Human Rights
The recently introduced Ohio Senate Bill 83, the so-called Ohio Higher Education Enhancement Act, has generated heated debate and considerable confusion over the bill’s motivation, what it actually says, its implications and impacts.
When asked at the first hearing what problem in Ohio public and private universities and colleges the bill was solving, the bill’s author, Sen. Jerry Cirino (R-Kirtland) stated plainly and clearly: to deal with a trend towards indoctrination in our universities.
But what is less plain and clear from the rattle-bag of bans and demands in the bill, is what this means in practice. Indoctrination is nowhere mentioned as the cause for the bill banning mandatory Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) training, courses, and initiatives, academic relations with China, or university employees from striking.
At the same time, indoctrination is missing from the rationale for the bill demanding a compulsory American History course, Board of Trustees education programs, making course syllabi public or determining faculty workload and annual reviews.
Earlier this week 23-year-old Tabias Cunningham was shot and killed on an indoor basketball court on the Far West side. Recent events on this gym’s court strongly suggest Cunningham was killed over a meaningless game.
Another terrible reality is a 10-month-old child will be raised without their father and a mother will spend the rest of her life wondering why this happened to her son. Also soul-numbing is the fact the gym – Esporta Fitness, a lower-cost membership brand of LA Fitness – re-opened the very next day. They did close the court, as were the rest of their courts across Central Ohio.
Re-opening of the gym hours after a human being was murdered within its walls tells us how desensitized and apathetic we’ve become to gun violence.
Just a week prior, a friend of the Free Press had broken up a fight on that very basketball court. The source said they “yelled and begged for peace.” An hour later this same group of players were amicable and still playing basketball. The source’s effort to de-escalate worked on this night.
City of Columbus mayoral candidate Joe Motil states, “CoverMyMeds announced today that it will be cutting 815 jobs nationwide, converting 1,100 employees to fulltime remote work, and plans to sublease portions of its 200,000 square foot Columbus headquarters for office space.”
Motil continues, “Columbus taxpayers need to be reminded that on July 25, 2018, CoverMyMeds received one of if not the largest tax abatement handouts in our city’s history of $77,741,415. This corporate pork chop to one of the wealthiest corporations in the nation. The McKesson Corporation, will result in the loss of $55 million that should have gone towards providing revenue to educate our children in Columbus Public Schools. I testified against this tax abatement in City Council Chambers in July of 2018 as I have against dozens of other corporate gifts over the last 8 years.”
Today, Starbucks workers across the country went on a one day strike. The union Starbucks Workers United are demanding an end to the company’s union-busting campaign.
Starbucks has launched a brutal campaign against unionization efforts in their stores. Raises were withheld from union organizers, union organizers were fired, and Starbucks locations where unions were established were illegally shut down.
But in recent months, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has ruled in favor of workers. A judge from the NLRB recently ruled that Starbucks has to re-hire fired baristas and re-open closed locations, finding the company guilty of violating labor laws “hundreds of times.” But Starbucks has nonetheless continued their union-busting campaign.
I am a citizen of the US currently visiting Palestine. I’m 64 years old. On March 7, myself and another international were attacked by Israeli settlers while standing on the outskirts of the Palestinian village of Tuba in Masafer Yatta. I was hit from behind, hard, with a large stick, and my companion was chased and threatened by a settler with an iron bar. The settler who hit me fractured my skull and caused a bleed in my brain.
This is what the colonialism of Israeli settlers looks like for Palestinian families living in Masafer Yatta in the southernmost end of the West Bank. Supported by Israeli military and Police, settlers from the many settlements and illegal outposts in Masafer Yatta are systematically stealing Palestinian land and violently forcing people from their land. To be here now in these 15 villages is to witness ethnic cleansing in real time.
Ginther Continues to Display a Lack of Leadership and Vison To Address our Affordable Housing Crisis
Candidate for Mayor of Columbus Joe Motil states, "The Conference of U.S. Mayors tweeted Saturday that, “Tomorrow marks the second anniversary of the signing of the American Rescue Plan Act, which provided $65.1B directly to America's cities. Over the past two years, mayors have put this funding to work to address long-standing challenges and build stronger, more equitable cities.”
Mayor Andy Ginther’s reply on Twitter conveniently neglects to inform voters that he has not spent a dime of our city’s $187 million share of ARP funds to build a single unit of affordable housing. The city has $84.6 million remaining. Since 2021, there has been 36,500 evictions, close to 300 homeless in Columbus have died, and about 60,000 people are paying 50 percent or more of their incomes to pay for rent.
“We basically nuked a town with chemicals so we could get a railroad open.” Those are the words of former Youngstown fire chief and hazmat specialist Sil Caggiano, describing the anything-but-controlled burn of 1.1 million pounds of highly hazardous chemicals after the Norfolk Southern derailment disaster in East Palestine on February 3.
Since then, residents have had a lot more questions than answers about what exactly was in those rail cars and what else formed when the chemicals in those cars were drained into a ditch and burned. The fire pit burn created a mushroom cloud of toxic smoke that was carried by the wind across neighboring states and even into Canada, according to NOAA modeling.
I trust that you’ve now fully settled into your position as this city’s Chief of Police. You’re not likely to remember me, but we’ve met twice.
The first was during the Faith Forum held at the Mount Herman Missionary Baptist Church last May. Specifically, it was May 31, 2022: two years to the day that the nation first heard of a murder that would galvanize the entire country into a reckoning the likes of which had been long overdue. You were asked a series of difficult questions that day, so I’d completely understand if you’d forgotten about it. In light of recent events, however, it behooves me to repeat it.
My question then and now are the same: In the event that one of your officers shoots someone under questionable circumstances, what will you do as this city’s chief law enforcement officer?
On Sunday, February 5 at about 4pm, I get a phone call from a friend who has access to police scanners and phone calls. He tells me there’s been an officer-involved shooting and have I heard anything about it?
A few minutes before hand, I’d mostly ignored a Facebook Live feed an organizer friend of mine had started regarding the same incident: it wasn’t that I dismissed this organizer’s work; it was that, ten years into my own work, I have come to realize that personalizing every tragedy in this city wears on a person’s mental health and physical well-being. I’m in my early 40s. Too many of my friends and comrades have either taken their own lives or lost them “accidentally” for me to be less than cautious about such happenings.
A generation ago, racist politicians invented a mythical “Willie Horton” as a made-up “straw man” to represent their false stereotype of African Americans. They campaigned against this mythical character, using his made-up bad behavior as something we had to fight against, change. Unfortunately, they were able to mobilize many white people to vote against their own interests, further their reactionary agenda that hurt all of us.
Critical Race Theory (CRT) is an important theory developed over 30 years ago that explains how racism/inequality toward one group also harms, increases inequality of others, including white people and harms our nation as a whole. It in no way vilified white people. Unfortunately, that hasn’t stopped Republicans, racists, from saying it did, using it (like those politicians a generation used Willie Horton) to mobilize their base.
CRT shows how race/racism has been central to our nation’s development, since even before its founding. It shows how defeating racism is key to progress, for African Americans, but also for white folks. Republicans are using our people’s ignorance to push cutting Social Security, huge tax cuts for the wealthy.