11
The Middle Class Defended
By September, We Are Ohio had regional field directors and organizers set up all over the state. In Hamilton, Butler, Warren, and Clermont counties (that is, Cincinnati and the surrounding counties), there were at least ten people assigned to the job of organizing many more volunteers. Over the course of the campaign, the AAUP at UC had interactions with several of them and found them young, enthusiastic, and professional. Already quite well organized, we did not need their help the way other groups did, but we collaborated with them and often directed them where their efforts would be most effective. There were also other groups active in Ohio and the Cincinnati area, including Organizing for America staff and volunteers—often the continuing presence of the 2008 Obama campaign in Ohio, who would still be in place for Obama’s 2012 campaign.
But the key for our coalition’s dynamic and effective drive toward the November election was the thousands of people who simply volunteered. Often union members or church members, they were always people with a conscience and concern for the kind of state and country we were becoming. For our part, at the UC AAUP, we were trying to block Gov. Kasich and his conservative allies from ending our 40 years of collective bargaining at the University of Cincinnati. As the election neared, I was constantly concerned that there was something more we could do to protect the university and preserve our right to have a say in our workplace. I didn’t want to leave anything undone that might help us.
I received a message from Catholics United on September 7, illustrating my fear: “Don’t wake up on Nov. 9th wishing you did more.” Noting that there were only 63 days left before the vote, the Catholic organization emphasized that there was not a single minute to waste: “Every added day, our opponents lie to Ohioans about the effects of Senate Bill 5 . . . We may be outspent by our opponents but with your help, we will not be out worked or out volunteered. Now more than ever we need to be talking to voters about the facts and the harmful consequences of Issue 2.” Catholics United beseeched people to volunteer to go door-to-door asking for people to “vote No on 2.”1
In early September, I met with Hollie Hinton, a mayoral candidate for the city of Chillicothe who was planning a We Are Ohio rally/ fundraiser event for the Cincinnati area. She asked me to be on the organizing team, and, of course, I agreed. Shortly after the meeting with Hinton was the annual Labor Day Picnic at Coney Island, on the edge of the city along the Ohio River. The UC’s AAUP chapter faculty had for years sponsored a booth at the picnic, and our signature effort at the picnic is hauling in a couple of helium tanks so we can blow up balloons, stamped with the AAUP logo, for the hordes of children who throng the event. While I was handing out balloons with my colleagues at the 2011 picnic, I encountered Bill Dudley of the UFCW. W