Local
Saturday, April 7, 10am-4pm
Northwood-High Building, 2231 N. High St. room 100
Bringing together Greens from all over Ohio to prepare for the upcoming election year.
Morning - by-laws conversation for Ohio Green Party Central Committee.
Afternoon - Hear from the candidates running for Green Party office this year and how to get involved.
Free, no RSVP required. If you are registered Green or not, you are welcome.
The Columbus Dispatch cannot give Dave Yost enough sweetheart coverage in his bid for Ohio Attorney General. The newspaper might as well be named deputy campaign manager for the Delaware Republican and current state auditor. This is hardly the way the recently crowned Ohio's best newspaper should behave.
In fact it is hard to remember the name of Yost's Democratic opponent. Let me take a moment to look it up. The Democrat candidate for attorney general is Steve Dettlebach. He gets little coverage in the newspaper and dispatch.com and when he did get covered, the Dispatch headline gave it a negative spin.
In early March, Dettelbach, former U.S. attorney for northern Ohio, was endorsed by former New York U.S. attorney Preet Bharara at a fund-raiser in Cleveland. The Dispatch carried the Associated Press account. I suspect no Dispatch reporters were available because they were tied up covering Yost.
Judge Cynthia Ebner, endorsed by the Stonewall Democrats, handed out sentences to three of the four #BlackPride4 on Tuesday, March 13. The #BlackPride4 were arrested when they held a silent vigil during the 2017 Stonewall Pride march to call attention to the murders of black trans people and killings of black people in Columbus by the police. Just seconds into the vigil, Columbus Police attacked and brutalized them.
Ashley Braxton was sentenced to two years probation, 90 days in jail with 89 days being suspended, 60 hours of community service, and a $250 fine. Kendall Denton, convicted of a mere fourth degree disorderly conduct, the lowest misdemeanor charge, was given a surprisingly harsh sentence: two years probation, 30 days in jail with 29 days being suspended, 48 hours of community service, and a $100 fine – with $50 suspended because he spent a night in jail.
Thursday, April 5, 5-6pm
2004 N. High St.
In response to powerful and beautiful Freedom Fast and Time's Up Wendy's March, Wendy's released this statement:
"There's no new news here, aside from the CIW trying to exploit the positive momentum that has been generated by and for women in the #MeToo and Time's Up movement to advance their interests."
Since then, the network has called Wendy's statement despicable, reprehensible, and vile. They're right!
We've seen what sexual harassment and sexual violence looks like on college campuses, and we won't tolerate it in Wendy's supply chain. April is sexual assault awareness month, and too often farmworker women are excluded from that conversation. Stand with us April 5th as Columbus heeds the call for a national day of action. Let's show Wendy's that farmworker women are leaders in the movement against sexual violence and that Wendy's has crossed the line.
"Look out, mama, there's a white boat coming down the river" ~ from Neil Young's "Powderfinger"
Damned little makes me happier than riding a bicycle – except maybe a motorcycle. For our purposes today, though, it's the human-powered invention usually attributed to a 19th century French man who was allergic to horses(hit).
I pedal, I thrive. Rhythmic grooves arrive. I bob my head in time as my legs go to the Derby, pumping energy through chain to wheels barely more mechanical than a chariot. Good lawd, I loves you, Porgy!
And when I'm feeling good, I want to the whole neighborhood to hear it.
Thus I break out in song. Lately, Powderfinger.
I lustily howl the quoted opening line--then forget virtually every other word except
Red means run, son, numbers add up to nothing from a following verse where the father advises the rebel son bravery isn't everything. Then – no kidding – I go into Rod Stewart's Maggie May
You made a first-class fool out of me
I'm as blind as a fool can be
oh Maggie I wish I'd never seen your fa-oh-ace
They call that a mash-up, I believe.
Any marijuana user knows failing a drug test will most likely cost you your job. Or, that getting popped for marijuana possession could ruin your career.
But what happens to a Fortune 500 company that’s been accused repeatedly over the previous decade by both federal and state law enforcement of breaking federal law by distributing massive amounts of opioids? A Fortune 500 company the Ohio Attorney General’s Office and others allege has helped fuel the heroin epidemic that’s killed tens of thousands?
If you are Dublin-based Cardinal Health, you pay a small fine and keep distributing huge amounts of opioids as your revenues go over $130 billion annually, that’s what.
You also pump Congress full of money so it hamstrings the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) from investigating opioid distributors, as told recently to 60 Minutes by a DEA whistle blower. And as for the founders of Cardinal Health, the Walter family, you become, over this same decade one of the richest if not the richest family in Central Ohio.
On March 27th, 2018, once again, the legal “authorities” made the same decision that seems to be the norm when it comes to police officers killing black man and boys “in the line of duty.” What decision did the Louisiana officials make regarding the fatal shooting of Alton Sterling? A black man that was seen, not alleged, but seen, laying on his back while two police officers held him down and shot him dead. They made the decision that police officers are not held responsible for killing citizens, especially black citizens, and will not be charged with murder when it is very clear, through visual evidence, that murder was committed.
Police officers getting off with killing black boys, or anyone for that matter, isn’t always the case. The police officer who shot unarmed 15-year-old Jordan Edwards in 2017 was charged with murder in Texas within a week of using his rifle to shoot into the car that Edwards was sitting in, with three other black boys, at a house party. This past March in Minnesota a police officer was indicted with murder charges for shooting 40-year-old Australian woman, Justine Damond, when police responded to her 911 call.
On March 22, people around the world celebrated World Water Day, an international holiday established by The United Nations in 1993 to advocate for sustainable management of freshwater resources. This year’s theme was Nature for Water. According to worldwaterday.org:
Environmental damage, together with climate change, is driving the water-related crises we see around the world. Floods, drought and water pollution are all made worse by degraded vegetation, soil, rivers and lakes. When we neglect our ecosystems, we make it harder to provide everyone with the water we need to survive and thrive. Nature-based solutions have the potential to solve many of our water challenges. We need to do so much more with ‘green’ infrastructure and harmonize it with ‘grey’ infrastructure wherever possible. Planting new forests, reconnecting rivers to floodplains, and restoring wetlands will rebalance the water cycle and improve human health and livelihoods.
Wed, April 4, 6:45-8:45pm
King Arts Complex, 867 Mt. Vernon Ave.
On the 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination we will commemorate through song, narration, and images, the African-American resistance to the violence and oppression that have defined the Black experience in America. Keith Kilty, at kilty.1@osu.edu. kingartscomplex.com.
Armed and dangerous: He’s the plainclothes “jump out boy” who shot up a Linden neighborhood in the summer of 2016 killing a young black resident, Henry Green. He’s the uniformed officer seen on tape stomping on a black man’s head as he lay cuffed on the ground in 2017. He is Zachary Rosen, and he was fired. But the Fraternal Order of Police threw such a fit and their weight around the city of Columbus that Rosen was reinstated last month. At first he was assigned back to his old beat in Linden until posters appeared warning the community that he was back on the streets: “Be on the lookout for this officer,” it read with Rosen’s scowling photo, “and record any suspicious behavior.” Later the Dispatch noted the CPD may assign him to a different area of the city. Pity them.