The Politics of Justice

The political scientist Richard Fenno, after following Cleveland’s legendary Lou Stokes around our town, noted with astonishment the red-carpet treatment and near hero worship the retired Congressman received from his former constituents. Fenno, considered the dean of Congressional scholars, remarked that he had never seen anything like it.

There is no doubt that Lou Stokes is a walking, breathing political giant in our midst. Still, it does not detract one whit from his stature to wonder whether the adulation he — and to a lesser degree, his beloved successor, the late Stephanie Tubbs Jones — continues to receive, says as much or more about the peculiar makeup of identity politics in Cleveland than it does about him.

In any event, it remains our good fortune to have his continued presence on the scene. Today, he appears as the special guest on “It’s About Justice”, the public affairs radio show hosted by retired Cleveland educator and activist Meryl Johnson.

Stokes was an outstanding trial attorney who won landmark cases before the US Supreme Court before beginning his thirty-year political career in the late 1960s. He likely will share his legal and political perspective on this week’s decisions regarding the Court’s savaging of the Voting Rights Act as well as its latest decision on affirmative action. I hope Meryl finds time to ask him about the Court’s DOMA decision as well.

“It’s About Justice” airs on WRUW-FM/91.1 Saturday afternoons from 1:30-2:30PM. You can hear it online at wruw.org/.

• • •

Justice will remain the theme of the week on Mansfield Frazier’s radio show, “The Forum”, which airs tomorrow night from 7-10PM on WTAM-AM/1100.  The show will be dealing with addiction and our country’s phony but devastating “war on drugs”.

Guests will include Cleveland Municipal Court judges Anita Laster Mays and Marilyn B. Cassidy; Debora A. Rodriguez, president and CEO of Recovery Resources; and Peter Christ, co-founder of LEAP [Law Enforcement Against Prohibition]. LEAP’s website says the nonprofit organization is comprised of “criminal justice professionals who bear personal witness to the wasteful futility and harms of our current drug policies.”

“The Forum”, known colloquially to wags as “Negro Night on WTAM”, is a call-in show, so listeners can interact with the show’s host and guests.

The program is also streamed at http://www.wtam.com/main.html.

 • • •

Finally, in keeping with our justice theme, I came across this compelling audio recording of George Zimmerman’s interrogation by the police after he was brought in for questioning following his killing of Trayvon Martin. His attitude is chilling, and begs the question of why it took a national campaign to arrest this menace to society.

Nonprofit Thursday: Voting Rights, The Right Wing, Shona Sculpture, studying vacant lots, the Cleveland Cavaliers, and John Patrick Carney vs. Mariama Whyte …

So I woke up the other day, checked the headline news on my smartphone, and saw that Ohio’s supine, reactionary, and corrupt legislative majority had voted to cut taxes on the wealthy, raise the regressive sales tax, ban Medicaid expansion, and continue the fight against modernity, history, and biology by enacting more restrictive measures against women.

So why would I be surprised that the US Supreme Court decided to cut the heart out of the Voting Rights Act?

The reality is the forces of money, power and privilege in America NEVER TAKE A DAY OFF. That’s what capitalism means. The forces of democracy, liberty, and justice, on the other hand, seem to think that winning a battle means winning the war. If that were so, Ohio would still have the nation’s best set-aside law, an updated Voting Rights Act would still be intact, and we would not have this continued testosterone assault upon women’s reproductive rights.

You’ve heard it before: eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. Better instill that piece of Founding Father wisdom in your soul before these Tea Party legislatures rewrite local public school curricula to excise that bit of Americana the same way they are working on whitewashing George Washington’s slave-holding past from school books.

So if you are upset about any of this, you should get busy at: 

1. Keeping yourself informed about what your elected officials are doing, 

2. Informing your friends, neighbors, and social media family about what your local officials are doing, and 

3. Getting involved on some level in fighting for what you say you believe in.

And if you are one of my Republican friends being courted by Ohio’s governor and the chair of the Republican National Committee, you should seize every audience and opportunity you have to challenge the whack social and fiscal policies their brethren are systemically and systematically advancing across the nation.

It would also help to study a little history so that you can respond with facts when people use superficial labels to claim, for example, that the Republican Party of 1854 is the same as the GOP of today or even the GOP of the 1960s.

• • •

On to more pleasant matters. A couple of decades ago, before the World Wide Web was actually worldwide, there was a print version of THE Real Deal. We tried to cover civic, commercial and cultural affairs of relevance to Greater Cleveland’s 350,000 African Americans and perforce to those astute enough to know that what affected them should be of concern to the entire community.

One of the pieces of which we were most proud was a cover story on an exhibit at Cleveland’s Museum of Natural History written by our ace correspondent Evelyn Castillo. The unforgettably spectacular exhibit was a display of Shona Stone sculpture fashioned by artists from Zimbabwe. Some of the pieces were immense; almost all were gorgeous.

What brings this to mind was receipt of a notice from the Deuteronomy 8:3 Café regarding a limited exhibit and sale of Shona Sculpture this coming weekend. Starting tomorrow the café will host a brief display of Shona Stone sculpture from the Zimbabwe Gallery collection in Philadelphia. Gallery owner Collin Thompson will speak at tomorrow’s 7PM opening reception.

The exhibit will close its brief run on Sunday afternoon, June 30. Deuteronomy 8:3 Café is located at 1464 East 105 St, Cleveland OH 44106 at the north end of University Circle. Exhibit hours this weekend will be 11AM-6PM on Saturday and Sunday. For more info, call 216.376.9695 or visit Zimbabwe Gallery, visit www.shonasculpture.com.

Selected pieces for purchase are priced between $100 and $1,000.

********

Learning from vacant lots

Today’s Plain Dealer carried a story on an Ohio State University entomologist who has received a $900,000 grant to study the management of biodiversity in vacant lots, which Cleveland has in abundance thanks to the [unpunished] criminal behavior of those responsible for the housing meltdown and the evaporation of 50% of the wealth of African Americans who, as always, were disproportionately affected.

In any event, the PD headline and story led to the grant from the National Science Foundation being heavily maligned by the usual aggregation of numbskull trollers at www.cleveland.com.

The story does raise eyebrows of course, as the environmental and caretaking cost of vacant lots is higher than one might imagine. So if you want to understand why the grant was made, or just be more knowledgeable about all the vacant lots around us, spend three minutes here.

• • •

Thoughts about Cavs’ draft tonight

The Cleveland Cavaliers have the first pick in tonight’s NBA draft. There is likely no franchise player available so the team needs to go for the surest bet of a frontline player. I would be tempted to take Victor Oladipo of Indiana University. He’s smart, tough, and tenacious, plays hard all the time, and is the kind of guy who will get better and better over time. He would especially fit in with the team’s new emphasis on defense.

I will be ok with the likely selection of Georgetown’s Otto Porter Jr. Just don’t bring home Nerlins Noel, who is a foot taller than I am but weighs less. And I’m not as out of shape as I thought I was [I overhauled my five year old grandson in a race last week on a steamy Los Angeles afternoon.].

Two events for tonight:

I haven’t made up my mind between going over to the Stephanie Tubbs Jones Community Center [3450 Lee Road, Shaker Heights 44120] at 7PM to meet John Patrick Carney, a state representative who is probably going to run for State Auditor next year, or to head over to Nighttown [12387 Cedar Road, Cleveland Heights 44106] for a Society of Urban Professionals event featuring live music from Cleveland native Mariama Whyte [5:30PM-9PM].

I’m sure Carney will be coming around again, so …

Lifting Voices instead of Crushing Spirits

I went to yet another celebratory community event this week and heard yet another singer sing some of the most powerful and symbolic words ever set to music as if they were at a funeral for that Chicago teen who was shot and killed in a random act of violence shortly after performing with her schoolmates at this year’s Presidential inauguration.

The soloist strung the song out so long that I thought maybe she was expecting a whipping from the plantation overseer the moment she finished.

I mean it was so pitiful that I wanted to cry.

Actually, I wanted to cry out in anguish, something like WHO DIED?! Or maybe STOP IN THE NAME OF MERCY BEFORE YOU BREAK MY HEART!!!!!

Believe me, I’m not picking on the singer. She was earnest, and her modest voice would have sufficed had she demonstrated any understanding of the lyric.

But it’s not just her. I have been to countless Cleveland affairs where this most stirring and brilliant anthem in American history is rendered. LIKE. A. DIRGE.

It wasn’t always this way. There was a time I can remember when the song was sung with verve, with pride, with robustness! The words themselves have a certain innate majesty, but if the singer tried to be too solemn then his audience, singing along because they knew, understood and loved the words, would pick up the soloist’s cadence and force him to accelerate.

Perhaps how the song is sung these days suggests where too many of us are as black Clevelanders. We sing this beautiful poem as if we are downtrodden, without hope. As if we have traversed a long and stony road, with only bitter food and drink for sustenance, and the road has dead-ended. We can’t remember where we’ve been, we don’t know where we’re going, and we haven’t the slightest confidence that any of our leaders have a clue.

The strange and sad part about this is that the anthem itself is a roadmap. It commands us to be upbeat, to celebrate with confidence, to sing with faith and hope as we march on till victory is won. While the second stanza reminds us how long and difficult the path has been, it reminds us that we have already gotten to where our forbears could only dream of going. And then the third stanza offers up a prayer to the Creator that we stand true to first principles and resist being seduced by the temporal pleasure or the selfish impulse.

I venture to say that 80% of Real Deal readers know that I have been referring herein to Lift Every Voice and Sing, written by James Weldon Johnson more than a century ago and magnificently set to music by his brother J. Rosamund. Many of you refer to it lovingly as the Negro National Anthem.

There was a time when I wouldn’t miss a February church service because we sang it as a congregation every Sunday during Black History Month. [Shout out to the Rev. Dr. F. Allison Phillips!]

I have reprinted the lyric below. Although it is a cultural crime to sing it as if it were a death knell, no such injunction should stop you from reading it with deliberation, pondering the words, and savoring their spirit-filling goodness.

Afterwards you might want to listen to one of the stirring renditions appended here. After listening to these versions I realized that it's not just the funereal pace of so many local renditions, it's most especially the lack of spirit and energy. Keep that in mind if you are ever on a program planning committee, and do whatever you can not to hire an aspiring embalmer as your soloist.

Lift every voice and sing, till earth and heav'n ring,
Ring with the harmonies of liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise, high as the list’ning skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith
that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope
that the present has brought us;
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on till victory is won.

Stony the road we trod, bitter the chastening rod
felt in the days when hope unborn had died
yet with a steady beat, have not our weary feet
come to the place for which our fathers sighed
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered
We have come treading a path through the blood of the slaughtered
Out of the gloomy past till now we stand at last
where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.

God of our weary years, God of our silent tears
Thou who has brought us thus far on the way
Thou who has by thy might led us into the light
Keep us forever on the path we pray
lest our feet stray from the places oh God where we met thee
lest our heart drunk with the wine of the world we forget thee
Shadowed beneath thy hand
may we forever stand
true to our God, true to our native land.

James Weldon Johnson

February 1900

Collaboration, Black Male Achievement, and Wind Power

Does Cleveland have a Foundation Center office because it has such an abundance of nonprofit organizations or is its plethora of nonprofits fueled by the existence of its Foundation Center?

Regardless of the answer, there is little doubt that the more savvy and ambitious local nonprofits avail themselves of what the Foundation Center has to offer. Next week that includes two free programs dealing with key elements of today’s nonprofit scene.

On Tuesday, June 18 from 10AM-11:30AM the FC will offer Introduction to Corporate Giving, an introduction to the world of corporate support for nonprofits and funding research tools to help identify corporate prospects.

Following the class, Joseph Cornell from Cleveland Public Library will be on hand to discuss specialized resources available through the library for locating hard-to-find company information.

On Wednesday, June 19 from 1:00PM-3:00PM, the FC offers a class on Understanding Collaboration, dealing with the increasing importance of strategic collaborations, joint programming, and mergers that are becoming more and more essential to helping achieve the mission-critical impact by which nonprofits are increasingly judge.

Afterwards, Susan Neth, executive director of MHS, Inc., will talk about the human aspect of collaboration and how to get all your stakeholders on the same page.   

Both programs will be held in the Stephen A. Minter Conference Center, located in The Hanna Building at Playhouse Square, 1422 Euclid Avenue, 12th Floor, Cleveland, OH 44115. [Foundation Center offices are on the 16th Floor].

To register, visit http://bit.ly/12PaFwZ [Corporate Giving] or http://bit.ly/17tyd1b [Collaboration] or call 216.861.1933 x325.

Campaign for Black Male Achievement

A few weeks ago the Foundation Center hosted a program on a nationwide initiative that has developed to increase the structural supports and opportunities that black men and boys need to survive in a society where social justice and racial equity seem less real than pie-in-the-sky for so many black males.

The initiative took shape following a 2006 front-page story in the New York Times, headlined “The Plight of Black Men Deepens”, about the steady and precipitous decline in the collective physical, political, educational and economic health of black males relative to their nonblack counterparts.

This Monday, June 17, from 1:00 to 2:30PM, those interested in exploring how this initiative can gain traction locally will be meeting at the Foundation Center’s offices on the sixteenth floor of the Hanna Building. For more information:  216.861.1933 x325 or jlm@foundationcenter.org.

Offshore Wind Power in Cleveland?

Lake Erie Energy Development Corporation’s manager of communications and strategy, Eric Ritter, will present "How Do We Build an Offshore Wind POWER Industry?" to members of the Northeast Ohio Group of the Sierra Club next Wednesday, June 19 at 7:30PM. The meeting is open and the public is invited to attend. The meeting will be at the Stephanie Tubbs Jones Community Center, 3450 Lee Road, Shaker Heights, OH 44120.

  

LEEDCo’s initial project, called Icebreaker, is scheduled for completion in 2017 and will consist of 6 wind turbines in Lake Erie about 7 miles off the coast of Downtown Cleveland. Proponents expect Icebreaker will not only create hundreds of jobs and power thousands of homes, but also be an important first step toward building an entire industry in Northeast Ohio around offshore wind power, creating a local clean and sustainable alternative to coal and natural gas, help reduce air and water pollution in our community, and become a symbol of our region’s leadership on clean energy issues.

Click here to see/print a flyer for the meeting.