Local
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).
Part One (of Four)
Unlike those of any other U.S. city of its size, and certainly its slogan-dominated, boosterish aspirations, residents of Columbus have few legal rights and fewer ethical democratic rights. I write as a privileged member of the community, a homeowner, retired professional, taxpayer, and voter. Many others lack my privileges. They have even fewer rights. The City of Columbus has no inclusive urban vision, no focus on the public, especially those in need, other than private interests and developers.
The contradictions of Columbus past and present require a long book. I can only highlight some of the major ones here. Refer to my continuing series of Columbus Free Press columns (listed at end of this essay and available on the website) as well as Kevin Cox’s Boomtown Columbus (2021), the only documented, book-length study of the 220-year-old city. I ask rhetorically: Does the 14th largest city in the nation deserve to have a thoroughly researched, fact-based history—not the fictitious and trivial version expressed always without context in Columbus Dispatch and on WOSU?
A long view
For all her decades of experience in politics and the ways of Washington, D.C., nothing had prepared Lady Bird Johnson for the role of First Lady. She and her husband were elevated to their offices under the worst circumstances imaginable. On the airplane ride back from Dallas, she visited Jackie Kennedy who was in the hold of the plane with the casket. Lady Bird told her, "Oh, Mrs Kennedy, you know we never even wanted to be vice president and now, dear God, it's come to this." We. Mrs. Johnson seemingly sublimated her husband’s wishes to hers. But as Julia Sweig shows us, LBJ’s political career was her career too. Indeed, she sometimes referred to his office as “our presidency.” If Robert Kennedy, the attorney general, was the second most powerful person in Washington during his brother’s presidency, Lady Bird Johnson played that same role in her husband’s administration.
Tuesday, June 21, 4:40-6:30pm
Southland Center, 3700 S High St>
Join CEA members as we rally outside the Board of Education meeting in support of the Schools Columbus Students Deserve!
Posters will be provided, and (appropriate) homemade signs are also welcome.
CEA members should wear their gray Solidarity shirts.
Monday, June 20, 10am-1pm, Neighborhood Services, Inc. Food Pantry, 1950 N. Fourth St.
Join the NSI Food Pantry and other local community partners for a resource fair in celebration of Juneteenth!
Community partners and resources provided include:
• ARCH [Accompanying Returning Citizens with Hope]
• MHAOhio [Mental Health America of Ohio]
• ID vouchers
• Birth certificates
• and many more!
This is a free event; all are welcome!
Hosted by Neighborhood Services, Inc. Food Pantry.