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The Mockingbird has previously reported on a nationwide campaign of work stoppages, labor strikes and hunger strikes began on August 21 in dozens of prisons. As the campaign was about enter it's third week local organizers from Black Queer Intersectional Columbus and the Incarcerated Workers Committee of the Industrial Workers World held a demonstration on September 4th outside the Franklin County Court and Jail complex on High Street.

Family and friends spoke out at a rally held for Donna Dalton exactly one week after detective Andrew Mitchell murdered her in a parking lot on August 23rd. The police attempted to control the narrative while continuing to stonewall. The rally had been called by a group on social media.

He is a 30 year veteran. She was a 24 year old mother of two on her way to see her mom on Columbus' economically hard hit West Side this past Thursday, August 23rd. They were perfect for each other. He wanted someone to rape, she had no power. But something went wrong, and what should have been just another Columbus police shakedown ended in a hail of gunfire inside his unmarked car because she may have fought back.

Tomorrow, August 21st, there will be another nation wide Prison Labor Strike. The Strike, which is slated to last until at least September 9th, mirrors a strike that began on the date this one ends in 24 states in 2016, with over 24,000 prisoners participating.

It was billed nationally as a “March against far left violence.” It was an attempt to distance activity from last weekend's “Unite the Right 2” rallies in Charlottesville Virginia and Washington and likely also a way to cozy up to a recent congressional initiative to outright suppress anti-fascist protestors. It drew small handfuls of assorted right wing activists to Boston, Spokane, and San Jose. There were more serious mobilization efforts that drew over 100 armed fascists to Seattle and over two dozen to Austin Texas.

Predictive Policing is not a fact based system. It is a system of taking selected events, putting those through biased filters and allocating resources. It is faith based policing and one of the commandments in the stone tablets is racism. When the vast resources of the nation's largest police executive association, the “best minds” of the recent Obama administration, the capital of silicon valley and the blessing of the CIA are added, thought crime avenue intersects racism street and sewer main is is spouting.

Voting machines are not secure. This author has been reporting that simple fact for nearly 6 years. The security on voter registration systems or more correctly the vulnerability thereof, has also been the topic of multiple articles over the years. I once speculated to an ex-girlfriend that I could teach her 10 year old how to crack a voting machine in under one hour. Said 10 year old mastered the method of breaking a single alphabetic substitution cipher in under an hour and wandered off bored. The kid in question had no particular talent and very little interest.

Today, August 8th, the Wikileaks tweeted a copy of a letter to Julian Assange signed by both ranking members of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee, Richard Burr (R-NC) and Mark Warner (D-VA) and dated August 1st. The letter, pictured below and thumbnailed at the top of this article and shown full size at the bottom, is labeled “Committee Sensitive” as if putting that at the top of a document and mailing it to the founder of Wikileaks will keep it from being leaked. Despite being a short masterpiece in political theater, it does raise some serious issues to be discussed in public.

Yesterday, August 4th, for the second time in under 40 days, Patriot Prayer and the Proud Boys marched against immigration and support of President Donald Trump. For the second time, police launched an unprovoked attack against antifascist protestors without warning but with their full arsenal of crowd control weapons. Tune 30th march by the same group attempted to use police escort to reach and attack an anti-ice encampment.