ComFest, Pride March, Politics--and bread

A busy week. This was the 34th annual Community Festival in Columbus, an event begun in 1972 as a university area, radical student event. It's grown and moved to Goodale Park just north of downtown Columbus a number of years ago. Although it retains its radical, post-hippie sensibilities. Lots of craft artists, leftist and progressive political groups, environmentalists, animal rights folks, and so forth. And several hundred thousand others. We usually wind up volunteering at community or political booths. This year, we were to be at the booth sponsored by the Coalition of Democratic and Progressive Organizations of Central Ohio (grand name, no?), groups that grew out of the 2004 election campaign efforts and decided to continue on after the disappointing results of that election (about which more later). (The Coalition's activities are at www.coalitioncentralohio.org ) That was for Sunday afternoon. But since Ann thought she might put some of her 'Some Women Are Born Leaders' tee-shirts at the booth for sale, we went down late Saturday morning.

The booth was too busy with various groups (including our own Uptown Progressives) and representatives for candidates to put out the shirts. But we ran into the formation of the Pride Parade, about to start at Goodale Park, the ComFest site.


A church group heads down State Street

The Marching Flaggots of Central Ohio

We wound up marching with the Kilroy for Congress group.

















Which meant a long walk as part of the march, and an even longer walk back to the car. But there's nothing quite so exhilarating as rounding a corner from a side street onto the main north/south artery and finding some 80,000 cheering people lining the sidewalks.






the kelly green shirts are for Kilroy






The march was logical, since we'd hosted a fundraiser for Mary Jo the night before, sort of! We'd worked with the campaign to set up a house party, invited a bunch of folks over, cleaned the house, bought food and wine, and then had the event cancelled--Mary Jo couldn't make it. We had the party anyway, although it was no longer a fundraiser. But we had a great time, and had a lot of terrific conversations about politics, both secular and religious (the Episcopal Church had just finished their convention in Columbus, and a couple of gay Episcopalian activists were with us).

Here's the group on the deck

Sunday we were back at ComFest, at the Coalition booth. Good conversations again, and very reinforcing to be with like-minded folks.

And more bread on the testing circuit; this time all rye. With decent results. The bread testing is fun, although the freezer is filling up with loaves; will have to start giving some away soon!

Protesting a Congresswoman's ties to defense contractors

Tim Revel photo, Columbus Dispatch, 6/12/06







Here I am presenting letters to Congresswoman Deborah Pryce's press secretary as part of the MoveOn.org 'Red Handed' series of ads aimed at seated congresspeople (poster in background shows a bit of the redhand on Congresswoman Pryce, pictured with Tom DeLay). The event, for which I was the representative spokesperson as a veteran, highlighted the seeming connection between Congresswoman Pryce's having accepted donations from defense contractors, then having voted against a bill which would have established oversight. The Dispatch article, at http://www.dispatch.com/news/news.php?story=dispatch/2006/06/12/20060612-B5-00.html takes the 'outside interests' approach, pretty much ignoring the reasons why we were there in the first place, although it does get mentioned, however briefly! And not a bad photo of the back of my head! Pity no view of my face.
here's a photo of our 'motley group'

I brandish letters to the Congresswoman, demanding she return oil money

All the more reason, of course, to support Mary Jo Kilroy for the 15th District!

as always, http://kilroyforcongress.com

We learned the following week that Time Warner cable locally was refusing to run the MoveOn "Red Handed" spot on defense contractors donations--so that caused another demonstration, a protest at their studios.

I'm in dirty jeans, talking to Justin Symonds, because I'd been gardening. Hardly the radical occupation!

Time Warner had the class to provide water and cookies--the kids especially appreciated that!