Cincinnati is not known as a city with stellar racial politics. From the 2001 uprising following a string of police murders of young black men culminating in the killing of unarmed 19 year old Timothy Thomas to the more recent discovery that the highly gentrified, increasingly segregated, area of Over-the-Rhine is home to the greatest level of income disparity in the country (according to census data), it is clear that there is not only still a long way to go, but also that things may be getting worse.

A new admissions policy at the University of Cincinnati is characteristic of the all encompassing system of institutionalized racism that Michelle Alexander wrote about in her book, “The New Jim Crow” released in 2010. UC is switching to the Common Application, a one-size-fits-all admissions application used by hundreds of colleges and universities nationwide, which requires member institutions to ask for a list of both misdemeanor and felony convictions.

According to Alexander, a new form of legal discrimination has emerged since the end of the civil rights movement and the dominance of electoral and legislative politics. While political forces have rightly defended institutions like affirmative action, they have not remained vigilant as other kinds of racism have emerged in society. Ex-criminals are faced with a number of issues after they are convicted which make it difficult, if not impossible, to vote in elections, find housing, work, food assistance, medical care, and other essentials. Alexander points out that African Americans, especially young males, have been disproportionately charged, convicted and jailed under the War on Drugs. This system of incarceration and lingering consequences, while claiming to be unbiased, actually creates a situation similar to the explicitly racist Jim Crow laws that dominated race relations in the South from reconstruction the civil rights era.

While the university may do what it wants with the information on convictions, a document sent from the UC admissions office to the faculty senate, who were discussing the switch in February, includes some indication that it will be used in a review of prospective students: “For the colleges, guidelines would need to be established regarding qualitative factors that can be used to either positively or negatively impact admissions consideration by the reviewers.” ¹ This statement can mean a number of things, the new information could be used to determine whether students may be admitted into certain programs (or the university at all), be able to live in dorms, or take part in other activities — to essentially be full members of the university community, academically and otherwise. There is no question, however, that the information will be used; the branch campuses will not switch to the common application with the main campus, but they will be adding the question about convictions to their applications.

Taken to the extreme, the effects could be devastating for the university that fetishizes its “diversity” and the fact that it is an “urban campus.” UC has had its share of racial issues in the past decade. Most recently, the University Police tased and killed Everette Howard, a black high school graduate who was on campus for a summer program before going to college in Tennessee. The documents released surrounding the tasing were initially heavily redacted and, possibly because of a lack of a strong organized public outcry, the officer who tased Howard is still on the force; the chief of the university police retired months after the incident, however, this didn’t seem to have any connection with the death.

UC’s actual diversity initiatives unfortunately seem to be falling short of their own low goals. Available demographic data indicated African Americans have consistently decreased as a percentage (11.2 percent to 8.9 percent) of the student population over the last 9 years that statistics are available for (2003 to 2011). This is as overall enrollment has reached new records. Applications from black prospective students have also decreased after peaking in 2009. In 2010 the percentage of staff that is African American stood at the lowest point since at least 2003. ²

Recently, one repeatedly cited solution that the university administration has put forward to the problem of falling diversity is to add an admissions representative in the Chicago area to increase out of state applications. Such a step, along with the new admissions requirements seems to take one step forward and two steps back. It is unclear if diversity is the actual goal of the admissions representative in Chicago, it seems equally likely that it would be a strategy to help patch up the crumbling budget, as any student enrolling from that area would pay out of state tuition, much higher than the skyrocketing rate that Ohio residents pay to go to the public university.

The common application added the question about convictions in 2006, codifying discrimination into the last place where, not only the ruling class, but the general public, has repeatedly told the least fortunate to turn to in order to get ahead. Paul Street calls mass incarceration a “self fulfilling prophecy”, noting a number of ironies embedded in the way society operates, chief among them the inverse relationship between wages and crime. Street writes, “according to one estimate, a 10 percent decrease in wages is associated with a 10 to 20 percent increase in the likelihood of incarceration.” ³ Couple this with the realities of capitalism: that more education is directly related to a higher wage and a total lifetime salary and that African Americans can expect to earn much less than white counterparts over the course of their lifetime. ⁴

The contradictions are rampant: more education is the only way to guarantee a higher wage, but, somewhat paradoxically, the system puts in place barriers to enrollment, which will only promote lower wages and higher crime.

It would seem that capitalism is incapable of promoting any sort of achievement among African Americans. African Americans in Ohio skew toward the lower end of educational achievement (some high school, high school graduate, or some college or associate’s degree) compared to whites. ⁵ Additionally, black educational attainment for males aged 25-34 is at the lowest level since the generation born before civil rights. ⁶

Under capitalism, it is desirable to have a class of low paid workers, if that class is further divided along racial lines, all the better. In 2009, the median net worth of black households was less than half of what it was in 2005, doubling the tenfold gap between black and white households to a twentyfold difference, according to the Pew Research Center. ⁷ This also comes at a time when the cost of education is increasing at an ever growing rate; public colleges and universities were the first targets for austerity after the 2008 recession and continue to be hit hard by budget cuts. In addition to enacting pay freezes, firing faculty and staff, and severely limiting the number of tenured professorships, these institutions have passed the burden onto the backs of the students themselves.

It is necessary to understand the societal significance of the criminal justice system and to realize the limitations of the broader system that has a long history of racism and discrimination. In Ohio, black men had a 640 percent higher rate of imprisonment than white men in 2009. ⁸ After the 2001 uprisings, a collaborative agreement with black activist leaders mandated audits of the Cincinnati police over the course of the next several years. These audits showed, time and time again, that traffic stops and other searches disproportionately affected the black community (blacks were stopped as much as two times more often), even though the hit rate, that is, the rate that contraband was found, was the same as white citizens. ⁹ A forthcoming paper from Francis T Cullen and John Paul Wright of, interestingly enough, the University of Cincinnati’s Center for Criminal Justice Research makes no illusions to the state of young black offenders in a town like Cincinnati, noting that “[being] a minority, especially from an inner-city community, dramatically increases one’s prospects of significant contact with the criminal justice system.” Cullen and Wright conclude their paper by calling for society to take measures to save youths from a life of crime–denying educational opportunities based on previous convictions seems counterproductive given the previously referred to correlation of education, wages, and crime.  ¹⁰

Important to Alexander’s thesis is the apparent colorblindness of the criminal justice system. Alexander explains that the colorblindness is actually cover for the the system’s structure of racism. It is interesting to note that the changes to UC’s admissions policies are coming just as the university switches to a “holistic review” process for determining admission, seemingly throwing out any “blindness” when it comes to choosing new students. The criminal justice system, acting as the agent of the New Jim Crow, is a tool to maintain an attractive social order that leaves poor blacks at the lowest rung of the ladder. We should not make the claim that UC’s admissions department is racist, that is an unwarranted accusation, however, we should realize that asking for conviction information on applications only serves the aims of the ruling class: to make it harder, if not impossible, for the working class to attain a good schooling (at any level–not just college) and, conversely, to only allow those of the right pedigree to attain a higher education.

The vigilance of NGO’s and others who seek to protect the gains of the civil rights movement is not enough to counter the gradual spread of discrimination in other areas. On the other hand, campaigns that spring forth as a reaction to a single case of injustice and fold at the close, good or bad, do not have the lasting effect needed to effectively combat all instances inequality and racism. Cincinnati’s characteristic lack of a lasting, proactive, anti-racist movement, made up of every kind of person, means racist policies like the New Jim Crow can and will always manifest themselves, in our criminal justice system, on our police force, and now, in our schools.

I was interviewed by Cincinnati’s Street Newspaper, Streetvibes, on thoughts on continuing the encampments. Though it does sound like I am endorsing “diversity of tactics” at the end, I think this does a good job of capturing the core of the sides of the “to occupy, or not to occupy question” (which might not actually be a question with a binary answer).

Read the article on Streetvibes’ website. 

By JIM LUKEN

Faithful Streetvibes readers know that the Meetup page offers up a bi-weekly account of an individual’s life story. As you can see, this time, there are two stories, and the focus is on a serious conflict, not so much between the two individuals featured here, but between two sides of an issue that, in a sense, affects the ongoing life of downtown Cincinnati.

Now that the city has granted Occupy Cincinnati (OC) members (as well as  anyone else) permission to  express their first amendment rights at a small area of Piatt (Garfield Park) 24/7, a number of individuals from the movement have chosen to do just that, to re-Occupy the park.

For the past three weeks (as of April 7), individuals from the movement have been at Piatt Park all day long, leafleting, and all night, holding vigil. They are proud to re-Occupy the park again. Others in the local Occupy group feel that what these folks are doing is a waste of time and energy.

Streetvibes Readers: read the two stories and decide for yourselves. Send Streetvibes letters stating your point of view. Should the demonstrators remain there at the statue of Garfield… or not?

Reginald Hill

Meet Reginald Hill. 46. Navy veteran. Native of OTR. 4^th of seven children. Father of one, grandfather of three. Long-time independent taxi driver. Grass-roots activist.

“In the middle of the night (at Piatt Park), it is usually pretty calm and dark, of course,” he says. “I often feel lonely and despairing, not knowing if the group as a whole (OC) understands the significance of having a 24 hour space for free speech.”

The protestors are not permitted to lie down, although they often do, catching sleep in snatches as best they can. Hill says that some nights have been very chilly. In the middle of one night, a cold rain fell. The protestors went across the street to stand under the overhang of the library. According to Hill, the police drive by often during the nights. Usually they don’t bother those gathered at the statue, he says. But that night they demanded that the activists return to the park, where they sat for hours in the rain.

Reginald—his friends call him Reggie—has very personal reasons for spending so much time there in the park. “I think it’s important to show that this space is needed, because of all the arrests that happened at this location.” Hill states proudly that he was arrested at both Piatt Park and—two days later—at a middle-of-the night demonstration at Fountain Square [All charges were recently dropped against all the arrestees].

Hill believes that the return of the 24/7 occupation is having a positive effect. He points out that he and his friends have already handed out over 1700 flyers. “It gives us the opportunity to engage by standers, to find out what they think of the Occupation. And it also gives us the ability to have youth become active in the movement.”

Hill expresses no overt anger at the other members of Occupy, who prefer to do committee work and to develop direct actions. But he often feels abandoned by the larger part of the group. He points out that some of those who stand there at the statue leafleting are themselves homeless. They might be described as “ragtag.” Whereas the others, who do their activist work at the OC warehouse facility, or from their computers at home tend to be more middle-class.

“The informational and the technological work to keep our movement alive must be done,” Hill affirms, “But supporting those of us (i.e., those on the street) who support your ideas is also important.”

“All of us,” Reggie avows, “need to be aware of all the people and to be inclusive, and not to exclude anyone because of status or class.” At several OC General Assembly meetings he has begged other members to come to the park late at night, “just to get a feel of what it is like and what we are doing down there.”

Hill has been active in both Occupy Cincinnati and Occupy the Hood, which focuses more on issues relating to foreclosures and the urban poor. Politics and political action is in his blood now. At some point, maybe for the 2014 elections, he hopes to run for city council. In the meantime, he is emphatic. “Occupy has become a family to me, and I would do anything for my family. I’m occupied with the thoughts of Occupy all the time, always ready to create more pressure in order to affect change. Nothing counts,” he concludes, “but more pressure.”

Ben Stockwell

Meet Ben Stockwell. 22. Socialist. Computer programmer for the University of Cincinnati. Second of three boys from a Kings Mills family.

Young Ben Stockwell has been a committed activist for some time now. Already his activist work has had a significant effect on a shadowy, ultra-conservative organization that is only now coming into public view.  A year ago, he and a small group of local friends “outed” this secretive lobbying group known as ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council. ALEC was holding its national meeting here in Cincinnati. “We felt we had to do something,” Ben said. That “something” brought Ben’s group national recognition, and brought ALEC under media scrutiny at last.

On the day of this interview, Ben and I celebrated the announcement that Coca Cola and Pepsi—under activist pressure—had just then abandoned their connections to ALEC.

Stockwell has been a hard-core member of Occupy Cincinnati from early on. But he is not in favor of the re-occupation of Piatt Park. “I don’t hold any grudge against them or anything,” He says, “But I would like to have conversation about why they think it is so important.”

As Stockwell sees it, the encampments that characterized Occupy Wall Street and its imitators all over the country (and world) were a striking visual symbol of the emerging fight against the ruling class. “Early on I think it was great. It got people excited about what we were doing,” he argues, “but I’m not sure a reoccupation can have the same effect. Before (last fall), people were flocking down to see and support the occupation. Now people are only coming across the occupyers accidentally.”

Ben seems fully appreciative of the value of confrontational, in-your-face, tactics when it comes to activism and movement building. “One of the nice things about the (physical) Occupation is that it did kind-of prefigure the collective spirit, and it drew a core of committed activists.”

Stockwell understands that he was one of those drawn into the Occupy movement by the power of those multi-colored tents and the energy that surrounded them in so many places. He became one of the committed core. He still follows the goings-on of Occupyers in various places.

“Greensboro, North Carolina,” he explains, “voluntarily left their physical occupation, and now they work on issues, like foreclosures and the environment. I don’t think we should be occupying for occupying’s sake.”

There are things Ben Stockwell does believe we should be doing. ‘I’d like to see us turn toward more traditional organizing, like canvassing, holding community meetings, essentially going to the people, instead of requiring the people to come to us.”

Stockwell is readying himself for the long struggle to bring true democracy and a level playing field to our common life. In the fall, he will be matriculating at UC, and seeking a second bachelor’s degree (his first was in computer science), this time in sociology.

In terms of his disagreement with Occupyers like Reginald Hill, he concludes, “We don’t have to resolve this thing tomorrow. I hope everyone who is involved realizes they have to put as much energy as they can into a variety of tactics. Some of these tactics, we haven’t even thought of yet.”

From Empire by Hardt and Negri

MILITANT

In the postmodern era, as the figure of the people dissolves, the militant is the one who best expresses the life of the multitude: the agent of biopolitical production and resistance against Empire. When we speak of the militant, we are not thinking of anything like the sad, ascetic agent of the Third International whose soul was deeply permeated by Soviet state reason, the same way the will of the pope was embedded in the hearts of the knights of the Society of Jesus. We are thinking of nothing like that and of no one who acts on the basis of duty and discipline, who pretends his or her actions are deduced from an ideal plan. We are referring, on the contrary, to something more like the communist and liberatory combatants of the twentieth-century revolutions, the intellectuals who were persecuted and exiled in the course of anti-fascist struggles, the republicans of the Spanish civil war and the European resistance movements, and the freedom fighters of all the anticolonial and anti-imperialist wars. A prototypical example of this revolutionary figure is the militant agitator of the Industrial Workers of the World. The Wobbly constructed associations among working people from below, through continuous agitation, and while organizing them gave rise to utopian thought and revolutionary knowledge. The militant was the fundamental actor of the ‘‘long march’’ of the emancipation of labor from the nineteenth to the twentieth centuries, the creative singularity of that gigantic collective movement that was working-class struggle.

Across this long period, the activity of the militant consisted, first of all, in practices of resistance in the factory and in society against capitalist exploitation. It consisted also, through and beyond resistance, in the collective construction and exercise of a counterpower capable of destructuring the power of capitalism and opposing it with an alternative program of government. In opposition to the cynicism of the bourgeoisie, to monetary alienation, to the expropriation of life, to the exploitation of labor, to the colonization of the affects, and so on, the militant organized the struggle. Insurrection was the proud emblem of the militant. This militant was repeatedly martyred in the tragic history of communist struggles. Sometimes, but not often, the normal structures of the rights state were sufficient for the repressive tasks required to destroy the counterpower. When they were not sufficient, however, the fascists and the white guards of state terror, or rather the black mafias in the service of ‘‘democratic’’ capitalisms, were invited to lend a hand to reinforce the legal repressive structures.
Today, after so many capitalist victories, after socialist hopes have withered in disillusionment, and after capitalist violence against labor has been solidified under the name of ultra-liberalism, why is it that instances of militancy still arise, why have resistances deepened, and why does struggle continually reemerge with new vigor? We should say right away that this new militancy does not simply repeat the organizational formulas of the old revolutionary working class. Today the militant cannot even pretend to be a representative, even of the fundamental human needs of the exploited.

Revolutionary political militancy today, on the contrary, must rediscover what has always been its proper form: not representational but constit- uent activity. Militancy today is a positive, constructive, and innovative activity. This is the form in which we and all those who revolt against the rule of capital recognize ourselves as militants today. Militants resist imperial command in a creative way. In other words, resistance is linked immediately with a constitutive investment in the biopolitical realm and to the formation of cooperative apparatuses of production and community. Here is the strong novelty of militancy today: it repeats the virtues of insurrectional action of two hundred years of subversive experience, but at the same time it is linked to a new world, a world that knows no outside. It knows only an inside, a vital and ineluctable participation in the set of social structures, with no possibility of transcending them. This inside is the productive cooperation of mass intellectuality and affective networks, the productivity of postmodern biopolitics. This militancy makes resistance into counterpower and makes rebellion into a project of love.

There is an ancient legend that might serve to illuminate the future life of communist militancy: that of Saint Francis of Assisi. Consider his work. To denounce the poverty of the multitude he adopted that common condition and discovered there the ontological power of a new society. The communist militant does the same, identifying in the common condition of the multitude its enormous wealth. Francis in opposition to nascent capitalism refused every instrumental discipline, and in opposition to the mortification of the flesh (in poverty and in the constituted order) he posed a joyous life, including all of being and nature, the animals, sister moon, brother sun, the birds of the field, the poor and exploited humans, together against the will of power and corruption. Once again in postmodernity we find ourselves in Francis’s situation, posing against the misery of power the joy of being. This is a revolution that no power will control—because biopower and communism, cooperation and revolution remain together, in love, simplicity, and also innocence. This is the irrepressible lightness and joy of being com- munist.

False Dichotomies in Ohio Politics

In the weeks leading up to the November 2011 election, ads for and against Ohio Issue 2 aired on TV. One shows Republican Governor John Kasich standing at a fork in the road, telling voters they have a choice to make, just like the one he said they had to make in an ad shot in the same location a year ago while he was running for office. In this Frostian dilemma, Ohio voters can continue down his path, and follow as he promises recovery; or go the other way. Jobs or no jobs, those are the options. The ad illustrates the false choice that citizens are given every year when they go to vote in Ohio.

What Kasich should be saying is that he has created the illusion of two choices, two choices that are not that far apart, just like the roads in the background of the ads which only slightly diverge. While the allegory of the roads might have helped Kasich defeat Democrat Ted Strickland and might aid him as he continues to push austerity onto Ohio, the image actually serves both major parties, who create a similar self-serving charade every election season for Ohioans.

When Ted Strickland, treated as a “Governor in Exile” by the newly agitated Ohio progressives, was in office, some of the same measures were imposed on unions. Though teachers, nurses and firefighters never had to fight against the prospect of losing their basic union rights, when the recession hit and funding was cut, they were forced to make massive concessions. They agreed to pay freezes, watched as firings occurred and compromised over some of their benefits like pensions and prevailing wage. All things that the “No on 2” ads say they would be subjected to without collective bargaining. Unfortunately, organized labor did not stand a chance in a state run by a Democrat they supported in the election just a few years before. Indeed, the Strickland years were no springtime for labor.

The false choice pushes other electoral options that Ohio voters have to the fringes and this duality bleeds into the time between elections: youʼre either with us or against us. This year, organizers in the state have been able to mobilize tens of thousands, but the solutions proposed by the major players are not always right. Union officials were at first begging for compromise on SB5 (Issue 2) before it was passed, showing that, after two decades of capitulation, they were willing to sacrifice again. An unprecedented movement took the lead early on while the unionsʼ leadership were lagging behind. And though the unions are to be praised for their work in helping the defeat of the issue during the elections, none should forget that only when angst turned into action, did they start standing firm against the measures. In this new movement, loyalty to the previous administration is clear, but what Ohio needs, just like the rest of the country, is a permanent wedge driven between the major partiesʼ fork in the road.

This wedge needs to be a working peopleʼs movement, and while unions can play a large role, the movement needs to recognize the struggles of all of Ohioʼs workers. The unions are not part of the problem, on the contrary, they can be part of the solution. But their focus must broaden if they are to enact lasting social change, and they should be met by other groups. A successful movement can’t just be a union movement.

Over the past year, labor and student groups have worked together in ways rarely seen before, but questions of environmentalism and imperialism, for example, have yet to be included in the discussion. This movement needs to be radical, permanent and democratic with a healthy dose of internationalism; the movement have a lot to learn from their counterparts in the Arab world. An inclusive movement will focus not only on the issues of jobs and unemployment, but larger questions of inequality and disenfranchisement. It can not preoccupy itself with the reactionism of its origins, or of the republicans.

There has been no room for a broader discussion thus far and the movement itself tends to use slogans with embedded chauvinism, for example “helping middle class families.” A movement that helps all workers can not be successful if it plays into the divisions of class, sexuality, race, gender, or any other bend. It can not risk alienating members of its movement because of rhetoric.

A truly radical movement in Ohio, which there have been glimpses of, will recognize the solidarity of all workers and aim to alleviate all of the problems of the world. It will not focus on electing one of the two parties of business. It will include demands like full employment, universal healthcare, good wages and true democracy. And it will embrace and embolden the institutions that SB5 and other legislative attacks on workers endanger.

Enter Occupy Wall Street

As the seasons changed and the tide of activism ebbed, the makings of a revolution have stepped to the fore. The Occupy movement, with its slogans of “ending corporate greed” and “holding the 1% accountable,” has in it the kernel of something larger. And though the origins lie with the labor movements that raged during the first half of 2011, it exists outside of the realm of party politics. This is its most promising feature.

While labor has played a role in the occupations, from its participation in the Oakland General Strike on November 2nd, to the turnout in force at occupations around the country, the virtue of being a working people’s movement is just one of its advantages. In Ohio, the occupy movement can and must fill the political void left after the defeat of Issue 2, and it must lead the way forward toward changing the system, instead of maintaining the status quo. What Occupy offers is a third way, it illustrates that democracy exists away from the ballot boxes, in the streets and parks of cities across the country.

Labor issues are but one of the focuses of the movement. In Columbus, Occupy the Oval, at the Ohio State University, is a strong student movement with dozens of young, self-described “revolutionaries.” The students have organized marches, walkouts and teach-ins and these activists and are a presence of light that should serve to inspire activists nationwide. The students, emboldened by existing strong movements on campus, like one of the country’s most successful chapters of Students Against Sweatshops, see that a just world is possible and that the institution is where some of the ideas that form that world can be developed.

In Cincinnati, Occupy the Hood, a fraction of the main Occupy Cincinnati is moving to protest against, and protect families from, the foreclosure of homes. These occupations have taken a principled stance in favor of peace, love, justice, equality and international solidarity; hardly a reformist program.

Ironically, in Ohio, the occupy movement needs to improve most in its interactions with labor. While it has postured itself in support of the working class, in this case the broad “99%,” and the local movements have received endorsements and other help from trade unions, the rank and file have yet to put foot to pavement in support of the occupation. What is happening more than anything else is a quid-pro-quo, that is, the unions were looking for something, be it newly registered voters and even de facto endorsements from the occupation (mainly in opposition to issue 2) in return for material support. But what is needed more than anything is warm bodies in the parks and streets.

Looking Forward to 2012

Without the support of the working masses, the revolutionary potential falls short. Just as thousands of new activists were radicalised in the months leading up the occupation, thousands more are needed in order to bring the demands and aims of the Occupy movement to a head. There is no question that the occupiers were among the 61% of voters who said no to the union busting legislation, so maybe a quid-pro-quo is in order after all. If Occupy is the successor of the large movements in the first half of the year, then it’s clear that its members played by the rules of those movements and helped bring a victory. The question now is how the movement can capture the support of those institutions that have historically ended their campaigns on the first Wednesday in November.

This is why many were alarmed at the November endorsement by SEIU, one of the unions that have marched with the occupiers, of Obama for president in the upcoming presidential election. The language of the announcement was the language of Occupy, with officials claiming “We need a leader willing to fight for the needs of the 99 percent.” But instead of working with the occupations to figure out what those needs are, SEIU is providing the marching orders and attempting to take the organizational power of the movement, and use it to “occupy congress” in order “to pressure Republicans to support Obama’s jobs creation proposals” which they claim is a goal of the larger occupy movement. By ignoring the constant claims by occupations across the country that both the Republicans and the Democrats are the problem, SEIU risks losing the support of the first movement in the United States in years that could actually mean working people retaking control of their democracy.

In Ohio, this presidential strategy will surely be applied to state and federal congressional campaigns. Sherrod Brown, the democratic senator, is up for reelection and Ohio’s congressional maps will be redrawn by November, meaning candidates will have to address issues facing constituents with whom they may not have shared a district previously. In Cincinnati, the danger of reductionism to electoral politics is clear. After four members of city council lost their reelection bids, the occupation cheered because of the prior actions of these members in relation with the movement. The defeat of those that the movement dubbed the “un-fantastic four” created an environment where occupiers were unwilling to make strong demands of the new council, such as a reduction in pay of city officials to the average household income in the municipality, for fear of losing potential allies of the now seven Democrat strong assembly.

What Occupy looks like to organizers in the Democratic party, is a group of thousands of activists who so believed in a political idea, that they were willing to sleep on the group to prove their devotion. Regardless of the content of their arguments, the Occupy movement is on the left of the spectrum, so it’s ripe for co-option by the party where, as the saying goes, “social movements go to die.” Should this happen, the Democrats may win another election, but Ohio’s progressive movement will once again wither away like it did in 2006 and 2008. So, the question is, can the Occupy movement survive the 2012 elections?

The question of Occupy making it through 2012 is a question of participation. What the movement needs more than anything, especially after the encampments in all but a few cities across the country have been cleared, is more people on the streets. These elections will mean competition for the Occupation movement. In communities and neighborhoods across not only Ohio but the rest of the country, where there will be different and opposing forces trying to engage citizens. One will be occupiers, who are generally committed not to a party, but to the idea of democracy. The second group is Organizing for America, formerly “Obama for America,” who registered over a million new voters in Ohio in 2008 and have continuously organized since then. The language that the organizers for OFA and the institutions that, while liberal in their politics, are conservative in their endorsements will use is going to be the language of the Occupation, there is no question. What Occupy needs to offer, while probably not in the form of political candidates, is a political platform that runs contrary to that which the Democrats, who are a party of the 1%, offer.

The End of Reform

Occupation is a revolutionary act and it is an act that needs to expand past the parks into the workplaces of the 99%. In 2008, the workers of Republic Windows and Doors staged an occupation of their workplace after they were told they would be laid off without any of the benefits promised in their contracts. After 2 weeks physically controlling their factory, they won and the factory stayed open. In Wisconsin, activists occupied the capital as union-busting legislation, not unlike SB5 in Ohio, was being deliberated often behind closed doors in the statehouse, these actions gave democrats no choice but to flee the state to deny quorum and delay a vote. At the same time, in Egypt, millions of people occupied Tahrir square and brought about a revolution which toppled a dictatorship.

The Egyptian case is a special one, and it illustrates what is at stake if occupiers go home. After the Mubarak regime was ousted, the military seized power and is very tightly controlling the “transitional” process to a “new” government. As has already been stated, the Democratic party, especially Barack Obama may attempt to seize the rhetoric and the energy of Occupy. Just as the Egyptian revolution must be a permanent one, one that fights against all forms of exploitation and oppression, the Occupy movement needs to be permantent as well. Unions can be allies, but they must not impose their largely top-down power structures on the movement. This method of organizing will stymie progress and attempts to co-opt already threaten to stall things.

This is not to say that Occupy should exist free of outside influence–there are many places where it must improve. Most crucial, as it develops its political makeup, it must recognize the ideas of the libertarian block, who espouse beliefs as reactionary as the Tea Party, as opposed to the basic principles that the movement represents. Occupy must not be afraid to name its enemy: Capitalism. This will not be Ron Paul’s Revolution. Even without having them explicitly stated, the values of Occupy run counter to the values of the libertarian right, namely the value of equality. Libertarians see the the state giving way to the “free” market as the liberating event that will save the 99%. They also espouse anti-immigrant and often nativist viewpoints. And let us not forget that the infatuation with John Galt, of Ayn Rand’s “Atlus Shrugged,” who believes that society owes him nothing and he owe nothing to society, is a selfish position that rejects to the simple idea of collective democracy and collective struggle that define the Occupy movement.

The struggle is real, and the 99% is a revolutionary force. In makeup it is a force of workers and students and it is a force that includes all minority groups and all of the oppressed. It is a force that while addressing the ideas of different identities, sees the struggles of different groups as connected by who the oppressor is. The 1% is everyone’s enemy. 2011 was a year when the working class of Ohio and the world realized that it had the power to fight back. Let 2012 be the year that Ohio and the world win what is rightfully ours: our lives, our freedom and our dignity, and our world.

This post also appeared on the blog of the Cincinnati International Socialist Organization

I previously posted the rules for GA as originally adopted (and later amended). Since then, a new rules has been formulated and adopted to address some of the issues with the first set. The education committee took the process from several different occupations and combined them to be as democratic as possible. This new process helps address the issues of time spent at GA (which easily run up to and over 2 hours) and also provides a forum for minority voices who wish to have a platform to air grievences with the occupation itself. My original post has some better definitions for a few of the hand symbols, but other than that, this version is complete.

Goals: To create productive celebrations of democratic process that allows full participation from all, while aligning our procedures with other Occupation GAs. To create rituals within that process honor each other, address our needs, and spur our growth.

1. Assemble: Mod Team uses people’s mic: “We the People/Have Found Our Voice” three times
2. Welcome: Intro of Mod team. Temp Check to approve Team. Introduce Consensus Process:
1. Our process flows out of our stated dedication to equality, justice, solidarity and peace.The process is designed to help us communicate clearly while allowing participation from all, therefore we encourage Step Up/Step Back & use Progressive Stacking.*
3. Consensus Instruction: Signs(can be used throughout), no clapping, wait to be called on, etc.
4. Challenges: Individual challenges to group, committees, or self. Open Stack, Mod. controls time.
5. Set Agenda: Individual Proposals added (post Comm. reports) if agreed to by GA consensus.
6. Recent Proposals: Reading of Proposals recently passed by GA.
7. Reports &Proposals from each Committee:
1. Proposals made using People’s Mic, Mod. takes Temp Check & Friendly Amendments.
2. Point of Process, Direct Response & Clarifying Question (all 3 non opinion based)
3. Mod. may call for consensus or ask Facilitators to create progressive stack of concerns.
4. Mod. may call for consensus, more discussion, amendments, or small group discussions where people sit. If consensus is not reached, proposal may be taken back to committee to be worked on and brought back to a future GA.
8. Announcements: Moderator controlled.
9. Acknowledgements: Open stack. Mod. controls time.
10. Closing Inspiration: Brief quote from history, or other uplifting item to send us off

 “Show me what Democracy Looks Like” – “This is what Democracy Looks Like.”

HAND SIGNS

Use of signs prevent speakers from being drowned out & allows our process to move forward continuously.

• Consensus, Temperature Check & Group Feedback
• Twinkle up = yes / Twinkle flat = maybe / Twinkle down = no
• Hands rotating around each other = wrap it u
• Hand cupped at ear and moving out horizontaly = Speak Up!
• Arms crossed at chest = block (blocker explains, only sign in group used just for voting)
• Signs that Interrupt Stack - Non-Opinion Based
• Hands form triangle with fore-fingers and thumbs = Point of Process (not opinion based)
• Hands moving in alternation at side of head = Direct Response (not opinion based)
• Hand in “C” = Clarifying Question (not opinion based)
• Concern Sign – Opinion Based
• Hand up

*Progressive stack: a process by which stack-takers are empowered to elevate certain traditionally marginalized voices, or voices that we have not heard from. Additionally, we encourage the process of Step Up, Step Back. If you’ve been talking a lot, try to step back. If you haven’t said much, please try to step up. We’d like to hear from everyone.

Occupy Cincinnati General Assembly

Every Day – 6pm – Piatt Park (Vine & Garfield)

This is what Democracy looks like

Note: This Article first appeared in the October 28th edition of Streetvibes.

by Ben Stockwell and Mark Grauhuis

Occupy Cincinnati is now in its third week. Much has changed since it began on October 8th, but participants are still finding that they have to struggle just to allow their voices to be heard. The amorphous nature of the occupation makes it difficult to for those outside the movement to understand the meaning and goals of the action, though recent General Assemblies have made the state of things most apparent.

Many questions about Occupy Wall Street and the satellite movements have been raised. The claim of the corporate media has been stating over and over that “they don’t know what they’re protesting,” but for the occupiers it’s clear. Tyler Huff, 23, of Clifton, believes that “this is our chance to start fighting back” against the war that is being waged and won by the white wealthy 1%. Since 1987, African Americans have lost more than half of their net worth; Latinos, an incredible two-thirds. Five-and-a-half million manufacturing jobs have been lost in the United Sates since 2000, more than 42,000 factories closed, and an entire generation of college graduates now face the highest rate of downward mobility in American history.

The main themes have been money in politics, the rise of corporate power and the lack of accountability at the top (especially after the housing crisis, the Wall Street Bail-Out and the resulting recession). It is a matter of the 99%, the workers, excluded and the poor, against the 1%, the stockbrokers, business class and the rich. To mention just two examples the movement cites: Bank of America, currently under investigation for its role in the mortgage collapse, gave $14 million to PACs (political action committees); and Comcast pays big bucks to the American Legislative Exchange Council (given national attention following efforts by Cincinnati activists this past year) for the privilege of sitting side-by-side with state legislators to draft bills to protect its media monopoly. The great issue is not raising taxes on the rich or achieving a better regulation of banks, but economic democracy: the right of ordinary people to make macro-decisions about social investment, interest rates, capital flows, job creation, and global warming.

The Cincinnati Occupation adopted “Peace,” “International Solidarity,” “Equality” and “Justice” as some overarching principles that they believe encompass the movement, as well as a commitment to experiment with and further the cause of democracy (especially through collective learning and direct actions). The tactics of the movement itself embodies the change that the protesters want to see: general assemblies, where everyone has a voice and a vote, based on the demcoratic principle of face-to-face, dialogic organizing, take place each day at 6 PM and show a microcosm of democracy that is missing in politics today. The meetings can be long, tedious, frustrating, sometimes foolish, but they are often inspiring, and through the consensus process people from diverse backgrounds develop. During the day, discussions about the occupation, politics, culture and personal life take place among the activists, who have now become friends, and passersby who are trying to better understand what it is about. In addition, the Education Week has featured workshops and teach-ins at the Public Library on topics that include: financial regulation, credit unions, a living wage, a guaranteed minimum income, international conflicts, identity politics, economic inequality, the history of labor struggles in the US, the culture of democracy, poetry, yoga, etc. Many guests have stepped onto the site, including a superb performance by leading protest singer David Rovics, who lead the crowd in a rousing version of ‘Solidarity Forever’ as the police stepped in Monday evening.

The movement has supported several local groups, like those working for affordable housing, and has also spawned new community groups itself. One of those, Food Not Bombs, has served the occupiers each day, and has shared food with not only those most active in the movement, but anyone who is hungry. And some of the most devoted allies have been the homeless population, with whom the occupiers have new-found affinity, having themselves been pushed around from place to place.

The occupiers have been evicted from their location of choice, Piatt Park, on Vine and Garfield. They chose the space for two reasons, first, because it was Cincinnati’s first public park, having been donated to the city over a century ago by the Piatt family. (Piatt also wrote his own attacks on Wall Street — and, by extension, Corporate America – through his independent media outlets, and Garfield called for universal education.) The park is also in a symbolic location, on the northern end of downtown and just south of Over the Rhine. The park sits in a gateway between wealth and poverty, between gentrification and corporate greed. Additionally, the occupiers are proposing and practicing a new form of ‘embodied’ organizing that respects no curfews and demands “Democracy never sleeps.”

The city has resisted and outright attacked the occupation since it began. For over a week, occupiers were issued citations totaling over $23,000 for remaining in Piatt park after hours. But the protesters were not budging and even challenged the citations in federal court. They enjoyed a relatively open relationship with police, until the businesses in the area nearby met with city officials to complain about protests.

The elected officials in city hall have also taken a stand on either side of the occupiers. Only two of eleven council candidates polled supported the right of the occupiers to stay in the park. Leslie Ghiz who has been very outspoken advocating the removal of protester, went so far as to post personal information of two constituents who disagreed with her stance on her facebook page. By the end of the first week, it had become clear to the participants that arrests were imminent.

The Occupy movement has been about challenging corporate greed and the existing power structure, so it should not be surprising that the first arrests and forced removal of the tents and other materials came the night before the funeral parade of Carl Lindner, the controversial millionaire and Right-wing ideologue, was set to pass the park. Lindner and his businesses, which over the years included Chiquita, American Financial, the Cincinnati Reds and United Dairy Farmers serve as a local example of the type of institutions that the movement is targeting. Lindner donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to mostly conservative political campaigns over the years.

Since their eviction, the occupation has not stopped. The right to free speech, though codified in our nation’s constitution, is often ignored or not so free. Though the Occupation movement, which has spread to over 1500 cities worldwide after starting on Wall Street over a month ago, is primarily about money in politics, in Cincinnati, the fight has mostly been about how late occupiers are allowed to protest.

Though they are public property, the parks close to the public usually around 10PM. But protest does not end because the parks close. Now, the protesters, who have turned the downtown park into a dynamic public space and catalyst for protest, are employing a new tactic to illustrate this. Roving demonstrations occur past midnight each day to show that they are not going home when they are told to, and that they have things to say all day long. The police cannot arrest these protesters because they are staying on the sidewalks, which are well-defined as “free speech zones.”

In other cities protesters have been violently removed from their occupation, and many instances of police brutality have occurred from New York, to Boston, to Denver to Austin and, most recently, Oakland. These events have only galvanized the movement, showing that the citizens will not stand idle as their rights to freedom of speech and assembly are threatened. The police actions in Cincinnati have not been violent, but they illustrate the same issues that the local government has with first amendment rights.

The arrests and citations that have occurred are also somewhat ironic. Many of those active in the occupation have also been active in the fight against SB5, now issue 2, which would strip public employees, including police, of their rights to collectively bargain and strike. Suhith Wikrema, who was arrested (in his wheelchair) along with ten others on October 21st, reports, “two corrections officers were so excited when they saw my buttons against issue 2.” He said that it illustrates that “they are not in solidarity with the actions, but in the larger scheme, we are in solidarity with them, and they with us… In the larger scheme, their interests and our interests overlap.”

This overlap of interests has not stopped the police from arresting and citing, but it does show a common thread that the protesters have with those that are the enforcers of the 1%’s laws. Those laws and the other gross political advantages of the 1% are what the protesters are fighting to abolish. Many times in casual conversation and during the general assemblies, the word “revolution” has been used to describe the potential of this movement. As recent polls confirm, two thirds of America’s youth think it might be a good idea to jettison the capitalist system before the next crisis cripples the nation and wider world. Given the growth and courage of the Occupy Movement, nothing should be left off the table.

Published in the July 27th to August 4th Edition of Streetvibes

In April, hundreds of mostly young activists converged on Fountain Square in Cincinnati to protest the American Legislative Exchange Council. ALEC, whose members were meeting in the Netherland Plaza Hotel downtown, is a group consisting of think tanks and corporate members who produce model legislation to be introduced in local, state and federal government.

The protest was the first of its kind, even though ALEC has been around as a powerful right-wing front-group since 1973 (when it was founded by rabid capitalist-conservative Paul Weyrich) and on its Corporate Enterprise board sit representatives from some of the largest corporations in the world; EXXON, Peabody Coal, Glaxo Smith Kline, Kraft Foods, Coca-Cola, Altria (Phillip Morris), Pfizer and Koch among others (many are still undisclosed).

ALEC sees thousands of its pieces of model legislation introduced in statehouses around the country each year, and sometimes entire bills. ALEC model legislation was used in Arizona’s SB1070 “show me your papers” law. Closer to home, Governor John Kasich is one of the founding members of ALEC and it is believed that SB5’s anti-union provisions, like Wisconsin’s recently-enacted State Act 10, were straight out of the organization’s playbook.

Though the public can view the names of many model bills on ALEC’s website, the actual language in the bills is behind password protection, available only to high-paying members.

That all changed when, after the April protest, Aliya Rahman, one of the organizers, leaked over 800 of the previously unavailable documents. On Wednesday, they were released by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) at ALECexposed.org. Later in the day, The Nation was the first media outlet to provide in-depth analysis.

One bill that could prove influential in Ohio is the “Education Accountability Act”. This would mean school districts deemed underperforming could be declared “Educationally Bankrupt” and taxpayer-subsidized vouchers provided for parents to enroll their children in private schools, rather than providing funding and other assistance to the district. One owner of a for-profit online school who would benefit from the voucher program is an ALEC corporate Co-chair for 2011.

ALEC model legislation like HB 1021, introduced by Rep. Chris Dorworth (an ALEC member) in Florida in February, directly attacks public workers’ last bastions of defense, union representation, denies them the right to political activity, and seeks to further privatize local and federal government in the interests of a business takeover of public policy.

ALEC openly advocates privatizing transportation and deregulating public health, consumer safety and environmental quality, including bringing in corporations to administer: foster care, adoption services and child support payment processing, highway systems (through heavy tolls resistant to green energy), drinking water, and solid waste services and facilities, etc.

ALEC has a long history of regressive environmental policies that hinder the effectiveness of regulation, protect big business polluters, promote climate change denial, and also threaten the ability of environmental activists to speak out.

“The Groundwater Protection Act,” for example, would limit the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to stop polluters.

“The Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act” would establish an “eco-terrorist” registry that would include activists who have committed, among other things, the new crime of taking photographs of factory farms.

The “Targeted Contracting for Certain Correctional Facilities and Services Act” allow states to contract prisons out to private corporations. Along with other bills that would ‘reform’ the prison industry, it would reduce regulation on private prisons and allow for the expansion of slave labor, particularly using immigrants and detainees processed as part of Homeland Security’s increased power, and the exploitation of prisoners.

The leaked documents help us understand how corporations like Koch Industries (who have given well over $1 million to ALEC) can make billions by demanding bailouts and taxpayer subsidies while corrupting government and polluting for free. ALEC gave the Kochs its Adam Smith Free Enterprise Award, and Koch Industries has been one of the select members of ALEC’s corporate board for almost twenty years. The company’s top lobbyist was once ALEC’s chairman.

The scope of the model legislation is large, ranging from concerted efforts to remove the public option on health care to voting rights, from corporate tax code to public services funding, and from workers’ rights to gun control. ALEC even wrote a resolution
in support of the horrendous Citizens United decision, which opened the floodgates for corporate money in our elections, and helped ensure that a socialized health care system was never considered.

In essence, ALEC has created a deceptive web of lawmakers and public employees who act as lobbyists/agents on their behalf and on behalf of their corporate and special interest members. The laws and the way in which they are written are entirely undemocratic and are an attack on our ability to work toward a more equal future during a time of financial crisis.

In recent years, ALEC has taken in about $6.5 million in tax-deductible donations, and reported $54,504,702 in “gifts,” “grants” and other contributions from its corporate and special interest members. Common Cause calculated that 22 of ALEC’s key member companies had contributed more than $317 million to state election campaigns over the last decade. It is time for ALEC to stop masquerading as a nonpartisan public interest group and receive a full investigation by the IRS.

Currently, their corporate backers can take a tax deduction by giving money to ALEC to push for more tax breaks and less regulation for their companies. The young folks behind the Cincinnati action are now working with organisations and public advocates across the country to organize a protest action at the ALEC August meeting at a luxury hotel in New Orleans’ French Quarter.

Show up, send money, spread information, and ask the media to cover this event. You can make a difference. For more information, visit http://protestalec.org/

ALEC refused to comment on any aspect of the material covered here. Learn more at www.truth-out.org and www.greenpeace.org.

As far as I know, these aren’t available anywhere online. So I am posting them here. I have written a few annotations in green.

(Initially adopted 10-8-2011)

DEFINITIONS

1. Resolution. A resolution put before the General Assembly to be included in Occupy Cincinnati’s official positions/list of grievances/demands.
2. Proposal. A proposal is any plan of action (such as ideas for marches, logistics, etc.) that the body should undertake.
3. Reports. Reports are brief summaries of their activities that each committee provides to the General Assembly for purposes of transparency and accountability.

GENERAL ASSEMBLIES

1. General Assemblies will start by asking for a volunteer to serve as the moderator. If a volunteer is met without objection in the Assembly they will serve as moderator. Otherwise the moderators name should be drawn from a hat. After a moderator is chosen, a proposal for a new moderator may take place.
2. The moderator is an impartial arbitrator of the assembly. As such, the moderator may not make proposals/resolutions, speak in favor or against any issue, or vote. If the moderator wishes to speak or vote on an issue, they must step down. At that time a new moderator will be chosen.
3. Once the moderator has been selected he/she will call for volunteer(s) to serve as secretary for the assembly. The secretary(s) will be responsible for keeping the minutes for the assembly and communicating to the Media Committee.
4. The moderator may delegate the task of keeping the speakers’ list and times. Note: This is typically delegated.
5. The moderator will ask all committees present to present an oral report to the General Assembly. Any proposals a committee wishes to make will be presented at this time.
6. Once the committees have submitted their reports/proposals to the General Assembly the moderator will ask if there are any resolutions/proposals that members of the assembly wish to propose. The proposals/resolutions of the Committees and the General Assembly will constitute the agenda for that session. Suggested time limits for debate of each item should be included with each proposal/resolution.

GENERAL PROCEDURES AND RULES OF DEBATE

1. For each item on the agenda the moderator will draw up a speakers list. The lists will be those wishing to speak in favor of the item (starting with the committee or individual that proposed it) and if necessary those wishing to speak against the item.
2. If people wish to speak on an item more than once, the moderator should prioritize those who haven’t spoken yet (or as much).
3. Once the speakers list is exhausted the moderator will bring the body to a vote on the issue. Alternatively any member of the General Assembly may propose to end debate and vote.
4. No one may speak without first being recognized by the moderator.
5. All speakers are limited to two minutes for remarks starting when they are recognized by the moderator. Note: This has usually note been enforced.
6. When speaking, General Assembly members will see that their remarks are germane to the issue being discussed on the floor. If they fail to do so, the moderator shall call them to order without delay. Note: The “Point of Process” symbol serves this purpose.
7. Once all items on the agenda have been discussed (or the General Assembly is coming close to another scheduled item, for example a scheduled march) the moderator will make a motion to adjourn the General Assembly. If there are no objections the assembly is adjourned, if there is an objection a vote will be held, a majority being necessary for adjournment.

GENERAL VOTING RULES

1. A 90% three quarters (75%) majority is necessary for resolutions/proposals to pass. (Amended 10-8-2011)
2. Unless otherwise requested all votes shall be by a show of hands. (see hand symbols below)
3. Only yea, nay, and on the fence votes shall be counted. Abstentions are not counted. (Amended 10-8-2011)
4. A block (arms crossed) means someone is morally or ethically opposed to the proposal/resolution and will leave if it passes. If a block occurs and the vote passes, the blockers will be able to state why they are opposed and then another vote will be taken. (Added 10-8-2011)
5. To take a vote the moderator will ask for “those in favor” (hands up), “those opposed” (hands pointing down), and “those on the fence” (hands level), “blocks” (arms crossed) (Amended 10-8-2011)

QUORUM

1. Assemblies are held once a day at 6:00 PM.To accommodate as many people’s schedules as possible, General Assemblies will be held twice as day; once in the morning and once in the evening.
2. All resolutions and proposals (when possible) must be approved by two consecutive General Assemblies. Examples of exceptions are if a morning assembly adopts as a course of action to take place before the evening assembly. Resolutions must be approved by two consecutive assemblies without exception. Note: This is not enforced, as only one assembly is held each day now.
3. General Assemblies will not be held when the group is substantially divided (ex: part of the group is on a march).

COMMITTEES

1. Established Committees are Action, Child Care, Communication/Education, Food, Legal, Occupation, Treasury and Security
2. New Committees may be formed by General Assembly proposal.

CHANGING RULES

1. Proposals for changes to these rules will be submitted in writing at the same time as all other proposals.
2. Proposed rule changes take precedence over all non-emergency orders of business (move to the head of the agenda).
3. Debate and voting on rule changes is the same as for any other proposals/resolutions.

OTHER HAND SIGNALS (not formally adopted, but used)

1. Finger up – Point of Information – To indicate that person has something relevant (IE: factual info, etc) to say about the current topic, not for opinions. Person is added to the end of the inner stack.
2. Fist up – Point of Order – To indicate that person has an opinion to share in support/opposition to current topic. Person is added to the end of the inner stack.
3. Palm Up – New Proposal – Person is added to the end of the outer stack.
4. Thumb and Forefingers in a triangle – Point of Process – To indicate to the moderator and speaker that we are not following process. Speaker is allowed to finish, and then the person who indicated this voices why they were out of order.
5. Circular fingers – Wrap it up, we got your point already.

Students gather outside of Cincinnati State to stand with their striking professors.

The 200 instructors who are members of the Cincinnati State chapter of the American Association of University Professors will return to work Friday after a week-long strike that brought the school to its knees. The strike was particularly significant at this time; Ohio Senate Bill 5, much like Wisconsin’s Budget Repair bill, strips unionized public sector workers of their rights to collectively bargain and makes the act of striking illegal in the name of saving the state money (on pensions and other benefits that the workers enjoy). A statewide vote will take place in November over whether to keep the highly controversial law in place, in the meantime, teachers, firefighters, nurses and other public sector workers retain these rights.

Over the course of the year, contract negotiations had been taking place, but with the backdrop of SB5 passing and going into effect, before it was stalled by petitioning, there had been limited headway made. Only in the last few weeks did the administration and board of trustees of Cincinnati state get serious about their proposals.

Other community colleges in the state would require only around 30 “contact” hours for each (two-session) semester, after the switch from quarters, the contract that Cincinnati State faculty were offered would have required them to work upwards of 40 contact hours. These increased hours do not come with increased compensation and professors were worried that they wouldn’t be able to devote the time they need to the classes they will have to teach. These contact hours are only the time that they are in the classroom with students, they don’t include grading assignments, preparing course materials, holding office hours or attending meetings. The faculty expect to work around 54 hours each week after the switch. Their workload would increase around 25% under the contract offered, severely limiting their ability to be effective educators.

“It’s about the students,” said one for the professors on the picket line Thursday. Another remarked that their “relationship with their students” would be in trouble, worrying that they wouldn’t be able to give the personal attention that students and faculty enjoy. After effectively shutting the college down for a week, they are returning because they don’t want the students to fall behind.

And the students have shown their support as well. As the picketing died down Thursday afternoon, a group of about a dozen students joined their professors on the line. On Wednesday over 200 students held a walkout of their classes in solidarity their professors. A group of students then walked up to the president of the university, O’dell Owens’s office and demanded answers. “We have failed you,” he said to them, clearly showing that it was the administration’s unwillingness to give the professors a fair deal that led to the strike. One faculty member on the line reported her American Sign Language class being taught by a Spanish instructor, there were also reports that an algebra class was taught by a chemistry teacher as well as some other mismatches. Most classes were only running for a few minutes: students would show up, attendance would be taken, and then they would be sent on their way.

The professors see themselves as the guinea pigs of the state’s new policy direction. The reactionary measures being pushed by Governor John Kasich at the state level, and the Board of Trustees (a few of which are outspoken Kasich supporters) at Cincinnati State effect all of the workers in the state, unionized or not. Cincinnati State’s AAUP is seeing some of the first clear repercussions of SB5; they are going back to work in good faith, but it appears that negotiations will not resume until after the statewide vote, clearly because of the administration’s hope that the measure will pass and SB5 will remain in effect. At that point, faculty won’t even have a seat at the table, and will be forced to sign whatever contract (probably the one they struck over) is given to them.

Though it is probably premature and misplaced to call this strike a victory — holding out until the administration caved would have been a much more ambitious (and, arguably, achievable) goal, a few valuable results did occur as a result. For one, it promoted a sense of consciousness among the faculty and they got an idea of how much power they have. Their numbers, together, made them a big fish on campus. It also helped the faculty develop a sense of camaraderie that, even though they were members of the same union and worked in the same place, was lacking. The faculty were dispersed in small groups at each entrance to the campus, upon talking to them about their feelings on the strike, each group  echoed variations on the phrase “we’ve grown closer to each other and to our students as a result of this.”

One professor likened the outcome of this strike and the SB5 referendum as a “domino effect;” if they are forced to make harsh compromises on their campus, then they will only be the first in a line of changes that threaten the entire public university system in the state. Another new state program, the enterprise university plan, which is being developed right now, would partially privatize public institutions in the state. Schools would get less money from the state and have to make it up from contributions from business interests. The fear is that these schools would indirectly become beholden to the will of these companies, effectively becoming charter universities. Not only does this plan threaten the programs which are socially minded, marginalized or unprofitable, it also threatens the affordability of an already expensive public education.

SB5 strips workers in the state of their basic democratic rights, and it is time people start using them. The “ripple effect” as one professor called it, can have consequences on all sorts of rights, not only for workers, it is worth noting that there is also a voter suppression bill that citizens turned in over 300,000 signatures to have a referendum over in 2012. The staff at Cincinnati State successfully got their message across and made their value clear to the university, this is the example that workers should take with them as they find their jobs threatened. And the community must support them. No one should be happy with their situation until all enjoy justice.

This post also appeared on the blog of the Cincinnati International Socialist Organization and on  SocialistWorker.org

Since the leak of the American Legislative Exchange Council’s model legislation. Journalists, bloggers and policy researchers have been scouring the documents to make connections with legislation that in statehouses across the country. Already, hundreds of matches have been found across the United States, and in Ohio those interested are doing their best to match the documents. Hoping that the identification of the matches will help halt the passage of legislation, a lot of the attention has been placed on bills currently in deliberations, however, attention needs to also be paid to bills based on ALEC model legislation that have already become law.

One bill currently in deliberations is HB 102, introduced by Ron Young. The bill deals with labor requirements for public works projects, and is part of this year’s anti-union push that has been spearheaded by other lawmakers like State Senator Shannon Jones and Representative John Adams. On first glance, the bill looks like ALEC’s model legislation titled “The Open Contracting Act.” However, the bill itself only inserts a few new words to the existing Ohio revised Code section that it is amending, the sections that are parallel to the ALEC document are actually already law, in fact, those sections of the Ohio Revised Code were amended in 1999, according to the ORC online.

Young was in office from 1997 to 2004, and was reelected again last year. Over the course of his first years in office, he sponsored a number of laws, among them was HB 101, during Ohio’s 123 congress. 12 years ago, HB 101 passed,  and it is the bill that added the original sections to the Ohio Revised Code. Young is back now, amending laws that he originally sponsored. 123′s HB 101 shares language with ALEC’s Open Contracting Act, this congress’s HB 102 is a less clear connection, but it must be examined to determine why Rep. Young would come back 12 years later to change things.

The language Young adds appears to be placed there to ensure that labor laws are relaxed for all state institutions, including universities. This is very deliberate, as the universities often have unionized staff and have labor agreements that prioritize local labor or protect prevailing wage for workers. Sustainable labor policy has been an important issue for many years in these institutions. In 2003, the staff at Miami University went on strike, demanding a living wage, which they only marginally received in the end. More recently, members of The Ohio State University’s staff held a walkout over the latest attacks on their livelihoods under the governorship of John Kasich. The public servants that work as universities, that is, housing and dining staff, maintenance staff, builders and other workers, are already threatened by SB5 which denies them the right to collectively bargain for things like healthcare and pensions.

Theoretically, the law on the books should have already affected those workers, but Ron Young is coming back around a second time to finish the job. This bill removes the special agreements that universities have with labor. Interestingly, he attempted to revise this bill in the 125th congress as well, but failed to pass the bill in the house. The new bill differs from that first revision attmpt and it also adds a section to the revised code specifically exempting private businesses from the regulations, in effect, ensuring that the better-paid, better-organized union labor has no place to hide.

This is not Young’s only use of ALEC model legislation. Also in 1999, he successfully sponsored a bill that added a new felony to the law books: HIV assault. HB 100, based on ALEC’s HIV Assault Act, classifies the body of a person who is HIV positive as a “deadly weapon” and makes intimate contact by that person criminal.