Local

After voting over the previous three days Kroger members of UFCW 1059 approved and ratified their 4th contract offer with 3,546 “Yes” votes to 3,193 “No” votes.

Kroger 1059 members had previously rejected their new three-year deal three times as negotiations between UFCW 1059 and Kroger corporate have been on-and-off since late July.

Even if they had rejected their contract a fourth straight time the union would only have authorized a strike if 66 percent of members voted ‘No’ this fourth time, this according to Kroger workers to the Free Press.

For the 3rd vote, 55 percent voted “No” and 44 percent “Yes,” which would have made the 66 percent threshold an uphill battle for the 12,000-plus Kroger members of UFCW 1059.

Worse, say Kroger workers, is how they previously voted to authorize a strike in the 3rd vote, but the union instead went back to the bargaining table.

As word spread last night that the contract had passed, stunned Kroger workers turned to social media to express their frustration.

“Why now and not the other times?” wrote one worker on a Kroger online forum. “It was the same contract!! Let the job search begin.”

A supermoon, sun of the night, isn’t always a sure thing. There is no safe trip 
Going back
Going limp
Going slack
With the weight of your simple message
that I am just a crack
In that veneer of faith wallpapered over the
faith you lack
There aren’t enough daydreams to buoy this
There aren’t enough churches to bury this
There aren’t enough lies to stack
While me and my body are lost to
echoes of the last frontal attack;
While me and my sisters are broken in half
While me and my daughters are soaked in the black of coat hanger deaths and still born baths

And if you think
We’re going back
To those days
When the world felt like it was on track
because you were born with a cock and a sack
and you could keep your bitch on a leash in the back
When we bred your heirs with a smile and a knack
For obedient care,
With a stepford stare under a pink pretty wrap
When we held our tongues and bent like sap
When we baked you a pie
with your heel on our backs

The Free Press is pleased to announce that we will honor Joe Motil with our 2022 “Libby” award for Lifetime Achievement in Community Activism. Each year, the board of the Columbus Institute for Contemporary Journalism (CICJ), the nonprofit organization that publishes the Columbus Free Press, chooses a local activist for the award.

We will honor Joe at the Free Press October Second Saturday Salon and Award event this Saturday, October 8 between 6:30-8:30pm at Mozart’s Café party room in Clintonville, 4784 N. High Street. The event is free and open to the public.

The CICJ board chose Joe for his dedication to social justice, in the spirit of the award’s namesake, Libby Gregory. Libby was a former Free Press editor, local entrepreneur, and activist for peace, women’s issues and human rights. Joe is a courageous and tenacious advocate for affordable housing, livable wages, public health issues, green space, mass transit, and democracy.

In January of this year, a Columbus Charter Review Commission was appointed to review and recommend changes to our city charter that will go on the ballot this November. One of the proposed changes, which came from the City Attorney’s office, was going to make it even more difficult for citizen initiatives - true democracy of, by, and for the people - to get on the ballot. Well, I am happy to report that through grassroot, citizen advocacy, this was thwarted and better conditions were won that will make it easier for citizen initiatives to make the ballot in the future. The ultimate decision will be the Columbus voters on November 8th.

Wednesday, October 5, 6;30-7;30pm
Gateway Film Center, 1550 N. High St.

Kick off the festival with our CXC Opening Night reception! Celebrate the return of a fully in-person Cartoon Crossroads Columbus at the Gateway Film Center. Gather with old friends and meet new ones over a Gateway / CXC signature cocktail. Volunteers will be available to help you make your plans to experience CXC’s panels, expo and afterparties. Reception followed by a welcome from CXC staff and our first presentation, a Screening – Rubber Hose Animation with Vincent Alexander.

Complimentary lite bites and cash bar available.

Cartoon Crossroads Columbus is a non-profit organization that sponsors a yearly, four-day Fall festival in Ohio devoted to comics and cartooning. CXC 2022: October 6-9.

Denzel Curry’s album Melt My Eyes See Your Future spent a year with me impressed with an album which sounded meticulous and received responses which are certain. A Florida’s rapper’s album will have legs.

People can find music everywhere.

It isn’t often someone creates something which will last past a month in the public’s eye especially when seven years of news makes it where rappers can’t compete with our crazy political environment.

I suppose that’s that why rappers tour instead of sitting around and looking at the internet while smoking weed.

While I don’t smoke weed, I dropped my bus pass somewhere and was annoyed. I lost 62 bucks. Instead of paying 62 dollars for travel before 10pm, this month’s cost was $124.

I decided I would find COTA’s iPhone app, and place $62 dollars there.

I don’t know the economics of the iPhone scanning vs. an unlimited pass.

I will find out and let you know the results if Project Pat plays at COSI.

After scanning my bus pass, I rode the 2 until I jumped off at High Street downtown, and walked west towards Kemba Live.

I wondered about Denzel Curry’s popularity.

Chris Hedges’ latest book, The Greatest Evil Is War, is a terrific title and even better text. It doesn’t actually argue a case for war being a greater evil than other evils, but it sure does present evidence that war is tremendously evil. And I think in this moment of nuclear weapons threats, we can consider the case pre-established.

Yet the fact that we’re at major risk of nuclear apocalypse may not interest or move some people the way that the case made in this book might.

Of course, Hedges is honest about the evil on both sides of the war in Ukraine, which is quite rare and may either do a great deal of good persuading readers or prevent a lot of readers getting very far into his book — which would be a shame.

Hedges is brilliant on the supreme hypocrisy of the U.S. government and media.

He’s also excellent on the experiences of U.S. war veterans, and the horrible suffering and regrets that many of them have.

This book is also powerful in its descriptions of the  shameful, dirty, and disgusting gore and stench of war. This is the opposite of the romanticization of war so prevalent on tv and computer screens.

Mystery-thriller “Don't Worry Darling” is Olivia Wilde's sophomore outing as a director; she made “Book Smart,” a brilliant coming-of-age buddy comedy film. Florence Pugh and Harry Styles play Alice and Jack Chambers. They live in what appears to be the fifties, "American Dream" type of home in a town called Victory, a desert-paradise visual look and feel to Palm Springs. It's picture-perfect; all the houses have modern-midcentury architecture and decor, surrounded by pools, palm trees, and never-ending cocktail hours. Chris Pine is Frank, the inspirational leader of the Victory Project.

The men put on their suits and drive off to work in beautiful vintage automobiles, to work at the mysterious Victory Project, which they swear consists of "developing progressive materials." Before their husbands leave, the wives happily send them off with lunch, only to welcome them home at the end of the day with a whiskey, a three-course meal, and whatever else will make them happy.

Tuesday, October 4, 7pm, Capital University Law School [Law Library], 303 E. Broad St.

What if you were sentenced to death for a crime you didn’t commit?

The #NoDeathPenaltyOH campaign, in partnership with our friends at Witness to Innocence and the Ohio Innocence Project, is thrilled to announce a statewide tour featuring the voices of men and women who spent years — sometimes decades — on death row, for crimes they didn’t commit.

This event will feature Kwame Ajamu, Joe D’Ambrosio, Derrick Jamison, Ray Krone, and Sabrina Butler-Smith.

This event will take place in the Law Library.

Hosted by Intercommunity Justice and Peace Center, Ohioans to Stop Executions, and ACLU of Ohio.

The 77th session of the United Nations General Assembly was, in many ways, similar to the 76th session and many other previous sessions: at best, a stage for rosy rhetoric that is rarely followed by tangible action or, at worse, a mere opportunity for some world leaders to score political points against their opponents. 

 This should surprise no one. For many years, the UN has been relegated to the role of either a cheerleader for the policy of great powers, or a timid protester of sociopolitical, economic or gender inequalities. Alas, as the Iraq war proved nearly thirty years ago, and as the Russia-Ukraine war is proving today, the UN seems the least effective party in bringing about global peace, equality and security for all.