Acre is an exciting new option for socially just diners on High St. just north of the OSU campus. They have developed their “farm to table to go” platform on locally sourced ingredients, organic grains and more sustainable practices like quality service ware (as opposed to disposable) recycling and composting. Hungry people can be satisfied with an affordable assortment of fresh, delicious and easily veganizable fusion of Asian and Mexican style bowls and wraps and refreshing shrubs. No vegan dessert here yet however; their cookies have dairy. Perhaps they can contract with Nanak, Pattycake or Destination Donuts for a vegan dessert. Vegans may want to verify what has honey or dairy. The peanut and hoisin sauces are vegan and they offer tofu for those who still eat soy. Their staff is informed on vegan needs and they have a comprehensive guide on menu item ingredients for anyone who has specific avoidances for ethics, health, allergies, phobias, prevention etc. The river of denial that still runs through our culture regarding “humane,” “free range,” “grass fed,” “organic,” “meat,” (and animal products including dairy/eggs/goat products etc.) requires a reality check.

Supporters of the hunger strike in the supermax unit at Ohio State Penitentiary rallied in Columbus Tuesday, April 14, calling upon prisons director Gary Mohr to order the restoration of the inmates' constitutionally protected recreation and religious rights.  Those rights had been taken away as collective punishment for the misdeeds of one prisoner.

   The month-long hunger strike in the supermax unit at Ohio State Penitentiary largely ended the next day, after attorneys Alice Lynd and Staughton Lynd, and one of the strikers negotiated with the warden. The prison reportedly agreed to some of the demands of the strikers – changing policies for phone calls and restoring religious services. The demand for rescinding a new restrictive recreation policy, however, was not met. Officials denied a “negotiated settlement.” The hunger strike started with more than 30 prisoners; until Wednesday, five were still refusing meals, all of whom had lost 20 to 30 pounds in the course of the strike and some experienced medical problems.  One of the five continues to strike, over concerns not yet made public.

Quietly and gradually since the 1980s, a bastion of free-market excess on Franklin County’s southernmost border has been selling-out the American worker while making piles upon piles of money for a select few. It is called “Free Trade Zone #138,” and its main operations are located at Rickenbacker Inland Port, which of course was once Rickenbacker Air Force Base.
  In 2013, a record breaking $6.3 billion in merchandise was imported into Free Trade Zone #138, ranking it in the top-10 of the nation’s 177 Free Trade Zones or FTZs, this according to the Columbus Regional Airport Authority, the zone’s operator and federal grantee. The growth of foreign-made goods brought into FTZ #138 has been staggering over the last decade. In 2006, just $250 million was processed.

Are innocent citizens pulled over, beaten and arrested by Columbus Police?
  Meet Dale Phillips. He claims he was roughed up, thrown to the ground, maced directly into his eyeballs and violently assaulted resulting in a ripped bicep tendon. His so-called “crime” – trying to back his car up to allow a police cruiser to proceed through an intersection. The charge -- ironically, “obstructing official business.”

The cellphone video “reality footage” just doesn’t stop. Black men are shot, killed, handcuffed. The shortcomings of their prematurely terminated lives soon become public knowledge, vaguely justifying the shocking wrongness of the officer’s action — always poisoning the grief.

The family, the loved ones, the sympathetic sector of the American (and global) public demand “justice.” Even when they get it, or sort of get it, in the form of an arrest or some official expression of regret, the victim — the human being they valued — is still dead.

Nothing changes.

At least it seems as though nothing changes, but of course change, in the form of outrage, revulsion, disbelief — and, ultimately, awareness — is stirring in the collective mind. How it will manifest in the form of specific social policy is, of course, unknown. The status quo, after all, has plenty of defenders — and they’re armed.