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Who is doing the mining/securing if they aren't using Bitcoin?

You don't need mining for private chains.

So, what, they're glorified Merkle trees?

Yes, as it turns out, cryptographically timestamped ordering of cryptographically signed individual transactions is a useful thing for trading markets.

so, basically git

...but with a network protocol, peer discovery/exchange, record gossip, and defined strict data format for the contents of commits; but basically yes.

Blockchains aren't any fundamentally new underlying technology, they're just existing technology bolted together in a new way that enables new applications. DHT and BitTorrent are similar in that regard.

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