Local
Local election season is in full swing and it seems like wherever you go in Central Ohio, alternative political candidates are shaking things up. Here in Columbus, the insurgent progressive group Yes We Can is challenging the unstoppable Franklin County Democratic machine, while down in Athens County, Democratic Socialist candidates are making local power players worried as well. Not to be outdone, a few Libertarian candidates are also running in Franklin County and just like their progressive counterparts, they’re causing quite the ruckus for local political establishments.
For the most part, theFreep supports Sen. Sherrod Brown and his daughter Elizabeth Brown, current Columbus City Council Pro Tem, or temporary council president, but this is no endorsement for re-election.
Mrs. Brown is an advocate for Columbus City Schools and a staunch fighter for women’s rights. She initiated the Columbus Families Together Fund, which provides legal help to keep local immigrant parents together with their children.
But when we reached out to her to see if she is actively pushing for air-conditioning in all city schools, the Freep did not hear back.
It makes us wonder whether her past position as an economic development manager with Columbus city government and her current position as chair of the city’s Economic Development Committee has anything to do with her silence on the sweltering issue.
Could the city have avoided this absolute embarrassment and shame, where our city’s marginalized children, who need the best educational system and setting possible, are instead treated like second-class citizens?
Three members of the Mayor’s Safety Commission are speaking out about the lack of transparency, candor and trust within the Commission.
Janet Jackson, former City Attorney and governing Chair of the Commission is accused of running roughshod over the group’s ability to ask questions and to dialogue about the various issues plaguing the Columbus Police Department.
“At no point in these meetings were we allowed to address the real issues. Our voices were not heard.” said Tammy Fournier Al Saada, organizer for the People’s Justice Project.
Ironically, Mayor Andrew Ginther set up the Safety Commission to study and evaluate the work of the Columbus Police Department (CPD), and to restore public trust and legitimacy to his battered police force which has come under severe public criticism within the last few years. Police killings of unarmed citizens, several incidents of police brutality and charges of racism and sexism swirl around the CPD.
Columbus, Ohio is a city known for its arts, culture, innovation, politics and the Buckeyes. However, Columbus is the largest city of its kind named after 15th Century Italian-Spanish explorer Christopher Columbus, an explorer who was more known for raping and pillaging indigenous people, and being a kingpin for slavery, rather than sailing across the Atlantic.
There are some people in Columbus who are questioning the city being named after the famed explorer who also did these heinous things to the indigenous.
There is a petition circulating around to have the City of Columbus change the city’s name to Arawak. Local activist Charles Robol is leading the charge into getting the city’s name changed. Robol has been out in the community in recent weeks handing out flyers to spread awareness of Arawak City.
There is an existential threat to all democracies worldwide, a dark corruption, and sinister plot to rip the fundamental rights and duties of a developed civilization from the hands of the most vulnerable. The vicious beast of American exceptionalism (or exclusionism) has been caught in the hen-house of our governance. Evidence of it's racist, elitist, and over-entitled claw-mark's are all over our metaphorical "collective consensus;" our county-level ballot boxes.
Is Atticus Finch a “white savior”? That question probably wasn’t on the minds of those who took part in a PBS poll that named To Kill a Mockingbird America’s favorite novel. But it certainly was on the mind of Emmy-winning writer Aaron Sorkin when he adapted Harper Lee’s 1960 work for the stage.
After seeing the results of his efforts on a recent trip to Broadway, I had mixed feelings. I felt Sorkin had successfully incorporated modern sensibilities into the beloved tale, but in the process, he misplaced some of the charm and profundity of Lee’s masterpiece.
Set in Depression-era Alabama, the classic story centers on a small-town lawyer who agrees to defend a black man falsely accused of raping a white woman. Lee’s novel and the subsequent Oscar-winning film depict Atticus as a principled man who takes on the case despite knowing it will earn him the animosity of many white neighbors. Conversely, it earns him the respect of the town’s black residents.
An historic Friday the 13th yellow harvest moon shining a light on an outdoor Jack White show, his Raconteurs going off like Roman candles for the better part of two hours – could there be any summer's night of musical intensity more spectacularly supernatural?
Maybe a Def Leppard/Whitesnake/Blackstone Cherry return-of-the-wish-they-were-still-dead tour, for sure. Or maybe not.
Just kidding, kids. Thus it was at a heavily attended PromoWest amphitheater one warm and humid evening last month, the moon at its advertised farthest-away apogee in a dozen years (a minimoon they call it as opposed to a supermoon which is closest).
Nothing mini about the music that night, strictly super. But I think the infamous numeral of bad luck; the rare cosmic distance between earth and luna; and Jack White's personal nuclear energy made the night one very special bunch of loose ends coming together and sparking maniacally like the devil's lightning.
Exciting as hell!
Good timing. The New York Times just published an op-ed called “Why Republicans Play Dirty.” Lately, the better adjective would be “filthy” if you think of Trump holding up military money to the Ukraine while trying to get the Ukrainians to do a black bag surveillance job on Joe Biden and his son. Or, the ritualistic – like the running of the bulls in Spain – stripping of Ohio’s voter rolls.
Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose trampled democracy in Ohio when he removed 235,000 of the state’s voters from voting rolls for not voting in two previous federal elections. Back in January this year he purged 250,000 voters. Sadly, the Free Press previously reported LaRose had promised not to purge.