Columbus turned out by the hundreds to protest the rally by the KKK, neo-nazis and white supremacists in Charlottesville and the subsequent terror attack on the counterprotestors. On Sunday, August 13, a large group gathered at the gazebo in Goodale Park for speeches and a report from some activists who were on the scene in Charlottesville.

The Franklin County Green Party unequivocally condemns the attack on anti-racist and anti-fascist protesters yesterday in Charlottesville, Virginia and are saddened by the death and injuries. The Green Party is an anti-racist organization continually working to create a just and fair society for all.

The Green Party fully supports the fundamental right of counter-protesters to free speech, freedom of assembly and redress of grievances.

The Party holds, as the Black Caucus states, that “In recognition of the central role of racism in the creation of our country's governmental, social, and economic systems and the use of race as a means of dividing and destroying progressive movements for fundamental change, we are actively antiracist. We oppose institutional, interpersonal, and cultural racism.”

We vigorously condemn the President of the United States for using the phrase “on many sides” after a right-wing terrorist attack upon democratic progressive forces lawfully demonstrating. The President’s words embolden and empower the far right. Let our actions as a counter force to liberate the people.

Campaigning for the presidency, Donald Trump argued that blacks and other people of color should vote for him.

The latest generation has access to an unlimited supply of information at just the touch of a finger. However, recent studies show that young people have trouble evaluating the information they get. This lack of news literacy among the youth contributes to a bigger struggle that ourcountry has and poses a threat to an already unstable democracy.

In the growing age of technology, teenagers spend hours upon hours with their faces buried in their phones. Yet, while they are flipping through social media outlets or surfing the web, they are also actively consuming the news. According to a survey by Common Sense Media, 49 percent of kids get their news from online media. However, a 2016 study carried out by Stanford University shows that despite having so much information, the youth’s ability to reason about this information is “bleak.”

The Will Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum production of Alice Childress’ Trouble in Mind came to me as a theatrical revelation. It is a classic “the worm turns” tale: Manners (Mark Lewis) is a big shot white liberal Hollywood producer who is making his Broadway stage debut in order to make “serious art” with a play-within-the-play (likewise written by a Caucasian). Manners sincerely believes it’s a powerful, searing social statement about and indictment of racism. Trouble, which is set in the 1950s, also hints that Manners may have fled Tinseltown to escape what is euphemistically called “the investigation”: the Hollywood Blacklist and House Un-American Activities Committees’ purging of so-called subversives (like WGTB founder Will Geer, who was blacklisted).

Willetta (the venerable Earnestine Phillips) plays an African American actress who, in scene one, Act I, seems to pooh-pooh the notion of theater as high art with a mission, as advocated by enthusiastic Broadway newcomer John (Max Lawrence who also does a superlative job portraying the workaholic steed Boxer in WGTB’s Animal Farm).