Ohio Organizing Collaborative

Formed in 2007, the Ohio Organizing Collaborative (OOC) is an innovative statewide organization uniting community organizations, faith institutions, labor unions and policy groups across Ohio. We are a coalition of 20 organizations with members in every major metropolitan area across the state, working on issues including minimum wage reform, endin... g mass incarceration, and combatting climate change. It is our mission to organize everyday Ohioans, building transformative power for social, racial, and economic justice in our state. To achieve these ends, OOC manages a diverse portfolio of issue organizing, non-partisan electoral programming, leadership training and movement building work - employing a broad range of techniques, including faith-based, worker-led, neighborhood-based, student-led, and constituency organizing models. What's at Stake? Ohio is a battleground state: not only for Presidential elections,but for the future of the American economy and our democracy itself. For most of the twentieth century, ours was a state where people migrated for good-paying jobs in steel fabrication, automobile production, and manufacturing work associated with those and other industries.Today, Ohio is ground zero for the restructuring of our national economy. As poverty-wage jobs replace good-paying jobs across the state, our cities and neighborhoods are in continual decline, poverty rates are soaring and most children have considerably less opportunity than did their parents. Ohio plays a central role in the national narrative of the disappearing middle class, rising racial tension, the growing anxiety of white working class families, and polarization resulting from increased economic insecurity. We are headed in one of two directions: Ohio can continue its decline, resulting in an increasingly reactionary electorate, deeper poverty and racial inequity, and a majority low-wage worker economy; or Ohio can become an engine for the new economy, a leader in addressing racial disparity, leveraging our electoral ...Read More