Local
Monday, May 7, 8am-2pm
Franklin County Board of Elections, 1700 Morse Road
The Columbus Community Bill of Rights Ballot Initiative is gathering Columbus Voter Signatures to put this Ordinance on the Nov 2018 ballot.
Contact Us w/ Availability: ColumbusBillofRights@gmail.com
SAFE WATER FOR OUR KIDS.
COLUMBUS -
NO PLACE FOR FRACK WASTE!
ColumbusBillofRights.org
https://www.facebook.com/ColumbusBillofRights/
Sunday, May 6, 2-3:30pm
Columbus City Hall, 90 W. Broad St.
The 2018 March for Freedom, is our 4th annual human trafficking awareness event. We are hosting our 4th Annual March for Freedom in Columbus to raise awareness of the human rights violations of prostitution and trafficking on Sunday, May 6, 2018 at 2 p.m. We will meet at Columbus City Hall, 90 West Broad St., and walk to the Ohio Statehouse where we’ll hear several heart stirring messages and take a pledge to personally fight human trafficking.
As the mid-terms loom, Democrats could regain control of Congress in 2018, and make a move for impeachment of Trump. But will progressive-minded voters be denied their constitutional right to vote, especially minorities? Or what about younger voters, who are energized to vote against candidates who support the National Rifle Association?
Citing a recent a study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the national office of the ACLU recently told the Free Press that 16 million people experienced difficulty voting in the 2016 presidential election. Of the 16 million, an estimated 1.2 million were turned away or their vote not counted.
The ACLU says over two-hundred thousand walked away from a long line, but an equal amount were denied because they lacked proper photo ID due to stricter voter ID laws. Registration issues resulted in 300,000 votes not being counted, and 250,000 votes were “lost”, which means the voter refused to vote provisionally or their provisional ballot wasn’t counted.
Saturday, May 5, 7-10pm
It Looks Like It's Open, 13 E. Tulane Rd.
Join us for a night of political music, poetry, speeches, dance and other art!
Too often political movements and works of art are separated into different spheres, the public and the personal, where each is only tangentially related to the other. But art and politics have always been bound up together. Art isn’t just often about political movements–it’s a living part of them.
A People’s Open Mic is meant to intentionally celebrate the political side of art and the artistic side of political movements. Bring your own art, or bring somebody else’s. We are living in a unique political moment, and we want to find the art that moves us, that speaks to this moment.
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Back when “tin soldiers and Nixon” were “cutting us down” in 1970, a group of Ohio State University students and campus activists started an underground newspaper in Columbus. Driven mostly by the murder of four students at Kent State – Allison Krause, Jeff Miller, Sandy Scheuer and Bill Schroeder – shot during a demonstration that was opposing President Nixon’s illegal attack on Cambodia and the Vietnam War, the Columbus Free Press was born.
Not surprisingly, the Free Press was the first western newspaper to expose Cambodia’s killing fields thanks to international law professor John Quigley’s reporting from Southeast Asia. In the first issue of the Free Press, the October 11, 1970 issue, a Free Press opinion attacked a special grand jury’s decision not to indict Ohio National Guardsmen for the Kent State killings.
Food Deserts. The definition by Merriam-Webster is “an area where little fresh produce is available for sale.” In rural areas and urban areas alike, food deserts are a concerning problem in communities everywhere. Columbus is not immune to food deserts. Communities like the South Side and Franklinton are stepping up to bring fresh produce to their inner-city neighborhoods.
On April 17, residents and stakeholders of the Near East Side packed together in the Community Room of Poindexter Place for a meeting on the “State of Retail” for that neighborhood.
The idea of a grocery store in the Near East Side has been a long soap opera unfolding, since the launch of Partners for Achieving Community Transformation (PACT) in 2012. In 2013, the original blueprint proposal from PACT called for a grocery store on Broad Street, between Ohio and Champion. However, after vocal opposition from Near East Area residents, and guidelines that were cited in the City’s 2005 Near East Area Plan on commercial zoning, that idea was scrapped.
Thanks to State Sen. Joe Schiavoni, the Columbus Dispatch stepped up its coverage of the ECOT scandal on April 24.
"Schiavoni wants criminal probe of ECOT attendance claims" the online headline screamed atop dispatch.com. It did not make the front page of the early print edition, but was relegated to the first page of the second section.
It turns out that a whistleblower contacted both the state auditor and the Ohio Department of
Education nearly a year ago with evidence that ECOT apparently was falsifying attendance figures in order to collect millions of dollars of state subsidies.
Schiavoni, the longest-running Democratic candidate for governor, is locked in a three-way race for the nomination with Richard Cordray and Dennis Kucinich. He is making the case the he is best qualified to clean up the Republican corruption being revealed on an almost daily basis.
By the way, the state auditor who was informed in May 2017 about the whistleblower's complaint is none other than Dave Yost, the erstwhile Republican candidate for attorney general and poster child for Dispatch favoritism. Keep reading.
As we plow towards Ohio’s primaries this month, the two big parties are predictably gearing up to reward their establishment candidates.
On the Republican side, Ohio’s attorney general Mike Dewine is trying to put the final nail in the coffin of lieutenant governor Mary Taylor’s campaign with million dollar ad buys, calling her “two faced” and challenging her “conservative” credentials. This comes after DeWine is already well on his way to the nomination after receiving the party’s endorsement in February, a process that Taylor criticized as the “good ol’ boys” tipping the race. With all of this support and plenty of money in the bank, DeWine’s ad buys are questionable because the nomination is seemingly in the bag, but his campaign must be worried about Taylor’s attacks having an impact past the primary. Either way, he’s certainly got the cash to blow.
Thursday, May 3, 5pm
WSYX-TV, 1261 Dublin Rd.
World Press Freedom Day is the perfect day to protest Sinclair Broadcasting’s mandated political propaganda. What do we do when the freedom of the press is under attack? Stand up! Fight back!
When the mother of an Israeli soldier finds dour-faced people in uniforms at her door, she doesn’t have to be told why they’re there. Her grief is immediate—and immediately quashed. The visitors plunge a hypo into the woman’s leg and send her into a coma-like slumber.
Thus begins Samuel Maoz’s Foxtrot, a three-part tale set in a country that has spent most of its seven decades in something resembling a state of war.
The first part focuses on Michael Feldmann (Lior Ashkenazi), father of a young soldier who reportedly was killed in the line of duty. Though Michael reacts to the news with more control than wife Daphna (Sarah Adler), his outer calm only masks a growing sense of panic and outrage.
Due to a plot twist and a shift in time, the second (and most effective) part of the film takes us to the outpost where the Feldmanns’ son, Jonathan (Yonatan Shiray), guards a remote road along with three comrades. The young soldiers’ days consist of long stretches of boredom relieved by tense exchanges with Palestinian motorists waiting to be approved for passage.