Event Recap - Discussion with Cong. Shontel Brown, March 14, 2023

Congresswoman Shontel Brown met with the Cleveland Club on March 14.

Having had the experience of one Congress (with Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi), Cong. Brown sees success in the present 118th Congress (with Republican Speaker Kevin McCarthy) as hinging on unity and coalition building. “Collaboration is going to be very important,” she told Club members. She added that she was warmly welcomed by members of the Ohio Delegation in the last Congress and has a good working relationship with its Members.

Cong. Brown accentuated her hopes for work on behalf of expanding access to opportunities for people in Ohio’s 11th District. She emphasized the importance of small businesses and described the visit of U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo to Cleveland for work in bolstering minority entrepreneurs. 

She also described her work co-sponsoring legislation to strengthen the federal SNAP program, especially as it applied to children with medical difficulties. She also expressed her support for President Biden’s effort to grant some debt relief to persons with student loans. 

Asked about her feelings on gerrymandering in Ohio, she acknowledged that powers concerning district lines resided far more in Ohio than in Washington. Nevertheless, she pointed out that she would do what she could in Congress to strengthen legislation dealing with federal voting rights.

She noted that besides her work on the Agriculture Committee and the Committee on Oversight and Accountability, she had been asked to serve on the Select Committee on the Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party in the 118th Congress. “This is a committee that includes members from a wide range in Congress and will work with the Foreign Affairs and Intelligence Committees to strengthen U.S. cybersecurity, guard against disinformation, and maintain strength relative to that of China,” Cong. Brown said. 

She answered a Club member by saying that Democrats are still discussing universal health care but that she could not be sanguine about its moving ahead soon.

Asked how she skirts Washington distractions and connects to her constituents, she said that she keeps her ears open in grocery stores and talks frequently after church with people who are not policy wonks or even particularly engage in political issues. 

Asked about Congressional Caucuses, Cong. Brown said they are effective and stimulating. “Caucuses focus your attention on specific issues,” she told the Club membership. “In addition, some are quite large and engage Representatives from different parts of the country who have differing outlooks. You can learn a lot about what people are thinking for shaping legislation; there can be lots of passionate discussion,” she said. She added that the Caucuses both charge fees and make note of attendance, so they are serious groups engaged in serious work. 

Asked how the recent Infrastructure Bill could impact Cleveland, Cong. Brown said that work is already underway bringing high-speed internet to NE Ohio neighborhoods. She added that efforts would be forthcoming for roads, bridges, Hopkins airport, and lead pipe replacement. She also noted that she, Mayor Bibb, and County Executive Chris Ronayne would be working with the U. S. Transportation Department to bring improvements to Cleveland. “When you go back,” she said to the Club’s collection of NE Ohio exiles, “you will see we are planning again to have Cleveland become ‘the best location in the nation.’”

Event Recap - Discussion with Jane Campbell, December 6, 2022

Speaking from her office of the U.S. Capitol Historical Society within the shadow of the Capitol, former Cleveland mayor Jane Campbell met with the Club on December 6.

Campbell explained that she came to Washington at the behest of Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu, who wanted Campbell as her chief of staff with the special task of expediting federal money for repairing coastal Louisiana and New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Having done that and coming to the end of her two-year commitment to the job, Campbell and Landrieu were suddenly faced with the horrific 2010 British Petroleum Gulf oil spill. Landrieu asked Campbellto stay on with the special task of expediting BP’s fines to coastal  restoration without first being clogged in the federal bureaucracy. “We succeeded,” she said, “moving 80% of the fines – about $4.5 billion – swiftly to where and when it could do the most good.”

When Landrieu lost her election in 2014, Campbell moved to work for Washington Senator Maria Cantwell. But with control of the Senate having switched to the Republicans, Campbell found working in the minority less fulfilling than working in the majority, so took on the job of running the Washington office of the National Development Council. That run ended when the Trump administration forsook community development, so she took up the reins of the U.S. Capitol Historical Society.

She had just begun to feel up to speed with the USCHS when the pandemic hit and both the Capitol and the USCHS offices closed. “The pandemic did have one benefit for the USCHS, though,” Campbell said. “We became more national and we reached far more people. That’s because we moved from mostly face-to-face small events to also presenting webinars that featured national experts – these could be seen by hundreds or even thousands of people.” She explained that the USCHS effort at bringing to the Capitol local middle school students – especially from DC impoverished neighborhoods with children who did not think of the building as meant for them – was shut down during the pandemic but in similar fashion it evolved into digital dramas and documentaries that could be used by social studies teachers across the country.

The Capitol and USCHS had only recently re-opened to more normal public access when the January 6 attack burst upon it, shutting down the Capitol again. Campbell was not in the building that day. “The attack was on a Wednesday and on the Monday previous I told our whole staff to stay away and work from home on the 6th. Having been a mayor, I think I developed a sense for a community’s mood, and I had a bad feeling about what the coming demonstration would bring. None of our people was hurt.”

Asked how Cleveland might improve, Campbell offered two points: hasten and enhance the connection of Cleveland to Lake Erie; and work harder as a unified region. Addressing the first, she said that she expected more action from Mayor Bibb and County Executive Chris Ronayne, but that new work along the lakefront takes enormous time, money and energy. Addressing her second point, she noted that there are 57 communities in Cuyahoga County. Columbus – now the largest city in Ohio – required annexation into the city to secure access to the water system. By contrast, Cleveland’s water department provides service to over a million people in different municipalities. The multiple decision makers put the region at a disadvantage unless its dozens of political entities align for mutual improvement.

Asked about divisiveness on Capitol Hill, she lamented that media favors reporting on drama and conflict at the expense of solid law-making. She cited the dearth of reporting on the negotiations to bring about the infrastructure bill as compared to covering sensational statements by publicity-hungry Representatives. Moreover, she said, there are still leftover tensions stemming from the January 6 attack. Especially in the House, she noted, there are Members who resent, maybe even fear, other Members on account of actions taken that week.

The U. S. Capitol Historical Society website is https://capitolhistory.org. It presents historical articles, a list of its past and future webinars, support opportunities and more.

Event Recap - Meeting with Mary Jordan, November 15, 2022

Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Mary Jordan joined the Club for a discussion on November 15.

Jordan was born and raised on Cleveland’s West Side, her parents having immigrated from Ireland where her father had been a farmer and shopkeeper in County Mayo. She said she first began reporting at age 16 when she worked at NBN radio, a small station that broadcast Hungarian, Polish, Irish and more than a dozen ethnic hours and that was a popular stop for mayoral candidates.

While still in high school she won a trip to Washington and went by herself on a bus. “Here I was from the West Side of Cleveland walking the corridors of Capitol Hill. I thought it was the most thrilling, fascinating thing.”

“So I have been about this for a long time,” she continued, switching to the present election season, “but never have I seen the kind of rigidity of electoral candidate selection that I recently saw in Georgia when I was there interviewing a group favoring Hershel Walker for the U. S. Senate.” She said members of the group resoundingly put party over character in their selection.

“It’s a very difficult time for politics,” she said. “CNN reporters in Arizona were assigned body guards because Steve Bannon urged supporters to ‘go after them.’ It’s such a different environment than when I first came to Washington.”

Asked about bias in the media, she replied that she believed that elements of media have contributed to the harsh division among the electorate. “It was a mistake that the Fairness Doctrine [in broadcast news programs] ended with the introduction of cable news shows. Fox News Channel swiftly took advantage. Laws never caught up with the expanding media and then fell further behind when social media spread. People are listening to false information and retaining it. At least there are now efforts to get people out of their bubbles and start watching more than just a single news outlet. One of these efforts was funded by Frank McCourt at Georgetown University.” She noted another called Unite, which was started by Tim Shriver and works to bring factions together.

“Extremists have given both parties bad names,” she continued. “People have grown sick of the political parties and more have turned to calling themselves independents.” She added that compared to other countries, U. S. elections are vastly longer and churn through vastly more money. “But I see two good trends,” she said, “One is that more people are aware that false information is out there, and two, that more young people are voting.”

She remarked that her husband Kevin Sullivan had recently returned from covering the Ukraine war for the Post and reported that there was no electricity at night. “You’d think that under these conditions, there would be looting, but Kevin saw none. Rather he saw Ukrainians fierce in their dedication to one another and their unity in a devotion to expelling the Russians.”

She talked about her experience in Mexican prisons, relating that inmates have to pay rent. “This results in the very rich ones – drug lords, say -- having excellent food and living conditions while someone who might have stolen a loaf of bread for their impoverished family might sleep under a blanket in a courtyard. “The system is grossly unequal,” she said.

Of the horrific decade-long kidnapping of three girls in Cleveland early in the century, Jordan said she was keeping up with the victims, with whom she helped write a book (the proceeds of which helped the women start over in Cleveland, a city they love.)

Having run the London bureau for the Post, she met members of the royal family on numerous occasions. She described Princess Diana as “luminous in person, much better than she appeared in media pictures.”

Wrapping up, the four-time book author said has recently expanded into podcasts.

Event Recap - Discussion with Ambassador Gina Abercrombie-Winstanley, October 25, 2022

The Club met (virtually) with Ambassador Gina Abercrombie-Winstanley on October 25. The Ambassador spoke from her office on the 7th floor of the State Department.

Ambassador Abercrombie-Winstanley grew up in Cleveland Heights and graduated from Cleveland Heights High School. She became interested in the Foreign Service after taking a Hebrew language class at Heights High. That led to an interest in foreign cultures, eventual study abroad in Israel, the Peace Corps where she was impressed by U.S. diplomats, and in due course the Foreign Service Exam. “When I grew up Cleveland Heights was a very diverse community,” she said, “and for me that led directly into Foreign Service.”

She said that her current position – Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer at the State Department – was a creation of Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who established the office because he felt so deeply about diversity and wanted it as part of his legacy. “Making the State Department reflect America has many advantages,” she said. “For one, it will help women and minorities advance in good and highly useful careers. It will also help our foreign policy because persons in other countries will understand that in the United States we have persons of their cultures also, persons in positions to affect American decisions. That will strengthen our foreign policy and our effect abroad.”

“In addition, the world is changing,” she said. “The United States does not have the clout it did in the period up to the 1960s, so the art of diplomacy is more important than ever in bringing others to our point of view, of being able to meet foreign leaders at their levels of cultural and historical perceptions and thereby hold a better chance of having them understand our viewpoint and why it should benefit them.

“And in yet another way, American women and minorities have a special role to play,” she said. “They have a history in this country of not coming to issues from positions of strength, that is, of being able to impose their perspectives on others – instead, American women and minorities have a history of working at persuading others of the rightness of their positions not because they can impose it but because they have made the case.”

Abercrombie-Winstanley stated the senior level at the State Department is 84% European and more than 60% male. At lower ranks, the Department is more representative of American diversity, “so we have a retention problem,” she said. “We have to demonstrate that anyone here can rise with talent and effort rather than by whom a person knows. For example, we recently changed how a senior level position was filled, not by appointment, but by advertisement – now everyone knows when that position is open and can make the decision to apply. We are moving to a more diverse, inclusive and representative Foreign Service.”

She added, “The Department is working harder to promote talent and capability wherever we find it. For example, there is no requirement for a college degree; you can have a high school education and do well here – persons who work here have. Many people know facts, and our excellent Foreign Service Institute can teach facts. We look beyond that. We look for cultural competency, discernment, thoughtfulness, flexibility in approaching issues and emotional intelligence. There are different ways of acquiring these, not necessarily in college or elite schools.”

Abercrombie-Winstanley was in Cleveland recently working with its Sister Cities program. Several years previous she also served as diplomat-in-residence at Oberlin College, teaching students and helping raise awareness in the Midwest of Foreign Service careers. She noted that Ohio has the highest number of foreign students after New York and California, a statistic she welcomed because part of American international relations is having foreign students study here and taking their impressions back home. She also discussed the advantage of lay persons performing acts of diplomacy by joining trade delegations, science panels, international health organizations and the like. “This type of sub-national foreign policy is very important,” she said. “Ohio and Cleveland have a great base for offering many of these things.”

The Ambassador told Club members that she expects many of the reforms in the State Department during her tenure will endure no matter the presidential administration or the Secretary of State. She concluded by saying she hoped to see Club members in the future at face-to-face events.

Event Recap - Meeting with Jules and Fran Belkin, March 15, 2022

The Cleveland Club visited with Jules and Fran Belkin on March 15. Jules and his late brother Mike were the greatest Rock & Roll producers in Cleveland from the 1960s to the year 2000.

Jules related how he and Mike got into the business rather back-handedly. They worked in clothing store in Ashtabula. The owner liked to bring in bands as store promotions. When the owner tired of it, he handed the work over to Mike, who was told no one was seriously promoting rock & roll music in Cleveland. So he tried it, and the first show featured the New Christy Minstrels. It wasn’t a runaway success, but it was a start, and after thoughts of giving it up for concentration on the retail clothing business Mike and Jules kept at concert-making. Soon the two were renting the likes of Public Auditorium and selling tickets by the tens of thousands.

For example, they sold 84,000 tickets for the Rolling Stones concert in Municipal Stadium in June 1975. Janis Joplin and her audience shook the floor so badly in 1968 at Public Hall that Katherine Hepburn performing a play adjacent in the Music Hall sent a message to tone it down.

Jules and Mike organized concerts at the Front Row Theater and the Allen Theater. This is when, paraphrasing Jules, the Allen was a wreck, but the ticket sales were so good that the concerts’ successes paved the way for saving the Allen from demolition and Playhouse Square for its dramatic revival.

The impresario business, of course, was fraught with peril. Some rock & roll bands cancelled at the last minute; others behaved badly. Some British acts wrote into their contracts they would accept no American-made beer. Kiss once demanded a certain wine, for which concert aides scoured Cleveland wine shops in vain. The type did not exist; it was a Kiss prank.

Jules and Mike liked to make tee-shirts for performing groups and ordered embroidered ones for Bruce Springsteen only to be told later that he really did not like to be called “The Boss.”

Although Mike died in 2019, Jules keeps ties to the music business alive by remaining on the Board of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He explained to the Club how voting for Inductees works: Most weight for votes coming from a list of 600 industry leaders; lesser weight from the members of the Hall of Fame Board; and only a slight weight from fans. Induction ceremonies now divide between Cleveland and New York, with an occasional nod to Los Angeles. Cleveland offers a far larger hall – Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse -- than New York can and last year’s celebration in Cleveland with an astonishing array of rock & roll celebrities was particularly notable.

Jules and Mike sold the impresario business 20 years ago, but Fran recently ran across boxes of memorabilia from the Belkin rock & roll era. She assembled them and stories for a book she published in 2018 called Rock This Town.