“Protecting the border” is essentially the same thing as protecting your own property, right? You’ve got to protect it from invaders, thieves — lawless jerks who want what you have.

If you’re rich and paranoid, then you have no doubt that’s what refugees are, especially down there at the southern U.S. border, or if you’re the European Union, the northern edge of Africa. The EU’s “Mexico” is the failed state of Libya, which, thanks to its former colonial conquerors, can now make a little scratch stopping the desperate hordes of people fleeing poverty, violence and the vicious effects of climate change from crossing the Mediterranean and finding a more secure life in Europe.

How do we move beyond a world that is shredded by invisible (imaginary) borders into endless enclaves of us and them? How do we embrace Planet Earth as a single, organic whole, of which we are just a part? How do we govern with a reverence for this whole?

Five members of the World BEYOND War Youth Network (WBWYN) from five continents have contributed, together with WBW’s Education Director, to a chapter in a new book (available free in full as PDF) called Problems, Threats and Challenges for Peace and Conflict Resolution, edited by Joanna Marszałek-Kawa Maria Ochwat.

The book provides a highly informative survey of how people in numerous parts of the world view working for peace, primarily meaning the ending of violent conflict within, rather than between, nations.

The first chapter was put together by Phill Gittins, World BEYOND War’s Education Director, together with young peace activists Sayako Aizeki-Nevins, Christine Odera, Alejandra Rodriguez, Daria Pakhomova, and Laiba Khan.

Sayako Aizeki-Nevins is a high school student from New York who has found her way from climate and racial-justice activism to activism for peace. “Today,” she writes, “my main interests revolve around the intersections between climate change, militarism, and war. I pursue these interests through my work with the WBWYN.”

Wednesday, December 1, 11:30am-8pm, this event will be live-streamed on “Facebook Live”

This World AIDS Day, join us as we bring together LGBTQ+ communities around the world to rewrite the narrative to end the HIV epidemic. We’re tacking the fight to end stigma, embrace our sexuality and our identities.

We’re hosting events all day, so feel free to pick and choose what works for you or attend them all.

• Session 1: Transgender Justice, 11:30am

• Session 2: Global perspectives on HIV/AIDS, 1:30pm

• Session 3: Rewriting the Narrative: Our Stories Are Our Future, 4pm

• Session 4: Being Balenciaga: A Journey As House in The Fight to End HIV, 7pm

This event will be live-streamed on “Facebook Live.”

Hosted by Human Rights Campaign.

Monday, November 29, 2021, 11:00 AM 
We’ll talk with advocates, researchers and organizers about how to create a more just, prosperous and healthy future that focuses on how people drive the economy. Our panel includes Tami Lunan, Ohio Organizing Collaborative, Grace Heffernan, Northeast Ohio Worker Center, and Mike Shields, Policy Matters Ohio. Please join the discussion and share your thoughts on how to go all in for dignity and create an economy for all of us. Use these links to get a reminder to join on Facebook or Youtube.

Today’s full page plus story in the Columbus Dispatch titled, “Group: Road done for developer not safety” reveals the never ending unethical, underhanded unbridled perpetual deal making that goes on in Columbus City Hall.  

Former Columbus City Council candidate Joe Motil says, “Like Centerplate, Redflex and Colemans house sale to a Chinese businesswoman, the Little Turtle road project reeks of political corruption that runs rampant through the Public Service Department, City Attorney’s office and exposes Coleman's reign over City Council President Shannon Hardin and other City Council members.”