Local

Saturday, January 11 from 7-8pm
On Zoom to discuss:
Organizing for the challenges of 2025
From despair to active resistance! - Housing First!

Speakers on local social justice issues including housing.
Kate Curry-Da-Souza, former longtime Near East Area Commissioner and Columbus City Council District #7 candidate
and
Ben Colburn, working with Maryhaven and active with encampments
More TBA.

Co-sponsored by Simply Living

Join Zoom Meeting:
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/88981714025?pwd=ON50ZHvqYpQ1WckVxFbgSmQELOWqa…

Meeting ID: 889 8171 4025
Passcode: 006908

For info: colsfreepress@gmail.com

In the final hours of last year’s legislative session, Ohio’s legislature passed HB 8—a dangerous bill modeled after Florida’s harmful “Don’t Say Gay or Trans” law. This legislation forces schools to notify parents or caregivers if a student requests to use a different name or pronouns, even when that disclosure could put the student at risk of harm.

HB 8 endangers the lives of LGBTQ+ youth in Ohio. Transgender and nonbinary students deserve to trust their educators without fear of being outed to unsupportive families, and educators deserve a workplace where they do not have to fear retribution for supporting a student.

Governor DeWine has the power to halt this harmful legislation, but he needs to hear from you. Call or email Governor DeWine now and demand he veto HB 8. Regardless of the outcome, your message in support of our precious youth will resound loud and clear.

Every call and every email counts in the fight to protect Ohio’s children. Through our collective action, our children will see what side of history we are on, and right now, that could save a life. Together, we can send a strong message that discrimination has no place in our state.

Steven Rhodes, local designer and construction consultant, is proud to announce that the Clintonville Passive House project is the first in central Ohio to received Phius ZERO Certification.

Clintonville Passive House is a single-family home designed and self-built by Steven Rhodes at an infill location in Clintonville. This is the first single-family certified passive house in central Ohio. The house is all electric and is projected to use less than half the energy of a similarly sized, newly code-built home. A rooftop solar array adds net zero energy performance to the comfort, indoor air quality, and durability inherent in a passive house. 

Phius Certified Projects have had their designs and energy models approved by the Phius Certification Staff, and have been inspected on-site by certified third-party quality assurance professionals trained by Phius to work on Phius projects. The rigorous Phius certification process ensures the building is designed and built to perform up to the targets determined by the climate-specific, cost-optimized Phius Standard.

Is there any way Kamala Harris could have won the 2024 election? Certainly. If a series of circumstances beyond her control had occurred, she might have become president.  If Biden had died in February 2021, she would have served out most of his term.  If Biden had died in October 2024, the outpouring of sympathy votes might have been enough to help her win the election in November.  If Biden had become seriously ill and resigned in October 2024, that also might have given her a boost. Also, Biden might have resigned after Harris lost the election to let her be president and make history even if she didn't serve long.

However, none of these events happened. We can only imagine what having a woman as president might have been like because now that possibility has passed and there may never be a situation where a woman could be president again.

Wednesday, January 8, Governor DeWine officially signed the Paystub Protection Act, with Central Ohio Worker Center (COWC) and Policy Matters Ohio staff by his side. In this important move, Ohio now joins 41 other states in requiring employers to provide earnings and deductions statements to each of the employer's employees.

The bill, which received unanimous support in both the House and the Senate earlier in 2024, goes into effect in April. The bill was sponsored by Representatives Dontravius L Jarrells and P. Scott Lipps, with 14 additional co-sponsors. COWC, along with Policy Matters Ohio, have been working to support the act's passage along the way. During testimony to the Ohio Senate in December, Claudia Cortez, Program Director of COWC, shared that this will “help ensure that workers are paid fairly and transparently by providing them with a clear breakdown of wages and deductions. Pay stubs are also often necessary for workers needing proof of income for housing, loans, and other financial requirements.” 

Thursday, January 9, 2025 at 6pm 
A presentation and discussion on unions and the state of the labor movement in Ohio.
Join us in person at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church (30 W Woodruff Ave, Columbus, OH 43210) or online at tinyurl.com/CORSmeeting.

TATANKA BRICCA discusses the chances that Joe Biden will save the life of Leonard Peltier, who’ll be released before 1/20 or die.

A minor correction comes from MYLA RESON…and still more from MIKE HERSH.

Young Progressive Democrats of America is represented by HARTZELL GRAY, who inspires our movement to recruit young activists.

NICOLE UNG urges us to help free whistleblower Charles Littlejohn.

Myla and DAVID SALTMAN talk about beloved corporate-assaulted attorney STEVE DONZIGER who has been privately prosecuted by Chevron Oil.

GAVRILAH WELLS of Amnesty International recalls Trump's mass killings of 13 federal prisoners and urges Biden to keep pardoning folks, especially Peltier.

NICOLE CORRADO evokes the need to sanction a Russian billionaire helping Musk buying Twitter.

Election expert RAY LUTZ shows disturbing statistics from Nevada indicating serious irregularities in the Democratic turnout.

The insane prosecution against JOHN BRAKEY for merely making a public records request is explained by SUSAN PYNCHON.

DON MCCANNE emphasizes the need for youth in the progressive movement.

Ohio’s Butler County Sheriff Richard Jones wants to restart his ICE contract during the second Trump presidency. However, Butler County Jail officers abused immigrants and violated the jail’s contract with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) repeatedly during the first Trump administration.

In 2021, Sheriff Jones claimed he terminated the Butler County Jail’s ICE contract himself after claiming the Biden administration was going to fire him. A lawsuit to hold this jail accountable for abuses against immigrants remains pending in federal court.

Sheriff Jones – as many Ohio immigrants know too well – is an ultra-conservative anti-immigration blowhard from outside Cincinnati who is a regular guest on right-wing media such as Glenn Beck. He has been referred to as Ohio’s “mini-Trump” and has struck fear in hardworking Ohio immigrants who work jobs rejected by white American workers. Butler County, for instance, has a large chicken rendering plant where many workers are Hispanic.

This article first appeard on World Beyond War

This article first appeared on Ohio Capital Journal

Environmental activists have been pressing the company buying an Ohio coal plant said to be the nation’s deadliest to retire the facility. But that seems unlikely, given statements it made in a regulatory filing that it provided to the Ohio Capital Journal.

The buyer, Energy Capital Partners, has boasted of helping plants make the transition away from coal. It hasn’t answered questions about its plans for Gavin, but in a Dec. 11 filing before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, it expressed no such plans for the Gavin Plant.

“As with any electric generation facility, (Energy Capital Partners) and Javelin expect that the Gavin facility… will continue to operate for so long as they are legally able to do so on an economic basis,” it said.