Audio by title stand_up_for_ohio

Activist Deb Steele on building alliances, voter suppression, privatizing OSU, and expelling Sodexo from Columbus Public Schools


20:08 minutes (18.44 MB)

Steele has worked w/ Greenpeace and served as Outreach Director at Jennifer Brunner For Senate. She is currently an organizer w/ Columbus Jobs With Justice. She spoke w/ us at the Stand Up For Ohio festival on Aug. 20.

A ‘disorientation guide’ for incoming OSU freshmen (and freshwomen)

She is helping Ohio State University students form a chapter of the Progressive Student Coalition.

“We just sort of need more progressive groups coming together. The Progressive Student Coalition is the feminists, the environmentalists, the worker rights student groups coming together to get more bang for our activism energy.”

Those students did an event at OSU on May 5 of this year called Live Against Five, at which they gathered about 300 signatures to add to the petition drive that put the repeal of Ohio House Bill 5 up to a vote this fall.

The OSU Progressive Student Alliance currently is working on the ‘Disorientation Guide’ to give to incoming freshman.

“It’s about the realities of the politics of the city we live in and the reality of Gordon Gee acting pretty cushy w/ corporations.”

Privatizing our land grant university ?

“There are murmurs of him wanting to privatize Ohio State University in the near future,” said Steele.

She said there is currently money going to charter universities that should be going to public universities.