CPT • Change is Coming to Ohio's iconic 11th Congressional District — Part III

Cuyahoga Politics Today 

Fudge departure must be wake up call for 11^th District’s Black Civic Leaders — Part III

By R. T. Andrews

The gale force entry of former state senator Nina Turner into the developing race to succeed Cleveland area Congresswoman Marcia Fudge, pending her confirmation as the next Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, knocked our plans for this column momentarily askew. 

Having discussed here in Part I and here in Part II the District's proud origins and history, and its importance to Cleveland’s black community, we had planned to advocate for a new process whereby we might begin more effectively to cultivate the generation of new black political leadership. 

Turner’s reemergence on the local scene, taken together with the initiative Justin Bibb is showing in the race to replace Frank Jackson next year, might seem to suggest a reinvigorated local political scene. But Black Cleveland needs a long term strategy if it is ever to realize its potential as an agentic community or capitalize on its status as the city’s largest ethnic group. 

If we can do that, we would not only address our seemingly intractable problems of poverty and despair, we would galvanize a sorely needed larger civic vision that for once was truly inclusive, not just so in our typical top down pro forma way. 

A smart community has a system for developing and nurturing talent.

John O. Holly, founder and president of The Future Outlook League

So, while Rep. Fudge is still our Congresswoman, we should consider that a smart community has a system for developing and nurturing talent. Let us realize that the mid-twentieth century ecology that produced our community’s greatest political talent — the Stokes Brothers — is not the environment we inhabit today. Carl and Louis Stokes, separately and collectively, were a once in a lifetime occurrence, products of a compact hothouse black community where they could attach themselves to a John Holly, perhaps black Cleveland’s greatest civic leader, and imbibe his sense of community service and spirit. 

Black Cleveland needs a long term strategy if it is ever to realize its potential as an agentic community and capitalize on its status as the city’s largest ethnic group. 

Carl and Lou came of age at a time when avenues for black excellence were tightly constricted. Many avenues of career and professional development were unavailable. Black people were unwelcome in every professional association. Black real estate agents could not participate in multiple listing services and could not even call themselves realtors, forcing them to invent the term “realtists”. You couldn’t find a black professional anywhere from downtown east until you neared 55^th and Woodland Ave.

How did we overcome? We got organized, informally and formally. John Holly formed The Future Outlook League, which quickly became 10,000 strong, forcing employers large and small to open their hiring gates.

Informally, civic leaders convened Operation Alert, a regular conclave of community leaders who shared information, plotted how to capitalize on vulnerable points in the area’s apartheid regime, and discussed how to navigate both opportunities and crises, whether sudden or foreseeable. 

The eventual 1960s breakthrough was communal, collective, cultural, and simultaneously national, global, and local. 

Regrettably, once black people began to find status and success in positions of public service, i.e. as elected officials, the definition and pecking order of community leaders and spokespeople began to shift, often with unfavorable results. Sometimes we placed impossible demands upon some of these officials. More often we asked too little of them and failed to hold them accountable. And most fatally, we failed to recognize the extent to which they in fact often answer to interests outside the community that are inimical to our own.

How can we change a system where too many of our elected officials do not work for us, do not respect us, do not love us enough to care for our welfare?

In much of the black community, the quality of our elected officials is left to chance. We do not identify, train, nurture and develop our political leaders. They self-select, more often than not becoming beholden to those who finance their campaigns.

There has to be a better way.

To find it, we spoke over the past month with a number of folks from all walks of life about the black community might develop a more effective politics. The brightest among them were quick to decouple the issue from any particular office or imminent election.  The frustration and despair that sometimes peeked through our questioning gave way before long to hope as we realized the enormous talent that already resides within our community. 

In the midst of our discussions, cleveland.com published a column that purported to identify some leading candidates to succeed Fudge. With a couple of exceptions, the list was tired, perhaps reflecting a veteran reporter’s old paradigm and his obvious disconnect from the black community of the present and future. It seemed almost an attempt to select a leader for us.

This is what happens when by our inaction we leave the field to others. 

In the next and final installment of this series, appearing this Sunday, we will explore how we might become, as a friend of mine is wont to say, “active participants of our own deliverance”.

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Former Cleveland Mayor Mike White Gets Real About Politics, Power, Race, Trump

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).

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.

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.

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%."

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.”

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.”

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

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.

Lisa Bottoms of Bottom Line Consulting, Christopher Howse
of Howse Solutions, and Gloria Ware of JumpStart 

There is a 21^st 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 21^st 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.

[2] First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
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.

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.

CPT • Black Political Unrest playing out in Cuyahoga Democratic Party

 Cuyahoga Politics Today

Cuyahoga Democrats: Change is Blowing in the Wind

Endorsement process is tip of iceberg of roiling black political energy

​It’s impossible to talk about politics in Greater Cleveland without talking about black politics.

That fact makes some folk uncomfortable for different reasons. People want to believe in the Kumbaya stick image that our homogenizing culture has made of Martin King. They like to cite his Dream while omitting the realities he gave his last full measure of devotion trying to change: a dominant military-capitalist system that crushed poor people and people of color.

Fifty years later society celebrates a sanitized version of King’s legacy that omits how he was cursed, vilified, asaulted, spied upon by his own government, and thrown in jail with regularity, just for trying to make this country a more just and humane place to live and work. When King came to Cleveland to support the 1967 Stokes campaign, Democratic Party chairman and county engineer Albert Porter sent out letters saying that a Stokes victory meant turning the city over to Martin King, the tone of his message implying that rape and pillage would soon follow.

King was one of a trio of now celebrated black men hated for their fearless and sacrificial stance on behalf of their community and thereby on behalf of the larger society. Muhammad Ali was another towering black figure who came to prominence in the civil rights era. His livelihood was taken away and all manner of hatred hurled at him for his humble, courageous and principled stand for his religious beliefs. He died in 2016 as perhaps the most recognized and beloved global citizen of his time.

Last year in Cleveland, establishment institutions went all in on the golden anniversary of Carl Stokes’ election as the first black mayor of a major US city. It seems little time was spent on how far we have and have not come in addressing our community’s continuing racial and class inequities. Carl and his widely respected brother Lou — the beloved Congressman aka “the Distinguished Gentleman” are today remembered for their accomplishments, as if the demons they wrestled against were vanquished.

The reality is quite different. Echoes of their struggles resound nationally in the rollback of voting rights; the outright perfidy of gerrymandering in North Carolina, Ohio and elsewhere; the open racism, crudity and unchristian behavior of this ersatz evangelical Administration bent on destroying the fundamentals of our democracy. Echoes of Ali’s struggles can be scene in the honest protest of Colin Kaepernick, who is reviled and unemployed for daring to speak out against police brutality and injustice.

Here in Cleveland, an examination of Stokes’ legacy would include fighting his own Democratic Party for respect and a fair deal. It would involve remembering how and why the Twenty-First Congressional District Caucus was formed, and how it became a transcendant force for empowerment.

When I remember Carl Stokes I like to recall his love for black people, his self-confidence, his willingness to go into hostile territory and stand on his qualifications to serve. I remember the respect he had for the profession of politics and the disdain he had for political pretenders. I loved that he always kept his eyes on the prize of fair and equitable power distribution.

I wish that today we had more African American professional politicians in our community who were, like the Stokes boys, rooted in our community and focused on their role as public servants. They understood that the leadership followed the service.

Each of these distingushed gentlemen — King, Ali, Carl, Lou — was guided in their professional pursuits by principle, purpose, passion and preparation. These were key elements in their ability to excel in their chosen fields.

Politics Today

For the past couple of days we have been writing to peel back some of the mystery of local politics, to provide some insight into the how and why some names appear on the ballot and some don’t. To give some understanding about the inner workings of the endorsement process.

One of the things we have noticed in our close up look at the local Democratic Party is how much is changing even as so much remains unchanged.

What has changed? Too often, black candidates are reluctant to campaign across their entire jurisdictions. They self-segregate themselves.

I just paused writing this and went searching for a passage in Carl Stokes’ magnificent book, Promises of Power: Then and Now. I re-read Chapter 3, “How to Get Elected by White People”. It’s unbelievable how his account of his campaign for the state legislature in 1960 remains a blueprint for any candidate of color seeking countywide office today. As I look at what’s happening in the local Democratic Party today, I think Karrie Howard may be the only black person running countywide this year whose campaign has internalized that chapter.

Perhaps that’s why Howard pulled the stunning feat of securing the backing of Parma’s rank-and-file political leaders even in the face of the Mason-Fudge alignment.

My political gut tells me that a huge shakeup in county politics may be on the horizon. Lou Stokes and the Congressional District Caucus were part of a strong black political tradition that connected ordinary black men and women to their political representatives. That tradition waned over the years, and when the Hon. Marcia L. Fudge took over from Lou’s successor, — the beloved Stephanie Tubbs Jones, who died suddenly in 2008 — Fudge effectively dissolved the Caucus, almost the last thread connecting the people to the process. In some cases the thread seems to have been replaced by ministerial mercenaries.

Fudge of late has been generously endorsing candidates, including two judicial aspirants — Deborah Monique Turner and Andrea Nelson Moore — who are longshots to garner the financial resources necessary — generally ballparked at $100,000 — to run successfully countywide. She is also backing Jeff Johnson in his campaign against incumbent State Sen. Sandra Williams, which most observers think is payback for Williams’ challenge to Fudge protégé Shontel Brown, to become Party chair. Fudge won that battle — which may be tied to her deal with Bill Mason — but is upset that Williams did not back down.

It is intriguing to consider what, if anything, this would-be Empress of Black Politics will be wearing if she leaves tomorrow’s executive committee meeting with none of her publicized candidates able to secure an endorsement.

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