Local
First, heartfelt thank you goes out to Mercer County Common Pleas Judge Jeffrey Ingraham for answering prayers for leniency. Wisdom, kindness, compassion. Justice as it should be.
There’s a story here, one that winds through small town America, Halloween, a drug bust, qualifying medical conditions, hostile prosecution, an arduous three years, a half million dollars and justice for patients in the end.
It all began in Rockford, a village of 1,120 people in Mercer County on the far west side of Ohio. White rural Republican red state, it’s a place where miles of soybeans, wheat and corn align razor straight roads. A “Mayberry” of the Midwest.
Ghosts and goblins have been known to haunt Halloween, usually as costumed kids ringing nearby doorbells in pursuit of candy and cookies. A knock on the door of the Keeling family on October 31, 2017, however, took on more ghoulish proportions.
So-called "Stand Your Ground" laws go by all of these names for one clear reason: they are a license to murder. Using the guise of “self defense,” they fuel gun homicides — especially homicides of Black Americans, like Trayvon Martin and Ahmaud Arbery. They are already law in at least 25 states. Even though we have fought this dangerous legislation a number of times Ohio lawmakers are still hearing and considering a “Stand Your Ground” bill to send to Gov. DeWine’s desk. OCAGV is joining a coalition of Ohio-based groups, civil rights and racial justice organizations, and more in an effort to mobilize Americans everywhere to tell Gov. DeWine that the entire nation is watching – and he must reject any Stand Your Ground bill that arrives at his desk!
Recently I've become aware that OSU wants to build a new power plant that runs on fracked gas, and it's got me pretty angry both as a student and as a taxpayer. I’m a third-year undergraduate student at OSU's School of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences. The global climate crisis is no new topic to me. I've been hearing about it, its causes (chiefly fossil fuel usage) and its solutions (replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy sources), since the 1st grade. It's always been a looming problem in my mind but I always assumed that our society would adjust and solve the problem. Evidently, the steering wheel is still in the hands of people who don't feel the same urgency that my generation feels. I enrolled at OSU because I thought of it as a cutting edge research school. I thought it'd be part of the solution to the biggest problems of this era. This proposal has shown me that the reality is much less promising.
In 1795, indigenous nations ceded much of the Ohio Country to the U.S. government as part of the Treaty of Greenville. The territory ceded as part of this treaty includes the land Ohio State University (OSU) resides on. The cession, as Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz wrote, was “a victory based on vicious irregular warfare.” She recounts U.S. forces “destroying Shawnee villages and fields and murdering women, children, and old men.” The decisive defeat for the indigenous nations that spurred their acceptance of the treaty was the Battle at Fallen Timbers, yet even after their victory, U.S. forces “continued for three days laying waste to Shawnee houses and cornfields.”
Saturday, August 1, 12 noon
Ohio Statehouse
Everyone is invited to this event, the mothers will be at the front of the march. We need bikers and medics for this event. There will be bookbags give away as well as raffle tickets for a gift basket with lots of goodies in there. Hosted by Underground United
Activists have been under heavy surveillance through body cams, street cameras and their social media, and many were explicitly targeted for arrest while on downtown streets over the previous several weeks, but Columbus police have entered a new strategic phase to end the protests and kill the movement.
The Free Press has confirmed the Columbus police began issuing warrants about a week ago against activists without the individual knowing, which is common practice for some serious crimes, but not for peacefully protesting.
After one warrant was secretly issued, the activist was then arrested several days later while protesting.
Several more activists, after discovering a warrant had been issued for their arrest, decided to turn themselves in, said a defense attorney who is representing these activists.
But instead of turning themselves into police, says the defense attorney, they decided on seeing the duty judge. The judge then set the warrant aside, or they plead not guilty and a recognizance bond was set.
“Five days isn’t enough time,” said a tearful Latosha Aaron-Gavin outside the temporary eviction courtroom at the Columbus Convention Center on a recent overcast morning.
The judge, while holding up the bright orange five-day set-out sticker, in a robotic tone had just told the 35-year-old mother her landlord was going to soon place the sticker on her front door.
Aaron-Gavin’s landlord is LINK Real Estate of Upper Arlington, which “proudly”endorsed City Council’s recent declaration that racism is a public health crisis.
“They’ve been telling me they just want their money, but they don’t care that my apartment floods every time it rains,” said Aaron-Gavin, who’s recent Amazon delivery job didn’t pan out.
She was also unable to receive unemployment and her stimulus check was used for March and April’s rent. She said she has paid rent to LINK for two years.
She wiped away another tear. “The pandemic put me here…”
Conveners: Pat Marida, Bob Fitrakis, Harvey Wasserman
Engineer: Trane DePriest
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The $60M bribed HB6 bailout is a national embarrassment and a statewide disaster.
The wind set-back clause must be repealed.
HB104 must be stopped.