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I’ve been thinking a lot about how the Trump administration has been using television, social media, and AI-generated digital graphics to advance its policies. This particular thought experiment started when my friend and I were watching the evening news. There was Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem prancing triumphantly in front of detainees in the CECOT concentration camp in El Salvador where Venezuelan immigrants had been deported. Noem was dressed to kill for the occasion with a designer outfit and a $50,000 Rolex watch. The dynamics of the event were telling. She scolded the detainees like they were 10-year olds caught smoking and, curiously, she did not target gang activity but rather illegal immigration as the cause of their plight.

Following a sound study in 2010, the Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) told Franklinton residents at an area commission meeting that stretches of SR-315 and I-70 were once again eligible for a sound wall.

This was a re-confirmation, as ODOT had said in 1993 that Franklinton was eligible considering it was a “pre-existing” neighborhood, meaning the community was there before the freeways. And surely deserving of a sound wall, as SR-315 cuts through the middle of Franklinton’s eastern end while its southern end is almost entirely bordered by I-70.

Nevertheless, back in 2010, ODOT said the project could start in 2013 and be completed by 2023. Between this time, residents called ODOT for an update. There are more cars than ever on these freeways, they said, and the public health impacts are real. ODOT responded, saying there was a new plan in place. They were going to expand I-70 and the sound wall would be installed when this project would be completed.

The calendar turned to 2023, and there was still no sound wall or even a hint the 70-expansion project was in the works. Franklinton residents once again reached out to ODOT.

Wednesday, June 4, 2025, 6:00 – 8:00 PM
Please join us for an in-person and live-streamed event. Together, we’ll hear from key experts—like international tunnel expert Brian O’Mara—about the latest on Line 5 and learn how to take action at this critical moment. The federal administration has fast-tracked the Line 5 tunnel permit, and your voice is more important now than ever!  

Line 5 is an outdated oil and gas pipeline that poses unacceptable risks of a spill, especially as it travels along the lakebed through the Straits of Mackinac in a four-mile section known as the dual pipelines.

Bill McKibben, who has been advocating for a shutdown since the beginning of this movement, will make a virtual appearance with a special message.

When Donald Trump talked about immigrants eating people’s pets during a 2024 presidential debate, he was carrying on a longtime Republican campaign tactic: Win the votes of White Americans by scaring the hell out of them.

According to Andrew Goldberg’s documentary White With Fear, this strategy can be traced back at least as far as the 1968 presidential campaign. Even though the controversial Vietnam War was still raging, we learn, the campaign of Republican Richard Nixon focused mainly on race.

Among the film’s many interviewees is author Rick Perlstein (Nixonland), who explains that the GOP worked to recapture the White House by tapping into many White Americans’ hatred of Blacks. This was done largely through innuendo and dog whistles.

When Nixon pledged to support “law and order” and fight crime, for example, it was understood that he was talking specifically about Black crime. The candidate’s subtext was hard to miss when he made statements such as referring to Black-majority Washington, D.C. as “the crime capital of the world.”

Tuesday, June 3, 5:30-7:30pm, this on-line event requires advance registration

Join Jason Salley (Investigative Journalist, Ohio Atomic Press) and Terry Lodge (Lawyer, Veterans for Peace) for a discussion highlighting connections between the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant (PORTS) in Piketon, the Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, and the proposed AI drone weapons manufacturer, Anduril, in Pickaway County.

Discussants will outline how these three facilities will likely work together to ramp up new Cold War tensions with Russia, exacerbate environmental injustices in Appalachian Ohio, further militarize Ohio’s police and surveillance state, as well as realize the imperial ambitions of Anduril CEO and virulent Zionist, Palmer Luckey.

RSVP for this event by using this link.

Hosted by Ohio Nuclear Free Network.

Facebook Event

Alejandro thought that driving full-time for Uber offered freedom — flexible hours, quick cash, and time to care for his young son. But that promise faded fast.

“There are hours when I make $20,” he told me. “And there are hours when I make $2.” As his pay dropped, he pawned his computer and camera, began rationing his insulin, and started driving seven days a week just to break even.

Alejandro, whose real name is withheld for his privacy, is one of millions of workers powering a billion-dollar labor model built on legal loopholes.

Anti-democracy lawmakers are attacking our rights, and they are moving the legislation forward so fast that Ohioans are barely getting a chance to get the facts and speak up.

Well, here are the facts.

SB 153 and HB 233 are an attack on volunteers who put boots on the ground, collecting signatures for our democracy. These are our grandmothers and grandfathers, our parents, our family and friends and our coworkers, all who spend their weekends and spare time collecting signatures and fighting for workers’ rights and voters’ rights.

Volunteers who collect signatures would be forced to sign away their 5th Amendment constitutional rights, potentially subjecting them to politically motivated investigations. “Compensated” circulators would be required to wear badges, but “compensated” is defined so broadly it even applies to volunteers who receive free pizza or a t-shirt.

Those are the facts.

SB 153 and HB 233 are an attack on our democracy and our freedoms.

Sunday, June 1, 1-4pm
School of Rock Columbus, 949 W. Third Ave.

The Tri-Village Family Fun Fest will be a free street festival located on Dover Ave. (right next to School of Rock Columbus), where we will have live music, food trucks, vendors, face painting, free music lessons, and so much more. This is an event for the community for all ages.

Featured vendors: Sadie Baby Sweets, Clay Cafe, Chick Happens Food Truck, Hook and Ladder Ice Cream, Bricks and Minifigs, Discovering You Portraits, Flocal Co., Ballooning with Izzy, Funatics4u Face Painting, and more!

On June 7, 2025, CNN will broadcast—on tape, from a live performance direct from Broadway--George Clooney’s homage to Edward R. Murrow, Good Night, and Good Luck, which is welcome news for audiences who are not able, or willing, to fork over the $900 plus fees for a decent orchestra seat to the stage version of Clooney’s 2005 docu-drama Good Night, and Good Luck.

For American progressives wallowing in a deep Trump funk, the callback to the integrity of Murrow and his gutsy take-down of Sen. Joseph McCarthy on the pioneering news magazine See It Now may offer hope that journalism can repeat its treasured origin story. The legend is imprinted in the famous illustration by Ben Shahn, Edward R. Murrow Slaying the Dragon of McCarthy, a depiction of the noble paladin killing the beast who threatened the realm. In the Clooney iteration, no one needs a playbill to read McCarthy as a stand-in for Donald Trump, but Murrow has no obvious successor ready to suit up in the new media ecosystem. Morrow and his like have gone the way of vacuum tubes and rabbit ears.

Dan-o Dougan and Dr. Bob Fitrakis start a series on planes, trains and automobiles playing a variety of songs about planes, including Sky Pilot, 8 Miles High, Aeroplane, and more!

Listen here

Listen live at 11pm Friday, May 30 and June 6 streaming at wgrn.org or on the radio at 91.9FM
and
Monday at 2pm streaming June 2 and 9 at wcrsfm.org or on the radio at 92.7 or 98.3FM