Monday, July 4 at 11 am.
Show your support for Fair Maps, voters, and democracy!

Fair Districts is joining with Common Cause Ohio, the local League of Women Voters, and other pro-democracy groups to pass out voter education materials, including information about the August 2 primary, and make a statement with our pro-voter and pro-democracy shirts. There will be candy to give the kids as well, of course!

The need has not been greater to help the homeless, especially during the pandemic and recent clearing of homeless camps, such as the one at Heer Park on the City’s far South Side. With rents rising, and the cost of living going up due to inflation, the mission of The Open Shelter is “To Stay Behind With Those Left Behind,” all while serving the homeless and marginally housed in Central Ohio, as affordable housing is a scarcity for those who are living in poverty.

On June 23, The Open Shelter had an open house at their new location on Parsons Avenue. There were remarks made by local dignitaries, as well as Shelter Staff and Board Members. The new facility, according to The Open Shelter’s website serves as a “hub for (the Shelter’s) Outreach Services, which are desperately needed” for the homeless and marginally housed in the community.

The first step of the intake process, as the Open Shelter’s Resource Development Coordinator Harry Yeprem Jr. explained while giving a tour of the new facility, is to serve a person with a warm meal that is prepared in the kitchen before being given an orientation and introduction to the Open Shelter’s services.

(Dedicated to the memory of Ghassan Kanafani, an iconic Palestinian leader and engaged intellectual who was assassinated by the Israeli Mossad on July 8, 1972)

 Years before the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, US media introduced many new characters, promoting them as ‘experts’ who helped ratchet up US propaganda, ultimately allowing the US government to secure enough popular support for the war. 

She is absolutely my favorite human rights activist and historical figure from the twentieth century. Who could not be in love with and awe of Fannie Lou Hamer?

A poor, black, Mississippi sharecropper with a sixth-grade education–it was rumored that Coretta Scott King, the refined, highly educated wife of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, once refused to share a platform with a woman of so little education–bedeviled two United States senators, a President, the Democratic Party, and every white supremacist in Mississippi with her uncompromising talk about racism in America. And that voice! She had a molasses-thick southern accent, and her voice had a frank and unapologetic tone that put the listener on notice that she was going to say what needed to be said and there would be no sugar coating. If Barbara Jordan sounded like God at His most prim and proper, Hamer sounded like your best sistah friend who reminded you she told you not to go out with that no good so-and-so in the first place.