Local
Sunday, June 4, 12noon-3pm
Whetstone Park Of Roses, 3923 North High Street
Join Columbus DSA at the Whetstone Park of Roses to relax and enjoy springtime with fellow socialists! Feel free to bring your kids and dogs!
It's requested, but not required, that you bring food to share. Please see the Google doc linked below for more information and to let us know what you'll bring.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GmYduoJiomLAxm7SXCEwtzyiGxuUqsz3Y5ca89-yzME/edit?usp=sharing
While Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach is getting most of the attention as the Co-Chair of Donald Trump’s “Presidential Commission on Election Integrity,” the appointment to that Commission of notorious election rigger Ken Blackwell, Ohio’s former Secretary of State, is the real threat to democracy.
Blackwell played a role in Ohio’s 2004 election parallel to that played by Florida’s Secretary of State Kathleen Harris in the 2000 election. He co-chaired George W. Bush’s re-election campaign in Ohio. Blackwell is a far-right Republican who administered Ohio’s 2004 election using an “all the above” barrage of tactics pioneered throughout the Third World by the CIA and other covert operatives since the beginning of the Cold War.
Prior to the election, Blackwell established a wide range of measures aimed at systematically disenfranchising potential Democratic voters, and for electronically shifting the vote count to guarantee a Bush-Cheney victory.
Saturday, June 3, 10am-12:30pm
All across the country, Marches for Truth - peaceful demonstrations focused on demanding the truth - will be arranged on Saturday, June 3rd. This event will be a rally supporting the March for Truth movement. Our goals are simple:
1. Congressional investigations should be properly resourced and pursued free of partisan interests, and/or an independent investigation must be established.
2. As much information should be made available to the public as possible, and as soon as possible.
3. If crimes were committed or if collusion is discovered, it must be prosecuted.
4. The President must be held accontable for the untruths he is perpetrating.
Driving north on Route 23 from Columbus one will see strip malls and big box stores spreading like a cancer toward Delaware. Just a short distance from the intersection of US Route 23 and State Route 315 in Delaware County is a place worlds away from the retail jungle to the south. The Stratford Ecological Center is a 236 acre oasis of woods, wildflowers and sustainability that is dedicated to reconnecting people with nature, educating children and reminding adults of where our food and fiber come from.
I visited there recently for a half-day class on edible wild plants. Included in the class was an educational walk in the woods and a lunch made from the wild plants found in the fields and woods of the center. The hickory nut pie, sweetened with honey harvested from the center's own hives, may have been the culinary highlight of my life.
As an African American woman, I started elementary school during the Jim Crow Law era. I went to middle school and high school after the Civil Rights movement helped end the law. As an adult, I have watched the country still practice the philosophy that we, Americans and all people that live here, are “separate but equal.”
I have watched the people of this country that I love, go about the business of “play acting” that the laws of Jim Crow no longer exist. That minorities, specifically, Black minorities, have the same rights as the white person that they live next to, that they work with, worship with and sit next to in school. We as a people, have been able to “try to get along” with each other, especially in public, regardless of our real thoughts in private.
I first saw Betsy Ross at the Blind Engineer's CD release party at Ace of Cups in July of last year. I only managed to catch a couple of songs, but I remember being impressed by the band and especially the playing of their bass guitarist. So when I heard that they were opening up for the Oklahoma City act Skating Polly at the Rumba Cafe last Monday I headed on over. I'm fond of Rumba anyway – it's walking distance from my house and I can drink all the whiskey I want. And their shows tend to start on time.
The show started with the Time Cat, a power trio from Akron that plays that vague mixture of punk/pop/rock that has dominated the indie scene for the last several decades. They did a lot of stop/starts and were well rehearsed, and beyond that they were about what you would expect.
Thursday, June 1, 1-2pm
Ohio Statehouse
Join hundreds of faith leaders from around Ohio and Reverend William Barber II for a Moral Rally against unjust Congressional legislation that would decimate the health care of Ohio children, families and seniors.
Free Press Hero – State Representative Bernadine Kennedy Kent
Rep. Kent is a Freep Hero for introducing House Bill 137. Currently, 49 states require law enforcement officers to be mandatory reporters of child abuse and neglect. Ohio stands alone as the only state without this requirement. Teachers, medical personnel, attorneys and other professionals are already required under Ohio law to report cases of child abuse and neglect. Kent has firsthand knowledge, as a former school administrator and tutor, witnessing credible evidence that young children were being molested and raped. The police detective assigned to the case never wrote up an incident report or contacted Children’s Services. Kent and House Bill 137 will correct this large oversight.
Josh Mandel and John Kasich appear to have spent upwards of $5 million of taxpayers' money on their vain pursuits of a U.S. Senate seat.
Ohio Treasurer Mandel spent nearly $2 million on TV ads pushing him off as a nice guy who supports charity.
Governor Kasich is nearing the $3 million mark in secret spending of taxpayer money on security, travel and lodging while he runs for president, peddles his book and maybe runs for the Senate.
Do the math. Kasich has spent 300 days of the last 2 years out of state and not doing his job at an estimated $10,000 a day. That adds up to $3 million down the drain.
Imagine what the combined $5 million could do to fight the opioid epidemic that Kasich purports to care about.
Speaking of Kasich's latest "book," Two Paths, it limped into the 13th spot on the New York Times best-seller list three weeks ago only to drop out of the list the following week.
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales is awash in mysteries, but the biggest is existential in nature. Namely, why does this flick exist?
In 2003, Disney gave us the first film in the series, The Curse of the Black Pearl, starring Johnny Depp as Capt. Jack Sparrow. The eye-shadowed scamp of a pirate was such a hit that the studio brought him back in a trio of sequels that drowned the original’s charm under scattershot plots and frantic action sequences.
Despite critical brickbats galore, Disney continued to earn shiploads of booty from the series, which is why Depp is back with Dead Men Tell No Tales. The title of this fifth installment is based on a quote from the chief villain, Javier Bardem’s Capt. Salazar, who reveals that he and his cursed crew leave one man alive from each ship they attack because they want someone to tell the tale.
Of course, that’s assuming anyone is capable of explaining the tale. Like its predecessors, Dead Men is a convoluted mess involving undead or missing parents, curses, quests, revenge and a series of magical objects: a compass, an unreadable map, a mythical island and Poseidon’s trident.