By Theodore de Macedo Soares

Planning for ComFest 2020 is in full stride. It’s almost spring and before long the community’s greatest event will return to Goodale Park showcasing Columbus’ rich cultural, music and arts scene. And of course, ComFest promotes and celebrates the city’s thriving and influential progressive community. Education, organizing, activism and community involvement are vital components of ComFest during the three days in June, as well as throughout the year. “Living Every Day the ComFest Way” guides ComFesters and has positively impacted the open, welcoming, tolerant and progressive city Columbus is today.

ComFest is guided by its Statement of Principles and Mission Statement:

ComFest Statement of Principles

The Community Festival is guided by its Principles. The Principles are statements of what the members believe is basically important. They are:

We think that people ought to work for the collective good of all people rather than for personal gain. We support cooperation and collective activity rather than competition and individual profit.

Well, the Democratic Party machine in Franklin County is delivering the primary vote this year as if it was Tammany Hall. Instead of the mantra “Vote early – vote often” it’s “Vote early – and vote our sample ballot.”

I got a call from a Bernie Sanders field rep who witnessed Somalians being disenfranchised at the Franklin County Board of Elections during the first week of early voting. He said the poll workers weren’t letting elderly Somali women vote. Their big sin seemed to be they refused the sample ballot.

Despite their names being in the poll book, the Somali women were told they couldn’t vote unless they pronounced their address correctly in perfect English. The Bernie rep had noticed that all the Somali voters in question had rejected to take the sample ballot a Democratic operative tried to hand to them on their way in. The Bernie rep had asked the poll workers if there were translators present and was told they could help translate at the voting machines but not at the poll book area. The three Somali women were turned away.

The night before Super Tuesday, Elizabeth Warren spoke to several thousand people in a quadrangle at East Los Angeles College. Much of her talk recounted the heroic actions of oppressed Latina workers who led the Justice for Janitors organization. Standing in the crowd, I was impressed with Warren's eloquence as she praised solidarity and labor unions as essential for improving the lives of working people.

Now, days later, with corporate Democrat Joe Biden enjoying sudden momentum and mega-billionaire Mike Bloomberg joining forces with him, an urgent question hovers over Warren. It's a time-honored union inquiry: "Which side are you on?"

How Warren answers that question might determine the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. In the process, she will profoundly etch into history the reality of her political character.

"The urgency of Warren's decision can hardly be overstated."