Wednesday, September 15, 7pm, this on-line event requires advance registration

What do you and your Central Ohio neighbors think and believe about our criminal justice system? Do we trust law enforcement? Can we believe in one another? How do we achieve positive change?

Explore these and other critical issues through a special forum on Wednesday, September 15, starting at 7pm, streaming virtually from partner WBNS at the Lincoln Theatre, as the Columbus Urban League and YWCA Columbus host a critical community conversation in conjunction with the National Urban League (NUL). Note: the event is now 100% virtual.

This event, the first of three to be held across the country, focuses on the first pillar in NUL’s 21 Pillars: A Comprehensive Framework for Redefining Public Safety. This cornerstone calls for community collaboration to build a restorative system and re-envision public safety in an equitable and just way — an issue highly relevant to Columbus right now.

Last weekend, U.S. corporate media continued a 20-year repetition compulsion to evade the central role of the USA in causing vast carnage and misery due to the so-called War on Terror. But millions of Americans fervently oppose the military-industrial complex and its extremely immoral nonstop warfare.

Tuesday, September 14, 7pm; Parma Branch of Cuyahoga County Public Library, 6996 Powers Blvd., Parma, Ohio; this on-line event [if you plan to attend via Zoom] requires advance registration

Mainstream media narratives of Middle East conflicts are often false or incomplete. Even as the U.S. “withdraws” from the region, the extent and depth of its Middle East presence and influence is profound. Our presenter, Oliver Boyd-Barrett, will discuss how U.S. military and covert presence in the region (with particular reference to Syria and Iran) continues to seriously damage both the region and U.S. long-term interests.

Oliver Boyd-Barrett, Professor Emeritus at Bowling Green State University, is an expert on communications, media, and U.S. foreign policy, and how taxpayers, Congress, and other world leaders are manipulated into supporting war and occupation around the world. Boyd-Barrett has written or edited some 25 books and 150 scholarly articles.

Here is the link to his biography.

Forced vaccination helped birth our nation.

As war erupted in the 1770s between American Revolutionaries and our British Imperial masters, a smallpox pandemic tore through the colonies.

The deadly disease killed by the thousands. But Supreme Commander George Washington made inoculation a decisive weapon of war.

The key insight came from a slave. In the early 1700s, an African “owned” by the Puritan preacher Cotton Mather introduced white America to the art and science of plague prevention. Stolen from his native land, Onesimus brought with him knowledge of the ancient method of inoculation.

As smallpox ravaged Calvinist Boston, Onesimus explained that injecting a small amount of infected pus under the skin of a healthy human would bring on a mild case of the disease … and then immunity. Despite intense resistance from the “civilized” white citizenry, Mather pushed the African insight.

Among those who trusted it … it worked, and countless lives were saved.

Several decades later, a 19-year-old George Washington traveled to Barbados with his brother, Lawrence. The trip was meant to cure Lawrence of tuberculosis, which later killed him.