A History of Lead Advocacy in Cleveland
Sources
Feb. 12, 2017. cleveland.com. Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson's concerns about rental inspections: Displacing poor families, burdening landlords
Oct. 02, 2016. cleveland.com. Cleveland's troubled Department of Public Health: A familiar story, decades in the making.
https://www.cleveland.com/healthfit/2015/10/toxic_neglect_curing_cleveland.html#incart_m-rpt-1
History of Lead Advocacy in Cleveland
The "modern" history of lead advocacy in Cleveland is pretty well documented by Rachel and Brie. See Sources. Cleveland Lead Safe Network and our successor organization CLASH are direct descendants of Rachel and Brie. CLASH put lead poisoning back on the public agenda, but seven years later, the fundamentals have not changed: housing is still full of lead and children continue to be poisoned.
There were a remarkable number of civic/philanthropic attempts before LSCC (see lead and amnesia)
CLASH thinks it's fair to say that the strategy of getting landlords to voluntarily comply with the Lead Safe Certificate law is on the edge of collapse. (Cleveland's plan) It's almost emperor's new clothes time and the danger is that the elite will walk away from the challenge.
September LSHB meeting, fur flies but no media. then, CWRU leaks a Fischer statement and whoops, picked up by WEWS.
Halloween 2023: Rebecca pulls the plug on the certificate program. The very plain dealer puts Bibb on the hook to rescue the program.
Competing audiences for Faith and Leaders/Lead Resource Fair and LSCC lead march.
Yvonka throws down the gauntlet in her LTE on 11/3/23
Suddenly, Mayor Bibb's Residents First proposal is likely to be a really important part of CLASH's 2024 advocacy agenda. If the voluntary compliance model fails in 2024, the civic elites will be faced with a choice: abandon the lead safe certificate program... or make it work through real enforcement. You can get a backgrounder on the Bibb proposal by listening to Sep. '23 New Cleveland Code Enforcement Ordinances
Addressing Lead poisoning in Cleveland
Presenters: Spencer Wells, Darrick Wade
(george questions are in red)
Overview of lead poisoning.
Antiquity: lead as a condiment
Lead paint, lead in gasoline Thomas A. Midgely.
Midgley invented Ethyl gas and got lead poisoning. Bounced back and invented Freon. Then contracted polio in his 50s, invented a mobility of ropes and pulley so he could move around the house, accidently hung himself when his rope system strangled him.
1970--Herbert Needleman. Identified lead as a medical and public health issue; fired for his reasearch at University of Pittsburgh, moved to University of Pennsylvania. His research was challenged throughout the 1990s, later his results were confirmed by subsequent studies.
1978-84: lead banned from residential paint, real estate disclosure rules, lead banned from gasoline
2014: Flint changes everything.
History of lead work in Cleveland
1987-2007: Rehab at Lakeview; Demetrius illness; claims against CMHA.
1996-1998; The HELP Coalition: National efforts to address lead poisoning as a public health problem based on a medical model. secondary vs. primary prevention, the origins of the expression "children as lead detectors"
2004 -- Cleveland enacts lead safe registry. No one ever registered.
2009--Ohio law suit against Sherwin Williams dropped. https://www.cleveland.com/business/2009/02/ohio_drops_leadpaint_lawsuit_a.html
2015-2017: Changing the problem into an issue
Flipping the script.
Primary prevention. Learning from Rochester and Toledo.
Lead Safe from Lead Free: Interim controls vs. abatement
2016-2018. Cleveland Lead Safe Network: A power analysis. Testing a theory of change: good government/consensus building. . It would be great to hear your perspective on how you have worked tobring about change in Cleveland. strategy that gained traction
Cleveland vs. Metropolitan vs. model project?
writing the ordinance/lobbying city council
water vs. paint in CLE
Focus on rental housing.
Designing a legally bullet proof model. Funny in retrospect. Models from Cleveland (Jackson’s efforts to block predatory lending and Toledo’s failure to survive a legal challenge).
2018-2019: The emergence of CLASH as a political force
Shifting from citizen advocacy to political activism.
Triggering reaction from the oligarchy.
https://www.cityclub.org/forums/2021/04/29/building-a-lead-safe-cleveland
2020-2023: Implementation and broadening the “community”.
LSCC becomes the public-private partnership (analyzing the corporate/philanthropic/government model)
CLASH reforms (gains and losses), become a 501c3, decides to continue be an all volunteer. Moves to broadens the issue base, musters more forces, and extends the geographic base.
The pandemic diversion
The 2022 Municipal elections: wins and losses
2024-2025: Possible next steps
More legislation?
More collaboration
Another generation of leaders and activists
George notes:
If possible, it would be good to get your sense of what has and has not occurred in Cleveland since the
2021 video. If there are any articles you strongly recommend regarding CLE between 2021-2023, I can make sure students have a look at them.
Student questions
Why has it taken so long for people to act?
Why such persistent neglect of this issue?
Has CLASH received any push back for our advocacy
How does CLASH members manage to sustain themselves in a long struggle