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WASHINGTON -
Declaring that “President Biden has been neither bold nor inspiring” and “his prospects for winning re-election appear to be bleak,” the national activist organization RootsAction announced today that it will launch a campaign to prevent his renomination.

With an email list of 1.2 million current supporters in the United States, RootsAction issued a statement saying it is committed to nationwide organizing to prevent Biden from being the Democratic Party’s 2024 nominee for president. This is the first time that a large national organization has announced such plans.

“In 2024 the United States will face the dual imperatives of preventing a Republican takeover of the White House and advancing a truly progressive agenda,” RootsAction said in a statement. With so much at stake, renominating Biden “would be a tragic mistake.” The statement concluded: “A president is not his party’s king, and he has no automatic right to renomination. Joe Biden should not seek it. If he does, he will have a fight on his hands.”

The full RootsAction statement announcing the #DontRunJoe campaign is posted at DontRunJoe.org.

 

Español abajo

Kreyol anba a

Dear President López Obrador,

We, the undersigned, condemn in the strongest possible terms Mexico’s spearheading of the renewal of the mandate of the United Nations Integrated Office (BINUH) in Haiti. The Haitian people view BINUH’s presence as a foreign occupation that, since 2004, has suppressed Haiti’s independence and sovereignty. We agree. We want you, President AMLO, to seriously consider your role and the role of the Mexican Republic in extending the UN’s mission and continuing the repression of the Haitian people. 

Details about event

Wednesday, July 13, 1:30pm, this event will be livestreamed on the PUCO YouTube channel.

Join us in watching and live tweeting the public meeting and help hold AEP and PJM accountable!

RSVP for this event by using this link.

PUCO Press Release

PUCO schedules power outage review for July 13

COLUMBUS, OHIO (June 29, 2022) The Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO) announced today that officials with AEP Ohio, AEP Transmission, and PJM Interconnection will appear before the Commission on July 13 to discuss this month’s electric power outages.

“The PUCO’s mission is to assure access to reliable utility services. Consistent with our mission, the PUCO will conduct a review of the outages, why and where the outages occurred, the impact on vulnerable populations, communication efforts, the decision-making surrounding the forced outages, the timeline of events, and what can be done to better protect or assist consumers in the future,” stated PUCO Chair Jenifer French.

Harvey J Graff

My struggles to gain democratic legal rights and respect for residents in the “city” of Columbus continue. The three documents reprinted here below elaborate the themes of my recent essays. To expand the discussion to a larger public, I include them here.

First, I wrote to the City Council legislative aides, department heads, and City Attorneys with who I am in communication. They were silent for some weeks after I tripped on (illegal) broken pavement and fractured my right leg, and commented that the City’s failure to inspect and enforce its zoning codes makes the city as well as the large corporate property owner legally liable.

June 10, 2022

To my correspondents,

Today for the second time in two weeks that we lost electric power from AEP for multiple hours on a weekday morning. Never an explanation. [This is the week before AEP’s massive and unexplained failures. The City refuses to hold AEP accountable, leaving that to the state’s corruption-ridden PUCO]

This parallels Rumpke's sporadic performances without consequences and City Council’s insulting public clean-up by volunteers—who also pay taxes for public services--days.

Joe Motil

Joe Motil, former Columbus City Council candidate and longtime community advocate who has been circulating petitions to run for mayor in the 2023 May primary election stated that, “City Council and Mayor Ginther have not spent one dime of the taxpayers federally allocated $187 million of American Rescue Plan funds to help address our city’s affordable housing crisis, but without a blink of the eye will shell out $900,000 to upgrade the Convention Center's ventilation system.”

Columbus City Council along with the blessing of Ginther’s Development Department, approved of a $900,000 ARP expenditure  at tonight’s City Council meeting to improve the Greater Columbus Convention Centers HVAC system. And although Mr. Motil testified that “I am not completely against the use of $900,000 to pay for the upgrading, but what continues to dismay and irritate me is that not one dime of the $187 million dollars of city of Columbus taxpayer ARP funds has been spent on providing not even one unit of affordable housing for an individual with an annual income of $35,000 or less. And not one dime of these ARP funds has been spent on affordable housing period.”      

Book cover

This past June 17 was the fiftieth anniversary of the break in of the Watergate Hotel. A surfeit of books have been written about this sorry episode in American history; indeed, two new ones have been published in the last few months. However, Adam Henig’s Watergate’s Forgotten Hero, propitiously timed, is the first biography to explore the life of the unassuming security guard.  

The band

Two years of death and disease and no live music---I hardly recognize myself. Thus it was Comfest '22 gently re-immersed this battered, drifting soul into the mildly healing waters of outdoor song-and-jamfestival-born. Better that way, among the trees, our original friends.

The Park's Gazebo Stage was the site of the first band I've seen and heard since a town named Wuhan changed America and the world. Friday, June 24, I liked how my personal siege was lifted. First force to the rescue entered the freshly opened city gates: The Neal Show!

Neal Havener is every mother's delight: genteel, pleasant, kindly, warm, fuzzy, youthfully middle-aged. Many mellow bones connect in his slim countenance. His music very much like early Simon and Garfunkel--earnest, thoughtful, crafted with respectable chord changes to almost be proud of.

Supreme Court crumbling

The July Free Press Second Saturday Cyber-Salon had the theme “Roe v Wade and Supreme Court Decisions.”

Watch the salon video here.

Free Press Board member Mark Stansbery facilitated the salon, starting off with a photo of the Supreme Court falling down.

Mark introduced the first speaker Ted Glick, progressive activist and author of Burglar for Peace: Lessons Learned in the Catholic Left's Resistance to the Vietnam War and 21st Century Revolution, Through Higher Love, Racial Justice and Democratic Cooperation.

Ted believes that there are four significant US Supreme Court decisions we should be organizing around:

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