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For years I have been wondering when someone would write a book about Constance Baker Motley, one of the most consequential activists in the modern-day freedom movement. Brown-Nagin, Dean of the Radcliffe Center for Advanced Studies and the Daniel Paul Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard University, has obliged me with a stunning portrait of the woman who came to be referred to as the Civil Rights Queen.

Tuesday, October 18, 2022, 7:00 – 8:30 PM
Philip Metres is poet, scholar, translator, essayist, playwright, and peacebuilder. He is the author of ten books, including Shrapnel Maps (2020), The Sound of Listening: Poetry as Refuge and Resistance (2018), Pictures at an Exhibition (2016), Sand Opera (2015), and I Burned at the Feast: Selected Poems of Arseny Tarkovsky (2015). His work has garnered fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ohio Arts Council, and the Watson Foundation.

He has been awarded the Adrienne Rich Award, three Arab American Book Awards, the Cleveland Arts Prize, and the Hunt Prize. Metres has been called “one of the essential poets of our time,” whose work is “beautiful, powerful, magnetically original.” His poems have been translated into Arabic, Farsi, French, Polish, Russian, and Tamil. He is professor of English and director of the Peace, Justice, and Human Rights program at John Carroll University, and Core Faculty at Vermont College of Fine Arts. He lives in Cleveland, Ohio. He will be sharing readings from Shrapnel Maps and other works. 

In case you haven’t noticed, there is an election being held in November – November 8th to be exact – and you must participate if eligible. The stakes are high.

You say, there’s nothing in this election for me. Do you use cannabis even occasionally? Do you or a family member have a medical condition? Do you know someone who has been incarcerated for marijuana, or someone who has lost privileges because of a cannabis conviction? Do you believe in social justice? Do you want a vibrant economy?  I could go on, but you get point. The herb in its many forms has become an important issue in the lives of many Americans.

This is a primer on canna-candidates and canna-voting in Ohio. The where, why, who and how of this process. Let’s get started. Sources are linked. See the canna-candidate list here.

How to vote: Make a plan.

The Compost Exchange is hiring Booth Managers! If you, or someone you know is passionate about sustainability, read below:

Requirements & Responsibilities Include:

Great communication skills to educate and explain How It Works to current and potential new members.

Must be well organized and able to work independently. Each booth has a Samsung Tablet that we use to record when TCE members drop off their food scraps.

A sincere desire to serve others with a positive & outgoing personality.

Setting up, managing, and tearing down the booth.

Come to our work with a sincere desire to learn all about how composting works so as to be able to answer composting related questions.

Shift lengths = 3.5 – 4.5 hours, depending on the location.

Compensation is $65/$75 depending on if the shift is 3. 5 hours or 4.5 hours.

Must be 18 years of age or older and in good physical shape.

There are openings for booth managers who work every week at the same location + subs who fill in at various booth locations where needed.

We're in a critical moment to finally repeal the 2002 Iraq Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF). The 2002 AUMF authorized war against Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq – allowing George W. Bush to invade Iraq.

This outdated war authority is unnecessary for ongoing military operations, but as long as it remains, it can be used and abused by this or future administrations. The 2002 Iraq AUMF was used in January 2020 by the Trump administration to justify the assassination of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, which Congress never authorized, the UN concluded as "unlawful" and brought the U.S. dangerously close to war with Iran. 

We need to put an end to our forever wars.  The House recently passed a provision led by Rep. Barbara Lee to repeal this dangerous authorization in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).  

Part Two

Failure of internal and external communication

Part and parcel of the foregoing is the lack of effective communications systems and open, integrating, and supporting cultures that modern institutions require. The City of Columbus admits that its comms systems are a disaster, from website to online to telephone. When I first attempted to communicate with both staff and Council, one legislative aide came to my home to explain how I might try to contact appropriate parties for different issues and problems. They began by stating “it’s impossible to learn this from our website.”

I share what they taught me as widely as possible. Everyone I have spoken or written to within the City agrees: all City of Columbus communications systems need to be scrapped and rebuilt from the ground up. I have proposed that they publish a guide or handbook to the City. All agree.

Matthew Davis of Upper Arlington is a die-hard mountain biker and dirt biker. He also considers himself a Scioto River preservationist. Especially for the areas near his home which are cratered by several expansive and deep limestone quarries, and considered by some to be awe-inspiring when standing on their precipices.

Long before Quarry Trails Metro Park opened in 2021, Davis raced through here on bike trails he helped build with a shovel and hard work. Little did he know back then that Quarry Trails Metro Park would be paired (so to speak) with a mixed-use development.

Quarry Trails is just west of the Scioto River in Grandview becoming Columbus’s 20th metro park. But also emerging from the sandy rubble off Trabue Road is “Project QT.” A $650-million dollar mix of condos, office space and retail.

When the Project QT’s foundations and basic structures first appeared, some fans of Columbus Metro Parks took pause, some mockingly laughed in disgust. The newest metro park would be different from the others. Dominated by $1,800-a-month single bedrooms and a possibly a Marshalls.

I’m old-fashioned. I think you can only learn so much about a candidate by reading about him and watching him on video.

I believe you must experience a candidate up close and personal by seeing him speak, watching him interact with voters, and by having a face-to-face conversation.

Enter Jeff Crossman, the Democratic running for state attorney general. On paper and on video, he came across as a good candidate, but I wanted that real life contact.

I got it three weeks ago when the Parma-based state representative appeared before the Third Friday Democrat group in Columbus. I was not disappointed. The 50-year-old lawyer wowed me and the crowd with a straight up speech that Ohio has been poorly served by the current AG and his Republican cronies, that corruption has been running rampant in the Buckeye State, and that he had the backbone necessary to clean up the mess.

Crossman told the group that his opponent was sometimes careless with the truth and the public has a right to be angry at AG David Yost for inaction and obfuscation.

Saturday, October 15, 2022
12noon
East North Broadway and High Streets
Peace vigil until 1pm. Medea will join us!

Presentation about book
6:30 PM
Kafé Kerouac, 2250 N. High St., Columbus, 43201. 

Facebook Event 

Join us for a discussion and book signing by Medea Benjamin, co-founder of CODEPINK and co-author of War in Ukraine:  Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict.  “This careful, informed, judicious study is an invaluable guide to understanding Russia’s criminal invasion of Ukraine, and most crucially, how we can act to help bring this terrible tragedy to an end.” – Noam Chomsky.  

Sponsored by the Central Ohio Peace Network, Progressive Peace Coalition and others.  

Questions?  Contact cmhammond11@att.net.  

The game may be almost over.

Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S.Davies put it this way:

“The irresolvable dilemma facing Western leaders is that this is a no-win situation. How can they militarily defeat Russia, when it possesses 6,000 nuclear warheads and its military doctrine explicitly states that it will use them before it will accept an existential military defeat?”