People
Carmen Szukaitis, a 21-year-old transgender fashion model attending Ohio University, will be profiled in Here-TV’s upcoming docuseries, Road to the Runway, premiering this August 5th.
The series profiles twenty hopefuls competing in this year’s annual Slay Model search. Slay Model Management is the premier management company representing transgender fashion talent.
Cameras followed the twenty women to their hometowns, including Athens, Ohio, to uncover their roots: the environments they were reared in and the circumstances that helped shape them into the beautiful, statuesque, fashionable young women they are today.
Rural Ohio and transgender people go together like oil and sweet water. But thankfully this is Athens, an island of open mindedness.
Nonetheless, Szukaitis, who was raised in Wooster, has faced a lifetime of scrutiny and judgement no “cis” could ever imagine. But after all the sour glances and cold shoulders, she suddenly finds herself on the cusp of stardom.
Columbus Police Lieutenant Melissa McFadden – whose book “Walking The Thin Black Line” exposed how the Division retaliated against her as she sought to make change from within – has won her federal racial discrimination suit against the City of Columbus.
The jury awarded Lt. McFadden just $2. Her book was also not about getting rich, as it has not earned her any compensation either.
In 2016, Lt. McFadden assisted a Black female officer in filing an EEO complaint with the Ohio Civil Rights Commission who claimed she was being unfairly treated by a white commanding officer.
The commander of the Internal Affairs Bureau at the time, Jennifer Knight, was overheard telling other officers the EEO complaint was “stupid,” and that she and others were going to retaliate against Lt. McFadden by “taking her out.”
McFadden was soon subjected to what she described in her book as the “CPD pile on.” A series of false allegations were made against her by fellow officers. She was a “black militant,” for example. She was relieved of her commanding officer duties and reassigned to the property room.
The Free Press is proud to announce that a cartoonist we publish, Clayton Jones of Virginia, is the 2022 winner of the RFK Human Rights Journalism Award in Editorial Cartooning. His work was awarded for its "unique style" which is "energetic" using "image and text to comment on larger issues." They stated that his cartoons hit on themes of human rights, imbalance of power and systemic racism. His work can be seen at freepress.org, columbusfreepress.com and our Facebook pages.
"Winners of the 2022 RFK Journalism Awards were selected in student and professional categories from over 350 entries across print, broadcast, and new media categories, encapsulating some of the most exemplary reporting from the past year," PR Newswire reported.
Over half of young trans people have contemplated suicide. Now up to a third of us could lose the care that’s been proven to prevent it.
In states across the country, small-minded lawmakers are pushing cruel, vicious new bills targeting transgender children.
These bills threaten to ban everything from medical care to even acknowledging the existence of trans people in the classroom. Many threaten parents and medical providers with prosecution. And all of them put the lives of young trans people at risk.
If these laws had been passed when I was transitioning, I might not be alive today.
As a trans student in middle school, I was dehumanized. I endured harassment, abuse, and physical violence for which I was the one punished. Even worse, my school responded to my coming out with harmful new policies.
For example, I was banned from the bathrooms. Instead of using the girls’ room near my classrooms, I had to go down two flights of stairs, across an open courtyard, into another school building, and all the way to the end of another building to use the nurse’s office bathroom.
Mark Stansbery, Free Press Board member, again did a fabulous job facilitating the May Second Saturday Cyber Salon on May 14.
See Video here.
The theme was International Worker’s Day in commemoration of May Day as the group celebrated the burgeoning new labor victories in central Ohio. Here is an article about Labor Day being May 1 by Nevin Siders.
In the world of policing where white men have set the rules for generations, two Black women will now be critiquing those rules in the city of Columbus—but they bring very different sensibilities to the task.
Janet Jackson is the first Chair of the Civilian Police Review Board (CPRB). Jacqueline Hendricks is the first Inspector General (IG).
Columbus voters approved the creation of their jobs in an amendment to the city charter in 2020. Mayor Andrew Ginther hand-picked Jackson, who previously served as city attorney and a municipal court judge. She was recently elected by the other ten members of the board for a second (and last) one-year term.
By all appearances, Jackson hand-picked Hendricks over serious objections from at least one board member, in a less than transparent process. With 35 years of criminal justice experience, Hendricks had retired from the Detroit Police Department and was working for the first Inspector General's office there when she applied for the Columbus position.
We’ve all heard of the old axiom about aging “like a fine wine.” Of course, in Ohio politics hardly anything is aging finely these days, including our recently-rendered-useless amendments to Ohio’s Constitution that attempted to curtail hyper-partisan gerrymandering, passed respectively in 2015 and 2018. Another thing on this list of items that “haven’t aged well” in Ohio politics is our feckless Governor Mike DeWine, who has ducked and dodged almost every difficult political battle he’s faced since taking office in 2019. He’s also seemingly always surrounded by corruption as the ever-growing HB 6 scandal gets closer and closer to his door. In fact, the name DeWine has grown so unpopular with Democrats, Libertarians –– and even Republicans –– that it’s hard to see exactly how our Governor wins reelection.
Just in time for the primary election on May 3, Homebound Entrepreneurs Against DeWines is putting its quirky political ad “Meet Mike DeSwine” on TV news channels around Ohio this week, while the PAC’s second ad “Tax Hike Mike” will be heard on conservative radio stations across the state by the weekend.
The PAC’s launch video “Meet Mike DeSwine” –– which debuted earlier in April –– received thousands of views on social media and featured the voices of Morgan Hughes from #SaveTheCrew and comedian Corey Ryan Forrester. The "Tax Hike Mike” ad slams Governor DeWine for keeping Ohio’s gas taxes high and features narration by podcaster Ben Kissel.
Today, Community Organizer and Producer/Host of GrassRoot Ohio Radio/Podcast Carolyn Harding is entering the Ohio State Representative race in Ohio, competing for the Democratic nomination for District (TBD, formerly District 18).
“I’m a Democrat running to represent our District at the Statehouse, to empower your Rights and your Vote,” said Carolyn Harding. “I will bring forward, brave leadership to the Statehouse with Equality, Sustainability and Justice for All as my guide. My campaign depends on everyday people, volunteers, and your contributions, not big corporate PACs or dark money.”
The inspiration for the April 2022 salon was Earth Month and WGRN 94.1 community radio’s Earth Day birthday celebration. Mark Stansbery facilitated the salon, first pointing out how back in 1970, Free Press folks helped start the first Earth Day in Columbus and have continually been at the forefront advocating for environmental issues.
Suzanne Patzer briefly reiterated the history of WGRN, which began in 2016 around Earth Day as an environmentally-focused, women-oriented, all-volunteer community radio station. Most of WGRN’s programming was put together by former Program Director Victoria Parks. Tim Chavez, WGRN programmer and scheduler, spoke about the diversity of WGRN’s current programming as a Pacifica affiliate with Democracy Now, the Thom Hartmann Show; the many national programs, and local producers.