"Without music, life would be a mistake."--Friedrich Nietzsche

Would the occasionally fantastically misunderstood German philosopher have understood the massive appeal of super-energetic sing-along songs of teen-angst? Or a free festival's fear of the riot potential of a band playing N.W.A.'s "Fuck the Police" on a Saturday night?

Yes, because he understood power.

Consider what went down the last full week in June here in our little nest-egg of an American dream town.

21 Pilots, two twenty-something Columbus musicians who were America's biggest breakout act in 2016, sold out two arenas and an outdoor amphitheater, plus the Newport and a small basement club the last full week of June. That's about 45,000 people, from near and far coming to see a two-man band--a drummer and a front man who played ukelele or bass part of the time.

"That's power, Oskar," as Amon Goeth, SS commandant, said in 'Schindler's List.' "That's power."

Perhaps we can say music has the power of life and maybe the power of death and destruction. Again, consider the latter at of all places, ComFest on its Saturday night.

Lots of black & white photos of Tupac and others with captions

Leftist black activists don’t get represented in Hollywood productions much, unless they represent the more mainstream Civil Rights movement. All Eyez On Me gives the radical leftist angle on rap icon Tupac Shakur’s family, upbringing, and his little-known political activism. Despite some of the movie’s small departures from eyewitness accounts, it surprisingly creates a pretty close approximation of Tupac, and the U.S. intelligence apparatus that murderously targeted him and his Black Panther family.

The movie opens with a filmed interview that Vibe magazine conducted with Tupac in prison. This interview frames the first two thirds of the film, until it reaches the point when Tupac is recalling the reason he ended up there.

words Stop Trumpcare

Thursday, July 6, 12noon-3pm
Senator Portman's office, 37 W. Broad St.
Activists are mobilizing across the country to stop the GOP healthcare bill in its tracks. On Thursday, July 6th—during the 4th of July recess when Senators return to their home states—there will be sit-ins at Senate offices across the country demanding Republican Senators vote NO on the bill.

The so-called “Better Care Reconciliation Act” introduced in the Senate would take away health insurance from 22 million working, poor, and disabled Americans, gut Medicaid by almost $800 billion, and provide a massive tax cut for the wealthiest 2% of the population. The passage of this bill means that thousands of middle-class and poor people will die so that the rich can get richer.

Inspired by ADAPT’s courageous nonviolent sit-ins last week targeting Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, we believe greater nonviolent direct action is called for to elevate the impact and unpopularity of the healthcare bill within the media and to pressure Republican Senators to vote NO on the bill. 

Black man in red jacket with red doo rag scarf on head with gold necklace, making a sneering face

Prodigy of Mobb Deep died June 20th from sickle cell. The QBoro rapper’s value to Hip Hop can be illustrated by oversimplifying statements like: Prodigy is more influential than Rakim because he helped Rakim become 90’s New York Hip Hop form. 

Nas, OC, Wu and others also helped Prodigy make Rakim resonate in the 90’s New York akin to 2pac popularizing Scarface’s rapping style everywhere.

Prodigy, Like Rakim, utilized his speaking voice in a cool, calm manner with controlled patterns creating the embodiment of the New York contrast between Hip Hop’s clean and dapper presentation and the grittiness of a gothic industrialization. Rakim’s 1992 song “Causalities of War” depicted a Desert Storm veteran who loses his mind because of PTSD that humanized the channel change from BET and CNN when people got bored of watching play by play of scud missiles.

The PTSD in Queensbridge from neighborhood violence during Mobb Deep’s rise had everyone speaking in the “dun” language while the East Coast adopted gulf-war names like CNN, Desert Storm and labeled neighborhoods Kuwait.

COTA bus, sllver bus with red white and blue curvy stripe on side driving in dusk

On May 1st COTA overhauled its transit system by increasing routes and connections, including to more jobs, such as at Rickenbacker on the far southeast side, which has an estimated 21,000 warehouse-related positions.

But more routes and increased frequency for those without their own transportation to an expanding Central Ohio and to more jobs apparently wasn’t the only improvement in mind for the transit authority. COTA also boosted the number of routes and frequencies to a place fueling an increasing addictive form of entertainment in our community – gambling.

COTA has two lines going to Rickenbacker, but four lines going to Hollywood Casino on the west side. Keep in mind there are jobs at Hollywood, but the majority of people taking these lines are going there to gamble.

What’s more, the four lines to Hollywood travel through some of Columbus’s poorest neighborhoods where the last thing these people need is a place where they lose what little money they have.

Police up in the face of black people in the street

“During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing classes constantly hounded them, received their theories with the most savage malice, the most furious hatred and the most unscrupulous campaigns of lies and slander.” - V. Lenin

In the comments of the Columbus Underground article, the #BlackPride4 were called left-wing terrorists. I guess if the shoe fits, though anyone who would suggest that is clearly way too easily frightened, but when not busy terrorizing the sacred corporate fun that is Columbus Pride, they are also organizers, volunteers, lawyers, or in other words, exactly the kind of people that “should” be protesting. Their moniker is apt then, because for once in a long time, I am truly proud of Don’t Call It Arawak City.

In 1932, Sigmund Freud and Albert Einstein conducted a correspondence
subsequently published under the title ‘Why War?’ See ‘Why War: Einstein
and Freud’s Little-Known Correspondence on Violence, Peace, and Human
Nature’.
https://www.transcend.org/tms/2015/04/why-war-einstein-and-freuds-little-known-correspondence-on-violence-peace-and-human-nature/

Cartoon of weird looking gray haired man with big ears in a suit holding a fiery torch made of a rolled up paper that says Voting Rights on it

I delayed writing this article until today, June 24th. The deadline lies just two days away. You see, the ground keeps shifting.

Donald Trump was elected President last year in part because he appeared to support states’ rights – let ‘em decide for themselves. Some reformers may have interpreted his Republican brand of libertarianism as something more than just a slick salesman. Some may even have voted for him because they thought he would legalize. The noise coming out of the White House differs widely from that heard on the campaign trail. And it changes daily.

As one of his earliest cabinet picks, Trump nominated his former campaign minion, then Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, to become U.S. Attorney General. Dark clouds began to loom.

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