Opinion

As wars rage, as cruelty shatters lives across the planet — as nuclear Armageddon remains a viable option for all of us — I think it’s time to claim some stunning awareness in this regard.

The human race is evolving in spite of itself — evolving beyond war, beyond empire, beyond dominance and conquest, and toward an uncertain but collective future. Indeed, I think most of us already know this, but only at a level so deep, so vague it feels like nothing more than “hope.”

The war in Ukraine rages on, and the war mentality, promoted by propaganda on all sides, generates ever more devotion to keeping it going, even escalating it, even considering repeating it in Finland or elsewhere based on having “learned” precisely the wrong “lesson.” The bodies pile up. The threat of famine looms over many countries. The risk of nuclear apocalypse grows. The impediments to positive action for the climate are strengthened. Militarization expands.

Columbus searches in vain for an identity, bouncing ridiculously from Cowtown to Crop Town, Cap City, Arch City, Buckeyeville, Nationwide or Crew City, or Number 14 or 15 (in population rank among U.S. cities). None of those fit the city past or present. I propose another, more appropriate and accurate moniker: the lawless, wild-wild-Midwest. (See my “Columbus’ identity crisis and its media”; “Columbus searches for its Downtown with historical, urbanist, and developers’ blinders”; “Columbus, Ohio, searches to be a city: The myth of the Columbus Way”; “Is Columbus actually a City?”)

A group calling itself the Columbus Coalition on Rent Control filed a petition this week with the city to officially begin a citizen-led ballot initiative which would create a rent control ordinance and establish a new city office named the Department of Fair Housing.

While the petition for rent control or rent stabilization may not be a first for the state of Ohio, this would be Ohio’s first-ever rent control ordinance if the citizen initiative were to win at the ballot.

The Columbus Coalition on Rent Control is driven by several well-known progressive and political activists, such as Jonathan Beard, Joe Motil, Tyrone Thomas, and Noel Williams, Chair of the housing committee for B.R.E.A.D, the local faith-based activist group.

Seemingly overnight, the cost of housing in Columbus went from relatively affordable to now putting tens of thousands under extreme pressure to keep a roof over their family’s heads. 

Affordable housing is at an impasse nationwide, but many believe Columbus, while late compared to other major cities, is now staring a homeless and affordable housing crisis in the face.

Today, Community Organizer and Producer/Host of GrassRoot Ohio Radio/Podcast Carolyn Harding is entering the Ohio State Representative race in Ohio, competing for the Democratic nomination for District (TBD, formerly District 18). 

“I’m a Democrat running to represent our District at the Statehouse, to empower your Rights and your Vote,” said Carolyn Harding.  “I will bring  forward, brave leadership to the Statehouse with Equality, Sustainability and Justice for All as my guide.  My campaign depends on everyday people, volunteers, and your contributions, not big corporate PACs or dark money.” 

​

As that sixties’ saying puts it, “the personal is political.” In the case of The Last Boy, which is being presented April 27 on Holocaust Remembrance Day at the renowned Town Hall in Midtown Manhattan’s Theater District, the personal is political and also theatrical to me. That’s because this timely fact-based anti-Nazi drama stars my 21-year-old cousin, who is making an auspicious Broadway debut.

Bret Sherman portrays the title character in The Last Boy, which is “about a group of seven boys who are in the Terezin camp in Czechoslovakia,” notes Sherman. “They are living through this terrible, dark time. But the playwright/director, Steve Fisher, does a really great job of not dwelling on that too much, of the miserable atmosphere they’re a part of. Because at the end of the day, while we can look back at it now and realize that was such a terrible time, and I’m sure the boys realized they were being mistreated, but they obviously didn’t have a ton of information and I don’t think they understood the scope of what was happening,” as Hitler’s “final solution” exterminated millions of Jews and others during World War II.

Greenhouse Canteen is a 100% plant-pure vegan restaurant chain headquartered in Australia. Local vegan owner operator Joshua Douglass launched its first US restaurant in Grandview in Oct 2020, in spite of covid. They have still managed to survive through some of the toughest years in business this millennium, as covid dramatically impacted our lives in so many ways.

I call the public’s attention to today’s radical, unprecedented, unconstitutional, and inhumane campaign to ban books in schools. It combines intersecting dimensions that span history, education, child development, and respect for the text and legal and cultural traditions of “We the People,” “Public Welfare” and “Public Interest.” It includes the rights of children, for which we fought from the late 19th century into the present.

I write as a historian of literacy and education, and children and youth; a teacher of college students for almost 50 years; and a concerned citizen. My colleagues and friends include authors of national prize-winning, young adult novels banned in several states on false grounds.

The Caravan for Water and Life has run through much of central Mexico, backed by the National Indigenous Congress (CNI). The Caravan’s goal is to raise awareness of how the subsidiary of Danone multinational corporation, Bonafont, for years has pushed first peoples aside to take over their wells, then sell the water in those infamous little plastic bottles that cost a large fraction of a day’s pay at minimum wage.

At the Caravan’s launching next to an appropriated well in Puebla state, on March 22 spokeswoman and former presidential candidate María de Jesús Patricio Martínez denounced how government complicity continues unabated four years into López Obrador’s six-year presidential term — and that complicity includes not only government and business, but criminal elements as well.

A press statement and photo by La Jornada can be seen here.

Like other nationalities, Hollywood has manufactured cinematic stereotypes of the French. Unlike Tinseltown movies such as 1951’s An American in Paris, 1954’s The Last Time I saw Paris, 1964’s Audrey Hepburn-William Holden comedy Paris When It Sizzles, and 1972’s Last Tango in Paris, there are no berets, brioches, baguettes, accordions or on location (or B unit) shots of urban landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower or Montmartre’s Sacré-Coeur Basilica to be found in Parisian Jacques Audiard’s Paris, 13th District. Indeed, the long shots of this arrondissement (district) on the Seine’s left bank consist mostly of hideous high rises – not the charming architecture often associated with the City of Lights.