Free Press History

HARVEY WASSERMAN - ET AL.

The global crisis at six Ukrainian atomic reactors and fuel pools has escalated to an apocalyptic threat that demands immediate action.

Protecting our lives on this planet now demands immediate deployment of a United Nations peacekeeping force to operate and protect this plant.

A petition is now circulating to help make that happen.

This week Russian occupiers threw the Zaporizhzhia site into deepening chaos by firing Unit 4 up to “hot shutdown.”  Until July 25, Unit 4 had been in cold shutdown, along with Units 1,2,3 and 6. Unit 5 had been on hot shutdown to help power the plant.

But the Ukrainian nuclear agency Energoatom warns that putting Unit 4 up to hot shutdown is “a gross violation of the requirements of the license to operate this nuclear facility.”

The Russian military has occupied Zaporizhzhia since March, 2022.

The 5th Annual Jazz and Vegan Ribs Festival is here! Come out to enjoy vegan ribs & other vegan BBQ while listening to local jazz musicians!

The highly anticipated follow-up to the best-selling Courage in Cannabis anthology is finally here. The new volume by Dr. Bridget Cole Williams, M.D., – Courage in Cannabis, Volume 2: The Triumphant Stories – celebrates everyday heroes who have found purpose through their relationship with cannabis.

Saturday, July 29, 2023, 1:00 – 4:00 PM
Join us for a celebration of trans joy and resources at our upcoming Trans Block Party. Featuring DJ Diesel and free food from Maybe Cheese Born With It food truck, we'll be sharing information of legislative news in Ohio, creating space to meet and connect with other trans and gender non-conforming Ohioans, and provide resources on community care, mental health, and other affirming needs. 
Location:  Topiary Park, 480 E Town St. Columbus, OH 43215. 
 Website. 

Thursday July 27, 2023 at 6 PM
Whetstone Branch Library Meeting Room - 3909 N. High Street, Columbus 43214 

UPDATES: Issue 1 – RMLA – Courage in Cannabis launch

Several months have passed since the Ohio General Assembly decided to force its absolute power over statewide ballot initiatives with Issue 1, slated for an August 8th special election. This move is so foundationally important that it deserves tracking and updates. Here we go:                                            

THIS JUST IN!!

Andy Ginther and Columbus City Council continued to show their true colors at the Monday, July 24 Columbus City Council meeting.

Three separate Enterprise Zone 10-year 75 percent abatements were handed out without a blink of an eye totaling roughly $24.74 million dollars. But it doesn’t end there. The generosity of Ginther and company also included more taxpayer funds to help subsidize the construction of the Merchant Building totaling $31 million.

Recipients of the tax abatements included a $4.7 million hand out to the Trident Capital Group whose company assets are valued at about $1.2 billion. Local developer and friend of Ginther, Crawford Hoying, received a $9.6 million property tax gift. And not to be outdone was CCBCC Operations LLC which is the nation’s largest Coca-Cola bottler and who is owned by Coca-Cola Consolidated. Gross profits for Coca-Cola Consolidated in the first quarter of 2023 were $624 million and one share of Coca-Cola Consolidated is currently selling at $646. Do you think that just maybe they might be able to get by with paying their fair share of property taxes?

Reading the fascinating, apparently counter-intuitive report “Parched Peru is restoring pre-Incan dikes to solve its water problem” (Simeon Tegel, Washington Post, Dec. 12, 2022) helped me to crystalize and partially redirect more than 50 years of critical thinking as a scholar.

As a comparative historian, I taught, lecture, and write about the centrality of contradictions across many topics, in particular, the past and present of literacy, children and youth, cities, and interdisciplinarity. Among my books on those subjects are, for example, The Literacy Myth (1979 and 1991), The Legacies of Literacy (1987), and Searching  for Literacy (2022); Conflicting Paths: Growing Up in America (1995); The Dallas Myth, 2008); Undisciplining Knowledge: Interdisciplinarity in the Twentieth Century (2015).

Wednesday, July 19, 2023, 7:00 PM
In its starred review of War Made Invisible, Kirkus Reviews called the book “a powerful, necessary indictment of efforts to disguise the human toll of American foreign policy” and “an incisive and provocative overview of the consequences of the media’s appalling failures in making important truths known.”

The review summarized War Made Invisible this way: “With formidable clarity, Solomon, the executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy and author of War Made Easy, documents how the so-called war on terror has spawned an endless and secretive program of foreign interventions. The author is particularly eloquent in explaining how the media’s exclusive focus on past and potential ‘American suffering’ in framing such activities has meant that ‘there [isn’t] much room to see or care about the suffering of others, even if—or especially if—it was caused by the United States.’

Are you struggling to pay rent in Columbus? Are those creeping student loan payments causing you anxiety? Is healthcare forcing you to pick up extra hours at work?

Well, good news! Your tax dollars are about to be going to work for you by going to an international developer with $1 trillion in assets to build less than 600 apartment rooms that have no guarantee to be affordable to anyone who doesn’t work downtown.

Blackstone, an international investment group owning more than 150 companies, was approved yesterday by Columbus City Council for re-zoning changes as a first step towards tax abatements. According to the Guardian, “Over the past two decades, (Blackstone) has quietly taken control of apartment blocks, care homes, student housing, railway arches, film studios, offices, hotels, logistics warehouses and datacentres.” They are the largest commercial landlord in world history.