CITIZENS GRASSROOTS CONGRESS Set the 2017 people's agenda for Central Ohio by attending the Citizens Grassroots Congress 2016!

Sunday, September 11, 1-5 PM Whetstone Library 3909 N. High St. (43214)

Representatives of community organizations are invited to attend the September Pre-Election, 2016 Citizen’s Grassroots Congress, which will unite community organizations in goals and action to help shape the agenda for Central Ohio’s future from the bottom up! 

Don't leave the future of greater Columbus to current out-of-touch public officials and elite titans. Attend the Citizens Grassroots Congress and help set the Central Ohio agenda at the street level! We want to know what you think are the most important issues for activists to collaborate on between now and the November election.

British director Stephen Frears’ latest biopic, about wannabe chanteuse Florence Foster Jenkins (the much Oscar-ed and “much-er” Oscar-nommed Meryl Streep), is a winning motion picture on many levels. Florence Foster Jenkins is at all times highly entertaining and occasionally downright hilarious. Based on the real life, eponymous Jenkins, it is a saga about a woman with limited (if any) vocal talent who somehow managed to pursue a career singing classical music. Let’s take a look at some of the dimensions Florence Foster Jenkins explores.

The stylish-looking film shot by London-born director of photography Danny Cohen (who was Academy Award-nominated for 2010’s The King’s Speech) has a “veddy” English sense of class. Florence makes it abundantly clear that Jenkins was a member of the 1% whose wealth enabled her, through a variety of ruses ranging from audience padding to influence peddling - of critics, elite figures in the rarified world of classical music, such as vocal coaches, music hall impresarios and the  renowned conductor Arturo Toscanini (John Kavanagh), etc. - to buy her way onstage.

I sometimes wonder whether one of the ways in which 'Amercian exceptionalism' manifests is that many US scholars and others are unable to consider the contributions of those who are not from the USA. For example, I routinely read about studies of Martin Luther King Jr. and his associates (such as strategist James Lawson) in relation to nonviolence while the much more insightful and vastly greater contributions of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi on the same subject are largely ignored by US scholars (although not, for example, by Professor Mary E. King, one of the best in the field).

I have just read another book that falls into this trap: 'This is an Uprising: How Nonviolent Revolt is Shaping the Twenty-first Century' http://www.publicaffairsbooks.com/book/hardcover/this-is-an-uprising/9781568587332

 

This article first appeared on Reader Supported News

Only so long you can keep this charade
Before they wake up and see they’ve been played
Too many people with their livin’ at stake
Ain’t gonna take it.
The comin’ round is going through
The comin’ round is going through.

t’s not often a single stanza can sum up a whole political system. But those words from Bonnie Raitt ring truer every day as this pathetic “selection” season lurches ever deeper into astounding ugliness.

As evidenced by her new album, Dig in Deep, and her current concert tour, the opposite is true of Ms. Raitt, whose astonishing talent and endless heart just keep growing.

By way of disclosure, I’ve had the privilege of working with Bonnie on nuclear and other issues since 1978.

At the end of July I had the good fortune to see her perform at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles. She is on a long tour now, and if you get the chance to catch one of her shows, don’t pass it up.