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We have chosen the Goodale Park Parimeter for the Walk for Health Care Justice this year. It will take place during ComFest, occurring in the Park, making our presence visible to hundreds of people as we walk.  We hope to have announcements about our action from one or more of the ComFest Stages, asking for other people to join us.

We invite you, family and friends to participate in this 1 mile walk for Health Care Justice. It will take less than 1 hour.

We will meet before 4 PM on the North-East corner of Goodale Park, at the intersection of Park Street and Buttles Avenue, begin will a few words and walk clockwise around the Park. If you have a SPAN Ohio T-shirt and sign, please bring them. We will have some signs available.  Bring a noisemaker.

Friday, June 24, 6:00pm
The Ohio State House. 1 Capitol Square Columbus OH 43215
From Michael Moore:
The choices we make in the next few hours will determine the fate of our democracy

Minutes ago the Supreme Court ruled, once again, that women are indeed second-class citizens — stripped of their rights to control their own bodies, and forced to give birth should they become pregnant.

This is one of the worst abominations ever committed by this country. And if we don’t act, RIGHT NOW, they will get away with it.

So, on this day of infamy, I ask, I beg, I IMPLORE you — 

MAKE YOUR VOICE HEARD! 

FLOOD THE STREETS!

Join me and the other millions in the majority and PLEDGE TO FIGHT BACK — today, tonight, and EVERY DAY until full rights are restored to women.

Remove all Republicans in November. 

Part Two (of Four)

In the shadows of democracy (cont’d.)

City Council appointments and elections

The process of filling public offices, especially City Council, is a key element in the reproduction of undemocracy from one iteration of office-holders to their successors. The city boosters in the media never comment on this.

Until the election of Elizabeth Brown in 2015 (reelected in 2019), no Council member had been elected without first being appointed to office since Mary Ellen O’Shaunassey in 1995. In 2019, Brown did not even complete nonpartisan Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey.

More recently, Shayla Favor and Rob Dorans gained their seats by submitting 500-word essays and resumes. They were not elected to office

These appointees, including mayors, typically rise from their “holding pens” (to quote one long-time civic activist) or school practice yards in the Franklin County Board of Elections, Columbus Board of Education, or minor City positions. They do not join the ranks of the rulers first by popular election.

After a two-year virtual-only hiatus, ComFest is in many ways rising from the pandemic’s ashes and returning to its full glory at Goodale Park.

What should never be undervalued is the energy and creative power of the volunteers who have run ComFest, which many know is coolest party in town, if not the only party in town that truly matters, for the previous half century.

But what also shouldn’t be forgotten is how they kept ComFest going in the face of a pandemic. There were two virtual ComFests, and they required a great deal of technical expertise and logistical planning that was entirely new to the volunteers, says ComFest volunteer Marty Stutz.

“Really, it was a lot of the same folks who put together the regular ComFest, and they just decided, ‘Hey, this is really important, and what can possible be done to keep ComFest going even though there’s not going to be a live festival in the park?’,” said Stutz. “There was a whole lot of people who came together with not a lot of time to put the virtual together.”

Friday, June 24 to Sunday, June 26, this on-line event requires advance registration

We’re a coalition of organizations and individuals working together to host A Radical Gathering — a virtual space for cultivating the world we all deserve.

A Radical Gathering will happen online the weekend of June 24-26 and will include a series of teach-ins, workshops, trainings, presentations, and panels, covering a myriad of revolutionary and visionary topics.

When we say the gathering is “radical,” we mean that it is for

• Getting at the roots of problems

• Thinking outside the realm of what we’ve been taught to believe is possible

• Exploring big questions and unsettling truths

The gathering is a chance to learn and teach each other, to meet other people doing their part of the work, and to practice some skills we’ll surely need. As we continue to move further into climate collapse and through other violent impacts of global capitalism and colonialism, those of us who have vision should gather, share, and practice together.

Will you join us and see where this goes from here?

Community Festival (ComFest) kicks off Friday, June 24 at noon in Goodale Park.

After a two-year hiatus due to the pandemic, ComFest is back live and will feature over 150 musical performances, workshops and community-oriented programming over three days.

In 2022, ComFest is celebrating 50 years of community, social activism and education.  In addition to the line-up of the city’s best music spread over four stages, workshops, comedy and other special programming will be featured at the Peace and Healing Pavilion. The much-loved Street Fair also returns with one-of-a-kind vendors, arts and crafts, local food and progressive community organizations.

Visit the ComFest Museum located in the air-conditioned Goodale Park Shelterhouse and travel back to the early years of Columbus’ favorite festival.

Hilltop hero Zerqa Abid, who has dedicated her life to helping thousands of young people on the Westside, is threatening a hunger strike if the City does not take more action to curb increasing violence by young people.

Last Friday, following three homicides over two days of young people in the Hilltop, Abid and the Hilltop Youth Social Justice Collaborative held an emergency press conference.

“There are 10,000 children at risk in our neighborhood,” said Abid, founder and director of My Project USA. “We cannot just be patiently waiting on the promises and talk we’ve been given for a year.”

But the City has given millions since 2021. This May, $16 million in funding was announced for summer youth programs, with $8 million of this allocation going to anti-youth violence programs.

But many are asking, is it enough? What’s more, they ask, who’s getting the money and is their advocacy effective?

Saturday, June 25, 5pm, Columbus Square Bowling Palace, 5707 Forest Hills Blvd.

Come join us for our annual bowling fundraiser! Come have a good time for a great cause. Registration is now open!

Trophies will be awarded to:

• Top three Adult Teams

• Best Male and Female Bowler

• Medals to Top three Child Bowlers

• Teams of four players

• $25 Adult Bowling Ticket: four games of bowling, shoe rental, pizza and soda

• $20 Adult Non-Bowling Ticket: Pizza and soda

• $15 Child Bowling Ticket: two games of bowling, shoe rental, pizza and soda (12 and under)

• $10 Child Bowling Ticket: Pizza and soda (12 and under)

The Faith Thomas Foundation raises funds and awareness to benefit and provide support to the transitional program, between Nationwide Children’s Hospital and Ohio State’s Comprehensive Cancer Center / James Cancer Hospital and Solove Research Institute, to improve the care of patients as they transition from childhood to adulthood. This transition program will provide services that will make for a seamless transition.

Joe Motil, former Columbus City Council candidate and longtime community advocate who has begun circulating petitions to run for Mayor in the 2023 May primary election stated that, “I attended the city’s promise to bulldoze the homeless camp at Heer Park this morning at around 8:00am. When I turned west onto Williams Road you would have thought there was another homicide or violent crime committed due to the heavy police presence. There was a combined nine police cruisers and paddy wagons on Williams Road alone. As I approached the parking lot to the south, I saw eight more cruisers nearby and two more parked on a service road just south of the camp. We are talking about 20 police vehicles and probably 25-30 police officers. Seriously? I haven’t seen this much police presence since the protesting in downtown Columbus in 2020.”

Wednesday, June 22, 7:30pm, Two Dollar Radio Headquarters, 1124 Parsons Ave.

Join author Kim Kelly for a moderated discussion led by the Ohio AFL-CIO and hosted by Two Dollar Radio Headquarters. Suggested donation is $10, 100% of which will go to the Central Ohio Worker Center!

Kim Kelly is an independent journalist, author, and organizer based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She has been a labor columnist for Teen Vogue since 2018, and her writing on labor, class, politics, and culture has appeared in The New Republic, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Baffler, The Nation, The Columbia Journalism Review, and Esquire. She has also worked as a video correspondent for More Perfect Union, The Real News Network, and Means TV. Previously she was the heavy metal editor at VICE’s Noisey, and a leader in the VICE Union. She is a member of the Industrial Workers of the World’s Freelance Journalist Union, an elected councilperson for the Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE).