n ordinary times, Ted Glick would hardly be someone you’d expect to hear urging fellow progressives to vote for the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee.

During the first 18 years of this century, Glick was an active member of the Green Party. He ran for the U.S. Senate as the Green Party’s nominee in New Jersey and put in a long stint co-chairing a local branch of the party. In fact, he recalls, “I have been a member of organizations working to build a political alternative to the Democrats and Republicans since 1975.”

Now, Glick is more than two weeks into a water-and-vitamins-only fast that he plans to continue until voting ends on November 3. As a headline says over his daily postings, it’s all about “Fasting to Defeat Trump.”

Channel 4’s Colleen Marshall is the matriarch of local broadcast news, so when she recently mentioned many Central Ohio suburban women are still undecided for President, some of us took serious pause.

Is it possible that thousands of educated and successful local women are still undecided and wavering whether to go with crotch-grabbing Trump as they did in 2016?

That’s all Columbus needs in its decades-long effort to attract and retain young professionals so to become as hip as Austin – another Trump victory.

Try not to cringe too hard or you could injure yourself, but as many are aware, the polls are neck-and-neck. RealClear Politics as of Sunday (Oct. 18) has Trump 46.5% to Biden 46%. Keep in mind women now vote more than men, a lot more: 73 million women voted in 2016 compared to 63 million men.

Nationally, polls and the mainstream media keep echoing that suburban women are bailing on Trump. This may not be the case for Upper Arlington, Dublin, Westerville, Canal Winchester, Grove City, Delaware and Licking County.

Last week in Cincinnati, Ivanka Trump told hundreds of invite-only supporters, “We’re going to win Ohio.”

ne of President Trump's most loyal propagandists is predicting that Trump will claim victory on election night as soon as he is ahead among Election Day voters. But that scenario is based on a misconception of how all ballots are counted and the early returns are compiled, according to election and legal experts.

"At 10 o'clock or 11 o'clock… on November 3, Donald J. Trump is going to walk into the Oval Office, and he may hit a tweet before he goes in there… and he's going to sit there, having won Ohio, and being up in Pennsylvania and Florida, and he's going to say, 'Hey, game's over,'" said Stephen K. Bannon, Trump's 2016 campaign CEO and former White House adviser, during a defiant speech on October 10 forum hosted by the Young Republican Federation of Virginia.

From Sojourners
The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) became a law 25 years ago, providing crucial protections for women and survivors of domestic violence. The legislation made it possible for courts to address violence inflicted upon women at home and in the streets. VAWA is now up for reauthorization but is being held up in the Senate. Ask your senators to vote for this important bill.  More information here. 

At what is arguably the most important time in human history, with Homo Sapiens confronted by an enormous range of violent challenges that threaten our very survival, the only question of any genuine importance is this: Can we craft and implement a strategy to end the violence, particularly in each and all of its extinction-threatening dimensions, to ensure that humanity has a chance to thrive on planet Earth indefinitely into the future? But few are asking that question.

And, unfortunately, if one candidly considers the evidence in several critical domains – notably the threat of nuclear war, the deployment of 5G technology, the collapse of biodiversity and the climate catastrophe – there is little genuine room for optimism. This, of course, is not a reflection on the efforts of those committed to the attempt but it is a measure of the enormity of the task given the almost endless violence perpetrated by so many human inhabitants of Earth.