Local
Tuesday, February 6, 11am-1pm
112 E Main St, Columbus
We live in a city in which our elected officials take millions of dollars from our failing schools to prop up commercial real estate properties in the hottest real estate markets in the sound.
We live in a city where 2-3 babies die every week before the age of 1 and Black babies die at twice the rate White babies do. The counter-measures proposed by the current machine have barely made a dent.
We live in a city where police brutality is ever on the increase and affordable housing is on the decline.
In the meantime, people who earned votes based on raising real issues are passed over for empty Council seats by City Hall insiders and party loyalists. Nothing changes, but it will.
Join us as leaders and friends of Everyday People for Positive Change address these and other issues as we prepare to submit the over 40,000 signatures of Columbus residents demanding to bring political power back to the people and away from the corporations and party power brokers they pay with our tax dollars.
Jury selection began today in the Franklin County Municipal Court for three of the four members of the #BlackPride4. Judge Ebner asked the defendants if they were aware that they may face jail time if found guilty. She also asked if they were aware of the offers made by the City prosecutors. Both the outgoing and incoming City Attorneys Rick Pfeiffer and Zach Klein have steadfastly refused to drop the charges against the #BlackPride4, or significantly reduce them.
#BlackPride4 members Ashley Braxton, Kendall Denton and Wriply Bennet held equally firm in rejecting the City’s offer to plead guilty and face no jail time.
The #BlackPride4 were arrested June 17, 2017 during the Columbus Pride march after they briefly held a silent vigil to protest the police killing of black people and call attention to violence against the gay and trans community. As they stood silently with others in the street, partially blocking the end of the parade, police moved in and used physical force to make them leave.
This week, January traveled to Switzerland and was humanely put out of its misery. The politically dreadful first chapter of 2018 contained a lot of “excitement” and taught us plenty about those who supposedly represent us. Regrettably, none of it was great. We should all be glad it is over and use its lessons to move forward into the new month and the rest of the year.
Surely one of the most shocking murders of the modern day freedom movement was that of Emmett Till in Money, Mississippi, on August 28, 1955. The fourteen-year-old Chicago native was engaging in a time-honored tradition in the black, northern, urban community: he was sent down south to visit relatives during his summer break from school. Emmett’s mother, Mamie Till, had warned him that there was a great difference between Chicago and Money. She cautioned him to stay away from whites, but to show them extreme deference if he had to interact with them. Till left Chicago a fresh, chubby cheeked teenager and returned a grotesque corpse in a pine box.
February 5-9, Franklin County Municipial Court, 375 S. High St.
Despite widespread outrage at their trumped-up charges, Wriply, Ashley, and Kendall of the #BlackPride4 are still scheduled to go to trial from February 5th-9th, 2018.
On Monday February 5th, we call community members to rally for the #BlackPride4 when they most need us. This is the defining moment in not just their cases, but the rest of their lives. We will be holding an action before trial proceedings begin that afternoon around 1:00. Afterwards, we will pack the courthouse and we will CONTINUE to pack the courthouse everyday of trial week. We must show our city that we will not sit idly by as Black queer and trans activists are brutalized by the state. See us on Facebook.
President Trump says – and the Supreme Court affirms – that we are “a nation of laws,” but no one questions “who” is making those laws. It takes a people’s movement to overturn unjust law and advance rights. And Ohioans are launching just that: a Community Rights movement to protect and enforce rights to clean air, water, and local community self-government.
It is a movement born out of necessity in this state. The oil and gas industry owns state legislators, and local government officials carry out state directives under threat of being sued and facing bankruptcy. In Pennsylvania, even the judiciary is punishing lawyers defending communities from fracking harms.
As fracking, pipelines, compressor stations, and wastewater injection wells inundate communities, it’s clear to residents they will find no remedy in the EPA, ODNR, and certainly not in their legislators.
Friday, February 2, 2018, 7:00 – 9:00 PM. Game Night! Join us for a game night to have fun and raise funds!
Even in the age of Trump, there are wins. Chief Wahoo, the Cleveland Indians’ longtime mascot, is finally heading for the showers.
For decades my indigenous buddy Mark Welch trekked up from Columbus, Ohio to opening day at the Indians Major League Baseball stadium in Cleveland. He and fellow activists—indigenous and otherwise—would stand outside the gates of Progressive Field with signs demanding the team get rid of its god-awful, cringe-worthy, ridiculously offensive logo. The damn thing is a big-nosed, buck-toothed, feather-headed idiot grinning about something that made no sense.
The team hasn’t won a World Series since 1948, when it adopted a previous, even more offensive version of that logo.
Indeed, a very near and dear friend has declared: my death is imminent, be prepared. Hospice forthwith. All good things must pass. Great things will always be remembered. Now what the hell are you going to do?
Acorn Bookshop hasn't just been a great little bookstore to me over the years – it's been one of my favorite places on our troubled Earth.
I have a favorite rock I visit and sit upon in Puerto Rico every time I go, to watch the ocean breathe and roll at me and the sun turn orange before it blinks its eye goodbye for the night.
Between that rock and the Acorn Books towering history section or its art shelves, when I'm not home laying on my sexy couch that never denies my ass, those are my two favorite haunts.
"Bookstore George" Cowmeadow Bauman, owner and proprietor, occasional tuxedo-ed in-store showman and raconteur, my favorite Connecticut Yankee (even though he's from Pittsburgh), sat me down shortly after the New Year in the store's back-office. He gave me the news: the Acorn was closing.