People
The theme of the salon was “ Building Community for Black Liberation.” It was available live on Zoom and Facebook Live.
Mark Stansbery, Free Press Board member, started out the February salon by introducing Aramis Malachi-Ture Sundiata, Executive Director of the People's Justice Project. He spoke about colonialism and how the struggle for African people began when the first African was kidnapped. Europeans attacked and enslaved the African people taking the continent's resources with force both material and human to build their own economies. . . Africans were robbed the right to produce and recruit life for themselves.”
I Was Once You & You Will be a Better Me is a three-part project that will use various art forms (poetry/monologues/performing arts/music/film) to bridge the gap between parents/guardians/grandparents and their children/grandchildren. The goal of this project is to develop a better relationship between them and hopefully the community where they live by learning what each other values about themselves and each other and sharing it in an artistic way. Sessions will be held at the Columbus Metropolitan Shepard Branch Library from March 2nd to May 25th, 2024, on Saturdays from 1:00 to 4:00 P.M. There will be a free community event and reception in June so that the participants can perform and share their creative work with family and friends.
*Participants must live in the Northeast Area of Columbus, Ohio which includes
Zip Codes: 43211, 43219, & 43224. Youth need to be between the ages of twelve (12) and eighteen (18) years of age.
The 1960s has never lost its hold on America, nor has the argument about when the decade actually started. It has primarily been defined by five very tumultuous years–1963 through 1968–because of a number of events–among them, the March on Washington; five political assassinations; the war on poverty, the passage of the Civil Right Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965; America’s formal entry into the Vietnam War under Operation Rolling Thunder; and the long, hot summers during which a number of northern cities were roiled by race riots. McElvaine makes a strong case for compressing the decade into those five years.
The Packer: “Drawing on her experience with the Fair Food Program, Gonzalo has helped to train, mentor and educate workers from other regions and industries on the Worker-Driven Social Responsibility model.”
“Gonzalo also was a member of the CIW team working with Futures Without Violence, which collaborated with CIW and other Fair Food Program partners on the first sexual harassment training curriculum for the agricultural sector in the U.S.”
As 2023 draws to a close, farmworkers with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers are celebrating the organization’s 30th anniversary. In the last 30 years, the CIW — which began as a loose gathering of farmworkers meeting weekly in a borrowed church hall in the small, crossroads town of Immokalee — has grown in size and success to become the founder of the Presidential Medal-winning Fair Food Program, the leading social responsibility program in the US agricultural industry today, and of the Worker-driven Social Responsibility model, the new paradigm for human rights protection in global supply chains to which the FFP gave rise.
The December Free Press Second Saturday Salon was held on December 9 over Zoom.
Listen to the recording here.
Mark Stansbery of the Free Press Board, introduced the speake Vina Colley. She related to us how she used to work at the Piketon Gaseous Diffusion Plant. She found that workers there, including herself, were not protected from radiation while at work. She complained about it and began to be suppressed by her employer.
On an aquifer, the plant has been contaminating the Ohio River in addition to the workers, the surrounding community, and several schools – one that was shut down because so many children had died. It is a cancer cluster and Vina herself has many physical problems as a result of her job. Also affected are the Scioto River, the Beaver Creeks, and many external sites.
It is difficult to believe that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated fifty-five years ago. Given the state of race and racism in America today, it is definitely a propitious time for a reassessment of his life, work, and legacy.
The Pulitzer Prize winning book Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference by David Garrow, was the first full scale biography of King and published in 1986. Parting the Waters: America in the King Years by Taylor Branch and also a Pulitzer Prize winning book, was published in 1988. Both men subsequently published two more books about King’s life and work in, but that has been decades ago.
It is difficult to believe that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated fifty-five years ago. Given the state of race and racism in America today, it is definitely a propitious time for a reassessment of his life, work, and legacy.
The Pulitzer Prize winning book Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference by David Garrow, was the first full scale biography of King and published in 1986. Parting the Waters: America in the King Years by Taylor Branch and also a Pulitzer Prize winning book, was published in 1988. Both men subsequently published two more books about King’s life and work in, but that has been decades ago.
John F. Kennedy was assassinated by the National Security State on Nov 22nd, 1963. Every high school textbook in the country says the same thing, which is that Lee Harvey Oswald shot JFK from the Texas School Book Depository in broad daylight, with his wife as his side. This was 5 months after his famous Peace Speech at American University (6/10/63) and only a few days after he ordered remaining troops out of Vietnam (NSAM 263).
During the pandemic, the government embarked on a beautiful experiment: expanding public programs to stave off poverty. One critical component was ensuring that public school students had free lunches regardless of family income.
During the 2020-2021 school year, 98 percent of all school lunches were free to students. All of a sudden, public schools were allowed to treat the idea of feeding students to be as essential as educating them.
The Free Press is honoring Alicia Jean (AJ) Vanderelli with our Activist Artist Award at a ceremony Thursday, November 9. AJ is the owner and manager of the Vanderelli Room, an art gallery that has served as a showplace and safe space for activist artists – and it is the location of the Free Press Awards dinner.
AJ was born in Los Angeles, California and was raised in Panama City, Florida. After graduating high school in 1993, she left the small beach community in search of one that provided both the comforts of a small town with the diversity of a city. In 2003, she settled in Columbus Ohio. She earned a Bachelors of Fine Arts with a concentration in oil painting in 2008 from the Columbus College of Art and Design, graduating Magna Cum Laude.