pro-Palestinian protesters persist on college campuses in Ohio and across the nation.

The Browns want the public to pay for half of either a renovated lakefront stadium or a new dome in Brook Park.

And litter bugs aren't just throwing away trash.

They're tossing out tax dollars.

Ideas is next.

Hello and welcome to IDEAS.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thanks for joining us.

Protesters demanding Israel withdraw from Gaza have assembled on college campuses in Ohio and across the nation.

Administrators say they want to balance free speech rights with campus disruption and student safety.

Yesterday, Case Western Reserve University, which had been tolerating an encampment on campus, declared protesters to be criminally trespassing.

The Browns want the public to cover half the cost of a new or renovated stadium.

If they stay on the lakefront.

It's a massive billion dollar renovation.

If they build a dome in Brook Park, the tab would be north of 2 billion.

Half of either is a lot.

The civil rights lawyer who represented George Floyd's family is now advocating for the family of an East Canton man who died in the custody of a Canton police last month.

The incident has led to calls for police reform and a federal investigation.

And litter bugs are costing us big time.

The Ohio Department of Transportation says cleanup costs more than $10 million a year.

Joining me for the roundtable from Ideastream, Public Media education reporter Connor Morris and health reporter Taylor Wisner in Columbus.

Statehouse News bureau chief Karen Kasler.

Let's get ready to roundtable.

pro-Palestinian protesters demanding divestment in Israel have set up encampments on college campuses here across the state and across the nation.

In Cleveland, pro-Palestinian protesters have been gathered at Case Western Reserve University since earlier this week.

The school originally tolerated their presence on private property.

But yesterday, the administration declared protesters, some of whom are not students, criminally trespassing.

Where do we currently stand?

Yeah, you know, as you mentioned, the university says the anybody trespassing or protesting on the oval there, you know, by the library case Western Reserve is trespassing and could be charged through their university disciplinary process for students, but also could be charged criminally.

That didn't stop the protesters, though.

They were they were camped out there through the night.

They went they marched to the administrative offices and posted their demands on the front door of the of the building.

You know, they also had you know, there was food there, the tents there still.

They were dancing.

They were singing, playing drums.

You know, that continued into the night, as I mentioned.

So I went there a couple of nights ago.

It was a very small encampment in front of the Kelvin Smith Library on the grass there.

As I understand it, they expanded that last night a little bit.

They yeah, they were pushing it a little bit.

They moved the university had some barriers they set up and they moved them out onto the sidewalk.

They being the protest protesters.

Yes.

And from my experience of covering protests, you know, that's something that administrations typically, you know, any kind of blocking of ingress and egress into buildings or blocking of of public thoroughfares, that's usually a no go.

And but they were not arrested, though.

And I know at Ohio State, they have had they had encampments and people were hauled off last week.

Now, what's happening there is they aren't tent cities type of things and people are just showing up to protest.

Yes, exactly.

And typically they're dispersing, you know, towards the, you know, maybe like 9 p.m. or so time period voluntarily dispersing from for the most part, from what we understand.

But what I'm seeing on television is UCLA, University of California, Los Angeles.

We're seeing that.

We're seeing Columbia, where it is much more chaotic.

Yes.

The you know, in Columbia, we saw students that went to take over a building.

And there is some history of that in college campus protests and the history of protests, general occupying buildings.

So it's not without precedent, of course.

But, yeah, police were sent in to clear that building, I believe, yesterday or two days ago.

And, you know, at UCLA, what we're seeing really is a pretty significant counterprotest movement as well.

And actually, the counterprotesters, I mean, there's reports of amazing folks.

You know, and so there are more serious clashes between the two there.

We haven't really seen that in Ohio that I know of so far.

Really, You know, the counterprotesters that were out at case last night, there were just a, you know, maybe six or seven or so.

And, you know, there was there was dialog happening, too, as well.

There were arguments, Yes, heated arguments, but, you know, no fights whatsoever.

So obviously, this all relates to the war with Hamas and what the Palestinian protests, pro-Palestinian protesters are saying is, you know, get out of Gaza and, you know all of that.

The Israeli protesters are saying, listen, you're saying from the river to the sea, that means you want us to not exist.

Yeah, that's the age old argument that was going on for decades.

Yes, But what we're hearing from the protesters is one specific demand and that is divest.

Yeah, there was there's a case there are there's like six demands.

You know, that's one of the big ones, though, you know, disclose what cases investments are and then, you know, divest from any kind of companies that are profiting off of the war, so to speak.

But there's also a broader antiwar movement that's been missed a little bit with some of these protests.

A lot of these students are calling for divesting from military contractors in general.

So not just related to Israel.

So that's been kind of interesting to hear that from the students.

Also at case, they're they're calling on the university to cut academic ties with Israeli institutions as well.

So it makes a little bit a different form for each protest.

But we're seeing similar demands in Oberlin, for example, as well, where there's been an encampment this week, too.

So, Karen, we mentioned Ohio State president there, approached the protests last week with what some viewed as a pretty heavy hand.

There were police on rooftops.

Tell me a little bit about that and whether that has changed in a week.

Well, I think there's a lot of pressure on college presidents to keep the peace, but allow students the right to free speech.

And like you said, some people are under the opinion that some of these colleges have gone too far, have brought in police.

These are students who are largely peaceful protesters.

And at Ohio State, we have not seen anything like Columbia, where buildings have been broken into.

Though Ohio State did order buildings locked in anticipation of protests.

The protests last week really went fairly peacefully up until about 10:00 at night when police forces started moving in and the protesters started performing an evening prayer.

And all of that really clashed as you had protester demonstrators surrounding those who were praying.

And so and, of course, a lot of this unfolded on live television, too.

So I think that there's a lot of pressure to try to keep the peace and follow the laws, but also to allow students the opportunity to protest while students are there, because we're getting to the end of the school year.

So I think that there's the hope that this will diffuse as students leave to go home for summer.

You've mentioned the word students a number of times there, and what I know, what I'm hearing from college administrators here and in an interview on NPR that I heard with Eric Adams from New York City, the mayor, there was the idea that many of these protesters are not students in New York at Columbia, and it's at Columbia.

They said that it was 40% as high as I don't know how they got that number, but a number of people who aren't students and that's been one of the bigger issues.

You wonder if after the school year, those who aren't students will persist.

Well, and of the students of the 40, I can't remember it was 41, I think, who were arrested last week.

A certain number, like 16 of them were students.

And I mean, 46 arrested, 16 were students and or faculty members, people affiliated with Ohio State and the rest weren't.

So.

But that doesn't necessarily indicate just because that's what the arrest breakdown was.

That doesn't indicate what the population of those were demonstrating was.

I think that's a narrative that you're hearing a lot.

And certainly there are people I mean, colleges have been a place where people have come out to demonstrate.

I mean, there's a history going back and we're going to remember it tomorrow with Kent State and the anniversary of the May 4th shootings in 1970.

College campuses have been a place of demonstration and protest for decades now.

And so it does they do tend to bring out other people.

The question is, of course, and this is the narrative that that people are being passed in from other places or paid to do that.

And I don't know that there's evidence of that.

Karen mentioned Kent State and I talked about it earlier to Connor.

The the thing that's really unsettling, I think, to people is when we hear folks saying they ought to call in the National Guard and anybody who knows anything about Kent State would get a chilling effect from that, given what happened where the National Guard opened fire on innocent, unarmed students.

The echoes are circuit certainly striking now.

Yeah, we spoke with some faculty members and students this week about that and they were all saying, hold up.

You know, sending in the National Guard is probably not the best idea, you know, in response to students who are peacefully protesting, given the history.

And it's kind of been, I guess, burned into our cultural consciousness for for many of us.

I mean, I'm only 32, of course, but still, I mean, I grew up understanding that context.

You know, I grew up in Ohio, of course.

So maybe not everyone, I guess.

But still, you know, I think the idea that you don't want that to happen.

Right.

And with all the protests across the country so far, there have not been any students that have been killed or demonstrators that have been killed.

There have been relatively tough takedowns of students that we've seen in Texas.

We've seen rubber bullets being deployed in other college campuses as well.

Again, none of that here.

But still, you know, some of the students that I talked to at Kent were saying, look, we're seeing even without the National Guard being called in, we are seeing students being, you know, their words, brutalize unnecessarily.

So, you know, students who are trying to express themselves.

But again, you know, it's tough when universities are trying to manage, you know, the operations of you know, they're trying to maintain the normal operations at the university.

I've heard about graduation, you know, ceremony one or two being canceled due to these protests.

So they're trying to balance things.

And it all comes back to that sort of time Warner place thing.

You know, what?

Where is it appropriate for a protest to happen?

You know, and is it disrupting university operations?

So, as Karen mentioned, these administrations are in a tough spot sometimes.

The Cleveland Browns want the public to foot half the bill for either a renovated stadium on the lakefront in Cleveland Public tab north of 500 million, or a new domed stadium in Brook Park.

Cost to the public around 1.2 billion.

House Finance Committee Chair Jay Edwards, you said you're going to talk to him today about the money.

Let's talk about that.

In general, the state has gone to bat for Ohio sports owners in the past.

Cleveland isn't the only city with professional sports teams and stadiums.

That's a lot of asks in in when you have Columbus, when you have Cincinnati, and when you have Cleveland, I mean, you got Guardians, Cavs, Bengals, Reds, crew, blue jackets.

Those are professional sports franchise, Major League Plus.

You've got all the minor league sports franchises in Ohio.

I mean, whatever would be given potentially to the Browns, certainly the Bengals are going to come back and say, hey, what about us?

And so, you know, it seems like it's a really heavy lift here.

And I just don't know what the what the what the ultimate goal is other than, you know, sure to make this happen.

But I just don't I don't know that it seems I'll be interested to talk giants and find out what the state's interest is in funding this.

I mean, Brown Stadium one was it renovated?

It was not that long ago, right?

No, not that long ago.

Yeah.

So this we're talking about $1,000,000,000 renovation or $2.4 billion Dome stadium.

I mean, these are huge dollar figures.

And I think that there is potentially some frustration on the part of fans who say, wait a minute, I have to pay tax money for this.

I have to pay for the tickets, I have to pay to go and Eaton Park and everything, or I have to pay for the NFL Network package or, you know, it's a lot to ask people to pay for who and who and control five cent does know Does that you Drew Yeah, I figured it had to be because you would know he's with me on sort of the very bare minimum in the stadium he says bring back the troughs and anyone who's use the restroom at the old Glebe Municipal Stadium knows what I'm talking about.

And I don't know all the restrooms, just the men's rooms, but we'll move on from that.

I know.

Listen, I didn't build them.

The Browns Taylor are putting forth ideas for both the staying and renovating the stadium there and now they say it needs a big update even though, as Karen said, it wasn't a whole long time ago that it was renovated.

And their decision will depend whether they stay there or build.

New in Brook Park on how much public support is given appears a Dome stadium option is preferred though.

Yeah, it does appear that way.

You know, according to these reports, I think what we're seeing is the more fleshed out plan is the brook Park plan.

You know, they've talked with officials about proposing an entertainment district, You know, lots of bars, restaurants, even some condos that would be privately funded.

But it, you know, seems that that sort of the proposal that they're really looking for, support for the Browns also say they really want this dome.

So and they've come forth and said you know for structural and financial reasons, you know, it it's not seeming likely that they can build that in place of the Browns Stadium as it is now.

So as as they're sort of bringing forth these proposals, you know, it's looking more and more like Brook Park is where they're headed.

Huh?

Well, if they can get the money to do, you know, a $2 billion project, $2.4 billion project, the dome, they would say, makes sense because it's covered.

And you can have more than just eight events a year.

You know, if it's covered, you can have all kinds of things in there.

And I understand that.

The other part is if you build in Brook Park, you've got an entire complex essentially owned by the team where everyone's going to eat, drink, dine, stay, all those kind of things.

So you could see the benefits of that.

Again, the big question is I think everybody's like, Hey, we're all for it.

The big question is going to be how much the public is going to pony up for it.

And what I'm hearing from the folks who are opposed to that is how much are we going to pony up for it in a town where we've got a whole lot of things that we could use the money toward?

The civil rights lawyer who represented the family of George Floyd has taken up the case of Frank Tyson, who died during an arrest after being handcuffed by Canton police on April 18th.

The incident unfolded inside a veteran's hall after he left the scene of a nearby one car accident.

Taylor, attorney Ben Crump is representing Tyson's family now, and he claims the police did not need to put that knee on Tyson while handcuffing him.

Yeah, they say, you know, use of force wasn't necessary in this case.

You know, Tyson was in distress.

His family says because of past experiences with police, he had been incarcerated for 24 years on a kidnaping charge.

So you could imagine, you know, coming into that situation with fear.

And apparently he expressed concerns that they were going to kill him.

So he was in an agitated state.

Likely why the police felt the need to subdue him and repeatedly, as he was being subdued, he said, I couldn't I can't breathe.

I can't breathe.

You know, calling back to the George Floyd incident.

So, you know, one police officer, we, as we've seen in the video, has even responded, you know, callously saying, you know, shut the expletive up.

So, you know, the video release of that incident has really called into question of how police officers should be responding to incidents like this.

Crump says how many times will it take for police to listen?

How long until they start practicing de-escalation practices?

He's also calling for the Department of Justice to investigate now.

Mm hmm.

Yeah.

So him, as well as the Stark County and ACP, have requested the DOJ open an investigation into Tyson's death.

Right now, the incident is being investigated by the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation.

They're just in the beginning stages.

Of course.

Officers are on leave, and the autopsy is in process.

They say it could take a minimum of five weeks to be released, according to the coroner's office.

Canton has a new mayor, and reforming the relationship between the community and police was an issue in the campaign.

This obviously is another issue to deal with.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, Mayor Scherer has had to balance this issue throughout his campaign of police shortages, rising crime trends and just community concerns about racial discrimination after the fatal police shooting of James Williamson 2022.

If you remember, an officer shot Williams through the fence of his home.

WILLIAMS Home, you know.

Sure, told Ideastream Public Media he wants to work with Police Chief John Gabbard to build back that trust with the public and the police department.

But he also wants the police to improve their training practices.

So he's very much paying attention to this issue.

He sat down with Tyson's family to give them all the information before the public and to share his condolences.

And he's promised transparency to the community throughout this whole process.

You mentioned the I can't breathe.

It was in, as you mentioned, George Floyd, also Eric Garner using those words in 2014 when he died during an arrest by New York police.

So clearly, those words are echoing with with Ben Crump, and we will continue to cover that as well.

The nonprofit Cuyahoga Arts and Culture, which distributes money from a cigaret tax to fund the arts, wants to increase the tax from $0.30 a pack to 70.

Smoking rates have gone down, which is good for health and bad for funding.

Ideastream, which covers the arts, is one of the recipients of CHC funding.

Taylor That's a hefty increase.

How did Cuyahoga Arts and Culture arrive at that number?

Yeah, it's been a long time coming.

I mean, the tax revenue has been off by 24% just this year, but it's been a trend for a while now.

The original amount for this tax was decided something like 15 years ago.

So, you know, over time, as we've seen, population trends here in northeast Ohio have gone down.

So there's fewer people paying that tax and fewer people who are smoking.

So good, good, good.

Right.

Mean, I think it's sort of a penalty tax and a way to help support the arts, but maybe discourage people from smoking.

So we're sort of winning in one respect and losing in the other.

So the board has considered maybe taxing other products as a way to figure out how to restore funding.

But ultimately they've decided, you know, they don't want to tax based products or movie rentals or alcohol and so those ideas haven't really made it before the public.

And they're just going to increase the tax is their proposal on cigarets.

They're proposing it.

So the county council has to say, okay let's put it on a ballot, but it's going to be a vote.

Cuyahoga County would have to vote on this.

Right.

So the people of Congress.

Yeah.

So it's to the city council or the county council at this point to place it before the public on the ballot.

I think it's the ballot November 2024.

So, yes, obviously, this will go to voters before this is approved.

All right.

Senator Bill Blessing, a Cincinnati area Republican, has proposed raising Ohio's minimum wage to $15 by January 1st, 20, 28.

It comes as advocates seek to get a $15 minimum wage amendment on the November ballot, which would be enacted much sooner if approved.

Karen, it appears to be an effort to get something done before the voters can vote on this.

So it's not I don't know, is it?

Does he want a higher minimum wage or is it just a way for the state to take control of this and not have the voters make their voice heard?

Well, I think lawmakers do feel like they may have learned something from the casino votes over the years that when when finally people approved casinos, then state lawmakers didn't have the ability to put regulations on the casinos because they were constitutional amendments.

So this may be an attempt and really going back to like the nineties when you put minimum wage votes to voters, are minimum wage increases to voters, they approve them.

And so it seems likely that if this does make the ballot, that it will get approved.

So maybe this is I think it's almost certainly an attempt to try to take control of this issue, but it could still go to the ballot anyway.

It's interesting because at the polling place for the primary this year where I was, there was someone circulating a petition for this minimum wage.

It's a great place to circulate petition because, you know, you're getting registered voters.

Exactly right.

Smart people.

But he was approached by someone who identified himself as a small business owner who just gave him a real piece of his mind and said, you have no idea how this is going to damage things and people are going to have fewer jobs.

So while it may be something that's popular at the polls, it is still something that is quite the subject of debate.

Right.

And that's one thing that we might be able to see.

If indeed it does go to a constitutional mandate, we could potentially see a real debate on what has been the history of when you raise minimum wage, what happens to businesses, especially small businesses.

The state right now, when you start talking about home rule and local control, you know, the cities cannot raise minimum wage like would want to because the state has that control there.

And so this could be a really interesting opportunity to talk about what minimum wage can do and what it does do and what it what the negative effects are and the difference of cost of living between living in a city versus living in a different area.

The key difference on this bill and and what would happen with the voter approved bill should that happen is that wages for non tipped workers would only be raised in the bill.

Those who get tips would remain at 750 an hour.

The legislation would make them higher.

So there are some differences to.

Yeah, and right now the current minimum wage is $10.45 an hour.

That's for non tipped employees, 525 an hour for tipped employees.

Now all of this goes back to a 2006 constitutional amendment on minimum wage, which voters approved.

That raises it because of inflation.

The state minimum wage.

This, of course, would raise it to a dollar figure of $15.

And I think it goes higher after that.

I have to look at it again.

But, you know, again, this discussion of that minimum wage isn't enough to be a living wage in in most parts of the country.

And therefore, what can what can be done about that?

And what is a minimum wage job intended to be?

You hear a lot of conversations about how well, that's a starting point, but other people, it is a career.

This is what they're doing and these are necessary jobs.

So all of this comes into play.

Do you ever see someone toss a popcorn or a cheeseburger wrapper or cigaret butt out the window of their moving car and have to suppress your rage?

Litter bugs are the worst.

And what they do doesn't just make you angry and degrade the environment.

It cost you money.

You have Department of Transportation says so far it has bag nearly 90,000 bags of trash this year at a cost to you of $10 million a year.

So, Conner, is it really so hard not to litter as you're driving down the highway?

You want to kind of act like a Frank Reynolds, you know, Danny DeVito's character and always Sunny, he's the trash man, come out of the arena and the trash everywhere.

He garbage.

I think it was Kramer in Seinfeld who who was cleaning up highway litter as well.

It's a whole other story on that.

So clearly.

And that's part of the zeitgeist.

Yeah, but but the idea.

Taylor, it just kind of shocked me that the amount of money that it cost ODOT and you would think they've got to have crews out there.

You're picking up gum wrappers.

I mean, it's not just the big stuff.

It's the little stuff that accumulates.

And if you drive down a highway and see all that detras along the side of it, you realize what a bad look it is.

Yeah, well, and you know, I've been noticing just clean cleanup efforts in general, sort of along along the highway, although I actually have a bone to pick with ODOT on this because they've cut down some trees that were blocking some highway noise in my neighborhood.

And it's kind of created an eyesore.

So with with more trash actually being visible.

So, yeah, you know, there's always, always can be improved.

But yeah, quite, quite a cost.

Don't, don't they know who you are.

Don't they know not to do it in my neighborhood.

Yeah.

Karen, I know the Columbus area's pristine.

There's never.

Oh I never, never see anything weird or.

God, no, I don't want to touch that, you know.

Monday on the Sound of Ideas on 89 seven KSU, we'll discuss in depth the recent Canton police custody death we touched on earlier in the roundtable.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thank you so much for watching.

And stay safe,