Local

The Free Press is proud to salute one of our contributors, local photographer Bob Studzinski, for the honor or having his work included in a digital art display at the Louvre in Paris, France on July 13, 2015. One of his photographs was displayed among work by an international group of photographers from over 191 countries.
   Studzinski’s photograph was part the Fifth Annual Exposure Award, was included in a digital display of images presented at the Exposure Award Reception at the Louvre and in a Documentary Collection book. The curators congratulated him on having his work seen by over five million photo enthusiasts from around the world. Sales of the book will benefit the charity Pencils of Promise which is working to build schools in developing nations.

The latest politician to leap toward the GOP nomination is widely known as America’s most anti-green governor. But he has a critical decision coming up that could help change that. Ohio Gov. John Kasich has established a national reputation as a leading enemy of renewable energy and enhanced energy efficiency.
   When he took office in 2011, he opened fire by killing a $400 million federal grant to restore passenger rail service between Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton and Cincinnati. Columbus is the largest capital city in the western world that people cannot get to by train. It also has no internal commuter rail, making it what some have called “the mid-sized town technology forgot.” The rail grant had been painstakingly crafted over the better part of a decade by a broad bi-partisan coalition. It was poised to create hundreds of jobs and provide new opportunity for a number of small towns languishing along the restoration route.

Sara Nuber Thomas is a local amateur archaeologist who writes a blog called Expedition Finn: things to do in Ohio with a kid. The blog is named after her son of course, and through her day-trip expeditions she came across a 100-year-old archaeological map that showed the Central Ohio region dotted with Native American mounds and other peculiar looking earthworks. They wanted to see the mounds for themselves, and so they set out.

But what they found probably won’t surprise anyone, and she took pictures of what they saw and posted them on her blog. She ended up capturing images of aging country roads and newly built suburban houses, and of farmland too, but all the pictures were barren of anything created by the Native American pre-history cultures that once flourished here.

Black Lives Matter activists are under surveillance and attack here in Columbus.
   A Columbus Police report obtained by the Columbus Free Press indicates that the police would have been justified in shooting Torri Sablan, a prominent local civil rights activist, as she rode along with friend Ashley Henderson when they transported Alexander Paraskos to the hospital on August 1st this year.
    The police report included the chilling abbreviation Just. Hom. Circ. This means “justifiable homicide circumstance” – indicating the police would have been justified in killing Sablan.
   Police records describe LEOKA circumstances, indicating a “Law Enforcement Officer Killed or Assaulted.”
   How a going-away party thrown by activists and an innocent asthma attack turned into a potential police homicide situation is hotly disputed. Sablan and Henderson are black females and Paraskos is a transgender male -- all well-known political activists.

Mon, August 31, 10am, Public Utilities Commission of Ohio [PUCO], 180 E. Broad St.

The PUCO has postponed the hearings for the third time, to August 31, for which date we will reschedule our rally. Postponing is likely a good sign. PUCO has gotten a lot of push-back from the public, showing statistics that contradict the propaganda being fed to them by FirstEnergy. They will have a harder time rubberstamping the request and any complicity with industry would stand out.

Rally with the Sierra Club and others at the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio. Tell them, “Don’t charge electric ratepayers $3 billion to bail out FirstEnergy’s unprofitable coal plants and the aging, accident-plagued Davis-Besse nuclear reactor!”

FirstEnergy led the fight that overturned Ohio’s renewable and efficiency standards. Boo! Now the PUCO is going to decide whether to hand them an enormous monetary gift, at the expense of the public health and purse.

No bailouts! No kidding!

Teen flick tackles Israel’s cultural divide

If politicians were replaced by filmmakers, the hostility between Arabs and Israelis would soon evaporate. That’s the impression you get after watching any number of imported flicks that treat people on both sides of the issue with respect and understanding.

Often the stories focus on a friendship or romance between a Jew and a Muslim. Sometimes, as in the case of A Borrowed Identity, they focus on both.

Eyad (Tawfeek Barhom) is the proud son of Salah (Ali Suliman), a Palestinian Israeli who was forced to drop out of college after being implicated in a long-ago bombing. Salah wants his brainy son to have the opportunity he lost and is elated when Eyad is accepted into a prestigious school in Jerusalem.

As one of the school’s few Arabs, Eyad at first feels isolated. It’s not long, however, before he’s made his first two Jewish friends: Naomi (Danielle Kitzis), a flirtatious young woman, and Yonatan (Michael Moshonov), a fellow student who has muscular dystrophy.

   The Ohio Secretary of State, Jon Husted, declared that the citizens of Medina, Fulton, and Athens Counties may not vote on their own county charter initiatives, despite meeting requirements to place those initiatives on the November ballot.
   In a statement released yesterday, Mr. Husted – elected by the citizens of Ohio – made clear that his interests lie with the oil and gas industry, rather than We the People. Despite the people’s constitutional right to alter or reform their own government, Mr. Husted claims “unfettered authority and being empowered by the Ohio Revised Code” to deny the people their constitutional right.
   This summer, Medina, Fulton, and Athens County residents secured the necessary signatures to place county charter initiatives on the November ballot. Each of these counties faces fracking wastewater injection wells, LNG pipelines, and other infrastructure projects that threaten to pollute clean air and pure water, regardless of community wishes.

   Last month in Colorado, Iraqi veteran Steve Otero, with his toddler twin boys by his side, told a crowd at a Colorado Board of Health meeting, “Without cannabis, I’d be dead.” Otero said he had a noose (literally) around his neck when a civilian friend suggested he take a couple puffs off a joint to ease his troubled mind, and lo and behold, it worked. Yet even after the testimony of Otero, the Colorado Board of Health denied approving medical marijuana for PTSD due to a lack of hard information on the benefits of such treatment.
   Clearly, Colorado is conflicted, because a veteran can purchase marijuana for recreational use, but if the VA tests his or her urine and it’s positive for THC, they can lose their VA benefits. This is a perfect example of a few bureaucrats sticking to their ideology while also having their heads too far up you-know-where to realize what’s good for combat veterans when the only combat these health officials have experienced is a snow ball fight.

Book Review: This Non-Violent Stuff’ll Get You Killed: How Guns Made The Civil Rights Movement Possible

By Charles E. Cobb, Jr.