The Columbus Coalition for Responsive Government is looking for paid petition circulators to go door-to-door in Columbus neighborhoods seeking signatures from registered voters for our petitions. We are a citizens' group trying to get two pieces of legislation on the ballot for a vote: 1) we believe the people of Columbus should approve or reject the bailout of Nationwide Arena, and 2) we believe there should be campaign finance laws in place for local elections as the voters approved in 1994.

You pick the neighborhood you want to work in. We provide you a "walk list" with the names and addresses of the registered voters on each street, and two clipboards and some talking points. You pick the days and time you want to work (likely evenings and weekends, when people are most likely to be home), and go out and get signatures. You bring the signatures back to us on Monday, and we pay you on Friday afternoon.

Morehouse College, one of the most distinguished historically black colleges — with graduates like Dr. Martin Luther King, former Atlanta Mayor Maynard Jackson, film director Spike Lee and others — literally shut down for spring break this week. As its 2,000 students took their break, every member of the faculty and staff was furloughed without pay as the college struggles to balance its books.

The crisis at Morehouse, which will hit other historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) even harder, results from the combination of foul economic times and continued cuts in support for students and colleges at the federal and state level.

Our Pro Bono, Low Bono, and Funded Activities
Bob Fitrakis has long been involved in voting rights litigation. Fitrakis was an Election Protection attorney on November 2, 2004 in Franklin County. Fitrakis rose to national prominence during the U.S. Presidential election of 2004 and called the first public hearings on election irregularities in Ohio. He filed a challenge in the Ohio Supreme Court to Ohio's presidential election results in the cases Moss v. Bush and Moss v. Moyer with three other attorneys. He testified on election irregularities before the Congressional Black Caucus and Progressive Caucus. Fitrakis served as co-counsel in the King-Lincoln-Bronzeville civil rights case.

Connie Gadell-Newton started working with Bob Fitrakis at the Free Press in 2008, when she requested the records of purged voters from the 88 County Boards of Elections. Connie and Bob also sued to get Cynthia McKinney, Green Party Presidential Candidate, on the ballot in 2008, and appointed Election Observers through the Green Party to protect the vote. These activities were supported by funding that was donated through the Ohio Litigation Fund.

The following is a brief summary of a much longer, and fully documented, report available at War is a Crime and being made available in an attractive 88-page PDF at Coldtype.
At 10 years since the launch of Operation Iraqi Liberation (to use the original name with the appropriate acronym, OIL) and over 22 years since Operation Desert Storm, there is little evidence that any significant number of people in the United States have a realistic idea of what our government has done to the people of Iraq, or of how these actions compare to other horrors of world history. A majority of Americans believe the war since 2003 has hurt the United States but benefitted Iraq. A plurality of Americans believe, not only that Iraqis should be grateful, but that Iraqis are in fact grateful.