LOVELAND MAGAZINE

News and Events from the Loveland, Ohio Area

Without fear or favor
Since 2004

Tag: Atlanta

  • We need more than thoughts and prayers from our lawmakers in response to these tragedies

    We need more than thoughts and prayers from our lawmakers in response to these tragedies

    Dear Loveland Area Residents,

    we’re still learning the details of the deadly mass shooting at the FedEx facility in Indianapolis, Indiana. Eight people were shot and killed, and several others were wounded. We mourn for the victims and the survivors, and our hearts are with their loved ones and all those impacted by yet another mass shooting in the U.S.

    In the last several weeks, our country has witnessed multiple acts of gun violence. In Chicago, a police officer shot and killed 13-year-old Adam Toledo. In Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, a police officer shot and killed 20-year-old Daunte Wright. In Charlotte, North Carolina, two trans women were shot and killed in hotel rooms. In Knoxville, Tennessee, multiple students from Austin-East High School have been fatally shot in recent weeks. And in mass shootings in Boulder, Colorado; Baltimore County, Maryland; Orange, California; Allen, Texas; Rock Hill, South Carolina; and Atlanta, Georgia, multiple people were shot and killed in each location.

    In addition to each of these tragic shootings, so many others occur and never make headlines. The tragedy in Indianapolis is at least the 251st mass shooting since January 2009.1 And every day in the U.S. on average, more than 100 people are killed with guns, and more than 230 are wounded—the majority of which do not take place during mass shootings.

    We need more than thoughts and prayers from our lawmakers in response to these tragedies. We don’t have to live like this. Take action today to help end America’s gun violence crisis.

    The U.S. Senate needs to listen to the will of the American public and pass background check legislation now; it would be their first major gun safety law in 25 years. And at every level of government, lawmakers must prioritize gun safety and work to end gun violence in all of its forms. In the last year, Indiana’s weak gun laws and the pandemic have exacerbated gun violence, with multiple cities—including Indianapolis—seeing elevated numbers of gun homicides in 2020.

    The news of the mass shooting in Indianapolis comes at a time when we’re already thinking about the history of gun violence in America: Today marks 14 years since the mass shooting at Virginia Tech, which left 32 people shot and killed, and 17 others wounded. For all of the victims and survivors of gun violence across the country, we must honor their lives with action.

    Thank you for being a part of this movement, and thank you for everything you do to help end our country’s gun violence crisis.

    Contribute To End Gun Violence

    Sincerely,

    Everytown and Moms Demand Action

  • After financing xenophobic campaign, FirstEnergy deplores anti-Asian bigotry

    After financing xenophobic campaign, FirstEnergy deplores anti-Asian bigotry

    By Marty Schladen and Ohio Capital Journal

    There has been a terrifying surge in violence against Asians over the past year, prompting one Ohio company to take a stand on an issue it was arguably on the other side of in 2019.

    Meanwhile, Ohio’s lieutenant governor is digging in over comments he made last week. (Ohio Lt. Gov. bashes China on coronavirus, won’t address Trump)

    There has been a drumbeat of random violence against Asians throughout the coronavirus pandemic. 

    Earlier this month, a man went on a shooting rampage in the Atlanta area, killing eight. Six of those victims were Asian women. Then on Monday, sickening surveillance footage showed a man in New York kicking a 65-year-old Asian woman in the stomach and then twice kicking her in the head and saying “you don’t belong here.

    The attacks are part of an alarming trend. Nearly 3,800 instances of anti-Asian hate — most of them verbal — were reported to Stop AAPI Hate over the past year. The organization said many more unreported incidents have undoubtedly taken place.

    Researchers have linked the increase in anti-Asian hate to former President Donald Trump’s rhetoric regarding the coronavirus. He repeatedly referred to it as the “China virus” and the “Kung flu.”

    Last Friday, one Ohio company condemned violence against Asians.

    “FirstEnergy condemns the rise in violence across the country and stands firm in our support of the Asian-American community — which includes many of our employees, customers, suppliers and stakeholders,” the company said in a tweet.

    As Dave Anderson of the Energy and Policy institute flagged over the weekend, that’s a far cry from the tone of FirstEnergy-financed advertising during the 2019 fight over House Bill 6 — a $1.3 billion energy bailout that morphed into one of the biggest corruption scandals in Ohio history.

    After Gov. Mike DeWine signed the bailout law, FirstEnergy and related interests funded a furious fight to stop a citizen initiative to repeal it. Much of the campaign consisted of bogus claims that the repeal effort was really a Chinese conspiracy to take over Ohio’s power grid. Some of the rhetoric in the million-dollar campaign might even have surpassed Trump’s.

    “They took our manufacturing jobs,” one spot ominously opens. “They shuttered our factories. Now they’re coming for our energy jobs. The Chinese government is quietly invading our electric grid.”

    As the ad makes these assertions, it flashes video of Chinese President Xi Jinping at a Communist Party function.

    In another ad meant to scare Ohioans from signing the petition to repeal the bailout, the FirstEnergy-funded effort again falsely linked bailout opponents to China.

    “Warning!” it said. “Don’t give your personal information to the Chinese government. Don’t sign their petition allowing China control over Ohio.” 

    Asked about the contrast between the stance FirstEnergy took last week and the advertising campaign it helped fund in 2019, a spokeswoman said that the company is under new management.

    “FirstEnergy’s new leadership team is fully committed to diversity and inclusion and condemning violence and discrimination against Asian Americans,” the spokeswoman, Jennifer Young, said in an email. “We stand behind our statement and will continue to support and foster a workplace and world where all races, ethnicities and other targeted groups are valued and respected.”

    Indeed, in October the company fired CEO Chuck Jones and other top executives after an internal investigation found that the company had made a $4 million payment to DeWine’s appointee to Ohio’s utility regulator just before the HB 6 fight heated up. 

    As FirstEnergy works to move past the rhetoric of 2019, Ohio’s lieutenant governor is digging in on rhetoric from last week.

    On Friday, as FirstEnergy was denouncing anti-Asian violence, Lt. Gov. Jon Husted tweeted a story about Robert Redfield, former director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Without providing evidence, Redfield claimed that the coronavirus had escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan, China — a claim the World Health Organization called “extremely unlikely.”

    Despite that information being in the Axios story, Husted tweeted the story with the question, “So it appears it was the Wuhan Virus after all?

    Ohio Sen. Tina Maharath, D-Columbus, is the daughter of Laotian refugees. She told the Associated Press that Husted’s comments echoed Trump’s and only aggravated anti-Asian sentiment.

    Husted denied that.

    “I was just pointing out that this is an international crisis, in my opinion, that the Chinese government is responsible for and I wanted an independent investigation,” he told the AP. “So I wasn’t trying to accomplish anything that the political left or political right thinks that I might have from that tweet other than to draw attention to the issue.”

    In an article in the prestigious journal Nature Medicine, virologist Angela L. Rasmussen said that the “virus probably evolved in a bat host until an unknown spillover event into humans occurred.”

    She called claims that the pandemic started with a laboratory accident or intentional engineering “outright ridiculous conspiracy theories.”

    As for placing blame for the pandemic on government responses, there seems to be plenty of that to go around. 

    Deborah Birx, Trump’s coronavirus response coordinator, last weekend suggested to CNN that Trump’s bungled response to the pandemic may have cost hundreds of thousands of lives. A Trump supporter, Husted has avoided criticizing Trump’s coronavirus response.

  • [Urgent Message] Everytown for Gun Safety and Moms Demand Action

    [Urgent Message] Everytown for Gun Safety and Moms Demand Action

    Dear Loveland Area Families,

    As families in Atlanta and countless other communities are still grieving after recent tragic shootings, we’re learning the details of the heartbreaking mass shooting in which at least ten people were shot and killed at a supermarket in Boulder, Colorado.

    We need more than thoughts and prayers from our elected leaders to end gun violence in our communities. That’s why we’re demanding action, and we want you to join us.

    Right now, no matter where you live, there are many ways you can take action with Everytown for Gun Safety and our local Moms Demand Action volunteer chapters in all 50 states and D.C.Take action now and join the movement to end gun violence.

    We’ll be in touch with more ways you can take action soon. Thank you for being with us.