Christmas came early for the three dozen or so aspiring young political activists who responded to the NAACP flier inviting them to a primer on building a framework for leadership in the new political landscape ushered in on election day last month, even if the lessons didn’t go exactly as planned.
More than 250 people filled the atrium at Cleveland State’s Levin College of Urban Affairs last night in a pulsing, buzzing swarm that in some ways resembled a political convention. There was an intriguing mix of officials serving as faculty, but the audience included a rich array of political activists whose roots go back to the black community’s heady successes of the late 1960s and early ‘70s, and a surprising number of current elected officials whose presence [in a delightful departure from normal protocol, was not officially recognized]. There was also a healthy dose of the hoi polloi, whose dismay at the perceived loss of black political power in the wake of the county’s new charter provided hot sauce for the evening’s brew.
An enterprising political aspirant could reflect on the mixed bag of wisdom that came from the invited panelists [State Rep. Robin Belcher, Lakewood mayor Ed Fitzgerald, Cleveland council members Mamie Mitchell and Zach Reed, Young Democrats president Curtis Thompson II, Jose Feliciano Jr. of the Hispanic Roundtable, and for good measure, community activist Eric Johnson and Chris Ronayne, president of University Circle Inc. [State Senator Nina Turner was an invited panelist but chose not to participate.]
Perhaps the most important lesson a novice politico could have learned was the need for patience and composure in the face of the untidy part of public life: when citizens, feeling disempowered and deeply upset with the state of public affairs, take the microphone and say so in all kinds of ways.
Charged with keeping the proceedings under control were recent law school graduate NeKima Hill of the NAACP Youth Council and radio talk show host Basheer Jones. Hill focused on keeping both panelists and audience on point, though her predetermined questions left panelists groping to respond at times. Jones showed promise as a moderator, and earned audience gratitude when he gracefully but firmly forced ever-garrulous Gerald Henley to give up the microphone after an overlong declaration of his intent to run for a seat on the new county council.
Panelists expressed a range of views when asked why Issue 6 had passed. Lakewood mayor Fitzgerald observed succinctly that people had lost faith in the existing system, and expressed it by overturning the existing order. He said, “Sometimes elections are about an idea, and not about the specifics.”
Eric Johnson argued that Issue 6’s mandate was weak because of poor turnout. Councilwoman Mamie Mitchell pointed out that very few of the politicians who stated opposition to the new charter actually campaigned against it.
For Curt Thompson II, three factors contributed to the result: the overwhelming amount by which Issue 6 proponents outspent the opposition, the ongoing corruption revelations and allegations, and a lack of engagement by Issue 6 foes. Speaking to The Real Deal in a post-forum analysis, he said matter-of-factly, “there is no more Issue 5 or Issue 6. Issue 5 is dead and Issue 6 is a law. We must concentrate now on putting people into office who will concentrate on progress and growth.”
Councilman Zach Reed was blunt in his analysis. “Issue 6 passed”, he said, “because the Plain Dealer wanted it to pass, and they took advantage of the corruption issue.” He said several times, in apparent reference to Republicans and their allies, “the people who couldn’t get in the front door came around the back door.”
Reed did have some cogent advice for those young people who want a place set for them at the table. It’s about power, he told them, and it’s not in the nature of power to yield except in the face of a greater power.
Among those on hand, possibly to recruit new blood or take the measure of potential rivals, were Cleveland council members Mike Polensek, Eugene Miller, and councilman-elect Jeff Johnson; mayor-elect Gary Norton of East Cleveland, and Highland Hills councilman Kenneth Roberts. Also in attendance was former county commissioner Tim McCormack, giving fuel to talk he may be considering a run for county executive.
Other public officials observed at the forum were former election board chief Jane B. Sheats, former Cleveland safety director James Barrett, chief Cleveland Municipal Court referee Greg Clifford, former Central State University board chair Betty Pinkney, and deputy county administrator Lee Trotter.
• • •
The Plain Dealer account of this event reported attendance as “more than 100” and seemed to suggest that the event was a downer because many older citizens lamented the passing of the old order.
In fact, more than 125 attendees signed in according to the organizers, and at least an equal number did not.
Whether or not a sizable number of young people attended depends in part not only one’s ability to guess ages, but also how old you can be and still qualify as young. I saw a vibrant mix of young and old, tried and true, straight and crooked. There was pessimism yes. There was despair, yes. But when I left after 90 minutes, finally tearing myself away from a fascinating evening to keep a commitment a few blocks away, I left feeling that I might be witnessing multiple manifestations of the law of unintended consequences. First, that a ballot initiative developed with the intent by at least some of its partisans to diminish some segment of the electorate, might prove a galvanizing force to greater involvement by that very segment. Second, that the evening’s takeaway for a young leader could plausibly include receiving not only a realistic dose of what his or her constituents likely feel, but a commitment to work to channel the intensity and depth of those feelings in positive ways, and to feel supported in that quest by the veteran troops who came out to be a part of a night for the new and the young.
Kudos to the NAACP, its Youth Council, and its executive director, Stanley Miller. Here’s hoping they do it again, east side, west side, all around the town.
Friday, December 04, 2009
Wednesday, December 02, 2009
Déja` Vu Act Ignites Vision of Era’s End
There is no surprise in the despicable attack by George Forbes upon state senator Nina Turner in the pages of the Call & Post. Forbes has a long and practiced history of vulgarity. His attack upon Turner’s intelligence and character is no different than his calling [then councilman] Jeff Johnson a “mulatto punk” a political lifetime ago. It parallels his routine denigration of the entire community back in the days when he performed as a shock talk jock on radio while running Cleveland City Council. Déja` vu.
We’ve seen this act countless times, sometimes disguised, often not. Sometimes toned down, sometimes not. Forbes is an equal opportunity offender. He has cursed white folks for whiteness and black folks for blackness.
The man long ago showed he had no shame in his game. And this community has repeatedly shown him he didn’t need to be ashamed for his behavior, even though his contempt for the community he has purported to serve has never been hidden.
The true shame in this stale scenario belongs to the community that has tolerated it for so long. And nobody is innocent. Why does a community with upwards of a thousand active local graduates of a program called Leadership Cleveland repeatedly turn to the same negative sources for positive solutions? Can we possibly expect different results?
It cannot be a failure to understand. Forbes’ public tactical practiced and public use of anger, ridicule, and scorn has always and only been directed at carefully selected targets for well-defined strategic goals. Those goals have always been related first and foremost to the accrual and preservation of Forbes’ personal political power.
Forbes is a past master at invoking the downtrodden and abandoned as props to show that leadership in the black community must continue to be trusted only to him. “Fifty thousand black schoolchildren are suffering.” “The police want 9mm ammunition to gun down black people.” “White folks won’t treat black people fairly.” “Black businesses can’t catch a break.” Forbes is always willing to step up and negotiate with wealth and power behind closed doors in the name of the community to protect the community.
The chief benefactor in these situations has always been George Forbes. He entered into personal business transactions with Jim Stanton, denounced as arch-nemesis to the black community in the 1960s and 70s. Forbes did legal work for multi-millionaire developer Dick Jacobs. He was confidant and mentor to former Cleveland mayor, Ohio governor, and current lame-duck US Senator George Voinovich. Despite the careful public posturing, Voinovich — who may be on his way back to town to run for county executive — has never been a friend to the black community. But he is a friend to George Forbes.
The pattern of personal gain as public denouncer and private negotiator has continued apace since Forbes became local NAACP president. He was legal counsel to Shell Oil when that company was gouging the community he claimed to represent. This summer he served as personal escort to Dan Gilbert’s triumphal march through portions of the black community, dispensing confections and reassuring words about future African American involvement in his casino business. But Gilbert uttered not one firm, enforceable commitment.
[A new form of gaming has already come to the black political community, as wags place wagers on where, how, and when Forbes’ law firm will appear as counsel to which company tied to Gilbert’s burgeoning empire, now enshrined for life into the Ohio Constitution.]
This structural pattern of designated spokesmen negotiating in private as nominal representatives for a vast and diverse segment of the community can only exist when the community stays in shadow. If any potential dissent emerges, its champion must be isolated, ridiculed, and rubbed out by any means necessary, including page one cartoons and editorials.
Nina Turner’s public defection from plantation politics represents a core threat to Forbes’ status as black political broker and overseer. He knows better than anyone that suburban mayors, business leaders, the regional GOP and statewide politicos will no longer employ him as a toll booth if alternate routes — more modern, straighter, less treacherous — are readily available.
A Better Future
One consequence of county charter reform, possibly unintended is the probable emergence of black political leaders who are not beholden to plantation politics. For example, serious citizen thinkers and activists like former Cleveland municipal judge Ellen Connally and Shaker Heights councilman Earl Williams are considering running for the new county council from the new county District 9. These potential candidates, like Turner, inner ring suburban activist Julian Rogers, and rising Collinwood resident Curtis Thompson II, are building coalitions and political paths independent of the black old guard.
Of equal consequence, other voices are bubbling to the surface. Brian Hall, a voice of quiet authority in Cleveland’s tiny black business community for decades, and a leader by example, took the unprecedented step of circulating a community letter denouncing the work of the Call & Post and calling upon Forbes to resign as NAACP head. As a result, 500 people who have joined the Facebook page “ We demand an apology”. Boyd’s Funeral Home has pulled its advertising. Local corporations and businesses are being asked to declare there will be no support for the NAACP’s 2010 Freedom Fund dinner if it does not stand up and denounce the Call & Post for its use of the Aunt Jemima image.
Forbes will no doubt display a steely resolve and attempt to turn aside the disgust he has generated in the black community by his disrespect of Turner and the symbolic use of its ugly racial imagery. He will bring out the hostages — Cleveland’s schoolchildren — and say this is what we should focus on.
Those schoolchildren are involuntary testimony to the power relationships that exist in our community: within the black community, between the City of Cleveland and its more affluent neighbors, and between private self-interest and public duty. The opportunity is at hand to re-structure some of those relationships, to set a broader table for public discourse, and to call an end to the era of I-win-you-lose political relationships.
We’ve seen this act countless times, sometimes disguised, often not. Sometimes toned down, sometimes not. Forbes is an equal opportunity offender. He has cursed white folks for whiteness and black folks for blackness.
The man long ago showed he had no shame in his game. And this community has repeatedly shown him he didn’t need to be ashamed for his behavior, even though his contempt for the community he has purported to serve has never been hidden.
The true shame in this stale scenario belongs to the community that has tolerated it for so long. And nobody is innocent. Why does a community with upwards of a thousand active local graduates of a program called Leadership Cleveland repeatedly turn to the same negative sources for positive solutions? Can we possibly expect different results?
It cannot be a failure to understand. Forbes’ public tactical practiced and public use of anger, ridicule, and scorn has always and only been directed at carefully selected targets for well-defined strategic goals. Those goals have always been related first and foremost to the accrual and preservation of Forbes’ personal political power.
Forbes is a past master at invoking the downtrodden and abandoned as props to show that leadership in the black community must continue to be trusted only to him. “Fifty thousand black schoolchildren are suffering.” “The police want 9mm ammunition to gun down black people.” “White folks won’t treat black people fairly.” “Black businesses can’t catch a break.” Forbes is always willing to step up and negotiate with wealth and power behind closed doors in the name of the community to protect the community.
The chief benefactor in these situations has always been George Forbes. He entered into personal business transactions with Jim Stanton, denounced as arch-nemesis to the black community in the 1960s and 70s. Forbes did legal work for multi-millionaire developer Dick Jacobs. He was confidant and mentor to former Cleveland mayor, Ohio governor, and current lame-duck US Senator George Voinovich. Despite the careful public posturing, Voinovich — who may be on his way back to town to run for county executive — has never been a friend to the black community. But he is a friend to George Forbes.
The pattern of personal gain as public denouncer and private negotiator has continued apace since Forbes became local NAACP president. He was legal counsel to Shell Oil when that company was gouging the community he claimed to represent. This summer he served as personal escort to Dan Gilbert’s triumphal march through portions of the black community, dispensing confections and reassuring words about future African American involvement in his casino business. But Gilbert uttered not one firm, enforceable commitment.
[A new form of gaming has already come to the black political community, as wags place wagers on where, how, and when Forbes’ law firm will appear as counsel to which company tied to Gilbert’s burgeoning empire, now enshrined for life into the Ohio Constitution.]
This structural pattern of designated spokesmen negotiating in private as nominal representatives for a vast and diverse segment of the community can only exist when the community stays in shadow. If any potential dissent emerges, its champion must be isolated, ridiculed, and rubbed out by any means necessary, including page one cartoons and editorials.
Nina Turner’s public defection from plantation politics represents a core threat to Forbes’ status as black political broker and overseer. He knows better than anyone that suburban mayors, business leaders, the regional GOP and statewide politicos will no longer employ him as a toll booth if alternate routes — more modern, straighter, less treacherous — are readily available.
A Better Future
One consequence of county charter reform, possibly unintended is the probable emergence of black political leaders who are not beholden to plantation politics. For example, serious citizen thinkers and activists like former Cleveland municipal judge Ellen Connally and Shaker Heights councilman Earl Williams are considering running for the new county council from the new county District 9. These potential candidates, like Turner, inner ring suburban activist Julian Rogers, and rising Collinwood resident Curtis Thompson II, are building coalitions and political paths independent of the black old guard.
Of equal consequence, other voices are bubbling to the surface. Brian Hall, a voice of quiet authority in Cleveland’s tiny black business community for decades, and a leader by example, took the unprecedented step of circulating a community letter denouncing the work of the Call & Post and calling upon Forbes to resign as NAACP head. As a result, 500 people who have joined the Facebook page “ We demand an apology”. Boyd’s Funeral Home has pulled its advertising. Local corporations and businesses are being asked to declare there will be no support for the NAACP’s 2010 Freedom Fund dinner if it does not stand up and denounce the Call & Post for its use of the Aunt Jemima image.
Forbes will no doubt display a steely resolve and attempt to turn aside the disgust he has generated in the black community by his disrespect of Turner and the symbolic use of its ugly racial imagery. He will bring out the hostages — Cleveland’s schoolchildren — and say this is what we should focus on.
Those schoolchildren are involuntary testimony to the power relationships that exist in our community: within the black community, between the City of Cleveland and its more affluent neighbors, and between private self-interest and public duty. The opportunity is at hand to re-structure some of those relationships, to set a broader table for public discourse, and to call an end to the era of I-win-you-lose political relationships.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
County Charter, Dimora Departure, offer Opportunity for Cuyahoga Democrats to Restructure, Rejuvenate their Party
Jimmy Dimora has literally and figuratively cast a huge and depressing shadow over the county Democratic Party for more than a decade. As the ongoing federal investigation has forced him to step away from his central command post as party chair, small rays of light have begun to expose long-suppressed sores and scabs in the folds of the party’s huge, stagnant and shaken body.
The dominance of the party in sweeping all non-judicial county races since 1992 has been less attributable to Dimora’s political acumen than to simple demographics. Republicans have either fled Cuyahoga for the fresh air of Lake, Summit, Medina or Lorain counties, or have retreated into privileged enclaves along the outskirts.
Dimora can be credited, in a quasi-positive way, for navigating the community’s long unresolved ethnic and class fault lines — lines faithfully recapitulated within the Party — with sufficient fairness and skill to keep the party’s core constituencies from imploding into unmanageable intraparty strife. He did this not with an iron fist but by using a carefully honed affability to disguise constant use of a mental abacus to calculate his political advantage.
Unfortunately for northeast Ohio, Dimora’s lame and dishonest stewardship as county commissioner has been a key element — though by no means the only or even the most important one — in retarding regional adjustment to 21st century realities.
Dimora’s greatest gift to his community, to paraphrase some wag, may be found in the appropriately large wake of his effective departure from his twin posts as government official and party boss. While he still has the titles, his power and influence have been eviscerated as a result of his total loss of public face. While the legal end to the federal investigation is not in sight, nor its outcome guaranteed, county voters overwhelmingly slammed the door on the particular form of government that facilitated his malfeasance.
• • •
Notwithstanding the abrupt and dramatic shift to a new form of county government that will soon be underway, it is the new contours of the local Democratic Party that may have greater impact upon the community’s public life. This is presently uncharted territory.
Will there simply be a repeat of the top-down structure with a new head? That is the dominant model across too many domains in this region. If that model prevails within the Party, there will likely be further erosion of party strength, with especially negative consequences to the state Democratic ticket next year.
Will old-style jockeying to protect county jobs and long-established fiefdoms derail a healthy and open process? Not if a new group calling itself Cuyahoga Democrats for Principled Leadership has anything to do with it.
Yesterday, shortly after sunrise, there appeared signs in Midtown Cleveland of a new coalition of activist Democrats. There were about 40 in attendance. Prominent public officials, even those who likely would support efforts to transform the party into a more open, transparent, democratic organization, were intentionally left off the list of invitees. A few suburban council people, including Lakewood’s Tom Bullock [one of the conveners], Pepper Pike’s Rick Taft and Rob Zimmerman of Shaker Heights did overcome the disability of office-holding. The diverse assembly included a smattering of precinct committee members, some old war-horses, some presumptive office-seekers, and a healthy contingent of new blood.
This latter group included several young people who have come to northeast Ohio from outside the state in recent years for reasons of job, family, or in several cases, to work on national campaigns. This segment seemed particularly appalled at the condition of local party affairs.
The tone of the meeting was crisp, open, organized, realistic, agentic, and hopeful. The focus was on values and practices, not personalities. Consensus was reached early in the ninety-minute meeting that the group would commit to openness, transparency, and inclusiveness.
The group has adopted no formal position statement, has no officers, no membership requirements. As a measure of its openness, the blogger/journalists in attendance [I counted two] were not asked to treat the meeting as confidential.
After the meeting, Tom Bullock, emailed The Real Deal to say the meeting "was the first of what we hope will be a series of meetings that will include a growing circle of participants. The invitation list for this first session did not include major elected officials but rather emphasized rank-and-file Party members, activists, and campaign volunteers to allow for a grassroots discussion. Some attendees hold formal Party positions; many do not. All agreed that future meetings should reach out to an ever-broader circle of Cuyahoga Democrats, including elected officials."
Stay tuned!
The dominance of the party in sweeping all non-judicial county races since 1992 has been less attributable to Dimora’s political acumen than to simple demographics. Republicans have either fled Cuyahoga for the fresh air of Lake, Summit, Medina or Lorain counties, or have retreated into privileged enclaves along the outskirts.
Dimora can be credited, in a quasi-positive way, for navigating the community’s long unresolved ethnic and class fault lines — lines faithfully recapitulated within the Party — with sufficient fairness and skill to keep the party’s core constituencies from imploding into unmanageable intraparty strife. He did this not with an iron fist but by using a carefully honed affability to disguise constant use of a mental abacus to calculate his political advantage.
Unfortunately for northeast Ohio, Dimora’s lame and dishonest stewardship as county commissioner has been a key element — though by no means the only or even the most important one — in retarding regional adjustment to 21st century realities.
Dimora’s greatest gift to his community, to paraphrase some wag, may be found in the appropriately large wake of his effective departure from his twin posts as government official and party boss. While he still has the titles, his power and influence have been eviscerated as a result of his total loss of public face. While the legal end to the federal investigation is not in sight, nor its outcome guaranteed, county voters overwhelmingly slammed the door on the particular form of government that facilitated his malfeasance.
• • •
Notwithstanding the abrupt and dramatic shift to a new form of county government that will soon be underway, it is the new contours of the local Democratic Party that may have greater impact upon the community’s public life. This is presently uncharted territory.
Will there simply be a repeat of the top-down structure with a new head? That is the dominant model across too many domains in this region. If that model prevails within the Party, there will likely be further erosion of party strength, with especially negative consequences to the state Democratic ticket next year.
Will old-style jockeying to protect county jobs and long-established fiefdoms derail a healthy and open process? Not if a new group calling itself Cuyahoga Democrats for Principled Leadership has anything to do with it.
Yesterday, shortly after sunrise, there appeared signs in Midtown Cleveland of a new coalition of activist Democrats. There were about 40 in attendance. Prominent public officials, even those who likely would support efforts to transform the party into a more open, transparent, democratic organization, were intentionally left off the list of invitees. A few suburban council people, including Lakewood’s Tom Bullock [one of the conveners], Pepper Pike’s Rick Taft and Rob Zimmerman of Shaker Heights did overcome the disability of office-holding. The diverse assembly included a smattering of precinct committee members, some old war-horses, some presumptive office-seekers, and a healthy contingent of new blood.
This latter group included several young people who have come to northeast Ohio from outside the state in recent years for reasons of job, family, or in several cases, to work on national campaigns. This segment seemed particularly appalled at the condition of local party affairs.
The tone of the meeting was crisp, open, organized, realistic, agentic, and hopeful. The focus was on values and practices, not personalities. Consensus was reached early in the ninety-minute meeting that the group would commit to openness, transparency, and inclusiveness.
The group has adopted no formal position statement, has no officers, no membership requirements. As a measure of its openness, the blogger/journalists in attendance [I counted two] were not asked to treat the meeting as confidential.
After the meeting, Tom Bullock, emailed The Real Deal to say the meeting "was the first of what we hope will be a series of meetings that will include a growing circle of participants. The invitation list for this first session did not include major elected officials but rather emphasized rank-and-file Party members, activists, and campaign volunteers to allow for a grassroots discussion. Some attendees hold formal Party positions; many do not. All agreed that future meetings should reach out to an ever-broader circle of Cuyahoga Democrats, including elected officials."
Stay tuned!
Monday, November 16, 2009
Building a New Ship, or Re-arranging the Deck Chairs?
Those who discounted the argument that the Issue 6 measure was at base about power and money should be a lot less certain today in the wake of the Plain Dealer’s call for a major shift in the public control of the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority.
If Fox News is the communications arm of the Republican Party, our community’s daily has long played the increasingly transparent role of mouthpiece for the dominant corporate interests that have always controlled this region no matter which party has nominally controlled the reins of city and county government.
Cleveland has had only three mayors in the last sixty years who weren’t eager to do the bidding of the region’s economic oligarchy. In 1967 Carl Stokes came into office with a progressive and pro-active civil rights and economic agenda. He was supported by the business community not so much for its positive elements as for the expectation that he could keep the fuse from being lit on the stockpile of socio-economic dynamite created by a half-century of retrograde policies. Dennis Kucinich squeaked into office in 1977 on an anti-corporate agenda but had no plans and no ability to do anything, given that his administration was at war with the Establishment every day of his tenure.
The current mayor, Frank Jackson, runs an honest, prudent, and pragmatic administration, no mean achievement in a time of national and regional economic freefall. His lack of personal political ambition and greed means he can’t be bought off like so many of his predecessors who aspired either to higher political office or to personal wealth. So while he leads well by example, and works constructively behind the scenes, he has yet to field an effective voice to counter the growing assaults upon his domain.
Perhaps the crassness of the Plain Dealer’s call for Cleveland to cede two seats on the Port Authority board to what is likely to be a business-controlled county government will stir some emotion in our strong-willed but publicly dispassionate mayor. Some righteous indignation would be both good and justified.
Brent Larkin, whose PD columns should be set in faint type, italicized, and boxed to show their kinship to commercial speech, gratuitously slurs both current and former Port Authority trustees by suggesting they represent a “generally pathetic” crop of public appointees. The recent sudden departure of the port’s chief executive, Adam Wasserman, has provided a convenient excuse to set up this latest power grab. His board-requested resignation is wholly unrelated to a discussion about how board members are selected.
A majority of the current board had no role in Wasserman’s hiring. The Nov. 10 PD editorial suggestion that current directors owe their selections largely to their political clout is ludicrous. The disdain for their expertise is rooted perhaps more in the fact that three of them are African American and one is Hispanic. Collectively, these four have less political clout than the weakest city councilman. All were appointed by Jackson, though the Port’s chair, Steven J. Williams, was originally appointed in 2002 by Jane Campbell, Jackson’s predecessor. It seems that their main shortcoming in the Plain Dealer’s eyes is that they are NOT inside players in the region’s shadow government.
Cleveland enjoyed phenomenal growth from mid-nineteenth century commercial town to world-class industrial behemoth during the roughly hundred-year period ending around 1950. This growth was largely built on the backs of immigrants, initially from central and southern Europe and later from the black farmlands of Alabama and Georgia. The social and infrastructure strains these newcomers placed on the city were manageable in an era of nearly unbridled growth. Congestion, pollution, and other public challenges could be and were personally resolved for industry leaders by relocation to newly minted suburbs.
Direct control of city government was relinquished by the city’s industrial captains as a consequence of the suburban migration, and replaced by informal methods devised to protect commercial and class interests.
Meanwhile, first white and then black ethnics, each in turn fearing loss of hard-fought political clout, rebuffed repeated attempts by good-government types to reform county government. Excepting the goo-goo types, nobody seemed much disturbed by the culture of corruption and inefficiency that infested county government, going back decades before mid-20th century party boss Albert Porter and extending forth decades to the present era. Winner-take-all, zero-sum game politics has been the name of our political game.
This didn’t seem to matter much fifty years ago. Hey, we had world-class institutions! We had more Fortune 500 companies than anywhere outside of New York or Chicago. We had the world-class Cleveland Browns! We had the Cleveland Indians, better than any team not the Yankees! We were the greatest location in the nation!!!
Anybody check the standings lately?
The fading of the industrial age, a transition to service- and knowledge-based economies, urban sprawl, and globalization, finally combined to force a renewed focus on the consequences of our inefficient and corrupt ways of doing public business. Unfortunately, we didn’t police ourselves but needed federal prosecutors to do it for us.
Embedded in the new county charter are mechanisms for the old forces to control valuable public resources in the name of economic development that never seems to trickle down in ways useful to those at the very broad bottom of our community. It is now incumbent on those who insisted that a new charter was about efficiency and progress to ensure that they are not out-maneuvered by those for whom Issue 6 was always about money and power.
If Fox News is the communications arm of the Republican Party, our community’s daily has long played the increasingly transparent role of mouthpiece for the dominant corporate interests that have always controlled this region no matter which party has nominally controlled the reins of city and county government.
Cleveland has had only three mayors in the last sixty years who weren’t eager to do the bidding of the region’s economic oligarchy. In 1967 Carl Stokes came into office with a progressive and pro-active civil rights and economic agenda. He was supported by the business community not so much for its positive elements as for the expectation that he could keep the fuse from being lit on the stockpile of socio-economic dynamite created by a half-century of retrograde policies. Dennis Kucinich squeaked into office in 1977 on an anti-corporate agenda but had no plans and no ability to do anything, given that his administration was at war with the Establishment every day of his tenure.
The current mayor, Frank Jackson, runs an honest, prudent, and pragmatic administration, no mean achievement in a time of national and regional economic freefall. His lack of personal political ambition and greed means he can’t be bought off like so many of his predecessors who aspired either to higher political office or to personal wealth. So while he leads well by example, and works constructively behind the scenes, he has yet to field an effective voice to counter the growing assaults upon his domain.
Perhaps the crassness of the Plain Dealer’s call for Cleveland to cede two seats on the Port Authority board to what is likely to be a business-controlled county government will stir some emotion in our strong-willed but publicly dispassionate mayor. Some righteous indignation would be both good and justified.
Brent Larkin, whose PD columns should be set in faint type, italicized, and boxed to show their kinship to commercial speech, gratuitously slurs both current and former Port Authority trustees by suggesting they represent a “generally pathetic” crop of public appointees. The recent sudden departure of the port’s chief executive, Adam Wasserman, has provided a convenient excuse to set up this latest power grab. His board-requested resignation is wholly unrelated to a discussion about how board members are selected.
A majority of the current board had no role in Wasserman’s hiring. The Nov. 10 PD editorial suggestion that current directors owe their selections largely to their political clout is ludicrous. The disdain for their expertise is rooted perhaps more in the fact that three of them are African American and one is Hispanic. Collectively, these four have less political clout than the weakest city councilman. All were appointed by Jackson, though the Port’s chair, Steven J. Williams, was originally appointed in 2002 by Jane Campbell, Jackson’s predecessor. It seems that their main shortcoming in the Plain Dealer’s eyes is that they are NOT inside players in the region’s shadow government.
Cleveland enjoyed phenomenal growth from mid-nineteenth century commercial town to world-class industrial behemoth during the roughly hundred-year period ending around 1950. This growth was largely built on the backs of immigrants, initially from central and southern Europe and later from the black farmlands of Alabama and Georgia. The social and infrastructure strains these newcomers placed on the city were manageable in an era of nearly unbridled growth. Congestion, pollution, and other public challenges could be and were personally resolved for industry leaders by relocation to newly minted suburbs.
Direct control of city government was relinquished by the city’s industrial captains as a consequence of the suburban migration, and replaced by informal methods devised to protect commercial and class interests.
Meanwhile, first white and then black ethnics, each in turn fearing loss of hard-fought political clout, rebuffed repeated attempts by good-government types to reform county government. Excepting the goo-goo types, nobody seemed much disturbed by the culture of corruption and inefficiency that infested county government, going back decades before mid-20th century party boss Albert Porter and extending forth decades to the present era. Winner-take-all, zero-sum game politics has been the name of our political game.
This didn’t seem to matter much fifty years ago. Hey, we had world-class institutions! We had more Fortune 500 companies than anywhere outside of New York or Chicago. We had the world-class Cleveland Browns! We had the Cleveland Indians, better than any team not the Yankees! We were the greatest location in the nation!!!
Anybody check the standings lately?
The fading of the industrial age, a transition to service- and knowledge-based economies, urban sprawl, and globalization, finally combined to force a renewed focus on the consequences of our inefficient and corrupt ways of doing public business. Unfortunately, we didn’t police ourselves but needed federal prosecutors to do it for us.
Embedded in the new county charter are mechanisms for the old forces to control valuable public resources in the name of economic development that never seems to trickle down in ways useful to those at the very broad bottom of our community. It is now incumbent on those who insisted that a new charter was about efficiency and progress to ensure that they are not out-maneuvered by those for whom Issue 6 was always about money and power.
Monday, November 09, 2009
Lingering Images from the Campaign Trail
While the Board of Elections tells us the bottom line winners and losers in an election, it helps to be out on the hustings to get a sense of what really happened. Newspapers once served to give us a flavor of the political battles and the contestants, but in today’s era of contracted resources and decreasing institutional memory, campaign vignettes are a rare sighting. As we begin the adjustment to the new political realities in Cuyahoga County, it seems appropriate to step back and share some of our lasting impressions of the campaign trail.
Peter Lawson Jones established himself as both an indefatigable campaigner and the most knowledgeable official around about the workings of county government. He showed up late to practically every event but unlike most of his fellow Democratic office holders, who opposed Issue 6, Jones actually campaigned against it. In the process he revealed a depth of knowledge about county operations and responsibilities that could serve him well if he decides to seek the new chief executive position.
George Forbes was the most predictable person we saw on the campaign trail. Appearing alongside Arnold Pinkney at a debate organized by the Black Women’s Political Action Committee to provide historical perspective on county reform efforts, Forbes allowed Pinkney to do the heavy lifting as to the history. Forbes simply enumerated all the white politicians who came beseeching his support of Issue 6 [implied testimony to his continued self-professed status as defender of all things black] and scowled that “Issue 6 was bad for black people.” This act needs a curtain call.
Lillian Greene was the most aggrieved campaigner. After resigning a Common Pleas judgeship to accept the position of county recorder, she set about reforming and streamlining the recorder’s office, successfully standing for election to the post in November 2008. Feeling tarred by the broad brush of corruption allegations against Public Officials 1 & 2, she defends both her own honor and that of the overwhelming majority of her fellow county employees, elected and hired. No shrinking violet, she castigated those who would condemn county employees as mostly a bunch of incompetent and or crooked bumblers, and repeatedly trumpeted her belief that the reforms that Issue 6 will usher in will lead to unimaginable problems for Cuyahoga County residents and government.
Harriet Applegate made the most memorable declaration we heard during the campaign. Alluding to organized labor’s often sordid history in blackballing black workers, she vowed that labor would never desert the black community so long as she was AFL-CIO secretary. Made us wonder if her labor troops would have her back if push came to shove.
Ronald V. Johnson Jr. of South Euclid was the most impressive candidate we interviewed during the campaign. A lawyer with KeyBank, Johnson was the lone Republican on the Issue 5 slate. He thoroughly studied the Issue 6 proposal, along with existing state law, concluded that its shortcomings outweighed its merits, and actively spoke out against it.
It was a mark of the shortsightedness of local Democratic Party leadership that Johnson was the only member of the Issue 5 slate not to receive party endorsement. Bright, articulate, and conscientious, Johnson is the kind of candidate both parties should be recruiting for the new county council.
Nina Turner was the most courageous figure on the campaign tour. The state senator was virtually alone among black political leaders in endorsing Issue 6. Her refusal to kowtow to the old guard and to stand on political convictions earned her this observer’s respect even though we disagreed with her. Reports are that she will face a tough fight in that labor and black leaders have vowed to defeat her should she choose to try and retain her seat. But she should not be underestimated.
Peter Lawson Jones established himself as both an indefatigable campaigner and the most knowledgeable official around about the workings of county government. He showed up late to practically every event but unlike most of his fellow Democratic office holders, who opposed Issue 6, Jones actually campaigned against it. In the process he revealed a depth of knowledge about county operations and responsibilities that could serve him well if he decides to seek the new chief executive position.
George Forbes was the most predictable person we saw on the campaign trail. Appearing alongside Arnold Pinkney at a debate organized by the Black Women’s Political Action Committee to provide historical perspective on county reform efforts, Forbes allowed Pinkney to do the heavy lifting as to the history. Forbes simply enumerated all the white politicians who came beseeching his support of Issue 6 [implied testimony to his continued self-professed status as defender of all things black] and scowled that “Issue 6 was bad for black people.” This act needs a curtain call.
Lillian Greene was the most aggrieved campaigner. After resigning a Common Pleas judgeship to accept the position of county recorder, she set about reforming and streamlining the recorder’s office, successfully standing for election to the post in November 2008. Feeling tarred by the broad brush of corruption allegations against Public Officials 1 & 2, she defends both her own honor and that of the overwhelming majority of her fellow county employees, elected and hired. No shrinking violet, she castigated those who would condemn county employees as mostly a bunch of incompetent and or crooked bumblers, and repeatedly trumpeted her belief that the reforms that Issue 6 will usher in will lead to unimaginable problems for Cuyahoga County residents and government.
Harriet Applegate made the most memorable declaration we heard during the campaign. Alluding to organized labor’s often sordid history in blackballing black workers, she vowed that labor would never desert the black community so long as she was AFL-CIO secretary. Made us wonder if her labor troops would have her back if push came to shove.
Ronald V. Johnson Jr. of South Euclid was the most impressive candidate we interviewed during the campaign. A lawyer with KeyBank, Johnson was the lone Republican on the Issue 5 slate. He thoroughly studied the Issue 6 proposal, along with existing state law, concluded that its shortcomings outweighed its merits, and actively spoke out against it.
It was a mark of the shortsightedness of local Democratic Party leadership that Johnson was the only member of the Issue 5 slate not to receive party endorsement. Bright, articulate, and conscientious, Johnson is the kind of candidate both parties should be recruiting for the new county council.
Nina Turner was the most courageous figure on the campaign tour. The state senator was virtually alone among black political leaders in endorsing Issue 6. Her refusal to kowtow to the old guard and to stand on political convictions earned her this observer’s respect even though we disagreed with her. Reports are that she will face a tough fight in that labor and black leaders have vowed to defeat her should she choose to try and retain her seat. But she should not be underestimated.
Monday, November 02, 2009
Cuyahoga County: What Change Do We Want?
In less than 24 hours Cuyahoga County voters will head to the polls to cast the most consequential ballots this community has seen since Carl Stokes was elected Cleveland mayor in 1967. Voters’ decisions on county Issues 5 and 6, along with results of Statewide Issue 3, are likely to bring profound change to the area’s political landscape. Some of that change has already begun to occur.
Cuyahoga’s landscape has been bleak for a long time. While a lot of manure has been spread over bald spots in the name of economic development, the establishment preference for quick and dirty fixes instead of labor-intensive work to rebuild the community’s barren polity almost guarantees that we will get the stench of economic b.s. [“34,000 jobs”] in the guise of fake economic development and imitation political reform.
The previous sentence may presage my vote, but my opinions are based on having talked to numerous municipal and county elected officials across the County, including those whose jobs will be directly eliminated if Issue 6 passes, and many who will remain in place however 5 and 6 turn out. I also have attended more debates than the select few the Plain Dealer chose to report, and they absent at some important ones. These would include newsworthy programs sponsored by the Black Women’s Political Action Committee at Cleveland State University and last week’s informative presentation at Case Western Reserve University, organized by State Senator Shirley Smith.
The Case presentation was especially notable because its Allen Auditorium stage not only included key Issue 6 proponents Parma Heights mayor, Martin Zanotti and State Senator Nina Turner on one side, and the fiercely-against 6 County Recorder Lillian Greene, but literally in between her and them were Issue 5 supporters, County Commissioner Peter Lawson Jones and North Olmsted councilwoman Ann Marie Donegan, as well as two out-of-state experts on local and county government imported to lend perspective on what is happening here and what ought to happen here. Presiding over the program was Case Professor David Miller, also a South Euclid councilman, and surely the only public official in these parts who packs both a PhD and an impressive set of dreadlocks.
Finally, I also have talked with close to a dozen of the impressive citizens who will be appearing in alphabetical order on the ballot as candidates for the charter review commission that will be established if Issue 5 passes. If the Plain Dealer talked to any of these people and reported on them as other than Issue 5 pawns or mostly-Republican Issue 6 supporters, that day’s paper wasn’t delivered to my home.
In support of the claim that the political landscape will change irrespective of tomorrow’s voting results, consider this: two local dinosaurs are dying. With respect to Issues 3, 5 and 6, the Plain Dealer has shown itself to be the FoxNews of Cuyahoga County, only with less imagination, energy, and imagination. The dumbed-down discussion promoted by a one-newspaper town was stultifying in its simplicity. In failing even to provide comprehensive analysis of the issues — not to be confused with relentless repetition of the flattest aspects of the debate — the paper has pretty much unmasked itself as being on sale to the highest bidder.
But a word of praise: retired PD writer Thomas Suddes wrote a piece that appeared in the October 18 Sunday edition of the paper that was remarkable for the plain and simple way it ripped the covers off the casino issue, exposing its sordid money plays, its assault upon the State Constitution, and its likely consequences for the already overburdened citizens of this county. If you voted early for Issue 3, you probably called the Board of Elections the next day and tried to get your ballot back.
A second major dinosaur about to fall is the black political leadership infrastructure. Little observed among the huge forest of demographic trends that both contribute to and document the community’s declining resources has been the emergence of positive black political leadership in many of Cleveland’s suburbs. If Issue 6 passes, this leadership will become more important in countywide discussions, Even if Issue 6 fails, the political domination of Stokes-Forbes-Pinkney will soon be retired, both by time and an inability to adapt its carnivorous ways. The issue here will be whether the new leadership will attempt to replicate the personal style of power accumulation that has retarded both the black community and the region, or whether they will lead the way in emulation of the more transparent, inclusive, and bottom-up style of the current White House occupant.
• • •
As to the Issues, I have almost given up hope, but here goes my Suddes-like evaluation:
Issue 3 is a sucker’s bet. The State’s voters will allow this community to play the lottery, which is to say, we will provide eternal riches to Dan Gilbert via constitutional amendment on the very long shot that casino gambling will revive us to the same extent that winning LeBron James in the NBA lottery revived the Cavaliers. Lightning strikes the whole community! Economic miracle! VOTE NO ON ISSUE 3.
Issue 6 is also a sucker’s bet. Whereas the casino issue is all about money, which buys power, the charter reform plan is all about political power, which when abused is a great way to acquire money. I have many, many good friends who believe in good government, who know that our current system is inefficient, obsolete and corrupt at key spinal joints, and who therefore support this county reform plan as a last gasp life-saving operation. But Issue 6 is like giving the County a blood transfusion with infected blood. It doesn’t address the corruption issues, it won’t improve the quality of our public officials, it puts too much power unchecked into the wrong hands, and it enhances the power of one current public official who either knew about county political corruption and did nothing or should be out of office for not having known. It will also perpetuate and extend the current inequities in our community in the name of economic development.
And the most important reason to vote against Issue 6 is that it is the product of a deeply flawed process. It is top-down reform being sold as our only way out. Those who are not cynically trying to regain the control they lost when they moved to pristine exurbs are totally frustrated by the County’s last-century orientation and believe that this is our last chance to turn the ship around. They have no faith that we can do better so they will gamble that the hungry sharks behind Issue 6 don’t bite.
We do need change. But Issue 6 is not the change we need. Process matters. VOTE NO ON ISSUE 6.
I am excited about Issue 5. I am excited because I believe some of Cuyahoga’s best citizens are members of both slates. I have talked at length with people like Tom Kelly, Ronald V. Johnson, Angela Thi Bennett, and James Brady about how they were selected, why they are running, and what they hope to accomplish. I don’t believe they are puppets for political leaders of any faction.
If Issue 5 passes, the citizens of Cuyahoga County will be empowered. We have been awakened by this political campaign in spite of its atrocious media coverage. We will not relapse into apathy. We will rise and re-take control of our community and craft a charter through a process that is open, inclusive, and transparent. The result will be a much stronger charter and a much better county government. The year spent in this process will not be wasted but will equip us to move forward together. VOTE YES ON ISSUE 5 and vote for at least 5 candidates from your less preferred slate.
P.S. This is an overwhelmingly Democratic county. The best reform we could make would be to reform the Cuyahoga Democratic Party. But that’s for a future post, for which you won’t have to wait as long.
BE SURE TO VOTE. IT MATTERS.
Cuyahoga’s landscape has been bleak for a long time. While a lot of manure has been spread over bald spots in the name of economic development, the establishment preference for quick and dirty fixes instead of labor-intensive work to rebuild the community’s barren polity almost guarantees that we will get the stench of economic b.s. [“34,000 jobs”] in the guise of fake economic development and imitation political reform.
The previous sentence may presage my vote, but my opinions are based on having talked to numerous municipal and county elected officials across the County, including those whose jobs will be directly eliminated if Issue 6 passes, and many who will remain in place however 5 and 6 turn out. I also have attended more debates than the select few the Plain Dealer chose to report, and they absent at some important ones. These would include newsworthy programs sponsored by the Black Women’s Political Action Committee at Cleveland State University and last week’s informative presentation at Case Western Reserve University, organized by State Senator Shirley Smith.
The Case presentation was especially notable because its Allen Auditorium stage not only included key Issue 6 proponents Parma Heights mayor, Martin Zanotti and State Senator Nina Turner on one side, and the fiercely-against 6 County Recorder Lillian Greene, but literally in between her and them were Issue 5 supporters, County Commissioner Peter Lawson Jones and North Olmsted councilwoman Ann Marie Donegan, as well as two out-of-state experts on local and county government imported to lend perspective on what is happening here and what ought to happen here. Presiding over the program was Case Professor David Miller, also a South Euclid councilman, and surely the only public official in these parts who packs both a PhD and an impressive set of dreadlocks.
Finally, I also have talked with close to a dozen of the impressive citizens who will be appearing in alphabetical order on the ballot as candidates for the charter review commission that will be established if Issue 5 passes. If the Plain Dealer talked to any of these people and reported on them as other than Issue 5 pawns or mostly-Republican Issue 6 supporters, that day’s paper wasn’t delivered to my home.
In support of the claim that the political landscape will change irrespective of tomorrow’s voting results, consider this: two local dinosaurs are dying. With respect to Issues 3, 5 and 6, the Plain Dealer has shown itself to be the FoxNews of Cuyahoga County, only with less imagination, energy, and imagination. The dumbed-down discussion promoted by a one-newspaper town was stultifying in its simplicity. In failing even to provide comprehensive analysis of the issues — not to be confused with relentless repetition of the flattest aspects of the debate — the paper has pretty much unmasked itself as being on sale to the highest bidder.
But a word of praise: retired PD writer Thomas Suddes wrote a piece that appeared in the October 18 Sunday edition of the paper that was remarkable for the plain and simple way it ripped the covers off the casino issue, exposing its sordid money plays, its assault upon the State Constitution, and its likely consequences for the already overburdened citizens of this county. If you voted early for Issue 3, you probably called the Board of Elections the next day and tried to get your ballot back.
A second major dinosaur about to fall is the black political leadership infrastructure. Little observed among the huge forest of demographic trends that both contribute to and document the community’s declining resources has been the emergence of positive black political leadership in many of Cleveland’s suburbs. If Issue 6 passes, this leadership will become more important in countywide discussions, Even if Issue 6 fails, the political domination of Stokes-Forbes-Pinkney will soon be retired, both by time and an inability to adapt its carnivorous ways. The issue here will be whether the new leadership will attempt to replicate the personal style of power accumulation that has retarded both the black community and the region, or whether they will lead the way in emulation of the more transparent, inclusive, and bottom-up style of the current White House occupant.
• • •
As to the Issues, I have almost given up hope, but here goes my Suddes-like evaluation:
Issue 3 is a sucker’s bet. The State’s voters will allow this community to play the lottery, which is to say, we will provide eternal riches to Dan Gilbert via constitutional amendment on the very long shot that casino gambling will revive us to the same extent that winning LeBron James in the NBA lottery revived the Cavaliers. Lightning strikes the whole community! Economic miracle! VOTE NO ON ISSUE 3.
Issue 6 is also a sucker’s bet. Whereas the casino issue is all about money, which buys power, the charter reform plan is all about political power, which when abused is a great way to acquire money. I have many, many good friends who believe in good government, who know that our current system is inefficient, obsolete and corrupt at key spinal joints, and who therefore support this county reform plan as a last gasp life-saving operation. But Issue 6 is like giving the County a blood transfusion with infected blood. It doesn’t address the corruption issues, it won’t improve the quality of our public officials, it puts too much power unchecked into the wrong hands, and it enhances the power of one current public official who either knew about county political corruption and did nothing or should be out of office for not having known. It will also perpetuate and extend the current inequities in our community in the name of economic development.
And the most important reason to vote against Issue 6 is that it is the product of a deeply flawed process. It is top-down reform being sold as our only way out. Those who are not cynically trying to regain the control they lost when they moved to pristine exurbs are totally frustrated by the County’s last-century orientation and believe that this is our last chance to turn the ship around. They have no faith that we can do better so they will gamble that the hungry sharks behind Issue 6 don’t bite.
We do need change. But Issue 6 is not the change we need. Process matters. VOTE NO ON ISSUE 6.
I am excited about Issue 5. I am excited because I believe some of Cuyahoga’s best citizens are members of both slates. I have talked at length with people like Tom Kelly, Ronald V. Johnson, Angela Thi Bennett, and James Brady about how they were selected, why they are running, and what they hope to accomplish. I don’t believe they are puppets for political leaders of any faction.
If Issue 5 passes, the citizens of Cuyahoga County will be empowered. We have been awakened by this political campaign in spite of its atrocious media coverage. We will not relapse into apathy. We will rise and re-take control of our community and craft a charter through a process that is open, inclusive, and transparent. The result will be a much stronger charter and a much better county government. The year spent in this process will not be wasted but will equip us to move forward together. VOTE YES ON ISSUE 5 and vote for at least 5 candidates from your less preferred slate.
P.S. This is an overwhelmingly Democratic county. The best reform we could make would be to reform the Cuyahoga Democratic Party. But that’s for a future post, for which you won’t have to wait as long.
BE SURE TO VOTE. IT MATTERS.
Sunday, May 13, 2007
Dining in the Public Square
I was all set yesterday to watch the pivotal third game of the NBA playoff series between the rising Cleveland Cavaliers and the veteran New Jersey Nets when the wife calls and says in unusually peremptory fashion, “I’m finished. Come pick me up.” She had been coaching high-level business executives in one of the region’s leading business schools and was ready to grab some personal time.
So I cut short my undisclosed shopping mission and rushed to University Circle to pick up my beloved. The weekend half gone, she was now ready to plan the rest of it. I listened deeply to discern and quickly sort the priorities: she needs to eat immediately, she wants to order flowers for out-of-state delivery on Mother’s Day; and she wants to recreate in some fashion.
My mind simultaneously googled the options seeking locations that combine likely eateries, florists, movie houses, shops, etc., trying to determine whether to head up to the Heights or downtown. In a secondary calculation I conceded the game to connubial requisites and hoped to store up marital chits for use when the playoffs get to crunch time.
We motored through downtown’s eating districts and cruised through Tremont and Ohio City, talking and relaxing before crossing back over the Detroit-Superior Bridge, finally settling on a Public Square eatery we used to patronize several years ago. I dropped her off in front, insisting she go inside and get seated while I sought a nearby free place to park.
[One of the benefits of low-density downtown Cleveland for the street-wise is knowing where you can park for free. In this case, it was less than half a block away.]
When I entered the restaurant, two very young pale women were guarding the hostess station. I indicated that I had come to join my wife. “Oh yes,” said one, more to the other than to me. The second hostess proceeded to lead me towards the booth area.
I found my wife with an affect that only I know indicated she was mildly distraught. She is sophisticated and graceful beyond words and quite self-controlled, so there was no readily discernible sign of her reaction to the way the restaurant's protocol had pigeonholed her.
After usefully informing the hostesses upon entering that “my husband will be joining me”, she was led on a convoluted route around the outskirts of all dining areas, past the kitchen doors, ending finally — voila! — next to the only other black diners in the place.
I had gotten my first glimpse of the diners in the adjacent booth as I was being led to join my wife. I saw a fellow on his hands and knees, his feet sticking out of the booth into the aisle, apparently in the process of retrieving something from under his table. I am a naturally curious fellow so I looked in as I went past, not knowing at that moment that these people were to be our virtual dinner companions.
I say virtual because their conversational volume invaded our intimate space in the next booth, a top-off condition when added to the in-your-face view of the service area that was also gifted us by the hostess.
By the time I was seated, my wife had already inquired if seating was available in other booths in the mostly empty restaurant. “No” had come the instantaneous and unequivocal reply.
I absorbed the substance of all this, first from my sense of my wife’s discomfort and then from our quiet exchange as we deliberated on our response. Midway through that process, our waitress re-appeared to solicit our beverage order. My wife asked for coffee, and I, focused on the issue at hand, tabled my response. The waitress gathered enough from our demeanor to depart with both the coffee order and an understanding that her customers were neither ignorant or accepting of the disdain with which they had been treated to that point.
She soon returned, perhaps after checking with the hostess station, to advise that a reservation had “just been canceled” and began to scoop up our water glasses and escort us to another booth away from the megaphoning diners. The view was much improved as well.
The rest of the dining transpired without incident; the service throughout appetizer, main course, and dessert, was exemplary, and appropriately rewarded.
You cannot be married to a doctoral candidate in organizational behavior through whose blood courses much of the history of the civil rights movement of this nation, and treat this experience without careful dissection.
We — the waitress, my wife, and I — all knew without discussion that the waitress’ transparent white lie was a miniscule fig leaf to cover her institution’s palpably ingrained race and class practices.
You might wonder whether your faithful scribe and his bride are overly sensitive, attuned to see slight and insult where none exist. Fair question. Under what circumstances would you as maitre-d have paraded a guest by the kitchen and then segregated her and her husband in the most unappetizing, out-of-sight, loudest area of your three-fourths empty establishment?
I add that the situation was resolved satisfactorily without any sense of helplessness or victimization on our part, without finger-pointing or blaming, and without ever naming what was undoubtedly taking place. The intelligence of our waitress helped her to recognize a problem and initiate action to ameliorate it.
Although there was neither confrontation nor overt acknowledgment, there was nonetheless a whole series of embedded social exchanges in this dining excursion. The entire experience was a visceral reminder of life in Cleveland, where the most Herculean efforts to rebuild the economy will fail so long as cultural attitudes remain mired in rustbelt thinking and actions. Our community will get ever more coarse and ossified unless and until we find ways to transcend its indignities and create environments of respect and hospitality.
So I cut short my undisclosed shopping mission and rushed to University Circle to pick up my beloved. The weekend half gone, she was now ready to plan the rest of it. I listened deeply to discern and quickly sort the priorities: she needs to eat immediately, she wants to order flowers for out-of-state delivery on Mother’s Day; and she wants to recreate in some fashion.
My mind simultaneously googled the options seeking locations that combine likely eateries, florists, movie houses, shops, etc., trying to determine whether to head up to the Heights or downtown. In a secondary calculation I conceded the game to connubial requisites and hoped to store up marital chits for use when the playoffs get to crunch time.
We motored through downtown’s eating districts and cruised through Tremont and Ohio City, talking and relaxing before crossing back over the Detroit-Superior Bridge, finally settling on a Public Square eatery we used to patronize several years ago. I dropped her off in front, insisting she go inside and get seated while I sought a nearby free place to park.
[One of the benefits of low-density downtown Cleveland for the street-wise is knowing where you can park for free. In this case, it was less than half a block away.]
When I entered the restaurant, two very young pale women were guarding the hostess station. I indicated that I had come to join my wife. “Oh yes,” said one, more to the other than to me. The second hostess proceeded to lead me towards the booth area.
I found my wife with an affect that only I know indicated she was mildly distraught. She is sophisticated and graceful beyond words and quite self-controlled, so there was no readily discernible sign of her reaction to the way the restaurant's protocol had pigeonholed her.
After usefully informing the hostesses upon entering that “my husband will be joining me”, she was led on a convoluted route around the outskirts of all dining areas, past the kitchen doors, ending finally — voila! — next to the only other black diners in the place.
I had gotten my first glimpse of the diners in the adjacent booth as I was being led to join my wife. I saw a fellow on his hands and knees, his feet sticking out of the booth into the aisle, apparently in the process of retrieving something from under his table. I am a naturally curious fellow so I looked in as I went past, not knowing at that moment that these people were to be our virtual dinner companions.
I say virtual because their conversational volume invaded our intimate space in the next booth, a top-off condition when added to the in-your-face view of the service area that was also gifted us by the hostess.
By the time I was seated, my wife had already inquired if seating was available in other booths in the mostly empty restaurant. “No” had come the instantaneous and unequivocal reply.
I absorbed the substance of all this, first from my sense of my wife’s discomfort and then from our quiet exchange as we deliberated on our response. Midway through that process, our waitress re-appeared to solicit our beverage order. My wife asked for coffee, and I, focused on the issue at hand, tabled my response. The waitress gathered enough from our demeanor to depart with both the coffee order and an understanding that her customers were neither ignorant or accepting of the disdain with which they had been treated to that point.
She soon returned, perhaps after checking with the hostess station, to advise that a reservation had “just been canceled” and began to scoop up our water glasses and escort us to another booth away from the megaphoning diners. The view was much improved as well.
The rest of the dining transpired without incident; the service throughout appetizer, main course, and dessert, was exemplary, and appropriately rewarded.
You cannot be married to a doctoral candidate in organizational behavior through whose blood courses much of the history of the civil rights movement of this nation, and treat this experience without careful dissection.
We — the waitress, my wife, and I — all knew without discussion that the waitress’ transparent white lie was a miniscule fig leaf to cover her institution’s palpably ingrained race and class practices.
You might wonder whether your faithful scribe and his bride are overly sensitive, attuned to see slight and insult where none exist. Fair question. Under what circumstances would you as maitre-d have paraded a guest by the kitchen and then segregated her and her husband in the most unappetizing, out-of-sight, loudest area of your three-fourths empty establishment?
I add that the situation was resolved satisfactorily without any sense of helplessness or victimization on our part, without finger-pointing or blaming, and without ever naming what was undoubtedly taking place. The intelligence of our waitress helped her to recognize a problem and initiate action to ameliorate it.
Although there was neither confrontation nor overt acknowledgment, there was nonetheless a whole series of embedded social exchanges in this dining excursion. The entire experience was a visceral reminder of life in Cleveland, where the most Herculean efforts to rebuild the economy will fail so long as cultural attitudes remain mired in rustbelt thinking and actions. Our community will get ever more coarse and ossified unless and until we find ways to transcend its indignities and create environments of respect and hospitality.
Monday, April 30, 2007
“Backstage Racism”
White Researcher Tells Tales Out of School at Cleveland State University*
Joe Feagin is a traitor to his race.
One would almost have to conclude that is how he would be considered in the Matrix world he describes.
In a career that has seen an unrelenting output of distinguished scholarship that has produced 48 books (six more are in the pipeline) and more than 175 articles, the 69 year old sociologist has thoroughly analyzed the living, thriving organism of racism that others have pronounced dead or dying.
Feagin was at Cleveland State University April 19 to talk about "backstage racism". In Feagin’s lexicon, “backstages” are places where whites are comfortable in vetted or presumed social situations where, knowingly or otherwise, their prejudices are more likely to surface.
In a 2002-2003 experiment, Feagin and a colleague collected journals from nearly 1000 college students – two-thirds of them white – enrolled at 28 colleges across the country. Students were instructed to record in personal journals their “observations of everyday events and conversations that deal with racial issues, images and understandings.”
The result was a depressing treasure trove: out of 15,000 accounts, nearly 12,000 depicted clearly racist commentary and actions by white acquaintances, relatives, and strangers. For the most part, the journals covered only five or six weeks.
By my rough calculations, this means that every week, on average, each student experienced 2 or 3 instances where racist commentary or actions were displayed.
As Feagin noted in his talk, the 12th annual Butler A. Jones Lecture, this is a remarkably different picture presented by repeated polls that show racist attitudes are fading from American life. When asked to explain the disparity, Feagin had a simple answer: in the polls, “whites lie.”
For Feagin, the notion that virulent racism is dead in America is “preposterous”. It has basically just taken up residence underground, or backstage, a fact he says is “ignored by the media and those in policy-making circles.”
A professor of sociology at the University of Texas, Feagin provided handouts to an audience of 125 or so that included CSU faculty and students, and numerous community leaders. The handouts illustrated several distinct situations where backstage racism was on display, including scenes taking place in the presence of African Americans and other nonwhite Americans. He said that about 75% of all incidents focused on blacks as the objects of prejudice, but that Jews and Hispanics, especially Mexicans, were also popular targets.
Feagin said he was particularly disturbed because his subjects were often moving among and were themselves, the best and the brightest, America’s future leaders. He noted how easily bias was assumed among groups of whites, even when the groups included strangers.
Feagin attributed this social illness to a variety of factors: the ahistorical nature of the Americans that declines to understand what 15 generations of white privilege has created in our society; the relatively weak enforcement of civil rights laws [“hardly enforced at all in housing”]; the wholesale absence of antiracism education; and a desire to preserve ill-gotten privileges. For Feagin, reparations are not a question of if but how much and why is it taking so long?
In response to a question about what black people can do amidst these circumstances, Feagin suggested amending the old maxim of eternal vigilance. He talked about leadership roles played by blacks in the multi-racial Abolitionist and Civil Rights Movements (“Frederick Douglass, not Abraham Lincoln, was the greatest American of the 19th century”) and said that, “Eternal Organization is the Price of Liberty.”
Feagin’s appearance was in honor of former CSU professor Butler A. Jones, a member of the team that provided essential research for Gunnar Myrdal’s seminal work, An American Dilemma. The work of Jones and other black scholars on the team, said Feagin, led to a complete re-framing of Myrdal’s work. Myrdal had begun investigating the Negro problem in America but concluded that there is a white problem.
Feagin’s lifelong and continuing research demonstrates the continuing scourge.
Feagin has been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and is a past president of the American Sociologist Association.
__* originally published at Cleveland OH in The Eastside News, April 2007.
Sunday, April 15, 2007
Imus show was intentional assault on all black women*
America is once again wrestling with the fault lines of race, gender, class and free speech, courtesy of schlock jock Don Imus' stupidity, bigotry, and crassness.
Unless your unit has just returned from its third tour of duty in Iraq, you have surely heard the uproar over Imus' despicable remarks about members of Rutgers University's women's basketball team, which lost the NCAA Championship game here last week at Quicken Loans Arena. Imus made his remarks the next morning in a segment on his radio talk show where he and his producer discussed the Rutgers players.
In their exchange the two men referred to the young Rutgers women as looking "rough", being "hardcore ho's" and "wearing tattoos". It was an escalating conversation of ridicule that culminated in Imus' characterization of the women student athletes as "some nappy headed 'ho's".
Imus has a long track record of racist, sexist and ethnic crudity. His show once labeled tennis star Venus Williams an "animal" and he has routinely ridiculed and degraded people of color, especially women, as unattractive or otherwise "less than".
Imus first made only a brief and perfunctory half-apology on his show, but has shown increasing amounts of contrition in a vain attempt to keep pace with growing calls for his firing. The two-week suspensions imposed by his CBS radio network and its simulcast partner MSNBC have not ended calls for his dismissal.
Imus, who is 66, honed his insult-talk style here in Cleveland in 1970, where he developed both a large following and an assortment of critics who called for a boycott.
Holland Cooke, a news talk industry analyst with Cleveland-based McVay Media, recalls that in 1970, when Imus first left Cleveland, a newspaper headline blared "Garbagemouth Goes to Gotham".
Cooke, who says "there are half a dozen reasons why this guy ought to be fired", thinks the decision will ultimately be based on the money involved. "His employers are hoping that Americans' notoriously short attention spans will fade", he says. The highly profitable show has already taken a hit as several advertisers, including Procter & Gamble and Staples, have canceled.
Of all the issues ignited by Imus, race has been the easiest to discuss. Virtually everyone has denounced Imus for his racial and ethnic crudity but his denunciation of essentially all black women, especially those of richer hue, through his insult of the young Rutgers women, seems relatively glossed over.
This is no small matter, as it is symptomatic of the place accorded black women in American culture. It raises questions again about the effects of mostly male black rappers who routinely denigrate black women with language far worse than that employed by Imus. In fact, Imus himself, along with some of his more vocal supporters, claims that a double standard is being applied to his conduct.
(The extended nature of the rap industry makes it more difficult for civil rights advocates to target, but cable station BET might be a good place to start.)
Barbara Danforth, president and CEO of the Cleveland YWCA, condemns both the rappers and Imus. Her organization has the twin goals of eradicating racism and empowering women. Danforth and her daughter saw the Rutgers young women from courtside, and were enormously impressed with their poise, fortitude, and achievements.
Danforth says that she would have counseled the young women not to meet with Imus. "He does not deserve a meeting with the team." She would further advise the young scholar-athletes that "they have to stand up and be proud of who they are."
"Incredulous" that Imus received a mere two-week suspension, Danforth was also appalled to discover that Imus has the economic strength, built upon his following, to speak as he does. She sees him "standing on the racist, sexist foundation this country is built on".
Danforth agrees that "most folks go immediately to the racist nature" of Imus' remarks. This speaks, she says, "to the invisibility of gender-related issues in America. Most people don’t think there are gender issues in this country, that there is no glass ceiling anymore."
Danforth notes that "the meaning of a message can change depending on the messenger. Words are very hurtful, very powerful." She wishes that Imus had picked on somebody his own size, because black teens struggle against so many hurdles already."
But bullies are astute at picking their targets, and who is less powerful in America than young women of color? Where are their defenders?
When black men are as attuned to systemic attacks upon black women as women as they are to attacks upon themselves, attacks on all black people will diminish.
--* originally published at Cleveland OH in The Eastside News, April 2007.
Councilwoman's outburst symptomatic of deeper issues*
It is hard to know what to make of Sabra Pierce Scott's verbal explosion last week at a city council caucus meeting. The Glenville area representative lambasted her white colleagues for not stepping up and sharing the blame she and her fellow black council members are receiving from constituents. Piling on are editorial writers at the Call and Post, the city's oldest black newspaper, now under the direction of George Forbes, editorial boss disguised as chief legal counsel.
The criticism revolves around the city's inability to stem the decay raging in many neighborhoods. The devastation has been wreaked by predatory criminals. Some wear oversized clothing and pack guns; others wear suits and offer easy mortgage money on impossible terms. When you add in a hostile justice system, a population marginalized by inferior educational opportunities, and the earliest and greatest vulnerability to the consequences of globalization, your local councilperson appears to be the closest official to assault in the face of so much indiscriminate and impersonal oppression.
Black city council people are perhaps too busy dodging these verbal brickbats to notice that over in Slavic Village the same systemic events are playing out. There the victims are older, white "ethnics" repeatedly burglarized, brutalized and ultimately exterminated by neighborhood thugs. It was charitable of Scott's white colleagues not to point out that neither she nor other black council people were heard to denounce Slavic Village terror.
But that is how we are organized in this town. Plain Dealer columnist Feagler is the designated mourner for the good old days when black people knew their place and hard working whites could harbor dreams of moving up and out. On alternate days, Plain Dealer columnist Fulwood is charged with deciphering what the black folks are doing and explaining that to the rest of us. And once a week, or whenever he deems it useful, Forbes directs the Call and Post to administer a race-based beat-down on whatever target he designates.
Meanwhile, the suburban puppet masters who still control all the key institutions sit around scratching their heads and contemplating whether regionalism or total abandonment is the answer.
Ladies and gentlemen, as a dear friend of mine likes to say, this is a "stuck fight": everybody is right, everybody wants to win, and nobody is willing to step aside and take a larger and more critical view. We have each become comfortable in our afflictions.
All of these public players -- whether officials, industry leaders, or opinion shapers -- are acting out roles in a disaster epic. Most are being paid handsomely for their roles in deflecting attention from the seriousness of the problems. Their collective pontification and caterwauling mask the giant sucking sound of a city, county and region headed down the drain amid a chorus of irrelevant accusations about who and what got us into this mess.
It is way past time to stop this nonsense. The finger pointing and moaning need to stop.
The city has a mayor in Frank Jackson who appears to understand this. He listens, analyzes, speaks softly and without exaggeration, and then acts. He is leading by example. Will we listen? Will we follow? Will he move fast enough? Are we ready to abandon our roles in this stuck-fight farce?
* originally published at Cleveland OH in The Eastside News, April 3-6, 2007.
Saturday, April 14, 2007
Beginnings
I set this blog space up more than 26 months ago. On the occasion of my first post I can do no better than to cite a favorite Sunday School teacher's favorite quote: "[Now] is the accepted time." (2 Corinthians 6:2)
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