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The Ohio State University strikes out again. From evidence-free slogans to an ordered, bought, and delivered “consultant’s report” to Campus unSafety non-Alerts and Campus unSafety Officers, who are inactive and lack direction. Note the repetition of Campus, and not Campus and Off-Campus or university area. Is the confusion ignorance or purposeful?

Shortly following OSU’s release of the Security Risk Management Consultant’s “Off-Campus Safety Assessment Report and Recommendations,” an off-campus student reported a gunshot through the window of his East 12th Avenue rental house. That “report” was commissioned from a New Albany-based, primarily “corporate campus” security evaluation firm that had never before studied an off-campus university area. Not surprisingly, it “praised” the university’s off-campus safety measures, adding a few modest, obvious, and long-overdue recommendations and photos of everyday, illegal trash.

Here’s what happened at the March 2022 Free Press Second Saturday Cyber-Salon, Saturday March 12.

Watch video here.

Facilitated by Free Press Board member Mark Stansbery, the salon addressed “Peace in the World.”

Harvey Wasserman, anti-nuke activist and senior Free Press Editor, spoke first about the nukes in Ukraine. He told us five of the 12 nuclear reactors in Ukraine were built by Soviets and all are over 30 years old. Chernobyl is one of the smallest ones and is now under control of the Russians. The explosion at Chernobyl in April 1986 was the worst nuclear accident in the world, overshadowed later by the meltdown at Fukushima, which was the equivalent of 100 times the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. After the Chernobyl disaster, the the Russians seeded the clouds above Ukraine so that it would rain the radioactivity over them instead of Russia. Even a nuclear plant that is shut down is a radioactive threat.

Sunday, March 13, 12noon
Nationwide Plaza One
Join us to support Ukraine and peace. Hosted by Ukranian Cultural Association of Ohio.

Saturday, March 12, 2022, 7:00 PM
Since we aren't getting together in person, we can gather for a couple hours on the second Saturday night of each month.  
Topic: Peace in the World. Join Zoom meeting here: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83906590837. Meeting ID: 839 06. 

Last week, Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine after a visceral speech laced with lies and threats of nuclear annihilation.Today, Russian nuclear forces are at a level of combat readiness unseen since some of the most dangerous moments of the Cold War. Any nuclear exchange between the United States and Russia could result in global death and the complete environmental devastation of our planet – a terrifying possibility. 

So far, the Biden administration has thankfully chosen not to respond to Putin’s nuclear threats. While we are encouraged by President Biden’s decision in choosing restraint, this is a moment to draw a clearer line and publicly affirm a policy of no first use. 

President Biden has the power to de-escalate and send a strong signal of leadership and restraint in this moment. 

Policy Matters Ohio, the non-profit lobbying for progressive values at the Ohio Statehouse and across Ohio, is mobilizing against HB 327 and HB 322, two bills that could ban “divisive teaching” such as Critical Race Theory or CRT.

The Ohio legislature has been pushing the whitewashing of American history. Critics of HB 327 say that besides censoring schools and teachers, the bill could result in school districts losing funding, schools losing their AP (Advanced Placement) designation, teachers facing civil litigation from parents and the further degradation and privatization of our public schools, especially those in urban districts.

Policy Matters Ohio is a founding member of Honesty for Ohio Education, a statewide coalition of over 30 organizations,which held a press conference on Wednesday at the Statehouse.

Honesty for Ohio Education has a simple mission: “Defend Ohio students’ freedom to learn and educators’ freedom to teach a full, honest history of our nation.”

As I have written in these and other publications, Columbus is poorly served by its major media, from its no-longer-daily Columbus Dispatch, owned and operated by the USA Today/Gannett chain, to its three network TV affiliates and its NPR affiliate. None actively and reliably serve their publics or fulfill the press’s and media’s historical and democratic mission. (See my columns, “Columbus’ identity crisis and its media”; “Response to Columbus Alive, ‘The list: Reasons that Columbus Underground opinion piece is trash,’ by Andy Downing and Joel Oliphint, Columbus Alive, July 26: A visit to journalism fantasy land”; “The Columbus Dispatch – The decline of a metropolitan daily newspaper”; and “WOSU, the nation’s worst NPR affiliate?

Vulnerable atomic reactors in a war zone?!  Please join us this TONIGHT Thursday, March 10, at 7 pm EST (https://kinema.com/e

The race to break the glass ceiling in Ohio by electing a woman as governor or as U.S. senator this year has been superseded by the aggressive actions by the highest ranking female elected official in Ohio, the one and only Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor.

Republican O'Connor must have gotten a hold of a piece of a glass ceiling in the Statehouse warehouse and is smashing it repeatedly on the heads of the five Republican members of the Ohio Redistricting Commission with a little help from the three Democratic members of the high court.

Talk about the revenge of a feminist. Talk about a woman who has played the go along, get along game pretty well until now when  the five white males running the state and the redistricting commission just plain pissed her off and she went rogue. She proceeded to figuratively bang the glass ceiling on their noggins not once, not twice, but three times with a fourth and fifth conk likely soon.

Gong No. 1. She and the three Dems turned down the first set of new district boundaries for the Ohio House and Senate.

Gong No. 2. They rejected the second set.