WCRS Podcast - consciousvoices

(Sorry, the text and photos are not in the same order as the audio content. We'll fix that as soon as possible. We're spread thin, and would welcome your collaboration w/ us. And audio from James Lunsford of The Help Project was not included, but it'll be aired next week and podcasted under Civically Engaged. Thanks, Tom Over tomover@ymail.com

Deb Steele spoke w/ us at the Stand Up For Ohio Festival on Aug 20, though this picture of her was taken in February.

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.

Evelyn Van Til, a Weinland Park resident who's been active in the community for many years, works w/ businesses and local government.

Van Til believes in working w/ the system in order to change it.

"Every social movement--whatever it is as we move along a historical continuum--has always been most effective when it co opts the larger system, when it infiltrates the larger system. And, of course, it is changed by it, but it also changes the larger system."

Also, we hear from East Side resident Melvin Harris who disapproves of a no trespassing sign and the newly placed fence at the large garden at Mound and Carpenter run by Four Seasons City Farm.

"There's no reason to put a fence around something that should belong to the whole community," Harris said.

He said he's never seen a fence around a community garden.
" I don't think that's fair to anyone in the neighborhood, especially (during) the times we're going thru now w/ people losing jobs and having problems paying their rent and getting food on the table for themselves and their kids."

Harris said people in this East Side neighborhood should be able to go to the garden and pick some vegetables w/o having to deal w/ a fence, so long as they help w/ some of the work.