A new Postindustrial columnist and Cleveland-area activist recently announced that his organization helped cancel numerous residents’ crippling medical debt.
There comes a breaking point where residents become tired, and I think we in Cleveland have all reached that point.
We are tired of reckless government spending while our city is still the second poorest in America.
We are tired of being one of the most dangerous cities in America while our municipal governments still push for the same old tough-on-crime politics.
We are tired of being told there is no money for a quality education or public recreation centers. At the same time, our cities keep hanging up cameras funded by Epstein partner Peter Thiel.
At its very core, what is a government?
A government is supposed to be a way for residents to pool the money we work hard for and elect representatives to manage it, creating things that make our lives easier and better. Somehow our elected officials have lost the plot.
Across the municipalities in Cuyahoga County, again and again, we get politicians who run for office as a vanity or retirement project.
Again and again we get politicians who have no real intentions of solving the evils of poverty, violence, and discrimination that plague Cuyahoga County.
In my hometown of Shaker Heights, this became explicitly apparent when my organization found that city government correspondence has been used more to defend Flock Safety Cameras than to address the hundreds of children in our city living in childhood poverty.
Across Cuyahoga, municipal politicians continue to create this reality with ease because they believe we won’t take action. Their power, in fact, relies on our inaction.
The sad fact is that they are correct.
Our inaction blocks a prosperous future. Through the years, inaction has cemented the truth that no country or bad actor on earth has done more harm to the United States than we have done to ourselves.
No country has impoverished more Americans than we have ourselves.
No country has created more inequity for Americans than we have caused for ourselves.
We must understand that our problems come from us picking politics as usual. We must understand that a better future is possible, but it won’t come from waiting for our politicians to change their minds.
How do we do this? In 2023, I launched a ballot initiative in Shaker Heights that led to one of the largest expansions of mental health/social work response as a fourth extension of 911 in the country.
This policy, which successfully helps reduce use-of-force bias and officer injuries, saves tax dollars, and makes our community safer, has now been expanded to be accessible to over 50% of Cuyahoga County residents.
And just recently, we canceled over $1.2 million in medical debt for Cuyahoga County residents. I share this as proof of my theory of change. Cleveland’s small municipalities are arenas where altruistic policies and projects take fewer resources to become successful.
I believe that a future where poverty and violence are a problem of the past must start through success at the local level. We have to do this through engaged moral and physical action. There is a reliance on you not reading local news.
They rely on you not voicing your opinion on their governance by voting in every election, or by voting only on the sample democratic ballot they hand you when you go to vote.
They rely on you not showing up to public comment, not making your voice heard, and not asking why people in cities across the country and around the world have access to amenities that you don’t.
At the highest level, they rely on your belief that you are different from your neighbor.
What I mean by that is they benefit from us not seeing our similarities. We must see that our problems are the same.
If a politician in an impoverished Black neighborhood decides that a municipal child tax credit that would cut 25% to 50% of childhood poverty is not worth it, that should matter to you even if you are not Black.
If a mayor in an impoverished White neighborhood chooses surveillance cameras over a quality education, it should matter even if that’s not your neighborhood.
We can no longer focus on our differences. We are the 99%; we rise and fall together, and we canno longer allow our inaction to poison our community.
Now change takes a while. It takes patience. That’s why we just canceled $1.2 million in medical debt.
Not to put a band-aid on the bleeding and to say we fixed the problem, but to show a thread of hope that will eventually be stitched together to heal our wounds.
Not only is a city where your tax dollars are spent to fix your real burdens such as medical debt possible, but so is a city where we have a government that doesn’t allow poverty, discrimination, or violence at all.
Even as a dark cloud continues to hover over our heads, an image of a better future appears in the distance.
This possibility of a better future stays alive only as long as we keep believing and staying active.
We are going to do just that.
We are going to vote this November, so every wanna-be-dictator Republican and do-nothing Democrat is removed from office.
We are gonna vote in our local elections in November of 2027 to force every elected official who has picked Peter Thiel over the people to reckon with the old words of the Reverend Dr. King, that there comes a time when “silence is betrayal”; and to remind them that they are not the boss of the community, the community is the boss of them.
In 2028, we will end the Trump era of politics and get America back on track to finalize its goal of being the most equal and free country in the history of the world.
