Opinion> Connie Schultz> Another 3 Ring Statehouse

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Another 3-Ring Statehouse

Any politician who still thinks it's a keen idea to go after the collective bargaining rights of public employees ought to come over to Ohio.

You know the old saying: As Ohio goes, so goes the nation. It doesn't take much of a stroll through the Buckeye State to see that somebody sorely underestimated regular Americans' fondness for the freedoms of regular Americans.

The new Republican battle cry:

O-H!

Oh, no!

A little before 10 a.m. on Tuesday, I started walking a 1 1/2-mile stretch of road toward Ohio's Statehouse in Columbus. The sights and sounds along the way reminded me why Ohio is such a bellwether state and how my fellow Ohioans are so often underestimated. There's a little bit of everything going on here, which sometimes confuses outsiders — and insiders who never mingle.

On this particular morning, I encountered the usual number of false impressions. Worst among them: a specialty shop displaying Aunt Jemima salt and pepper shakers and a restaurant's empty patio with loudspeakers blasting the rants of a misogynist comic.

So very un-Ohio.

Then my BlackBerry buzzed with an e-mail alert. Anti-choice extremists had announced their plan to roll ultrasound equipment into an Ohio House hearing room this week so that a pregnant woman's fetus can "testify" in support of a bill that even Ohio Right to Life does not support.

Welcome to the latest sideshow at Ohio's three-ring Statehouse.

Fortunately, I was on my way to meet a whole lot of salt-of-the-earth Ohioans — about 8,500 of them, by official estimates — who are not buying into the circus.

They came from every corner of Ohio to rally on the Statehouse lawn for public employees under attack by the proposed state Senate legislation widely known as SB 5.

This bill is a lot like the one churning up protests in Wisconsin, except our governor didn't even pretend to like the firefighters and police better by exempting them.

Here in Ohio, every public employee could lose his or her right to collectively bargain under this beauty of a bill.

Now is as good a time as any to mention the latest New York Times/CBS News poll, which shows that the majority of Americans — by almost a 2-1 ratio — oppose bills like SB 5. They don't want public workers to lose their right to collectively bargain, and they oppose cuts in pay or benefits, too.

This is true even among most Americans who have no union members in their families.

One of the people I met at Tuesday's rally was 22-year-old Sandy Pesuit, an early-education major at Ohio University. She started working with preschoolers when she was still in high school. She never has wanted to do anything else.

"My mom says being around little kids turns me into a different person," she said. "I guess I do light up."

Pesuit said she will owe at least $40,000 in college debt by the time she graduates. If SB 5 passes, her dream of making a living by becoming a teacher will die.

"I won't be able to afford it," she said. "And it's not just the teachers we're going to lose. Who knows which child will be the next doctor, the next lawyer, the next president? If we don't invest in them early, we lose them, too."

Hundreds of small American flags fluttered through Tuesday's crowd. Some were tucked into ponytails and baseball caps. Most people held them in their hands, including Larry Cremeens, a Marine who lost his right leg in Vietnam in 1968.

He parked his wheelchair near the curb of North High Street and propped a sign on his lap that read, "It's About Freedom!"

When I asked why he was facing the street rather than milling with the crowd behind him, he smiled.

"They understand why we're here," he said, pointing to the protesters.

Then he pointed at the cars passing by.

"They don't understand."

I noted the number of drivers honking, and he grinned again.

"They're learning," he said. "We're all learning."

Connie Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and an essayist for Parade magazine. To find out more about Connie Schultz (cschultz@plaind.com) and read her past columns, please visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.