Part One

Introduction

Faculty, staff, and students are OSU’s greatest assets. But the university’s leaders by sloganeering rarely acknowledge that. Students, staff, and faculty do not share President Kristina Johnson’s incessant personal identification and embrace of “My Fellow Buckeyes” or “Born to be a Buckeye.” They are demoralized. Faculty and staff in particular, but also many students, with due cause, feel locked out of OSU decision-making and communications structures. Disaffection is high.

But senior administrators, awash in their sea of slogans, excessive numbers, and overpayment, do not see this. There is no evidence that they know or care. If Johnson was “born to be a Buckeye,” and both President and Provost adhere to a dramatically incomplete and distorted notion of “land-grant mission,” what else matters? In her mind, OSU is the world’s largest STEM University. Johnson has no time to look up between giving herself awards, giggling and showing selfies to Columbus Dispatch reporters, or watching the Board of Trustees over her shoulders.

Saturday, August 27, 5-9pm, The Vanderelli Room, 218 McDowell St.

It’s that time of year again!

Every year we have been gathering around Rubén Castilla Herrera’s birthday to celebrate his life, love, family, and the community he made and which made him.

This event will also be a fundraiser for Columbus Community Pride, Columbus’s alternative Pride celebration by and for LGBTQ+ people of color since 2018.

All are welcome to this event, including those who weren’t able to know Rubén while he was with us on earth.

¡Es esa época del año!

Todos los años reunimos por el cumpleaños de Rubén Castilla Herrera para celebrar su vida, su amor, su familia, y la comunidad que hizo y que lo hizo a él.

Este evento también recaudará fondos para Columbus Community Pride, la celebración alternativa del Orgullo de Columbus por y para la comunidad LGBTQ desde 2018.

Todos son bienvenidos a este evento, incluidos aquellos que no pudieron conocer a Rubén en persona.

While US and western mainstream and corporate media remain biased in favor of Israel, they often behave as if they are a third, neutral party. This is simply not the case.

Take the New York Times coverage of the latest Israeli war on Gaza as an example. Its article on August 6, "Israel-Gaza Fighting Flares for a Second Day" is the typical mainstream western reporting on Israel and Palestine, but with a distinct NYT flavor.

My daughter, Alison, who is 36 years old, flew into town the other day (angel that she is) and I can’t let go of the wonder and miracle of it all . . . being alive.

I had intended to write a column this week about the nature of the U.S. security state and the country’s trillion-dollar, only minimally challenged annual “defense” — actually, offense — budget, but then I came upon a journal entry I wrote in 1988, when my daughter, who is a stained-glass artist and poet living in Paris, was 2 years old.

Was this the birth of her career?

I wrote:

“Oh gosh, here it is, the morning of my 42nd birthday. I just dropped Alison off at Katy, Patrick and Erin’s. For some reason, she was real reluctant to go this morning. She was feeling her own brand of tension and disorientation. When Alison gets disoriented, she has to find some small, tangible, happy thing to focus on — for instance, the stained-glass teddy bear in Katy’s porch window. To psych herself up for her day at the babysitter this morning, Alison had to say, ‘I’m going to see the teddy bear!’ And imitating me as we walked down the sidewalk toward Katy’s house, ‘Where’s that teddy bear?’

Thursday, August 25, 5:30pm, Gemüt Biergarten, 734 Oak St.

Join the Central Ohio Worker Center for our summer happy hour. Bask in some solidarity, have a drink, eat a hot pretzel, stand on tables and yell about unions, whatever it takes!

Hosted by Central Ohio Worker Center / Centro de Trabajadores de Central Ohio.

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