When it comes to Columbus’s new district system for City Council, Eastside activist Jonathan Beard pulls no punches.

“I started calling this ‘Columbabama.’ This is repackaged 1950’s Jim Crow,” he says. “These fake districts were Shannon Hardin’s effort to confuse the ballot, claim responsiveness to an issue, and preserve white money and white voters’ influence over who represents Black folk in Columbus.”

In 2016, Beard unsuccessfully tried to bring true representative districts to Columbus. His non-profit Everyday People For Positive Change spent $13,000 while the City spent over $1 million to distort and then defeat the citizen-initiated vote.

“Our proposal simply sought to enlarge the size of council and bring real council districts to the city. Columbus is the only big city in America to retain an all-at-large election system,” he says.

Reefer Madness is alive and well. Remember the drug war when truth didn’t matter? Apparently, those who represent us at the statehouse vehemently oppose cannabis being on the ballot. So, to sway public opinion, they copped their legislative authority to pass a ridiculous resolution filled with faulty facts.

Yep, on October 10th, with nary an announcement nor a hearing, Ohio Senate Republicans – all of 23 them – introduced an passed that very same day, along strict party lines Ohio Senate Resolution 216 (S.R. No. 216), whose Long Title is: “To express the Ohio Senate's opposition to Issue 2 on the November 7, 2023, statewide ballot, which would legalize the use and retail sale of recreational marijuana; to identify the problems, risks, dangers, burdens, and costs it would bring to Ohioans, employers, and communities; and to encourage Ohioans to vote against the measure.” Gee thanks.

Labels are central to the politics of media. And no label has been more powerful than “terrorist.”

 A single standard of language should accompany a consistent standard of human rights, which the world desperately needs. “If thought corrupts language,” George Orwell wrote, “language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation, even among people who should and do know better.”

 No amount of rhetoric from its defenders and apologists can change the reality that Hamas engaged in mass murder. What Hamas horrifically did to more than 1,000 Israeli civilians of all ages two weeks ago meets the dictionary definition of terrorism.