Over fall break, CU Dems campaign for labor rights in Ohio

While many Columbia students forget that fall break is officially called Election Day, 56 members of the Columbia University College Democrats remembered their civic duties last week.
Each year, the Dems take a fall break campaigning trip to lobby for Democratic candidates or progressive legislation. This year, the destination was Cleveland, Ohio, and the cause, collective bargaining rights.

“The best moment of the trip to me was when I went to the home of an 80-year-old couple. The man had forgotten about the Election Day and said to his wife, “Can you believe we forgot about voting?” Ian Armony, CC ’15 and a first-time campaigner, said. “Both of them got really excited about the issue. They definitely went out to vote on Tuesday.”

Past trips have taken dozens of College Democrats to Virginia to campaign for President Barack Obama in 2008 and to Bucks County, Pa., where they campaigned for former congressman Patrick Murphy last year. However 2011 was an “off-year”—a year when elections to the Senate and House of Representatives do not occur. Instead the Democrats worked to support the repeal of Senate Bill 5, approved by the state legislature in March, to reduce public unions’ ability for collective bargaining, which allows employees formed in a union to bargain with their employers.

This was a good year for the College Democrats—the bill was repealed by 61 to 39 percent.

“The bill basically kills all workers’ rights,” Marybeth Seitz-Brown, CC ’14 and lead activist, said. “With an issue like this, it boils down to: do you think unions should have rights? Do you believe in the middle class or not?”

But Seitz-Brown said that the victory was not everything that mattered, adding that the trip was “a wake-up call.”

“In college, it is easy to get caught up in little things—problem sets and schoolwork—and forget about real issues,” she said.

CU Dems worked with We Are Ohio, the Cleveland-based group that has been fighting to refute the bill since early April.

“They were very welcoming,” Armony said. Each day the group got the Dems up early to go door to door with literature about the bill. Armony said he was inspired by We Are Ohio volunteers’ commitment.

“They had such a personal issue at stake,” Armony said. “This made us want to help as much as we could.”
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