State

With Saddened Hearts, We mourn the Loss of a Christian..A Giant..A Royal Knight..A Prince..A Gentleman..A Scholar..and Warrior...Mr Bill Moss..passed away today, Tuesday, August 2, 2005. He was a Columbus School Board Member for 20 years plus a host of Achievements.

I'm sure He's standing side by side with Malcolm X, Dr Martin Luther King, Johnnie Cochran, Ossie Davis and many other Outstanding Black Men who have Stood Up with Integrity..Showed Up..and Spoke Out with Truthfulness. His Light will Always Shine Brightly...and His Family, The Children, The Parents, and The Community will Surely Miss Him.

The Genocide Awareness Project (GAP) paid a visit to OSU May 17-18. Headed by Mark Harrington, director of the Center for Bioethical Reform Midwest and Reform America both headquartered in Columbus, GAP is a traveling photo/mural exhibit that, according to GAP, "compares contemporary abortion to historically recognized forms of genocide" such as the Holocaust, Jim Crow lynchings, and the slaughter of Cambodians by the Pol Pot regime. The displays marked "The Changing Face of Choice" and "The Insanity of Choice" included graphic photos of Holocaust and lynch victims labeled "ungentle" and "unwhite" next to bay-bee bits abortion pictures labeled "unborn."

The Ohio State University (OSU) is hosting a course that many physicians consider a pointless exercise in cruelty. Nicknamed "Cruelty 101," the course attempts to instruct students in spinal cord injury research methods. Unfortunately, students will not be focusing on the newest in vitro cell biology, neural cell imaging, and clinical research techniques. Instead, OSU neurologists are teaching the students how to systematically injure the spinal cords of rats and mice using a weight dropped on the animal's exposed spinal cord and then to put the animals through behavioral tests and surgical manipulations.

Over the course of the three-week class, the 269 injured mice and rats are subjected to additional surgeries, invasive laboratory procedures, and physically demanding behavioral exercises before they are killed. The course is funded in part by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The university states that the class teaches a "standardized" methodology for inflicting spinal cord damage.

On January 4, 1971 history was made at the Columbus Police Academy. Seven Black men would begin training at the police academy. This was highest number of Blacks to take training at this facility. Joseph (Andy) Edwards, Charles Martin, Warren Hanna, Freddie Robinson, William McDonald, Sam Allen, and I, James Moss would become the new trend in police hiring. Blacks in this class were the aftermath of the turbulent times of the 1960’s.

Riots had plagued the large cities with a great number of people losing their lives, buildings were destroyed and the inner cities looked like a war zone. Unlike, Chicago, Cleveland, Trenton, and Los Angles, Columbus was spared from the destruction of its inner city. The riot in Columbus was not large and the property damage was less than the Ohio State- Michigan Football Celebration on campus.

Columbus, OH. Close to 75 protesters gathered by 10 AM on East 17th Avenue on June 9, within the Ohio Exposition Center complex, to send a message to President Bush and the Ohio Democratic Party.

Bush’s motorcade arrived around 10:50 am and was greeted with angry shouts and signs to repeal the Patriot Act, bring our troops home from Iraq, reject electronic voting machines and to fully investigate the $215 million diverted from the Ohio Bureau of Workers Compensation fund into Republican campaign coffers. “I think the George Bush campaign raised a lot of illegal money in Ohio,” US Rep. Sherrod Brown said. “That puts the election in some question,” as reported at http://www.ohiohonestelections.org/

Just before noon, as the motorcade of SUV limos exited the Ohio Highway Patrol Academy, and drove slowly past the demonstration, a secret service agent, riding shotgun, raised his machine gun for all to see through an open window.

COLUMBUS (June 8, 2005) — The Ohio Office of Criminal Justice Services (OCJS) has announced several new initiatives to aid law enforcement and other criminal justice related organizations in working with Ohio’s increasing non-English speaking communities.

I Speak: Language Identification Guide: Small enough to fit in a pocket or glove compartment, this language identification guide is a tool for law enforcement and other criminal justice agencies to identify the language of individuals they encounter who do not speak English. Printed just weeks ago, requests for this guide have already been received from law enforcement and other criminal justice organizations nationwide, including the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

On June 6, members of a student organization at The Ohio State University sent the president of the school over 500 letters requesting that the university admit to failing to respond appropriately to a rape case in 2002.

"You, like a person, should have the integrity to stand up and admit when you've made a mistake," said Jennifer Yoder, co-chair of Women and Allies Rising in Resistance, a student organization dedicated to fighting violence against women.

Yoder addressed a group of around 30 at a press conference held for the letter send-off. University officials hovered in the back of the room, and a camera was sent from university relations to record the event. University spokeswoman Elizabeth Conlisk asked for a copy of Yoder's speech, and headed to a back room to speak off the record to reporters, declining comment on the lawsuit.

The battle between Deputy Director Sherole Eaton, a recently fired federal whistleblower, and the Hocking County Board of Elections (BOE) she worked for, is becoming a bare-knuckled political brawl.

The Free Press has learned that Eaton supporters will protest at the Hocking County BOE Thursday, May 26 and plan to allege that Susan Hughes, a Democrat who seconded the motion to fire Eaton, is illegally on the BOE.

During last December’s presidential election recount, Eaton signed a sworn affidavit that a Triad, Inc. voting machine technician came into the BOE without being scheduled and changed out the county’s vote-tabulation computer hard drive. Eaton also claimed that he offered a “cheat sheet” to make sure the recount tally matched the original election results.

The Logan Daily News reported that BOE members privately complained “that Eaton was a disruptive influence in the office.” But, all BOE members “refused to be quoted on the record.”

WHY VOTE?

Because local politics matter. Because the smoking ban is on the ballot – again. Because if we don't back the good candidates now, there won't be anyone good on the ballot in November. Because the Columbus Public Schools budget is huge – who's minding the store?

The Slate

CLEVELAND--On the day that legislative action on Social Security privatization began in the U.S. Senate, concerned Ohioans joined with the Northeast Ohio-based Coalition To Protect Social Security for a public "Rally to Protect Social Security and Stop Privatization" to persuade Senators DeWine and Voinovich to pledge not to privatize Social Security. Citizens at the gathering, held outside Senator DeWine's Cleveland office, said they wanted Ohio's Senators to use their influence to shape the Social Security plan while it is being written in order to stop privatization from becoming a part of the law.

"DeWine and Voinovich should take Social Security privatization off the table. Now that Congress has begun the process of writing an actual plan, they need to declare their views and influence the way that Social Security law is put together, so it to stops privatization," said Betty Chaka, a Cleveland retiree.