Bretts brother Prett sat in for the first half, it went downhill quick. We talked wikileaks, fighting racism on facebook, the recent rise in police involved shootings in Columbus, and the story of the plastic wrapped sign that resulted in a death.

We also had a few voicemails come in, thanks for calling and showing your support/disdain. You can call us at 1-209-MRR-SHOW to leave one of your own.

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various tunes ft. magic system (cote d'ivoire) , sekouba bambino (guinea -conakry-) and more

Bob and Connie interview organizer of Hot Times Festival

Wendy Ake (left) and Deb Steele outside the Kroger near the corner of Olentangy River and Ackerman Roads

Ake works with the recently formed Central Ohio Immigrant Justice (COIJ)

She expects more groups will get involved in the demos in front of various Kroger stores in Columbus.

"The Kroger headquarters is located in Westerville. So Columbus is probably going to be more and more of an active hub for this movement."

Ake said demos are planned for Kroger stores in urban areas as well as suburbs.

Increasingly, people in wealthy nations such as the US are interested in local and organic food. But she said labor and human rights issues often are not prominent in those movements.

"People are mainly engaged with health issues and maybe chemical inputs into their food but not so much with the labor and human rights issues involved with their food."

"Early on when the food movement started contemporaneous w/ the environmental movement back in the 70s, all of these issues were looked at. But when the FDA began to articulate its standards for the organic movement, it looked specifically at the chemical inputs ...and so the human rights issues and standards began to be marginalized."

She and other activists are working on changing that. She agreed people's hearts and minds can be engaged by way of their palates and stomachs, connecting a wide variety of social justice and environmental causes for a mass movement to defeat corporatism. She said human rights and environmentalism are inseparable.

"When we have global warming, for instance, the people most impacted are the most marginalized populations, globally and in our own backyards."

We spoke w/ Kilroy at the Stand Up For Ohio festival on Aug. 20

Here is what she had to say about building alliances to counter right wing extremism.

“We have to offer ideas to people that matter to them and their lives. The biggest thing we need to be talking about is how to improve the economy and bring jobs to our cities and to our towns and rural communities, jobs that allow people to have a middle class standard of living.”

Kilroy said she doesn’t want to talk w/ people about Sarah Palin or Michele Bachmann.
“I want to talk to people about where they’re at, what matters in their lives, not the lunacy that some of these right-wing, divisive figures peddle in this country.”

Kilroy acknowledged the risk of that sort of lunacy taking over our country if voters become desperate amid hard times. But she does not focus on those right-wing personalities when she engages w/ communities.

“ I don’t want to ignore them(people such as Bachmann), I just don’t want to talk to people about them all the time. I want to talk to people about what matters to them, so they see that there are other people, other ideas out there that are going to address their real needs so that those other crazy things…don’t have currency w/ them.”

Kilroy said if people are not side-tracked by hot-button issues such as evolution or global warming, they can take a stand for fairness for the vast majority of Americans.
“They don’t have to settle for politicians that are only concerned w/ 1 percent of the country.”

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.

Rachel Radina is a graduate student working w/ Miami University Defend Ohio

“We’re concerned about the push to privatize our public universities in Ohio. Chancellor (Jim ) Petro put out a report last week or a plan to create charter or what they’re calling ‘enterprise universities’ now,” said Radina.

Here is what that plan would do, according to Radina.

“In exchange for less state funding, they would get less state regulations, which we know is not good for vulnerable populations such as students and workers. So they’d have the ability to increase tuition and increase class size. That means less quality education, but it’s going to cost more money. So it’s kind of like a backdoor tax on Ohio families.”

Radina said the report also calls for the ability to partner w/ corporate entities.
“That could create a situation where professors have to do research for corporate interests instead of for the public good. So, we’re concerned about all of these issues and we don’t really know what the final plan will look like. But we want to be included in the conversation. That’s why we here today to let the public know that these talks are going on behind closed doors, and that if we don’t do something about it, our universities will be private and less accessible to working families.”

Radina said legislators are going to be forming committees to change Petro’s plan and then create legislation. <<>>>

“It’s in the process. He (Petro) has created a plan. Now it’s in legislators’ hands. Legislators will make changes and that will be sent out to be made into legislation. We’re not really sure what it will look like. At this point, we just have Petro’s plan which you can access online.”

Christine Kozobarich recently joined Ohio Communities United as a lead organizer.

She agreed that environmentalism and social justice activism should be combined in order to build a bigger movement.
“That’s a very good way to come together for people who care about progressive issues. Sometimes we get so entrenched in our own issue that we’re working on at the moment that we don’t step back and see how it’s connected to things other people are working on.”

Kozobarich said building alliances that bring together a variety of causes reflects the reality of every day life.
“As Ohioans, we all need healthcare. We all need good jobs. We all need safe, secure communities. We all need a healthy environment to live in and raise our children in…We’re not one-issue communities.”

She said events such as the Stand Up For Ohio festival are ways for people to find common cause w/ one another, instead of being divided and conquered w/ wedge issues.