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Columbus Police Reform

Black man in dreads talking at a mic

 Please consider 1) looking at the video of June 5 public testimony and/or 2) calling the Mayor’s office  and/or 3) attending on Monday night July 15 at City Hall to let CDP and the City know we care about this issue. Thank you for any action you take to improve policing.  Columbus continues to suffer racial injustice within and by the Columbus Division of Police. The Mayor’s Community Safety Advisory Commission, intended to recommend improvements to CDP, finally took public testimony after meeting for 13 months, and near the very end when Commission recommendations were to be drafted.  The June 5 public testimony was shocking as citizens raised numerous and consistent serious allegations against CDP.  These included but were not limited to these reports.

Lights for Liberty to End Human Detention

Drawing of a statue of liberty bending down to hand her torch to s small boy as a hand is grabbing the boy and pulling him away and the words Lights for Liberty

Friday, July 12, 7-10pm
Ohio Statehouse, Broad and High Streets
We’ll be having a team from Columbus partnering with Angry Tias and Abuelas to bring much needed items for families leaving detention and families in Mexico. Please consider donating toiletries, socks, shoes, and cards to use for bus transportation. We will have clearly marked boxes for collecting these!Thank you!

This is a nationwide MASS MOBILIZATION effort. We will gather here in Columbus at the Ohio Statehouse at 7pm on July 12. We will join together in solidarity, listen to a few speakers, and hold a candlelight vigil at 9pm.

Bob Bites Back

Latino people posing for camera looking grim, one man holding a sign that says #LetEdithStay We Stand with Edith

Why neo-Nazis love Trump’s immigration policy

Remember when Trump muttered those despicable words “There’s good people on both sides” after the white supremacists’ rally at Charlottesville in 2017? Recall their slogans: “Blood and Soil!” or, as Hitler preferred, “Blut und Boden.” Blood, of course, referred to the Nazi obsession with racial purity and bloodlines. Soil referred to a belief in settlement areas on borders controlled by the Germanic/Nordic races. The Blood and Soil canard went hand-in-hand with the Nazi concept of Lebensraum, or “living space.” Trump is using a new version of Nazi propaganda to try to instill fear of immigrant hordes taking away jobs and living space from his white male supporters.

Is the Teachers’ Strike Wave Coming to Columbus?

Young white man with facial hair, glasses and a hat posing with his arm around a black woman in a solidarity T-shirt

On Wednesday at 7 p.m. inside the Two Dollar Radio Headquarters, Columbus Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), hosted Eric Blanc to discuss his book, Red State Revolt, about why there was an upsurge of teachers striking last year in supposedly right-wing majority states. DSA invited Regina Fuentes, member of the teachers’ union, Columbus Education Association, to present on their Columbus Students Deserve movement.

Demand U.S. Legislators Defund Harmful Immigrant Enforcement Policies

People outside at a rally holding signs saying Children out of detention and End Mandatory Detention Now
From Unitarian Universalists Justice Ohio - Demand U.S. Legislators Defund Harmful Immigrant Enforcement Policies.  From the Friends Committee on National Legislation:  "The administration has demanded more money for harmful immigration enforcement policies and Congress has funded them.  The supplemental spending bill (H.R. 3401) Congress just passed was more of the same. It provides money with no guarantee that it will be spent to protect children, not further militarize our border. This approach is worsening the humanitarian crisis. Congress is home this week for their Independence Day recess. It’s important that they hear from you. Urge them to divest from enforcement spending and instead, invest in true humanitarian assistance."   Three Steps to Dropping by a Congressional Office:  1.

Near East Side Riots – 50 Years Later

Street scene with a tower and trees and a lightpost and electricity poles

The Near East Side has become one of the trendier places of Columbus in recent years. However, it was only a half-century ago this month that the Near East Side had a completely opposite story to tell. A story that has helped give the neighborhood a negative perception for decades. The Near East Side of 2019 is a long cry from the Near East Side of 1969. Or is it?

The day was Monday July 21, 1969, the day after the historic Apollo 11 Moon Landing.  David Chesnut, a 69-year-old white businessman on 832 East Main Street fatally shot Roy Beasley, a 27 year-old Black sanitation worker for the City of Columbus who lived in the home directly behind Chesnut’s dry cleaning business, The Pad and Pillow Place, when the two got into an argument over Beasley’s three children playing on Chesnut’s property.

My View From the Weeds: Reclaiming the Right to Heal Without Big Pharma

Red medical box with a white cross on the front full of flowers

Independence Day each year serves as a reminder of the liberties afforded to U.S. citizens and consumers. Yet in 2019, when the word medicine is used the first thing that comes to the mind of many Americans are the pills doctors prescribe for them, available at a pharmacy. The truth is hidden from public view: most modern pharmaceuticals were created by synthesizing phytochemicals from herbs and plants.

The roots of herbal medicine weave throughout history and cultures. Archeologists have found evidence that the use of herbs goes back to the paleolithic era, 60,000 BCE. Sumerian tablets carved into stone and ancient Egyptian texts highlight the use of herbs and plants for medical purposes. In fact, the origin of the word medicine comes from the greek word fármako. Often referred to as the father of herbal medicine Hippocrates declared in ancient Greece, “Let food be thy medicine, and medicine be thy food.”

A return to Put-In-Bay

Neon sign with a parrot, palm trees, and the words in script Jimmy Buffet and the word in large capitals Margaritaville

Against my better judgment, in a couple of weeks I’ll be taking a trip up to Put-In-Bay with the family of one of my daughter’s friends. I say better judgment, because the last time I went there I ended up spending nine boring hours with some guy named Mitch, who owes me money. Ah yes, island culture. Boating culture. Buffet Culture.

When I was 18 I had a job bussing tables at a place up at Crosswoods called Cantina del Rio. On Fridays and Saturdays they would have live acoustic music at the bar. The acts differed, but it was always more or less the same set. The only real question was whether they would open or close with Margaritaville. 

In college one of my friends got free tickets to see some guy named Pat Dailey play at Promo West and I got dragged along. We knew nothing about the guy. This local college rock band opened up and played a song about being too stupid to effectively communicate in a relationship, or something equally insubstantial.* They had like nine guitar players, and there was this weird scene where this gigundus band tore down and was replaced by just one guy with an acoustic guitar.

Who’s UA’s Kelly Kullberg? A wolf among the flock

A yellow street sign that shows a family running across a street and the words CAUTION against trees and the words below What Would Jesus Do?

What would Jesus do about the undocumented immigrant crisis at our southern border?

He would walk with them to America but then hold up his hand and proclaim, “Stop Here!”

He would also create a far-reaching network of pro-Trump Facebook pages, including Blacks for Trump and lie that he’s African American. 

For us at Freep, this is not the Jesus we know. But for Upper Arlington’s Kelly Kullberg, a far-right Evangelical celebrity of sorts, this is her Jesus, as she transforms him and the scriptures into political weapons.

Deep within the American heartland there are a host of Evangelical Christian strongholds, and no doubt, Columbus is one of them.

Two local congregations or megachurches, both with thousands of devoted followers, stand out. There’s Rod Parsley and his World Harvest Church, which sort of looks like a massive menacing spaceship, in Canal Winchester. In Westerville there’s the main campus of the Vineyard, which recently announced that its congregation raised $13 million in six weeks to build five more campuses.

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