History isn’t typically told from the point of view
of ordinary working people. However, a new book gives us a substantial
look at a short period of Cleveland history when ordinary people played
an open and significant role in the city’s life. Until they went
too far for the Cleveland Establishment.
From a “Give us a billion dollars” fight against
SOHIO to a fortress-storming demonstration by neighborhood activists at
the Chagrin Valley Hunt Club that spelled the end of private funding of
community activists, the book by Randy Cunningham examines organizing
efforts to uplift Cleveland’s have-not neighborhoods and gives us a
comprehensive, readable history of that period.
In Democratizing Cleveland – The Rise and Fall
of Community Organizing in Cleveland, Ohio, Cunningham covers the
time between 1975 to 1985. It’s readable and informative about
citizen events that only rarely make the newspapers, radio or
television.
It will jog the memories of political junkies of
the late 1970s and '80s.
It tells the neglected story of how in many city
neighborhoods numerous people who never got much opportunity to
participate in community decision-making forced themselves into the
city’s life and helped make some decisions that still reverberate.
It tells the story of how some fought racism,
poverty, redlining, slum landlords. It takes a close look at birth and
operation of the Commission on Catholic Community Action where the first
organized efforts of this period germinated.
The book provides a rich history of vociferous
community organizations and citizens that affords timely lessons today
for citizens and corporate leaders. The neighborhood insurgency came as
Cleveland was losing its manufacturing base and population, and
residents were experiencing severe economic troubles.
Cunningham tells the story of the developing
community organizations and their battles with utility companies, banks
and city political leaders.
There’s an interesting description of the battle
between neighborhood people, learning how power works, and the great
Cleveland Trust and its CEO Brock Weir. Weir is probably most
responsible for the city’s historic default. Weir’s belligerent style
divided even bank executives and likely led to his “departure from
Ameritrust and the eventual demise, through merger, of the institution.”
The fight between a coalition of community
organizations against SOHIO (Standard Oil of Ohio at the time) was
linked to the energy crisis of the 1970s and 1980s. Citizens wanted
SOHIO, flush with cash from its Alaskan oil venture, to contribute $1
billion “to finance energy conservation and subsidy programs for low and
moderate-income utility customers.”
In a chapter entitled, “Give Us a Billion Dollars,”
Cunningham presents an almost a blow by blow account of citizen
campaigns against East Ohio Gas Co. and SOHIO. Cunningham does a
masterful job of reporting the fight from all views, including
self-examination by the protesters and their paid staff.
Richly descriptive, the Hunt Club demonstration
provides a Hollywood film or Michael Moore movie of a horde of poor
people invading an elite lawn party.
Here’s how Cunningham describes it...
“What occurred when the 600
demonstrators landed at the Hunt Club was not just a political event.
It was a collision of worlds that barely recognized each other’s
existence, and that never came into contact. That afternoon at the
Hunt Club, the club chairman’s Saturday lunch was in progress. The
veranda was full of well dressed diners while on the grounds, members
in English outfits were tending their mounts, gather for the
afternoon’s equestrian events. (The target was SOHIO’s top executive
Alton Whitehouse, who wasn’t there.)
“Pouring out of the buses were organizers in
jeans and working-class and poor people in polyester. The Hunt Club
had never before seen so many African-Americans or so many who were
not among those the English call ’the great and the good.’ As Marlene
Weslian of CBBB (one of the organizing units) remembered, ‘How
dramatic to see the difference in how people live… It was so clear who
had it and who didn’t when you went there.”
The demonstration led nonprofit foundations to dry
up funding for community organizing, thus showing who held the power in
Cleveland – not the citizens, for sure. As one of those involved
said, “You do not embarrass the rich among their rich peers.”
As the head of SOHIO's public relations staff
said...
“That was the last straw
that really caused us to take steps to be sure that the usual funding
organizations in the city knew what these groups were doing. Whether
they were defunded, I don’t know.”
Well, of course they did. The two foundations
mainly funding the neighborhood groups were the Gund Foundation and the
Cleveland Foundation. Once they turned the spigot, funding
evaporated for activism.
Cunningham describes the start of the neighborhood
movement, its developing power and subsequent demise, though not without
some achievements. As funding for organizing evaporated, funders
shifted their gifts to more acceptable efforts, such as housing
construction and rehabilitation.
Funding also changed with the times. Cunningham
notes, “The primary goal of society was to get out of the way of the new
American hero, the heroic entrepreneur.”
Cunningham covers in detail the contribution of the
Catholic Diocese, via the Commission on Catholic Community Action, in
the funding and staffing of community organization, though it eventually
also pulled back drastically on funding such efforts.
The rise of these neighborhood activists came about
the time Dennis Kucinich was elected mayor.
Cunningham writes...
“At first look, the
relationship between Kucinich and the groups should have been a love
fest. Both claimed the banner of urban populism. Both claimed to
represent the ‘little people’ against the insensitivity of government
and the rapaciousness of big business. They had the same enemies.
Yet, shared values, foes, and constituencies were not enough for them
to make common cause.
“The conflict was between two very different
viewpoints on where power came from and the role of politicians in b
ringing about social change. Both sides were trapped by the narrowness
of their perspectives. The resulting conflict set back the cause of
progressive social change and reform in Cleveland for decades.”
Cunningham gives an account of a confrontation
between the neighborhood organizations and the Kucinich administration
at a 1978 Neighborhood Conference. Neighborhood organizations
typically confronted public officials on issues important to them.
When one of the Kucinich representatives was questioned she refused to
give answers. The neighborhood people dismissed her and a
confrontation erupted. Kucinich’s chief of staff Bob Weissman then
was given an opportunity to address the group. Weissman started to
lecture the group and got rough treatment. Audience members began
to boo and yell, “What is this bullshit… sit down.” A fight broke
out on the platform and the Kucinich people ran out of the meeting.
Though neighborhood activism and democratic action
seems at ebb today, Cunningham concludes that “Cleveland benefits from
the presence of dozens of neighborhood-based development corporations
working for housing and economic development.”
The Community Development Corporations (CDCs) now
active in many communities provide a service but they are so linked to
their political funders – private and governmental – that they are more
businesses than community organizations.
One former staff member saw the change as
disturbing, too...
“I don’t think they
understand or see the need to empower people. Their goals are just
mainly to develop real estate. They don’t do any other type of
organizing.”
We could use today the experiences gained by those
neighborhood people who came together to better their communities.
Apathy is rampant.
As one staff member of a near West Side group,
Eileen Kelly, put the results of such a movement...
“It may be a tiny thing,
such as learning how to ask a question in public, or it may be a huge
thing, such as standing up in front of a hundred people to make a
speech. These things change people’s lives. That whole process of
showing people that they have an impact makes a difference for the
rest of their lives. I don’t know the impact of the organization on
the city, but on the people, it was huge.”
I’m afraid that the people with power who helped
turn off the spigot for community activism deprived Cleveland of the
very kind of spirit and involvement on the very local level that now
doesn’t exist to help solve the serious problems the city now suffers.
It destroyed the leadership (and development of new
leaders) on the bottom and now finds that the leadership at the top has
no ability to solve this city’s dire ills.
One of the leaders at the Catholic Commission is
quoted...
“I think there is also a
latent power sitting out there. I think someone could mobilize them.”
It’s always out there but it takes an ignition
mechanism. Cleveland’s leadership, at all levels now, is quite
absent.
Democratizing Cleveland can be purchased
from Arambala Press, Box 14268, Cleveland, OH 44114 for $23.58, which
includes mailing. On Saturday, January 26, 2008, you can meet
author Randy Cunningham at the Book Store on West 25th Street. For
details, click
Democratizing Cleveland.
2007 County Bed Tax Breaks the Revenue Record
A few weeks ago, I reported that Positively
Cleveland (Visitors and Convention Bureau) got more than $100 million
from Cuyahoga County since 1992.
It was actually slightly more. It didn’t
include December of 2007.
The total distributed by the County for the
convention bureau for 2007 was $8,103,445.56, the County Auditor
reports. It’s the highest amount ever recorded in a single year.
In my last report, the figures for December’s
revenue were not included. The amount for December was
$599,779.64, increasing from $7,503,665, as originally reported to the
$8 million figure.
They must have had a good Christmas party at the
old Positively Cleveland. Positively.
My
How the Money Rolls In – and Out
Here are the numbers again.
The “sin” tax, presently being collected for the
Browns stadium, not Gateway, has raised $33,489,000 as of December 31,
2007. The taxes started going from Gateway to Browns Stadium in
October 2005.
The tax raised $238 million for Gateway. That
was money that didn’t go to a child’s college education, or to the
groceries, or to gasoline for your auto.
The $33 million for the Browns Stadium also isn’t
going into the bank for a
child’s college education, isn’t going to pay for groceries and isn’t
going for gas for the auto.
It’s gone... to enrich the Lerner family.
The “sin” taxes are regressive taxes levied by
Cuyahoga County (read: Tim Hagan, the only one left of the original
taxing commissioners) on cigarettes, alcohol, beer, wine and mixed
beverages.
On another highly regressive “sin” tax levy – the
Arts & Culture Tax – the county now has raised another $17 million from
cigarette smokers alone. That’s $17 million that can’t be spent on
saving for college education, your groceries or gasoline for your car.
Take from the least of them, because there are so
many more of them. Who said that?
