Protest Reports

Because of President Donald Trump’s policies and Neolithic attitude toward women, pussy hats have become popular regalia at protests in downtown Columbus. But at the March for Science on April 22, brain hats outnumbered pussy hats. White lab coats were also in abundance.

An estimated five thousand people gathered on the west lawn of the Ohio Statehouse to hear physicians, researchers and science educators speak about the essential role of scientific research and the need to base public policy on objective evidence instead of ideology.

“We are wearing our white coats,” said Dr. Beth Liston MD, Associate Professor of Internal Medicine and Pediatrics at OSU. “They’re not red; they’re not blue. This isn’t a partisan issue. This is simple truth and real fact.”

Dr. Liston is also affiliated with the Physicians Action Network. “Science saves lives,” she said, describing cases of patients surviving cancer after receiving new treatments discovered through publicly-funded research.

Despite the rain and gloom, several hundred people gathered for the People's Climate March on Saturday, April 29 in downtown Columbus. 

When a group of Ohio State University students interrupted an OSU Board of Trustees meeting on April 7, the timing was perfect for causing maximum embarrassment to the university’s administration.

While 22 members of the of the Student/Farmworker Alliance and Real Food OSU waited in the back of the conference room at the Longaberger Alumni House,  board members and students gave glowing reports of OSU’s philanthropic programs. The College of Dentistry gives free care to underserved communities with the Ohio Project. The Buckeye Civic Engagement Connection provides tutoring for student athletes at East High School.

Then university president Michael Drake gave his annual report to the board, waxing eloquent about OSU’s service to the community and connecting it to swelling enrollment in recent years. But before he finished, PhD student Henry Anton Peller interrupted him.

Jodi Ann, one of the organizers of the rally for justice in the case of Shelton Adams, spoke to Channel 4 during a demonstration March 16 across the street from Grant Hospital, where Mr. Adams was pepper sprayed and wrestled to the ground by Ohio Health security guards on Monday. Jodi Ann told the TV news crew that she thought the actions by the security guard were unfounded and that video showed Adams was not doing anything wrong. Adams had been outside the Hospital smoking a cigarette when the guards approached him and without obvious rationale, started pushing him and spraying his face with pepper spray from a distance of five feet or more, the video showed. Adams ended up on the ground in very cold weather, pepper spray in his eyes, without getting any medical assistance -- again, right outside Grant Hospital.  

Dana White, a participant at the rally, recounted his own encounter with the same three security guards while waiting for a neighbor to receive treatment in the emergency room at Grant Hospital four months ago. The guards physically threw him out of the building for no apparent cause, causing injury to his back. 

Bodybuilders and sports fans at the Arnold event stood dumbfounded outside the Columbus Convention Center Saturday afternoon as the "No More in 614" demonstrators marched by holding signs saying "Black Lives Matter," "No Homeless Children," "Don't Frack the Wayne National Forest" and other demands to our local government. They chanted "No hate, no fear, immigrants are welcome here!" which could be interpreted either as a response to Trump's call for deportations, or a welcome to our country to Arnold himself. A few Arnold-goers yelled "Make America Great!" while others looked surprised, and a few gave the protestors a thumbs up.

The biggest news from standing rock is that the protest is not over. There are still close to a thousand protestors encamped in Areas around Oceti camp which was shut down by the government. While many protestors are still in a state of shock after being removed from the land they had occupied for nearly a year, this is an incredibly tough breed of activist. The largest and most organized of the remaining camps is Sacred Stone, where I am now encamped. While many are leaving, new protestors are arriving daily. I spent Friday picking up trash and helping to erect tipis that had been salvaged from Oceti.

The militarization of police forces in the U.S. has come under increasing scrutiny, including the effect it has on the psychology of police. Equipped with military-grade weapons and body armor, police have been conditioned to view citizens as enemies, instead of human beings whom they are bound to protect and serve.

Wearing face shields or gas masks has the psychological effect of deindividuation: a feeling of anonymity that curbs police officers’ sense of personal responsibility for their actions.

These effects played out in downtown Columbus on the evening of January 30 as a demonstration against President Trump was winding down. About 3,000 protesters were marching from the Franklin Country Courthouse back to the Ohio Statehouse, as police attempted to keep them off High Street by forcing them onto the sidewalk.

Approximately 30 activtists staged a demonstration Wednesday, February 22 outside Senator Rob Portman's office in downtown Columbus. Debbie Silverstein, Single Payer Action Network Ohio State Director, illustrated the devastation an illness without access to medical care can bring, told of breaking her leg* years ago -- she then just lay on the floor and cried and cried, desolate because she knew that she could not afford the needed medical treatment.  Advocating militancy, Silverstein said that we have learned our lesson -- compromising in the struggle over the legislation that resulted in the Affordable Health Care Act did not serve the movement well.  "Instead of retreating in the face of Administration threats to abolish the Affordable Care Act," she declared, "now we are demanding more -- Medicare for All!"

A few blocks north of Old Worthington’s quaint downtown area, Executive Center, an unobtrusive brick office complex, is nestled between a bank and another office building, and surrounded by a generous parking lot. On most days passersby are unlikely to notice the building managed by international real estate giant CBRE, but on January 14th a group of protesters lining North High Street in front of Executive Center with signs bearing anti-racist slogans directed at Greg Anglin, one of its tenants, were hard to miss.

The “Demonstration Against Hate From Worthington To Whitefish,” was organized by Columbus’ chapter of Anti-Racist Action (ARA), to raise awareness about Morningstar Ministries’ ties to Daily Stormer, a neo-nazi news site popular with Alt Right millennials, run by Greg Anglin’s globe-trotting son, Andrew, who grew up in Worthington. On the site’s donation page Andrew Anglin listed his father’s Christian counseling office’s address in Worthington for cash donations, explaining that he and his site have been banned from Paypal and other electronic payment services.

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The day after inauguration day, on January 21st, over one million people converged on the capitol to make their voices heard at the Women's March on Washington.

I went there to inquire what some of them thought about loving kindness. I suspect that if politically-organized loving kindness is espoused and carried out, activism becomes more immune to infiltration, cooptation, and in-fighting. A social movement based in loving kindness makes it harder for the corporate media and authoritarian politicians to convince the general public we are to be feared, hated and repressed. This article also asks some important questions of our readers.