Friday, January 23, 1 – 2pm EST
Ohio Statehouse, 1 Capitol Sq, Columbus, OH 43215

ICE has been inflicting a reign of terror in our communities. They are showing us, in real time, what their power looks like: masked agents, raids in our neighborhoods, our families terrorized, and our allies and leaders targeted for standing with immigrant workers. This is not “enforcement.” It’s intimidation. It’s state violence designed to make people keep their heads down and accept the unacceptable.

Join SEIU District 1199 WV/KY/OH, Common Cause Ohio, Indivisible Central Ohio, Ohioans Against Extremism, Ohio Families Unite for Political Action and Change (OFUPAC), other allies and partners, and community members at the High Street side of the Ohio Statehouse at 1 PM to meet history where it stands. We can mourn publicly and organize relentlessly. We can resist authoritarianism without apology, and we can win.

Let’s make it clear to all that when ICE comes for one of us, they answer to all of us.

A colleague, an editor at a widely read outlet that centered Gaza throughout the two-year genocide, recently voiced his frustration that Gaza is no longer a main focus in the news.

He hardly needed to say it. It is evident that Gaza has already been pushed to the margins of coverage — not only by mainstream Western media, long known for its structural bias in Israel’s favor, but also by outlets often described, accurately or not, as ‘pro-Palestine.’

At first glance, this retreat may appear routine. Gaza during the height of the genocide demanded constant attention; Gaza after the genocide, less so.

But this assumption collapses under scrutiny, because the genocide in Gaza has not ended.

Trump’s approach to Greenland has something in common with his (Cutting-)Board of Peace approach to Palestine: not even the slightest pretense of involving the people impacted. The residents of Kalaallit Nunaat were never asked about the existing permissions for the U.S. military to build bases in their land and are not being asked now about a “deal” made between Trump and, not even Denmark but, Trump’s servant, the Secretary General of NATO.

“Oh, what a relief to have a deal,” shout the corporate media, after Trump yet again threatens WWIII and then proposes something else. The something else has yet to ever be anything actually desirable.

The people of neither Greenland nor the Earth as a whole have been asked whether, as fossil fuel consumption and other human activities heat the planet and melt the ice, the U.S. military should seek out newly exposed Arctic areas in which to find more fossil fuels with which to finish the job.

The first of a series of “Forums for a Nuclear-Free New York” was held last week following New York Governor Kathy Hochul’s proposition for an expansion of nuclear power in New York State. Earlier in the week she called in a “State of the State” address for an additional four gigawatts of nuclear power in New York, the energy generation equivalent of four large nuclear power plantsThis continued Hochul’s nuclear drive through 2025 pushing for the state to become the center of a nuclear power “revival” in the United States and then proposing one gigawatt of new nuclear power in New York.

This first forum, a webinar on January 15, was titled a “Symposium for Safe and Affordable Energy in New York.” It was organized by a coalition of safe-energy and environmental organizations and moderated by Alec Baldwin, actor and nuclear power opponent. It featured Dr. Mark Z. Jacobson, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University and director of its Atmosphere/Energy Program, and Joseph Mangano, executive director of the Radiation and Public Health Project. 

[Content Warning - Sexual Violence and Child Exploitation]

Under the Trump administration, the Department of Homeland Security likes to claim that every immigrant is a criminal. But a new list shows the real criminals work for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Border Patrol. Said Lynn Tramonte, Executive Director of the Ohio Immigrant Alliance, “As the government pushes to hire new agents rapidly, background checks and vetting processes are being tossed aside. How many more predators are in the process of joining these federal agencies? No one knows, and that is terrifying.”