Stylistically, Finnish writer/director Aki Kaurismäki’s Fallen Leaves is set in the same social milieu as Italian Neo-Realist films, the working class. But while its proletarian protagonists are similar in class to, say, Vittorio De Sica’s 1948 drama Bicycle Thieves, Fallen Leaves is a romantic comedy. Blue collar boy meets girl on the wrong side of the tracks in Helsinki. Ansa (Alma Pöysti) and the hard drinking Holappa (Jussi Vatanen) are lonely thirty-somethings, searching for love and intimacy in this movie full of dry wit that’s likely to cause viewers to smile often, and perhaps laugh out loud a few times. 

The Free Press is honoring Alicia Jean (AJ) Vanderelli with our Activist Artist Award at a ceremony Thursday, November 9. AJ is the owner and manager of the Vanderelli Room, an art gallery that has served as a showplace and safe space for activist artists – and it is the location of the Free Press Awards dinner.

AJ was born in Los Angeles, California and was raised in Panama City, Florida. After graduating high school in 1993, she left the small beach community in search of one that provided both the comforts of a small town with the diversity of a city. In 2003, she settled in Columbus Ohio. She earned a Bachelors of Fine Arts with a concentration in oil painting in 2008 from the Columbus College of Art and Design, graduating Magna Cum Laude.

The Free Press is honoring Alicia Jean (AJ) Vanderelli with our Activist Artist Award at a ceremony Thursday, November 9. AJ is the owner and manager of the Vanderelli Room, an art gallery that has served as a showplace and safe space for activist artists – and it is the location of the Free Press Awards dinner.

AJ was born in Los Angeles, California and was raised in Panama City, Florida. After graduating high school in 1993, she left the small beach community in search of one that provided both the comforts of a small town with the diversity of a city. In 2003, she settled in Columbus Ohio. She earned a Bachelors of Fine Arts with a concentration in oil painting in 2008 from the Columbus College of Art and Design, graduating Magna Cum Laude.

Far south side unhoused to be evicted from their makeshift homes; mutual aid group Heer to Serve asks community to help advocate for those affected.

The City of Columbus, along with Columbus Police and private contractors, will soon evict more than 30 unhoused individuals living in tents and other makeshift shelters on the Southside of Columbus. This is far from the first camp sweep the city has been involved in in 2023, a year that has seen the eviction and bulldozing of dozens of camps. 

Mutual aid group Heer to Serve has been providing necessary and emergency items to and conducting outreach and programming with people who are unsheltered on the Southside for the past three years. The group is asking fellow community members to help advocate for their neighbors whose homes the city plans to bulldoze. “Housing is a human right,” said Heer to Serve founder Emily Myers. “People should not be dying on our streets due to exposure to the elements and yet it happens every year, with both extreme heat and cold. 

My first open letter was addressed to the people of Gaza https://popular-resistance.blogspot.com/2023/10/letter-to-gaza.html . It had hundreds of responses mostly asking us not to give up and asking for list of actions to do (these are available at ongaza.org and http://qumsiyeh.org/whatyoucando/ )