Wed, Sept 4, 7-8:30pm
Bexley Public Library, 2411 E. Main St.
Screening portions of the documentary “Jews Step Forward.” The moral voices of bravery and justice that are depicted in “Jews Step Forward” will be followed by a discussion of the personal experiences of our members. Hosted by Jewish Voice for Peace Central Ohio. facebook.com/JVPCentralOhio.

When Donald Trump used to call out the “fake news” for being biased during the 2016 presidential election, it was a not-so-subtle way for him to appeal to Bernie Sanders’ supporters who felt the same pain. The blatant bias shown towards anyone who challenged the media’s favored candidate Hillary Clinton in 2016 was so obvious that CNN contributors were eventually busted for feeding debate questions to the Clinton campaign. Heck, The Washington Post ran sixteen negative articles on Sanders within a span of sixteen hours. So the notion that media outlets were potentially biased against Bernie or anyone else was not completely far-fetched.

Naturally, as the 2020 presidential race kicks off, the question now becomes with Sanders running again, will the media’s anti-Bernie bias still exist? After all, if these major news outlets simply favored Clinton in 2016, certainly they wouldn’t have any lasting ill-will towards Vermont’s senior senator, right? Unfortunately, the media has already answered this question with a resounding “hold my beer.”

Being shot by the police is sadly a leading cause of death for black males in this country, according to an August 2019 study by the Los Angeles Times. During a violent encounter with the police, black males are 2½ times more likely to die than white males.

But what about here in Columbus?

Between 2013-2016 the Columbus Police shot and killed 24 people, 20 of them black. At the time, we were number one in the nation of the 15 largest cities in police killing blacks, per capita.

Columbus police use force disproportionately against minorities, said a report initiated by the Columbus Community Safety Advisory Commission as part of an evaluation of the city’s police training and procedures. Matrix Consulting Group issued the 330-page report.

In 2017, whites constituted 61 percent of Columbus’ population, yet were involved in only 26 percent of the police division’s use of force incidents. By contrast, the city’s black population was only 28 percent but the report states that “more than half” of the use of force victims were black.

There’s a mantra that Americans are the freest people in the world. The First Amendment guarantees our right to free speech, assembly and redress of grievances. The Republican-dominated Ohio State Senate opposes these basic principles and they memorialize their hatred of civil liberties in Senate Bill 33.

Known all over the nation as the “pipeline protest bill,” SB 33 criminalizes protest activities. This ALEC-based (American Legislative Exchange Council) bill already passed through nine state legislatures – and passed 24-8 in the Ohio Senate. Ohio State Senator Frank Hoagland (R-Mingo Junction), the man who introduced SB 33, is a member of ALEC.

The bill makes trespassing on “critical infrastructure” property different than regular trespassing and defines “critical” as pipelines, natural gas plants, other facilities and even property where a pipeline might someday be built. Protestors found in violation can face a third-degree felony that carries a prison sentence from three months to five years and increases of fines by the ten-fold – up to $100,000.

It is not often that one hears anything like the truth in today’s Washington, a city where the art of dissimulation has reached new heights among both Democrats and Republicans. Everyone who has not been asleep like Rip Van Winkle for the past twenty years knows that the most powerful foreign lobby operating in the United States is that of the state of Israel. Indeed, by some measures it just might be the most powerful lobby period, given the fact that it has now succeeded in extending its tentacles into state and local levels with its largely successful campaigns to punish criticism or boycotting of Israel while also infiltrating boards of education to require Holocaust education and textbooks that reflect favorably on the Jewish state.