Local
Nearly 100 Ohioans across race, place, and income rallied at the Statehouse Saturday to keep up the fight for fair maps
The OOC rally included national and statewide faith leaders, young Ohioans, formerly incarcerated people and their families, and voting rights advocates
The coalition urged Black, brown, young, and formerly incarcerated Ohioans to vote during the midterms to fight back against political extremism in Ohio
On Saturday, August 6, on the 57th Anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, a multiracial coalition led by the Ohio Organizing Collaborative (OOC) joined together outside the Ohio Statehouse to protect Ohioans’ freedom to vote and keep up the fight for fair district maps. The nearly 100+ person rally included faith leaders, college students, formerly incarcerated Ohioans and their families, and voting rights advocates from all over Ohio.
We live in an age of division. As the briefest glance at news media shows, contemporary universities are so often centers of differences, contradictions, and clashes between knowledge and ignorance off- and on-campus. One revealing site of combat is the false opposition of the faculty and the—to faculty and academic administration—second-class “professionals” in departments of student affairs and student life. This dichotomy, and its underlying both real and imaginary conflicts, critically parallels those between “learning and earning,” humanities’ core curriculum and “great books” vs. STEM and business education, curriculum vs. extracurriculum, and on-campus vs. off-campus life.
In this essay, as a retired humanities professor who taught for almost half a century at three public universities in large cities, and who lives in my city’s University District, I propose to seize on the strengths of both sides of what I see as a fallacious and harmful dichotomy. I seek to bring them closer together in the interests of undergraduate, graduate, and professional students, the suffering health of our universities, the advancement of young adults, and the needs of our nation.
Sunday, August 7, 4:30PM
Families and friends are welcome. Please bring a dish to share and join in some great conversation with our JVP friends.
The location is Whetstone Park of Roses - Open Shelter House 1 at the entrance to the park. Rain or shine. You may want to bring a chair. The coordinating committee is providing the beverages, plates, cups, napkins and utensils.
Please sign up with the number of people in your party and what you are bringing. Here is the link to RSVP..
If you have any questions, please email me at cmhammond11@att.net.
Hope to see you there!
Saturday, August 6, 2022, 1:00 – 2:00 PM
Celebrate the 57th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act on August 6th by standing up for democracy!
Check-in and brunch begin at 10:30 am at the Sheraton in Capitol Square. The program will begin promptly at 11:00 am with a training and voter engagement resource give-away. We will then march to the Statehouse for the rally at 1 pm.
This event is co-sponsored by Ohio Organizing Collaborative, NAACP Ohio Conference, APRI of Ohio, Ohio Unity Coalition, the Amos Project, the Ohio State Baptist Convention, our national partner Faith in Action, and our new co-sponsor The Ohio Legislative Black Caucus Foundation. Join us to uplift Black and brown voices and fight for fair, free, and equitable elections. All Ohioans deserve to have their voices heard and their votes to matter! For questions, support with transportation, or other accessibility needs, please contact us at info@ohorganizing.org.
(Presentations by Dr. Yurii Sheliazhenko, executive secretary of Ukrainian Pacifist Movement, at the International Peace and Planet Network conference in New York and at the 2022 World Conference against A and H Bombs in Hiroshima.)
“Thank God Ukraine learned a lesson of Chernobyl and got rid of Soviet nukes in the 1990s.”
Dear friends, I am glad to join this important peacebuilding dialog from Kyiv, capital of Ukraine.
77 years ago (August 9, 1945) an all-Christian bomber crew dropped an experimental plutonium bomb on Nagasaki City, Japan, instantly incinerating, asphyxiating and/or vaporizing tens of thousands of innocent civilians, mostly women and children. Very few Japanese soldiers were killed by the bombs.
Japan’s major religions are Shitoism and Buddhism, but a disproportionate number of the dead at Nagasaki were Christian. The bomb also wounded uncounted tens of thousands of other victims who suffered the blast trauma, the intense heat and/or the radiation sickness that killed and maimed so many of the survivors.
In 1945, the US regarded itself as the most Christian nation in the world and the bomber crew reflected that reality. The small United States Army Air Force (USAAF) unit that was charged with dropping the atomic bombs (the 509th Composite Group) even had two Christian military chaplains assigned to it. They all were products of the type of Christianity that failed to teach what Jesus taught concerning homicidal violence (ie, that it was forbidden to his followers).
Friday, August 5, 2022, 12:00 PM
Simply Living will be holding a First Fridays online information session about Solarize Columbus. Solar United Neighbors provides unbiased, installer-neutral support through each stage of the process of going solar. Their team ensures you understand how solar works, how it saves you money on your bills, and how it can be installed on your home.
More educators, reducing class sizes, and air conditioning are on the bargaining table between Columbus City School teachers and the Columbus Board of Education (the Board). But teachers are telling the Free Press that Superintendent Dr. Talisa Dixon, the Board itself, and the way the district has been run since Dixon took over are also under scrutiny and one reason why they may strike.
Dr. Dixon was hired by the Board early in 2019 and she led the district with its 50,000 students through the pandemic. She also lost her father at the beginning of the lockdown.
Her first three years were eventful to say the least. But during this time the district’s 4,100 teachers noticed more administrators were being hired. A lot more, actually.
Indeed, nearly 100 administrators, who are not members of the teachers’ union, were hired (see above chart provided by Columbus City School teachers). Many of these of positions pay over $100,000, and many are “central office” admins, meaning they do not work in the schools.
Thursday, August 4, 6:45-9:30pm, this on-line event requires advance registration
“A gun-toting 83-year-old woman refuses to sell her house to the power plant next door. But despite her refusal, the plant has moved ahead with their 20-million-dollar deal to buy out most of Cheshire and bulldoze all the homes. What happened in this Ohio River town overrun by one of the largest coal-fired power plants in the world? A story of money, power, and the increasingly difficult choices we face surrounding coal and the environment, ‘Cheshire, Ohio’ makes us think twice about home.”
“Filmed over a decade, ‘Cheshire, Ohio’ follows a community devastated by coal, starting with American Electric Power’s buyout and bulldozing of this Ohio River community after exposing them to years of harmful emissions, and then returning several years later to the now almost emptied town as we follow the case of 77 plaintiffs who have filed a lawsuit against American Electric Power for not protecting them from carcinogenic chemicals at the plant’s coal ash landfill site.”
Wednesday, August 3, 12noon-1pm, this on-line event requires advance registration
In the face of relentless attacks on abortion access and bodily autonomy, abortion pills have become even more essential.
Learn how to share information about why Self-Managed Abortion (SMA) through medication is a safe, effective, and convenient reproductive health option for those in your community.
RSVP for this event by using this link.
Hosted by Faith Choice Ohio.