Local
When Westboro Baptist protestors descended on St. John's United Church of Christ on Columbus' near east side to demonstrate again the "Jezebel Preacher," over 130 counterprotestors showed up to peacefully defend their female pastor. The Rev. Virginia Lohman Bauman, targeted for being a female preacher who opens up the church to a congregation that includes LGBTQ people, called it "an amazing spiritual experience" as she was joined by so many supporters on very short notice, according to the United Church of Christ website. According to the website, Columbus Police tipped off the church that the notorious anti-gay Westboro Baptist protestors were coming their way on Friday, August 30. The demonstration happened Sunday, September 1. Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church was the second target of the Westboro group and counterprotestors kept up their viglance against the haters there. Rev. Gary Witte and his wife Winifred Wirth joined in the counterprotest and supplied the photos displayed here for the Free Press. Witte reported that the huge outpouring of support by the community for the churches far outnumbered the members of the Westboro Church protest.
When you know, you know. Take President Donald Trump’s Cincinnati speech just before the El Paso and Dayton nightmares. A handful of lefty protestors compared to roughly 20,000 possessed Trumpers, many of whom use the N-word judiciously and have never read a book.
The Ohio General Assembly is firmly in Republican control. All statewide non-judicial elected officials are also GOP. Ohio now has a six-week abortion ban. Proud Boys are marching down Sawmill Road (with a quick stop at Walmart).
Let’s face it, Ohio is becoming redder. When you see so many speeding pick-up trucks sporting American flags, the obvious is staring in you in the face like a crazed Trump supporter ready to punch you out.
“(Ohio is) clearly becoming more conservative, a bit older,” said Ohio U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown just after Ohio’s dreadful midterms for Democrats. “We still have too many young people leaving. We don’t have enough people moving in, so it’s increasingly hard. And we see fewer workers in unions, which makes it harder, as you know.”
Freely Vegan is a local, vegan, top-8 allergen-free company that sells their products online at www.freelyvegan.com and at various events such as the Columbus Vegan Festival and It’s All Natural’s seasonal pop-up markets.
Freely Vegan offers delicious vegan alternative products such as a shelf-stable vegan eggs, gluten free flour and cheeze sauce. They just launched two new ice-cream mixes (vanilla base and a chocolate base) that can be customized into any flavor you want. At the recent Vegan Festival, Freely Vegan featured chocolate, chocolate fudge brownie, mint chocolate chip, cookies-and-cream, strawberry and a coffee ice cream. They often do brownies, and they added brownies into their new ice cream mix that knocked our socks off with an old-time favorite. Chocolate ice cream with brownies – Oh, my! You must try it, and they have many more surprises coming soon.
Nineteen years ago, I graduated from the Ohio State University. As a somewhat lackluster student, I wasn’t able to pull things together to graduate on time and missed the big ceremony that used to be held on the Oval. Instead I was stuck with the rather grim winter quarter graduation at St. John Arena. Winter quarter graduation speakers were selected by the faculty, who unsurprisingly picked one of themselves.*
The speaker, whose name I unfortunately can’t remember, was a voice professor from the music school. His speech was a combination of talking, poetry and singing, with a soaring list of musical comparisons to an unstated something (i.e. calling down the defiant beauty of contralto Marian Anderson’s 1939 rendition of “My Country ‘Tis of Thee” at the Lincoln Memorial). He didn’t bother to tie any of it into the idea of graduation, it just sort of rolled.
But one thing he said sort of stuck with me. He mentioned the power of Big Mama Thornton’s “Hound Dog” before Elvis Presley “stole her song.” My first exposure to the concept of cultural appropriation.
Wed, Sept 4, 7-8:30pm
Bexley Public Library, 2411 E. Main St.
Screening portions of the documentary “Jews Step Forward.” The moral voices of bravery and justice that are depicted in “Jews Step Forward” will be followed by a discussion of the personal experiences of our members. Hosted by Jewish Voice for Peace Central Ohio. facebook.com/JVPCentralOhio.
This past September, Alabama governor Kay Ivey was found to have worn blackface while performing in a comedy sketch during her college years. Virginia governor Ralph Northam posed in blackface standing next to another college mate dressed as a Ku Klux Klan member in their 1984 yearbook. In 2013, David Sponheim, a Washington state mayoral candidate, wore blackface dressed as Barack Obama. In 2015, Bill Helton, another political candidate, this time in Oklahoma running for mayor, wore blackface in his drag performance.
It would take more than my word limit to document all of the incidents of a politician being found out and called out for wearing blackface. Who are these people? They are white, male or female, Democrat or Republican, living in the North or South. They all apologize when found out to have this “spot” on their life. Some retire, step-down, but the majority of them apologize and keep on doing what they were doing in their political lives.
When Donald Trump used to call out the “fake news” for being biased during the 2016 presidential election, it was a not-so-subtle way for him to appeal to Bernie Sanders’ supporters who felt the same pain. The blatant bias shown towards anyone who challenged the media’s favored candidate Hillary Clinton in 2016 was so obvious that CNN contributors were eventually busted for feeding debate questions to the Clinton campaign. Heck, The Washington Post ran sixteen negative articles on Sanders within a span of sixteen hours. So the notion that media outlets were potentially biased against Bernie or anyone else was not completely far-fetched.
Naturally, as the 2020 presidential race kicks off, the question now becomes with Sanders running again, will the media’s anti-Bernie bias still exist? After all, if these major news outlets simply favored Clinton in 2016, certainly they wouldn’t have any lasting ill-will towards Vermont’s senior senator, right? Unfortunately, the media has already answered this question with a resounding “hold my beer.”
This is where I would normally write some sort of introduction to college students that hopefully makes them want to learn about the city they live in.
Used Kids, and Embassy Skateboards to the north. Yao’s Chinese Bistro and Magnolia to the south.
Ok now we’ve said that. Kafe Kerouac, Cazuella’s, Dirty Dungarees. Ace of Cups closer north. The Westside and Eastside probably have places you can have fun and meet people who went to the Columbus College of Art and Design (CCAD).
Call me a small town nitwit, but I found myself walking to White Castle and Starbucks at Lane and High. I can remember when that area didn’t look like an area in New York that you might stop at while headed somewhere.
While making this walk, I noticed families moving their kids into campus living. I walked to Panda Express and saw people playing beer pong in the nearby houses.
The contrast between young humans and their families and slightly older young college students drinking made me think about the fact these college freshmen are nervous, excited and in the least moving into a new life.
Being shot by the police is sadly a leading cause of death for black males in this country, according to an August 2019 study by the Los Angeles Times. During a violent encounter with the police, black males are 2½ times more likely to die than white males.
But what about here in Columbus?
Between 2013-2016 the Columbus Police shot and killed 24 people, 20 of them black. At the time, we were number one in the nation of the 15 largest cities in police killing blacks, per capita.
Columbus police use force disproportionately against minorities, said a report initiated by the Columbus Community Safety Advisory Commission as part of an evaluation of the city’s police training and procedures. Matrix Consulting Group issued the 330-page report.
In 2017, whites constituted 61 percent of Columbus’ population, yet were involved in only 26 percent of the police division’s use of force incidents. By contrast, the city’s black population was only 28 percent but the report states that “more than half” of the use of force victims were black.
Hot times, music, and hopefully sunny weather are on their way back to Olde Towne East as the 43rd Annual Hot Times Festival returns, with organizers hopeful for perfect weather after last year’s rain-shortened Festival.
The 43rd Annual Hot Times Festival will take place September 6 through 8 on the front lawn of the Columbus Health Department in Olde Towne East. Hot Times is truly a community festival that brings the community together celebrating art, music and honoring local community artists.
Friday evening of Hot Times was the only perfect day of the Festival last year, with picture-perfect weather to kick off the weekend. However, it was non-stop rain on the second day of the Festival in 2018 that cut the Festival short as the ground got saturated. The dance floor of the Main Street Stage fell victim to the muddy and saturated ground as festival goers braved the rain to enjoy the festival. While the acts on the Main Street Stage continued on as usual on Saturday as scheduled, capped off with a set by perennial Hot Times Headliner C.J. Chenier, the rain proved too much for the Festival to continue on Sunday.