Our elections need to be protected and our progressive campaigns need grassroots support, exclusive of the party system.

In this GREEGREE zoom #121 we lay out a template for our work through November, 2024 (and maybe beyond).

We look first at a list of 20+ core issues dealing with election protection that will be in varying degrees the upcoming focus of our work.  They are listed below.

We are then joined by RAY MCCLENDON of the Georgia NAACP, who explains the nitty-gritty importance of grassroots “relational” campaigning with “democracy centers” for progressive candidates everywhere.

Ray focusses in particular on Georgia, where the recent GEORGIA MIRACLE has helped swing control of the United States Senate, among much more.

Saturday, December 24, 6:30pm, Ye’s Asian Vegan Restaurant, 2469 Hilliard-Rome Rd., Hilliard, Ohio

Come and celebrate Christmas Eve with Columbus vegans with dinner at one of Columbus’s favorite vegan restaurants.

Ye’s has offered to stay open just for the Columbus Vegan Meetup group on the 24th! Spend time with friends and fellow vegans as we enjoy a great meal during the warmth of the holiday season.

Please make certain that you RSVP accordingly so that Ye’s will be able to prepare for our group.

We are looking forward to seeing everyone on the 24th!

Here is a link to Ye’s menu to entice you to come.

RSVP for this event by using this link.

Hosted by Columbus Vegan Meetup.

Facebook Event

Many of you are prison reform or prison abolition advocates, and I have a request for you today.

I ask that you sign a petition to the Ohio Parole Board advocating for the parole of inmate Willie Lagway. His parole hearing is in January 2023.

Willie Lagway has been imprisoned by the state of Ohio for 39 years. He committed and admitted to his crimes and was given an unusually long sentence. He has consistently expressed remorse for the crimes and used his time in prison to improve himself.

At San Francisco Airport I enjoy a filling lunch at the comfy United Club lounge. Relaxed, I then board a United Airlines nonstop direct flight for my 15th visit to Tahiti since the 1970s. I luckily have an entire aisle to myself and pass the time watching a recruiting poster masquerading as a movie called Top Gun: Maverick and the far better genre-bending Everything Everywhere All at Once. Upon arriving at Tahiti International Airport in Fa’a’ā, I am greeted by Tahiti Tourisme and Mana Tang and Vanessa Alvarez, co-owners of Tiurai Tours, and driven to my hotel in French Polynesia’s capital.

Many consider contemporary Tahiti to be a paradise lost. Candidly speaking, the urban/ suburban sprawl of this French colony, stretching roughly northeast from Papeete to Mahina and northwest to Punaauia, does have many of the ailments of “modern times.”

"The Whale" is the story of Charlie (Brendan Fraser), a reclusive English teacher, living with severe obesity who attempts to reconnect with his estranged teenage daughter Ellie (Sadie Sink) for one last chance at redemption.

When we meet Charlie, he’s in a kind of literal and emotional limbo: physical because his size prevents him from moving very well; emotional because of the enormous roiling grief he has towards his dead partner, Alan. He's full of guilt over Alan’s passing, guilt over walking out on a life with his daughter, guilt over all the things that might have been.

Unable to forgive himself for his own role in Alan’s death and deeply guilty about his desertion of his young daughter and wife Mary (Samantha Morton), Charlie begins to self-destruct through compulsive binge-eating. Unprocessed grief is the ground floor of everything for Charlie. He’s suffering from congestive heart failure, but maybe he’s really dying of the grief he’s never reconciled.