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Data Centers sparking rate increase

Data centers in PJM, the largest U.S. regional power grid that serves customers from New York to Chicago, are adding billions of dollars to ratepayers' electricity bills and increasing the odds of potential power shortages, a new analysis shows.

Projected electricity demand from the rise of artificial intelligence is rippling across U.S. power grids. A report by Monitoring Analytics, the independent market monitor for Eastern grid operator PJM Interconnection, estimated that current and planned peak power will add nearly 12,000 megawatts to the expected peak power demand next summer.

Added Power demand drove up PJM's July capacity auction by $7.2 billion, an 82 percent increase over the previous auction.

Jesse Vogel with four volunteers

This year’s Columbus City Council race is a battle between grassroots progressives and well-heeled incumbents. Challenging the status-quo, Jesse Vogel is a Democrat running for Columbus City Council - District 7 against establishment darling Tiara Ross. Vogel knows he can’t do it alone. So he’s building a coalition of progressive allies. One of them is Kate Curry-D’Souza, the third candidate from the May primary who recently endorsed Vogel. Vogel respects her a lot as “a principled, progressive leader who I’m honored to have on our team,” Between the two of them, Jesse and Kate received 60 percent of the votes in the primary, indicating a desire for a different kind of leadership. By partnering now, they’re able to show how people on the left are engaged and working together to win.

Tom Hayes

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According to the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, “All the Freedom Flotilla and Thousand Madleen boats were pirated in the early hours of October 8, 2025.” 

Among the crew on the flotilla is Tom Hayes, a documentary filmmaker and Associate Professor of Instruction in the School of Film at Ohio University, currently serving as a media volunteer.

Hayes was sailing on a boat called the Conscience, carrying dozens of international journalists and medical professionals from 25 countries. The Conscience was on a mission to break Israel‘s illegal siege of Gaza, challenge Israel’s media blackout of Gaza, and affirm the Palestinian people’s right to live in freedom and dignity.

Ohio University Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine join the Freedom Flotilla Coalition in demanding the following:

· An end to Israel’s illegal and deadly blockade of Gaza;

We begin GREEP Zoom by honoring Loretta Swit, MASH’s “Hot Lips” Houlihan, who has just left us.

We also note that Japan has just gotten its first female Prime Minister, who may also be pro-nuclear, a radioactive Maggie Thatcher.

We then hear from our Poet Laureate MIMI GERMAN who provides a brief leap into levity with an account of Portland’s upcoming “Naked Bike Ride,” being timed to connect with the possible arrival of the National Guard.

Mimi pays tribute to the Trump-appointed Judge Karin Immergut’s ruling that Trump can’t send federal troops wherever he wants.  Meanwhile we deal with reports that ICE has been tear-gassing the Chicago Police (!!!). 

We also note that the Trump Regime is sending Federal e-mail to fired employees blaming Democrats for the governmental shut-down.

Political activist DOROTHY REIK lauds Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker for suing to keep ICE out of his state and describes the horrifying ICE attack on a Chicago apartment building with no warrants.

California’s DR. RUTH STRAUSS opens the door on Larry Ellison buying the American media.

Tiara Ross and Jesse Vogel

Wednesday, October 8, 2025, 6:30 – 8:00 PM
Budd Dairy Food Hall, 1101 N 4th StColumbus 43201

Hear Columbus City Council Candidates Tiara Ross and Jesse Vogel discuss their views on the future of Columbus' 7th District. Moderated by Amy Juravich of WOSU's All Sides.

Sign up here

Money, house, book titled Dept of Veterans Affairs

James Jones is a 54-year-old disabled Army veteran. After four years of active duty and four in the reserves, Jones says he has a “multitude” of health care problems.

“There’s PTSD, a right arm injury, my right shoulder, chronic rhinitis from toxic exposure during the Gulf War, dental,” he says. That’s why he depends on the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) health system, the nation’s largest.

Jones, a federal employee from Watauga County, North Carolina, is also one of the 25 percent of vets who live in rural areas. And care for these rural veterans is now at serious risk as Republicans push to cut rural health care and privatize the VA. Ohio, which has one of the largest veteran populations overall in the country, could be especially impacted.

Ann Walker

On Sunday, October 5, 2025, Columbus would learn that afternoon the news that shook its soul: Queen Mother Ann B. Walker — broadcaster, journalist, community matriarch, civil rights trailblazer, and living archive of Black excellence — had joined the ancestors at 101. The air felt heavier that day. Social feeds filled with black-and-white photos, church bells echoed across the Near East Side, and elders spoke her name with reverence, as if afraid it might be the last time it would roll off their tongues while she was still fresh in memory.

This wsn’t just another obituary moment. This was Columbus losing a cornerstone.

From East High to Ebony Airwaves

Long before Ann B. Walker’s name echoed through newsrooms and political halls, it was written in the ink of the East High X-Ray, her high school paper. She recalled the moment her teacher, Miss Marie Google, told her that “we didn’t need to go to Bexley to work in anybody’s kitchen when we were working in our own.” That moment became prophecy.

Tuesday, October 7, 2025, 11:30 AM
Ohio Statehouse, Columbus
For almost two years, Ohioans have been organizing across the state to demand divestment from Israel. Our tax dollars should not fund genocide, apartheid, or the starvation of millions in Gaza. Our tax dollars should be used here—to support education, housing, infrastructure, and public services.

On the two-year anniversary of the beginning of this ongoing genocide in Gaza, organizers and community members from around the state will come together to demand a permanent end to all of Ohio’s ties to Israel. We demand an end to Ohio’s complicity in genocide. 

With gabapentin risks back in the news and Trump’s friendship with Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla reportedly behind new drug pricing agreements, it’s time to revisit questions about the drug, the company and its misleading marketing.

Two Neurontin Widows

After years of silence, two women who say their doctor husbands died from taking Neurontin (gabapentin) spoke out.

What began as something personal and private in their lives became a call for social justice, awareness and protecting the health and safety of others both women, Debbie Alsberge and Robin Briggs, told a reporter.

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