AROUND TOWN TODAY | Quick Takes on the Civic Scene

Black Philanthropy Summit • Black Citizenship in Action • Cleveland Rising! • Cuyahoga GOP

 By R. T. Andrews

The sixth biannual African American Philanthropy Summit takes place today from 1-3PM via Zoom. Registration is now closed but we will have a report for you.

If you are moved by what’s happening around the country and are wondering how you might get involved, here are two suggestions:

Read this compelling op-ed by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor for a keen perspective on how to understand what's happening in our country today in the wake of George Floyd's murder at the hands of police officers in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Consider attending "Black Citizenship in Action Online" [BCA] today at noon. Discussion will center on how black people in this country gained citizenship rights and how that power can be used to create lasting community change. 

Jessica Byrd online during
Black Citizenship in Action

BCA includes local community outreach and mobilization opportunities and civic and voter engagement that help deepen black people's shared understanding of our rights as citizens and helps build the power needed to create a future that works for us.

Cleveland Rising!, the curious collective effort of certain Clevelanders concerned about our city's cratered condition, convenes this afternoon from 1-2:30PM via Zoom. Working groups formed at the CLE Rising Summit will share progress toward aspirational goals identified last fall. Virtual attendees, after watching the working group presentations, will have an opportunity to provide feedback.

 Register here.

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The Cuyahoga County Republican Party holds organizational meetings today  for its central and executive committees amidst unusual circumstances. State law requires political parties to meet within 15 days of the certification of the election of their precinct committee people, which occurred earlier this month following the close of primary voting on April 28.

Today’s meeting will be held at the Cuyahoga Heights City Hall but, given the restrictions on public gatherings imposed by the state in the midst of the pandemic, most of those attending will do so via Zoom. How this will affect voting is still unclear, a matter of both logistics and intra-party intrigue, according to party insiders with whom we have spoken.

Until last fall, Rob Frost chaired both the central and the executive committees. Sources told us there has been mounting dissatisfaction over the party’s operations and its ballot box performance in recent years. Frost yielded the chair of the executive committee at that time but retained control of the more powerful central committee.

Today’s vote will test how much power Frost retains. He is being challenged by Lisa Stickan, a city councilwoman from Highland Heights. Stickan is the daughter of Lucy Stickan, a long-time party activist in the county GOP and a high-ranking party official.

Frost still controls a lot of the party’s levers, so the outcome may turn on voting logistics and whether the vote will extend past today.

Peter Corrigan, who was named interim chair of the executive committee in December after Frost stepped down, is unlikely to be opposed and is expected to shed the interim tag and be installed as chair after the vote.

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NONPROFIT THURSDAY • School draws on DuBois for inspiration

T2 Honors Academy • Olivet Town Hall tonight • BPACF Forum • Gerrymandering

 By R. T. Andrews

IN THE SPOTLIGHT:

T2 (“Squared”) Honors Academy is a small community school — i.e. “charter school” — currently operating in Warrensville Heights. Its stated mission is to use “a rigorous, innovative academic curriculum to infuse a passion for people, intrinsic motivation, and self-discipline in its students”.

According to the school’s founder and lead educator, Dr. India Ford, the "T2"  stands for the Talented Tenth. It’s a nod, she says, to W.E.B Dubois' premise that ten percent of the African American population would lead the masses out of poverty and become the catalyst to a social reform movement. In alliance with DuBois' quote, T-Squared’s academic curriculum incorporates  elements of social activism.

T-Squared opened in 2014 and currently serves 120 students, 99% African American, in grades 7-12. About 54% of the enrollment is eligible for free/reduced lunches, but the entire school received approval for a free lunch program under a community eligibility program.

The school, established in 2014, has made serious strides in its four years of operations. Students typically arrive at T-Squared from challenged area school districts measuring two to three grade levels behind in reading and/or math. T-Squared has achieved a “B” grade relative to its progress in closing these gaps. Its most recent [2018-2019] overall grade is a "C," and includes a valued added grade of "A". It graduated its first senior class in 2018.

The Academy is presently housed in an office space in an active industrial area.  Its board of directors and administrators want to purchase a shuttered school building in Garfield Heights and begin operations there in the fall of 2021. They started a GoFundMe campaign last month to that end.

Founder Ford taught in the Maple Heights schools before leaving to establish T-Squared. She earned her Ph.D. in Urban Education and Leadership from Cleveland State University.

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Here’s what happening tonight for the civic and business-minded Clevelander:

• Olivet Institutional Baptist Church and its Olivet Housing and Community Development Corporation are hosting a virtual town hall tonight on health and community in the time of COVID-19. Olivet’s pastor Jawanza Colvin will moderate a distinguished panel of physicians comprising Dr. Edward Barksdale, Dr. Carla Harwell, Dr. Robert Haynie, and Dr. Sonja Haywood.

Among the topics to be discussed: causes and prevention of the virus, its impact on mental health and well-being, and its effects on children and education.

The forum starts at 6PM and will be carried on Zoom and the church’s Facebook page. Registration here is requested but not required.

• The BPACF Leadership program featuring LaRese Purnell, managing partner, CLE Consulting Firm; Vanessa L. Whiting, Esq., President, A.E.S. Management Corp; Dr. Charles Modlin, Surgeon, Cleveland Clinic, starts at 7PM. The guests will discuss the health, wealth and business impact of COVID-19 on the black community in Northeast Ohio. More info here.

• Democracy remains a challenge in Ohio. An online video forum tonight at 7PM addresses "Gerrymandering and Ohio". Participants include Michael Li, Brennan Center For Justice; Kathay Feng, National Redistricting Director, Common Cause US: and Jen Miller, Executive Director of the League of Women Voters-Ohio. Catherine Turcer, Executive Director of Common Cause Ohio will moderate. RSVP HERE. 

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Race and COVID-19

The Dangerous Link between Race and COVID-19

By Roger T Jones

Special to the Real Deal

Race plays no part in how the Covid-19 is spread.

Covid-19 is a vagabond virus looking indiscriminately for hosts. It is not a boutique infection that looks for a specific type of host. It does not calculate the  biology of a potential host before deciding to invade. It lands wherever it can survive. Covid-19 is from a larger family of viruses that cause disease all of the time. It is an infection that easily travels across racial and gender lines.

I say all of that because there are dangerous assumptions being spun about who gets the infection. Such is the slippery slope of racial biology. Although the belief that race is a classification tool in biology has been long sense debunked by mainstream natural and social scientists, the Alt-Right's “scientific wing” and — unwittingly, I hope — black identitarians have both appealed to the alleged racial nature of the infection. This cannot stand unchallenged.

Scientific racists are easy to dismiss since for them everything is in the genes. They claim that racial disparities are inborn, removed from external interventions like education, livable wages, or adequate healthcare. You can catch them most any night on Fox News sputtering nonsense.

Black identitarians inhabit the same coin with scientific racists, albeit on different sides. They believe, like scientific racists, that blacks have a different biology. They imagine that if blacks would just rediscover their lost African heritage, understand that they are syncretic Africans, all of their problems would simply vanish. Both postures rely heavily on specious logic that view race and genetic inheritance as exactly the same thing. This is how each side models Covid-19.

The Center for Disease Control, however, which has called for the collection of data and the tracking of racial disparities, says that blacks are particularly susceptible to Covid-19 infection because of certain social and economic conditions, specifically their impoverished living conditions, their work circumstances and underlying health conditions, and their lower access to healthcare. 

But a recent New England Journal of Medicine article underscores the need to contextualize disparities data about blacks and the disease with “adequate analysis” so as not to “perpetuate harmful myths and misunderstandings that actually undermine the goal of eliminating health inequalities.”

The more Covid-19 is viewed as a “black” disease, the more its victims will be stigmatized and the less likely a coherent long term national response will emerge.

The authors, Merlin Chowkwanyun and Adolph Reed, Jr. speak to the need to have a precise, data informed view of how “vulnerability is distributed in this pandemic.” They identify the dangers that attend the haphazard contextualization of data about blacks and Covid-19 and call on everyone to ground their thinking in four key areas and suggest data collection methodologies that preempts race as the principal explanation of the disease.

First of all, they warn against collecting data in a vacuum. Such explanations, they point out, can replicate racial biology by accepting the tenet that there are differences in black and white biology. This is a point not lost on Jonathan Marks, Professor of Anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, when he observed: “One of the major scientific accomplishments of the 20th century was to distinguish the study of race from the study of human variation.”

        

Second, disparity figures historically have given rise to blaming the behavior of victims for their condition. This was apparent even in the early stages of Covid-19 when it was seen as a result of the Chinese penchant for eating bats and having live animal markets.

Third, normally supercharged language can often be camouflaged by use of a proxy. Here, the proxy for black Covid-19 sufferers has become a city ward — or a zip code. As Chowkwanyun and Reed point out, focusing the spotlight only on the people who generally inhabit those spaces reinforces stereotypes about “those people.” Descriptors like New Orleans Ninth Ward” or “Cleveland's East Side" are often used as synonyms for "poor black people. While zip codes and ward names don't tell the entire story of the people in an area, the linguistic sleight-of-hand  can further marginalize the people who inhabit that  area something in the way it implies something negative negative about “those people.”

Finally, Chowkwanyun and Reed warn how those three factors germinate a fourth challenge that may be equally dangerous. The researchers discuss how perception can become reality even when is false; how social problems become “racial” and give in to the “all-too-familiar mobilizations of racialized rhetoric.” That tendency has helped rationalize recent cuts in education, public housing and programs like the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC). The more Covid-19 is viewed as a “black” disease, the more its victims will be stigmatized by it and the less likely a coherent national response will emerge in the long term.

Chowkwanyun and Reed end by calling for further research that collects social and economic data “alongside” racial data; takes into account “multiple axes of inequality,” and considers what public health researcher Arline Geronimus calls “weathering” or advanced aging, caused by a person's response to external stressors, which can lead to cardiovascular disease or diabetes — two conditions that elevate one's risk of death from Covid-19.

This line of research would almost certainly illuminate current Covid-19 data analysis and perhaps point to some long term public health policies.

Roger T. Jones is a Cleveland-based freelance writer.

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BUSINESS TUESDAY | BPACF • Sydnor • CODE M • KeyBank +

BUSINESS TUESDAY | BPACF hosts COVID-19 panel • Sydnor starts new business • CODE M gets new president • KeyBank gets inclusion chief …

By R. T. Andrews

The Black Professional Association of Charitable Foundation (BPACF) has gathered an expert panel to discuss the health, wealth and business impact of COVID-19 on the black community in Northeast Ohio. The panel will be moderated by Frank Wiley of WEWS Channel 5 and consists of:

·       Dr. Charles Modlin of Cleveland Clinic, who was recently appointed by Governor DeWine to the Ohio COVID-19 Minority Strike Force

·       Vanessa L. Whiting, Esq., president of A.E.S. Management Group dba Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen, who was appointed by the governor to the Ohio Economic Recovery Advisory Board

·       LaRese Purnell, managing partner of CLE Consulting Firm, who has been instrumental in providing food and resources to people in need during COVID-19

The Zoom session will run this Thursday, May 28, starting at 7PM. To attend, register here.

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Local webinar targeting start-up entrepreneurs is online tomorrow

The North Coast Ventures investment fund, formerly known as North Coast Angel Fund, will present a webinar tomorrow featuring 22 entrepreneurs, investors and business executives offering two-minute speeches about one critical thing a start-up operator should know in launching a new business.

The presenters include Adam Bain, former COO of Twitter; Akram Boutros, CEO of the MetroHealth System; Charu Ramanathan, a Case Western Reserve University Ph.D. in biomedical engineering who has started three health care companies; Gil Van Bokkelen, CEO of Cleveland biopharmaceutical company Athersys Inc.; and Mike Walker, senior director of applied innovation at Microsoft Corp.

The program is Wednesday, May 27, at 5PM.

Sign up for the event here.

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Sydnor launches start-up

Danielle Sydnor

Danielle Sydnor, the former executive director of Northern Ohio for the Economic Community Development Institute, has left the organization to launch her own venture. Sydnor has formed We Win Strategies Group, which she describes as “a firm dedicated to working with a diverse array of stakeholders to create win-win outcomes for individuals, organizations and communities.”

Sydnor is president of the Cleveland NAACP and chair of the board at Eliza Bryant Village.

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Code Media Group has new president

Brad J. Bowling

Brad J. Bowling has joined Code Media Group LLC as President of the company. He will be responsible for strategic planning and running the day to day operations of the company. He brings his extensive background and experience in the areas of digital publishing, marketing and B2B relationship leveraging.

Code M’s best known product is the national digital quarterly magazine Code M, aimed at men of color. Bowling told The Real Deal that he wants to take the magazine to a monthly schedule in 2021 and retain its national perspective even as it develops a more regional focus. The magazine recently signed on as media sponsor for this year’s Martha’s Vineyard ComedyFest, which will be livestreamed August 3-20, 2020 during National Black Comedy Month.

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New Chief Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer for KeyBank

Greg Jones

Greg Jones is now accountable for leading KeyBank’s strategy and tactics to improve the acquisition, movement, development and retention of diverse talent and suppliers. He was named Chief Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Officer for the bank last month after most recently serving as Chief Diversity Officer at United Airlines. He also has held past roles at Northwestern Mutual Life, UBS, Bank of America and GE Healthcare.  

Jones holds a BS from Tuskegee University, an MS from Stanford University, both in electrical engineering.  He was named as a Top 100 Executive in Diversity by Black Enterprise Magazine in 2018 and recognized in Ebony Magazine's Power 100 in 2017. Greg also has received multiple industry certifications, including Six Sigma. Jones is veteran of the United States Navy where he served as a 2nd Class Petty Officer.

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“Grab a Bucket and Mop!”

Finding QSC when we need them most

By Julius C. Dorsey, Jr.

GUEST COLUMNIST

Owning the cleanliness position has been the basis for great sales performance before. Little did McDonald's founder Ray Kroc know how much the restaurant industry and others would need him today. Ray's dedication to core operations led to the acronym, QSC, which stood for Quality, Service & Cleanliness. 

Post- COVID-19 McDonald’s would probably love to bring back the commercial that started it all, “Grab a Bucket and Mop” and the campaign that it launched, “You Deserve a Break Today.” 

As dine-in service returns today in my state of Ohio and elsewhere, there’s no doubt we could all use a break and a safe place to take it. 

The You Deserve a Break campaign and its first commercial, Grab a Bucket, were written by legendary ad man, Keith Reinhard. Six of us here at Dorsey & Company worked with Keith as fellow McDonald’s account or creative staff or, as some of us did, on both the agency side and then as McDonald’s national marketing staff.

The jingle stems from great creativity applied to something operationally fundamental about the McDonald's that made it different AND better than competitors, providing a competitive advantage. Notice - In the entire commercial, not one image and just one word about the food!! This shows advertising giant, David Ogilvy was right: “The most powerful element in advertising is the truth.”

McDonald’s owned the clean position until long after the campaign ended. Just read a few words from the 1971 commercial:

Grab a bucket and mop,

Scrub the bottom and top.

There is nothing so clean

As my burger machine!

 With a broom and a brush,

Clean it up for the rush!

Before you open the door,

Put a shine on the floor!"

Advertising comes after the hard work

Even before the advertising folks developed the iconic campaign, the hard work of delivery had to come first. Reasons to believe advertising claims can’t be based on hope, dreams and cleverness; they have to be reliably and consistently delivered. Only then can promises, big claims and big ideas drive outstanding sales results.

Claims are OKAY, but to quote another bit of great QSR advertising: “Where’s the Beef?” For the most part, we haven’t seen it yet, but that's no fault of restaurateurs or others. The performance standard for safety post COVID (set ultimately by the customer, not regulators) is still evolving. Meanwhile, restaurants and others scramble to restock, reformat service and seating, and retrain staff to resume operations. Unfortunately, exactly what will make everyone feel safe is unsettled at best or worse, unknown.

For some restaurant, retail and service brands, big opportunities await because “clean” is such an important issue today – it’s suddenly more top of mind for every consumer. Advertisers everywhere are now touting their efforts to make things clean and safe for customers and staff. 

Some will find the "secret sauce"

Brands with insight will engineer sanitation, safety and service processes into operating procedures to be top of mind, word and deed for every employee, every time. This can be achieved by most with sufficient desire and follow through. But more sales production is available from this effort only for a select few.

Who will step up past the words to present an elegant combination of operating performance, brand positioning and creativity to own “clean” in the future? Who will, who can, who should take something EVERY CUSTOMER will say they want and EVERY provider will say they deliver and turn it into a principal reason to select and sustain use of their brand?

Julius C. Dorsey Jr. is President & CEO of Dorsey & Company, consultants in competitive and market strategy, tactical development, research, and implementation.

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CELEBRATION SUNDAY | Graduations and Promotions • A first for United Airlines

Life goes on amid pandemic

By R. T. Andrews

We like to recognize excellence and celebrate educational achievement at The Real Deal Press. We are empathizing these days with those students and their families who have completed their degree journeys this year but for whom the pandemic has precluded the hard earned pomp and circumstance that should frame the occasion.

To acknowledge those students from our community who have or will receive degrees this spring, let's do this:

If your son, daughter, mother, father, grandchild, cousin, nephew, neighbor, colleague, or significant other has earned a degree this spring, complete this short form and we will share their accomplishment with the world.

Our first responders:

Aliyah Marie Benson of Shaker Hts., was graduated from Hiram College with a Bachelor of Science degree in Neuroscience/Psychology, [Sharon Glaspie, Grandmother].

Christopher Joseph Alexander Cox May of Hudson received his Master of Science in Biomedical Sciences degree last week from Tufts University. [Anthony C. "(Tony") and Glenda Cox May, parents].

Complete this form soon to make sure your special person gets the community acknowledgement they deserve.

Act now! This offer is ending soon!

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Former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich is a professor at the University of California at Berkeley. We chanced yesterday upon this 20-minute video of him speaking at the semester-ending class on Wealth and Poverty. He talked about the career and life choices ahead for his graduating students. It was deeper fare than most graduating speakers offer.  It’s worth checking out and sharing with the young people in your life.

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Speaking of careers, although economic activity as we knew it has ground to a halt these past few months, a number of people have changed jobs or won promotions. Here are a few:

Ebony L. Yeboah-Amankwah

FIRST ENERGY: Former deputy general counsel Ebony L. Yeboah-Amankwah was named general counsel. She will remain in her role as chief ethics officer.

Talia Seals, SHRM-SCP, is now Human Resources Business Partner at Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.

Hickman

CWRU Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing Associate Dean for Research Dr. Ronald L. Hickman Jr.,  was  officially installed as the inaugural chair of The Ruth M. Anderson Professorship in Nursing.

Smith

Arielle D. Smith is now Senior Social Distancing Area Manager at Amazon.

Boise

April Miller Boise has joined Eaton Corporation as executive vice president and general counsel.

Blakemore

Dan Blakemore is the new Development Director for The Conservancy for Cuyahoga Valley National Park. 

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First African American president for United Airlines

Brett J. Hart took over as president of United Airlines Holdings on May 20, 2020. Hart previously served as United’s executive vice president and a chief administrative officer. Prior to joining United, Hart was executive vice president, general counsel and corporate secretary at Sara Lee Corp.

Brett J. Hart

He has a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and English from the University of Michigan and a law degree from the University of Chicago Law School.

The previous president, Scott Kirby, is United’s new CEO, succeeding Oscar Munoz, who now takes the role of executive chairman of the company’s board of directors.

In a corporate statement announcing the executive changes, Hart expressed confidence that “United can stand up to the challenges posed by the coronavirus epidemic” and that the new team “will build United into a thriving industry leader.” He said he said he will forgo his salary for the time being due to the pandemic.

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