Richmond Heights mayor's race shows candidates in stark relief

By their words and deeds ye shall know them

The four mayoral candidates at the LWV forum in Richmond Heights last week offered voters three starkly different visions of the city's condition and future.

One candidate seemed to think everything was hunky dory, the future was bright, the citizenry was content and might even wish to consider erecting a new municipal building on public land across from City Hall. He said repeatedly the city was solvent, “not broke”.

That candidate was Dan Ursu, the city's six-term incumbent who seems blissfully unaware of the economic and demographic challenges his city has encountered since he became mayor in 1989. He cited his biggest accomplishment as leading the successful fight to keep the city’s hospital open when the Cleveland Clinic acquired it several years ago and planned to close it. His plans for the city’s future include encouraging development along Curtiss Wright Blvd. Understandably, he was the only candidate who said he was opposed to term limits.

A second vision, that the city is heading straight to hell in a hand basket, was energetically trumpeted by longtime resident Dave Ali, who is in his first try for public office.  The former owner of several businesses in Cleveland's Glenville neighborhood, Ali sounded like an apprentice carpenter with one tool. He argued that the answer to every problem the city had was financial and could be solved only by was a full-time mayor with a forthright business approach. On several occasions, he added, “If it don’t make dollars it don’t make sense.”

Among these problems, according to Ali, are high property taxes, municipal insolvency, inadequate police protection, poor snow removal, an alienated citizenry and a declining school system. He cited his rebuilding of an entire block on St. Clair Avenue in Glenville and said he wanted to do the same for Richmond Heights.

A third approach was presented by first-term councilperson at large Miesha Headen. She was in general agreement with Ali on many of the city’s problems, especially relating to the city’s fiscal condition and lack of city services, but she also identified municipal assets on which to build. She touted the city’s fire department as one of the county’s finest, saying that all of its employees were trained paramedics and that the chief was expert. She suggested that Richmond Heights could take the lead in joint efforts with other cities in collaborating around this asset.

Headen, an accountant by training, was elected in 2009 on a platform of accountability, efficiency, and transparency in government services, attracting more commercial business and revenue to the city, environmental stewardship and investing in the municipal services needed to retain families. She said that she had uncovered the city’s clandestine purchase of 39 properties and forced the Ursu administration to publicize these properties on the city website.

The fourth candidate turned in an odd performance. Eloise Henry is an intelligent and capable councilwoman who can be insightful in discussing her city. She was the first to declare in this year’s mayoral campaign but the last to file, submitting her petitions at deadline. But on this night she appeared disinterested, unprepared, and more than once lost her train of thought when answering a question. She said her biggest accomplishment in public life was securing the county assistance in eliminating the flooding of residents’ homes.

NOTE: The Real Deal has extended an offer to candidates to share their vision for Richmond Heights directly to the voters via a short unedited video. Two candidates have agreed to participate so far.

Nonprofit Thursdays: Mental Health & Violence, The Presidents Council Foundation, PolicyBridge, The Gathering Place

TOWN HALL MEETING on Substance Abuse, Mental Health & Violence

We just learned of a Town Hall meeting today on the interrelationship between substance abuse, mental health, and violence.

The meeting is today at the New Life Cathedral, 16200 Euclid Avenue in East Cleveland.

Panelists include William M. Denihan, CEO of the county ADAMHS board [Alcohol, Drug Addition, Mental Health Services]; Helen Hernandez, administrator of Office of National Drug Control Policy; Gary Norton, mayor of East Cleveland; Judge William Dawson, East Cleveland Municipal Court; and a representative of the Domestic Violence and Child Advocacy Group.

Fox 8 News anchor Wayne Dawson is the moderator.

The meeting sponsor is the Northern Ohio Recovery Association. Call 216.541.6672 for more information.

Two area nonprofits collaborate to study key issues for local African Americans

The Presidents Council Foundation has joined with PolicyBridge, Cleveland’s think tank for Northeast Ohio public policy issues of particular interest to African Americans, to develop research over the next several years relating to urban education, entrepreneurship and economic development.

A joint committee comprised of board members from both organizations is working on a road map to chart the specifics of this work. We will have more to report on this initiative soon.

Find great buys and support The Gathering Place

The Gathering Place  [see here and here] is having a sale this weekend of furniture, holiday decorations, collectibles, and lots of china and glassware.

The sale is this Saturday, October 26 from 9am to 2pm and Sunday, October 27 from 10am to 1pm.

See photos here. Call 216.595.9546 for more information.

Claiming Culture, Telling Your Story, Nigerians in Northeast Ohio

Political Correctness didn’t start in the 1960s

A close friend of mine surprised herself recently when she pulled off a feat at work on deadline with great aplomb.

I wasn’t surprised. Not only did I know she is incredibly talented; her situation evoked the maxim that “necessity is the mother of invention”.

I see evidence of this truism all around, and increasingly so when it comes to African Americans and the economy. Black people have always had to be resourceful and inventive in order to survive and prosper in a land that was both contemptuous and confiscatory of their labor and yet hostile towards efforts at self-sufficiency.

Back when America still found public education a useful means of instilling common core values in youthful minds, public school curricula were structured to encourage foundational faith in patriotism, Manifest Destiny, and American exceptionalism. Some stories, especially of the American Revolution, were told so often that the mere mention of certain terms or places — King George, Bunker Hill, the Midnight Ride — evokes a common narrative. For example, just writing these words calls to mind Johnny Tremain, a novel I read in elementary school. Was it taught as history or as literature? Either way the effect was the same.

Much of this cultural indoctrination was reinforced by shared religious experience and imagery. I don’t remember whether I learned the Battle Hymn of the Republic in church or in school. In some ways there was little difference between the two. Through the magic of Hollywood, the accepted narrative has been reinforced with incredible special effects, in such films as Birth of a Nation, Gone With the Wind, Johnny Tremain [Walt Disney, of course], and virtually every Western up through mid-20^th century.

While this indoctrination continues today at many mega churches, which in some instances seem indistinguishable from Broadway, popular culture is no longer so unilateral in its messaging. Creative artists — musicians, writers, poets, painters et al., — have always found ways to express counter cultural views. Today, abetted and accelerated by the proliferation of technology — iPods, smartphones, iPads, Xboxes, digital readers, hundreds of television channels, a world wide web that facilitates all sorts of individuated information streams — we are each our own disc jockeys, movie distributors, television networks and schedulers, and gamers.

All this is happening as Americans go to church less often, read or watch the same news sources less, and are increasingly victims of or escapees from an increasingly fragmented, pulverized, discredited and disintegrating public school system.

So if we didn’t know about Black Wall Street [see here and here] or Greenwood or Mound Bayou, Mississippi, before, the chances that we can the lessons therefrom are reduced to near nil.

 All of this came to mind when a friend told me earlier this week that Nigeria is the world’s third largest producer of feature films. That probably comes as a surprise to most Real Deal readers, sophisticated though ye be. I mean, tell the truth, in free word association, “Nigeria” is more apt to evoke fraudulent email schemes, rampant bribery, and military government than most anything positive. 

Why doesn’t that free word association evoke “one of the world’s largest populations” and “one of the world’s largest oil producers”, Nollywood, and home to some of the world’s brightest and most energetic minds

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

. [Americanah, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, is the best novel I’ve read in a very long time.]

Short answer to the previous question: the history of the Wild West will be different when Native Americans tell it instead of the cowboys.

The curious can get a taste of the vibrant cultural mix that is Nigeria with a visit to Akron tomorrow, Saturday, October 19, where NIMAS [Nigerians in Metropolitan Akron and Surroundings] has organized a Nigerian Independence Day celebration. The former British colony achieved independence October 1, 1960.

The featured guest will be Kene Mkparu, founder and CEO of The Filmhouse.

Kene Mkparu

Pre-event activity will kick off at 4:30 PM with a free screening of one of his films.

The main event kicks off at 5:30PM and will run to near midnight. Music, dancing and Nigerian cuisine will be featured as part of the evening’s “cultural bonanza”, according to NIMAS president Gertrude Mkparu [no relation to Kene Mkparu].

The celebration venue is Tadmor Temple, 3000 Krebs Drive, Akron.  For more information: 330.265.5712 or 440.263.5584.

You can sample a recent Nollywood movie here. You can sample a Nigerian dance here.

NEWS BULLETIN: Ohio Supreme Court's Disciplinary Counsel comes down hard on Cleveland Municipal Judge Angela Stokes

Discipline, psychiatric exam recommended by Supreme Court counsel

Cleveland television station WOIO is reporting “the Disciplinary Counsel of the Ohio Supreme Court has recommended that Cleveland Municipal Court Judge Angela Stokes be disciplined for what it calls abusive treatment of nearly everyone that comes into her courtroom. “

Judge Angela Stokes

A report from the Office of Disciplinary Counsel obtained by the station claims that Stokes continues cases 300% more often than any other judge, that she has had 21 bailiffs since 1995, and that court personnel rotate through her courtroom more often than others because of "burnout" and the abusive treatment they receive. 

The ODC report, finding that she "may be suffering from a mental illness that substantially impairs her ability to perform her duties as a judicial officer," recommends that Judge Stokes be given a psychiatric examination.

Click here to read the report.