Opinion

Mark Stansbery, Free Press Board member, again did a fabulous job facilitating the May Second Saturday Cyber Salon on May 14.

See Video here.

The theme was International Worker’s Day in commemoration of May Day as the group celebrated the burgeoning new labor victories in central Ohio. Here is an article about Labor Day being May 1 by Nevin Siders.

WHAT?
On Thursday, May 12, 2022, local comic book artist, writer, and publisher Ken Eppstein dropped off just over 2,000 one-page cartoon strips at the Beechwold Post Office. These cartoons will be delivered to homes and businesses within his neighborhood using the Every Door Direct Mail (EDDM) service. This project was paid for through a grant from the Greater Columbus Arts Council (GCAC). In addition to the cartoon on the front of the mailer, the flip-side will feature a link to a survey about comic reading habits. The goal of this project is to bring a conversation about cartoons and comic arts to a broader community.

WHO?
Ken Eppstein is a veteran of the Columbus small press and cartoon arts scene. He has been publishing his “Nix Rock ‘n Roll Comics” since 2011. The Nix Comics catalog has over 40 publications featuring work by over 80 artists. Ken has also written for the Columbus Alive, Red Stylo Media, SOLRAD Comics Literary Magazine and many small press zines, blogs and publications.

If it’s true, as General William Tecumseh Sherman reputedly observed during America’s Civil War, that “war is hell,” according to Kyiv-born Maryna Er Gorbach’s Klondike, the “hottest seat in hell” (to paraphrase Dante) seems reserved for those ensnared in the civil war in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region. One of the grimmest films I’ve ever seen, Klondike is so bleak in its realistic depiction of warfare that it almost makes two antiwar classics that won Best Picture and Best Director Oscars – Lewis Milestone’s1930 All Quiet on the Western Front and Oliver Stone’s 1986 Platoon – look like musical comedies in comparison.

As Oksana Cherkashyna, who stars as Irka, told the audience after a SEEfest screening at the Lumiere Cinema in Beverly Hills, Klondike dramatizes actual events that took place when the war between Russia and Ukraine really “started eight years ago” in 2014, with armed conflict in the Donbas, while what we’re witnessing now is “a full-scale invasion” by the Russian Federation of Ukraine.

 Indeed, there is a growing sense that a new global agenda is forthcoming, one that could unite Russia and China and, to a degree, India and others, under the same banner. This is evident, not only by the succession of the earth-shattering events underway, but, equally important, the language employed to describe these events. 

If you’re an Ohio medical marijuana patient, you may have received a 2022 survey from Ohio State University’s Drug and Policy Center (DEPC). If you took the survey, what did you think? 

MedicateOH spoke with the DEPC to learn more about what goes into how they developed their 2021 and 2022 surveys, what questions they chose to ask, and what knowledge they hope to gain. 

DEPC 2022 Survey: Take Now Through End of May 2022 

MedicateOH spoke with Jana Hrdinová, Administrative Director for the DEPC, about the current survey, which you can take by clicking here. It’s open through the end of May, but the DEPC says they may extend it depending upon response.

Lessons from the City

My major lessons will be news to some and confirmation to others. Like many middle-size to large cities, Columbus claims special status and a unique identity when it actually has remarkably little of either.

Consider three powerful indicators. First, the 220-year-old state capital and home to one of the nation’s mega-universities, but without major league baseball, football, or basketball, has no accepted, well-founded, or documented identity. Columbus has far fewer serious, documented, scholarly or journalistic books and articles than any other U.S. city of its size or quest for recognition. The annual Arnold body-building display and OSU football do not constitute a firm foundation.

The medieval demand that women be denied power over their own bodies has prompted one of GREE-GREE’s most powerful zooms ever.

Beginning with the great MIMI KENNEDY, we said through a full hour of powerful discussion about what the back-stabbing assault on Roe v. Wade really means and how it will affect our upcoming elections.

Plunging to the core of this horrific landmark, we also hear from LYNN FEINERMAN, DR. RUTH STRAUSS, MARY STONEWALL-BUTLER, MYLA RESON, WENDI LEDERMAN, JOEL SEGAL, JUSTIN LEBLANC, JULIE WEINER, ERIC LAZARUS, NANCY NIPARKO, TATANKA BRICCA and more.

We then get a devastating report from climate scientist DR. CAROLYN ORR on the killer impacts of global warming and the pollution of our air.

RON LEONARD updates on the grid in Puerto Rico, just recently the subject of an in-depth energy report in the New York Times.  

Next week, we do yet another full hour on Roe, this time with the great CHRISTIAN NUNES of the National Organization for Women.  See you then!!!

“Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.’” — Genesis 2:18. RSV

One chapter later, after Eve was held responsible for the First Sin (Adam, the submissive male, just did what she told him to), we have this:

“To the woman he said, ‘I will greatly multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children, yet your desire shall be contrary for your husband, and he shall rule over you.’” — Genesis 3:16

Some people are able to liberate the creation story from its theological misogyny, but for most believers (especially the male ones), it’s pretty clear: Women are commanded, indeed, they were created, to do what they’re told. This is our cultural infrastructure — a.k.a., the patriarchy — ten thousand or so years in the making.

If I object, in the United States, to the Israeli government’s brutal occupation of Palestine, most people will not only know what I’m talking about but also understand immediately what a hateful antisemite I must be.

If, on the other hand, I object, in the United States, to Morocco’s brutal occupation of Western Sahara, most people will have no idea what I’m talking about. Isn’t that actually worse?

Remarkably, the Moroccan government is armed, trained, and supported by the U.S. government, and escalated its brutality in response to a tweet by then-President Donald Trump, never corrected by Joe Biden.

Yet the presence of unarmed U.S. civilian protectors in Morocco prevent rapes and assaults and all sorts of violence simply by virtue of their being from the U.S. Even in the midst of atrocities committed with U.S. weapons, it is U.S. lives that matter.

Meanwhile, virtually nobody in the United States has any idea what’s going on.

In the world of policing where white men have set the rules for generations, two Black women will now be critiquing those rules in the city of Columbus—but they bring very different sensibilities to the task.

Janet Jackson is the first Chair of the Civilian Police Review Board (CPRB). Jacqueline Hendricks is the first Inspector General (IG).

Columbus voters approved the creation of their jobs in an amendment to the city charter in 2020. Mayor Andrew Ginther hand-picked Jackson, who previously served as city attorney and a municipal court judge. She was recently elected by the other ten members of the board for a second (and last) one-year term.

By all appearances, Jackson hand-picked Hendricks over serious objections from at least one board member, in a less than transparent process. With 35 years of criminal justice experience, Hendricks had retired from the Detroit Police Department and was working for the first Inspector General's office there when she applied for the Columbus position.