Local

On Thursday about 50 demonstrators, most wearing black, marched in a silent mock funeral procession from the Columbus Mennonite Church to the home of Mayor Andrew Ginther in the predominately white neighborhood of Clintonville.

“Mayor Ginther’s inaction speaks louder than words,” said Tynan Krakoff, an organizer with Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ). “Ginther needs to wake up to the racism thriving in Columbus. We are here to demand justice for Ty’re King and Henry Green. We are calling on city officials to invest in communities of color and for the mayor to break his silence and complicity in upholding racism.” SURJ is a national organization of white people organizing to fight against racial injustice.

“As white people, we know that we are treated differently than our neighbors of color, particularly under police programs such as the Summer Safety Initiative,” Krakoff said. “We need to shift our city’s budget away from policing and instead invest in black communities.”

Not to big myself up too much, but my strongest columns are usually ones I'd rather not be writing. I was all set to take a break from election commentary to write about the Dakota Access Pipeline protests and visions of a unified Turtle Island, but then Columbus had to go and live up to its namesake. Which is to say I'm not surprised. The Indie Art Capital of the World was more than due. In fact this wasn't even the first, lest we forget Henry Green. Columbus Police have already killed 5 people this year, a rate that would draw props from any half-decent serial killer. Though this is the first child. And they can't even pull the shit they did with Tamir Rice talmbout “he was so big, how were we supposed to know he was only 12?” Tyre King was five feet even and less than 100 pounds, and they shot him as he was running away. I really should just end the column right there.

The Mainstream Media developed some backbone since we last wrote -- after being brutally manipulated by Donald Trump -- and finally brought full-time 2020 presidential contender, and occasional governor, John Kasich down to size.

Chuck Todd, host of NBC's venerable Meet The Press, recorded an interview with Kasich on Friday Sept. 9 and posted part of it online on Sept. 10. Politico and The Columbus Dispatch reported about it and said it was broadcast on Sunday morning, Sept. 11, but it was never shown and never even mentioned during the hour-long broadcast.

I'm sure Kasich's people would blame it on the breaking news of attempted bombings in the New York City metropolitan area that was covered for a few minutes by Meet The Press, but in the two-thirds of the show devoted to politics, Kasich never came up.

Café Bourbon Street’s Pierogi Mountain, located in the North Campus area on Summit, has a seasonal variety of delicious, Eastern European Style, filled dumpling called Pierogi topped with caramelized onions. When you are buzzing around town looking for a vegan midnight meal, some music and great service, this dive-bar might just be the hive you were looking for.

Winston Hightower is releasing “Exploration Date” on Super Dreamer records towards the end of October. “Exploration Date” is a follow-up to “Too Close to Home.”  Winston plays drums in Minority Threat. He was in Hardcore bands Yuze Boys and Puberty Wounds. Winston recently received some press that put him on experimental music innovators R. Stevie Moore and Gary Wilson’s radar.

“Exploration Date” sounds as if R. Stevie Moore filtered through the experimental narrative of Columbus Rock. Winton's solo stuff isn’t hardcore. Imagine Ariel Pink with ghostly Krylon Terracotta fingernail overspray from the Calumet Bridge.

Winston said of his contact with the influential Nashville musician, “I think R. Stevie Moore is at the point where he is so annoyed with me. That’s like my goal. That’s how I feel he operates.”

While we were conducting the interview it was difficult not to discuss our climate as this swing state that is reeling from the shooting of Ty’re King.

Going to Shadowbox Live can be a humbling experience. The troupe’s so-called “metaperformers” are so busy, ambitious and talented that you can’t help feeling like a lesser species in their presence.

For a prime example of what they’re capable of, see Broken Whispers, an adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby that transforms the title character into a lesbian and tells her story through a combination of narration, dance and song. Radically changing a literary classic sounds like a dangerous endeavor, but the production is put together with such skill and ingenuity that it’s a wonder to behold.

And that’s just one of the shows currently being staged at Shadowbox. When you consider that the average troupe member juggles multiple productions with behind-the-scenes duties and even waiting tables, it’s hard not to conclude we’re dealing with a higher order of being here. 

Fortunately for our egos, every once in a while the Shadowboxers put on a show that proves they’re only human after all. Such an animal is Shadow Zone, the troupe’s annual Halloween-season production.

Do Italian musicians feel things differently?

Only one of these questions popped into my head at a very recent Friday Woodlands Tavern happy hour when the monstrously good guitarist Rick Collura and his Blue Cats played like the muddy waters of the Mississip coursed through their veins. I mean, baby, they were up to their necks in blue electric mud, churnin' out deep-pocketed groove like tax exiles in France. Groanin' and moanin' they had me, I confess. Where did their music end and my metabolism begin? It was a delta-Chicago-Vulcan soul-mind meld of the highest order. A rarity these days, what with all the roots doctors of music leaving no inheritors of the genre behind for what reason. Fuckin' millenials.

Nevertheless, I felt like I was in the catfish's stomach by the third song.

This past September many America citizens were hit back-to-back with the realization that Black boys and men are “moving targets” for some police officers in America. In Columbus a thirteen-year old was shot and killed. Why? According to the Columbus Police Department (CPD) he pulled a gun on them during a chase. The “gun” turned out to be a toy gun. King is the third young Black man killed by the CPD this past year in Columbus. The police-officer appears to have fallen under the misbelief that the teenage boy, who happens to be Black, wanted to harm him, and thus his lawyers defense that the white man who is a trained police officer was “in fear for his life.” And now Tyre King’s mother buries her son and cries “no peace until justice.”

On Tuesday, September 13th, the Lantern published an interview with President Michael Drake that misrepresented the details and events of and surrounding the #ReclaimOSU occupation last spring. We, as a coalition, have several corrections and rebuttals to President Drake’s comments:

Referring to the threats of expulsion against protestors at the ReclaimOSU protest, President Drake claimed that “it never would happen.” However, Dr. Drake has a history of upholding these same draconian measures against student activists. As Chancellor of The University of California Irvine, Drake threatened students who became known as the Irvine 11 with arrest and expulsion. After peacefully disrupting a speech by an Israeli ambassador, students were suspended from school and given three years of probation.

On the tragic evening of September 14, 2016, Tyre King, aged 13, was shot and killed by Columbus Police Department (CPD) officer Bryan Mason. Around the city, people are mourning the death of this child. The scars are still new, and will never fade.

We mourn for Tyre and his family, and hope they can find some solace in the vigils and protests that have started to emerge around this atrocity.

While Tyre's story is unique and individual, the violence against him is also part of a larger pattern. So far this year, at the time of this writing, the police have killed 788 people (and counting), and a disproportionate number of them--almost 25 percent--were African American.

In terms of police killings that have received a great deal of media attention, Ohio stands out, with the deaths of Tyre King; Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old killed by police in November 2014, while he was holding a BB gun in a Cleveland public park; and John Crawford III, a 22 year old who police shot in August 2014, while he was in the aisle of a Walmart store near Dayton holding an air gun he was considering buying.