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Tuesday, May 28, 2024, 7:00 - 8:00 PM
Join ACLU for our May Franklin County Action Team Meeting as we prepare for a summer of action in criminal legal reform and more!  

Location:  ACLU Ohio - Columbus Office, 1108 City Park Ave Ste 203, Columbus, OH 43206.  

Register here.

Tuesday, May 28, 2024, 7:00 - 8:00 PM
Join ACLU for our May Franklin County Action Team Meeting as we prepare for a summer of action in criminal legal reform and more!  

Location:  ACLU Ohio - Columbus Office, 1108 City Park Ave Ste 203, Columbus, OH 43206.  

Register here.

Introduction

The focus of this post is on the fascist aspects of Trump’s rhetoric and plans. It argues that, if Trump wins the presidency in November, he and his administration are likely to implement his anti-democratic vision.

Is he a fascist?

Federico Finchelstein has written extensively about fascism. In his most recent book, The Wannabe Fascists: A Guide to Understanding the Greatest Threat to Democracy (publ. 2024 by the University of California Press), he identifies “the four pillars of fascism,” including: (1) “violence and the militarization of politics; (2) “lies, myths, and propaganda”; (3) “the politics of xenophobia” and racism; and (4) dictatorship (pp. 16-17). He argues that Trump is not quite a full-blown fascist, but rather a “wannabe fascist because he has not yet become a “dictator.”

NATO What You Need To Know

By MEDEA BENJAMIN and DAVID SWANSON

“An indispensable primer. It can save your life — indeed all of our lives…NATO is a clear and present danger to world peace, a war machine run amok.”

— Jeffrey D. Sachs

“Read this book to understand how NATO promotes a logic of domination, not equality, or justice or peace.”

—Clare Daly, MEP

On a recent warm evening at the Runaway Bay apartment complex in Grandview, a middle-aged woman in a rowboat was chased by a gaggle of white swans, geese, mallards and who knows what else. They pursued her over the quarry’s still waters as she throws them crumbs. It is a sight to be seen, but only a few are able to enjoy this private quarry filtered by the nearby Scioto River because its surrounded by condos, apartments and ugly office buildings built a few decades ago. Irony is how this quarry is also home to Hidden Lake Condominiums.

In 2022, the Free Press published a flippant story on how a section of this quarry should be returned to the public and made into a beach with boats or kayaks to rent (pictured above).

After obtaining a shocking leaked Columbus City Schools Board of Education strategy document [READ LEAKED DOCUMENT], which details plans to use racial divides to attack opponents of school closures and hide information from taxpayers, members of the community and Columbus City Schools Union leaders sent the following open letter to the Board of Education this morning:

An Open Letter to Columbus City Schools Board of Education Members,

Thursday, May 23, 7pm, Tuttle Park [outside of the Tuttle Community Center], 240 W. Oakland Ave.

Join us this Thursday, May 23 at 6pm at Tuttle Park outside of the recreation center (weather permitting) or online at tinyurl.com/CORSmeeting to discuss Victor Serge’s What Every Radical Should Know about State Repression. The full text is available here.

After the victory of the Russian revolution, Serge was tasked with going through the archives of the Tsar’s secret police. His study reveals the incredible level of surveillance, infiltration, and provocation against which the Bolsheviks had to fight. His analysis shows how they were able to win, and ultimately how we can win against repression by our own state. This information is vital for any organizers to know in our current political moment.

There have been many documentaries about Holocaust survivors. Queen of the Deuce is likely the only one about a survivor who went on to make her fortune in the porn industry.

Born into a family of Greek Jews in 1908, Chelly Wilson was quicker than most to recognize the rising threat Nazi Germany posed in the late 1930s. Temporarily leaving her son with her ex-husband and her daughter with a non-Jewish acquaintance, she hastily emigrated to New York, where she was soon making money selling hot dogs.

But Wilson’s real success came years later, when she began acquiring neighborhood movie theaters and devoting them to the increasingly popular genre of pornography. By the time soft porn began giving way to the hard variety, she was honchoing a business that ran a slew of theaters and even made its own features.

Wednesday, May 22, 6pm, this on-line event requires advance registration

We, the Ohio Community Rights Network, are inviting you to join us for, “A Truth and Reckoning with Nature: Isn’t it Time Ohio?,” on Wednesday, May 22, at 6pm, for a conversation with Tish O’Dell, OHCRN [Ohio Community Rights Network] board member and Consulting Director for CELDF [Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund] to imagine what being in right relationship with nature and each other might look like and how can we get there.

When an industry announces plans to come into a community, residents may discover that there is more to the story than the “more jobs and money” mantra. Instead, what they learn often raises concerns and many times actual fear and panic. Elected officials will attempt to quiet the alarm by stating that we have “strict regulations” to protect the community and nature. But is that really the case? Does the existing system of law recognize the important relationship between healthy ecosystems and healthy communities or does it place more importance upon the needs of an industry to profit from exploiting nature and the community and future generations.

Community Festival (ComFest) is back in Goodale Park Friday, June 28 through Sunday, June 30, 2024. 

ComFest will feature over 150 musical performances, social activism and community-oriented programming over three days. In addition to the line-up of the city’s best live music spread over five stages, workshops, KiDSART, live comedy, poetry readings and other programming will be featured throughout the park. The much-loved Street Fair also returns with one-of-a-kind vendors, arts and crafts, local food and community organizations. 

New at ComFest this year will be a singer/songwriter/troubadour stage and a Silent Disco.

ComFest has partnered with Seventh Son Brewing Co. for a special ComFest brew that will be featured all weekend. A portion of the sales will benefit ComFest’s Community Grants Program. Also new for 2024 will be a non-alcoholic beer option.

ComFest is “Powered by Community” and volunteer opportunities are available. Give a shift and get chips for ComFest beverages and food and your very own volunteer T-shirt.