It was spring 1970, the world was ablaze with anti-establishment expression: free speech, women’s rights, civil/human rights, anti-war were all movements of the day. On the Ohio State University (https://library.osu.edu/site/dissent/), Kent State (https://www.kent.edu/may-4-1970), and Jackson State (https://www2.kenyon.edu/Khistory/60s/webpage.htm) campuses, like many other campuses across the globe, there was active student rebellion. While the “don’t trust anyone over 30” motif was prevalent, the movement gained support from many communities in Central Ohio, especially OSU students, faculty, and administration. In historic moments, however, the OSU administration had to be challenged to meet student, faculty, and community demands. In 2020, OSU administration was presented with over 500 faculty member signatures concerned by the re-opening of the OSU campus among COVID-19 pandemic and racial justice issues.

Sunday, July 12, 1pm
Ohio Statehouse

Franklin County’s health department made national news in May after apologizing for issuing mask-wearing guidelines widely denounced as racist. The story was carried in newspapers from the Washington Post to the Seattle Times, in the national magazine The Week and by CNN.

A place the story didn’t make big news, though, was Franklin County itself. Neither the county’s daily newspaper, the Columbus Dispatch, nor the city’s television stations covered it. WOSU Radio carried a small story, for whatever tiny percentage of the county’s residents follow that.

The guidelines stemmed from the April 3 announcement by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) encouraging the public to wear masks to contain the spread of COVID-19. Some racial minorities voiced concerns they could be profiled by wearing masks. Their anxiety presented the health department with an opportunity to educate central Ohioans to shun racist attitudes.

The department instead told racial minorities they were the ones needing to change, advising them:

The new film, The Vow From Hiroshima, tells the story of Setsuko Thurlow who was a school girl in Hiroshima when the United States dropped the first nuclear bomb. She was pulled out of a building in which 27 of her classmates burned to death. She witnessed the gruesome injuries and agonizing suffering and indecent mass burial of many loved ones, acquaintances, and strangers.

Setsuko was from a well-off family and says she had to work at overcoming her prejudices against the poor, yet she overcame an amazing number of things. Her school was a Christian school, and she credits as influence on her life the advice of a teacher to engage in activism as the way to be Christian. That a predominantly Christian nation had just destroyed her predominantly non-Christian city didn’t matter. That Westerners had done it didn’t matter either. She fell in love with a Canadian man who lived and worked in Japan.

How do protesters move from our downtown streets to force real change in Columbus police?

It is a daunting challenge when you consider over the previous decades all the promises Columbus police, the Mayor(s) and City Council members have made to end police brutality.

Promises they never or couldn’t keep – since 2013 Columbus police have killed 40 people, 27 of whom were black, but only one case of police misconduct over the previous 20 years (within the now-disbanded VICE unit) has resulted in any indictments. 

Mayor Ginther, Chief Quinlan and his commanding officers have chosen to sit down three times over the previous weeks with one protest group in particular. But we refuse to name this group because there questions as to who they exactly are.