Culminating her day at Oberlin in a sparsely-attended speech at West Lecture Hall in the New Science Center, Democratic Representative Marcy Kaptur spent last Monday
reaching out to Obies, some of her newest constituents.
In her address, she mentioned Oberlin’s previous Congressional Representative, saying, “I don’t know if I have as much energy per second as Sherrod Brown does, but over the year I think it averages out in different ways.” Oberlin, now part of the ninth congressional district — which now stretches west to Toledo — was formerly part of the 13th District, which stretched east to Youngstown.
Kaptur visited Kendal at Oberlin and the Allen Memorial Hospital before beginning her afternoon at the College. She opened her visit with a lunch at the College President Nancy Dye’s house, dining with Dye as well as several student leaders. Sophomore student senator Behrad Mahdi was one of those in attendance, “I thought Marcy Kaptur was interesting. Her views are sort of all over the place, and her answers were just the same,” he said. In the afternoon, Kaptur attended an Ohio PIRG workshop and met with the Oberlin College Democrats before her afternoon speech.
“We were grateful for her willingness to speak with us, and our forum went very well. We appreciate her support of issues of hunger and homelessness, and especially her support of the National Affordable Housing Trust Fund. She gave us some great ideas on how to combat issues of hunger and affordable housing, and we look forward to working with her on those issues,” Sophomore Brianna Tindall, who organized the forum, said.
“She was very concerned about mounting levels of student debt and asked for copies of the two Ohio PIRG reports about the issue,” junior Winston Vaughan, Ohio PIRG co-chair, said.
The speech, clearly geared toward Oberlin’s activist audience, focused on foreign affairs and the need to move away from American dependence on foreign oil toward use of biofuels, wind, solar power and other renewable energy sources.
Responding to a question from an Oberlin student about her position on the World Bank and WTO, Kaptur motioned to Oberlin’s former Congressman, Don Pease, who was in attendance, and said, “[He] fought the fight before Americans were even paying attention….Trade agreements exploit the vulnerable and undermine our own people.” In further comments on international trade agreements, she called NAFTA and the FTAA “lopsided” and said that U.S. foreign aid was not “gender-appropriate,” noting that in most countries women are the ones who manage money and food, but that U.S. aid is disproportionately geared toward supporting patriarchy.
Kaptur is one of 75 women in the Congress, as well the most senior woman Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee. She also sits on a variety of subcommittees, including that of Agriculture, Housing and Urban Development and Environmental Protection, as well as the Subcomittee on Veterans, NASA and the National Science Foundation.