Local
The Indianola Presbyterian Church was built in 1916 in the center of Columbus’ historic, once noted and desirable University District. It was known for its architecture (the architect is not named on its website). Its congregation largely consisted of nearby homeowners, many of whom rented rooms to Ohio State University students at a time that OSU had no dormitories. OSU did not build residences on campus until after World War II with its GI Bill-fueled growth.
Contrary to local dangerously misleading mythologies, the area was long shared by homeowners and student tenants. There was no “golden age” of a middle-class mecca of homeowners. There were many students. But there were no large absentee landlords, and the city’s zoning codes regulating the number of properties an individual could own and the number of unrelated individuals living under one roof were actually enforced.
Monday, January 8, 2024, 4:30 PM
This is the first of a weekly vigil. Cardboard signs, hot tea and handwarmers, safe community, and calls to action will be provided. This action will be led by progressive Palestinian and Jewish community members. All are welcome.
Location: Outside Senator Brown’s office, 200 N. High St.
For more information you can email to hello@barriertoentrypac.com
The Discovery
This was not going to be a good day. The sky was cloudy, and the ground was still wet from the rain that poured down over Columbus all last night. I was walking hard and fast in my black army boots towards Jimmy’s cab company. I was not supposed to be going over there, and if Sheila knew I was going there, or even knew where there was, I would get an ass whipping that would cause me to not be able to sit down for a week. Sheila didn’t care how old her girls were or how big they were, if an ass whipping was called for, an ass whipping you got! I often wondered if this would still apply when we were grown. I didn’t dwell on it long though because I knew deep down that, yes, Sheila would still whup our butts, grown or not.
On November 18th, 2023 in Oxford, Ohio, 20-year-old Devin Johnson, a student at Miami University, was arrested and charged with assault, resisting arrest, underage drinking and criminal trespassing. After the arrest the Oxford Police Department claimed it was investigating the use of force, while immediately affirming the use of force was certainly justified. This false narrative immediately planted by the Oxford police department could not be further from the truth.
In recently released videos from the patio, you see the true version of events. Not only is there a stark contrast from the aggressor the department has painted Devin Johnson as, but you also see there was no need for the use of force he received. While being held on the ground by multiple people, Oxford officer Matthew Blauvelt almost immediately began punching Devin as he was held down by other officers.
Clintonville’s Rag-O-Rama – a hipster destination for resale clothes – shut down this past weekend, leaving employees in a lurch and another remnant of Columbus’s soulful and non-corporate past in the proverbial back-alley garbage dumpster.
The Free Press often reminisces on Columbus of the 1960s, 70s, 80s, and 90s, when it was more a hip and quirky college town than a lame playground for young professionals and their corporate overlords.
“I’ve been going there for 25 years. After Bernie’s, Surly Girl, Larry’s, Mamas, Outland, Lil Brothers, King Avenue Coffee Shop, Atlantis, Blue Danube, Tee Jayes, Short North Coffee House, and almost all the entire Short North art district, etc. with nothing ever replacing any of it, Columbus is culturally dead,” wrote Michael Moore on the Crazy Mama’s remembrance page on Facebook. For those not in know, Crazy Mama’s on South High off-campus was Columbus’s answer to the punk, new wave and garage band “underground” which emerged in the 1970s and 1980s.
Saturday, January 6, 9am
Ohio Statehouse, Broad and High Streets Columbus
Calling on community members and groups to counter demonstrate against the hate and bigotry of mulitple racist groups planning a rally at the statehouse.
Introduction
This post raises the question of whether President Biden’s quest for re-election in 2024 will be negatively affected by his pledge to continue America’s support for Israel and its war on Gaza.
President Biden has put his 2024 re-election at risk by supporting Israel’s genocidal war against Gaza.
Early in this war, Biden unequivocally supported Israel’s military response to the Hamas attack on southern Israel. In just over a week after Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, Biden met with Netanyahu to express his and America’s unequivocal and unconditional support for Israel
(https://www.npr.org/2023/10/19/1206832708/biden-israel-trip-mideast-peace).
Wednesday, January 3, 2024, 12:00 PM
Learn the ins and outs of collecting signatures for the Citizens Not Politicians ballot initiative. Register here.
Love and Happiness
Sheila ordered a gin and juice from David, the bartender, and laid a dollar on the counter. She glanced at her watch and saw she had about two hours before her girls would get out of school. David made her drink, set a napkin on the counter in front of her and sat the drink down.
“How you been doing, Sister?”
“I’m cool, Dave. How you?”
“Doing all right, hanging in there, you know.”
“Yeah, I know.”
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.