CINCINNATI — If there’s one thing everyone remembers about Ohio Citizen Action, it’s that we are the people who knock on your door every year. We ask you to join the organization and write a personal letter to a key decision-maker in our campaigns for safe drinking water and clean air.
One of the most fun parts of our work is when our members ask their children to draw pictures to include with their letters.
We’ve heard directly from the elected officials and corporate decision makers who receive them that the childrens’ drawings are especially effective. Kids have a wonderful way of getting straight to the heart of the matter. And, after all, wanting to leave a better world for future generations is the reason many of us get involved with Ohio Citizen Action.
Thank you for being a part of Ohio Citizen Action. I hope you’ll consider making a special, tax-deductible year-end gift to Ohio Citizen Action Education Fund. Help us to leave these kids the kind of world they deserve.
— Melissa English, Development Director, Ohio Citizen Action
CLEVELAND – Fred Ross (1910 – 1992) is best known for teaching community organizing to Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, and hundreds of United Farm Workers Union organizers. His life ranged much farther, practicing and teaching organizing to Dust Bowl refugees, former Japanese-American internees, the Jerry Brown for Governor campaign, the United Domestic Workers of America, Chiquita Banana boycotters, and the Nuclear Freeze Campaign, Jobs with Peace, Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador, and the anti-interventionist Neighbor to Neighbor organization.
In 1989, Neighbor to Neighbor published a short booklet of his axioms. You can choose your own favorites. Here are three of mine:
Reminding is the essence of organizing.
Usually those who can spare a little time for the cause are actually ready to give it all if only someone would ask them.
A good organizer is a social arsonist who goes around setting people on fire.
— Paul Ryder, Assistant Director, Ohio Citizen Action
CLEVELAND – Every time an initiative goes to the voters, it is a chance both to advance an issue and to learn lessons about what it takes to win on the Ohio ballot. In 2012, not only was the cause of redistricting reform set back years, also no new lessons were learned. Regardless of the merits of the proposal, its defeat was already certain on February 15, the day supporters began circulating petitions.
The redistricting constitutional amendment was drubbed last night, 63%-37% statewide, losing in 87 of Ohio’s 88 counties, all but Athens County.
From the start, the political fundamentals were overwhelmingly negative:
• The measure was sure to be heavily contested. Since the amendment would throw out the new political maps favoring Republicans, the GOP would of course strenuously fight it. They did, with $7,243,545 going into the “No” campaign as of October 17. It also resulted in unfavorable decisions on ballot language by the Ballot Board, controlled 3-2 by Republicans.
• The issue was not already well-defined in voters’ minds. Redistricting is in an arcane corner of the political world. As fascinating as it may be to some, especially in Columbus, most voters are not absorbed with it, don’t study it, and do not rank it as an important issue.
• The proposal and the message were quite complicated.
• Petitioners needed a “yes” vote to win; this is always more difficult than a “no” vote.
• The petitioners did have enough money to get their message out to voters. After May 8, when the Democratic election law referendum was taken off the ballot, Democratic money began flowing into the redistricting initiative. The campaign took in $6,110,735 as of October 17, almost all from unions tied to the Democratic Party.
In ballot issue campaigns, the outcome is not determined by which side spends more money. (See, for example, the 1997 workers compensation referendum, the 2006 smoking ban, and the 2008 payday lending referendum, all described above.) The money question is this: Does the campaign have enough money to get its message out to the voters? In this case, proponents did have enough. If they didn’t get their message out, it wasn’t for lack of money.
At the same time, the only place proponents could get the money was the Democratic Party. They thus traded away the non-partisan nature of the campaign.
— Paul Ryder, Assistant Director, Ohio Citizen Action
COLUMBUS — “Ohio EPA’s relationship with environmentalists and U.S. EPA, though, has had a long and troubled history in large part because of its coal production and manufacturing history.
Tensions came to a boil starting in 1997 when Ohio Citizen Action, along with other environmental groups, filed a petition calling for EPA to strip the state agency of its authority to implement federal statutes like the Clean Air Act.
The effort was originally spurred by legislation that would have allowed corporations to keep environmental audits shielded from the public, but it eventually morphed in 2001 into EPA’s largest investigation into a state counterpart ever. Among the charges EPA looked into was whether Ohio EPA was failing to act against polluters.
Sandy Buchanan, Ohio Citizen Action’s executive director, recalled that she also launched a “pink slip” campaign to get Chris Jones, then Ohio EPA director, fired.
In an unusually strongly worded report, EPA found severe flaws in Ohio EPA’s methods, including its enforcement of the Clean Air Act and permit process. But, ultimately, it allowed the state EPA to largely retain its enforcement authority. ‘U.S. EPA did require Ohio to make a bunch of changes in how they were operating,’ Buchanan said. ‘More significantly, U.S. EPA ended up taking over enforcement of many individual cases.’
Buchanan’s effort also unintentionally produced other results. In 2001, President George W. Bush nominated Donald Schregardus, who directed Ohio EPA during the 1990s, to be U.S. EPA’s top enforcement officer. EPA’s report, taken up by Democrats on Capitol Hill, effectively sunk Schregardus’ confirmation.
CLEVELAND – Ohio Citizen Action today introduced a free ActionGram app for iPhone, iPad, and iPod. Angela Oster, Citizen Action’s Web Editor, said, “The ActionGram takes the popular Postagram app one step further. With the Postagram app you can send real postcards from your iPhone, for example, using photos from your phone, Instagram or Facebook. The ActionGram connects Ohio Citizen Action campaigns to decision makers using Postagram. ” The new app can be downloaded free from the iTunes Store. Each ActionGram costs the user 99 cents, processed through Postagram.
You can still send an ActionGram from your home computer, even if you don’t have an iPhone, iPad, or iPod.
When a public official, company official or other decisionmaker needs to hear from us, we’ll send you an alert with all the details. You can immediately send, from your computer, a real postcard about the issue with you own message. You can decide what photo goes on the postcard. It can be a photo of you, your family, your friends and relatives, your neighborhood, the polluting factory you drive by every day, or the drilling rig next door. Or a photo of a drawing your child made about the issue. Whatever you like.
Each postcard you send through Postagram costs 99 cents, processed through Postagram.
To get started, choose the issue you want to send a postcard about:
Ohio Citizen Action’s mobile site as it appears on a smartphone.
CLEVELAND – Ohio Citizen Action today launched a mobile website for those who want to check on the latest news with their smartphones. The mobile website contains an easily readable list of all recent headlines on our main website, with links to the full text. The pages will load much faster, and the font sizes and links will be much bigger. The mobile site is compatible with all major smartphones, including iPhone, Android, Windows Phone and Blackberry.
Anyone who uses a smartphone to visit the Ohio Citizen Action website at www.ohiocitizen.org will now be redirected automatically to the mobile site. For those who want to use all the features of the full website, they can choose a link to take them there.
As of last month, 45% of American adults owned smartphones, according to a Pew Research Center study. Of people between 18 and 29 years old, 66% own smartphones. More American adults now own smartphones than own feature cell phones, which can be used only as a phone and for texting. Some 34% of adults have a feature phone; 5% say they do not know if they have a smartphone or not, and 15% have no cell phone at all.
— Paul Ryder, Assistant Director, Ohio Citizen Action
City Council member Wendell Young, Melissa English and City Council member P.G. Sittenfeld
CINCINNATI — The State of the City Environment Forum on Wed. October 10 drew a crowd of approximately 100 people to celebrate the city’s accomplishments and provide feedback for future endeavors. Here are some of the people who made the event a success.
— Melissa English, Development Director, Ohio Citizen Action
Ohio Citizen Action lost a dear friend and long-time board member yesterday with the death of Mike Jones, 62, of Pataskala. Mike died, surrounded by his family, in hospice care after suffering from lung cancer.
We first met Mike in the 1990’s when he worked with our board member Carrie Garnes and his mother, Roberta Jones-Booth, on the campaign to protect their South Side Columbus community from pollution and accidents at Georgia Pacific. Although Mike and his family eventually moved to Pataskala, Mike never really left the South Side, continuing to work with his friends and neighbors on important community and public health issues.
Mike served on our board for 9 years, beginning in 1999, was term-limited off, and then came back to the board as soon as the by-laws allowed two years ago. He made these comments about his involvement on the board:
“It’s truly an exciting experience – it’s a joy being in the same boat with like-minded people. It reminds me of what Cleve Sellers wrote in his book, The River of No Return. He was a regular farmboy when he began organizing with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and he wrote about how once you realize what’s at stake, there’s no way to make that understanding go away. You can’t ignore it. You have to deal with it. You have to clean it up. We’re all paddling down the river of no return together.”
Mike was a joy to work with, forever thinking of new strategies and, as he would say, coming up with ideas for “propaganda.” Mike was a treasured colleague, a gracious host, and most of all, a fighter for justice.
Mike worked as a systems analyst at the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio. He is survived by his wife, Tressia Priestly- Jones, their five children and six grandchildren. The Celebration of Life Service for Mike will take place at 11 a.m. Saturday, September 15, 2012, at the New Antioch Bible Fellowship Church, 1415 Lancaster Ave., Reynoldsburg, OH. Mike’s family will receive friends beginning at 10 a.m. In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions can be made to the Roberta Jones-Booth Scholarship Fund in care of The Columbus Foundation, 1234 E Broad St. Columbus, OH 43205.
Zella Cook, hostess and Ohio Citizen Action board member Laura Rench and Ellen Dorle. Kathy Jones in background.
NEW LEBANON — Hosts David and Laura Rench welcomed 44 guests Saturday to the first-ever barn dance benefitting Ohio Citizen Action. The event raised over $3,500 for the organization’s anti-fracking campaign and brought together people from throughout southwest Ohio. New Lebanon was well represented, but people came from as far away as Cincinnati and Piqua. The Rabbit Hash String Band led six dances, concluding with the Virginia Reel and then treated guests to a short concert of some of their old-time favorites. Thanks to everyone who came, our event sponsors and especially Laura and David. Congratulations also to Jim Runkle, winner of the hollerin’ contest.
— Melissa English, Development Director, Ohio Citizen Action
NEW YORK, NY — “Staughton Lynd is all the rage. Again. In the last 18 months, Lynd has published two new books, a third that’s a reprint of an earlier work, plus a memoir co-authored with his wife Alice. In addition, a portrait of his life as an activist through 1970 by Carl Mirra of Adelphi University has been published, with another book about his work after 1970 by Mark Weber of Kent State University due soon.
In an epoch of imperial hubris and corporate class warfare on steroids, the release of these books could hardly have come at a better time. Soldier, coal miner, Sixties veteran, recent graduate – there’s much to be gained by one and all from a study of Lynd’s life and work. In so doing, it’s inspiring to discover how frequently he was in the right place at the right time and, more importantly, on the right side.
Forty-six years ago, during the tumultuous summer of 1964, Lynd was invited to coordinate the Freedom Schools established in Mississippi by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. The schools were an integral part of the Herculean effort to end apartheid in the United States and became models for alternative schools everywhere.”
CLEVELAND – Ohio Citizen Action has prepared a hydraulic fracturing leaflet for anyone to download, print and distribute at presidential campaign events this fall.
In 2008, we circulated leaflets at presidential campaign events on the issue of mountaintop removal coal mining. It was a lot of fun, and was part of an effort that helped persuade all four presidential candidates (John McCain, Barack Obama, Cynthia McKinney and Ralph Nader) to publicly oppose the practice during the campaign. In 2012, we’d like to keep candidates on their toes about hydraulic fracturing.
Whether the speaker is a presidential candidate, vice presidential candidate, or a high profile campaign spokesperson, a presidential campaign event is different from other public events. The approach to leafleting at it needs to be a little different, too. The difference comes from the way in which campaigns have taken the legitimate public interest in the safety of the candidates, and twisted it into a way to stifle free speech. We’ve all seen the absurd lengths to which this has gone in recent elections, with police escorting protesters to chained-in “free speech zones” far away from the campaign event. Someday, the courts will recognize these zones to be unconstitutional and prohibit them. Until then, if you plan to protest – with placards, banners, costumes, street theater, anything of that kind – you should talk to a friendly attorney first to understand your rights and practical options.
If instead what you want to do is leaflet, there should be no problem if you follow these tips.
The campaign creates a security zone within which the event occurs. There will be a gate or gates through which everyone has to pass to get into the security zone. At the gate, the security guards make sure that no one who is a potential threat to the candidate gets in. This is also where they eject people with protest banners and placards, and they may well do the same to someone trying to get in with 1,500 leaflets. They will not, however — and this is the key – eject someone carrying one leaflet.
This means that if you distribute flyers to people before they get to the security gate, they will take the flyers into the event for you, one by one, and they won’t be stopped.
These security gates actually help leafleters in a way because they slow down people’s entrance into the event, and a line of waiting people stretches out from it, sometimes for blocks. Leafleters can just go right down the line, distributing very large numbers of leaflets as they go. Plus, people have a chance to read the leaflet and talk to one another about it while they are waiting.
The more leaflets you get out the better, so you’ll have to resist the temptation to stop and chat with people in the line until you’ve run out of leaflets. You don’t have to have much of a rap as you move down the line. “Did you get one of these?” is just fine.
What if we want to leaflet and protest?
Good. Just make sure that some people in your group are leafleting and different people are protesting. If you mix the two, you could easily see your leaflets confiscated, and hundreds or thousands of people won’t get a chance to read our message.
Local contacts
If you use the leaflet we produced, please note that there is room at the bottom for you to put contact information for a local group. Ohio Citizen Action wrote the leaflet, and we have included our contact information to show we stand behind every word. It would be best if you could add the local contact information, too, before you print it. That way, people who get the leaflet know who to call to get involved locally.
Color
When you are ready to print the leaflet, you may want to consider using paper with a bright distinctive color such as yellow or lime. Once all the event-goers are inside and waiting for the event to start, they’ll notice the sea of bright leaflets being read by others in the crowd. The candidate and his or her staff will notice it, too, and they will make sure they get a copy so they know what’s going on.
Please stay in touch
The day after the event, please call Nathan Rutz, Citizen Action’s Cleveland Campaign Organizer, and let him know how it went, especially any reactions you got from people in the crowd. You can reach him at (216) 861-5200.
– Paul Ryder, Assistant Director, Ohio Citizen Action
TOLEDO — Mark Wisniewski, 61, of Toledo, lost his life in a car accident while traveling in upstate NY on July 18, 2012. He is survived by his wife Ellen, two children, Lauren and Garrett, and a host of family and friends. Among the many lovely tributes to Mark on his memorial website, this one, from Ann Strickler, seemed to capture the way people felt about this wonderful man:
“The more I remember and learn about Mark, the more I want to live life the way he did: with a sense of fun, with loads of original ideas, with deep involvement in the organizations that mattered to him, with steadfast loyalty to his family, and the gentle way he cherished his spouse. He is a person to emulate. He will be so missed.”
Mark was a long-time member of Ohio Citizen Action, dedicated to protecting the quality of Ohio’s water resources. We are humbled that Mark’s family has honored us as a designated charity for memorial contributions, and are very grateful to receive the support of Mark’s family and friends.
GALION — “A week ago today, an exchange between Galion City Councilwoman Roberta Wade and City Council President Gail Baldinger centered on a possible “public meeting” locally involving an official from an organization called Ohio Citizen Action.
At issue was the nature of the meeting itself. Wade shared that it would be a normal Finance Committee meeting, albeit held in a larger venue. Baldinger, however, expressed the view that calling it a “public” meeting and having it in an alternative location would increase the chances that it would serve as a “bashing” instead of a normal meeting.
In light of this dialogue, we thought it made sense to look at the organization which would be invited to participate, Ohio Citizen Action.”
Letters supporting the Fracking Emergency Medical Right to Know Act
9,241 neighbors have sent handwritten letters and made personal phone calls urging state legislators to support the Fracking Emergency Medical Right to Know Act as of June 10, 2013.
