To End Homelessness, Invest in Harm Reduction

Homelessness and substance use disorder often occur simultaneously — but many people struggling with both are unable to get the help they need. That puts homeless service providers on the front lines of the battle for reversing overdoses while also trying to end homelessness, one life at a time.

As the CEO of a large homelessness service provider, I’ve seen first-hand how helping someone overcome substance use can lead directly to helping them overcome homelessness.

Ending homelessness is a long process. It isn’t all about lifting someone off the streets and finding them a job and a place to call home. There’s a spectrum of steps and successes along the way to help someone build confidence and independence so they can make long-term positive lifestyle changes.

Overcoming substance use is one of those steps. We have a number of strategies to approach substance use that have offered positive results. The first is the overarching principle of harm reduction, which we use because it saves lives.

With Congress Preparing a “Fiscal Tsunami”, States Can Choose Differently

Tax policy experts and lawmakers have long circled 2025 as a year to prepare for. What makes it so significant?

For one thing, Federal COVID money to states is expiring, straining state budgets at the same time the economy is starting to weaken. For another, Republicans in Congress are working to increase and extend President Trump’s tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations — while cutting trillions from health care, housing, and education programs for everyone else. And it all up and you get a fiscal tsunami.

While major tax policy changes are being made and discussed in Congress, this is also happening in the states.

Benito Cheeto

Behind Closed Doors: Black Migrants and the Hidden Injustices of U.S. Immigration Courts

Details about event

As the Circuit Courts and Supreme Court are increasingly called upon to correct immigration injustices, people are starting to realize that the U.S. immigration courts do not operate with independence and fairness.

War Dust and Collateral Inhalation: Israel Breathes in Gaza’s Dust

Over 100,000 tons of bombs have been dropped on Gaza, an area slightly smaller than the City of Detroit, Michigan, resulting in the recorded deaths of at least 60,000 Gazans and injuries to hundreds of thousands.¹

It is impossible to overstate the effects of the abominable bombing war on Gazans, their lives, their families, their health, and their communities.

What has escaped attention up until now is the undeniable environmental and health effects of the bombing of Gazans on Israelis, as well as on citizens of neighboring states, and the potential harm to U.S. military personnel in the region.

A study of explosion physics based on declassified Department of Defense data, as well as blast temperature data and consequent emissions; a review of wind patterns, together with publicly available data of health effects from 9/11, as well as data gathered from U.S. veterans of the Persian Gulf War, yield a shocking conclusion.

Community Improvement 614 meeting

Hilltop library

Wednesday, April 23, 2025, 6:00 PM
Columbus Metropolitan Library, Hilltop Branch Library, 511 Hague Ave., room 1, Columbus. 

Columbus neighborhood historians and environmentalists you are invited! Will discuss effect of LinkUs on historic buildings and on the environment along the proposed corridors. Required public notice about federally required historic review and environmental impacts were not mentioned to public in numerous meetings citywide.  Adverse effects on environment and historical buildings bus were not advertised. COTA/City were selling the project to the public for a “yes” vote November 2024.

Please RSVP to communityimprovement614@gmail.com by April 20 at 5:00 PM. 

Classified Pete

Democracy or Plutocracy?

Founding fathers

Despite much lofty rhetoric portraying the United States as a democracy (in which the people rule), this nation, in fact, has often resembled a plutocracy (in which the wealthy rule).

The confusion owes a great deal to the fact that the United States, at its founding, was somewhat more democratic than its contemporaries.  In the eighteenth century, European nations, governed by kings, princes, and other wealthy hereditary elites, usually provided a contrast to the more unruly, less hidebound new nation, where some Americans even had the vote.

Even so, the overwhelming majority of Americans didn’t have the vote, which was largely confined to property-owning or tax-paying white males―about 6 percent of the U.S. population in 1789.  Women (comprising about 50 percent of the population) were, with very few exceptions, denied voting rights.  And slaves (about 18 percent of the population) lacked both voting rights and citizenship.

Franklin County Treasurer Decides to Not Reinvest in Israel Bonds, For Now…

Franklin County Israeli bonds meeting

After over a month of withholding information surrounding public investments in Israeli Bonds, the Franklin County Treasurer’s Office finally released the county investment reports for February and March of 2025. These reports, alongside discussion at the meeting of the Investment Advisory Committee (IAC) on April 17, 2025, confirmed that Treasurer Cheryl Brooks Sullivan has decided not to reinvest holdings from Israeli Bonds that matured on February 1, 2025 into additional Israeli Bonds. 

Video of meeting

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