Local

Wednesday, December 8, 11:30am-12:30pm, Supreme Court of Ohio, 65 S. Front St.

Black, white, or brown, native, or immigrant, Ohioans believe that voters should pick our leaders, not the other way around.

The unfair, illegal, and heavily-rigged legislative maps that Republicans rammed through the official process will literally shape our lives and our communities for the next decade.

Join us on Wednesday, December 8, 11:30am-12:30pm, for a rally outside of the Supreme Court of Ohio on the first day of oral arguments in the lawsuit against the rigged Statehouse maps passed by the Ohio Redistricting Commission. RSVP for this event and bring a friend with you!

As Ohioans, we have the power to choose which hospitals, schools, and resources are funded in our neighborhood, not power-hungry politicians who favor their own interests.

We need “all hands on deck” to demonstrate that our communities agree that voters need fair and representative maps that reflect the diversity of Ohio.

Below this introduction is the obituary for Sarah Michelle Burris, who passed from a drug overdose in October. The obituary was written by her mother who wrote it “early one morning after not sleeping very much. The words are straight from my heart.”

“The love I have for my daughter never changed throughout the addiction,” Rhonda Burris told the Free Press. “I loved her every day the same as the day she was born. I miss her so very much, we all do. She was a beautiful soul.”

Sarah’s obituary first appeared in a London, Ohio, weekly paper, where Sarah was born and raised. We reprint it here because it reflects what we are learning from the “Saint of Sullivant Avenue” – Esther Flores.

Flores works tirelessly at her drop-in safehouse to take care of the “Street Sisters” who travel up and down Sullivant. Esther knew Sarah and used some of the exact same words to describe Sarah as her mother did. “She was a beautiful soul. Kind and polite.”

Sarah’s mother confirmed that her daughter’s battle against addiction was mostly fought on Sullivant Avenue, a long-time hotspot for trap houses.

The exclusion of certain countries from the U.S. “democracy summit” is not a side issue. It is the very purpose of the summit. And excluded countries have not been excluded for failing to meet the standards of behavior of those that were invited or the one doing the inviting. Invitees didn’t even have to be countries, as even a U.S. backed failed coup leader from Venezuela has been invited. So have representatives of Israel, Iraq, Pakistan, DRC, Zambia, Angola, Malaysia, Kenya, and — critically — pawns in the game: Taiwan and Ukraine.

What game? The weapons sales game. Which is the whole point. Look at the U.S. State Department website on the Democracy Summit. Right at the top: “‘Democracy doesn’t happen by accident. We have to defend it, fight for it, strengthen it, renew it.’ –President Joseph R. Biden, Jr.”

Wednesday, December 8, 6pm, this on-line event requires advance registration

Join us for our monthly huddle for all Fair Districts volunteers. Catch up on Fair Districts news, current actions, what’s next for our #fairmaps advocacy. Bring your questions!

RSVP for this event by using this link.

Hosted by Fair Districts Coalition, League of Women Voters of Ohio, and Common Cause Ohio.

The Columbus Dispatch is suffering a four-year free-fall in circulation/readership, according to documents obtained exclusively from the Alliance for Audited Media.

The Columbus market is rapidly becoming a news desert, that is a place where news readership is dwindling and where increasing numbers of residents are either uninformed or poorly informed about their communities, the state, the United States and other nations.

What people know about the world around them is increasingly random via social media such as Facebook and websites that often lack verification and editing. This may be affecting our politics adversely as people are increasingly motivated by imagery and personality cults rather than by facts, reasoning and science.

Until around 2006, Ohio's government and its political leaders were held accountable by the major Ohio daily newspapers, who often would ardently investigate wrong-doing. The Coingate scandal, where Ohio taxpapers' money was invested in rare coins, led by the Toledo Blade and the Dispatch, resulted in Democrats winning all but one state administrative office and control of the Ohio House.

The Columbus Dispatch is suffering a four-year free-fall in circulation/readership, according to documents obtained exclusively from the Alliance for Audited Media.

The Columbus market is rapidly becoming a news desert, that is a place where news readership is dwindling and where increasing numbers of residents are either uninformed or poorly informed about their communities, the state, the United States and other nations.

What people know about the world around them is increasingly random via social media such as Facebook and websites that often lack verification and editing. This may be affecting our politics adversely as people are increasingly motivated by imagery and personality cults rather than by facts, reasoning and science.

Until around 2006, Ohio's government and its political leaders were held accountable by the major Ohio daily newspapers, who often would ardently investigate wrong-doing. The Coingate scandal, where Ohio taxpapers' money was invested in rare coins, led by the Toledo Blade and the Dispatch, resulted in Democrats winning all but one state administrative office and control of the Ohio House.

I continue my examination of The Ohio State University. In this essay, I focus on several dimensions of public health. Ohio State has a large medical center and various public health programs. Yet they are not involved with the university’s public health endeavors. See my previous essays: “Colleges can learn from sports figures about mental health,”Inside Higher EducationSept. 13, 2021; “For Ohio State, bigger is not better,” Columbus Free Press, Sept. 16, 2021; “The decline of a once vital neighborhood: Columbus’ University District,” Columbus Free Press, Sept 14, 2021; “Columbus’ University District: Students and the institutions that fail them,” Columbus Free Press,Oct.

I continue my examination of The Ohio State University. In this essay, I focus on several dimensions of public health. Ohio State has a large medical center and various public health programs. Yet they are not involved with the university’s public health endeavors. See my previous essays: “Colleges can learn from sports figures about mental health,”Inside Higher EducationSept. 13, 2021; “For Ohio State, bigger is not better,” Columbus Free Press, Sept. 16, 2021; “The decline of a once vital neighborhood: Columbus’ University District,” Columbus Free Press, Sept 14, 2021; “Columbus’ University District: Students and the institutions that fail them,” Columbus Free Press,Oct.

Monday, December 6, 2021, 7:00 PM
Hello all you cultural creatives! Simple livers, renegades from the consumer society, green activists, arts and craft makers, yoga lovers, meditators – you know who you are! Join us for a meet and greet, a time to share what you are reading, watching, imagining, and doing to make the changes we need to get to an ecological culture. We can get there if we gather together, online and in person, learn from each other, and build a community that is inclusive, resilient, and way more fun than life in big box stores, traffic jams, and fast food. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for! Suggested price $5.00.  Simply Living.  More information and registration here.

Julie Whitney-Scott is the founder/Artistic Director for Mine 4 God Productions (M.4.G.P.) www.mine4godproductions.com and the Columbus Black Theatre Festival that will celebrate its 10th year July 8th – 10th, 2022 at the Columbus Performing Arts Center and July 16th – 17th, 2022 at The Abbey Theater of Dublin

Let’s Talk Theatre: Why did you start the Columbus Black Theatre Festival (CBTF) in Columbus, Ohio?
Julie: I started the CBTF because I wanted to see the stories of Black/Brown people on the stage. As a Black female playwright, myself, I found that there was no place for my work to be produced by the, what seemed to be, traditional theatre companies in Central Ohio. As I began to produce my own plays, I wondered how I could make a difference in my theatre community that would provide a place for other Black/Brown artists work to be seen, heard, and produced so that others could see themselves and the people that they lived with in society on the stage. The goal was to share their stories.