Accountability for the murder of Casey C. Goodson, Jr.

Black man's face

Friday, December 11, 6pm, Franklin County Municipal Court, 373 S. High St.

Facebook Event

Enough is enough. After months of demonstrations against police brutality and the disproportionate murder of Black people, it has happened again.

Join us in a peaceful protest to demand justice for Casey Goodson Jr., the beloved son, brother, cousin, friend, neighbor, and community member.

As always, wear masks, social distance, and bundle up! Bring your signs and help us demand justice, accountability, and transparency.

Casey, aka Tank, was murdered by a 17-year-experienced Franklin County Sheriff Deputy who was working with the U.S. Marshal to capture an individual who was not Casey.

The media has reported multiple lies and facts that don’t add up. Casey was murdered as he entered his home, holding a Subway sandwich, in front of his family. His back was to officers and he was not a threat. Yet they killed him anyway.

#JusticeForCasey

Ohio Prisoner Justice League: Gifts Beyond the Gates

Christmas presents

‘Long Live the (Dead) Peace Process’: Abbas Prioritizes US Ties over Palestinian National Unity

No one seemed as excited about the election of Joe Biden being the next President of the United States as Palestinian Authority President, Mahmoud Abbas. When all hope seemed lost, where Abbas found himself desperate for political validation and funds, Biden arrived like a conquering knight on a white horse and swept the Palestinian leader away to safety. 

 

Top 10 Ways Neera Tanden Has Been Misunderstood

When Neera Tanden emailed her colleagues in support of forcing Libya to pay for the privilege of having been bombed, many misunderstood, including one of her colleagues who emailed back objecting to creating what he supposed was an obvious financial incentive for bombing more countries.

Now that Tanden has been nominated for high office and will face confirmation hearings in the U.S. Senate, we have an obligation to get this right. The top ways in which Tanden has been misunderstood are:

Embracing Ecological Realism

Our post-election hope couldn’t be more fragile.

Does Joe Biden see his mission as merely reclaiming situation normal from Donald Trump? How aware is he of the big, beyond-our-lifetimes future and the crucial need to address climate change? Is he able to acknowledge that human “interests” go well beyond national borders? And if so, how much political traction would he have to have before he could begin turning vision into policy?

I agree with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on Foreign Bases

You may have heard that the U.S. House of Representatives just passed a bill to spend $741 billion renaming military bases that have been heretofore named for Confederates. You may think that’s a grand idea but still wonder at the price tag.

Of course, the secret is that — even though most of the media coverage is about the renaming of bases — the bill itself is almost entirely about funding (part of) the world’s most expensive military machine: more nukes, more “conventional” weapons, more space weapons, more F-35s than the Pentagon even wanted, etc.

Annually, the military appropriations and authorization bills are the only bills to go through Congress where the bulk of the media coverage is always devoted to some marginal issue and never to what the bill essentially does.

Almost never does media coverage of these bills mention, for example, foreign bases, or their huge financial cost, or the lack of public support for them. This time, however, there has been mention of the fact that this bill blocks the removal of U.S. troops and mercenaries from Germany and Afghanistan.

Picketing a Juneteenth celebration? Upper Arlington’s “Golden Pride” group exposed

Collage of FB messages and golden bear logo

When a podcast titled “Whites of the Roundtable” is focused mainly on Central Ohio’s most prestigious old-money suburb Upper Arlington (UA), by railing against any affordable housing moving in, this old-money suburb probably has a white supremacy problem.

But it’s no laughing matter when on an invite-only and unsearchable Facebook group called “UA Golden Pride,” veiled threats are made against a UA Ohio House of Representative Democrat.

Or when UA’s most vocal right-winger takes his explosive anger to Facebook as UA Golden Pride cheers him on.

The Free Press wants to be clear, UA is not the Republican stronghold it once was even though it still has the lowest percentage of Black residents in metro Columbus.

In 2016 it went Clinton by 15 points (3,300 votes), and while the Free Press was unable to obtain 2020 presidential vote totals, Ohio House of Rep. Catherine Allison Russo, of UA’s District 24, won her re-election over Republican Pat Manley by 15 points (12,000 votes).

UA is jammed with million-dollar homes and good people. For some of them it’s win-at-all-costs, an attitude reflective of Ohio State’s football program.

Middle East Peace: Tell Your Senators: Restore Humanitarian Aid to Palestinians

Action Alert

In 2018, the Trump administration announced its decision to cut all US aid to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA). This agency helps administer critical services and resources such as health care, education, and emergency food assistance to Palestinian refugees throughout the Middle East including in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. UNRWA’s work is even more important now as COVID-19 greatly exacerbates the difficult conditions that Palestinian refugees endure. Without US funding, UNRWA is unable to execute its important activities that serve millions of Palestinians. Before the $360 million dollars in US funding was cut, it accounted for nearly 30 percent of UNRWA’s budget. Today, while COVID continues to rise throughout the world, UNRWA is left without the funds to pay its November and December salaries for all of its 28,000 staff, including health care workers and teachers.

The Maxwells: Mossad’s First Family of Spies

The story of the deceased pedophile and presumed Israeli spy Jeffrey Epstein continues to enthrall because so little of the truth regarding it has been revealed in spite of claims by the government that a thorough follow-up investigation has been initiated. The case is reportedly still open and it is to be presumed that Justice Department investigators have been able to examine certain aspects of what occurred more intensively. A major part of the investigation has been a review of actions taken by the four government prosecutors who were most directly involved with the negotiations with Epstein and his lawyers in 2007-8. The 22 month-long review, carried out by the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), finally produced a 350 page report which was released on November 12th.

The Collapse of Michèle Flournoy’s Hopes for the Top Pentagon Job Shows What Can Happen When Progressives Put Up a Fight

Just a few weeks ago, super hawk Michèle Flournoy was being touted as a virtual shoo-in to become Joe Biden’s nominee for Secretary of Defense. But some progressives insisted on organizing to raise key questions, such as: Should we accept therevolving door that keeps spinning between the Pentagon and the weapons industry? Does an aggressive U.S. military really enhance “national security” and lead to peace?

By challenging Flournoy while posing those questions -- and answering them in the negative -- activism succeeded in changing “Defense Secretary Flournoy” from a fait accompli to a lost fantasy of the military-industrial complex.

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