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Join the Central Ohio Worker Center for a webinar discussing wage theft, your rights in the workplace, and organizing for better working conditions. Hear from our experts and participate in a question-and-answer session about the issues most relevant to you!

RSVP for this event by using this link.

Hosted by Central Ohio Worker Center / Centro de Trabajadores de Central Ohio.

The resistance to the apparent election of Joe Biden as President of the United States is continuing to play out. Current President Donald Trump is continuing to fight against the presumed results of the November national election with his final card appearing to be a vote in Congress when it reconvenes on January 6th to throw out the results due to fraud in certain key states. Many have noted how the registration and electoral processes in the United States, varying as they do from state to state, were and are vulnerable to fraud. That, plus some eyewitness testimony and technical analysis, suggests that possibly systematic fraud did take place but it is far from clear whether it was decisive. This is particularly true of the vote by mail option, which was promoted by leading Democrats and which empowered literally millions of new voters with only limited attempts made to validate whether citizens or even real people were voting.

Vermont’s only prison for women is, by all accounts, a ghastly place. The facility was never intended to be a prison. The facility was never intended to house women. Built as a men’s detention center in the 1970s, the facility is inadequate to provide what any reasonable person would consider adequate health and safety conditions for as many as 160 incarcerated women.

The Vermont women’s prison, formally known as the Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility (CRCF) in South Burlington, came into being in August 2011 as a political effort to reduce the state budget pushed by then Governor Peter Shumlin, a military-industrial Democrat who also supported basing the nuclear-capable F-35 in Winooski. Shumlin pushed both projects with grand promises of benefits that have yet to be fulfilled.

As 2020 finally comes to an end, many publications are releasing their annual “best and worst” lists, but in a year marred by such tragedy, is anything worth celebrating? Many are simply summing up 2020 with terms like “please end” or “go away,” or letters such as “WTF,” “SMH” or “JFC.” Here in Ohio, there were at leasta few silver linings in a very dark year, but since the good doesn’t always outweigh the bad, we’ll just remember 2020 as “one of those years” and hope for better days in the Buckeye State ahead.

THE WORST

- COVID-19 - This is a no-brainer, as the coronavirus pandemic killed thousands of Ohioans, destroyed the economy and completely disrupted our way of life. Ohio wasn’t the same without the sporting events, concerts, music festivals, county fairs, restaurants and other amazing activities (usually filled with thousands of people!) that make Ohio unique. And while our state was hailed for “getting it right” back in March, we slowly slipped into the same downward spiral that several other states did because thousands of Ohioans didn’t take the virus seriously, killing thousands of others. I mean, WTF.

Sometimes a couple of nominations convey an incoming president’s basic mindset and worldview. That’s how it seems with Joe Biden’s choices to run the Office of Management and Budget and the State Department.

For OMB director, Biden selected corporate centrist Neera Tanden, whose Center for American Progress thrives on the largesse of wealthy donors representing powerful corporate interests. Tanden has been a notably scornful foe of the Democratic Party’s progressive wing; former Sanders speechwriter David Sirota calls her “the single biggest, most aggressive Bernie Sanders critic in the United States.” Who better to oversee the budget of the U.S. government?