Opinion

A 1963 landmark meeting that helped change the course of civil rights in America provides the centerpiece in the world premiere of “When Your Soul Cries,” a two- act drama by Columbus playwright Rich Bloom.

Bloom said the play is being produced by Stage Right Theatrics  Aug. 13-15 at the Abbey Theater in Dublin.

 “This is the very first play I’ve written, and I am humbled that Stage Right would deem it worthy to premiere this summer,” Bloom said. “Naturally I am excited and apprehensive, but I believe the play’s message resonates loudly given the racial divide that still exists in this country. On that one day in May,” he said, “black lives not only mattered, they made a difference.”

The four-hour gathering, Bloom said, took place on May 24, 1963 between Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and a passionate group of black activists. Both sides had agreed to keep the meeting “a secret,” but anger, frustration and disillusionment undermined that agreement.

In The Last, Best Small Town playwright John Guerra has adapted Thornton Wilder’s 1938 Pulitzer Prize-winning drama Our Town, resetting the turn-of-the-last-century Grover’s Corner, New Hampshire at turn-of-the-21st-century Fillmore, California, which is located a bit north of Six Flags Magic Mountain, in Ventura County. In doing so, Guerra has injected contemporary ethnic, as well as economic and wartime concerns into Wilder’s Americana classic, which – along with gems like Romeo and Juliet – is one of those perennial favorites performed by junior high and high school theater departments across the USA.

Dennis Kucinich was a hero of mine.

His newly released book, The Division of Light and Power (Finney Avenue Books), is all about how he became a hero to me nearly five decades ago when he was first a Cleveland City Councilman and then, for one glorious but controversial term, was the mayor of Cleveland, then the largest and most powerful city in Ohio.

The book is well worth reading if you, like me, were old enough to be aware of Kucinich's rise to power. If you are younger and want to learn about the era, the book will enlighten you as well.

I was living 60 miles to the south in my hometown of Ashland, Ohio. We got all of our TV and much or our radio from Cleveland, not to mention the Cleveland Plain Dealer, then the largest and most powerful newspaper in Ohio.

This column was first published in The Rooster.

I don’t know much about legal matters because I’ve tried avoiding them for most of my life, but one term I know thanks to watching Murder, She Wrote is “alibi.” It’s pretty straight forward –– if you weren’t at the scene of a crime when a crime happened, you probably didn’t commit that crime. Another axiom I’ve learned is “don’t mess with the FBI.” However, this was a new one –– what if someone who has been indicted by the FBI calls the cops on you for trespassing on their property while you’re in another state? Perhaps I should start from the beginning…

The new three-year labor deal between the City of Columbus and Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) Cap City Lodge #9 shows once again our local law enforcement union is dictating its demands to the community instead of the community demanding the Columbus Division of Police become a more professional law enforcement agency so we don’t repeat the summer of 2020.

FOP Cap City Lodge #9 has repeatedly said the Division of Police is one of the best trained police agencies in the nation with phenomenal officers, as union President Keith Ferrel professed during a recent press conference.

The Free Press agrees the job of police can be dangerous and takes its toll on officers. Drug and gun epidemics continue to marginalize and terrorize areas of the community. The Free Press family has several members who work with at-risk youth and often interact with Columbus police, and their experiences have been positive for the most part.

Perhaps the best possible thing we could acknowledge being is a “divided nation.” Failing to do so justifies — or at least avoids noticing — all manner of violent cruelty and repression in the name of so-called democracy, from the jailing of whistleblowers who reveal U.S. war crimes and global criminality, to the lynching of men and women of color . . .  to the waging of endless war.

Oh, and so much more!

“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the empire it purports to be (because it’s the greatest country in the world), one nation under the God of Money (who happens to be a white male), with liberty and justice for a few — and probably not for you or your parents, little kid!”

This is the pledge of allegiance we don’t teach to schoolkids, but it’s the one under which they live — some more than others, of course.

Do you remember the United Nations Millennium Development Goals? If not, you are not alone. 

These ambitious goals, which included the eradication of “extreme poverty and hunger”, to “combating lethal diseases” and “reducing child mortality worldwide”, proved to be yet another empty gesture which, unsurprisingly, amounted to little. 

It seems the allure of empire is just too great. For many Americans, Canada is a peaceful, enlightened and progressive country with universal healthcare, affordable education, and what we thought was a slim, non-interventionist military funded by a sensible budget. They have their house in order, we thought. But while the notion of empire may be alluring, it is in fact cancerous. Canada is buying into global militarism, American-style. And make no mistake, “American-style” means under American direction and designed for corporate profit and protection.

The U.S. needs cover for its goals of economic and military dominance and Canada is willing to play the proxy, particularly in establishing military bases around the globe. Canada insists these physical plants are not bases, but rather “hubs.” The U.S. calls them lily pads. Small, agile bases that can quickly be scaled up allowing for a “forward posture” most anywhere in the world.

As restrictive anti-abortion state laws head to the six anti-choice fanatics on the Court, the Trump Cult’s simultaneous attack on anti-virus vaccination grows ever-more stunning in its hypocrisy.

In short: they claim official mandates for masks and vaccinations in places where they could spread the virus violate their personal freedoms. As “anti-government” activists, they claim such mandates invade their sacred bodies.

And at the same time, they also demand that women who want to control their own reproductive lives must be denied.

So let’s try to get this straight:

These “pro-liberty” anti-government fanatics portray masks meant to stop the spread of the coronavirus pandemic as a dictatorial plot to curtail their freedoms. One lunatic congresswoman says masks are the equivalent of the yellow star forced on Jews by the Nazis. Others proudly resist demands by local governments that likely spreaders take steps to weaken the pandemic. This, they say, is an invasion of their civil liberties.

Hard on the heels of recent reports revealing the shocking existence of 1,000-plus unmarked graves of First Nations children at church-run schools in Canada (see: Canada: 751 unmarked graves found at residential school - BBC News), the new movie Cousins – written, directed and starring Maori females – deals with the trauma of family separation of New Zealand’s indigenous children.

The 98-minute feature is an adaptation of the 1992 novel of the same name by Maori author Patricia Grace (who I met in the 1990s at a literary symposium of Pacific Islander authors in Honolulu) and co-directed by Maoris Ainsley Gardiner and Briar Grace Smith (who also wrote the screenplay). Cousins tells the story of three Maori cousins, Mata, Missy and Makareta, who are portrayed by different actors at different points in their lives as children, teens/young adults and middle aged.