To the Editor:

Accountability is the bedrock of American justice. Yet, as I fight to end Qualified Immunity for government actors through the Ohio Coalition to End Qualified Immunity, I am now forced to fight a similar battle on a heartbreakingly personal front. ​My son, Terrell Michael Raphael Brown died May 26, 2022, at just 21 years old after being served a fatal volume of alcohol by a local establishment.

Common sense says that a business profiting from recklessly overserving a young man to the point of toxicity should be held liable. However, the Ohio Dram Shop Act (O.R.C. 4399.18) acts as a shield, granting statutory immunity to businesses and attempting to block a grieving family’s right to a jury trial. ​This law relies on a "First-Party" bar, effectively blaming the victim for their own death while ignoring the gross negligence of the establishment that kept pouring the drinks. This is legally and morally unsound.

The planet isn’t melting because of politics, culture, or morality. It’s melting because humans are operating out of alignment with the physical laws that govern reality. The consequences we are living through are not random — they are structural.

Enslavement, domination, and exploitation are not built into the structure of reality. They are human inventions. And when entire societies operate on ideas that violate natural balance, the effects show up in the world around us.

The imbalance we are living through — what many people call “the melt” — is the earth reacting to systems and behaviors that break natural law.

And here’s the truth behind that idea: the universe itself is immune to rebellion.

It works on laws that cannot be violated without consequence. We can pretend otherwise in our minds, but the physical world keeps the score.

You can defy the measure in your thoughts, but you cannot escape the consequence in the world.

That is why the planet melts.

Monday, December 1, 2025, 12:00 – 1:00 PM
Ohio Statehouse, Rotunda
Retired pastor Lea Austin will lead with a Litany for the Eulogy of Policy Violence.  

We refuse to accept policy violence as normal or inevitable.  

James Heddle, part of a social justice documentary filmmaking team with his wife Mary Beth Brangan, passed away in November 2025. The Free Press will forever be indebted to Jim and Mary Beth for documenting the election integrity movement that began after the stolen 2004 presidential election in Ohio.

In the chaotic days following the W Bush “victory” in 2004, Jim and Mary Beth joined dozens of activists in Columbus to help in the Free Press struggle to expose election fraud and refute the results. Their video “A Little Light’ll Do Ya” depicted the January 5 challenge to Ohio’s electoral votes in Congress. Jim and Mary Beth continued to partner with the Free Press and Ohio’s election integrity community for the next three election cycles. They covered election conferences, election protection activities, and election-related lawsuits brought by the Free Press’ Ohio Litigation project.