Thursday, February 22, 2018, 6-7:30pm
905 Mt. Vernon Ave.
Join Leah Aden, Senior Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, who has come to Columbus on a fact-finding/investigatory trip to address the LDF's "substantial concerns" the Columbus City Council's at-large elections may violate Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Learn about "minority vote dilution" and at-large elections, from a top attorney at the nation's leading civil rights law firm. Engage in a panel discussion and town hall meeting with Ms. Aden, Jonathan Beard (Everyday People for Positive Change), Bob Fitrakis (professor of political science and attorney), and Al Warner (community activist and former Columbus NAACP chapter president) to discuss the extent to which Black community interests are addressed under the current system where every council member is elected with a majority White votes -- unlike in every other diverse big city in America -- each of which has changed to include at least on majority-minority electoral district under pressure from the Voting Rights Act of 1965. 53 years after Selma.

It’s hard to know where to begin. Last Friday’s indictment of 13 Russian nationals and three Russian companies by Special Counsel Robert Mueller was detailed in a 37 page document that provided a great deal of specific evidence claiming that a company based in St. Petersburg, starting in 2014, was using social media to assess American attitudes. Using that assessment, the company inter alia allegedly later ran a clandestine operation seeking to influence opinion in the United States regarding the candidates in the 2016 election in which it favored Donald Trump and denigrated Hillary Clinton. The Russians identified by name are all back in Russia and cannot be extradited to the U.S., so the indictment is, to a certain extent, political theater as the accused’s defense will never be heard.

It’s sort of silly that it matters. The United States bombed North Korea flat with ordinary, non-bioweapons bombs. It ran out of standing structures to bomb. People lived in caves, if they lived. Millions died, most of them from regular old non-scandalous but mass-murderous bombs (including, of course, Napalm which melts people but doesn’t give them exotic diseases). North Koreans to this day live in such terror of a repetition of history that their behavior is sometimes inexplicable and bewildering to Americans whose knowledge of history comes from watching game shows.

If you had just asked me if peace needed a “business plan,” I’d have replied, “Sure! Just like it needs a toupeed golfing fascist reality-TV creep in the White House! That’ll just about fix everything! War is over! Thanks!”

But after reading Scilla Elworthy’s book The Business Plan for Peace, I say, “Yeah, OK, that sounds pretty good, actually. Here, let me tweak it some!” In fact, I’ve added this book, despite some quibbles, to my bookshelf of war abolition advocacy. (Read em all! Send me others!)