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.

Standing Rock is the focal point of a struggle between the indigenous people of the United States and the big oil industry. Energy Transfer Partnership is building the Dakota Access Pipeline that will transport Bakken fracked oil to the Gulf of Mexico and then likely sold outside this country. The pipeline is planned to go right under the Missouri River just one half mile upstream of the Sioux Reservation. The Missouri is the main source of water for the people on the reservation, as well as approximately 13 million people downstream.

Via social media, I was shocked to see video footage of natives being attacked by guards with pepper spray and vicious dogs as they tried to peacefully defend their sacred burial grounds from bulldozers. I became resolute that I wanted to go to the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota.

On September 8th I arrived in North Dakota. As I drove down route 6 into the reservation, I started to see small camps along the road next to areas that had been disturbed by bulldozers. A little farther and I saw hundreds of flags lining a long road into the camp. The land was covered in tepees and bright colored tents.

Attack of the Mixed-Use Monsters

Across Columbus and its suburbs mixed-use developments, which often include high-end condos, parking garages, office space, retail and entertainment, are either up-and-running, under construction or being proposed with each new week.

Some of these developments work for certain neighborhoods, especially if the development utilized a property that was either vacated or in need of investment, developments in Grandview and Franklinton, for example.

But cramming a mixed-use development into an already established and historically unique neighborhood is a different beast altogether. A recent case-in-point is the development that replaced Clintonville’s Olympic Pool, a summer hangout cherished by several generations of kids and parents alike.

Even in Upper Arlington there are some residents who see the coming invasion of high-density, mixed-use development as a gamble that not only could cause too much commercialism and increased density, but worse, demolish a community’s soul and character.

My remarks are related to the problem of media as a factor in the war system but not focused primarily on that. I have experienced first hand as a journalist and as an author how the corporate news media hews to a set of well-delineated lines in the coverage of issues of war and peace that systematically block out all data that conflict with those lines. I’d be glad to talk about my experiences especially in covering ran and Syria in Q and A.

But I am here to talk about the larger problem of the war system and what is to be done about it.

I want to present a vision of something that has not been discussed seriously in many, many years: a national strategy to mobilize a very large segment of the population of this country to participate in a movement to force the retreat of the permanent war state.

I know that many of you must be thinking: that is a great idea for 1970 or even 1975 but its no longer relevant to the conditions we face in this society today.