Editorial

The Columbus Action Network ("CAN") urges Franklin County residents to vote "against" Issue 6, the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium's proposed 1.5 mill continuing property tax levy. Issue 6 proposes to more than double the Franklin County property tax dollars directed toward the Zoo, and to make the levy permanent, where in the past levies had to be renewed every ten years. The CAN opposes this request for several reasons: 1) Any publicly funded entity seeking to double its public funding should have its proposal looked on with great skepticism, and such is the case here with the zoo's 110% proposed increase. We see no compelling reason for a doubling of the zoo's property tax collected from Franklin County residents. Quite simply, a zoo is not an essential element of the county, and our essential levy-funded human services to our most vulnerable residents - public schools, public transit, child protective services, mental health, addiction services, developmental disability services, and senior services - are a far higher priority for scarce taxpayer dollars than is the Zoo. 2) More than $65 million of the Zoo tax increase would go to fund a proposed downtown zoo.

You may have seen or read ads for Britta water filtration systems that shows plastic bottles lined up end to end along a coastline. The narrative tells us that the number of water bottles that are thrown away could circle the Earth 50 times – an astounding 38 BILLION bottles. It’s a mind­ boggling number! And that’s not the only problem with bottled water. The amount of oil used to make these bottles annually would power one million cars for a year. Environmentally, aside from oil use, bottle water extraction has a huge impact on local water resources. The “Big Three” culprits in this crisis – Coke, Pepsi and Nestle – are getting access to water both in the form of city water and underground water resources at a huge cost to local communities around the world. People have seen their wells dry up and lakes and rivers run dry. In one case the corporation is paying 1/64 cents for a gallon of water, selling it at a huge profit, $1 per gallon. In Sacramento, in 2009, Nestle signed a contract with the city for access to city water for $0.71 for 748 gallons of water!

For urbanites who have already been bit by the gardening bug, there is no need to wait. There are many community gardens and urban farming programs that will appreciate your assistance. Earth Day is a great day to get started. Green Columbus puts on a weeklong event for community organizations to host volunteers to beautify the land in various ways. From gardening to trash pickup, any type of work offered is greatly valued. Four Seasons City Farm and Franklinton Gardens are among the many urban gardens that are hosting volunteers. Four Seasons City Farm is a non­profit organization “dedicated to revolutionary food production and community ­building” in and around the near east side of Columbus. Started in the early growing season of 2004 as part of a ministry of the Old First Presbyterian Church, the City Farm vision has expanded to include fourteen lots in the city, including a one­acre “New Freedom Garden” on East Mound Street at Carpenter. The produce grown on the collaborative sites is divided into thirds.

In a visit to the United States in 1842, Charles Dickens was appalled by our prisons, where a man never left his cell (except to the exercise courtyard) for the duration of his sentence, never got word of his family or news of the outside world. An alternative type of prison was the Silent, which permitted to mix with one another while working during the day…but forbade them to communicate. Fortunately, today’s prisons offer interaction, exercise, education, libraries, family visiting, correspondence and nowadays even a controlled email. But, Ohio’s prisons fail to offer release to prisoners who have 20, 30, 40 years in, because of a cruel parole board. Prisoners continually come to their hearings with a raft of programs they have taken, stellar behavior records (“18 years ticket­free”), volunteer hours, family support, a job waiting.

On Thursday, April 3rd, 2014, IMPACT Community Action is holding a Poverty Summit, as part of its recognition of the 50th anniversary of the War on Poverty. IMPACT is in a unique position to hold this Poverty Summit, since the organization’s roots date to the early days of the War on Poverty. The Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 – the cornerstone of Lyndon Baines Johnson’s vision for ending poverty in the U.S. – established community action agencies as a core element. Community action agencies are alive and well after half a century in the state of Ohio, with 50 different organizations – including IMPACT – members of the Ohio Association of Community Action Agencies.

So the Republican Party pulled it off. On Friday, March 7 Ohio Libertarian governor hopeful Charlie Earl and his Attorney General candidate Steve Linnabary found out they were no longer candidates. Through thuggish and authoritarian tactics the Republicans managed to knock the gubernatorial candidates of both the Ohio Libertarian and Ohio Green Parties off the 2014 primary ballot. How did they do it? Like any two-bit dictator, they did it by usurping the U.S. Constitution and simply outlawing all minor parties in the state of Ohio. It is very difficult to get signatures for a candidate when your party has been banned from the ballot. In legal terms, it is called “irreparable harm.” Before he was banished from the ballot, Earl was polling at 6 percent of the vote. Political pundits across the state speculated that he might cost John Kasich to lose his re-election bid. The day Earl initially announced for governor, a Republican Party Senator introduced a bill that would kill all minor parties in Ohio. Critics aptly nicknamed the bill “The John Kasich Re-Election Protection Act.” The blatantly unconstitutional bill struck down by the U.S.

Intertextuality be the name of the game y'all. A few weeks ago, I focused on the way Western media employs Vladimir Putin as a useful villain for its imperial narratives. Not even a day after I emailed the piece, I was in an airport walking past a newsstand when I saw the cover of Bloomberg Markets, and this was pre-Crimea. On the cover was a giant picture of the dear Comrade with the headline “Russia's CEO.” The tag was “Vladimir Putin is using oil giant Rosneft to tighten his grip on the country's economy.” When trying to understand why certain places or governments occupy such villainy in the media landscape, from Russia to Venezuela, it's important to remember that there is one word more than any other that strikes fear straight into the heart of the capitalist class: expropriation. As a head of state, you can feel free to oppress your people at will and expect relative silence from the West, but expropriate one little oil company (like Rosneft did with Yukos Oil), and like clockwork, you can expect the headlines calling you a power-mad dictator to start rolling in. Truly, you will be an enemy of freedom. Political freedom, yes, but more importantly economic freedom.