For the first time, after more than a century, Columbus will vote for district candidates in November. But as activists have repeatedly argued, there’s nothing district about it. Candidates must live in one of the nine geographically designed districts as each has roughly 100,000 residents. However, the November 7 vote is citywide, and representation will remain “at-large.”

“If it were just my district to win I’d have a huge chance of winning,” said City Council candidate Adrienne Hood who’s running in District 4, which includes large swaths of the Northside, parts of Clintonville, North and South Linden, and also the street where undercover Columbus police shot and killed her son.

Last decade, three citizen-led initiatives sought true districts, also known as wards, through the ballot, but all lost. In 2016, Issue 1 was championed by the group Everyday People For Positive Change. They were soundly defeated by Columbus voters after a $1.1 million corporate-funded ad campaign by City officials.

Jericho does not belong to the Palestinians alone. It belongs to the whole of humanity. 

 For Israel, however, the recognition by UNESCO of Jericho as a “World Heritage Site in Palestine” complicates its mission of erasing Palestine, physically and figuratively, from existence. 

 The decision was described by Israel’s foreign ministry as a “cynical” ploy by the Palestinians to politicize UNESCO.

Human history is all-too-full of ghastly acts of cruelty and torment. They are our ultimate downfall.

But 80 years ago, the people of Denmark—-often a great personal risk—-saved some 8,000 Jewish Danes from occupying Nazi murderers.

On October 1-- 1943’s Jewish New Year-- Denmark's King and its underground resistance helped mobilize the nation to ferry nearly all resident Jews to safety in Sweden.

The story is complex, but among the most moving and powerful in the annals of our species.

Hitler’s Wehrmacht had occupied Denmark in 1940. Recognizing the Germans’ overpowering might and love of slaughter, the Danes watched the Nazis march into their country with little violent resistance.  

Conversely, Hitler desperately needed Danish agricultural supplies. The result was an uneasy coexistence. Alone amongst the countries he occupied, Der Fuhrer abstained from slaughtering en masse the country’s Jews, who were generally well integrated into Denmark’s social mainstream.