Local
Note: I refer any one skeptical of what follows, including the subjects of the report, to the public record, OSU Student Legal Services, records of past and current court cases, conversations with current or recent OSU students, and to their own visual inspection of the District and the properties
Columbus, Ohio, and especially its historic, residentially-zoned University District, is a national hotspot for criminal—literally-speaking—landlords. This is widely known in City Hall and The Ohio State University, both of whom aid and abet neighborhood destruction and uncontrolled profit-taking by circumventing their own laws and guidelines. They fail to protect the lives and well-being of homeowners and students alike, allowing a large catalogue of property-owners malpractices and criminality to continue unchecked.
Too much money changes hands. Caring for the lives of its students along with home-owning, older, most often OSU-related neighbors is too much for OSU’s sprawling and disconnected Offices of Student Life or Legal Services (the one overfunded and the other underfunded), and law enforcement by the City of Columbus or the City Attorney’s office.
In a perfect Ohio world, the two months between the November election and the early January would be free of insults to our intelligence by the rogue Ohio Legislature.
We would be free to enjoy the holiday season without having to worry about our public schools being taken over by the governor, our voting privilges made more difficult, and our opportunity to petition our government severely diluted.
But this is the real Ohio where the rapacious Republicans are running roughshod over the rest of us during what is commonly called the lame duck session, the two months between the election and the New Year.
I call it the rogue duck session. It has got to end.
There is a remedy for this political malady.
The Ohio legislature needs to be defanged.
Its elected members need to become part-timers, banned from meeting for all but financial and existential emergencies between election day and the New Year.
In 1835, the Treaty of New Echota forcibly removed the Cherokee Nation from its homelands in Georgia to lands west of the Mississippi, resulting in the deaths of thousands on what became known as the Trail of Tears. The same Treaty also guaranteed the Cherokee Nation a delegate in Congress -- a promise that has never resulted in so much as a hearing, until now. The Senate and President Biden have already indicated their support.
Now it is up to the House of Representatives to act. We need your voice to urge your congressperson to do what is right!
Saturday, December 10, 7-10pm
Old First Presbyterian Church, 1101 Bryden Rd.
Limited parking in side lot, alley, and street parking
Theme: Human Rights Day
Food, drink, and music
Featuring
Lorraine Moore, author of book on the Universal Declaration of Human RIghts
Tekla Lewin on prisoner rights and free speech
Live Jazz music
Saturday, December 10, 7-10pm
Old First Presbyterian Church, 1101 Bryden Rd.
Limited parking in side lot, alley, and street parking
Theme: Human Rights Day
Food, drink, and music
Featuring
Lorraine Moore, author of book on the Universal Declaration of Human RIghts
Tekla Lewin on prisoner rights and free speech
Live Jazz music
Friday, December 9, 6-7:30pm, this on-line event requires advance registration
The National Lawyers Guild (NLG) Legal Observer program is part of a comprehensive system of legal support designed to enable people to express their political views as fully as possible without unconstitutional disruption or interference by the police and with the fewest possible consequences from the criminal justice system.
NLG Legal Observers (LOs) are not part of the demonstration. LOs observe and document interactions between law enforcement and demonstrators in anticipation of future civil or criminal litigation under the direction of NLG attorneys. NLG Legal Observers do not negotiate with law enforcement, provide legal advice, or serve as peace marshals.
For more information about the National Lawyers Guild’s Legal Observer program, visit nlg.org/legalobservers or email <ohio@nlg.org>.
Use this link to register in advance for this meeting.
The Red Oak Community School, located in the Unitarian Universalist Church in Clintonville, was the site for both a huge success and a huge failure for the Columbus police on Saturday morning. The school had attempted to host an annual fundraiser featuring three local drag artists reading holiday stories to students.
The brand new, blue-vested, de-escalation focused, Columbus Police Dialogue Team was out with a stunning presence, standing two by two among the Proud Boys keeping the confrontation with counter-protesters to a mild roar.
Eight specially trained officers and sergeants were on site to protect the protesters’ right to free speech while reducing the use of force, arrests, and injuries that protesters have experienced in the recent past.
Chief Elaine Bryant reported in a YouTube statement on Monday night that they had been successful in that goal. No use of force, arrests, or injuries were reported.
Just as City Council works against public safety and the Columbus Police—reducing the force, under-funding, spouting slogans instead of policy, and refusing to conduct serious gun buy-back programs; the natural environment by approving oversized developments; the public schools by tax abatements and worse; and the city’s publics in general, on Monday, Oct. 25, 2022 council acted out against art in the little city that can’t.
Like the Columbus Dispatch and OSU’s president, it is often too easy to caricature Columbus’ City Council and the mayor, “Mr. Opportunity—for some.” It is hard to parody self-parody, but we must persist. The fate of Columbus’ ever-slight democracy depends on it.
With no debate but unblushing exhortations purportedly about cities, art, economics, and whatever doesn’t fit--free of knowledge, understanding, or meaningful context, City Council approved $250,000 to “create its first-ever ‘Public Art Master Plan,’ for the development, improvement and enhancement of public art and cultural arts programs in the community.”
From ACLU Ohio
A sub-bill was introduced on November 17 for House Bill 294, which will harm Ohio voters and make it more difficult to vote. The new version of the bill no longer includes automated voter registration and verification – the most significant positive component of the original bill. Send your message to the House Government Oversight Committee here.
Last week I wrote a column for this publication in which I mentioned that I’m a member of the International Association of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) Local Number 12. In it I exposed the association one of our members also had with the Proud Boys (PB) and that he’d been caught passing out PB propaganda at a worksite. He was removed from the worksite that weekend and, during an executive committee meeting a few days later, was justly and thankfully removed from our union altogether.
In the column, I called him “Andy.” His name isn’t “Andy.”
I also seemed to leave the impression in that column that those who choose to work as laborers at the Convention Center are somehow rougher than the theater crews.
Neither of those things are true. In the first place, the one Andy that’s in our local, can (and has) walked intellectual circles around the “Andy” I mentioned in the last column; in the second, many of those who primarily work the Convention Center are higher up on the food chain than anyone who prefers the theater.