Local election season is in full swing and it seems like wherever you go in Central Ohio, alternative political candidates are shaking things up. Here in Columbus, the insurgent progressive group Yes We Can is challenging the unstoppable Franklin County Democratic machine, while down in Athens County, Democratic Socialist candidates are making local power players worried as well. Not to be outdone, a few Libertarian candidates are also running in Franklin County and just like their progressive counterparts, they’re causing quite the ruckus for local political establishments.

For the most part, theFreep supports Sen. Sherrod Brown and his daughter Elizabeth Brown, current Columbus City Council Pro Tem, or temporary council president, but this is no endorsement for re-election.

Mrs. Brown is an advocate for Columbus City Schools and a staunch fighter for women’s rights. She initiated the Columbus Families Together Fund, which provides legal help to keep local immigrant parents together with their children.

But when we reached out to her to see if she is actively pushing for air-conditioning in all city schools, the Freep did not hear back.

It makes us wonder whether her past position as an economic development manager with Columbus city government and her current position as chair of the city’s Economic Development Committee has anything to do with her silence on the sweltering issue.

Could the city have avoided this absolute embarrassment and shame, where our city’s marginalized children, who need the best educational system and setting possible, are instead treated like second-class citizens?

Columbus, Ohio is a city known for its arts, culture, innovation, politics and the Buckeyes. However, Columbus is the largest city of its kind named after 15th Century Italian-Spanish explorer Christopher Columbus, an explorer who was more known for raping and pillaging indigenous people, and being a kingpin for slavery, rather than sailing across the Atlantic.

There are some people in Columbus who are questioning the city being named after the famed explorer who also did these heinous things to the indigenous.

There is a petition circulating around to have the City of Columbus change the city’s name to Arawak. Local activist Charles Robol is leading the charge into getting the city’s name changed. Robol has been out in the community in recent weeks handing out flyers to spread awareness of Arawak City.

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Thailand has built what's described as the
biggest industrial-scale medical marijuana facility in Southeast Asia
with 12,000 plants, and will soon allow everyone to grow six cannabis
plants "in their back gardens like any other herb."

Recreational use remains illegal with punishments including
imprisonment. Enthusiasts hope the disappearing resistance to
marijuana's medical use will result in looser laws for public
enjoyment and business profits.

Those changes appear to be gaining momentum.

Government officials on September 2  attended a ceremony in northern
Thailand's Chiang Mai where Maejo University researchers planted
12,000 new marijuana sprouts.

The promising shoots are inside a newly built 32,722-square-foot
(3,040-square-meter) greenhouse with controls for temperature,
moisture and light.

Seeds for the 12,000 plants were provided by the government's
Department of Medical Service.

Officials expect the plants will produce medical-grade cannabis

There is an existential threat to all democracies worldwide, a dark corruption, and sinister plot to rip the fundamental rights and duties of a developed civilization from the hands of the most vulnerable. The vicious beast of American exceptionalism (or exclusionism) has been caught in the hen-house of our governance. Evidence of it's racist, elitist, and over-entitled claw-mark's are all over our metaphorical "collective consensus;" our county-level ballot boxes.