Thursday, September 15 from 12:00-1:00 pm

How did you spend your summer? If, like many Ohioans, you spent time on the water or along the shore of Lake Erie, you know what a precious resource it is. The Great Lakes constitute 21 percent of the world's supply of surface fresh water, spanning eight U.S. states and two Canadian provinces. In addition to being the primary water source for over 40 million people, the Great Lakes support commerce, manufacturing, energy generation, agriculture, and recreation.​​​​​​​

As important as the Great Lakes are to our environment and economy, they cannot escape the impacts of climate change. Lake Erie faces unique challenges as the shallowest of the Great Lakes in a region dominated by agriculture and industrial activity. Adding elements of a changing climate to legacy effects and ongoing inputs creates the potential for greater damage.

In the aftermath of the Donovan Lewis shooting, Cynthia Brown, a past Free Press Hero, traveled to eastern and northeastern Ohio seeking signatures and support for her effort to put a citizen-led initiative on a future statewide ballot. The initiative will let Ohio decide on whether it should change the Ohio Constitution by eliminating qualified immunity for law enforcement and other professions.

When Brown was in Akron, word got around to a local group of nuns she was advocating to end qualified immunity. The convent where these nuns live will go unnamed for fear of retaliation.

Not only did the nuns want to sign the petition they also wanted to collect signatures. Brown and her umbrella organization, the Ohio Coalition to End Qualified Immunity, gladly handed over a stack of petitions.

Before the premiere of Sophocles’ Oedipus, most of the outdoor tables at the Getty Villa’s café were filled, and while dining I spied from afar a longtime friend of mine, fellow reviewer Myron Meisel, tray in hand, looking for a place to eat, and I waved him over to our table. Joining us, Myron and I were pleased to see we had both survived the you-know-what. As Myron had co-made the 1993 documentary It’s All True, about Orson Welles’ unfinished South America film made during the 1940s, I told Myron that Voodoo Macbeth – a feature about the legendary Welles-directed all-Black 1936 production of the Scottish play reset in Haiti – had been shot, which was news to the astute Myron. I had received a press release about Voodoo Macbeth, which is to be theatrically released October 21, just a couple of days earlier.

Welcome to Riotsville – a fictional town built by the U.S. military. Using footage shot by the media and the government, the film explores the militarization of the police and the reaction of a nation to the uprisings of the late '60s, creating a counter-narrative to a critical moment in the country's history.

Riotsville, USA, a point in American history when the nation’s rulers, politicians, bureaucrats, and police were faced with the mounting militancy of the late 1960s, and did everything possible to win the war in the streets. Using training footage of Army-built model towns called “Riotsville” where military and police were trained to respond to civil disorder, in addition to nationally broadcast news media, the documentary connects the stagecraft of law and order to the real violence of state practice. Recovering an obscured history whose effects have shaped the present in ways both insidious and explosive, "Riotsville, USA" is a poetic reflection on the rebellions of the 1960s, and the machine that worked to destroy them.

As the Israeli military bombed homes, clinics, and schools in Gaza and threatened to push Palestinian families from their homes in Jerusalem May 2021, Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud executives signed a $1.22 billion contract to provide cloud technology to the Israeli government and military. By doing business with Israeli apartheid, Amazon and Google will make it easier for the Israeli government to surveil Palestinians and force them off their land.