The City Club of Cleveland Podcast

For 80 years, the United Negro College Fund (UNCF) has been the nation's largest guiding light in propelling our nation's Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs)--which educate and support the largest number of the nation's Black professionals.\r\n\r\nThe City Club is proud to partner with UNCF as it marks this milestone to foster a stronger, more inclusive Cleveland community by enhancing educational opportunities for underrepresented students in the region. WKYC\'s Danita Harris will sit down in conversation with Steve Phillips, author of The New York Times bestseller Brown Is the New White and the newly released national bestselling book How We Win the Civil War: Securing a Multiracial Democracy and Ending White Supremacy for Good.

In his latest book, Derelict Paradise: Homelessness and Urban Development in Cleveland, Ohio, Dan Kerr shows that homelessness has deep roots in the shifting ground of urban labor markets, social policy, downtown development, the criminal justice system, and corporate power. Rather than being attributable to the illnesses and inadequacies of the unhoused themselves, it is a product of both structural and political dynamics shaping the city.\r\n\r\nKerr is an associate professor of history at American University. Since his earliest work with the Cleveland Homeless Oral History Project (CHOHP), he has sought out ways to bring the oral histories he has collected back to the communities they originated from. The CHOHP project shaped the core themes woven throughout Derelict Paradise.\r\n\r\nHe is currently working on the Mobilizing Against Homelessness project, which seeks to document and amplify the voices, perspectives, and analysis of those experiencing homelessness in Washington, DC.

According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, more than half of suicides are by firearm; and nearly 90 percent of suicide attempts involving firearms are fatal, compared to 5 percent of all other suicide attempts. Suicide ideation to action can be as short as 10 minutes-making access to lethal means a key focus in tackling increasing suicide rates in our communities.\r\n\r\nRecently, the Center for Health Affairs launched the Social Determinants of Health Innovation Hub powered by Amazon Web Services which aims to address structural racism, poverty, and behavioral health crises. They found a correlation between suicide by firearms and historically redlined neighborhoods, poverty, and race. Analysis also showed that firearm suicide among youths as young as 12 rapidly increasing in Northeast Ohio-underlining the critical need to address structural barriers such as unemployment, lack of housing, and lack of reliable and affordable transportation.\r\n\r\nJoin the City Club as Brian Lane, President & CEO of the Center for Health Affairs leads a conversation about efforts to address lethal means, improve suicide prevention, and increase mental health resources in Northeast Ohio.

Morelle McCane qualified for the 2024 Olympic Games last October after she won the silver medal at the Pan American Games in Santiago, Chile. Now, she is the fifth straight boxer and the first female to qualify for the Olympic Games from Cleveland. The last time a Cleveland boxer brought home an Olympic medal was in 1952.\r\n\r\nMorelle started boxing in 2013 - her senior year of high school - training at an outdoor gym at E. 117th Street and Sellers Avenue in Cleveland\'s Glenville neighborhood. Soon after, she received high-level training at the Bob Davis Boxing Club at the Glenville Recreation Center. She will be representing Team USA this July in Paris, where she hopes to bring home the gold and elevate women\'s boxing to a whole new level.\r\n\r\nJoin us at the City Club as we hear from champion boxer Morelle McCane and her journey to the 2024 Olympics.

Few musicians tower like Terence Blanchard. The eight-time Grammy winner has been recording for more than four decades, and though his early work recalls the legacy of midcentury greats, for years now, Blanchard has been remaking and reshaping the genre, turning it into a force to give voice to social change. A trumpeter, pianist, composer, Blanchard has pushed the genre and his own artistry beyond jazz to opera and film scores.\r\n\r\nBlanchard began playing in his teenage years with the Lionel Hampton Orchestra. By the 1980s, he was playing with Art Blakley\'s Jazz Messengers. In the 90s, he began performing solo and working with filmmaker Spike Lee, a collaboration that would include films from Do the Right Thing to BlacKKKlansman. During the same period of time, he began to work in opera, turning Charles Blow\'s 2014 memoir Fire Shut Up in My Bones into an opera for the Metropolitan Opera\'s 2021-2022 season, marking the first time a project from an African-American composer was presented from the Met\'s world-renowned stage.\r\n\r\nBlanchard is in Cleveland for an appearance with The Cleveland Orchestra\'s Mandel Opera and Humanities Festival, where he will perform the music of Wayne Shorter. Before he does, he\'ll join moderator Jeff Johnson on our stage for a conversation about power and his own artistry and what it means to use music to address social challenges.

As the world's eyes follow the Israel-Hamas war, the recent Iran attack, and the repercussions on American campuses and beyond, the need for rigorous reporting and respected journalism has never been more essential. The Forward is the nation\'s most widely read Jewish news outlet, a fiercely independent and non-ideological source for news, culture, and opinion across the political spectrum.\r\n\r\nJodi Rudoren became editor-in-chief of the Forward in 2019 after more than two decades at The New York Times, including a stint as Jerusalem bureau chief. Having personally covered two prior Israel-Hamas wars, in 2012 and 2014, Rudoren has been a leading commentator since Oct. 7, appearing on CNN and MSNBC and speaking at numerous college campuses, synagogues, and more.

When author Richard Rothstein joined the City Club in 2017 for his book The Color of Law, he argued with exacting precision how segregation in America-the incessant kind that continues to dog our major cities and has contributed to so much recent social strife-is the byproduct of explicit government policies at the local, state, and federal level.\r\n\r\nThe Color of Law brilliantly recounted how government at all levels created segregation. Now, Just Action describes how we can begin to undo it. Just Action serves as a blueprint for concerned citizens and community leaders with programs that they can undertake in their own communities to address historical inequities. It provides bona fide answers, based on decades of study and experience, in a nation awash with memes and internet theories.

Last month, billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott announced she was gifting $640 million to 361 small nonprofits out of 6,000 that responded to an open call for applications. It was another round of jaw-dropping and transformative gifts that Scott pledged to dole out \"until the safe is empty\" following her divorce from Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos.\r\n\r\nOn the receiving end are four Cleveland nonprofit organizations--providing a catalyst for high-impact equitable community change right here in our neighborhoods. Each of these organizations shares a mission that aligns with Scott\'s goal to \"advance the voices and opportunities of individuals and families of meager or modest means, and groups who have met with discrimination and other systemic obstacles.\"\r\n\r\nBirthing Beautiful Communities, the LGBT Community Center of Greater Cleveland, and Towards Employment each received $2 million in gifts; and Fairfax Renaissance Development Corp. received $1 million of the latest round of Scott\'s donations.

Richey Piiparinen is a son of Cleveland and one of the city\'s leading researchers on urban poverty and community development. His work has appeared in the Huffington Post, NPR\'s Morning Edition, CBS Evening News, and more. His first book, Rust Belt Chic: A Cleveland Anthology assembled an authentic snapshot of a post-industrial Cleveland. Over the years, Piiparinen has built a reputation on his keen ability to recount why Rust Belt cities like Cleveland have struggled to thrive, all while revealing the promise of what is possible.\r\n\r\nThen in January 2021, Piiparinen would come face-to-face with a glioblastoma diagnosis, an aggressive form of brain cancer. What came next was Octopus Hunting, a collection of fourteen essays on the history and economics of Cleveland. But it is also part memoir of Piiparinen\'s wisdom in the face of life and death, while living in a city in its very own throes of revival. Piiparinen\'s personal experiences deepen the economic discussion, forcing us never to forget that when we are talking about the rise and fall of cities, we are really talking about the people who live in them.

2024 Law Day with Former US Attorney Barbara McQuade\r\nIn democracies, the people rule. For nearly 250 years, Americans have expressed their political views and wishes by speaking their minds and voting in elections. Yet, the information we consume, and a well-informed public is crucial to the health of our democracy. These days, it seems like voters are more polarized than ever before and cannot come to a consensus on much of anything.\r\n\r\nIn Attack from Within, legal scholar and analyst Barbara McQuade argues that American society is strategically being pushed apart by disinformation-the deliberate spreading of lies disguised as truth. Advances in technology including rapid developments in Artificial Intelligence threaten to make the problems even worse by amplifying false claims and manufacturing credibility. McQuade shows us how to identify the ways disinformation is seeping into all facets of our society, and how we can fight against it.