Local

A group of locally-based, high-profiled corporations are financially backing the Issue 2 campaign – for a civilian review board of the Columbus Police – but when asked whether they would officially endorse it publicly, or encourage their employees and customers to vote ‘yes,’, the answer was ‘no.’

The Columbus Partnership, the region’s so-called public-private partnership seeking prosperity for all Central Ohioans, and its biggest players have (quietly) contributed to the Issue 2 campaign. This includes Huntington Bank, Nationwide Insurance, Cardinal Heath and JP Morgan.

But they aren’t putting their mouth where their money is.

Huntington Bank was the only one to respond to repeated emails asking whether they would publicly endorse a ‘yes’ vote to finally bring a civilian review board to Columbus.

As many know, Columbus is one of the largest US cities without a civilian review board to independently investigate citizen complaints against police, and city residents are set to make a historic vote on November 3 to create one within the city charter.

Tuesday, October 27, 2020, 12:00 - 1:30 PM
Noam Chomsky, Institute Professor, MIT and Professor of Linguistics, University of Arizona.  The world is facing unprecedented crises on several fronts. Lack of leadership by the United States has intensified many flash points around the world including nuclear threats and the abandonment of arms control negotiations, bio-safety, climate change, food insecurity, instability and tensions in the East, and increased pressure from nationalists and extremists at home and abroad. This Tuesday seminar series will capture a subset of these critical issues facing humanity and the planet. Register for webinar here.

More Tuesday, October 27 events listed here.

Released in time for the election, Fish in a Barrel is an exposé of how the NRA’s history of alleged campaign violations have stymied popular efforts to make even modest reforms on access to firearms, despite hundreds of mass shootings in the United States over the past two decades. The NRA’s electoral enterprise ended up being gamed by Russian agents of influence in the 2016 election, as detailed in the 2019 U.S. Senate Finance Committee report: The NRA & Russia: How a Tax-Exempt Organization Became a Foreign Asset. 

“As mass shootings have continued, the NRA obstructs any effort at reform to prevent future massacres. It’s angering watching politicians tweet ‘Thoughts and prayers,’ then do nothing to stop it from happening again,” says director John Wellington Ennis. “But when I learned that the NRA had become a Russian asset while working to elect Trump, I knew I had to do something.”

Monday, October 26, 2020, 3:30 PM.

Sunday, October 25, 4-7pm
400 West Rich

Saturday, October 24, 1pm
Early Voting site, Franklin County Board of Elections, 1700 Morse Rd.
Hosted by Ohio Women's Alliance Action Fund, Planned Parenthood Advocates of Ohio and Ohio Women's Alliance

In the race for Franklin County prosecutor between longtime Republican incumbent Ron O’Brien and his Democratic challenger, former 10th District Court of Appeals judge Gary Tyack, some progressives are supporting Tyack because of O’Brien’s unimpressive record on police misconduct cases. It’s true Tyack could hardly do worse in that regard.

But based on Tyack’s handling of my 2013 whistleblower case against the state government, I doubt he’s committed to protecting victims of governmental injustice and holding the perpetrators accountable. If Tyack is elected, progressives should watch and pressure him to ensure he doesn’t act like a lapdog and cover-up artist for the Columbus establishment.

The whistleblower case resulted from my employer, the Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation, imposing discipline on me for reporting unlawful, but noncriminal, acts in state government to the Ohio inspector general’s office. During oral argument at the appeals court, Tyack expressed no concern about what the agency did.

Police Lieutenant Melissa McFadden got done walking the “thin black line” and took a great leap of faith into the abyss of justice. Imagine if you can demonstrators going directly to police headquarters on the National Day of Protest to Stop Police Brutality. Bravely the lead speaker steps to the mic and screams “No Justice!” We know the reply. “No Peace!” She chants “Black Lives Matter!” But then she does the big reveal. She just finished her workday at police headquarters. And, by the way, she is the highest-ranking black woman in the department. A 24-year veteran of the force.

 The October 22 rally at the Columbus Police Department on Marconi Boulevard in downtown Columbus was dedicated to supporting McFadden who is under fire for the revelations in her new book “Walking the Thin Black Line: Confronting Racism in the Columbus Division of Police.”

The Heartbeatmovement called the rally to make a show of community support for McFadden, who has reported she’s been threatened and harassed since the book was published. About fifty people gathered with signs reading #StandwithMelissaMcFadden and Black Lives Matter.

Less than two weeks to go until Election Day – what can you do?

Begin by reading Greg Palast’s How Trump Stole 2020: The Hunt for America’s Vanished Voters and then go out and stop the theft.

Not only is Palast one of our premier investigative reporters he is also a great storyteller, and the best part, the stories are all factual.

This latest tome reads like a rogue’s gallery of real crime. Because they are rogues and they committed real crimes.

Palast came to notoriety in 2000 when he revealed the illegal voter purges in Florida that cost Gore the election. Back then he focused on Governor Jeb Bush and Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris. In the new book he stalks, rightly, the likes of Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and documents in detail how he helped rig the election he ran against Stacey Abrams in 2018. Kemp used his power as Secretary of State to purge 665,677 voters, overwhelmingly Democrats.

Now Palast spells out the big purge states of 2020: Ohio with 432,000 axed from the voting rolls; North Carolina with 576,534 purged; Arizona with 258,000; and Wisconsin with 99,000.