In this year’s elections around Athens County, Ohio, there are a number of independent candidates running for office, including several socialists.

McCray Powell (I, Nelsonville) and Ellie Hamrick (I, Athens) are both running for office as independent socialists for City Council in their respective cities.

As socialists, Hamrick and Powell believe in workers controlling their own workplaces and communities, instituted by revolutionary system-change that must occur from “the bottom up.”

“Socialism to me is workers running the world that they created,” Powell argued. McCray Powell says that he developed his Marxist beliefs through his experiences at previous jobs he’s worked, including working as a cashier, factory worker, retail worker, maintenance worker, server, fast-food worker, and as a wine-bottler.

Hamrick says that she had first started her activist journey by reading Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle in middle school; activist work throughout her time at Ohio University, however, was what fully solidified her socialist beliefs.

Turning their backs on the human rights principle of voluntary informed consent as decreed in the Nuremberg Code, countries are fast-tracking involuntary vaccine mandates for school-age children. Adults are next. This is an egregious violation of human rights.

Mercury, Aluminum, and other adjuvants are in vaccines. Inadequate testing is the norm. There are no tests that show interactions of one vaccine with another — or with other medications. There is no financial liability in the US for vaccine manufacturers as they cannot be sued for any and all the injury and death caused by their products. Vaccines are therefore a giant experiment.

My first response from reading JAre (J Rawls + John Robinson’s) Youth Culture Power book was: There Are Social Skills Even For People Who Don’t Teach. The book is written to give educators methods to build rapport + create environments that are conducive to the exchange of information utilizing Hip Hop.

Youth Culture Poweris a Hip Hop record as well as book. YCP’s album brings the human side for the teachers as music should.

I want to recommend Youth Culture Power’s music to people who participated with Hip Hop in high school + college while choosing to work as a teacher following the ideals that made them Hip Hop.

The YCP album starts with John Robinson stating that Youth Culture is Power in some median point articulation between KRS One + Q-Tip.

Four years ago, the editors of the Columbus Free Press gave me the chance to write a monthly column about the local media as the Columbus Media Insider. Over time, the editors let me write broadly about media and politics.

I will always be grateful. Nearly every newspaper journalist yearns to be a columnist.

Thank you, Robert Fitrakis and Suzanne Patzer, for making my dream come true.

And thank you, dear readers, even those of you at the Columbus Dispatch.

The sale of the Dispatch by the Wolfe family to GateHouse Newspapers led to the launch of my column in July 2015.

I noted in my first column that chain newspaper ownership results in major staff cuts. Around Labor Day, 2015, dozens of heads rolled. Today there are about half as many journalists putting out the newspaper as before.

The paper's coverage has shrunk and the errors have increased as much of the design and editing has been shifted to a hub in Texas.