Former Columbus City Council candidate and long-time community activist Joe Motil is submitting more than 2,000 petition signatures to the Franklin County Board of Elections at noon on Wednesday February 1, 2023. This officially confirms his campaign for mayor in the 2023 non-partisan May primary election.  

As a community leader dedicated to fairness, opportunity, equality, and justice, Motil has been involved with city government for 37 years in numerous capacities. His advocacy and commitment is well known and respected throughout Columbus’ neighborhoods. He is recognized especially for his fights against the city’s tax abatement policies, proposing solutions for truly affordable housing, advocating for the unsheltered, exposing corruption and the unethical conduct of city officials, reforming police, and advancing the rights for all Columbus citizens voices to be heard.       

Tuesday, January 31, 2023, 6:00 – 9:00 PM
Location:  Studio 35 Cinema and Drafthouse, 3055 Indianola Ave, Columbus, 43202.

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.