Mike White talks to local civic group about everything from parenting, politics and power to leadership, race and Trump
Former
Cleveland mayor Michael R. White made one of his infrequent public appearances
Tuesday night when he appeared as the final speaker in a 17-month series on
leadership sponsored by the Black Professionals Association Charitable Foundation (BPACF).
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| Former Cleveland Mayor Michael White makes a point at BPACF event [All photos courtesy of WAKE UP CALL MEDIA] |
Generational
conflict was clearly on his mind as White spoke informally and
extemporaneously, first in conversation with BPACF president Ronald V. Johnson,
and later in a Q&A before an audience of at least sixty business owners,
civic leaders, educators, and attorneys.
Echoing
both his elders and the spirit of his youth, White repeated the wisdom of Frederick
Douglass’ famous lesson that “Power concedes nothing without demand”. White
displayed an enduring respect for the elders of his youth — “W. O., Carl, Lou,
George, Arnold”[1] — who inspired and taught him the
fundamentals of politics, supported his development, and then resisted him on
generational grounds when, as a state senator, he decided to run for mayor in
1989.
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| BPACF President Ronald V. Johnson, left, with business owner Ishmael Martin |
White
talked about how he soaked up the wisdom of these and other leaders in Cleveland’s
black community. Feeling privileged to be in the room with these titans, White
said he kept his mouth shut, his eyes open, and focused on doing what he was
asked to the best of his ability. The result was a continuing rise in his
responsibilities.
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| About 60 people attended the final session of BPACF's Leadership Speaker Series at JumpStart in Midtown on January 30, 2018. |
Although
he set his life’s goal on becoming Cleveland’s mayor after he “met” Carl Stokes
at 13 (he saw him on television), White said he didn’t think of himself as
having leadership qualities until 1969 and he arrived at Ohio State University,
where he began to study leaders in a search for their common characteristics.
White
expounded on a variety of topics, including Cleveland Schools — “No one in
Cleveland should be happy with the state of public education.” — the impact of
Donald Trump on race relations, the importance of vision, parenting, and some
of his current work with the Mandel Foundation. And, of course, the
Browns-Modell saga.
Among
White’s observations:
Power: “you gotta take it.” When you have prepared yourself and you are
ready, go for it!
Politics: “Politics is hard work… What prepares you to be a councilman is
ward work.” You have to put in the time, work campaigns, get to know the
issues. Formal education is important but insufficient in and of itself. White
said he ran 6 or 7 campaigns, including those of Lou Stokes and Jesse Jackson
[locally]. You have to stay focused on the task and not be distracted by the
personal.
Parenting: One of “the most painful moments” of his life, on a par with
losing his mother when he was 33 and his father a quarter-century later, “was realizing
my children were gonna have to fight the same battles” against discrimination
that he had fought.
Schools: “Education is so important to the future of our people... the
school system has historically not been welcoming to working class people.
"Do not accept a high school graduation rate of 71%."
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| From left: Cosmo Danielly, Chris Nance, Stephanie Hamilton Brown and Sanford Watson |
The black community: We cannot be afraid of our young people. We must become more
engaged with our children. We must nurture them.
“When everybody around you tells you can fly, you believe you can
fly. That is half the battle.”
The stool of survival for our community has three legs, which are
economics, education and politics.
“We need to continue developing and evolving our own businesses
even as we penetrate institutions” at the professional level.
We need to be about business and not make things personal.
“We gravitate around personalities when we should gravitate around
vision.”
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| Front: Marcella Brown, BPACF executive director |
Vision: "Vision is always more important than the individual. There is no
leader who is more important than the vision. The vision must remain intact and
undefiled.”
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The Cleveland Browns campaign: “The whole Save Our Browns strategy came out of the Civil Rights
manual." Number one, do we have legal standing? [Yes.] Number two, talk to a
broader audience. [Build a base of support.] Number three. Be disruptive. White
said had Cleveland relied on the courts, “we would have lost” because of the
time factor. By taking the fight to select cities and teams, the opposition got
nervous and anxious. Cleveland won, he said, essentially because the National Football
League paid us to go away.
Cleveland’s future: The
city’s neighborhoods are moving in the right direction, albeit more slowly on
the east side. There needs to be physical development, business development,
and human development.
Question about Trump
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| White responds to question from BPACF President Johnson |
Perhaps
the most sobering moment of the evening came in White’s response to a question
about the impact of Donald Trump upon race relations. The former mayor’s answer
was ominous.
“We all
know what it is, but that’s only a part of it. Much of it is under the radar.
We don’t see ICE [deporting and harassing people].”
We don’t see the move towards the development of a national database that will track license plates nationwide. We don’t see the rollbacks that are degrading our air and our water. We don’t see the “real insidious nature” of this administration.
We don’t see the move towards the development of a national database that will track license plates nationwide. We don’t see the rollbacks that are degrading our air and our water. We don’t see the “real insidious nature” of this administration.
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| Lisa Bottoms of Bottom Line Consulting, Christopher Howse of Howse Solutions, and Gloria Ware of JumpStart |
There is a
21st century kind of lynching going on of blacks, Hispanics, Arabs,
people who don’t look like them. We have to fight back 24 hours a day.
White said,
“Trump’s rise was enabled by millions and millions of people who think just
like him, and worse.”
White
warned the audience that we can’t be so holed up that we don’t understand
what’s happening to others. We can’t take the attitude that because we live in
Solon we can be dismissive about what goes on in Hough. White referenced the
time when he became a state senator, and his constituency included Jewish
citizens for the first time, causing him to broaden his perspective. He quoted
a snippet from the famous poem that begins, “First they
came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a
Socialist.”[2]
White said
we should all be repulsed by what is happening to the Dreamers.
“We are
all Dreamers,” he said.
White today
White was
relaxed and outgoing, betraying little of the trademark intensity that
characterized his governing style during his three mayoral terms from
1990-2001. Now 66, White was the first in his family to attend college. He
earned two degrees at OSU and after graduation went to work for the Republican
mayor of Columbus before returning home to pursue his goal of becoming
Cleveland’s mayor. He left direct political combat close to two decades ago,
moved several counties away, and now sees himself as a farmer. He has become a
winemaker and a rescuer and hospice steward for horses. In what he said was a
rare admission, White said he was an introvert, one who needed regular time
away from the madding crowds. He attributed his attendance in large measure to
his respect for BPA, which recognized him as its Black Professional of the Year
in 1993.
White has
been a consultant to the Mandel Foundation almost since his retirement from
active politics. His work for Mandel brings him to Cleveland about once a week.
While his Foundation work is most visible in his direction of the Neighborhood
Leadership Development Program (NLDP), White has quietly become an influential
political adviser to a reigning power structure that prefers to sit offstage
until its interests are threatened and preservation of the status requires direct,
albeit discreet, intervention. Politically speaking, he knows both how and when
to wield a hammer and thread a needle.
Those
interests were seriously challenged twice last year, most notably in the bitter
fight to force public subsidization of the Quicken Loans Arena expansion to
serve private interests. Strings were pulled from national to ward to parish
level to thwart an engaged Cleveland citizenry. The second direct intervention
was required following the September primary, when Mayor Frank Jackson’s
surprisingly poor showing led to an “emergency cash transfusion”
to beat down the quasi-populist challenge of Zack Reed.
White described
his NLDP work as helping to identify engaged community leaders and building
their capacity to be more effective. He likened it to “fishing for zealots”.
The event
drew a Bell-shaped crowd age wise, from Millennials to seniors. Reed was among
those in attendance, listening closely as his one-time hero turned adversary,
showed that while removed from the ring, he still retained the sharp instincts
honed during decades of political combat: White donated several bottles of wine
from his Yellow Butterfly Winery as part of the evening’s refreshment.
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[1] W. O. Walker was the longtime
editor and publisher of the once influential Call and Post weekly
newspaper widely read throughout Cleveland’s black community. Carl
Stokes was Cleveland’s first black mayor [1967-1971] and the
inspiration behind both the 21st Congressional District Caucus,
in its heyday the strongest black political organization in the nation. Lou
Stokes was Carl’s brother, an outstanding lawyer who became Ohio’s
first black Congressman, serving from 1969-1998. George Forbes amassed
unprecedented power during his tenure as City Council president from 1974 to
1989. Arnold R. Pinkney gained renown as a
master campaign strategist power broker and was highly sought out for advice
and campaign assistance by politicians near and far, including Jesse Jackson,
Hubert R. Humphrey and Jimmy Carter in their presidential campaigns.
Then they came for the Trade
Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there
was no one left to speak for me.
– Martin Niemoller
Niemöller
(1892–1984)
was a prominent Protestant pastor who emerged as an outspoken public foe of
Adolf Hitler and spent the last seven years of Nazi rule in concentration
camps.
