Protest Reports
A small group rallying at Columbus City Hall just prior to Monday, September 17th's Council meeting demanded justice for Donna Castleberry (Dalton. Local activist and preacher Gary Witte wrote: "Had the opportunity to stand with Donna Dalton's mom and dad. In their terrible greif they are demanding a real investigation into the murder of their daughter, Donna, by an undercover Columbus cop. All they get is silence and no redress. Donna was shot 8 times in the front seat of the cop's car. God bless this family."
Some 100 or so protesters marched in the steady rain in Columbus, Ohio, on Saturday September 8, 2018, as part of over 900 events in 95 countries and on all seven continents, for the "Rise Up For Climate, Jobs, and Justice" day of environmental action. Stops and speakers at the Statehouse, Senator Portman's office, and City Hall, promoted a 100% renewable energy goal for the City of Columbus; the Columbus Community Bill of Rights for clean water, air, and soil voter initiative; and a reinstatement of clean energy standards for development projects in Ohio. Winie Wirth and Nathalia Rhodes as "Mother Nature" and "Sister Water" reminded us that "Water Is Life-Don't Frack it Up"!
Two recent local news stories offer compelling, if baffling, insight into the priorities of the media in and around Columbus. On August 22, the media descended on Ohio State University to learn the future of Urban Meyer following the football coach’s handling of a domestic abuse scandal involving one of his assistants.
Two days later, the same news outlets failed to appear at the Franklin County Board of Elections to learn the fate of a citizens’ initiative to protect Columbus, and thus Central Ohio, from the toxic and radioactive dangers of fracking. During this hearing, the board would decide whether to place on the ballot the Columbus Community Bill of Rights (CCBOR) proposal to “establish a community bill of rights for water, soil and air protection” from fracking operations and its waste. Strangely, the same media that comprehensively covered Meyer and his football program demonstrated little interest in an issue that affects the health of all Central Ohioans and their environment.
Why is the Greater Columbus Arts Council (GCAC) shilling for the Columbus Blue Jackets and the Nationwide Arena boondoggle? The first open forum on GCAC’s proposed 7 percent ticket tax faced stiff opposition Wednesday night, August 22 at the Vanderelli Room art gallery and event space with standing room only. The ticket proposal would place a 7 percent increase to all cultural and sports events only in Columbus except for high school and college sport events.
The tax is estimated to generate $14 million a year. GCAC is straightforward in their fronting for the Arena’s needs. Point Four of their handout entitled “The Proposed Ticket Fee Helps All of Columbus and Franklin County” specifically states that the tax will “…fund up to $4 million annually in efficient, essential renovations to Nationwide Arena, to maintain the facility and attract major concert shows, and sporting events that add so much to our economy and quality of life.”
Concerned citizens, politicians and activists participated in a rally and march July 19 to defend reproductive rights by raising awareness of the dangers that Trump’s Global and Domestic Gag Rules pose to women and families. The rally was sponsored by the Population Connection Action Fund.
In addition, they delivered to Sen. Rob Portman’s office more than 1,300 petitions, 12 local business endorsements, 200 photo petitions and 4 local elected official endorsements calling on the senator to protect reproductive health and rights.
The event was organized by #Fight4HER, a national campaign focused on mobilizing action against Trump’s Global Gag Rule and in support of the bill to block it, the Global Health, Empowerment, and Rights (HER) Act.
Anti-ICE (Immigration & Customs Enforcement) activists shut down city streets around ICE headquarters in downtown Columbus, attempted to occupy the ICE office, and erected a two-story wooden tripod structure in front of the building with a sign reading "ICE RUINS LIVES HERE" on Monday, July 9. Local Columbus Sanctuary Collective activist Ruben Castilla Herrera said: "ICE was created and it can be demolished, it can be abolished and we're going to make it happen." Demonstrators held signs reading "Abolish ICE" and chanted "No Borders, No Wall!"
President Donald Trump’s efforts to impose fascism exploded to the surface with the realization that his war on non-white people has escalated with his version of the Nazi SS – the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) – separating children from their parents. Trump’s government has created “Tender Age” detention centers, in other words, prisons. The government has released video of the caged warehouses housing male children, but they have not, as of this writing, released pictures or definitively confirmed the location of the female children. Imagine turning over your teenage daughter over to ICE.
Amazingly, many Americans still support Trump and his racist policies. It appears that the American citizenry is experiencing the same creeping fascism as did Germany in the pre-war years. Children in prison. But not white children. Are gas chambers in our future?
The public outcry, possibly with a little help from the two women in his life, caused Trump to sign an unnecessary executive order to undo what did not require an executive order to create. However, he retained the right to hold immigrant families indefinitely.
The mood was not only to vote but to resist. A massive crowd filled the Ohio Statehouse capitol square on Saturday morning June 30, 2018 for the Families Stay Together rally. The demonstrators were of two minds. the majority, working on behalf of the Democratic Party to create a blue wave around the immigration issue and the others a plurality of activists who want to defy and resist the Trump administration and are calling for direct action, civil disobedience and some to make the United States ungovernable unless Trump backs off on his militaristic border tactics. Many of the latter forces called for the abolition of ICE and had chants involving "Melt ICE" and Crush ICE."
The very diverse crowd listened to a number of speakers, many who were experiencing immigration issues, and the rally culminated in a march around the block. At the end intersection of Broad and High Streets some marchers shut down the roads for a short while. Police presence was minimal, the police were restrained in their reactions, and the march ultimately continued down West Broad Street to the ICE headquarters in the Leveque Lincoln tower.
Families in Columbus Ohio, along with their children, came together and took to the streets on Thursday, June 14th from 5-7pm EST. They came together at Goodale Park, to talk about and protest for the end of family separation. The protest and rally was in response to the “Military-Style” ICE raid that took place June 5th in Sandusky Ohio, on workers at Corso’s Garden Center.
Before the protest began, people listened to a very diverse group of speakers, from many different walks of life, as they shared their perspectives on the issue. These were people who were working day and night to support this cause and what had happened to the families of Sandusky Ohio.
Near the end of his life, Dr. Martin Luther King came to some radical conclusions about the fundamental root of oppression. “Why are there forty million poor people in America?” he said in 1967. “When you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy.
“We have moved from the era of civil rights to the era of human rights, an era where we are called upon to raise certain basic questions about the whole society,” he said in a report to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. “We have been in a reform movement…. But after Selma and the voting rights bill, we moved into a new era, which must be the era of revolution. We must recognize that we can’t solve our problem now until there is a radical redistribution of economic and political power.”