WCRS Podcast - consciousvoices

Some homeless and formerly homeless people may soon have jobs recycling materials that come from offices, bars, restaurants and other businesses in down-town Columbus.

“ We are trying to start businesses that will employ homeless people, because traditional employers don't want to hire somebody who's got a lack of employment experience or has a criminal background. So, we want to create those jobs ourselves.”

That was Mary Loritz, who works with the Columbus Coalition for the Homeless. She said there is a demand for this type of work in downtown Columbus. .

“A lot of them don't have recycling service and so we'll hire the homeless and formerly homeless to pick it up and take it to recycling centers.” Leadership Columbus is providing help with market research, incorporation, and business insurance.

“Hopefully it will be on the ground in a couple of months.”

She said she would like the recycling business to become a worker-owned co-op at some point in the future, but not just yet.

“To begin with, we'll be a regular business, but I think down the line, we'll want to have a more cooperative ownership and management structure where the homeless are actually in control and democratically managing the company themselves.”

Tom Over for WCRS Columbus

Music by Jake Wildwood

You are able to hear my voice right now because of electricity. Electricity that powered my computer and the voice recorder. As you hear this, electricity powers the computer in our studio that operates our radio programming. Most of that electricity comes from burning coal, especially in this part of the country. Some of that coal comes from a mining practice leads to people in Appalachia breathing silica dust into their lungs and ingesting selenium and arsenic as they drink the water in their communities.

It is my hope that this program is at least a small part of more people getting involved with finding better ways to get our electricity.

Welcome to the Feb 12, 2010 edition of Conscious Voices. I am Tom Over. This program has been made possible with funding help from the Puffin Foundation and from you.

To comment on this show go to WCRSFM.org or columbusfreepressforum.org

If you search the internet for information about mountain top removal mining, you'll find that people too numerous to count have, during the past few years, sat in jail cells, chained themselves to mining machinery, staged tree-sits, marched, rallied, and otherwise have worked to put an end to this form of strip of mining that is not only contaminating the air, land , and water in Appalachia, but also deforming its landscapes.