Local
Sunday, April 24, 5-6pm, this on-line event requires advance registration
UUJO’s Environmental Justice Team presents “Connecting the Dots” on Sunday, April 24, focusing on community gardens in rural and urban Ohio and their impact on food justice, access to healthy sustainable food, resilience, and mitigation of food deserts.
Pam Roberts, Executive Director of Together We Grow Gardens, will share resources and ideas for creating community gardens that provide greater equity and food justice. Come and share your successes and questions about community gardening!
“Connecting the Dots: Planet, People, Power” was launched by UUJO: Unitarian Universalist Justice Ohio in September 2021. We meet monthly to provide a platform for issues of environmental justice along with actions that can be performed during each meeting. Our monthly topics are driven by you and the immediate areas of environmental injustice that you are confronting right now.
RSVP for this event by using this link.
I don’t know if it’s supply and demand. I don’t know if it’s Covid. I don’t know if Trump, and his friends are waging economic sanctions within our country for criticizing the January 6th attack. I don’t know if someone wants to punish Chairman of the Budget Committee Bernie Sanders for tweeting criticism of wealthy companies by name. I don’t know if this correlates with the raised wages at places like Kroger, and Walmart.
I don’t know if this correlates with the fact Russia invaded Ukraine. Our country is supplying Ukraine with weapons which appears there is some sort of conflict between our country and Russia.
I don’t know if Republican Governor Abbot blocking agriculture shipping which cost our country $240 million dollars had something do with it.
http://www.cnn.com/2022/04/17/opinions/greg-abbott-texas-border-policies...
Texas governor reversed this costly block which Texas Agriculture’s Commission called "Political Theater."
On Wednesday, April 20, members of Ohio Youth for Climate Justice and Sunrise Columbus disrupted The Ohio State University’s 2022 signature Earth Day event: “Time to Act on Climate Change” at the Ohio Union’s US Bank Conference Theater.
Organizers dropped banners and led chants when President Johnson, a planned speaker and award recipient at the event, began her speech.
The students demanded that OSU completely divest from fossil fuel companies immediately and reinvest the money into the Columbus community.
“It’s time for President Johnson to address the realities of the crisis and leverage her power to tangibly act on climate change,” said Catherine Adams, a student organizer and a freshman at OSU. “We have tried asking nicely. We have tried to meet with President Johnson, but she continues to make empty promises rather than sitting down with us and working towards real solutions for our community.”
Friday, April 22 - Earth Day
Saturday, April 23, 12-7pm - Earth Day Festival downtown
Join us at Genoa Park for our annual Earth Day Celebration! This family-friendly event will feature local music, food, and drinks from a diverse array of vendors. Genoa Park is a 2.07-acre urban park along the west bank of the Scioto River located between Broad and Rich Streets,
Vendors & Children’s Activities 12-5pm
Bands, Food Trucks & Beverages: 12-7pm
Entry: Free!
The war in Ukraine rages on, and the war mentality, promoted by propaganda on all sides, generates ever more devotion to keeping it going, even escalating it, even considering repeating it in Finland or elsewhere based on having “learned” precisely the wrong “lesson.” The bodies pile up. The threat of famine looms over many countries. The risk of nuclear apocalypse grows. The impediments to positive action for the climate are strengthened. Militarization expands.
Columbus searches in vain for an identity, bouncing ridiculously from Cowtown to Crop Town, Cap City, Arch City, Buckeyeville, Nationwide or Crew City, or Number 14 or 15 (in population rank among U.S. cities). None of those fit the city past or present. I propose another, more appropriate and accurate moniker: the lawless, wild-wild-Midwest. (See my “Columbus’ identity crisis and its media”; “Columbus searches for its Downtown with historical, urbanist, and developers’ blinders”; “Columbus, Ohio, searches to be a city: The myth of the Columbus Way”; “Is Columbus actually a City?”)
Tuesday, April 19, Jewish leaders from central Ohio along with interfaith and secular allies gathered in front of the Columbus office of Chase Bank to demand that Chase Bank take immediate action to end their investments in polluting fossil fuels. Emphasizing the urgency of the moment and lifting up the symbols of Passover, community leaders proclaimed the plagues that fossil fuel Pharoahs – coal, oil and gas companies – have inflicted on us. They held up matzah to demonstrate the urgency needed to confront the climate crisis and urged Chase Bank to ‘move their dough’ out of polluting fossil fuels.
A group calling itself the Columbus Coalition on Rent Control filed a petition this week with the city to officially begin a citizen-led ballot initiative which would create a rent control ordinance and establish a new city office named the Department of Fair Housing.
While the petition for rent control or rent stabilization may not be a first for the state of Ohio, this would be Ohio’s first-ever rent control ordinance if the citizen initiative were to win at the ballot.
The Columbus Coalition on Rent Control is driven by several well-known progressive and political activists, such as Jonathan Beard, Joe Motil, Tyrone Thomas, and Noel Williams, Chair of the housing committee for B.R.E.A.D, the local faith-based activist group.
Seemingly overnight, the cost of housing in Columbus went from relatively affordable to now putting tens of thousands under extreme pressure to keep a roof over their family’s heads.
Affordable housing is at an impasse nationwide, but many believe Columbus, while late compared to other major cities, is now staring a homeless and affordable housing crisis in the face.