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First in Ohio Ballot Initiative: Right to a Healthy Climate in Bowling Green

A sign reading No Pipelines

Bowling Green, OH:  The Bowling Green Climate Protectors coalition announced today they are gathering signatures to place their Community Rights to a Healthy Environment and Livable Climate City Charter Amendment on the November 2017 ballot. The measure is the first of its kind in the state. Similar measures are being advanced in Spokane, WA, and Lafayette, CO. Each community is fighting fossil fuel activities.

The Bowling Green amendment was drafted by Bowling Green students and City residents, working with the assistance of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF). The student-resident coalition formed when Spectra Energy Corporation requested an easement from the City for the Nexus pipeline to cut through City limits. Community members crowded City Council meetings, urging their representatives to deny the easement. While the easement was not granted, residents learned the pipeline would pass under the Maumee River, threatening the City’s drinking water source and located perilously close to the Bowling Green Fault.

Two vigils on March 24

People protesting outside Wendy's building

Boycott Wendys! Vigil & Parade for Human Rights
FRIDAY, MARCH 24: Vigil, 3:30pm, Wendy's HQ. Gather at the corner of W Dublin Granville Rd & Dale Dr. Dublin, OH
SATURDAY, MARCH 25: Summit for Human Rights, 10am - 6pm. Dinner, teatro, and concert, 6pm - 11pm. 82 E 16th Ave, Columbus, OH
SUNDAY, MARCH 26: Parade for Human Rights, 1:00 PM. Gather at Goodale Park, 120 W Goodale St. Columbus, OH
REGISTER HERE: bit.ly/17-r2hr
COLUMBUS! What are we hungry for?
From March 20 to 26, Columbus community members will be holding a week of action in support of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers Return to Human Rights Tour spreading the word about the Wendy's boycott, which arrives in Columbus on March 24. 
The major highlight of their entire tour will be the Parade for Human Rights - parading down High St from Goodale Park to OSU's campus on Sunday, March 26th at 1pm. Join us! 

National religious leaders stand with the OSU fasters: “The student fast taking place at OSU is an inspiring act of solidarity…”

White women with long dark hair and sunglasses holding sun that says Fair Food Taste Better
 

Declarations of support for student fasters at OSU flood in as fast enters Day 4: National Farm Worker Ministry, T’ruah, Unitarian Universalist Service Committee send blistering statements to Wendy’s, OSU administration;

CIW welcomed back to Chicago on Return to Human Rights Tour! We begin with an update on the progress of the 19 courageous OSU student fasters, who today cross the halfway mark of their weeklong fast calling on the university to cut its contract with Wendy’s unless the fast food giant joins the Fair Food Program.

Trump, JFK, and the Deep State

 

 

 

There’s a lot of talk these days about the “Deep State,” especially among supporters of President Trump, some of whom believe that this Deep State is working hard to destroy anyone loyal to Trump, both inside and outside of the government, and ultimately, Trump himself. General Flynn was forced to resign after a media scandal surrounding his contacts with Russian ambassadors – a scandal which, by most accounts, was highly exaggerated. After Flynn’s resignation, prominent neoconservative and NeverTrumper Bill Kristol tweeted:

Neocons as a Figment of Imagination

We have a president who is belligerent towards Iran, who is sending “boots on the ground” to fight ISIS, who loves Israel passionately and who is increasing already bloated defense budgets. If one were a neoconservative, what is there not to like, yet neocons in the media and ensconced comfortably in their multitude of think tanks hate Donald Trump. I suspect it comes down to three reasons. First, it is because Trump knows who was sticking the knife in his back during his campaign in 2016 and he has neither forgiven nor hired them. Nor does he pay any attention to their bleating, denying them the status that they think they deserve because of their self-promoted foreign policy brilliance.

Mike Signer: Profile in Cowardice

A footnote to the City of Charlottesville's courageous passing of a resolution this week asking Congress to move money from the military to human and environmental needs, rather than the reverse, was the cowardly abstention of Mayor Mike Signer from the vote.

I don't always agree with the other four city council members on everything, or even know enough to have an opinion on much of what they do, but they have all repeatedly been willing to stick their necks out for things they apparently care about for moral reasons. Even Council Member Kathy Galvin, who in my view marred Monday's resolution by adding to it some nonsense about U.S. troops fighting to protect you and your rights (even as we're poorer and have fewer rights with every new war started and never ended) believed things had gotten so bad she would vote aye.

(The Council would have passed the resolution 3-0 without the rah-rah-troops bit that garnered Galvin's vote. I asked Council Member Kristin Szakos whether she herself believed that bit, and she said she imagined most of the troops did. By that logic, the City Council should also declare climate change to be a myth and angels to be real.)

The Perfect American: Opera Review

This U.S. premiere at Long Beach Opera is no hagiography of one our country’s most beloved folklore and pop culture heroes. Based on Peter Stephan Jungk’s novel, composer Philip Glass and librettist Rudolph Wurlitzer’s ironically named opera The Perfect American takes an often scathing look at animation icon Walt Disney (baritone Justin Ryan). When thinking of “Uncle Walt,” as he was rather euphemistically dubbed (and I should add marketed), color pops immediately to mind. From his classic cartoons such as 1937’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to the 1960s TV series Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color, a richly vivid palette of hues has long been associated with this pioneer of motion picture cartoons and theme parks.

 

Five Localities Part Resolutions Against Trump Budget: Three of Them Done Well

The Mosque that Disappeared

We committed a quiet little war crime the other day. Forty-plus people are dead, taken out with hellfire missiles while they were praying.

Or maybe not. Maybe they were just insurgents. The women and children, if there were any, were . . . come on, you know the lingo, collateral damage. The Pentagon is going to “look into” allegations that what happened last March 16 in the village of al-Jinah in northern Syria was something more serious than a terrorist takeout operation, which, if you read the official commentary, seems like the geopolitical equivalent of rodent control.

Fearing Waco Bloodshed at a Buddhist Temple

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Fearing duplication of 1993's Waco, Texas
bloodshed, thousands of Thai troops and police retreated from their
three-week siege surrounding a Buddhist temple after failing to find
the former abbot who is wanted for alleged financial crimes.
   The sensational confrontation on Bangkok's northern edge ended on
March 10 and is widely seen as an embarrassing failure by the
coup-installed military government which deployed 4,000 security
forces in an unsuccessful attempt to arrest one elderly man.
   The crackdown against Phra Dhammachayo, who is Dhammakaya temple's
former abbot, is part of a broader shake-up of Thailand's Buddhist
clergy which is frequently tainted by scandals involving sex, drugs,
money and other violations.
   Dhammachayo, 72, founded the Dhammakaya temple in the 1970s,
promising fast enlightenment and a better reincarnation in exchange
for big donations.
   He reportedly claimed to perform miracles and to have met Apple
computer's late co-founder Steven Jobs in a heavenly encounter.

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