Columbus’s best kept 95-degree day secret was overrun this week by scores of young people at Runaway Bay apartment complex in Grandview. The pop-up party fueled by social media once again exposed a historical reality: There’s too few public spaces and not enough culture for non-privileged young people in Columbus. There are also too few public pools in Columbus, due to lack of funding or greedy developers, such as those who bought out Olympic Pool in Clintonville.

The Free Press is not condoning the illegality of young people taking over a private beach, that by the way is rarely used by tenants, but we are not condemning them as the police-state apologists from Channel 6 WSYX did. Few people are ever seen on this beach probably because Runaway Bay management charges $100-per year to have access.

Community Festival (ComFest) is back in Goodale Park Friday, June 27 through Sunday, June 29, 2025.

Come visit the Free Press booth at Comfest!

ComFest will feature over 200 musical performances, workshops and community-oriented programming over three days. In addition to the line-up of the city’s best live music spread over seven stages, workshops, KiDSART, live comedy, poetry readings and other programming will be featured throughout the park. The much-loved Street Fair also returns with one-of-a-kind vendors, arts and crafts, local food and community organizations. 

Now in its 53rd year, ComFest’s history is celebrated in the ComFest Museum located in the frosty, air-conditioned Goodale Park Shelterhouse. Stop in to learn about Community Festival’s roots in social activism, protest movements, community engagement and civil rights.

Thursday, June 26, 2025, 8:00 PM
The "Midnight Rockets" were not myths or isolated incidents—they were deliberate, engineered releases of radioactive gas from the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Piketon, Ohio, sanctioned by the U.S. Department of Energy during and after the Cold War. Declassified documents from 1985 confirm that technetium-99 and uranium hexafluoride were routinely vented into the atmosphere through a 164-foot exhaust system known as the Tall Stack, with minimal filtration and ineffective monitoring. By 1994, government data showed that nearly 86% of airborne radioactive emissions at the site came from this process. Decades later, a federal whistleblower lawsuit and independent environmental testing in 2023 revealed off-site contamination. The pattern of exposure matches prevailing wind data, confirming that the so-called "Midnight Rockets" silently blanketed communities in radioactive fallout for years. 

Then the legendary RAY MCCLENDON gets us up to date with the mass disenfranchisement Vigilante strategy for stealing the upcoming elections in Georgia.

Alabama native RUTH STRAUSS affirms the need to protect the vote in the upcoming 2026 elections.

Long-time activist DIANE CAMERON raises the issue of working with labor unions, especially amidst growing discussion of a general strike.

From BOB BABCOCK we get an exhortation to take over the Democratic Party. 

Repeat speaker ALEX WILLIAMS discusses the need for grassroots organizing.

Co-host MIKE HERSH alerts us to major grassroots victories in Arizona.

From NICK CRAYNE we hear of the need for a “shame primary” for right-wing Democrats.

From Arizona’s LEE STANFIELD we get a reminder that the Democrats sabotaged Bernie’s campaign without denying it, and that the Party is a privately-owned entity that always attacks the Greens on every possible level.

From MAGGIE BOYD we get an earful about “General Strike US” and the need to get 3.5% of the general population in support of such an action, which would be 11 million citizens.