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Friday, February 4, 7:30-9pm, this event will be live-streamed on “Facebook Live”

Serious love songs, humorous trivia questions, and surprises will highlight the 13th annual Valentines concert by Bill Cohen and friends from 7:30pm to 9pm on Friday, February 4.

With guitar and piano, Bill will sing favorites from the 1940s through the 1980s, made famous by John Denver, the Everly Brothers, Sam Cooke, Bette Midler, James Taylor, Bing Crosby, the Shirelles, the Eagles, the Beatles, Nat King Cole, Johnny Mathis, and others.

While the songs will reflect the ecstasy, warmth, heartache, and pain that love can bring, there will be a lighter side too, as Bill poses trivia questions about famous and infamous couples and love songs throughout the decades.

The online concert is free, but if you appreciate the music, memories, and fun, we’ll welcome donations to help produce the upcoming Central Ohio Folk Festival in May.

Smedley Butler is generally left out of U.S. history. If you bring up a guy who prevented a Wall Street coup against FDR, you do real damage to the tale of peaceful respect for government from the beginning of time up through January 6, 2021. If you mention the scandal that erupted when he recounted how Mussolini had run over a little girl with his car, it’s hard to leave out the U.S. government’s friendly relations with Mussolini.

Interestingly, it was Cornelius Vanderbilt IV, who had been in the car with Mussolini and who had told his friend Smedley Butler about it, who later recounted in his autobiography a second Wall Street coup plot that he said he had exposed to Eleanor Roosevelt and thereby her husband, and successfully put a stop to. For some reason we never celebrate Vanderbilt as the savior of the U.S. government in the way that those of us who’ve heard of him do Smedley Butler, even though Vanderbilt turned against oligarchs as Butler turned against warmakers.

Friday, February 4, 2022, 12:00 PM 

Homeowners who live in homeowner associations and condo associations could soon have the right to install solar panels on their roofs. With a 32 to 1 vote, the Ohio Senate earlier this week passed Senate Bill 61, a bill making it easier to install rooftop solar. The bill moves to the House of Representatives for further consideration. 

The single ‘no’ in the Ohio Senate came from Republican Niraj Antani (R-Miamisburg). Antani, who previously served three terms as an Ohio House of Representative. Antani made national headlines in 2018 suggesting students over the age of 18 should be able to bring rifles to school.

Antani also in 2018 accepted $7,000 from the Friends of Larry Householder PAC, which has since 2015 received $120,000 in donations from FirstEnergy Political Action Committee ($38,708), the Ohio Coal PAC ($18,700), and the American Electric Power Committee for Responsible Government ($17,500).

Even so, the nonprofit Solar United Neighbors, with a mission to further rooftop solar and advocate for solar policies, told the Free Press that fossil fuel and utility lobbies have not weighed in on the bill.

Today, I tell a story. It is both familiar and out of the ordinary. It focuses on a new friend whose personal and family history merits widespread attention in Columbus, Ohio, and across the nation. The family is second- and third-generation Palestinian Americans who contribute in remarkable ways to our society, culture, and polity.

For understandable but not acceptable reasons, it is much more common to tell stories about Black, Latino, and Asian brothers and sisters than Middle Easterners. Prejudice remains.

The grandfather to today’s younger generations emigrated from Lebanon to Columbus 40 years ago. Born in Palestine, he immigrated to Lebanon at age 10 during the 1947 war. After graduating from high school and university, he worked with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for more than 25 years. As a refugee, he had a life-long commitment to education and service for which he is remembered by all who knew him. He was devoted both to adaptation and to the transmission of Arabic and his heritage.

WHEN: Thursday, February 17, 7pm
WHERE: Jimmy V's, 1788 West 5th Ave., Grandview
Link to Facebook event here.

A new book features frontline stories from a movement fighting corporate and state power in Ohio.

For over eight years, organizers with the Ohio Community Rights Network (OHCRN) have worked hard with CELDF to propose and pass county charters, city charter amendments and city ordinances recognizing protective local self-governance and the Rights of Nature. In Death by Democracy — we hear directly from them.

Ballot initiatives they advanced, like the Lake Erie Bill of Rights, made international headlines and expanded peoples’ political imaginations. But in the end, a power structure revealed itself that saw all branches of the government of Ohio and corporate interests go so far as to alter state law to repress the movements’ tactics and remove a total of 14 qualified initiatives from local ballots, despite all measures gathering sufficient signatures and satisfying all administrative requirements.

Hidden in plain sight, the extreme hypocrisy of the U.S. position on NATO and Ukraine cries out for journalistic coverage and open debate in the USA’s major media outlets. But those outlets, with rare exceptions, have gone into virtually Orwellian mode, only allowing elaboration on the theme of America good, Russia bad.

Aiding and abetting a potentially catastrophic -- and I do mean catastrophic -- confrontation between the world’s two nuclear superpowers are lawmakers on Capitol Hill. Like the media they echo and vice versa, members of Congress, including highly touted progressives, can scarcely manage more than vague comments that they want diplomacy rather than war.

The Central Ohio Worker Center has put together an Employee Rights Handbook. The Handbook includes easily readable and understandable essential information regarding workers' rights that all workers should know. It provides basic information regarding employment laws and legal protections, including federal and state minimum wage and overtime law, employment discrimination, non-compete clauses, laws protecting the right to join with coworkers, the new Columbus Wage Theft Ordinance, anti-retaliation laws, and worker's compensation protection.  This information is particularly relevant to low-wage, minority, and immigrant workers since they are often the victim of workers' rights violations. Vulnerable populations deserve better than to be taken advantage of for their work.