Tonight’s run was supposed to be its last.

But the riders, after a months-long campaign, including e-mails, petitions, saved their route after meeting Thursday night with Joe Calabrese, general manager of the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority.

“It is a Horatio Alger story — the little man pleaded the case and won,” said Dianne Snyder of Berea. “It was a fight for what we needed and were entitled to.”

Here is the PD update on the story. Apparently one of the key issues that swayed Calabrese was the fact that Olmsted Falls residents were going to be seriously under served if the route was cut. Who says grass roots efforts don’t work!  Thankfully enough people who live in that area DID know what time the meeting started.      Peace Out – 3C

There are ten people. One gentleman uses heavy equipment, at his own expense, to clear roads after tornados and hurricanes so relief work can get to the people who need it. One woman and her boyfriend quit their jobs in DC and went to St. Bernard’s Parish to help rebuild homes…they had no carpentry skills but locals helped them learn. Several are promoting literacy and schooling efforts in their home towns or country of origin. In a lot of cases, the $100,000 reward money can provide a big bang for your buck to these kinds of programs.  One woman sends one third of her monthly salary ($1,000) to her home town to keep learning alive. Another woman started a school in her grandmother’s home while she was still living in this Country.

And it was remarkable to see that once young people started learning, they became entrepreneurs.  Their own idea to help fund the school. It began with learning how to bake.  Then they learned how to make things like dolls. 

Not only will reading about these people and the remarkable organizations they founded make you feel good, but you can vote for one of them and maybe get them more funding.

There will be a show on CNN on Thanksgiving night about these amazing people and the person chosen as hero of the year.  Of course they are all heroes.

Peace out – 3C

Update: I decided, after a comment on Triibes to one of my posts there, that it would be cool to keep adding good sites that I find – or that you recommend – to this post. I’ll start with two.

Smile Train - charity supporting cleft palate work around the World.

Mothers Fighting For Others – raising money for lots of bare necessities for Third World people

Good things happened over the last few days. My conservative and liberal (for lack of a better monniker, since we seem to need them) friends and I talked about the Bail Out…constantly. No matter what political party, everyone said 1)there was enough blame, on all sides, to go around. 2)we are all fed up with rhetoric. 3)we expect our leaders to do the right thing, whatever that is. 

It became clear to me that no one trusted anybody.

I was streaming the House discussion before the vote (CNN provided a stream on their website).  Many people talked, and then John Boehner spoke. I don’t share many of his political views, but I was impressed. Here was a conservative Republican, talking to his colleagues, imploring them to put partisanship aside, suck it in, and do the right thing for the Country by supporting the Bill. Then Nancy Pelosi got up to speak. 

I was appalled. I cringed. I started emailing friends, asking how someone like that can be Speaker of the House. They emailed back in agreement. This ‘agreement’ came from friends who are more liberal and friends who are conservative.

Let’s get this straight: The Speaker of The House of Representatives is supposed to be a leader who is adept at forging alliances.  Someone who leads, not someone who snipes. Yet there was Nancy Pelosi, not more than five minutes before a vote was expected, chastising the last 8 years of The Bush Admn. and conservative right wing politics run amok.  I wanted to be Elivs and shoot the screen!

I admit that the Republican Reps who said they didn’t support the Bill because of her sound lame. They can be pissed if they want, but don’t vote based on that or all you are doing is showing your lack of leadership as well.

Okay now for some good news. Thousands of people called their Representatives over the last week. Grassroots was at it’s best.  Supposedly, the voting was affected by the voter outcry. One more reason to believe that the more we all get involved, the better off we will be.

But how sad is it, that we cannot trust our political leaders? As Joel Auchenbach and Ashley Surdin said in the Post today, “A political establishment held in higher regard might have been able to hold together some kind of coalition of the willing. But distrust of the nation’s leaders, from the leaders of Congress to the president of the United States, foreclosed that possibility.”

The rest of the Washington Post article is here.  An even better example of the citizen outcry and involvement over the last week showed up in today’s WS Journal. This article is only one of many about the Bailout and in my opinion, the WSJ covered it best with an article entitled How Voter Fury Stopped the Bailout.  

Some sites and blogs weigh in, from the WSJ article:

The proposal’s defeat was also cheered on by a number of blogs that in recent days have posted links to lawmakers’ telephone and fax numbers and urged citizens to oppose the plan. They included stopthehousingbailout.com, a Web site organized by a 37-year-old Los Angeles attorney named Morgan Ward Duran, and    globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com, run by Mike Shedlock, an investment adviser at SitkaPacific Capital Management. Mr. Shedlock said in an interview Monday that his site had received 1.7 million page hits this month, which he said was half a million more than normal.

I plan on calling Dennis Kucinich and giving him a piece of my mind about Nancy Pelosi. (I am sure Dennis can’t wait to hear from me)   I think the best place to start is by getting a new Speaker. Someone who actually understands what the job of Speaker of the House was designed to do, not what it has evolved into at this point in time.  Bah humbug!  3C

BTW: This is the only guy, the only Representative who did not vote today. Jerry Weller from Illinois. You want to read about him? Send him an email and ask why, unless he was on his deathbed, he chose to add to his poor attendance record on the day when one of the most important votes needed to be cast?  Here is a link to Jerry Weller.

Crain’s Cleveland weighs in with some info from Sutton, Kucinich and LaTourette on why they did not support the Bill.

10.03.08 update:  by now everyone knows, the bail out has passed on it’s second go-round in the House (after tweaking by the Senate earlier this week).  Here is a PD run down of the votes.  Betty Sutton switched her vote, Kucinich and LaTourette still voted nay.

“….We still need critical calls into Sen. Voinovich’s office to let him know
our support for the Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act of 2008
and the Rail Safety Provisions passed by the House yesterday.  If you have
not already voiced your support for this important piece of legislation, now
is the time.

The Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act of 2008 will allow for the
creation of a funding mechanism that provides states with 80% federal
assistance for rail projects.  Currently, no such provisions are available
to states….”

Here is Sen. Voinovich’s number to call: 202-224-3353

And while yer at it, don’t forget to tell Senator Voinovich how he should vote on the Bailout.  Peace Out – 3C

9/30/08 update: yesterday votes were taken to end the debate and approve the Bill. You can read what happened on this link (as well as check on how everyone voted)  In Ohio, Senator Brown voted aye and Senator Voinovich voted nay.

This is the second part of my musings, for what they are worth, on solutions for cities, big and small, and the need for connectivity between those we elect to represent us and those of us who live and work here (wherever here happens to be). This was Part One.

I have seen schools do it, through PTA’s, asking for comments about possible cuts in services like sports programs, as an example. But I have yet to see surveys that seem to want our opinion about how to solve any problems. The other day I wrote about the possible explanations for why there can be a disconnect between those of us who live in a neighborhood and what happens there. And I am including the businesses who operate in our communities….they can feel disconnected as well.

We’ve seen the new Master Plan and it was dog and pony’d at community meetings last year. It was called Connecting Cleveland.  People came out to see what was going on, what was proposed; at least at the three I attended. Here is my premise: the more you ask for involvement and show you care what people think, the more willing people are to try to be part of the solution.

I found this survey on line; I think it’s a Bellingham, Washington survey, done by an area neighborhood association, and the comments are good.  They run the gammut of interests: some want a walkway and the addition of one or two shops in the neighborhood (maybe this is from a home owners assn). The comments at the end of District 6 are wonderful:

“….I never knew there was an Edgemoor website.  Another: I can’t wait to see the survey results! Thanks for sending this out, I don’t have the Internet. Thank you for all your hard work!….”

Here is a survey conducted by the Sociology and Anthropology Dept at Portland’s Lewis and Clark College. They got responses that dealt with things like air quality, asthma, development, traffic congestion. They seemed to be seeking information on who was connected (Internet) and who wasn’t. Respondents worried about energy costs, gentrification, soaring rent values.

I had an idea that maybe our CDC’s and City Ward leaders could hire high school interns to conduct some surveys to get us involved in our neighborhood life in a positive way. You know how many people have talked about a need for national service. (I heard Jim Lehrer talk about this too, and he’s an old military man). Well getting our high school students involved in the neighborhoods would show them that they don’t have to disconnect, they can be a part of the solution as well.

Two things caused me to write about this now. First, Sharon from New Urban Mom wrote a great post on the mortgage crisis, among other things. Like any good post that generates discussion, the talk turned to the ‘turning around of her community’ and how that was done with initiatives, hard work, and a mayor with vision. (This is all starts in the comments) She was really positive about her Mayor’s efforts in the community, and I asked her if there was one attribute she could transfer from her mayor to ours, what would it be? (and yes she used to live in Cleveland).

“….The Mayor I’m speaking of is Don Cousens, former mayor of Markham….if there was one attribute I could transfer it would be his collaborative approach to management. 

He pulled upon community development advocates and international thought leaders on relevant issues for advice. He had national market research companies involved in helping to engage and poll residents here on so many plans, initiatives and proposals that not only did we feel respected but we understood that we had a stake and say in the future development of our city….”

Does this idea excite you as much as it does me? Couldn’t this happen here?

(post getting long  so more later, I guess there really is a part three)   Peace Out – 3C

In a continuing quest on my part to figure out what gets people involved in their communities in the 21st Century, I’m reading the Randy Cunningham book called Democratizing Cleveland: The Rise and Fall of Community Organizing in Cleveland Ohio, 1975-1985. It shows how neighborhoods all over Cleveland came together, with and without outside help, to try to solve housing issues, school issues, arson issues, etc. I’ll do a full review of it (almost finished reading the book), but for now am impressed how neighbors came together on both sides of the River to tackle some of these issues, and did so successfully in many cases.

I’ve long felt that the less I participate the less invested I am. There are those who feel that renters don’t have as much invested in their community as home owners, which is why many towns have percentage requirements for rental property (i.e., no more than 25% of a community can be rental housing, etc).  I don’t share this view because some of the most committed, invested community people I know rent their homes. But I do believe there are things that keep us from feeling invested.

The Cunningham book talks about how CDC’s developed and that while they were once the trail blazers, now they are part of the establishment. There is an inference that among some of the CDCs public involvement isn’t sought out as much or even welcomed. I read a book a few years back called Is There A Public For Public Schools?.  It discussed the disconnect in parental involvement in our schools and how school administrations moving to corporate management systems of operation wound up discouraging or just putting up with parental involvement. Anyone ever taught in a school where people (teachers and admn) kvetched about not being able to wait until parent/teacher day is over? Sometimes this is the only real involvement parents have or are encouraged to have.  Not always, but sometimes.

Jennifer Gonzalez wrote in yesterday’s PD about a new bill before the Ohio leglislature that would mandate all parents do 13 hours or more of volunteer work at their children’s school or face a $100 fine for not doing it. I understand the sentiment, I guess my question is, can you mandate involvement or interest? Maybe so, maybe not.

What are other issues that get people involved? How do we (wait for the buzzwords) take back our neighborhoods? I’m not going to blame the powers that be or the residents – just looking at our current status. Some communities are still very well organized with block clubs and probably strive to be as inclusive and transparent as possible. Some communities have no block clubs and not much involvement by residents.  

There are also issues about master planning of neighborhoods which (after about what, 7,000 words!) got me thinking about this topic in the first place. We know in Cleveland proper we have many fewer residents than we did when the master plans, mandated or ‘laissez faire’ generated, went into existence.  Now our Planners recognize that business districts are not as sustainable if they are as long and wide as they used to be, they should probably be grouped. We have too few residents for all the aging housing stock around Cleveland, what do we do about that? And regardless of how we got to the point of not being as in charge or involved in what happens in our own communities, how do we change that?

Thoughtful article on CDC’s and non profit issues from NeighborWorks® in Lawrence Massachusetts. Part of it:

form needs to follow function – that all the power structures (committees, working groups, and so on) have to be seen as “provisional” – useful only in that they get residents to where they need to go. LCW believes that in community organizing and community building, practitioners suffer greatly from dysfunctional or old organizational structures that persist long after their usefulness and have no real connection to action or accountability. LCW believes, instead, that creating an environment where no one gets too comfortable in positions of power is an important precondition to creating accessible and accountable groups.

My next post deals with two more ideas, stay tuned.  Peace Out – 3C