Local author examines key period when democracy flourished in Cleveland

(Plain Press, January 2008) Democratizing Cleveland: The Rise and Fall of Community Organizing in Cleveland, Ohio 1975-1985, recently published by former Near West Housing Corporation staff member Randy Cunningham and his Arambala Press, offers a challenge to Clevelanders to examine the legacy of their past in looking for ways to restore democracy and democratic power to residents of Cleveland neighborhoods.

As a staff person of Near West Housing Corporation, Cunningham became involved in the block club meetings, neighborhood conventions and citywide actions of its mother organization, Near West Neighbors In Action, one of the organizations in Cleveland’s neighborhood organizing movement.

Now, several decades later after pouring through archives and interviewing some of the actors of the time period, Cunningham is retelling the story of the heyday of community organizing in Cleveland in what he calls “the first history of community organizing in Cleveland.”


REVIEW & ANALYSIS

Democratizing Cleveland describes circumstances and individuals that allowed grass roots community organizations to flourish in Cleveland from the mid 1970s into the 1980s. “The community organizing movement that swept Cleveland’s neighborhoods benefited from a unique set of favorable conditions, including the movement legacies of the 1960s, an available labor pool of potential organizers, obtuse and blundering institutions that were dream targets, institutional cover from the Catholic Church, and funding from the federal government, the Gund Foundation, and the Campaign for Human Development. There was the synergy of the right people being at the right place at the right time in key institutions.”

The book takes a look at some of the key players that were in position to help the movement to take hold and gain a degree of political clout during this exciting and turbulent time period in the history of the city. One of the institutions Democratizing Cleveland examines is Catholic Commission  and the critical role it played in funding the neighborhood groups and the pressure put on the diocese by politicians and corporate executives as the community organizing groups’ “in your face” tactics led to the invasions of City Hall, corporate board rooms, church services, suburban streets, and a private country club in an effort to call attention to social injustice and make demands for change.

Cunningham uses taped interviews with Harry Fagan of the Catholic Commission to provide insight into the thinking and philosophy of those such as Fagan and Cleveland Catholic Diocese Auxiliary Bishop William Cosgrove who backed the community groups, provided them with resources, and helped to insulate them from those who would have liked to see their demise.

Cunningham examines support for community organization not only from people locally like Harry Fagan at the Catholic Commission and Hank Doll at Gund Foundation, but also from national figures such as Monsignor Geno Baroni in the federal office of the Department of Housing and Urban Development in Washington D.C. in President Jimmy Carter’s Administration.

Democratizing Cleveland notes the role that Msgr. Baroni played in convincing the Catholic Bishops to create the Campaign for Human Development in 1969. Baroni hoped to prevent Catholic involvement in a racist reactionary movement in the United States in the wake of riots that followed the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Baroni sought to unite multiracial communities on issues of common interest.

In Cleveland, Reverend Dan Reidy, the Director of the Campaign for Human Development looked for a neighborhood where he could unite such diverse groups around common interests. The Buckeye Woodland neighborhood was the neighborhood chosen. The organization that resulted from these initial efforts, the Buckeye Woodland Community Congress, became a model for the powerful issue-oriented community organizations that built coalitions to challenge powerful public and private sector interests in Cleveland while pushing for social change to benefit residents of Cleveland neighborhoods.

Cunningham also examines events and changes in the local and national political climate that led to the demise of grassroots issue-based community organizing in Cleveland. Change of leadership in the Cleveland Diocese and at the Gund Foundation ultimately threatened the funding of the groups.

Cunningham sees the community organizing groups’ failure to develop a more secure, independent and diverse funding base as one of the flaws of the local movement that led its demise. Nationally, the assumption of power by the Reagan administration caused a backlash drying up federal funds for VISTA workers used in community organizing and federal dollars for training and development of community organizers.

He notes ironically that the community development organizations of today which owe their existence to the grass roots community organizations that preceded them, are often political extensions of the power of local councilpersons or organizations that work in concert with the councilperson sharing the same goals and agenda. In contrast to the grassroots community organizations of the mid seventies and early 1980s, the community development corporations of today are timid about challenging downtown-based development agendas that drain public dollars from neighborhood projects and interests.

This wasn’t the case in the heyday of grassroots movement in Cleveland. Powerful community-based organizations challenged City Hall and powerful Cleveland institutions to focus more resources on Cleveland neighborhoods and the myriad of problems that plagued them.

Key organizations of the time period included the Senior Citizen Coalition, Near West Neighbors in Action, the Buckeye Woodland Community Congress, Citizens to Bring Back Broadway, and the Union Miles Community Coalition. The organizations not only tackled local block club concerns and problems, but also joined in coalitions to address citywide issues and state and national agendas for reform. The organizations used a confrontational style, could muster hundreds of people for sit-ins, City Council meetings, or “hits” on institutions and public officials that dared to deny their demands for reform on such issues as

- redlining of Cleveland neighborhoods by banks and insurance companies,
- lowering home heating costs for neighborhood residents, and
- providing public transportation services for senior citizens at affordable rates.

Cunningham describes the legacy Clevelanders today owe to these groups, whose efforts brought about massive change in how the city of Cleveland spent its Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) dollars. Instead of those dollars being used as a slush fund to supplement city departments, the neighborhood organizing efforts assured that community-based meetings would help set the agenda for the distribution of those funds.  Cunningham describes how this led to the formation of the development corporations, as we know them today, which help to administer community development programs on a neighborhood level.

Noting the significance of the organizing efforts in the late 1970s and early 1980s that led to the redistribution of CDBG dollars to Cleveland’s neighborhoods in comparison to the scale of organizing efforts in recent times, Cunningham says, “None of the organizing that has happened since that era has had the effect of reorganizing the agenda of the city of Cleveland.”

The efforts of the community organization groups also secured funds to create home weatherization assistance programs, more investment by lending institutions in Cleveland neighborhoods and the Regional Transit Authority discount fares for the elderly and special services for seniors and disabled persons.

Descriptions in the book focus on each of the major community organizing groups, their specialties, and some of their famous joint actions (such as their effort to get Sohio to provide a billion dollars in neighborhood energy assistance).

Cunningham examines in detail reflections of both community organizers and members of the corporate community who were their targets at the Sohio shareholders meeting in downtown Cleveland and the exclusive Hunt Club in Gates Mills.

Interviews with community organizers and residents who became leaders in these grassroots organizations reveal how involvement in these organizations helped shape their lives and create confidence to confront those in power concerning issues that matter in their lives. Cunningham describes the work of the community organizations of the time as “one of the greatest campaigns of civic education that was ever done in Cleveland. People who had little or no advanced education learned how to run organizations, deal with their betters in a social realm, hold meetings and speak to crowds. It was a crash course in civics,” said Cunningham.

Eileen Kelly, a former staff person at Near West Neighbors in Action who is now an Outreach Minister at St. Colman Parish, is one of several persons interviewed by Cunningham who described the impact on individuals of being involved in organizing:

“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. Those 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.”

Democratizing Cleveland, is not only a history of an important time period in Cleveland, it is also an examination of mistakes made by the movement, which lead to its failure and demise. Cunningham offers insights into flaws in the ideology of the grass roots groups and offers suggestions as to how Clevelanders could restore democracy to what has become an autocratic and dictatorial environment in which residents have little participation in the decision making influencing their lives.

In a passage in Democratizing Cleveland describing the situation today in the city, Cunningham says, “The average Clevelander is born, lives out his or her life, and dies without experiencing one moment when his or her opinions or desires matter. Families, schools, and places of employment operate at miniature dictatorships. Voting is as foreign to most Clevelanders as books are to an illiterate household. Those who vote experience perhaps ninety minutes of democracy over their lifespan. The political culture of Cleveland is of little help to them because it is composed of ever-shifting proportions of paternalism, authoritarianism and populism.”

In contrast, Cunningham says, “The organizing movement of the 1970s and 80s revolutionized how many individuals saw their lives and how they wanted to live their lives.”

Cunningham offers some suggestions on restoring democracy to Cleveland through grassroots political efforts while avoiding mistakes of the past. He suggests that Cleveland residents could form their own political action committees and remain independent from the dominant political parties, yet still wield influence on their decisions when they choose to. He says, “The very act of taking a political stance could aid in a process of self-definition. It would force organizations to ask tough questions: ‘Who do we represent? What are we about? Who are our friends? Who are our foes?’ What is lacking is not the ability. It is imagination,” says Cunningham.

Given the lessons of past failures of community organizations, outlined in interviews by Cunningham in Democratizing Cleveland, he sees developing independent sources of funding as crucial to restoring democratic power to Cleveland residents. Among ways he suggests to reach this goal are rethinking the way the organizations are run and diversifying funding sources “to protect the organizations from having to turn off the lights and close up the office the moment one source of funding ends.”

Clevelanders who wish to apply the lessons of our past to help solve today’s problems would do well to read the history of this exciting and turbulent time period in Cleveland’s recent past that Cunningham has presented. It is a history that provides much insight into the dilemmas we face today as a new period in our history has emerged with challenges that call for new leaders and new vision.

Asked to compare the current climate in Cleveland to that of the time period of which he writes, Cunningham says in Cleveland today “there are weak to non-existent institutions for accountability.” He says that the formation of community organizing groups “could serve as a conscience” for the local development corporations in the neighborhoods. He says the development corporations “are too beholden to City Council people” to play that role.

He also called for community organizing groups to be independent of development corporations. He said that block clubs that co-exist under the same roof as development corporations generally end up being “cheerleaders for neighborhood development.” In this climate he says, “nothing is allowed that is any way an inconvenience to business.”

Cunningham says independent grass roots community organizations would keep development corporations from making unpopular mistakes “preventing them from stepping off a curb and getting hit by a bus.” Such groups would not be afraid to be controversial and address new issues, says Cunningham.

“Everything you hear about in Cleveland is about development – nothing on democracy. Democracy is an orphan right now. The only way you get democracy is through activism. Activism is the pulse of democracy. I wish people would talk about democracy one fourth as much as they do about development,” he said.

Cunningham offered some insight as to why he spent fifteen years researching and writing this history of a time period when activism was alive and well in Cleveland. He said it is important to examine how social change occurs in America. He called for:
- more study of the art of community organizing,
- the evolution of new tactics and creative methods of funding independent community organizing groups, and
- the examination of the role of non profit organizations and their 501c3 status in stifling dissent.

Cunningham is under no illusion about the difficulty of creating a force for social change in a era of “reactionary politics – here in Cleveland and nationally.” He says, “I don’t know if you can get a revival of organizing unless there is some sort of crack in the conservative armor.”

Democratizing Cleveland: The Rise and Fall of Community Organizing in Cleveland, Ohio 1975 - 1985 by Randy Cunningham is available for purchase. For information on ordering a copy of Democratizing Cleveland go to the publisher's web site at: www.arambalapress.com or e-mail to info@arambalapress.com.

Book review and analysis by Chuck Hoven, Plain Press Managing Editor

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