Recently I've become aware that OSU wants to build a new power plant that runs on fracked gas, and it's got me pretty angry both as a student and as a taxpayer. I’m a third-year undergraduate student at OSU's School of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences. The global climate crisis is no new topic to me. I've been hearing about it, its causes (chiefly fossil fuel usage) and its solutions (replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy sources), since the 1st grade. It's always been a looming problem in my mind but I always assumed that our society would adjust and solve the problem. Evidently, the steering wheel is still in the hands of people who don't feel the same urgency that my generation feels. I enrolled at OSU because I thought of it as a cutting edge research school. I thought it'd be part of the solution to the biggest problems of this era. This proposal has shown me that the reality is much less promising.

In 1795, indigenous nations ceded much of the Ohio Country to the U.S. government as part of the Treaty of Greenville. The territory ceded as part of this treaty includes the land Ohio State University (OSU) resides on. The cession, as Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz wrote, was “a victory based on vicious irregular warfare.” She recounts U.S. forces “destroying Shawnee villages and fields and murdering women, children, and old men.” The decisive defeat for the indigenous nations that spurred their acceptance of the treaty was the Battle at Fallen Timbers, yet even after their victory, U.S. forces “continued for three days laying waste to Shawnee houses and cornfields.”

Activists have been under heavy surveillance through body cams, street cameras and their social media, and many were explicitly targeted for arrest while on downtown streets over the previous several weeks, but Columbus police have entered a new strategic phase to end the protests and kill the movement.

The Free Press has confirmed the Columbus police began issuing warrants about a week ago against activists without the individual knowing, which is common practice for some serious crimes, but not for peacefully protesting.

After one warrant was secretly issued, the activist was then arrested several days later while protesting.

Several more activists, after discovering a warrant had been issued for their arrest, decided to turn themselves in, said a defense attorney who is representing these activists.

But instead of turning themselves into police, says the defense attorney, they decided on seeing the duty judge. The judge then set the warrant aside, or they plead not guilty and a recognizance bond was set.

“Five days isn’t enough time,” said a tearful Latosha Aaron-Gavin outside the temporary eviction courtroom at the Columbus Convention Center on a recent overcast morning. 

The judge, while holding up the bright orange five-day set-out sticker, in a robotic tone had just told the 35-year-old mother her landlord was going to soon place the sticker on her front door.

Aaron-Gavin’s landlord is LINK Real Estate of Upper Arlington, which “proudly”endorsed City Council’s recent declaration that racism is a public health crisis.

“They’ve been telling me they just want their money, but they don’t care that my apartment floods every time it rains,” said Aaron-Gavin, who’s recent Amazon delivery job didn’t pan out.

She was also unable to receive unemployment and her stimulus check was used for March and April’s rent. She said she has paid rent to LINK for two years.

She wiped away another tear. “The pandemic put me here…”