Surprisingly or not, the Columbus City Council, apparently with the advice and consent of the City Attorney’s Office, publicly decreed at its Monday, March 6, 2023 meeting that the First Amendment of the United States Constitution does not apply to Columbus residents especially any who dares to speak honestly and openly about any element of the City itself. This is obviously not a problem for mayor, City Councilors, Council’s Chief of Staff, and major division heads.

On one hand, it is curious because City Attorney Klein likes to struggle very publicly and politically with the alternatively ignorant of and anti-Constitutional state Attorney General David Yost and Secretary of State Frank LaRose, all of whom aspire to higher office. LaRose just returned from hobnobbing with 2020 election deniers at the Trumpist CPAC meeting. These two are busy suppressing voting and many other legal rights in Ohio.

Friday, March 10, 6-9pm

The Vanderelli Room, 218 McDowell St.

Columbus based artists have donated a variety of artwork to help support efforts to end human trafficking.

The sales from this exhibition will benefit 1DivineLine2Health.

Join us for a night of artwork and entertainment, while supporting this westside grassroots organization led by our very own Esther Flores.

Hosted by The Vanderelli Room.

On Thursday, March 9, join the Columbus DSA Housing Priority Campaign as we continue our efforts to oppose the American Campus Communities/Blackstone private student housing proposed for Lane and High. On this date, the project goes before the city’s Development Commission.

We oppose the project because ACC is owned by Blackstone, one of the world’s largest and most predatory landlords. Recently, our campaign opposed the proposal at the University Area Commission, and the conversation at that meeting spurred commissioners to vote against the proposal 10-6. The area commission’s decision is advisory, not binding, and the Development Commission may overrule the area commission’s recommendation at the March 9 meeting.

The future tapped me quietly on the shoulder the other day and suggested that I take a moment to learn about the writing bots.

They’re coming!

Excuse me, they’re here. And they struck me as alien invaders, this recent manifestation of artificial intelligence on the Internet, which college students, high school students — anybody — can download, feed a topic and get it to write an essay for them. Is this technology’s next step, after Roomba the robot vacuum cleaner? Humanity is relieved of one more odious task — writing stuff.

Columbus’ reigning Democratic political class falsely presents itself as progressive and democratic. This seldom goes beyond empty, poorly formulated and awkwardly articulated slogans. Their uninformed rhetoric is contradicted at least weekly when not more often by their policy- and program-free actions and especially inactions.

It is astonishing to me as historian and life-long urban resident that Columbus is the only city in the US of any size and self-proclaimed (if exaggerated) significance that proudly lacks representative, democratic city government. Almost all  US cities moved from lack of representation or at-large city coucils in the second half of the 19th century, not the 20th century. Along with its lack of an identity, this is Columbus’ only justifiable claim to uniqueness or exceptionality.