Local

Three out of every ten workers in Ohio perform essential jobs that literally keep us alive and our communities functioning. And if anyone needs reminding, food and agriculture workers – the people who literally put food on our tables – are paid less than a poverty wage. 

According to a new report from Policy Matters Ohio and Essential Ohio, essential workers’ median pay is 12.9% less than that of workers in nonessential jobs. Meanwhile, essential workers’ risk of contracting COVID and bringing it home is far greater.

Saturday, August 7, 10am-5pm, Poindexter Village Museum and Cultural Center, 290 N. Champion Ave.

Join us as we celebrate Poindexter Village being an official State of Ohio Historic Site. The James Preston Poindexter Foundation, in partnership with Ohio History Connection, will re-engage community members by inviting them together around the Poindexter Legacy Tree at historic Poindexter Village in Columbus, Ohio.

For centuries, drum circles have been a source of cultural expression and unity. This outdoor activity will engage people safely and will allow them to social distance while experiencing community, rhythm, and sound. Elder drummers, community leaders, musicians, neighbors, and past residents will gather with African drums and lawn chairs to share stories, song, and dance.

The Poindexter Village Drum Circle schedule includes various arts, drum call-and-response, puppet story tellers, and drum making craft tables. Community members who participate in drum making craft tables will make a take-home wood box drum that can be decorated and used during the Drum Circle call-and-response.

In 2015, Alice Sabatini was an 18-year-old contestant in the Miss Italia contest in Italy. She was asked what epoch of the past she would have liked to live in. She replied: WWII. Her explanation was that her text books go on and on about it, so she’d like to actually see it, and she wouldn’t have to fight in it, because only men did that. This led to a great deal of mockery. Did she want to be bombed or starved or sent to a concentration camp? What was she, stupid? Somebody photoshopped her into a picture with Mussolini and Hitler. Somebody made an image of a sunbather viewing troops rushing onto a beach.[i]

“Never Rarely Sometimes Always,” a movie screening hosted by Planned Parenthood Advocates of Ohio

Thursday, August 5, 7pm, this on-line event requires advance registration

We’re screening “Never Rarely Sometimes Always” as part of the fourth installment of the Planned Parenthood Advocates of Ohio film series, “Movies, Mifepristone, and Misoprostol.”

Mifepristone and Misoprostol are safe drugs that provide life-affirming care: abortion. As Democratic lawmakers push the FDA to make these drugs more accessible, join us for a movie screening that focuses on the right to bodily autonomy.

Changes to Ohio’s Telemed Policy Impacting Medical Marijuana Card Holders, CTR Doctors 

Last week, the State Medical Board of Ohio issued guidance that telemedicine appointments for medical marijuana patients in the state would no longer be permitted. Telemedicine appointments were temporarily allowed as a response to COVID-19, but it appears the Board has now reversed that decision in light of lifted pandemic sanctions. 

A 1963 landmark meeting that helped change the course of civil rights in America provides the centerpiece in the world premiere of “When Your Soul Cries,” a two- act drama by Columbus playwright Rich Bloom.

Bloom said the play is being produced by Stage Right Theatrics  Aug. 13-15 at the Abbey Theater in Dublin.

 “This is the very first play I’ve written, and I am humbled that Stage Right would deem it worthy to premiere this summer,” Bloom said. “Naturally I am excited and apprehensive, but I believe the play’s message resonates loudly given the racial divide that still exists in this country. On that one day in May,” he said, “black lives not only mattered, they made a difference.”

The four-hour gathering, Bloom said, took place on May 24, 1963 between Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and a passionate group of black activists. Both sides had agreed to keep the meeting “a secret,” but anger, frustration and disillusionment undermined that agreement.

The race for a vacant congressional seat in northeast Ohio was a fierce battle between status quo politics and calls for social transformation. In the end, when votes were counted Tuesday night, transactional business-as-usual had won by almost 6 percent. But the victory of a corporate Democrat over a progressive firebrand did nothing to resolve the wide and deep disparity of visions at the Democratic Party’s base nationwide.

One of the candidates -- Shontel Brown, the victor -- sounded much like Hillary Clinton, who endorsed her two months ago. Meanwhile, Nina Turner dwelled on the kind of themes we always hear from Bernie Sanders, whose 2020 presidential campaign she served as a national co-chair. And while Brown trumpeted her lockstep loyalty to Joe Biden, her progressive opponent was advocating remedies for vast income inequality and the dominance of inordinate wealth over the political system. Often, during the last days of the campaign, I heard Turner refer to structural injustices of what she called “class and caste.”

Wednesday, August 4, 2021, 5:00 - 7:00 PM
This town hall is a chance for us to gather (in-person!) across Ohio to talk about what’s at stake in our fight for fair maps and to hear about how folks can plug into the process.  Join AOTL Ohio and the Equal Districts Coalition to talk about how your community has been impacted by gerrymandered maps and how best we can fight for the fair maps that we deserve. WE know what’s best for our communities and OUR voices need to be heard during the redistricting process. This town hall is the first step to organizing around making our voices heard!  Location:  UFCW 4150 E Main St, Columbus.  Sign up here. 

The systemic issues inherent in American policing are nothing new. While everyone deserves to feel safe in their own community, we know Black people in our country have been terrorized and killed at the hands of the police for centuries. It’s a reality that has led millions to finally follow the lead of Black organizers and Black-led grassroots groups by calling for change that goes beyond mere reform: to divest from police as an institution and invest in community-based, life-affirming programs and solutions.