Human Rights
Image
On 13 June 1980, Pan Africanists, African scholars, political activists and scholars of various disciplines were stunned by the news – Walter Rodney was dead at the age of 38. He died in Guyana, his home, as a result of a car bomb that also injured his brother, Donald. Recently returned from Zimbabwe in southern Africa where he had celebrated the independence of that nation from settler colonialism, Rodney had once again thrown himself into developing a Guyanese coalition of all who were historically disenfranchised in the South American nation – the poor, various ethnic groups and women.
Best known as the author of How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, a classic exposition of the deliberate impoverishment of African nations, Rodney was also a dedicated activist who worked tirelessly in the Caribbean, Tanzania and Guyana to ensure an equitable distribution of resources for all. He founded the Working People’s Alliance in Guyana and its growth as a credible opposition is believed to have led to his death.
Image
March 29 was just another working day for two working journalists from the Toledo Blade. They began by attending a press conference at a Ford factory in Lima, Ohio. On the way back to the office, the pair, Jetta Fraiser and Tyrel Linkhorn, were assigned to update their publication's stock photo library by taking exterior shots of industrial facilities in the area. Their trip to a Heinz ketchup plant was followed by a stop at the General Dynamics tank plant. That is where the camouflage painted face of post constitutional America raised its ugly head and the day turned sour. The conduct of the soldiers on American soil has caused Fraiser and Linkhorn's employer, the Toledo Blade to file a federal lawsuit against the army, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, and several individual soldiers.
The pair were engaged in a routine, unglamorous journalistic task. Pull up to a building, take some photos of the building, go back to the office, and catalog the photos in case they might one day be relevant to some future story. Fraiser, who was handling the camera, took photos of a driveway entrance to a sprawling plant with an unmanned guard post, a chain link fence and a grass median.
Image
OKCupid members arriving at the site via a Firefox browser today are being asked to make a choice and stand up against anti-gay bigotry. At the center of the controversy is Firefox's new CEO, Brendan Eich, who donated money in support of California Prop 8 back in 2008.
Visitors to the site browsing with Firefox received a special message from OKCupid stating, “Hello there, Mozilla Firefox user. Pardon this interruption of your OkCupid experience. Mozilla’s new CEO, Brendan Eich, is an opponent of equal rights for gay couples. We would therefore prefer that our users not use Mozilla software to access OkCupid.”
Visitors were then offered redirect tabs to download alternatives to the Mozilla Firefox web browser. The move is a bold piece of activism in a tech industry becoming more willing to flex its political muscle.
The Prop 8 ballot measure instituted a statewide ban on gay marriage in California after winning at the polls with the help of large donations from the right wing. It temporarily redefined marriage in California as specifically a union between a man and a woman.
Image
Recently Facebook has been on a media offensive. They have been touting their March 28 purchase of experimental Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV, called drones) manufacturer Ascenta. Ascenta has built a solar-powered extreme endurance drone that can remain aloft at high altitude for years. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg sees this as the key to his dream of expanding internet access in the developing world. Facebook's planned deployment of drone-based internet will compete directly with Google's planned use of high altitude balloons to expand rural connectivity in the developing world in what it calls Project Loon. Both projects have the leave the door wide open to the surveillance state in ways that neither advertise. Ascenta's connections to the defense industry are well documented.
Facebook's plan is to have Ascenta's drones constantly circle an area at an altitude above 65,000 feet. This altitude would keep the lingering UAVs out of the way of both commercial air traffic and harmful weather. From that altitude the drones would provide a point of internet connectivity for cellular and wireless devices either directly, or via line of sight base stations.
Image
Yes, Columbus, thereis a Columbus Police Department ChronicComplainers List. After publishing aJanuary 30, 2014 cover story “Are you on the Columbus Police’s secret blacklist?” the Columbus Free Press has obtained a copy of a so-called “Caller Watch List”through a public records request. This list, along with other documents, raises new concerns surrounding the police department’s controversial inaction on phone calls from certain Columbus residents.
Two people listed, James A. Whitaker, Jr. and Bernadine Kennedy Kent, wrote an email to Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O’Brien claiming they were unfairly included on the Caller Watch List. Their previous work as whistleblowers has provided evidence that led to the felony conviction of a vendor in the Columbus City School’s tutoring scandal.
The Free Press obtained the email trail including Whitaker and Kent’s email to O’Brien, and then another email that appears to be from O’Brien to Jeff S. Furbee, Chief Police Legal Advisor for City Attorney Richard Pfeiffer.
Image
"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross."
-- Sinclair Lewis
Dissatisfied with the Boy Scouts of America's new policy permitting openly gay boy scouts, a new Christian alternative, called Trail Life, emerged in 2013 and began a public relations blitzkrieg this past week. The group, which already has more than 100 chartered troops, has materials and rules but no uniforms as of yet. The press offensive played up the group's values and growth and garnered write-ups in the San Jose Mercury News, Seattle Post-Intelligencer and MSNBC, among others. The mainstream press was happy to print photos of young “trailblazers” giving what appears to be a Nazi-style salute without criticism, but did not seem eager to research the background of the group's leaders and their connections.
Image
The FBI may have you on a terrorist list. Have you been to see “Gasland” or attended a zoning meeting on fracking?
The Columbus Free Press obtained a July 23, 2013 FBI's Philadelphia Joint Terrorism Task Force report on “Environmental Extremists.” The FBI and the Pennsylvania State Patrol coauthored the report that lumps virtually all activists engaged in protests against fracking for natural gas together as potential violent terrorists. The report includes photos of protests and protestors in Ohio along with photos of low grade black powder pipe bombs found unarmed and undetonated near natural gas drilling operations in rural Pennsylvania.
Madeline ffitch, of Millfield, Ohio, was arrested for blockading an entrance way to a fracking wastewater injection well site on June 26, 2012. She was arrested while locked to two 50-gallon cement filled drums, effectively shutting down the well site.
In 1973 six black men filed a class action lawsuit in the US District Court, Southern District, Eastern division, against Columbus city officials for racial discrimination in the hiring of firefighters. The city was found guilty of employing practices that “established prima facia showing of racially adverse impact by city officials employment practices for firefighters.” Knowing the trajectory of our history allows us to conclude that there were several barriers to the recruitment and hiring of African Americans as firefighters and the court based its findings on easiest observable obstacles to African American employment in the fire department. What they didn’t, or couldn’t, account for – in a document based on constitutional precepts- are the systemic obstacles that retard our progress: low high school graduation rates, low family employment and higher dishonorable military discharges.
“I’m a football player, and I’m gay.” With those words, Michael Sam, an All-American defensive end from the University of Missouri, demonstrated courage far beyond that demanded on the football field. And America may, for the first time, witness an openly gay man playing professional football.
“I just want to own my own truth,” said Sam, fully aware of what he risked by standing up. There are no openly gay athletes in the NFL, NBA, NHL or major league baseball.
That’s not to say there are no gay professional athletes. There have always been gays in professional sports, just as there have been in all professions — lawyers, doctors, bricklayers and steelworkers. Some came out of the closet after they retired. Many gays were known, or widely suspected, by teammates but not admitted publicly. When Jerry Smith, a tight end for the Washington Redskins, died of AIDS, some of his teammates served as pallbearers. It was rumored that he was gay when he was playing. His teammates rallied to him, partly because he could play.
“I just want to own my own truth,” said Sam, fully aware of what he risked by standing up. There are no openly gay athletes in the NFL, NBA, NHL or major league baseball.
That’s not to say there are no gay professional athletes. There have always been gays in professional sports, just as there have been in all professions — lawyers, doctors, bricklayers and steelworkers. Some came out of the closet after they retired. Many gays were known, or widely suspected, by teammates but not admitted publicly. When Jerry Smith, a tight end for the Washington Redskins, died of AIDS, some of his teammates served as pallbearers. It was rumored that he was gay when he was playing. His teammates rallied to him, partly because he could play.
Image
The Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT) is the largest charter school in the state of Ohio.
The online school is easily the largest charter school in Ohio and would be ranked as the 12th largest school district in the state. ECOT received over $88 million in state funding for the 2012-13 school year and funding is expected to jump to over $92 million this school year.
On the latest report cards released by the Ohio Department of Education, ECOT continues to rank below all of the 8 large urban schools that are often-criticized by legislators and in the media for their “sub-par” performance.
For graduation rate, a key indicator for the long-term success of a school/district, ECOT’s 4-year graduation rate is a paltry 35.3 percent, while their 5-year graduation rate of 37.8 percent, which is only slightly higher, was still over 25 percentage points worse than the lowest urban school district, Cleveland, which checked in at 63.3 percent.