ohio Immigrant Alliance is a civil violation, not criminal. Thus, holding on to your job to achieve the American dream could get you sent to the hellhole that is Buter County jail which is run by Trump glory-hole lover Sherrif Richard K. Jones.
Juneteenth on the Ave
Saturday, June 21, 12-6pm
Bronzeville area, Mt. Vernon Avenue
Juneteenth is celebrated annually, usually on the 19th of June to mark the date when some of the last enslaved people in the Confederacy were notified of their freedom following the Civil War.
Juneteenth on the Ave. is a city-wide, family-friendly celebration and commemoration of Freedom.
For weeks, Congress has been wrapped up in passing President Trump’s big, brutal budget — the one that pays for tax cuts for the wealthy and a trillion-dollar Pentagon budget by taking food stamps and Medicaid away from people struggling to get by.
The GOP-controlled House of Representatives just barely passed this bill — it squeaked through by a single vote. Now the Senate is considering it.
Alongside trillions in tax cuts for the wealthy, the bill also gives big handouts to the Pentagon and the president’s plans to separate immigrant families. It would result in the country’s first-ever trillion-dollar Pentagon budget — and triple annual spending on the mass detention of immigrants.
Thursday, June 19, lineup starts at 10am, parade at 11am
Hudson at Cleveland Avenue
Third annual Junettenth parade, come to partcipate or cheer us on!
People move — is a part of life as old as time, as basic as breathing. But U.S. immigration laws have been written through scapegoating, not sensible debate. They are not logical, and do not work the way they did over a century ago, when my relatives came to this country. They also do not work the way most people think they should, or want them to.
The first vote I ever cast was for a Democrat. I believed in the Democratic Party, and I want to believe in them again. But most of them aren’t listening, and they’re not meeting this moment with the bold ferocity it requires. Until they do, I’ll remain skeptical, critical, and vocal.
Indivisible Central Ohio recently hosted an empty-chair town hall meeting for Ohio’s 15th Congressional District. Here’s how they described the event after it ended: