Feature

On Black Friday, protestors entered the Victoria’s Secret store at the Easton Mall chanting “Free Palestine!” The group of protestors say they have launched a campaign targeting the store because of its strong business relationship with the Israeli company Delta Galil. Protestors say they want Victoria’s Secret to cut its contracts with Delta Galil and all Israeli companies who, they say, are funding the IDF. 

The group were removed from the Easton Center Mall property as police arrived and told they could not return to the mall. 

One protestor said, “With the ongoing war crimes committed by the state of Israel we need companies like Victoria’s Secret to stand against genocide and ethnic cleansing and make more ethical business choices. We are calling on the company to cut its ties with the state of Israel.” 

The state of Ohio boasts some of the most astounding ancient earthworks in the world, which, before the era of pioneer destruction, included more than 10,000 burial mounds, elaborate sets of parallel embankments that together extended at least a hundred miles, effigy mounds like the famous Serpent Mound of Adams County, and enormous precise geometric earthworks in the shapes of circles, squares, ellipses, and octagons that seem like beacons to the heavens.

Indeed, the first white settlers in Ohio believed that they had come upon the ruins of a bygone lost civilization. While staying in Chillicothe, the first state capital and where some of the most extraordinary of the earthworks reside, the painter Thomas Cole wrote in 1836:

“[H]e who stands on the mounds of the West [Ohio was then the West], the most venerable remains of American antiquity, may experience the emotion of the sublime, but it is the sublimity of a shoreless ocean un-islanded by the recorded deeds of man.”

Fossicking through the discord and strife in the world, to find some alluvial meaning, or trace elements of hope, and the common truth about their value and their sources, we have to kneel down, get close, and appreciate anew, the difference between muck, fool’s gold and gold.

Our social media is inundated with sensationalist news, boosted and curated deliberately to incite outrage, and as a society, we have normalised the habit of ejaculating our meaningless opinion onto everything.

Our news media have long since ceased being the vigilant guardians of public discourse, the Fourth Estate's foundational role. They have declined in virtue and value, increasingly favouring immediacy over investigation, and provocation over profundity, leaving the essential mission of informing the public with unbiased and thorough journalism in the balance. This decline has eroded the bedrock of trust and accountability that should underpin our information landscape.

Emmanuel Remy was appointed to Columbus City Council in 2018, like all of his colleagues on Council, not elected. On the very first day he took office, Remy voted to approve the City’s “district” system that some consider fake, and even racist. Remy faced off against community activist Adrienne Hood at the polls yesterday and won with 60 percent of the vote. Hood’s campaign, however, made a strong showing for an activist candidate not endorsed by the local Dem machine by earning nearly 60,000 votes, 40 percent of the vote.

Eastside activist Jonathan Beard, who has kept a close eye on how the “fake” Council districts came to be, remembers that City Council meeting in January of 2018 as if it were last night.

“On the very first day new member Remy took office, Shannon Hardin passed legislation to put his ‘fake districts’ proposal on (a local) ballot,” said Beard. “Shannon needed Remy’s vote because he did not have the votes to pass it, due – in part – to Councilmember Tyson’s unwillingness to disregard the NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s concerns about the potential illegality of Shannon’s fake district proposal.”

When Channel 6 news recently called John Coneglio, president of the Columbus Education Association (CEA), he knew exactly how they were going to frame their story on the Columbus City School’s levy, or Issue 11. They asked Coneglio how to explain the Ohio Education Association’s annual grade given to Columbus City Schools. They gave the district a ‘2,’ which means the district is not up to state standards.

“Find me a failing district with rich people living in it,” Coneglio told the Channel 6 reporter, owned of course by Sinclair Broadcast Group, which everyone knows is anti-union, especially unionized teachers. “If I go to Dublin, Olentangy, or Bexley, are any of these school districts failing? Why not? This is what I asked Channel 6.”

He turned the table on Sinclair Broadcasting, which comes from a position that public school teachers aren’t worth their salary, benefits, and summer break.

Political corruption and lack of accountability in the statehouse today are reasons Ohio’s Republican Party supermajority legislators are considering despoiling Ohio’s state parks by fracking, said David Pepper, Cincinnati political activist and author, at a recent Columbus rally.

 Dark money led to “safe” gerrymandered voting districts, where some politicians have never been adequately challenged for re-election, he told about 100 people attending the Save Ohio Parks-sponsored “Rally for State Parks, Climate and Democracy” on Oct. 27.

“We're living in Ohio, but it’s happening around the nation,” said Pepper. “All the incentives are turned upside down; the incentive to serve the people goes away, because you get re-elected no matter how bad a job you do, no matter how poor the schools are…no matter how much you screw up the Ohio parks.”

What dark money has given Ohio politicians is an incentive to keep private players happy, and what do the private players want?

UFOs are all the rage, even en vogue, especially after the Pentagon admitted it had secretly been investigating a gigantic white Tic Tac UFO, among others. The mystery is reaching near hysteria and even the Air Force may not have a clue about these things which have made many, many people exclaim “What is that?” to the sky.

We republish this updated Halloween thriller from 2013:

On an ink-stained night in late October 1973, sheriffs near Zanesville witnessed three pulsating globes over a local graveyard on the edge of town.

UFOs hovering over graveyards sounds like a pretty cool plot line. But 50 years ago, just days before thousands of kids flooded the streets for Halloween, the truth was way stranger than fiction as a UFO wave swept across Ohio in mid-to-late October of 1973.

Also known as a UFO “flap,” fear and panic spread across the colorful fall prairie. Much like how the Halloween night radio broadcast of HG Wells’ War of the World’s did in 1938.

But this was mind-bendingly real, as police from Columbus to Cincinnati fielded hundreds of calls. Local newspapers put the story on the front page.

Reefer Madness is alive and well. Remember the drug war when truth didn’t matter? Apparently, those who represent us at the statehouse vehemently oppose cannabis being on the ballot. So, to sway public opinion, they copped their legislative authority to pass a ridiculous resolution filled with faulty facts.

Yep, on October 10th, with nary an announcement nor a hearing, Ohio Senate Republicans – all of 23 them – introduced an passed that very same day, along strict party lines Ohio Senate Resolution 216 (S.R. No. 216), whose Long Title is: “To express the Ohio Senate's opposition to Issue 2 on the November 7, 2023, statewide ballot, which would legalize the use and retail sale of recreational marijuana; to identify the problems, risks, dangers, burdens, and costs it would bring to Ohioans, employers, and communities; and to encourage Ohioans to vote against the measure.” Gee thanks.

After decades of advocating for fully legal recreational marijuana, there is lament amongst some older stoners and hippies now that Ohio is on the cusp with Issue 2.

The Columbus Free Press, for instance, has been advocating for fully legal marijuana for half a century. Columbus was a place in the 1970s where the Columbus Police Department (CPD) would rough you up for having a joint in your cig pack. In the 80s and 90s, a pot arrest could destroy careers. Yet when the Free Press tried to get some medical growers and local medical dispensaries onboard as advertisers at the beginning of the 2020s, many scoffed.

Free trees have become available at our South Side (10/14) and Linden (10/21) community giveaways! Have the perfect spot in your yard for a tree? Reserve yours at greencbus.org/freetrees2023.

Act quick! The giveaways were previously sold out, and will likely sell out again. Insider tip: If the tree you want is sold out, you are welcome to swing by the giveaway during the last 15 minutes to check for extras due to no-shows.