On January 19, during one of its raids in the Occupied West Bank, the Israeli military arrested a Palestinian journalist, Abdul Muhsen Shalaldeh, near the town of Al-Khalil (Hebron). This is just the latest of a staggering number of violations against Palestinian journalists, and  against freedom of expression. 

A few days earlier, the head of the Palestinian Journalist Syndicate (PJS), Naser Abu Baker, shared some tragic numbers during a press conference in Ramallah. “Fifty-five reporters have been killed, either by Israeli fire or bombardment since 2000,” he said. Hundreds more were wounded, arrested or detained. Although shocking, much of this reality is censored in mainstream media. 

For the very first time
I watched that crime.
of stealing from
the hopeful youth
their breath
their dreams
their futures indeed
and just because
they’re
Black.
For the very first time
I watched that crime
Took me back
To 1991
When I first
watched that crime
on TV, horrified.
I watched that crime
Inching my way
Into the certain pain
Of watching another
Mother of a
Black Brother being
Murdered, killed
With no mercy
Crying out for his mother.

I watched that crime
And as a mother
Again I cried
For the pain
Of the mothers
Of Black sons.
As we add another
Name to the long
List of names
Of our sons who have
Died just because
They’re Black.
By the hands
Of the blue culture.
I watched that crime
I watched that beating
I watched that killing
Of Tyre Nichols.
I watched that crime
For the very first time
Again.

I would like to tell you about a very interesting and well written summary of indigenous resistance in early Ohio, aspirating to intertwine it with current struggles. This reader learned a lot!

The Columbus Worker, offers a particularly worthwhile article on a history of the indigenous resistance throughout what is today Ohio and Indiana, beginning some decades previous to its colonization by the United States and extending up to Tecumseh’s departure from this life.

This online magazine is sponsored by a group called the Central Ohio Revolutionary Socialists, who recently opened their formerly internal magazine to a wider readership. Dylan Vanover’s reasons for broadcasting the History of Indigenous Resistance in Ohio couldn’t be said better or more succinctly than his own introduction.

Neil Young rocked America with his anthem “Southern Man” on his 1970 album “After the Gold Rush.” Similarly, the Black and white bards Sheri Bailey and Dura Temple struck gold with their outstanding Southern Girls drama, which was first mounted during the Reagan era and is, happily, being revived at the Hudson Backstage Theatre with an all-female cast and a woman director, Zadia Ife.
Set like To Kill a Mockingbird in smalltown Alabama, three of the eponymous females are white, two are Black and one is biracial. The play’s trajectory follows them from small kid days, when they played girlish games in the Jim Crow South, through the Civil Rights era, the Black Power movement and beyond. Southern Girls is exemplary in how it rather perfectly dramatizes how world historical events – from American apartheid to assassinations, et al – deeply impact individuals in their daily lives and the choices they do – and cannot – make.  

When Ohio Attorney General David Yost went judge shopping to permanently ban Columbus City Council’s effort to enact even the mildest of gun safety laws, the Free Press was certain the Fairfield County judge he found would side with the State of Ohio.

Many were confused or not paying attention: How could a Fairfield County judge have authority over Columbus? Unfortunately, and almost unimaginably, is how a tiny sliver of southeast Columbus extends into neighboring (and mostly conservative) Fairfield County.

But the Free Press was thankfully wrong. Fairfield County Common Pleas Judge Richard Berens on January 20 denied the State of Ohio’s motion for a preliminary injunction to forever ban Columbus’s gun safety measures passed in December.