Saturday, October 13, 7-9pm, Ohio History Center, 800 E. 17th Ave.

Author, mentor, community-based activist, and educator, Is Said provides sage leadership on a national level as well as in the greater Columbus arts community. He conceives, stages, writes, and performs unique multimedia arts events, combining visionary, historical-based poetry or prose synergistically with high-energy African music and dance. Founding the Columbus-based “Advance Party” in 1973, he brings to life a powerful, spiritual vision to inspire, inform, and empower diverse audiences. With an inclusive multicultural approach, Is Said serves formally and informally as consultant to many arts agencies and individuals, seeking his wisdom born of a lifetime of community experience. He shares his expertise with school-age or homeless youth, growing artists, and senior citizens, conducting educational workshops that foster literacy, creativity, performance skills, and, most importantly, self-awareness. Is Said received the King Arts Complex 24th Annual Legends and Legacies Award in 2011.

In the wake of the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation, as white male privilege reclaims its desperate grip on our future, the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report comes out, informing us that we haven’t got much future left in which to avoid . . . I mean implement . . . serious change

Meanwhile, the midterm elections percolate.

Our quasi-democracy —rife as it is with voter suppression and mainstream media determination to trivialize the issues at stake —remains, nonetheless, the country’s primary means of manifesting public values. Inconvenient as it is to the powerful, this thing called voting is how collective humanity expresses its will —and I believe this will, to paraphrase Martin Luther King, bends toward sanity.

I hope so.

Many people erroneously self-identify as being “a vegan” when really, they are eating a plant-based diet, and not living in vegan consciousness on any other level, and sometimes, not even within the diet itself.

Someone who self-identifies as a vegan while eating a plant-based diet, is not embracing the vegan consciousness if they take their family to the zoo, the rodeo, the marine entertainment parks, animal acts or circuses. The same goes for buying animal-based fur, leather, wool, silk, feathered goods, and either breeding or buying companion animals from breeders instead of supporting sanctuaries and rescues.

A plant-based dietdoes not mean 100% plants, unless it specifically says 100% plant-based. It means predominantly plants, still consuming animal products, however, in “moderation” like 3 oz servings 2-3 times a week. Some like to say “like a condiment” which is particularly galling to vegans because these “condiments” were at the ultimate price of the lives of other innocent individuals who wanted to live and did not consent to their lives being taken.

The "[l]ongest bull run in the history of the stock market, congratulations America!" tweeted President Donald J. Trumpone day in August. But there are two Americas, and only one of them owns any stocks at all; and the richest 10% own 84%of all stocks owned by Americans. What is a stock anyway? A stock is a claim on a company's profits and assets, both of which are products of workers employed by the company. The America of the owning class lives off the labor of the other America and the rest of the world. On another day in August, President Trump tweeted: "For all of you that have made a fortune in the markets, or seen your 401k's rise beyond your wildest expectations, more good news is coming!" You know to which America the president intends to bring "more good news."

Last day to register to vote in the November 6 election at Franklin County Board of Elections
Go to your county Board of Elections or Secretary of State's website to make sure you are registered.