Local
Sunday, December 18, 1-2pm, intersection of N. High St. and North Broadway
Join Jewish Voice for Peace for our Hanukkah Vigil standing up for human rights everywhere.
Hosted by Jewish Voice for Peace Central Ohio.
Almost all visitors to Columbus comment with surprise about the city’s dirtiness, trash, broken streets and sidewalks, confusion about parking, and uncontrolled vehicular traffic including bicycles and especially electric scooters.
With no recognized identity or documented history, I dub Columbus, Ohio, the United States’ “plague city.” Knowledgeable residents may first think that I refer to the city’s nationally high rates of racially and economically-linked infant and maternal mortality, or police murders (with judicial and City impunity) of unarmed young Black men. Or the incomplete, unknowledgeable, and too brief responses to Covid and tardiness with the measles outbreak now.
But my identification pertains primarily to the city’s unsafe and unsanitary physical environment. We hear little to nothing from the “mayor” or our unrepresentative city councilors about this, despite its dramatic contradiction to their unusually poor and out-of-touch sloganeering. Of course, “contradiction” is not a concept with which they are familiar.
Saturday, December 11, 2022, 11:00 AM - 1:00 PM
Location: North High Street across from the Wexner Center. Over 400 people have been killed and many thousands people have been arrested. The Iranian regime has begun executing them.
Earlier this week civil rights and grassroots leaders, such as the Ohio Conference of NAACP, released a letter to Ohio legislators urging them to vote “NO” on Substitute HB 458. But both the GOP entrenched Ohio Senate and the Ohio House passed the bill yesterday, posturing this legislation as an effort to combat voter fraud, which is mostly a myth. Governor Mike DeWine is expected to sign the bill into law.
Violet Night is directed by Tommy Wirkola ("The Trip," "Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters") and stars David Harbor as Santa Claus. The film opens with Santa Claus, who's currently fed up with Christmas and is taking a break from delivering presents by chugging a few beers at a Bristol pub on Christmas Eve. Santa has grown a little cynical over the centuries and is disgusted that all kids want for Christmas are video games and money. He feels they have become increasingly materialistic and unaware that he exists. Drunk and disappointed, he flies off with his reindeer and sleigh, and this version of Santa leans over his sleigh to vomit.
Thursday, December 15, 7-8:30pm, this on-line event requires advance registration
Tackling to A-Z Impacts of Plastics is doing a “Debrief on Climate Grief” so that we will be able to move on to victory for 2023. This event will include music therapy and meditation along with the discussions on the Port Arthur tour and what is happening now in the Ohio Valley River Basin.
RSVP for this event by using this link.
Hosted by Sierra Club Ohio, Indigenous Environmental Network, and Tackling the A-Z Impacts of Plastic.
A Cincinnati area father whose son committed suicide after being bullied by his Kroger managers is suing the grocery giant for wrongful death. The case claims nothing was done to remedy a hostile and toxic work environment even when Kroger corporate and the local Kroger union were aware of his son’s pleas for help.
Evan Seyfried, who was 40, had worked for Kroger in Milford, Ohio for nearly two decades before taking his life in 2021. He had no prior history of mental illness, and, by all accounts, popular and well-liked by his co-workers.
But perhaps Evan’s popularity, and maybe even his politics, put him on the radar of two managers who would soon wage “a campaign of terror” against him. Many are not aware that Kroger moves managers from store to store every four months or so, and many Kroger workers believe this is part of corporate’s strategy to keep them in line.
From Massachusetts Peace Action
Congress is voting on a $857 billion Pentagon budget, the largest in history. That's $80 billion more than last year And that doesn't count spending on nuclear weapons, spending for the war in Ukraine, and veterans' benefits.
2.9 million children in the United States were lifted out of poverty in 2021 by the Child Tax Credit. But that program expired after a year, and now our elected officials want to spend an equivalent amount on war instead. Bring our war dollars home.
Kill this awful bill. Update, Dec. 8: The House voted for the NDAA 350-80, with 45 Democrats and 35 Republicans voting no. The Senate has yet to act.
Rally for Democracy!
Tuesday, December 13, 11am, Trinity Episcopal Church on Capitol Square, 125 E. Broad St.
Join We Are Ohio, Fair Districts Ohio, Equal Districts, the Ohio Voter Rights Coalition, and over 165 organizations that are standing up against the cynical attempt to make it harder for Ohio citizens to amend the state Constitution.
We will gather at Trinity Episcopal Church (125 E. Broad St., across from the Statehouse) on Tuesday, December 13, at 11am. We are planning a press conference and a visit to the Ohio House. Be prepared to stay into the afternoon if possible!
We are asking you to wear T-shirts or other apparel that includes the logo for your organization or represents the kinds of issues that have appeared in past ballot initiative campaigns or might be the impetus for future campaigns.
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.