Action Alerts

Tuesday, August 10, 7:30-8:30pm, this on-line event requires advance registration

Join us for a monthly meeting to take action in the Beyond Coal Campaign. We are organizing to stop fossil fuels and to move towards a renewable, just, and equitable future! This meeting will focus on a campaign to request that the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio [PUCO] protect Ohioans from unjust coal plant bailouts.

Currently, Ohioans are shelling out $233,000 a day to bail out the OVEC [Ohio Valley Electric Corporation] coal plants — Kyger Creek in Ohio and Clifty Creek in Indiana — and subsidize the shareholder profits of AEP, Duke, and AES Ohio (formerly Dayton Power and Light).

FirstEnergy customers are now paying for these plants as well. In 2020, the PUCO audited this corporate bailout and found that the OVEC plants are not just financial losers that will continue to cost customers every single month but that they’re also being run inefficiently, in ways that cost customers even more money.

Monday, August 9, 2021, 6:30 PM (social time), 7:00 PM (program)
Dick Gunther, Emeritus Professor of Political Science at Ohio State University will join us to discuss the process of redistricting that will begin that month. Current information from the Bureau of the Census is that data will be released August 16 so states can begin the process of redistricting. Professor Gunther serves on the Ohio Redistricting Commission.  Location:  Open air shelter #1 at Whetstone Park.  This is just across the bridge on your left as you enter the park on Hollenbeck.  The meeting will also be shared on zoom.  Join Zoom Meeting:  https://ashlanduniversity.zoom.us/j/91270379532. Meeting ID: 912 7037 9532. 

Sunday, August 8, 2021, 7pm
The University Baptist Church, 50 W. Lane Ave. (43210)
Columbus Campaign for Arms Control invites all peacemakers to attend the annual Hiroshima/Nagasaki commemoration event:
Original Compositions Peace Concert featuring local musicians and composers: Devin Copfer, Paul Strawser, David nelson Tomasacci, Rocco De Pietro
Contact: Mark D. Stansbery, 614-252-9255 or walk @igc.org
Thank you to our sponsors, and supported by Puffin Foundation West

The U.S. Department of Justice criminally indicted and signed a deferred prosecution agreement with FirstEnergy for the Company’s efforts to bribe Ohio officials as part of the House Bill 6 scandal.

In this indictment, new details of inappropriate communications between FirstEnergy executives and Sam Randazzo, the former chairman of the PUCO and OPSB were made available.

Randazzo resigned last year after the FBI raided his home and it became clear he had taken $4.3 million from FirstEnergy immediately before his appointment as PUCO Chairman.

Saturday, August 7, 10am-5pm, Poindexter Village Museum and Cultural Center, 290 N. Champion Ave.

Join us as we celebrate Poindexter Village being an official State of Ohio Historic Site. The James Preston Poindexter Foundation, in partnership with Ohio History Connection, will re-engage community members by inviting them together around the Poindexter Legacy Tree at historic Poindexter Village in Columbus, Ohio.

For centuries, drum circles have been a source of cultural expression and unity. This outdoor activity will engage people safely and will allow them to social distance while experiencing community, rhythm, and sound. Elder drummers, community leaders, musicians, neighbors, and past residents will gather with African drums and lawn chairs to share stories, song, and dance.

The Poindexter Village Drum Circle schedule includes various arts, drum call-and-response, puppet story tellers, and drum making craft tables. Community members who participate in drum making craft tables will make a take-home wood box drum that can be decorated and used during the Drum Circle call-and-response.

“Never Rarely Sometimes Always,” a movie screening hosted by Planned Parenthood Advocates of Ohio

Thursday, August 5, 7pm, this on-line event requires advance registration

We’re screening “Never Rarely Sometimes Always” as part of the fourth installment of the Planned Parenthood Advocates of Ohio film series, “Movies, Mifepristone, and Misoprostol.”

Mifepristone and Misoprostol are safe drugs that provide life-affirming care: abortion. As Democratic lawmakers push the FDA to make these drugs more accessible, join us for a movie screening that focuses on the right to bodily autonomy.

Changes to Ohio’s Telemed Policy Impacting Medical Marijuana Card Holders, CTR Doctors 

Last week, the State Medical Board of Ohio issued guidance that telemedicine appointments for medical marijuana patients in the state would no longer be permitted. Telemedicine appointments were temporarily allowed as a response to COVID-19, but it appears the Board has now reversed that decision in light of lifted pandemic sanctions. 

Wednesday, August 4, 2021, 5:00 - 7:00 PM
This town hall is a chance for us to gather (in-person!) across Ohio to talk about what’s at stake in our fight for fair maps and to hear about how folks can plug into the process.  Join AOTL Ohio and the Equal Districts Coalition to talk about how your community has been impacted by gerrymandered maps and how best we can fight for the fair maps that we deserve. WE know what’s best for our communities and OUR voices need to be heard during the redistricting process. This town hall is the first step to organizing around making our voices heard!  Location:  UFCW 4150 E Main St, Columbus.  Sign up here. 

The systemic issues inherent in American policing are nothing new. While everyone deserves to feel safe in their own community, we know Black people in our country have been terrorized and killed at the hands of the police for centuries. It’s a reality that has led millions to finally follow the lead of Black organizers and Black-led grassroots groups by calling for change that goes beyond mere reform: to divest from police as an institution and invest in community-based, life-affirming programs and solutions.