Columbus is in the middle of a building boom. Sleek apartment towers climb skyward, marketed with rooftop lounges and pet spas. Rents stretch past $1,500 for one-bedroom units. But a very different Columbus exists on the other side of the leasing office glass: one where families tuck their children into bedrooms streaked with black mold, where winter nights are endured with broken furnaces, and where cockroaches scurry across kitchen counters.

These tenants aren’t silent. They are doing exactly what the city says they should — calling 311, filing code complaints, and showing up in Environmental Court. Since January 2024, Columbus renters have filed more than 7,000 housing complaints, and the court has opened nearly 2,600 cases. Judges have ordered more than $1 million in fines against landlords.

Yet the same addresses keep appearing in 311 logs, the same landlords keep showing up in court dockets, and the same families keep waiting for repairs that never come. Columbus’s enforcement system documents the crisis in detail, but rarely fixes it.

Should your employer be allowed to ban you from taking another job? Most Americans would say that’s ridiculous — but it’s more common than you think.

When I was head of the policy office at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), I read thousands of public comments about how employers used “noncompete clauses” to trap workers into jobs. Many people shared deeply personal stories of being stuck in abusive workplaces, enduring punishing commutes, or working for years and years without a raise.

Monday, September 1, 4pm
McFerson Commons, 218 West Street, downtown Columbus

Labor Day, September 1st, 2025, people in more than 1,000 communities across the 50 United States, Sweden, and the Territory of Guam will gather for Workers Over Billionaires. This is a national day of action sponsored by the same coalition that brought you this year’s May Day National Day of Action. Participants will creatively and nonviolently protest the billionaire takeover of our democracy and the government’s abandonment of the American working class.

The War on Workers.