Local
Tuesday March 15 is just around the corner and the national media hordes will be descending into central Ohio, the swing region in the swing state, to cover the presidential primary.
On the Democratic side, the slugfest between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders will be coming to a head with Sanders needing a victory to overcome Clinton's growing lead..
Former Gov. Ted Strickland is also on the ballot, trying to fend off challenger and Cincinnati councilman P.G. Sittenfeld for the U.S. Senate Democratic nomination. Ordinarily, Strickland, well-known and well-liked by Ohio Democrats, would be home free against a little-known newcomer, but Sittenfeld has been cozying up to the Sanders campaign and could ride a Sanders wave into contention, even an upset.
Strickland is a longtime Clinton supporter, owing her for helping him win a close race his southeast Ohio Congressional seat way back when. Strickland could be harmed and Sittenfeld helped if Clinton slumps or is wounded by the FBI investigation of her emails while secretary of state.
IMPLICATIONS FOR FRANKLIN COUNTY
City planners and everyone else for that matter are convinced Columbus is one of the fastest growing cities in the nation. Data from the US Census Bureau shows from 2013 to 2014 the region grew by 25,000 residents, and many more are said to be on the way. The Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission or MORPC predicts Central Ohio will attract 500,000 more residents over the next 35 years.
The numbers are eye-opening and many are taking notice. Such as high-end apartment complex developers and owners who are salivating over these predicted herds.
From downtown to Franklinton, from Grandview to North Campus and into Clintonville, high-end apartment complexes are up-and-renting or being proposed. The developers and owners are inspired by predictions from MORPC and others that Columbus is one of the last Midwest boomtowns, this according to several real-estate experts interviewed by the Free Press.
On Sunday, March 6, at 12:30 pm, hundreds of farmworkers, religious leaders, students, and consumers will gather at Goodale Park to march to Wendy’s at 3592 North High Street to protest the chain in its hometown for its failure to respect farmworker rights, and ending at Tuttle Park.
The protest, organized by local group Ohio Fair Food in partnership with the farmworker-led Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), is part of the CIW’s Workers’ Voice Tour, which builds on a three-year consumer campaign and a year-long national student boycott of Wendy’s, launched by Ohio State University students a year ago.
“Are you tired of the 1 percent making more than the bottom half of this country?” asked Troy Harris, an activist with Central Ohio Grassroots for Bernie Sanders. “Are you tired of corporate-owned Democrats and Republicans who are controlling our legislative interests? Are you tired of Starbucks and Wal-Mart decimating our communities?
“I’ve got a candidate for you,” he said. “His name is Bernie Sanders.”
Harris was speaking to a crowd of about 900 Sanders supporters at the Wexner Center Plaza on the Ohio State University campus on February 27, a few days after a Sanders campaign office opened on East Main Street in Columbus.
Many of the speakers at the rally emphasized the local implications of Bernie Sanders’ national platform. CWA Local 4501 president Kevin Kee brought the focus directly to OSU and the university’s privatization of much of its workforce.
“They outsourced the parking here, and now pay employees $8 an hour,” Kee said. “You can’t raise a family on $8 an hour. You can’t buy a car on $8 an hour. Are we in a race to the absolute bottom of the wage scale, or do we believe that there should be a living wage?
Thursday evening at the University of Virginia four expert pollsters performed a dramatic act of self-experimentation in which they demonstrated that, using a map and two hands, they would still be incapable of finding their ass.
The brave participants included Glenn Bolger who promotes and does polling for Republican senators, Congress members, and governors at Public Opinion Strategies; Courtney Kennedy who is director of survey research at Pew Research Center; Mark Mellman who promotes and does polling for Democratic senators, Congress members, and governors; and Doug Usher who works for Purple Insights and supports the two political parties the name suggests.
The event was put on by the Center for Politics which was trying to hand out stickers that said "Politics is a good thing." I didn't see anyone accept one. The event had been titled "How Polls Influence Public Opinion," which was why I went. But the moderator, Kyle Kondik, and the four panelists never mentioned that topic. During Q&A someone in the audience asked about it, and was given the answer: Oh, no, polls don't influence the public.
Bernie Sanders' common sense proposals for dealing with universal health care, college tuition, restoring the infrastructure, confronting poverty and more have encountered predictable scorn from "fiscally responsible" corporatists.
They all scream about the "deficit spending" and tax hikes that might be required to pay for these vital programs. From predictable right-wing corporatists to Hillary Clinton ("free stuff! free stuff!" she mocks) to fictional "left-leaning economists" invented by the New York Times, numerous voices scorn Bernie’s agenda because his proposals "cost too much."
Speaking to a reporter before a screening of Race at OSU’s Mershon Auditorium, one of Jesse Owens’s daughters said several changes were made to the script for the sake of historical accuracy.
That’s nice to hear. The tale of Owens’s participation in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin is intrinsically so dramatic and inspiring that it would be a shame to sully it with blatant inaccuracies.
As you probably know, Owens was the African-American track and field star who symbolically thumbed his nose at Hitler’s theory of Aryan superiority at the pre-World War II Olympics. For Central Ohioans, he also was a hometown hero. After racking up an impressive record as a high school athlete in Cleveland, he came to Ohio State and fell under the tutelage of track coach Larry Snyder.
This is where director Stephen Hopkins’s film takes up the story. Snyder (Jason Sudeikis) calls Owens (Stephen James) into his office and demands to know whether he’s ready to work hard. He also begins plying him with the notion that track records are made to be broken, but medals are forever. In no time, it seems, the two are setting their sights on the 1936 Olympics.
A candlelight vigil honored the life of Marshawn McCarrel, local community leader, drawing friends and fellow activists together in sadness and solidarity. "Many people spoke, sang songs and cried," said Pejmaan Irani who attended the event at Dodge Park in Franklinton on Tuesday night, February 9 at 6pm. McCarrel committed suicide on the stairs of the Ohio Statehouse on February 8 after posting "My demons won today. I'm sorry." McCarrel was 23 -years-old from Columbus' west side.
McCarrel was a well-known and liked Black Lives Matter activist. Free Press Editor Bob Fitrakis remembers him from a protest in Beavercreek following the John Crawford murder at the WalMart there. Members of the Ohio Student Association had sat in at the Sheriff's office in Beavercreek to demand answers following the police shooting of Crawford.