News & Commentary

Below is our Chief Lobbyist Gary Daniels' opponent testimony on Sub. House Bill 215. This was delivered to the House Criminal Justice Committee on February 26, 2020.

Below is our Chief Lobbyist Gary Daniels' opponent testimony on Senate Bill 260. This was delivered to the Senate Health, Human Services & Medicaid Committee on February 26, 2020.

Below is our Chief Lobbyist Gary Daniels' opponent testimony on Senate Bill 260. This was delivered to the House Criminal Justice Committee Committee on February 26, 2020.

Late last year, the Economics Policy Institute Economic Analysis and Research Network (EARN) released a new report which made something glaringly obvious: Ohio still has a major racism problem. The evidence is there in many glaring ways – for instance, Ohio is in the top ten states with the largest ratio between black and white unemployment; Dayton and Cleveland are two of the six metropolitan areas in which poverty among the black population exceeds 40%; and like many Midwestern states, Ohio also imprisons African Americans at more than five times the rate of white individuals.Here’s the thing, if there is anything that we can do to honor the legacy of Black History Month, then we must do exactly what the Director of EARN, Naomi Walker, suggests – we must hold our policymakers accountable so they “recognize the economic harm that structural racism has caused Black families in all parts of the country. In a time of federal inaction, states must step up to address disparate economic outcomes by strengthening public education, bolstering workers’ rights and strengthening labor standards, and eliminating discrimination.”So you might ask: how do we hold our policymakers accountable?To start, we must elect lawmakers who are well aware of the impact of racist and classist policies and actively work against the grain of such. And the timing couldn’t be any better – 2020 is Election Year, and we can take advantage of this opportunity in just a few months!Then we can do more.We can also go beyond this in several ways – by actively holding our own leaders and authoritative figures in our workplaces and in the school system accountable when it comes to racial divides and discrimination, we can make changes in our everyday lives to combat this systemic racism.But then we must go a step further.Organizations such as the Tamir Rice Foundation, Black Lives Matter, Columbus Urban League,  Ohio Conference of the NAACP, the United Black Fund of Greater Cleveland, INC – and many more across the state of Ohio – need support in a variety of different capacities that many of us can fill in one way or another. Whether that means financial support, volunteering for events, or even just showing up and supporting these organizations and individuals involved with them, everything you do can make a difference.We must stop letting Ohio take the top ranks of perpetuating systemic racism.And we must also do it in a way that doesn’t make us “saviors,” but posits us to recognize how we’ve maintained this systemic oppression and how to actively dismantle the systems that have been advanced by the people who have been placed in authoritative roles by us.Only in this way can we live up to the legacy of Black History Month.And it is imperative that we should.We owe it to this beautiful state – and more importantly, we owe it to the individuals and communities that we are celebrating this month of February.

In 2019, I moved to Columbus from Arizona four days after Senate Bill 23 was introduced in late February.Before I had even gotten to unpack the last of my items, the bill, which was dubbed by anti-choice groups as the “Heartbeat Bill”, was signed into law in early April. It followed in the quick and fast footsteps of similar heartbeat bills that were introduced and passed in Alabama, Kentucky, Georgia, Mississippi, and Missouri.Being born and raised in the D.C., Maryland, and Northern Virginia area, I was lucky enough to never have to deal with restrictive laws that ultimately decided what would happen with my body when it comes to reproductive health. But now I officially lived in a state that was making headlines all across the world for passing an incredibly egregious law that not only restricted abortions to a nearly impossible time frame, but essentially was outlined in a way that it ultimately was a near-total abortion ban.My friends and family all across the nation (and the world) would ask me what was going on in the state, constantly referring to Ohio as “crazy territory where women had no rights and couldn’t get abortions.” I, like so many other Ohioans, shrugged my shoulders, praying and hoping that the law would be overturned or news would break that it was all a sham. But the news never came to me. My social media timelines were stark silent after they had so frequently been inundated with news of all the bans being signed into law.It wasn’t until I started working at the ACLU of Ohio four months later that I realized that despite this bill being signed into law, abortion is still legal in Ohio.And actually, it’s still legal in EVERY state that the so-called “Heartbeat Bill” was passed in.  How?In particular for Ohio, before DeWine’s signature could even dry on SB 23, the ACLU of Ohio, Planned Parenthood, and Preterm-Cleveland were already gearing up to take the state to court. And we did just that – on May 15th, we filed a lawsuit challenging this near-total ban. Due to this, a federal judge blocked the law from going into effect in early July. Since then, we’ve filed a motion for permanent injunction on the ban, so again I reiterate, abortion is still legal in Ohio.Here’s the thing – while media outlets from all over covered the insanity that ensued when the bill was introduced and subsequently signed into law, the same attention was not given to the trajectory of the law afterwards due to a myriad of reasons. And because of that, there is a common belief that the law is effective – when it simply is not. The fact that there is utter confusion around the legality of abortion in Ohio has been confirmed by Preterm staff, who have stated that clinics in West Virginia have reported an increase of Ohio residents seeking abortion in their state due to the rampant misinformation.Let that sink in.Individuals are crossing state lines into West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Indiana in order to obtain abortions that they have access to in their very own state – and likely their own city! And this isn’t even taking into account of the individuals across the state who are carrying out pregnancies under the misunderstanding that they cannot get an abortion in Ohio and do not have the means to travel out of state in order to get one.And this is exactly why we recently took to the highways and streets with ten massive billboards positioned all across the state with a very simple message: abortion is still legal in Ohio.Because it is.It’s a fact.These billboards aren’t an attempt to troll anyone or a subtle move to agitate abortion proponentsThey are to let people know the truth.And every Ohioan deserves to know the truth.Which is, simply put, that despite the “Heartbeat Bill” being signed into law last year – and another, even more outrageous bill being introduced – abortion is still legal in Ohio.

Below is our Chief Lobbyist Gary Daniels' proponent testimony on House Bill 1. This was delivered to the Senate Judiciary Committee on January 22, 2020.

Below is our Chief Lobbyist Gary Daniels' proponent testimony on House Bill 285. This was delivered to the Senate Local Government, Public Safety & Veterans Affairs Committee on January 21, 2020.

Below is our Chief Lobbyist Gary Daniels' proponent testimony on House Bill 158. This was delivered to the Senate Local Government, Public Safety & Veterans Affairs Committee on January 21, 2020.

Hamilton County has one of the highest rates of homelessness in Ohio. In the City of Cincinnati alone, the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development estimates that over 7,500 people—about 1,800 of whom are children—will experience homelessness in any calendar year. On a single day in 2016, some 6,000 people took refuge in County shelters, which are crowded to capacity and regularly forced to turn people away. Left with no choice, groups of people experiencing homelessness have lived for years on Cincinnati’s Third Street, Fort Washington Way, and elsewhere in tents and other makeshift shelters. These group encampments, though obviously far from ideal, are safer and more stable than camping alone.