People

Just when we were ready to move on to the next step in “Tips and Tools,” we have a public health pandemic with politicians and pundits predicting the whole world of work and popular activity will change. Social distancing will mean the end of meetings. Work will be remote or at home, rather than office based. Fewer will travel and the whole world will zoom into the future as masked marauders six feet apart. No one can doorknock. People won’t open their doors.

Trust me on this: not in our neighborhoods.

Drive into almost any low-moderate-income community, and I challenge you to count the masks and make a note where you happen to see social distancing. It’s just not happening in the same way. There is a real racial, age, and class divide here that is starkly visible.

Bus service for example in many cities require masks now to ride public transit. In fact, talking to the head of a regional transit authority yesterday, he said maybe half of the riders in his majority African-American city was wearing masks. Talking to the bus drivers’ union leadership, they were clear that their drivers were in no position to enforce the decree. They are drivers, not police.

Over the previous five years the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections twice told the ICE-contracted Morrow County Correctional Facility its infectious disease control plan was out of compliance. The jail was cited in 2016 and again 2018.

What’s more, the jail was told to collaborate with its local health authority – the Morrow County Health District – to update and improve the plan. The jail is one of four Ohio jails contracted to hold ICE detainees, and about an hour’s drive north of Columbus.

In November of 2019 after another inspection, the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections (ODRC) finally found the jail’s infectious disease control plan in compliance.

Nevertheless, as of mid-May, every single inmate at the Morrow County Correctional Facility had tested positive for COVID-19, this according to U.S. District Court judge for the Southern District of Ohio Sarah D. Morrison (a Trump appointee), who so far has ordered the release of 15 ICE detainees from the jail after the ACLU sued ICE.

Margaret Sarber-Nie passed away today. Many people whose lives intertwined with hers are mourning. Margaret was a hippie, an activist, a militant. Her resume includes involvement with some of the most radical organizations of the 60s and 70s. She was one of the founders of Community Festival, edited the Columbus Free Press, worked with the Indochina Coalition, SDS, and participated in demonstrations and actions – fighting for a revolution.

I can remember the first time I met Margaret. It was at Community Festival in the early 90s. I had just begun publishing the Free Press and she told me she was a former editor of the paper and I should look it up in the newspaper’s files. If I wanted to talk to her, I could call her at 268-FUCK. I did call her.

Margaret was a great storyteller and fascinating as the stories were – they were all true. From her being one of the Free Press staff arrested in 1972 for inciting riot during the Vietnam War to openly carrying a rifle to protect the community from law enforcement and the FBI (wearing a beret, of course).

When it comes to hitting the doors and dealing directly with the people on the other side, when you rap your knuckles on the wood, you need to remember that you are employing a very powerful weapon effectively and responsively. Meeting people directly is persuasive, so know what you are doing.

Doorknocking to build an organization is not simply canvassing.

Canvassing is a valuable, but abbreviated way to distribute a message with the specific result of either moving a vote or producing a donation. The response to the visit is highly structured to achieve maximum impact in these directions.

There is certainly a structure to a home visit on the doors, but at its core, listening is still the primary requirement. The outcome is uncertain and exciting. The visiting team or organizer needs to be able to hear the issues and interests of the person on the other side of the exchange in order to be able to respond effectively about whether the organization and collective action is possible. At the same time, the organizing team needs to communicate effectively what the organization is and, equally important, what it is not, who should belong, and who should not.

In the opinion of our highly respected City Auditor Megan Kilgore regarding the impact COVID-19 will have on Columbus’s economy, Ms. Kilgore states, “The likely scenarios are not good and will require federal, state, and local stimulation to rebuild businesses’ balance sheets and turn things around for our most vulnerable workers.”

Since March 3, when nearly the entire Arnold Sports Festival was shut down, our Mayor and City Council has taken steps to mitigate the spread of the virus.

They have temporarily halted all city meetings, closed recreation and senior centers, passed a $1 million emergency human services fund, created an additional $12,000 senior citizens relief fund, established a COVID-19 Resource web site, ordered city employee travel restrictions, relaxed various street parking violations, and suspended parking ticket fines and penalties.

Mayor Ginther has also signed a declaration of a State of Emergency for Columbus granting him emergency powers to suspend certain city codes and regulations, and to control purchasing and contracting requirements to assure the public’s health and safety.

Julie Whitney Scott – Free Presscolumnist, radio producer, actor and theater festival director – was honored with the Harold Award at the 20th Annual Central Ohio Theatre Roundtable Theater Awards Celebration show on February 16. Scott founded the Columbus Black Theatre Festival and received the award for her Mine 4 God Productions and for and presenting the annual Festival for eight years. The Harold Award is named for the late Harold Eisenstein the long-time theater director for the Gallery Players.

“I am honored, grateful, humbled, privileged and in awe of what God is doing and has done for me. What he is doing for me has blessed others and I will continue to pay it forward,” Scott said after receiving the award, “I was being recognized for something I had and was doing to serve others in my community, of my race, for the unity of all people, to ensure our stories, the here and now stories, the ‘we are no longer slaves’ stories were being told, under the title of Mine 4 GOD Productions. A title that from the beginning had to fight and preserver through the naysayers because I dared to use ‘God’ in my Theatre production company.”

The last time the Freep wrote about Reynoldsburg’s Tierna Oxenreider, in 2017, the then 12-year-old was being hailed as one of the world’s best fencers in her age group. That summer she won the US Junior Championship for those under 12. The following year she placed 3rd at the US Junior Olympics for all age groups (under 20).

The fencing prodigy, who at the age of four insisted to her parents “I want to do a sword sport,” could see gold in her future. How can you doubt her Olympic dreams when an epiphany to pick up a weapon so to compete strikes you before kindergarten?

But no one said life was fair, and there’s never a clear and easy path to the top of the medal stand. Last year she injured her back while competing in Germany. Then the injury was aggravated when she was a passenger in a car rear-ended by a texting driver.

Martin Luther King Jr: “Protest beyond the law is not a departure from democracy; it is absolutely essential to it.”

January should have been a month to celebrate new beginnings and Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King’s legacy. Instead, in Columbus, Dr. King would likely have boycotted his own birthday party after observing how our City leaders practice systemic racism and sexism in our city. At the City’s much touted annual MLK Breakfast, two young Black women interrupted Mayor Ginther’s speech by yelling “Justice for Julius!” It was peaceful protest – an example of the civil disobedience King’s legacy represents and what the City leaders were presumably celebrating. The two women were dragged out of the gathering and arrested.

In 2018, Julius Tate Jr., a 16-year-old African American, was shot five times by an undercover cop after he pulled out a gun. Julius’ 16-year-old African American girlfriend Masonique Saunders was charged for his death and with aggravated robbery. She reported that Julius had no gun and there is an affidavit by another eyewitness that has a different story from Columbus Police Department statements.

Esther Flores is a fighter. She champions for the rights and dignity of all people and she fights against bigotry and prejudice. You want Esther on your side.

A Registered Nurse, Esther has created and developed a program, One Divine Line to Health, which provides vital services health care to those women caught up in sex trafficking in Columbus and especially on the infamous Sullivant Avenue on the Westside. She has also set up several safe houses within Columbus for women in recovery.

Raised in New York City, Esther is a woman of strong faith and characters. She teaches us that we can change our attitudes about trafficked women by calling them what they are, “Street Sisters” who deserve our care and understanding. One can see her red minivan driving around attending to her Sisters on the Westside.

Our dear friend, Margie Daffey has passed on.

Margie Daffey showed up on our doorstep when we asked for people to join us for the Voting Rights March the Rev. Jesse Jackson held in Atlanta in August 2005. It was the beginning of a wonderful friendship. Margie had been a supporter of Columbus School Board member Bill Moss and shortly before we left for the march, Bill unexpectedly passed away.

Margie became a very active member of our election integrity movement in Columbus. In 2006, Margie was the key signature-gatherer for my campaign for Ohio Governor. In one day alone at Columbus State, she talked over 1000 students into signing my petition to get on the ballot. After she helped me on the ballot, she drove me all over the state of Ohio for campaign events in her white Lincoln.