Local
The Columbus Black Theatre Festival (CBTF) celebrates its 10th Anniversary this July 9th and 10th in Central Ohio. The theme this year is Speaking Truth That Heals. Mine 4 God Productions (M4GP) kicks off our tenth year of bringing the Columbus Black Theatre Festival (CBTF) to Central Ohio with a free Anniversary Recognition & Celebration event held this July 9th at the Columbus Metropolitan Library, Main Auditorium, from 1:30 to 3:30 PM.
The CBTF is produced by Mine 4 God Productions and has brought playwrights and actors from around the world to Columbus, Ohio for the past ten years. This year the festival is sponsored by the Greater Columbus Arts Council, Wild Goose Creative and Lady Butterflies-Ohio.
Monday, July 4, 5:15-6pm, Goodale Park, 120 W. Goodale St.
Dan Dougan and His Little Brother’s will play from 5:15pm to 6pm on the Goodale Park Gazebo Stage on Monday, July 4 at the Doo Dah Music Fest and Parade!
• Great live music 11am-7pm
• Adult beverages
• Free entry for all!
Band: Dan Dougan on vocals, Ro-z Mendelson on guitar, Chris Cox on drums, and Bob Ray Starker on sax
Read “Little Brother’s, big shoes” in the 6-28-2017 issue of Columbus Monthly.
The Doo Dah Parade steps off at 1pm.
Hosted by Doo Dah Parade.
July 3 & 17, 4-6pm
Bronzeville Community Park, 199 Hamilton Ave.
Free admission, all are welcome!
Hosted by Bronzeville Neighborhood Association, featuring Transit Arts
Monday, July 4, 12noon, Goodale Park, 120 W. Goodale St.
Join fellow vegans as part of the Doo Dah Parade on Monday, July 4, beginning at 12noon; the parade kicks off at 1pm.
“Celebrate Liberty and Lunacy with off the wall range of mischievous grounded superheroes, political debacles, homegrown satirists, and the other bohemian frolickers winding through the Short North.” This is a great time for vegans to come together and to be provocative, zany, and leave an impression that folks won’t forget.
We will need signs . . . all positive vegan statements please. Here are some suggestions . . . “Kale Yeah!,” dressing like zombies with signs and sounds of “Grains, Grains!,” “Tofu: the Other White ‘Meat’,” or a blue Facebook sign that reads, “Vegan . . . 70 Billion Animals Like This!”
If you have any ideas, please post in the comments.
We will be making our final decision of what to create by June 21. An example would be us dressed as non-human animals with a human kabob. Doesn’t have to be that wild, but you get the idea. We hope that you can join us!
Monday, July 4 at 11 am.
Show your support for Fair Maps, voters, and democracy!
Fair Districts is joining with Common Cause Ohio, the local League of Women Voters, and other pro-democracy groups to pass out voter education materials, including information about the August 2 primary, and make a statement with our pro-voter and pro-democracy shirts. There will be candy to give the kids as well, of course!
Comfest returned this year. Comfest celebrated a 50 year anniversary last weekend.
Comfest began in 1972 as a community concert founded with a group of political activists, artists, craftspeople, local business owners, musicians, and plenty of dreamers near 16th avenue off the Ohio State Campus.
Our Columbus Free Press was amongst the founders of Comfest.
Comfest’s principal goal aims for elimination of prejudice against people on the basis of age, class, ability, income, race, sex and sexual preference/orientation.
In 1983 Comfest relocated to Goodale Park in the Short North.
I know I like freedom, justice, and equality, and outdoor drinking.
Last year, Comfest existed virtually last year because of COVID.
It was really weird thinking about the fact all of Columbus wouldn’t drink together in 2021.
Everyone was stuck inside.
Last weekend, I looked at the Comfest program guide as 2022’s Comfest returned to the Short North.
I didn’t know which music group I would watch but I knew I would find vegan food.
The necessity of food insured this.
I took the number 1.
The need has not been greater to help the homeless, especially during the pandemic and recent clearing of homeless camps, such as the one at Heer Park on the City’s far South Side. With rents rising, and the cost of living going up due to inflation, the mission of The Open Shelter is “To Stay Behind With Those Left Behind,” all while serving the homeless and marginally housed in Central Ohio, as affordable housing is a scarcity for those who are living in poverty.
On June 23, The Open Shelter had an open house at their new location on Parsons Avenue. There were remarks made by local dignitaries, as well as Shelter Staff and Board Members. The new facility, according to The Open Shelter’s website serves as a “hub for (the Shelter’s) Outreach Services, which are desperately needed” for the homeless and marginally housed in the community.
The first step of the intake process, as the Open Shelter’s Resource Development Coordinator Harry Yeprem Jr. explained while giving a tour of the new facility, is to serve a person with a warm meal that is prepared in the kitchen before being given an orientation and introduction to the Open Shelter’s services.
Part Four (of Four)
Residents’ lack of basic rights (cont’d.)
Public safety
The right to public health and a clean environment for healthy living, which I explored in Part Three, is inseparable from freedom from dangerous sidewalks and streets, and especially residents’ and visitors’ rights to public safety. Columbus is the state king and queen of homicides by guns, and (perversely) a national leader. The mayor and Columbus Public Health respond with little more than an unhelpful, inaccurate slogan: It is “a public health crisis.” Among a multitude of distractions and misunderstandings is the fundamental misconstrual of public health itself. They say little to nothing about broader social reforms including education, training, jobs, social supports, and accessible and affordable health care itself.
She is absolutely my favorite human rights activist and historical figure from the twentieth century. Who could not be in love with and awe of Fannie Lou Hamer?
A poor, black, Mississippi sharecropper with a sixth-grade education–it was rumored that Coretta Scott King, the refined, highly educated wife of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, once refused to share a platform with a woman of so little education–bedeviled two United States senators, a President, the Democratic Party, and every white supremacist in Mississippi with her uncompromising talk about racism in America. And that voice! She had a molasses-thick southern accent, and her voice had a frank and unapologetic tone that put the listener on notice that she was going to say what needed to be said and there would be no sugar coating. If Barbara Jordan sounded like God at His most prim and proper, Hamer sounded like your best sistah friend who reminded you she told you not to go out with that no good so-and-so in the first place.
Thursday, June 30, 7-9pm, Tuttle Park [outside of the Tuttle Community Center], 240 W. Oakland Ave.
Roe v. Wade has been overturned. Join us for an organizing meeting to address the fallout.
Hosted by Central Ohio Revolutionary Socialists.