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Columbus produces influential people for various reasons. One reason is Columbus has major learning institutions which provide an influx of young people looking to ripen, who mix with the civilians who exist. One place that exemplified this pure-of-heart culture incubator was Bernie’s Bagels and Deli (and bar) on the OSU campus. The campus bar combined lifer-anarchists with college kids who, in turn, created experiences that helped develop new energies. They finally removed Bernie’s physically. But with this spirit of internal exploration, here is my incomplete guide to something you could do with your next two months to 75 years.

Allen Ginsberg

As 96 percent of America's minds descend into election-year madness, driven there by two scoundrels in particular and many more in general, perhaps it is time to ponder the only question that matters:

What would Allen Ginsberg have thought of America 2016?
 

Back in August 1995 when I was in my prime provocateurship at The Other Paper, I decided to treat myself to a little vacation in New York City. I picked a helluva week--and on purpose: Shane McGowan of the Pogues was playing his first post-Pogues live show in America with his band The Popes, that I had to see.
 

Who is Zach Klein and where did he come from?

On the heels of Represent Columbus’ Issue One, which was perhaps the most partisan political event in memory, the all-Democratic City Council launched a divisive propaganda campaign falsely claiming the issue was a Republican plan. City Council member Mike Stinziano initiated an attack against Represent Columbus co-chair Whitney Smith at a council meeting, pointing out that she is a Republican.

Issue One, the initiative attempting to expand and reform Columbus City Council that was defeated at the August 2ndspecial election, actually had support from the Green, Libertarian, Socialist parties as well as many disgruntled Democrats

The one-party Columbus City Council and its One Columbus PAC, led by Mayor Andrew Ginther’s aide Bryan Clarke, attacked Issue One as being a “Republican power grab” led by “the Party of Trump” associated with the “Koch brothers.”

Bullet holes in house

The recent killing of Henry Green has spawned protests and a deeper look into the practices and tactics of the Columbus Police. Witnesses stated that there appeared to be no reason for the two officers to shoot Green, who had no criminal record. Police claimed Green brandished a gun. The Franklin County Coroner said Green was shot seven times.

The question of whether the Columbus Police Department disproportionately targets Blacks for violence is best answered with direct evidence, including statistics. A new “police accountability tool” created by the website Mappingpoliceviolence.org is useful in this debate.

Mappingpoliceviolence has studied police violence throughout the nation from January 2013 to June 2016. The group’s focus is on the police forces in the 100 largest cities in the country, where 28 percent of all people are killed by police. The Black population of these major cities is 21 percent but Blacks comprise 39 percent of all people killed by police.

Man in a car with a dummy driving

One thing is clear about the Smart City grant. Columbus and its sprawl is about to become a petri dish to “creatively reengineer our urban transportation networks” so to avoid global warming and connect the underserved to good jobs. This is the altruistic vision some national pundits have consecrated Columbus with.

The grant is heady stuff for “Test City USA.” A $150 million public and private work-in-progress to test sci-fi transportation technology such as driver-less cars. A plan to build neighborhood hubs with electronic vehicle charging stations that will also have bikeshare and carshare services.

The US Department of Transportation and host of corporate partners – including Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s Vulcan Inc., which chipped in $10 million – chose Columbus over 78 other cities, such as Austin, San Francisco, Portland and Denver.

And while our traffic congestion and its pollution doesn’t compare to Denver’s problems, Central Ohio needs to reengineer its transportation and do it in a hurry. For the last several years anyone who commutes into Columbus has painfully dealt with ongoing major road construction to end the outerbelt’s bottlenecks.

While Bernie Sanders was doing a brilliant job of ripping into the Trans-Pacific Partnership during the livestreamed launch of the Our Revolution organization on Wednesday night, CNN was airing a phone interview with Hillary Clinton and MSNBC was interviewing Donald Trump’s campaign manager.

 

That sums up the contrast between the enduring value of the Bernie campaign and the corporate media’s fixation on the political establishment. Fortunately, Our Revolution won’t depend on mainline media. That said, the group’s debut foreshadowed not only great potential but also real pitfalls.

 

Even the best election campaigns aren’t really “movements.” Ideally, campaigns strengthen movements and vice versa. As Bernie has often pointed out, essential changes don’t come from Congress simply because of who has been elected; those changes depend on strong grassroots pressure for the long haul.

 

He’d left the water running, flooding neighbors’ apartments. He’d been running around outside naked. By the time police arrived, he was standing in the window of his fourth-floor apartment on Farwell Avenue — a few blocks from where I live in the diverse, unpredictable Chicago neighborhood called Rogers Park — threatening to jump.

He pointed his finger at the cops, pretending he had a gun. “Fuck the police,” he said. The standoff lasted four hours. 

But eventually he capitulated. The forces of sanity held sway. He was taken to a hospital. No one was hurt. (Phew-w-w!) And life in Rogers Park moved on.

CITIZENS GRASSROOTS CONGRESS Set the 2017 people's agenda for Central Ohio by attending the Citizens Grassroots Congress 2016!

Sunday, September 11, 1-5 PM Whetstone Library 3909 N. High St. (43214)

Representatives of community organizations are invited to attend the September Pre-Election, 2016 Citizen’s Grassroots Congress, which will unite community organizations in goals and action to help shape the agenda for Central Ohio’s future from the bottom up! 

Don't leave the future of greater Columbus to current out-of-touch public officials and elite titans. Attend the Citizens Grassroots Congress and help set the Central Ohio agenda at the street level! We want to know what you think are the most important issues for activists to collaborate on between now and the November election.

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