News

“Banks have all the money, and the rich hold all the cards.” These are common laments among Central Ohioans who, as the dismal turnout in the November 2014 elections indicate, suspect that democracy is not working as it should. While the majority of citizens and businesses play by the rules, clearly other are writing the rules, and not to our benefit. Large and often multinational corporations expect politicians to fight for their interests, not ours. It’s all too much, and we wonder, why don’t citizens unite and take back our democracy? Then along comes an organization called Citizen United. Sounds inviting.

A two-part series in the Sept. and Oct. issues of The Free Press reported on the Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation (BWC) setting employers’ insurance premiums illegally and unfairly for many years. The violations were revealed in the class-action lawsuit of San Allen v. Buehrer, in which Ohio’s 8th District Court of Appeals in May affirmed BWC’s liability to Ohio employers.

In November, the trial judge in the case, Richard McMonagle of the Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas, approved a $420 million settlement agreed to by BWC and the plaintiffs’ attorneys.

McMonagle had ruled in 2012 that BWC knowingly violated state law and acted unfairly in setting hundreds of thousands of Ohio employers’ workers’ compensation premium rates. The illegal rates were imposed on employers for over 15 years, until the lawsuit forced the agency to stop in 2009. BWC’s records submitted at trial indicated its conduct caused many thousands of employers to close due to shockingly high – and completely illegal – premium increases.

Demonstrators against police brutality took advantage of the busiest holiday shopping day of the year by staging a “die-in” at the Easton mall in Columbus on December 20, the Saturday before Christmas. Sixty or so activists gathered in the Easton mall food court, unfurled a banner proclaiming “Black Lives Matter,” and struck death poses on the floor.

Columbus police and mall security were there in large numbers, but a legal observer overheard orders to the police to “stand down.” Twenty to thirty bystanders, mostly young black adults, joined the demonstration. After a brief die-in, the demonstrators moved close to the AMC theatre area and proceeded to sing and chant: “No justice, no peace! No racist police!” and “Black Lives Matter!”

The group marched outside and overwhelmed the holiday musicians with their own musical performance. They also chanted “Hands up! Don’t shoot” and “This is what democracy looks like!”

Back inside the mall, one demonstrator gave a speech to the crowd about how the community was no longer going to tolerate racist police killings. Hundreds of shoppers stopped holiday consumption to record the events on their cellphone cameras.

On Saturday, Dec. 20, the usual holiday hustle at the Beavercreek Walmart was disrupted as nearly 200 protesters and activists took to the aisles to demand justice for the late John Crawford III, a 22-year old black man shot and killed by the local police department earlier this year.
 

The crowd first amassed in the pet department of the store, marking the spot where Crawford died. Once enough people gathered in the confined aisles, thus congesting the flow of shopping, Walmart management demanded all shoppers and protestors alike evacuate the store. For nearly two hours, all commerce came to a halt.  The protesters remained.

Tuesday afternoon about 100 people gathered at the base of the Peace statute on the east side of the Statehouse to protest the Grand Jury decision to not prosecute Ferguson, Missouri police officer Darren Brown in the shooting death of Michael Brown. The rally was peaceful with over a dozen speakers, mostly young people,urging black and white solidarity. 

“Are you ready to strike and refuse to work this Thanksgiving and Black Friday to protest Walmart's bullying?”

  That is this year’s rallying call from the Organization United for Respect – better known as OUR Walmart – as they try once again to convince Walmart associates across the county to strike on Black Friday.

  Formed in 2011, OUR Walmart is not a union; however, they receive financial support from the United Food and Commercial Union (UFCW). OUR Walmart is technically termed a “worker organization,” and joining requires a monthly fee of around $5. While worker organizations don’t have negotiating power, federal law permits worker organizations to speak out against employers without the threat of retaliation.

It all started as a house burglary in Reynoldsburg. It lead to missing dogs, a missing police service weapon, several arrests and a Columbus Police Detective implicated in a pattern of sex with minors. It then lead to nothing beyond a handful of juvenile prosecutions. The Free Press, as a matter of policy, does not identify minors or survivors of sex crimes. The Free Press has no problem identifying Detective Sergeant Terry McConnell, who is still the second watch supervisor of the Columbus Police Department's Special Victims Unit.

  Through the acquisition of police reports from the Reynoldsburg Police Department, the story leads to the Columbus Police Internal Affairs division and the Franklin County Prosecutor's office. It then ends abruptly.

As the nation waits on President Barack Obama to unveil his “Ten Point Plan” for overhauling the U.S. Immigration policy via executive action, which may suspend deportations for millions, one family in Columbus may be broken apart soon.

  When Ángel Bustos arrived at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office in Columbus on October 27, he never imagined that he might never see his wife April and 7-year-old son Christian again. Ángel was accustomed to weekly meetings with ICE while his petition to remain in the U.S. was being processed. David Deweese, supervising ICE officer for the Columbus field office, denied Ángel’s petition.

  Ángel was arrested and has been in detention since. Today, Ángel is fighting to stay with family and asking Deweese to exercise prosecutorial discretion to make this happen.

  The Department of Homeland Security's frequent deportation of low-level offenders, undocumented minors and breadwinners for U.S. citizens has rallied immigrant rights activists and organizers asking to “Stop The Deportations.”

First in a series

Since the Bush-Cheney-Rove theft of the 2000 election in Florida, the right of millions of American citizens to vote and have that vote counted has been under constant assault.

In 2014, that systematic disenfranchisement may well have delivered the US Senate to the Republican Party.  If nothing significant is done about it by 2016, we can expect the GOP to take the White House and much more.

The primary victims of this GOP-led purge have been young, elderly, poor and citizens of color who tend to vote Democratic.  The denial of their votes has changed the face of our government, and is deepening corporate control of our lives and planet.

There’s no doubt the Democrats have alienated their core constituency and given millions of their former supporters little reason to vote.  Perpetual war, blank checks for mega-banks, stiffing the working poor while giving away the planet to the rich----these are all part of the malaise.   Our political landscape is currently defined by corporate personhood and its gutting of the Democratic Party.  

Anita Rios received nearly 100,000 votes as the Green Party candidate for governor this Election Day 2014. This 3.3% of all votes in Ohio needs to be placed in historical context. The Ohio Greens needed 2% of the statewide vote to remain on the ballot for future elections.

In five Ohio counties, the Greens polled more than 4% of the total vote: Athens County at 6.52%, Franklin County at 4.53%, Cuyahoga County at 4.28%, Portage County at 4.4% and Meigs County at 4.3. The only counties showing Rios votes under 2% were Darke, Mercer and Putnam. She received more than 2% in all 85 remaining Ohio counties.

The Green Party, committed to grassroots democracy and reining in unfettered corporate capitalism, reached numbers in Ohio that often reflect a much broader mass progressive movement.

In 1932 for example, Norman Thomas received 2.2% of the vote as the Socialist candidate for President. Scholars speak of the Socialist Party as the last mass movement of the “Old Left.” The high point of the Old Left was Eugene Debs’ 6% of the vote, gained in 1912 at the apex of the progressive era.