Local
Over a hundred concentration camps now colonize Ohio’s landscape including a federal prison, 87 county jails, 25 state-funded adult prisons, three privately-operated adult prisons, seven juvenile prisons and five Immigration Custom and Enforcement cages. According to the Prison Policy Initiative, “...every state in this country is more likely to incarcerate its residents than almost every nation on this planet.” Ohio’s incarceration rate is greater than the incarceration rates of Cuba, Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Vietnam, Zimbabwe, Iraq, China, Haiti, Libya, Afghanistan, Syria, or Pakistan. The State of Ohio has approximately 262,000 people on probation/parole, 50,257 adult prison inmates (ODRC, Sept 2017) an estimated 18,190 jail inmates and 505 juvenile inmates. Its adult prison population is superseded only by Pennsylvania (50,580), New York (50,864), Georgia (54,353), Florida (99,119), California (131,436), Texas (147,053) and the Federal government (196,500).
COLUMBUS, OHIO – Joe Motil, 32 year community activist and Write-In candidate for Columbus City Council is continuing to push forward on his development of city legislation requiring all new apartment projects to provide upwards of 20% of new units to be set aside for low-moderate income individuals and families. Motil first announced this idea during his 2015 Columbus City Council election campaign.
Motil says, “In 2015 83% of all apartments built in Columbus were on the high end. With almost 17,000 apartments newly opened, under construction or on the drawing board since then, we have already missed out on an opportunity to create 3,400 affordable housing units to those in need.” To help offset the costs for developers, Motil proposes slightly lessening the square footage of these units and allowing for less extravagant amenities such as counter tops, flooring, light fixtures, kitchen appliances and bathroom features but not displacing them with substandard appliances and components.
OCTOBER 12, 2017 – COLUMBUS, OHIO: The Estate of Jaron Ben-Rasu Thomas has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the Columbus Division of Police. The lawsuit brings civil rights, wrongful death, survivor and loss of consortium claims. The family seeks declaratory, injunctive, and monetary relief for the violations of the Fourth Amendment rights of Thomas to be free from excessive use of force and his common-law right to be free from reckless conduct directly and proximately causing his pain, emotional distress and death. The lawsuit was filed on October 12, 2017 in the Southern District of the United States Federal District Court.
This December, the Bureau of Land Management plans to auction off more of Wayne National Forest to gas and oil companies for unconventional fracking, putting public land, wildlife habitat, and the air and water we all depend on at risk. The protest period has already begun and ends next Thursday October 12th! This is you're opportunity to voice your opinion and share your personal stories and any relevant information you have that may influence this decision. Please take a few minutes and stand up for the Wayne! The BLM must read and respond to every letter. Even if they choose to deny your protest, there will be a record of it and that will help to demonstrate that the public does not want this. All letters must be either postmarked or faxed by October 12th.
Northwood-High building, 2231 N. High St., if parking in rear park in "R" spots only
At 7:00pm, come hear a presentation by Don Shartzer, criminal defense attorney speaking on: "Don't Talk to the Cops." He will explain why -- and explain what you should say if they start to ask you questions.
SeaBus Dance Company is excited to announce our upcoming project LOOM, an improvisational dance piece that will bring distant dancers and Columbus communities together. LOOM will premiere Friday, October 27th at Art of Yoga and will continue through the weekend with a October 28th show at MadLab Theater and a October 29th show at Flux + Flow Dance and Movement Center. Wherever you reside, we didn’t want you to miss it, which is why we included performances all across the city: in Franklinton, Downtown Columbus AND Clintonville! Just as LOOM aims to weave distal Columbus communities together with dance, its goal is also to gather dancers from across the country and present the converging of ideas, movement and narrative.
Sunday, October 8, 12:30pm [registration], 12:30pm [send-off rally]; Scioto Audubon Metro Park [Maier Place Pavilion] 400 W. Whittier St.
The 39th Annual Columbus CROP Hunger Walk has open registration from 12:30pm to 2pm. Come enjoy the beautiful Scioto Audubon Metro Park and be sure to join us for our Send-Off Rally at 12:45pm with an invocation, updates from the Mid-Ohio Foodbank and Church World Service, and a special guest!
Refreshments, hunger advocacy, and a CROP “kids station” will all be available! Join us as we end hunger, one step at a time, around the block and around the world!
CROP Hunger Walks are community-wide events sponsored by Church World Service and organized by religious groups, businesses, schools, and others to raise funds to end hunger in the U.S. and around the world.
Walk distance: 5K or ¾ mile
Contact: webwalk@crophungerwalk.org; or Andrew Gifford, agifford@cwsglobal.org
By Madeline Stocker and Nicole Butler
Sparked by the outcome of last November’s presidential election, a fire is spreading across Columbus.
Even people who don’t usually pay attention to local politics are witnessing a shift in the political landscape of Ohio’s capital city. There has been a surge in anti-Trump marches, demonstrations outside the Statehouse and public outcry against the top-down legislation threatening to compromise the everyday lives of Columbus residents citywide.
In other words, ‘resistance’ has become a daily practice for hundreds of thousands of Ohio citizens. But each day since last November, more and more Columbus residents are channeling their efforts into resisting the status quo here at home.
“I want to stand against the harmful and flawed policies coming from Washington D.C.,” said Ernest Whitted Jr., who lives with his wife on the South Side. “But I’ve started to notice that many of the decisions that hurt me and my family are made right here in my hometown.”
When you arrive at the polls this November 7, will you go in empty-handed? Or will you bring a list of candidates you prefer? As usual, the Franklin County Democratic Party will distribute partisan sample ballots – postcard-size fliers listing all the endorsed Democratic candidates – for its members to consult when voting this fall. Many who use the cards know only the candidates' professed political affiliation and nothing else about them.
The cards are distributed recommending the Democratic candidates for Columbus City Council and other city offices, despite the Columbus City Charter providing for “nonpartisan” elections. In placing this provision in the charter, Columbus citizens evidently subscribed to the position that political affiliation is irrelevant to which persons can best provide city services. And they apparently believed that cooperation between persons of different parties is more likely if elections are nonpartisan. According to the National League of Cities, those considerations are the reasons for nonpartisan municipal elections.
If the whole state of Vermont, the cities of San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Denver, Seattle, Minneapolis, Albuquerque, Davenport, Iowa, and even Oberlin, Ohio can change the name of Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples Day – could Columbus, Ohio be far behind? Sadly, yes.
Following the Ameriflora controversy in 1992 – the international flower festival at Franklin Park celebrating 500 years since Christopher Columbus invaded North America – Native Americans descended on Columbus City Council playing drums and chanting. Council members refused to change the name of Columbus Day, but as an immediate concession to the victims of genocide initiated by Columbus and to make the Native Americans go away, agreed that a week starting on Columbus Day would be designated Indigenous People’s Week. But we never heard anything about that again.
There were some victories: our city hasn’t held a Columbus Day parade since the 90s, the Santa Maria is thankfully gone, and activists successfully prevented a Christopher Columbus statue made by a Russian sculptor, six feet taller than the Statue of Liberty, from being erected downtown.