Nonprofit Thursday [Barely!]

Our deep apologies for almost turning this week’s Nonprofit Thursday into Nonprofit Friday. Our cup was truly running over today as we went from one event to another.

We would not be doing justice to the experiences of the day if we tried to cram everything into a hasty report.

We can say that the plug we gave here last week to Ronald Ferguson’s appearance today was well worth the space. Dr. Ferguson spoke with a simple eloquence that could easily have camouflaged for the casual listener the deep truths of his talk about “Educational Excellence With Equity”. His presentation contained insights for parents, teachers, students, businesses, and the community at large.

We videotaped the majority of his presentation and will post it as soon as we can process it, by Monday at the latest. We will also post our comments on this City Club in the City event.

 • • •

WE APPRECIATE the response we got to last week’s premiere of Nonprofit Thursdays.  

Several of you responded promptly with news of upcoming events, appointments, and suggestions for future coverage. Keep all that nonprofit info coming to us here: NonprofitsATCUYAHOGANEWS.NET.

CALENDAR SPOTLIGHT

• Is your organization clueless when it comes to social and mobile media? What does our mobile society mean for the nonprofit sector? How do you start your organization’s mobile presence? How can you mesh your agency’s mobile presence into other marketing initiatives? These and other questions will be addressed at the Center for Community Solutions’ 11^th annual Telling Your Story program for nonprofits and the media. The St. Luke’s Foundation co-sponsors this year’s program:  

“iPhone, iPad, iDon’t Know How to Connect with Our Organization’s Mobile Audience…”

WHEN: November 15 from 8am-Noon

WHERE: Center for Families and Children, 3955 Euclid Ave., (Free parking in adjacent lot; first-come, first-served)

PRESENTERS: Christina Klenotic, Vice President, Dix & Eaton, and Ann Poston, Marketing Manager, The Cleveland Orchestra

PANEL: 

Lee Chilcote, Development News Editor, Writer, Freshwater Cleveland
Rick Jackson, Morning Edition Host, Reporter, WCPN / WVIZ ideastream
Lila Mills, Editor & Publisher, Greater University Circle Neighborhood Voice
Karl Turner, Deputy Metro Editor/Online, The Plain Dealer

COST: $50. Registration required. Click here to register 

Other Events:

• An Evening of Style and Grace with The Honorable Sarah J. Harper

WHAT: Benefit for the Sarah J. Harper Children's Library, a library in the Outhwaite Homes in the Central neighborhood that encourages and promotes reading, learning and positive avenues for self realization.

WHEN: Sunday, November 6^th. Doors at 4pm. Fashion at 5pm

WHERE: The Masonic Temple Performing Arts Center, 3615 Euclid Avenue

CONTACT: For ticket information, please call Vernon Robinson at 216.534.8145 or Gabrielle Ross at 216.322.0011. 

Tickets are $50 per person.

• • •

DISCUSSION: Movement Building and the First Amendment

WHEN: Thursday, November 10 at 7PM

WHERE: Max Wohl Civil Liberties Center, 4506 Chester Ave, Cleveland 44103

WHO: The Ohio ACLU, members of the Occupy Movement, and constitutional and criminal defense attorneys.

N.B.: This event is free and open to the public. Free parking is available. To RSVP call 216.472.2220.

• • •

OPENINGS/OPPORTUNITIES

• Need an Intern for the Summer?

Application Deadline: November 30, 2011

  

The Cleveland Foundation's Summer Internship Program is accepting applications from area nonprofits or governmental agencies until November 30, 2011. College students, recent graduates, and graduate students work full-time for an 11-week session during the summer.

The Cleveland Foundation provides funding to cover the intern’s stipend.

RFPs

• The Cleveland Foundation is seeking nonprofit organizations in Northeast Ohio interested in receiving one or more pieces of modern art for use within their organization. The art works are from the extensive collection of the late Nancy L. and Frank H. Porter, and were bequeathed in 2003 as part of what was then the largest gift in the Foundation’s history.

There are of course some modest conditions, which you can find at www.clevelandfoundation.org along with pictures of the artwork and dimensions and descriptions of each piece.

Application materials are due by Nov. 7, 2011, to the Cleveland Foundation at: PorterFund@clevefdn.org.

Contact: Kara Copeland, program officer [216.615.7156; kcopeland@clevefdn.org] for questions regarding the Porter Fund, specific pieces of artwork, or the overall application process.

APPOINTMENTS

Nicole M. Bell to Executive Director, The Presidents’ Council Foundation.

Donna Dabb to Director, Cuyahoga Small Business Development Center at the Urban League of Greater Cleveland.

Tip of the week

Does your public relations plan coincide with the overall strategic plan of your organization? Do you have a public relations plan? Do you have a strategic plan?

You can find tips on how to improve your agency’s visibility and raise more donor dollars in this article:

Send your Nonprofit Thursday info to:

nonprofits@cuyahoganews.net.

Deadline for consideration is Fridays at 3pm.

• • •

Re-districting Drama is High Stakes Battle for More than Seats

Within hours of news reports citing GOP sources that a deal was near to peel off black House Democrats for a revised congressional map, State Rep. Sandra Williams, a Cleveland Democrat who heads the Ohio Legislative Black Caucus, released a statement denying that any such deal has been reached and reaffirming her group’s solidarity with House Democrats and the Democratic Party.

Williams’ statement:

“There has been no agreement between members of the Ohio Legislative Black Caucus and anyone on the Republican side on new congressional district lines. …The GOP so far is only offering minor tweaks to district lines without fundamentally changing the huge disparity between Republican and Democratic majority seats. This status quo is unacceptable to us, House Democrats and the Democratic Party as a whole. However, discussions are ongoing to achieve a workable map.”

My oh my.

Politics these days has become a high stakes game.  Or, as the wags put it, politics ain’t beanbag.

The posturing going on at the statehouse is real combat as Republicans work to adjust on the fly to yet another overreach.  If we look at the political landscape not just in Ohio but all across the land in 2011, there has been a well-organized, well-funded coordinated effort to restrict American democracy and full participation therein. And you don’t have to be a liberal loving, Wall Street-hating, union-worshiping, blindly partisan Democrat peacenik to see it.

Discouraging voters by restricting access to early voting; attacking public unions to eviscerate virtually the only force capable in the public arena of going toe-to-toe the most egregious excesses unbridled corporate desire; rigging voting districts to ensure that people can vote essentially by packing up and moving: this is what the GOP-Tea Party has ramped up since the last presidential election in preparation for the next presidential election, now just twelve months away.

No less an authority than the Federal Reserve provides evidence that since 2007, the collective net worth of Americans has fallen about $5.5 trillion [$5,500,000,000,000.00], or more than 8.6 percent. Over 85% of that decline is in real estate, which has lost $4.7 trillion in value, or 22 percent, since 2007.

Now we already know that those at the top have seen their wealth increase astronomically over the past two decades. So who is seeing that loss at home, gentle readers? All the rest of us, the 80 to 90 percent of the country who need to be seeking out and shoring up allies of every sort, because if the conservatives’ coordinated national effort succeeds, we’ll be in for more of the same.

Your representatives in Columbus know this, and you should let them know that you do as well and that they needn’t come home if they sell out.

• • •

Quick Bits: Today marks the anniversary of the debut of Ebony magazine in 1945.

The US tested the first hydrogen bomb on November 1, 1952.

Nonprofit Thursday deadline

Has your nonprofit agency:

• hired new staff?
• scheduled its annual meeting?
• won a new grant or award?
• re-located?
• elected new officers or trustees?

Send Nonprofit Thursday info to:

nonprofits@cuyahoganews.net.

Deadline for consideration is Fridays at 3pm.

Nonprofit Thursday Debuts!

WELCOME to this first Nonprofit Thursday post!

Nonprofits play a critical role in a community’s civic, business, social, and of course, religious life. In few places is this truer than Cleveland. A few years ago I found an online listing of US charitable organizations that showed Cuyahoga County among the top two or three locations in the country with upwards of 10,000 such groups.

Of course many of these nonprofits are dormant, having been the creation of an impulse or an idea that never actually gets off the ground.

The nonprofits that are our principal focus are those in some way connected to the African American community. I write this with some sense of irony because today’s daily paper reports on a study finding that some of Northeast Ohio’s whitest communities — Brunswick, Parma, North Olmsted, Avon and Wadsworth — are among Ohio’s most ethnically diverse municipalities! That’s a subject to tackle on another day.

What we intend to do today is provide a space that has been lacking in Greater Cleveland since the loss of the Plain Dealer’s vital City Streets column following Dick Peery’s retirement from the paper a few years ago. 

Peery’s followers included many in Cleveland’s nonprofit community. His weekly column was one of the few places — and certainly the best and most erudite — where you could find out what various community organizations were doing.

These organizations ranged from household names like the Black Professionals Association and the Urban League to all of the fraternal, social, and charitable groups — big and small, high and low — whose functions do so much to stitch together a community that pretty much exists under siege. These groups lost a valuable outlet with Dick’s retirement that has not hitherto been replaced.

So while we are famously nondiscriminatory here at The Real Deal, our emphasis on Nonprofit Thursdays will be on — in the spirit of City Streets — those organizations whose efforts resonate with the welfare and betterment of our local African American community.

This emphasis, if you will, has no exclusionary impulse; it is intended to address a perceived huge local void. We expect not to lose any of regular readers on Nonprofit Thursdays for two reasons. First, we think our readers are Cuyahoga’s most broadminded citizens, folk interested in and supportive of the welfare of our entire community. Second, our readers appreciate that what goes on in such a large segment of the community affects us all. This has certainly been true of the black presence in Greater Cleveland since World War I.

So without further ado, here’s what is happening around town that you would have be paying extremely close attention to know:

• Several major black institutions in town have new leadership at the top: Marsha Mockabee has secured the reins over at the Urban League since the removal of the interim tag earlier this year. … Arlene Anderson has been filling in on an interim basis at the NAACP since Stanley Miller resigned earlier this year as executive director. … Cecil Lipscomb has been lured away from a fundraising post at the Cleveland Clinic to become president of the United Black Fund of Greater Cleveland. Terri Hamilton Brown served as UBF interim director for much of this year.

We are glad to see this infusion of fresh leadership.

The real deal is that all three of these institutions need and should have the best and brightest talent in the African American community. With few exceptions this has not been the case for decades. The same stultifying attitudes and atmosphere that constrict and retard forward progress on the black political scene have been reprised and duplicated in far too many of our civic organizations. The whole community has suffered as a result.

We will get into the particulars of this on future Thursdays.

ANNOUNCEMENTS

Huntington Bank giveaway. Details here.
 

EVENTS

• LECTURE: Restoring "Function" to Children and Young People on the Path to Family and Community Revival. 

WHEN: Tuesday, November 1, 2011, 11:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.

WHERE: CWRU Mandel Center for Nonprofit Organizations (MNO) Room 115

WHO: John McKnight, Professor of Education and Social Policy, Asset-Based Community Development Institute, Northwestern University

John McKnight has conducted research on social service delivery systems, health policy, community organizations, neighborhood policy, and institutional racism. He currently directs research projects focused on asset-based neighborhood development and methods of community building by incorporating marginalized people. Much of his recent work on asset-based community development is captured in McKnight's co-authored book, Building Communities from the Inside Out: A Path Toward Finding and Mobilizing a Community's Assets (1993), which has circulated through a broad range of community, government, business, nonprofit, and educational institutions in the United States and Canada. McKnight serves on the Board of Directors of numerous community organizations including the Gamaliel Foundation and The National Training and Information Center. Before joining Northwestern, McKnight directed the Midwest office of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

Discussants: Claudia Coulton, PhD, Co-Director, Center on Urban Poverty & Community Development; Lillian F. Harris Professor of Urban Research & Social Change

Geraldine Burns, Director, Friendly Inn Settlement Corp.

Free and open to the public. A light lunch will be served. Registration is strongly encouraged.

http://schubert.case.edu/McKnight.aspx

 • • •

“Educational Excellence with Equity: A Social Movement for the 21st century”

WHO: Dr. Ronald F. Ferguson is a Cleveland native who attended John F. Kennedy High School. His research over more than three decades has focused on reducing economic and educational disparities. His most recent book is Toward Excellence with Equity: An emerging vision for closing the achievement gap (Harvard Education Press 2008).

WHEN: Thursday, November 3, 1:00-3:00 PM

WHERE: Plymouth Church 2860 Coventry Road Shaker Hts.

The U.S. is undergoing a fundamental transformation. The baby-boom generation is retiring while the fastest growing segments of our future workforce are the lowest achieving academically. Compared to Americans, students in many other nations are achieving higher scores and more years of schooling.

Dr. Ferguson will argue that the nation is in the early phases of a national social movement to improve educational outcomes for students from all racial, ethnic and social class backgrounds.

NOTE: This is a City Club in the City event. Tickets to this event are free, but reservations are required. www.cityclub.org - 216.621.0082 for reservations.

  • • •

• An Evening of Style and Grace with The Honorable Sarah J. Harper

WHAT: Benefit for the Sarah J. Harper Children's Library, a library in the Outhwaite Homes in the Central neighborhood that encourages and promotes reading, learning and positive avenues for self realization.

WHEN: Sunday, November 6^th. Doors at 4pm. Fashion at 5pm

WHERE: The Masonic Temple Performing Arts Center, 3615 Euclid Avenue

CONTACT: For ticket information, please call Vernon Robinson at 216.534.8145 or Gabrielle Ross at 216.322.0011. 

Tickets are $50 per person.

OPENINGS/OPPORTUNITIES

• Need an Intern for the Summer?

Application Deadline: November 30, 2011

  

The Cleveland Foundation's Summer Internship Program is accepting applications from area nonprofits or governmental agencies until November 30, 2011. College students, recent graduates, and graduate students work full-time for an 11-week session during the summer.

The Cleveland Foundation provides funding to cover the intern’s stipend.

 More information can be found by clicking here.

RFPs

• The Cleveland Foundation is seeking nonprofit organizations in Northeast Ohio interested in receiving one or more pieces of modern art for use within their organization. The art works are from the extensive collection of the late Nancy L. and Frank H. Porter, and were bequeathed in 2003 as part of what was then the largest gift in the Foundation’s history.

There are of course some modest conditions, which you can find at www.clevelandfoundation.org along with pictures of the artwork and dimensions and descriptions of each piece.

Application materials are due by Nov. 7, 2011, to the Cleveland Foundation at: PorterFund@clevefdn.org.

Contact: Kara Copeland, program officer [216.615.7156; kcopeland@clevefdn.org] for questions regarding the Porter Fund, specific pieces of artwork, or the overall application process.

SERVICE

Faith Credit Union is looking for an accomplished professional to serve on its diverse Board of Directors. Contact Faith CEO Vaughn P. Johnson @ 216.271.7111.

Two organizations looking for trustees:

Continue Life Inc. 

East End Neighborhood House 

Tip of the Real Deal cap to Montrie Rucker for this heads up. She writes:

“They are both fine organizations that serve our community. CLI is unique because their population is homeless, pregnant women and children. They also offer life skills to help them transition into their own homes. Can you imagine being pregnant and homeless?

You know all about East End Neighborhood House. It's been around since 1907 and it's still in its original building. Awesome programs for children and seniors. Not to mention the Rites of Passage Program.”

 • • •

Send Nonprofit Thursday info to:

nonprofits@cuyahoganews.net.

Deadline for consideration is Fridays at 3pm.

Ohio University students teach Halloween lesson for all seasons

Members of STARS [Students Teaching About Racism in Society] — an Ohio University student group dedicated to the prevention of racism through education and awareness — have a simple message especially timed for the start of Halloween season. 

“Stop and consider” the implications of what you do, say, and portray, is the way Seth Williams, ’13, describes the goal of the  group's 'We're a culture, not a costume' campaign. Williams, of Shaker Heights, is not a  STARS member  but was recruited to pose for one of the compelling posters the group has developed. 


The group has mounted a campaign to remind parents, students and children that ethnic groups and historic cultures should not be caricatured by costume representations.

Ethnic and racial stereotypes become increasingly popular around Halloween, and are often expressed in costumes that carry a deeper message than may be intended by their wearers.

While the student-led campaign has inspired much admiration on campus and beyond, detractors are also making themselves heard, raising questions of free speech, political correctness, and harmless fun.

Like affirmative action, political correctness is one of those terms most people have an opinion about, but few understand, thanks in part to a culture that reduces ideas to sound bites and a corporate media and contentious blogosphere that thrive on conflict in efforts to lasso those with short attention spans and limited training in critical thought.

We commend the students of STARS and join with them in the hope that open and honest dialogue can free all of us from the stereotypes we bear.

Read more about the 'We're a culture, not a costume' campaign here. Take a look at the posters here.

(Seth Williams of Shaker Heights is pictured in the upper right poster. His  parents are Shaker city councilman Earl Williams and Viveca Williams, a teacher at Adlai Stevenson Elementary in Cleveland OH.)

Voter Education Seminar TODAY

We just received word of this event moments ago. *

The Cleveland Young Professional Senate (CYPS), the Cleveland Professional 20/30 Club, the Young Latino Network (YLN), Young Nonprofit Professionals Network (YNPN) proudly present:
Get Informed!  The 2011 YP Voter Education Seminar
What: A non-partisan ballot education program to discuss general election information such as vote by mail procedures, where to find a sample ballot, how to track your ballot and how to be a poll worker 
Representatives from the League of Women Voters will also be on hand to answer questions about issues on the ballot
Where: Cleveland State University Student Center, Multipurpose Room 313-315
When: Tuesday, October 25th, 2011
6:00 p.m. - 7:00 p.m.
All ages welcome! Hope to see you there!
This is a non-partisan event. Audience members are welcome to bring resources to place on tables outside of the event. Audience members are welcome to talk to each other after the event, but during the event, clapping, snickering, shouting or interrupting the presenters is strictly prohibited. This event is for information purposes only.
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=129271323842098

* We will be discussing Real Deal policy regarding community events on Nonprofit Thursday. If your event is coming soon, send a concise announcement to rtaATCuyahogaNews.net.

Real Deal mini-pieces: Richmond Heights, Nina Turner, Nonprofit Thursdays

   1. Today’s Plain Dealer carries a piece by editorial writer Joe Frolik [“Surviving the suburban squeeze”, page A5] in support of old-line Richmond Heights city leaders proposing a tax increase. Frolik gives not even a nod to the strong opposition of half the members of the city council’s finance and audit committees to the tax increase at this time.

We don’t intend to debate the merits of the tax increase here [Issue 91 on the ballots of Richmond Heights voters], but to call attention once again to the paper’s establishment biases. No one appears to disagree on the city’s difficult financial circumstances but the people calling for the increased revenue have not shown themselves to be good stewards of the city’s finances. 

Councilwoman-at-large Miesha Wilson Headen has raised reasoned objections to the tax increase. She points out that the city has failed to reconcile its bank accounts for almost three years, producing an audit finding of $40,395 gone missing in 2007 and 2008. 

In arguing that Issue 91 is ill conceived, hasty, and premature, Headen also cites the city’s failure to file Annual Financial Statements since 2008, in defiance of state law.

Surely these concerns are worth at least a mention in a column that hawks the views of the city’s long-established leadership.

22. Frolik is also on the bandwagon for fostering regionalism in Cuyahoga County and therefore gives an even more direct endorsement of Richmond Heights Issue 90, which would amend the city’s charter to facilitate the sharing of critical services like police and fire with neighboring communities. This is indeed sensible, so I guess that makes it o.k. to omit any reference to the way the city’s school system is about to implode, thanks to a long succession of school board members run amok with political concerns to the detriment of the children whose education should be their principal focus.

33. For those who take note of such things, the website Politic365.com is reporting that State Senator Nina Turner has filed paperwork creating an exploratory committee to run for Congress. The Real Deal has been unable to confirm this report. Federal election law generally does not require the filing of such a report prior to a candidate’s declaration of candidacy.

44.We will launch Nonprofit Thursday here this week, inspired in part by the interest generated by our posts last week on the Huntington giveaway, but also by a recent conversation with our good friend Dick Peery. So for those of you executive director and trustee types who are not yet regular visitors, make a note to stop by here Thursday morning.

Nina Turner keynotes NOAH banquet [video]

State Senator Nina Turner has had a meteoric rise to prominence as a fierce and outspoken public official. Elected to Cleveland City Council in 2005, she vaulted to the Ohio Senate less than three years later in 2008 when Democratic state senators selected her to succeed Lance Mason, who had resigned the 25^th District seat for a judicial appointment.

Fewer than seven months later, Turner was the most prominent black public official to champion Issue 6, the controversial ballot issue that led to the reform of Cuyahoga County government.  Widely attacked by the black political establishment for this alleged heresy, she is guaranteed to make the entrenched old guard apoplectic if she follows through  with her expected challenge to incumbent Congresswoman Marcia L. Fudge for the right to represent the newly configured 11^th Congressional District.

We have yet to sit down and discuss this potential race with Turner, but we did hear her deliver the keynote at the Northeast Ohio Alliance for Hope's 10th Annual Banquet last night. 

It's a fair assumption that most Real Deal readers, though surely ranking among the county's most informed residents, have not heard a Turner speech. So, as a public service, here and here is Turner's talk from last night. Each segment is  about ten minutes long.

As always, your thoughtful responses are invited.

Huntington bonanza for nonprofits • NOAH Note

Huntington National Bank’s local HQ move to the former BP Building at 200 Public Square has created a great opportunity for area nonprofits in need of office furnishings.

The Bank is preparing to give away thousands of pieces of office furnishings including desks, credenzas, chairs, tables, file cabinets, fireproof files, book cases and hundreds of other miscellaneous items.

The giveaway will be held on the first two Thursdays in November — Nov. 3 and Nov. 10 — at Commercial Works furniture showroom/warehouse located at 4901 Johnson Parkway in Garfield Heights.

This opportunity is for registered nonprofits only. Interested parties should email Diane Downing at the Bank and copy Sharon Sills. Nonprofits will need to include contact info [address, phone, email] and verification of their nonprofit status.

The Bank is giving away the goods but delivery is not included, so beneficiaries will need to plan for pick up. Help with loading will be available for those that come with transportation. Quotes for delivery service can be arranged at the site.

Questions? Tony Gugliemotto of Commercial Works is the answer man [tonygATcommercial-works.com • 614.851.4301].

Let your favorite executive director, pastor, and board members know about this opportunity. Let us know how it works out for them. And be sure to tell them where you learned about this real deal!

•  •  •

While we are on the subject of nonprofits, one of our favorites is the Northeast Ohio Alliance for Hope, and not just because they retained us to develop a community/agency newsletter for them. 

NOAH and its executive director Trevelle Harp are doing outstanding work in the city of East Cleveland and beyond. They played an instrumental role in the two best success stories East Cleveland has had this century: a negotiated agreement with the Cleveland Clinic valued at $25 million, and involving the Cuyahoga Land Bank to help address the East Cleveland's abandoned property issues. The county land bank was a linchpin to the recently announced deal to build new housing at the city's new gateway on Euclid Avenue at Lakeview Road.

NOAH's annual banquet is tomorrow at the McGregor Home, 14900 Private Dr., East Cleveland. State Senator Nina Turner is the featured speaker. The dinner is NOAH's annual fundraiser, a bargain at $35. The evening starts at 6PM. Call Deirdre at 216.834.2324 for tickets.

Candidate Forum tonight in Euclid

Tonight I will be moderating a forum for candidates for public office in Euclid, Ohio. The program begins at 7PM at Euclid Central Middle School, 20701 Euclid Avenue.

All four mayoral candidates have confirmed their attendance, along with both judicial candidates, and three of the four candidates for Euclid School Board.

The program was organized by Ward 1 Councilman David Gilliham, who told The Real Deal that he was sponsoring the forum as a way to give the residents of his ward the chance to meet the candidates and to ask them questions.

While the forum was designed to meet the needs of Ward 1 residents, Gilliham said that residents of any ward are welcome to attend.

Euclid is a working class city with a recent history of social unrest that figures to be reflected in the outcome of the mayoral contest.

We will be wearing our referee’s hat tonight.  Next week, we will put on our analyst’s visor to take a look at some of the races in Euclid and elsewhere.

Careful teaching

A friend emailed me this morning asking rhetorically,  “At what age do people start hating other people?” His query drew to mind that Rodgers and Hammerstein ditty from South Pacific:

You've got to be carefully taught

You've got to be taught
To hate and fear,
You've got to be taught
From year to year,
It's got to be drummed
In your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade,
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught before it's too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You've got to be carefully taught!

I was on the verge of my eighth birthday when I started third grade under the stern but loving tutelage of Miss Pauline Singley [later to become the well-respected Dr. Pauline Singley Davis at district HQ; assistant superintendent, I think]. That was the class that had Ray Abt, John Mishne, Belva Blankenschoen, Carol Negenborn, and assorted other classmates of East European extraction who were soon to depart the neighborhood. [Any of you guys still around? Give me a shout out!]

One September day, shortly after that first semester started, less than 90 days after moving to our new city, my parents casually inquired as to how many Caucasians were in my classroom of 25 or 30.

Now, I had been an avid reader since pre-school, back when pre-school meant you hadn’t attended any kind of school, except maybe nursery, which I had had the good fortune to avoid. So I had a pretty good working vocabulary for a seven year old. But that “Caucasian” was a new word. What the heck were they asking about? I couldn’t answer their question with an approximate number until they explained some basic phenotype stuff to me.

I had no real concept of race before that first year at Miles Standish Elementary in Cleveland's burgeoning Glenville area. Born and raised in Washington DC, I had spent nearly the first eight years of my life in and around the marvelously sophisticated campus of Howard University, just up the hill from the Hill, i.e., the nation’s capitol buildings. I knew about Africans, whose fascinating accents could be heard all around the campus. But I didn’t know about white folks.  I didn’t know that my neighborhood school in northeast Washington was legally segregated — and remained so until after the 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education.

After that storied decision my fascination with words led me to spend endless hours trying to decipher the nuances that distinguished the new words I began to hear with increasing frequency. What's the difference between de jure and de facto? Is "integration" the same as "desegregation"? 

I think the country is still trying to answer that last one!

Huntington Bank's move to benefit area nonprofits

A chance encounter today led us to the discovery that Huntington National Bank will soon be offering a bonanza to area nonprofits. HNB will soon be vacating or at least downsizing its historic headquarters at the northeast corner of Ninth Street and Euclid Avenue and is setting up a process to donate hundreds of desks, chairs and other items to local nonprofits. We are tracking down the details and will post them here! Watch this space to get on the list.

Looking Back, Going Forward

As far back as I can remember I have found myself repeatedly at points of cultural confluence. As a consequence I have been blessed with an understanding that the black community has never been monolithic, even when we were largely united around certain broad public policy goals like ending American apartheid and promoting equal opportunity. Or celebrating heroes like Joe Louis and Jackie Robinson.

Yesterday I was speaking with my youngest daughter about the radical shift that occurred in Cleveland’s Glenville area when my family relocated here from segregated Washington DC in the mid-fifties. Cleveland was still a high-energy town back then. Unbeknownst to practically all of us, the city was just past its high-water population of 914,808 and about to undergo severe constriction in size and stature.

Much of the town’s energy continued to come from its status as a haven for immigrants and refugees. The renowned Cultural Gardens were less than a block from my neighborhood elementary school and offered endless out-of-school lessons in geography and history. Many a weekend, as we rode to Saturday choir rehearsal or Sunday worship, we passed Lithuanians, Albanians, Italians, Germans, Hungarians, Poles, and others dressed in native garb celebrating or commemorating Louis Kossuth or some other hero.

These experiences helped me to understand that the white community wasn’t monolithic either. I never thought all white folk were alike. I learned that Dutch didn’t care much for Germans; that many western Europeans looked at their East European brethren with disdain; that Turks and Armenians were a combustible combination; that there was historical enmity between Chinese and Japanese. Eventually I came to appreciate that Caucasians [and some Latinos!] didn’t even become white until they emigrated to the United States.

Close to home, as black people were migrating to Cleveland from the hostile regimes of Alabama and Georgia to presumed meccas like Hough and Central and Kinsman, the white folks — with names like Abt, Mishny, Negenborn, Blankenship — were fleeing to Euclid, South Euclid, and Mayfield Heights.

Of course, I didn’t understand any of the social forces at the time, even as I strove to comprehend the lynching of Emmett Till in mysterious Mississippi. What I came to appreciate later was that there was an establishment in this town that sought to constrain the movement of black people and to profit from that constraint. The strategic arenas were political, economic and social. The battlefields were schools, workplaces, and neighborhoods.

In little more than a decade, Cleveland would become the first major city in America to elect a black mayor. This fact for a time seemed to cement the city’s national reputation as progressive, consistent with the civic slogan “best location in the nation.”

But Carl Stokes’ 1967 electoral victory — historic and transformative as it was — actually masked the deep conservatism of both Cleveland’s white and black leadership. Cleveland’s Republicans, for example, were among Barry Goldwater’s staunchest supporters in 1964. And the evidence seems clear, despite the puppet political theater of the 1980s and 1990s, that ethnic-based leaders shook hands around political arrangements that protected interest groups at devastating cost to civic spirit and growth.

For reasons that are primarily historic and systemic, many of this area’s challenges — in housing, education, health, public welfare, criminal justice — have their greatest and deepest manifestations in the county’s blackest areas. Our communal failure to address our divisions honestly is a major factor in our ongoing urban crisis.

The good news is that as the remnants of old-style local leaders — Dimora, Hagan, Forbes, Pinkney, Voinovich — fade from prominence, Greater Cleveland at last has a chance to redefine itself in the public arena. Some of the new leaders are on suburban ballots this year, while others are likely to appear before the decade is out. We will be looking at a few of these bright lights in the next couple of weeks.

• • •

At the end of yesterday’s post I mentioned that I would be on Civic Commons radio today talking about the mischief politicians sometimes seek to create with confusing ballot language. If you missed my dulcet dynamite you can hear the podcast here.

The core of the program is a discussion about ballot initiatives—their language, intent and affect on political behavior — hosted by Dan Moulthrop and Noelle Celeste. Featured guests include Jeff Rusnak, a well-respected local political strategist, and Daniel Coffey, political scientist and a Research Fellow at the University of Akron’s Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics.

The Civic Commons was created last year with a $3 million Knight Foundation grant. Its mission is to educate, engage and empower citizens to be involved and active in strengthening the community using civic journalism, public engagement and social media. Moulthrop is curator of the conversation for the Commons, which describes itself as social media for stuff that matters.

One of CC’s most important issues is to increase northeast Ohio’s collective understanding of our global society. A key initiative in that regard focuses on the Middle East, which is more than a notion for any of us to understand. If your interests, like mine, skew to that sort of thing, check out this podcast, where Neda Zawarhi of Cleveland State University and Pete Moore of Case Western University, both members of the Northeast Ohio Consortium for Middle East Studies, discuss events in the Middle East. You can also hear Case Western Professor Dr. Ramez Islambouli talk about how his students perceive the Islamic world.

The Civic Commons podcast is a regional effort over the sixteen county Northeast Ohio region.  Its podcast is a dynamic half-hour public affairs program that features more citizen voices and  fewer talking heads. It airs Tuesday afternoons at 12:30 on 88.7 FM/WJCU, University Heights and Tuesday evenings at 7:30 on 88.5/WYSU, Youngstown. You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or listen to it on Stitcher Smart Radio. (Download iTunes or Stitcher)

• • •

Uncharted Waters ahead in the 11th Congressional District

The worst kept political secret in town is state senator Nina Turner’s intent to challenge Congresswoman Marcia L. Fudge in next year’s Democratic Party primary.

If the contest happens — and, while likely, it is by no means a done deal — the battle between two of the community’s best-known politicians could be epic.

A Fudge-Turner contest would have an immense impact on black community political life, no matter the victor.

Many of Cleveland’s black politicians are of the timid variety. They dodge and duck having to endorse a candidate if the outcome is not clear. But a Fudge-Turner faceoff, which could even attract other strong candidates looking to sneak to victory, would permit no bystanders.

The congressional district Fudge now represents was first drawn in 1968 in the wake of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.  The plum — the assurance of becoming Ohio’s first black Congressman — produced a mad rush of candidates, including legendary Cleveland City Council majority leader Charles V. Carr, and the ambitious eastside Cleveland councilman, George L. Forbes.

Louis Stokes, fresh off a huge legal victory before the U.S. Supreme Court [Terry v. Ohio, the seminal stop-and-frisk case], and hugely aided, of course, was the eventual winner, aided by his brother the mayor’s political machine.

Upon Lou Stokes’ retirement thirty years later in 1998, the late Stephanie Tubbs Jones resigned as county prosecutor and seized the seat with a resounding primary victory over the Rev. Marvin McMickle and then-state representative Jeff Johnson. She seemed poised to challenge Stokes’ longevity record until her sudden death in August 2008.

Lou Stokes stepped into the void after Jones’s death to manage an orderly though not uncontroversial transition of the congressional ring to Fudge, a Stephanie confidant and then-mayor of Warrensville Heights.

Fudge declared last Saturday in Richmond Heights that she would be running wherever the district lines wound up being drawn. Her announcement came at an 11^th District Caucus town hall meeting, the day after the Ohio Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the handiwork of the Ohio Apportionment Board in securing a 75% favorable GOP-district set up could be challenged by voters in a November 2012 referendum.

That decision becomes relevant only if and when the Democrats can secure 231,000 valid signatures to force a statewide vote.  At the moment, the decision creates uncertainty as to the primary date, the district’s outline, and the filing date for primary candidates.

Amidst all the uncertainty, Turner must decide soon whether she can raise enough money and secure enough endorsements to make at least a credible challenge to Fudge.

It is both ironic and sobering to realize that less than four years ago, neither Fudge nor Turner had a political profile that was discernible more than a few blocks from their respective residences.

• • •

Your humble correspondent can be heard on the airwaves tomorrow over at the Civic Commons, where I will be delivering a three-minute commentary on the maddening obfuscations that assail even educated voters trying to decide how to vote on an issue where they have made up their minds but the ballot language leaves them scratching their heads.

The show starts at 12:30pm. Catch it on WJCU/88.7 FM.

Been wondering about Herman Cain?

Some days you can't do better than cite a Pulitzer Prize-winner. Here is Leonard Pitts:

Explaining Herman Cain

By Leonard Pitts Jr. The Miami Herald

…Modern social conservatives, in my experience, do not hate black people en masse. To the contrary, there are two kinds of blacks they love. The first is those, like [Condoleezza] Rice, who are mainly mute on the subject of race, seldom so impolite as to say or do anything that might remind people they are black. The second is those who will engage on race, but only to lecture other blacks for their failures as conservatives conceive them. And that, friends and neighbors, is Herman Cain all over.

“I don’t believe racism in this country today holds anybody back in a big way,” he told CNN recently. Had he contended too many African Americans use racism as an excuse for failure to succeed and even failure to try, Cain would have gotten no grief from me; I’ve made that argument often.
But what he said was that racism is no longer a factor. He surely warmed the hearts of his conservative fellow travelers who swear blacks have the same opportunity to succeed as whites if they’d only get off their lazy so-and-sos and do it.

It is a claim spectacularly at odds with reality, given that African-American unemployment runs twice that of whites, given that the Agriculture Department admits to systematically discriminating against black farmers, given documentation of a “justice” system engaged in the mass incarceration of young black men.
But what made the claim truly bizarre is that two days later, Cain branded himself a victim of racism. Specifically, he said some black people are “racist” because they disagree with his politics. So blacks aren’t held back by racism, but Cain is?
…
One of the least-discussed impacts of the black experience in America is its emotional toll. African Americans were psychologically maimed by this country, the expression of which can still be seen in the visceral self-loathing that afflicts too many.

Meaning the black child who equates doing well in school with “acting white.” Meaning the famous black man who bleaches his skin. Meaning the famous black woman who rationalizes her use of a certain soul-killing racial epithet. Meaning Herman Cain.

In his diminution of African-American struggle, he comes across as a man profoundly at odds with the skin he’s in. He seems embarrassed he’s black.

For what it’s worth, I suspect black folks aren’t real happy about it, either.