I attend downtown’s Jazz And Ribfest for an hour every year. I attend because I absorb legendary musicians in nature. While I’m impressed our city attracts various vendors who’ve won BBQ competitions. they don’t sell anything I eat.

Hip Hop is why I’m vegan. Wu Tang Wu Tang Wu Tang Wu Tang Wu Tang. “No Pork on my fork. I don’t dine on swine.” Several Wu members are Vegan.

I visit the Jazz and Ribfest because I’ve seen Ramsey Lewis and Roy Ayers. Thanks, Hip Hop. I browse the Jazz and Ribfest’s website every year. Whomz the legend were playing in 2025.

Mavis Staples Sunday. Kenny Lattimore Friday. I didn’t attend Kenny Lattimore. The weekend rained. Sunday, it rained. I debated – is this worth leaving my building if it’s raining?                                        

The Staple Singers, MAVIS STAPLES!

Asawin Suebsaeng at Rolling Stone is out with a vital article that explains who Ayman Soliman is to his friends, community, and the families at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital — and why the government’s “case” against him isn’t a case at all. See excerpts below and read the full piece.

The kind of person Ayman is

CALL TO ACTION: Show Up to Stop Taxpayer-Funded Genocide

Thursday, July 24
-2:00 PM
 
 Franklin County Treasurer’s Office, 373 S. High St., First Floor Auditorium 

Are you heartbroken and outraged watching the ongoing starvation and slaughter of children in Gaza? Do you feel helpless watching your tax dollars continue to fund war, apartheid, and genocide?

This is your chance to DO something.

In February, Franklin County Treasurer Cheryl Brooks Sullivan made the decision not to reinvest $5 million of our public funds in Israel Bonds — a move applauded by community members committed to human rights.

But now, Israel’s economy is being artificially propped up. War profiteering, booming weapons and surveillance industries, and an inflated stock market could all potentially help improve Israel’s credit rating — making it more likely that public officials could consider reinvesting in genocide.

We must show up and say: NO MORE!

Prostitution is not the “romanticized fantasy from the movie “Pretty Woman,” US Attorney Steven D. Weinhoeft recently said after a federal grand jury in East St. Louis indicted two with operating five prostitution-front massage operations in Illinois and Indiana. It exploits and coerces women “into degrading subjugation” and violates the “rights of vulnerable victims across southern Illinois.”

Jianhong Hu Allbright of Indiana and Yalong Cao of a Chicago suburb face money laundering charges related to prostitution and other counts.

The fate of sex workers in Chicago has been grisly. Thirty-nine were killed during the 1990’s before they could avail themselves of the protection from street predators that online “dates” could sometimes afford. Key word, sometimes.

Sex workers in Chicago’s marginal neighborhoods were terrorized by four different mass murderers: Gregory Clepper—alleged to have confessed to killing 40 prostitutes—Geoffrey Griffin aka the Roseland Killer, Hubert Geralds and Andrew Crawford. Thanks to pimps and addictions, few women could stop working despite the lethal risks.

The House of Representatives has approved giving Israel an additional $1.3 billion in “emergency defense assistance” for its Iron Dome missile defense program, another installment of countless billions sent from the United States to intensify a one-sided war against the Palestinian people.

The Iron Dome system intercepts short range rockets (launched from 2.5 to 43 miles) through the joint work of the IDF, Israeli contractors, and U.S. weapons manufacturers like Raytheon. Radar batteries detect incoming missiles, calculate direction and threat level, and, if necessary, target the menacing projectile and speed interceptors to destroy it.

The Iron Dome destroys incoming rockets at high altitude, but, since its emplacement in 2011, the system has also functioned to enable Israel to conduct ethnic cleansing and perpetuate genocide with impunity in Gaza and the West Bank.

It has underwritten an astonishingly deadly campaign of collective punishment, with lengthy, targeted air, drone, and guided missile strikes in densely populated areas. These deadly attacks are carried out against a people who have no army, no shield, and no means of response.