Local

State Rep. Bride Rose Sweeney (D-Westlake) today responded to Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose’s plans for another statewide voter purge clouded in darkness that will happen two weeks before voting in the upcoming presidential election. The Cleveland-area lawmaker sent a third letter to LaRose’s office after his refusal to provide public records requested related to LaRose’s quiet 2023 purge of nearly 27,000 people from Ohio’s voter rolls six days after November absentee ballots were sent out and reiterates a demand for transparency and cooperation with the public to ensure that no voter is incorrectly removed from the voter registry.   

“The secretary of state seems more excited about canceling Ohio voters than providing answers and transparency to his process, which seems plagued by politics and inexperience. That’s why I’ve repeatedly asked for an official audit and public records so we know exactly what’s going on, ”said Rep. Sweeney in her letter to Sec. LaRose’s office. “ The problem with purging is that it has removed eligible voters. That’s unacceptable. We need answers.” 

Rocco Di Pietro’s The Normal Exception: Life Stories, Reflections, and Dreams from Prison is an outcome of the author’s ten years of teaching college courses to prison inmates in New York, Ohio, and California.

A thoughtful observer, Di Pietro offers illuminating commentary on people's roles and the relationship
between prison and life outside the walls. Incarceration, he points out, “was only one way to transgress
out of the matrix of society; the artist, the poor, the homeless, the ill, the addicts, and psychological
cripples of every sort were also some of the other ways one could slip through the cracks.”

The book consists of essays that Di Pietro had assigned his students to write, interspersed with the
author’s thoughts on the content. For me, the most striking impression taken from these stories is how
many of these individuals had been living in prisons of other sorts long before their incarceration. Many
of these stories are harrowing, and the words of one woman are indicative of the suffering: “Though I
was incarcerated, I began to feel freer than I had in a long, long time. No longer did I live under an

Sunday, June 2, 5-9pm
First Unitarian Universalist Church, 93 W. Weisheimer Rd.

Get Your Free FrackStock w/ Justin Nobel Ticket/s Here:  https://events.humanitix.com/frackstock-w-justin-nobel
Face Book Event Page Here:  
https://www.facebook.com/share/9yorGqb4TmgANuzu/?mibextid=9l3rBW

1 NIGHT of LOVE, JUSTIN & MUSIC 

Justin Nobel is coming through Columbus on a nationwide tour to present his landmark book, "Petroleum-235: Big Oil's Dangerous Secret and the Grassroots Fight to Stop It!" 

AND 

Sunday, May 5, 12noon-4pm, Goodale Park, 120 W. Goodale St.

Join us this Sunday, May 5 at Goodale Park for our May Day Picnic and Labor History Bike Ride Tour!

Picnic: 12noon-4pm

Bike Ride: 2-4pm

The picnic will begin at 12noon. We will be grilling burgers and hotdogs (meat and veggie of both) and will have lots of snacks and drinks. The bike ride will start at 2pm, be approximately two hours long, have nine stops, and will be around five miles in length. The ride will start and stop at Goodale Park.

• “May 1st, known as May Day, is also International Labor Day. This date was chosen to commemorate the Haymarket Affair, the aftermath of a bombing that took place at a labor demonstration on May 4, 1886, in Chicago’s Haymarket Square; what better way to celebrate than learning about our own local labor history?”

• “Join Columbus DSA for our annual picnic and labor history bike tour of Columbus, this year at noon on May 5th!”

Saturday, May 4, 2024, 12:00 – 1:00 PM
Location:  East North Broadway and High St., Columbus.

Imagine getting over one of the hardest challenges of your life. You are ready to start a brand-new chapter of your life. You can picture the new home you want, plans to get your degree, or your dream job just in reach, but all of a sudden you are told you cannot have any of it, all because of one mistake from your past. 

Whether from an OVI, an assault charge, or even something as small as shoplifting, nearly 100 million Americans have a criminal record. This “X on their back” follows them around the rest of their life. That is unless they receive a second chance in the form of expungement or record erasing. 

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is proposing to lease 40,000 acres of the Wayne National Forest’s Marietta Unit to the oil and gas industry.

Send a message now to oppose oil drilling and gas fracking in Wayne National Forest!*
*Scroll down for a draft message you can use to help with your comment.

Thursday, May 2, 2024, 7:30 PM
The Annual Meeting will include a report on last year’s finances, awarding of funds from the ComFest Grants program to non-profit community organizations, and a chance to meet and network with ComFest organizers and other local activists. There will be cake!  
Location: The Big Room, 1036 S Front Street, Columbus.

Across Ohio, students are gaining momentum in the movement to end the ongoing genocide of Palestinians at the hands of extremist Israeli powers. This comes as part of a wider wave of direct action on college campuses nationally as young people call for change.