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Essential workers in the Central Ohio region will go on strike for health protections and workplace reform on May 1st. Workers will be picketing and car parading outside of the CMH1 Amazon Fulfillment Center in Etna, Ohio (11999 National Rd SW, Etna, OH 43062). The action will take place from 9:15 AM to 11 PM.Parking will be available in a church just outside the facility at-10 first Ave SW Etha, OH 43062.

Columbus, Ohio - This May Day, Amazon, Whole Foods, Instacart, Target, Walmart and FedEx workers throughout the nation will be walking out of work to call attention to workplace safety and issues during COVID. As a coalition of “essential workers” across different companies, we all agree that our employers are putting their profits before our lives, as they continue to amass incalculable amounts of wealth while our lives are put at risk daily. Although our organization’s share varying demands for workplace reform, we all share the common platform for essential health protections as well as sick and hazard pay. 

Let’s spare a recital of COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic’s facts and figures. Simply put, they are sickening, staggering, scary, unprecedented, unfathomable, unimaginable, hellish, horrific, historic. The human suffering combined with the collapsing economy finds one of the greatest countries on earth quaking under enormous challenges, the most pressing of which may be hunger.

The virus has frayed the fragile fabric that holds America together. Loss of employment leads to lost income, leaving little left over for even basics like shelter and food. It reveals a tattered and torn safety net that subjects the vulnerable not only to the illness, but also to the scourges of homelessness and hunger.

The Columbus Dispatch appears bound and determined to break the daily newspaper reading habit in central Ohio.

First, management keeps jacking up the price of home delivery and single copies of the print product.

Second, the newspaper keeps getting thinner and thinner as less news and information is provided compared to the past.

Third, the deadline for the next day's paper keeps getting earlier and earlier. It was around 9 or 10 o'clock at night for the early edition until the printing plant in Columbus was closed and moved to Indianapolis in January. Then the deadline was moved up to 7 p.m., ostensibly because it takes nearly three hours to truck the papers to Columbus.

I did some checking and found out that 7 p.m. was also the deadline for the Indianapolis Star, a sister newspaper of the Dispatch under the new merged company called Gannett.

What?

Why would the Star be stuck with such an early deadline when there is no 3-hour trucking imperative?

A reasonable deadline for the Star would be 2 a.m. Allowing for trucking time, a reasonable deadline for the Dispatch would be 3 hours earlier, at 11 p.m.

On January 23, 2020, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced they were approving a “fourth line of production” at the Mid America Conversion facility. Mid America is located on the 4,000-acre Portsmouth Nuclear Site at Piketon, Ohio.  The new fourth line would make Depleted Uranium Hexafluoride (DUF4.)

Translate that to English, you say?  There is no use for DUF4 other than to make depleted uranium munitions, explosive devices, and armored vehicles. The Defense Department wants a more refined form of depleted uranium to make heavy nosecones for the B-61 bomb, a surprisingly small “earth-penetrating” thermonuclear weapon. And what would be the target?  Iran has its uranium enrichment facilities underground. This would be illegal under international law. And the DUF4 process will cause more radioactive contamination in and around the Portsmouth site.

Naomi Klein’s No Logo exposed the insidious invasion of our psyches by the billions of dollars in carefully scripted ad messages – propaganda - designed to program our brains to accept the branding of products and services churned out by the multinational corporations that run the global consumer economy.  More recently, in the era of social media, Shoshanna Zuboff’s The Age of Surveillance Capitalism demonstrated how the ad industries now steal our privacy by scraping the details of our lifestyles from the apps on our cell phones to feed Big Data’s targeted marketing campaigns in their endless pursuit of profit. 

Note: With most movie theaters closed due to the pandemic, major Hollywood openings have been put on hold. One of the few silver linings of this is that it allows small and often worthy films—some of them directed by women—to debut without competing with the blockbusters. This is one of them.

Tough but touching, Bull is the story of a girl’s coming of age amid the direst of conditions. It’s also the story of her unlikely relationship with an aging rodeo performer, as well as a window into a subculture most of us know nothing about. 

Kris (Amber Havard) is a 14-year-old living on the outskirts of Houston with her grandmother and younger sister while she waits for her mother to serve out a prison term. Mostly left on her own, she has a tendency to get into the kind of trouble that suggests she’ll eventually follow in her mom’s self-destructive footsteps. 

From Monday, April 27th, 2020 at noon EST to Monday, May 4th, 2020 at noon EST, #CitizenMiriam will be hosting an Online Silent Auction Benefiting Miriam Vargas. Folks with marginalized identities are often hurt the most in any crisis, and this is certainly true of the coronavirus pandemic. While many of us are experiencing social isolation and restricted movement for the first time, Miriam Vargas has been in sanctuary lock down at First English Lutheran Church for more than 670 days. Further, if she seeks urgent medical attention, she risks deportation.

#RepYourBlock2020, a grassroots coalition, recruited dozens of people from diverse political, demographic and racial backgrounds to run for central committee and strengthen the party. Our candidates are united in a vision for a Franklin County Democratic Party (FCDP) that works for the many, not the few. That means a Party that is radically transparent, accountable to all people, open to new ideas and has the political courage to fight for the urgent needs of our underserved communities.

A group of people begging to “Live Free or Die” may just get their wish as they gathered in Columbus to demand Ohio be “opened” – most of them failing to maintain social distance from each other or wear protective masks. Men in camouflage sporting large weapons added to the surreality of the scene.

Since the first Coronavirus cases in Ohio were confirmed in early March, events have been canceled left and right. Everything from small gatherings and weddings, to big city festivals and major international events have all been halted due to the pandemic. 

However, it is not 100 percent doomy and gloomy while we are all in quarantine. Organizations and individuals alike have come up with alternative ways to have events virtually, to align with the social distancing guidelines that have been governed by our State leaders and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).

Virtual Events are not just a way to keep the masses entertained while the curve is being flattened, but virtual events have also boosted morale and raised awareness, and sometimes funds for organizations and individuals who need it the most during these times. We can’t be together physically for each other, but we have been there and shown our support virtually for each other. Businesses and local municipalities have all held meetings on Zoom since the pandemic shut down gatherings of more than ten people.