Local
Saturday, August 18, 12pm
Weinland Park Elementary School, 211 E. 7th Avenue
Neighborhood Festival for all ages
An issue might be burning through the community. Friends and colleagues might always be talking about a nagging issue. A problem or grievance that might have seemed personal turns out to be shared by many who want a vehicle to demand justice and win change. Whatever triggers the drive to build an organization dedicated to building power and achieving change, if is worth doing, it is important to keep alive, and that means that sustainability always matters.
Sustainability in organizing is a euphemism for self-sufficiency. Self-sufficiency requires organizational control of financing.
There are two sources of organizational funding. One is external funding and the other is internal financing. Sustainability privileges either source if it is driven and determined by the organization itself.
Privatized detention and incarceration centers are hell on earth--and they are big business for private companies. Ending private detention is a way to start ending detention - period.
Between 2014 and 2018, the Office of Refugee Resettlement paid private companies $3.4 billion to house migrant children. Further, 44 percent of those companies face serious, well documented reports and allegations of child maltreatment.
In these centers children suffer from:
Forced administration of psychotropic drugs Jail-like conditions with armed officers Physical abuse, sexual abuse and even deathSign this petition to demand Congress end privatizing detention and incarceration now!
The Commander-in-Chief, President Donald Trump, has announced a new mission into the realm of martial excess. It is one that will surely enrich the aerospace industry while spreading the global battlefield to a new dimension.
Trump is calling for the creation of a new Space Force as a sixth branch of the U.S. military, to militarize the heavens.
“It is not enough to merely have an American presence in space,” Trump told a meeting of the National Space Council in mid-June. “We must have American dominance in space.”
To this end, the President has taken a page from Ronald Reagan’s “Star Wars” playbook. Reagan’s scheme, according to a recent article by Karl Grossman, was built around “nuclear reactors and plutonium systems on orbiting battle platforms providing the power for hypervelocity guns, particle beams and laser weapons.”
Grossman, a journalism professor at State University of New York/College at Old Westbury and author of the book The Wrong Stuff: The Space Program’s Nuclear Threat to Our Planet, has been reporting on the militarization of space for decades, says the move will likely spur a new international competition to weaponize space.
Tuesday, August 14, 6:30-8pm
Linden Branch Columbus Metro Library, 2223 Cleveland Ave.
We will network with each our get campaign updates on the Federal, & State policies and take action. All are welcome. We'll provide a light snack so let us know you are coming. Sponsored by the Sierra Club.
Monday, August 13, 7:30pm, Rambling House Soda, 310 E. Hudson St.
Join Columbus Community Bill of Rights [CCBOR] for an evening of protest, music, and singing along as we raise money for our ballot initiative. This event is hosted by CCBOR and Doug Morris, a guitarist and singer/songwriter.
Power to the people!
This event will be a fundraiser for Columbus Community Bill of Rights.
Tickets: eventbrite.com/e/an-evening-of-protest-music-and-singing-along-with-ccbor-tickets-48225131667?aff=efbeventtix
Hosted by Columbus Community Bill of Rights.
Saturday, August 11, 6:30-11pm
1021 E. Broad St.
Parking in lot behind house, side driveway or on street
Come to socialize and network with progressive friends. Music, food from Acre to Go, presentations on black history and the Columbus Community Bill of Rigthts.
Free, no RSVP required.
614-253-2571, colsfreepress@gmail.com
In the first Star Trek movie, 1979’s unimaginatively-titled Star Trek: The Motion Picture, there is a scene where the USS Enterprise gets sucked into a wormhole. This spatial anomaly wreaks havoc on time (or something) so everyone on the bridge is suddenly rendered blurry and left speaking in deep, distorted voices.
Kirk is lunging to-and fro in his captain’s chair. A bald lady is there, giving ominous countdowns to impact with some rapidly-approaching celestial body. I’m pretty sure the dad from “Seventh Heaven” is in there somewhere, maybe firing photon torpedoes as he drones on in his slow, time-warped voice.
It’s a truly awful movie, remembered only for its ambition (and failure) to live up to the spectacle of Kubric’s 2001 or the fun of Star Wars, and does not bear rewatching for clarification on any of this. The point being, the scene in question is slow, sucks, and seems to take forever to get anywhere.
“Words ‘n pictures, you can do anything with words ‘n pictures,” the late Harvey Pekar, writer of the “American Splendor” series famously said of the comics medium. Anyone wishing to see a concrete example of Pekar’s quote need only pick up a copy of the Columbus-produced graphic novel "Far Tune," written by Terry Eisele and illustrated by Brent Bowman.
The "Far Tune" of the title is a play on words, referring both to the name of the young Somali protagonist, whose name is Fartun, as well as to the song she shares with her late mother, who dies in a refugee camp in the story's prologue. Weighty issues are tackled in "Far Tune;" culture clash, religious conflict (most effectively, WITHIN the Islamic religion), generational schisms, and notions of class and gender. Although one could call “Far Tune” a young adult graphic novel, anyone of any age could read it and re-think the circumstances of their own lives in this large and prosperous nation we share.