On courage
In a wildly accusatory post, State Rep. Dontavius Jarrells (D-Columbus) told me to "write about the Randolph Freedpeople." Well, alright then.
As you might have read, a cabal of elected officials, subordinates, sycophants and hangers-on descended upon the IBEW #683 union hall on Tuesday night for a smash-and-grab endorsement of Tiara Ross, their ordained city council candidate.
It was a sad, albeit unsurprising, affair for the local political syndicate, which is circling their climate-controlled SUVs after a primary in which 59 percent of the votes went against their candidate despite a slew of endorsements and institutional support.
But given the words from State Rep. Dontavius Jarrells (D-Columbus), I somehow missed when an alleged Democrat ignited a cross on the hall’s floor in protest of Ross’ candidacy.
Given that Jarrells deleted hostile comments contradicting his narrative, and that there’s no archived video of the high-stakes meeting, it’s hard to tell whom, exactly, he is impugning for “falsely equal[izing] a Black woman who’s endured real struggle with the forces that have torn this party apart.”
What I do know is that three Black women spoke against the endorsement. One white woman, a lifelong Democrat, did remind the crowd that former gubernatorial Ed FitzGerald tanked the 2012 Democratic statewide ticket by driving on a suspended license.
Which, I guess, might feel like a low blow depending on how you feel about Ross accumulating $3,795 in unpaid parking tickets and driving on a suspended license for a year and then lying about it under oath despite being a barred lawyer.
It’s not as if Ross has anyone (other than perhaps Donald Trump(?) to blame for that scandal. It’s not like meter maids were racially profiling her illegally parked Hyundai Santa Fe.
And yes, it’s an act of courage to run for public office and enter that arena.
But let’s not overdo it when it comes to Ross, who has enjoyed every lever of power within city government aiding her campaign—from a minimum $60,000 from three elected officials (who can donate unlimited sums of money), to a bevy of endorsements from party officials and unions with business in front of the city, to her co-worker chairing the candidate screening committee, to Tuesday night’s party endorsement after an election in which 59 percent of votes went against her.
That is the literal opposite of being “unseen.”
Coincidentally, there was a much better example of a courageous Black woman running for office, who also happened to be in that room Tuesday night and spoke against the endorsement before calling into question the party leadership’s integrity.
Adrienne Hood, the mother of the late Henry Green, used her son’s murder at the hands of the local police as a call to public service. She ran against Councilman Emmanuel Remy, a white man who, in his day job as a realtor, almost assuredly uses inside knowledge of city government to his financial gain.
Did party leaders and Black elected officials rally to her cause? Did they write multiple $20,000 checks? Did they provide any institutional support to Hood at all?
Did they paint opposition to her as a plot from wealthy crackers on “the other side of [Route] 71," as Jarrells did on Tuesday night?
No.
They stood on the sidelines silently while the party endorsed the white realtor over the Black mother in a true minority-majority district to predictable results.
And I would have left all those points in a sternly worded tweet. But then Jarrells doubled down:
Again, I’m mystified that Jarrells claims he “couldn’t” see what I wrote about him, since everything was above the paywall.
But maybe he’s telling the truth in not seeing what I wrote, which was factual if not flattering, because my criticism had nothing to do with his ability as a legislator.
Normally, I would have just chuckled and gone about my day. But it was the jab at the end—the demand to “write about the Randolph Freedpeople”—that set the table for today’s blog.
It’s a reference to a press conference that Jarrells invited me to in June 2024, in which he was positioning himself as the deal-maker for an ultimately toothless resolution that would have apologized for the wrongs agaisnt the Randolph Freedpeople, a group of emancipated slaves from Virginia that were met by violence from angry white mobs when they moved to Ohio to settle the land they had been deeded.
It’s the sort of travesty that often goes unaddressed in public education in Ohio. I never learned about it, and I went through school before the Republican junta tanked our state’s education rating.
But it wasn’t news to me in June 2024. I had learned the story in 2018—when Jarrells was answering phones for a true absentee legislator, former Democrat Bernadine Kent—during my tilt-at-windmills run for the Statehouse in Miami County.
I already knew Larry Hamilton and Freedpeople descendant Paisha Thomas and their quest for justice. As well as a simple fact about Piqua, Ohio, that pisses me off to this day:
But Jarrells said something to me that day that has stuck with me. He said that, when proposing this resolution to Republican leaders, they told him they didn’t even want to get a whiff of the word “reparations” in exchange for passing the ultimately toothless resolution.
Which is the kind of pragmatic choice that Democrats regularly face in a super-minority party at the Statehouse: Get a feel-good resolution passed or raise Hell about reparations and lose his ability to pass fringe legislation and bragging rights about bringing “millions of dollars” to Ohio’s largest metropolitan area.
But that resolution never got passed. In fact, I have never heard Jarrells mention the Randolph Freedpeople again, until yesterday, when he brought them back to pot-shot my honkey ass at the end of a passive-aggressive post about a blog he claimed not to have read.
His last tweet about the Randolph Freedpeople was also on June 19, 2024. It got 795 views.
My two tweets combined for a total of 7,000 views.
Nothing earth-shattering or anything close to viral, but I’m perplexed by what “writing about the Randolph Freedpeople” would have done for their descendants when I’m a low-rent blogger that Republican legislators largely despise, and he is, by his own description, a respected and important state legislator capable of cajoling the Republican junta into passing substantial and impactful legislation.
Ultimately, Jarrells’ cry of the Freedpeople deserving their land back rings as hollow as his empty resolution would have when he continues to support the apartheid state of Israel and its ongoing genocide of Palestinians in their native lands:
You’ll notice how the word “Israel” doesn’t get mentioned, which is by design for anyone not being familiar with AIPAC or its purpose within Ohio politics.
Jarrells’ involvement goes beyond hosting a “reception” with AIPAC and a Republican henchman like Mike Carey, who has actively worked to dilute the power of Black votes through gerrymandering in state and federal elections.
Though Jarrells was smart enough not to post touristy pictures on social media, he went to Israel last year using Israeli and campaign money to vacation in an apartheid state that infamously and involuntarily sterilized Black immigrants.
Days before the 2024 election, Jarrells was spending time regaling college students about his “inspirational” free trips to GenocideWorld:
That was my point in yesterday’s blog, though not in as many words.
Jarrells pretended to have keen insight into the needs of District 7 without mentioning that the district voted for Vogel by 18 points. And yes, Jarrells represents poor neighborhoods, but it’s not where he raises his money from.
Jarrells used those poor neighborhoods as fodder—as if their votes count more than poor people’s to the west of 71—without mentioning he also represents Bexley, the wealthiest suburb in Columbus, where, coincidentally, he was last night raising money once again.
And look, I get it: His Democratic House colleagues recently bounced him from leadership, which he immediately tried to spin to the public as “stepping down.”
With Rep. Latyna Humphrey (D-Columbus) running for his district’s Senate seat, it’s hard to see where Jarrells goes after the House if Congresswoman Joyce Beatty fulfills her threat to seek re-election and forestalls another beautiful game of Franklin County Democratic musical chairs.
Jarrells needs allies where he can find them. And he’s smart enough to know that Ross will be the next councilwoman in Columbus thanks to the all-mighty sample ballot.
Power protects power, and it’s all in the game. But I’m not going to tolerate gross mischaracterizations of honest political debate for personal gain or self-righteous cheap shots from a politician actively supporting the most egregious act of genocide in our lifetimes.
Anything else, we can save for the camera at the Statehouse in October. Until then, he should say something—anything!—about the ongoing genocide in Gaza, where the victims look a lot more like him than they do me.
Anything else is pompous window-dressing from a grandstanding politician who has failed the simplest moral test of our lifetimes.
If I wasn’t already married you’d be in severe danger of a proposal after this one. My therapist sends their thanks, as well. Outstanding call out, I have no notes.
Posts like these restore some of the sanity inevitably lost to daily attrition in the current political era. Thank you.