Ohio Citizen Action was founded to address what its leaders viewed as a critical national crisis: the destruction of the industrial working class. According to Ira Arlook, the organization’s first executive director from 1975-1993, the founders, including Arlook, Paul Ryder, Jack Nicholl, and Brewster Rhoads (who had worked together in the Indochina Peace Campaign) believed that Ohio was at the very center of this crisis.

The organization was created to fight back against:

• Plant closures and outsourcing: Manufacturing plants throughout Ohio and the industrial Midwest were closing and moving abroad
• Economic forces: What the founders termed “corporate run globalization” combined with automation were decimating the industrial base
• Political abandonment: Democratic political leaders were abandoning workers by embracing deregulation and encouraging privatization

The organization was created to fight back against these forces – advocating for Ohio’s working people against corporate power, toxic polluters and corrupt politicians.