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| clevescene.com | July 15-21, 2020
| clevescene.com | July 15-21, 2020
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CONTENTS JULY 14-21, 2020 • VOL. 50 NO 54
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UPFRONT LIES AND THE LYING LIARS WHO TELL THEM: CLEVELAND EDITION EARLIER THIS MONTH, contradictory statements by Cleveland Police Chief Calvin Williams and Cuyahoga County Sheriff Dave Schilling were frontpage news in The Plain Dealer. At issue were details from the Cleveland demonstrations for George Floyd on May 30, demonstrations which devolved into widespread vandalism and looting after police fired pepper spray, tear gas, flash grenades and rubber and wooden bullets into an overwhelmingly peaceful crowd at the Cuyahoga County Justice Center downtown. Schilling’s testimony before Cuyahoga County Council revealed that many of the assertions Chief Williams had made about the protests, several of which Mayor Frank Jackson cosigned in statements from City Hall, were either partially or fully embellished. One of Williams’ wilder assertions was that protesters had breached the Justice Center the afternoon of May 30. The protesters intended, he claimed — though how he could possibly have known this is unclear — to start fires and release the 1,100 prisoners in the attached county jail. Schilling clarified that no protesters ever breached the Justice Center. He also confirmed the accounts of legal observers who’d said that protesters threw plastic water bottles and food at police officers; not, as Calvin Williams had earlier claimed, rocks and bricks and glass bottles and urine. To their credit, reporters at cleveland.com have reviewed hours of surveillance footage to confirm that Williams lied. But the paper did not call the police chief’s lies lies. They presented the story as one of contradictory interpretations of events, with Schilling and Williams representing two ostensibly valid sides. It’s hard to imagine a gentler headline than the one that appeared on the front page July 2. It soft-pedaled Williams’ blatant lies by describing a mere appearance of confusion. (Was this
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meant to be sarcastic?) That the paper devoted marquee print space to this issue is good. One can surmise that editor Chris Quinn and co. felt responsible for correcting the record, as they were the ones who ran with Williams’ false assertions in the first place. Williams not only fed his malarkey to reporters at press conferences but to the PD/cleveland.com editorial board at a private meeting in the week following the protests. Quinn was initially skeptical of some of Williams’ more transparent lies, for example that the looting and vandalism had been instigated by outside agitators. These agitators were not from Cleveland, Williams stated in a press conference; indeed, were not from the state. They had traveled from parts unknown to Northeast Ohio in order to wreak havoc on small businesses and to inflict bodily harm upon the region’s first responders. The ensuing arrest of two Pennsylvanians, who could hardly be construed as instigators — they traveled to Cleveland to “protest watch” after things were well underway — scanned to discerning viewers like the police’s attempts to justify Williams’ thin geographic claims. On cleveland.com’s news podcast This Week in the CLE, Chris Quinn correctly noted that the “outside agitators” line had been used by police chiefs all across the country. In fact, he recognized, this was a standard line that authority figures always seem to trot out after incidents of unrest, generally without evidence. As in historic cases, the current claims about outside agitators should have been dismissed as nonsense out of hand. And yet, in follow-up episodes, Quinn bought into the narrative of crafty instigators who managed to provoke local opportunists into property destruction and then fled in the dead of night. On that point and on others, it’s important to be clear that Williams has lied from the start. Cleveland. com’s Cory Shaffer has done some
| clevescene.com | July 15-21, 2020
of the most important work in the aftermath of the protests because he has demonstrated clearly that the police narrative was false. Williams and Jackson issued a joint statement on May 31, for example, alleging that “police took enforcement actions including the deployment of munitions after multiple orders given by law enforcement to disperse were ignored.” (Italics added.) According to multiple eyewitness accounts, including my own, this was not the case. Far from “ignoring” orders to disperse, no one had any idea that the orders were being given at all. Shaffer’s reporting documented the feeble (in fact, illegal) police efforts to broadcast these dispersal orders before officers unleashed their weapons upon the crowd. Williams was lying about the dispersal orders and the use of munitions. He was lying about out-of-state agitators. He was lying about the breach of the Justice Center. And he was lying about the degree of provocation by protesters on armed and shielded officers. The local story, then, should not be that there are two competing versions of events from Saturday, May 30: one from Calvin Williams and one from the County Sheriff. Cory Shaffer and others have produced a fairly airtight account of the May 30 demonstrations. It should be a no brainer to conclude, based on that solid reporting, that Williams’ account is wrong. It takes a bit more intellectual chutzpah, (though it’s equally obvious, in my view), to conclude that Williams’ account is intentionally wrong. That is to say, his lies serve a purpose. It’s not like the honorable police chief is flubbing the odd fact this way and the odd fact that way from a messy day with lots of conflicting information. To the contrary, all of his lies have sought to achieve the same goal: to paint the Justice Center protesters as more dangerous, more violent, and more contemptuous of police authority than they actually were.
Why would he do this? Well, one recalls that the atmosphere on the night of May 30 and the days that followed was charged with anxiety. Clevelanders were glued to their phone screens watching videos of riots across the country and were eager to believe a composed and trustworthy leader like Williams. Insulated both by the chaos and by his reputation, Williams must have felt safe to embellish events. He must have known — and Frank Jackson might have, too — these lies would convince many Clevelanders that 1) police officers had been justified in their extravagant use
Photo by Emanuel Wallace
of force at the Justice Center, and 2) that a militarized curfew was necessary to stem the tide of extremism. In a call with reporters last week, Jackson and Williams swore up and down the police chief was “not a liar.” Williams said he “had no need to lie” and claimed that anything he said was based on information he had at the time. These strenuous denials did not rise to the level of refutation, which would have required some evidence. Neither Jackson nor Williams provided any examples to show that the Chief had not lied – an email or audio recording, say,
which would show that Williams had reason to believe protesters breached the Justice Center. If the so-called “information [Williams] had at the time” showed a breach, where is that information? How did Williams come by it? And when it was shown to be incorrect, why didn’t he immediately change his story? It is no longer a question that Williams’ account was wrong, multiple times over. A legitimate defense would now have to include evidence of how and why he believed his erroneous assertions and was confident enough in their veracity to communicate them
to the public and the press. -Sam Allard
Alarming White Opt-Out Rates Have Left Eastside Suburban Schools Segregated at Levels Not Seen Since the 1960s Levels of segregation in some Cleveland-area public school districts are now as high as they were before Mayor Carl Stokes was elected, according to a report from South Euclid native and academic Beth Fry. In several inner-ring suburbs,
they are even worse. But unlike the 1960s, this racial segregation is not perpetuated by a system that demands that educational buildings and services are inherently separated. Black families are not barred from attending white schools. The white students are simply leaving the local public system entirely, and at an alarming rate that’s inextricably linked with race. Cleveland and its inner-ring suburbs have long suffered from the detrimental impacts of “white flight” to outer suburban and rural areas. Systemic and individuallevel racism and classism have cast | clevescene.com | July 15-21, 2020
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UPFRONT areas that are predominantly Black as less valued and less deserving of investments in high-quality economic, housing, and educational opportunities. Still, the report, which comes from Fry’s master’s thesis at Cornell University, indicates that while poor, minority public school districts already face disinvestment due to an unconstitutional funding formula that relies too heavily on property taxes, they also see incredibly high levels of attrition from the white student body. In the city of Cleveland, this white opt-out rate averaged around 70% between 2009-2017. In the East Side suburbs, that rate average was closer to 75%. Fry told Scene she observed this segregation effect first-hand.
DIGIT WIDGET 114 Cleveland’s single day record for number of new confirmed cases of COVD-19, set Friday, July 10, after two consecutive days of 100 new cases.
1,830 Complaints made since March 20 to Cleveland’s Department of Public Health regarding social distancing, mass gatherings, and mask usage. The Steelyard WalMart and TownHall were the two locations with the most complaints.
5 Approximate number of suicides per day in the State of Ohio. Rates of suicide have increased dramatically since 2010. They are highest among men and among those 60 and older.
38 Number of homicide detectives that the U.S. Dept of Justice believes Cleveland needs to properly investigate murders in the city. (Cleveland currently has 19.)
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| clevescene.com | July 15-21, 2020
“As I was growing up,” the Brush alumna said, “you could see in real time this shift of white people moving out of the community or sending their kids to private schools as more Black students enrolled in the school.” Fry began to really dig into the shifts in public school attendance through her work several years ago with South Euclid’s Housing Director, Sally Martin. As they dug into the lived experiences of residents, Fry and Martin heard a common narrative that highlighted the value of diversity. But only for some. As they dug deeper, Fry found a common theme was also apparent: Many, many, many white families were not sending their children to the district schools. Indeed, when Fry set out to research this opt-out issue further as a graduate student, she found the clear and obvious relationship between the loss of white students and the growing number of Black families in the district. The resulting shifts, according to Fry, can clearly be understood as re-segregation. The rapid rate of resegregation suggests that many white families are choosing to bypass the local public education systems in the inner-ring suburbs entirely. They’re sending their kids to private schools, moving to other suburbs, or sending their kids to schools in other, whiter communities. The data is damning: Besides Shaker Heights, which has a white opt-out rate of 47%, all other innerring east side suburbs have rates higher than 50%. South EuclidLyndhurst: 71%. Cleveland HeightsUniversity Heights: 85%. That’s left east side inner-ring suburbs with an average 78% Black enrollment, compared to 4% for west side inner ring suburbs, 67% for the city of Cleveland, and 47% for outer ring east side suburbs. What mechanisms, besides a fear of racial threat, drives white, wealthier families to spend tens of thousands of dollars in private education? State-wide policy efforts that further fuel existing inequities. The EdChoice voucher program is exactly as helpful as its name suggests. It is guided by a belief that systemic inequities can be resolved through better decision making (a claim that has been fully debunked by scholars, activists, and minority groups) and offers a flawed resolution for racist policy making. The program was adopted in
2005 and intended to provide assistance, in the form of funding, for students in low-rated public districts who wanted to attend private schools. In 2013, it was expanded to include an incomebased element allowing even those in high-rated districts to access these funds, should their personal finances make them eligible. But according to a 2016 Fordham Institute report, the students who actually use the vouchers are among the less disadvantaged kids in the eligible school districts. “This finding may be, in part, an artifact of the program’s basic design,” the report notes, “It allows private schools to retain control over admissions, and a child must gain admission into a private school before he or she can apply for a voucher. This multi-step process might be more easily navigated by relatively more advantaged families; their children might also be more likely to meet the private schools’ admissions requirements.” Though the program has been controversial since it was established, predominantly Black and poor school districts continue to lose significant amounts of money as vouchers go to students who already exist in a network likely to set them up for middleclass success. Some of these students, like many of those in the East Side suburbs, already planned to attend non-public schools. Others are the already high-achieving, high-capacity students who do currently attend the local public school, but who have the wherewithal and the “acceptability” to be able to transition to a private school education. Many of these students use their vouchers to attend parochial schools, giving credence to those who think the program is a questionable crossing of the line between church and state. And, according to the Fordham report, “the students who use vouchers to attend private schools have fared worse academically compared to their closely matched peers attending public schools.” Though predominantly Black and brown districts have been up in arms over the EdChoice program for years, last year’s reassessment of school eligibility for vouchers brought new players into the game. When schools in Solon, Avon, Avon Lake, and North Olmsted were added to the list due to a new performance metric, State Senator Matt Dolan (R- Solon) expressed his deep dislike of
program’s expansion. Earlier this year, Dolan and other Republicans in Columbus proposed revisions to the EdChoice program, not because of its negative impact on poor and minority districts, but because of their concern that it would negatively impact “successful” districts. In March 2020, one year after the Cleveland Heights local newspaper reported that the local district had lost over 30% of its funding to vouchers, the state cut back the list of eligible schools to protect Dolan’s constituents. That Solon’s predominantly white school district faced little disinvestment threat, despite its performance concerns, isn’t a surprise considering Fry’s findings. Though Fry’s work didn’t focus on vouchers, “it becomes very clear that the racial diversity is the predictor of what causes the school segregation,” she notes. Still, the issue goes beyond public-private funding to include public funding mechanisms as well. Ohio’s open enrollment system enables students to attend a district school outside of the one they are zoned for, should both districts agree to allow it. When students attend a public school in a different district, the school they join receives funding in exchange for that attendance. According to 2018 data from the state department of education, only twelve schools in Cuyahoga County have open enrollment, half of which are in the inner-ring suburbs, including Brooklyn, CH-UH, East Cleveland, Euclid, Garfield Heights and Shaker Heights. Students in these districts who utilize the open enrollment system attend schools in various areas around the county and state, taking much-needed dollars with them. Indeed, state reports highlight deep cuts in funding to these districts in open enrollment adjustments. And these existing concerns related to individual and intra-school funding have only been further exacerbated by the COVID-19 crisis. In May, Governor Mike DeWine announced a series of funding shifts to school districts across the state. Unsurprisingly, areas that were already struggling will see some of the most significant cuts. Though Fry’s work focuses on the individual family’s decision to opt-out, the systemic nature of this resegregation effort is clear. White, middle and upper-income families in areas that have seen rapid demographic shifts are
incentivized to leave their local districts and the racialized fear that the school district will not provide a high-quality education, a talking point that Fry herself had to push back against as a public school attendee. “It’s about pushing forward the idea that the education is great, the people are great, and you’re in an environment where not everyone is like you, and that in and of itself is an education,” Fry says. As Fry noted in an interview with a South Euclid publication, “For the past 55 years, research has told us that the greatest predictor of educational achievement is socioeconomic status and parental education level. Only about a third of the achievement gap between white and Black students is explained by school quality and classroom characteristics.” But as local schools struggle to actually address the social and economic concerns of the remaining students while hemorrhaging funds, systemic racism and disinvestment threaten that greatness, and the calendar is turned back 60 years. “Cuyahoga County has the fifth highest black-white segregation in the nation,” Fry’s report says. “73% of Greater Cleveland’s black residents would need to move in order for the metropolitan area to achieve integration with whites.” -Hannah Lebovits
Consent Decree Monitor Says McGrath Was Too Lenient With Officer Discipline In a report filed with U.S. District Court Judge Solomon Oliver Monday, the Cleveland Consent Decree Monitor said former Safety Director Michael McGrath had been too lenient in doling out punishment for police misconduct. Having reviewed 39 cases of officer discipline from March, 2018, through May, 2020, Monitor Hassan Aden said that not only did McGrath consistently impose punishments on the low end of the s0-called “disciplinary matrix,” he failed to sufficiently document his rationale for these decisions, even after being instructed to do by the monitoring team. The report found that McGrath’s failure to consistently impose proper discipline, and to do so in a timely manner, was preventing the reestablishment of trust between
the police and the community, one of the central goals of the Consent Decree. The report was the first review of officer discipline as meted out by the Safety Director. It focused on McGrath, as opposed to Chief Calvin Williams, because in Cleveland, serious discipline (anything more than a 10-day suspension), must be authorized by the Safety Director. The findings, in aggregate, were serious indictments of McGrath’s judgement and performance. These included McGrath’s abiding preference for suspensions over terminations, even when terminations were advised in the court-approved disciplinary matrix. McGrath also routinely chose not to impose serious discipline for integrity-related offenses. Fully 50 percent of the cases reviewed involved deception, the report stated, yet in only three of them was an officer terminated. In all 23 of these cases, officers “either knowingly and intentionally lied to or withheld information from” Internal Affairs, the Office of Professional Standards, police command staff or a judge. In the Consent Decree’s revised disciplinary matrix, untruthfulness now carries a presumption of termination. “Going forward,” the memo stated, “the issues raised by these cases suggest that substantial progress must still be made by the City to achieve compliance with the Settlement Agreement with respect to accountability, transparency and officer discipline.” Accountability has long been an issue for the police department Michael McGrath oversaw as Chief and then as Safety Director. Mayor Frank Jackson, however, recently defended his promotion of McGrath in 2014, insisting that without McGrath, in the aftermath of the police killings of Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams, (#137shots), there would have been no police accountability at all. McGrath resigned abruptly last month due to what he called “personal and unavoidable circumstances.” He has been replaced, in an interim capacity, by Karrie Howard, formerly a city prosecutor who retains close ties to Mayor Frank Jackson. -Sam Allard
scene@clevescene.com @clevelandscene
Mail-in Voting is Bad for Democracy. And More Importantly, Me. I ONCE CONSIDERED joining the Marines, then realized I could better serve my country as a Civil War reenactor. If you saw me in my Stonewall Jackson outfit, you’d know why the Daughters of the Confederacy email blast once cited my “stirring performance” as “the finest of the day, marred only by repeated falls from his horse.” I mention this to establish my patriotic bona fides. For I come to you with a grave warning: We’re about to witness the greatest voting fraud since “Brokeback Mountain” won three Oscars. Agents of the radical left – like Ohio Governor Mike DeWine – are conspiring to steal the coming election. Their weapon of mass destruction: expanding mail-in voting, a scourge rising in socialist hotbeds from Kansas to Nebraska, Montana to South Dakota. Their cover story is so-called “safety.” They argue that the coronavirus makes in-person voting lethal, that no one should have to die to pick the next Geauga County auditor. But their real plan is clear: Mail allows more people to vote. Which favors candidates I don’t like. Which can only mean massive fraud. Yes, I know what the so-called “facts” say: That voter fraud is as common as getting impregnated by a wolverine. That even President Trump’s own Commission on Election Integrity could find no evidence of fraud. But that’s not the point. The point is that if you just keep saying something over and over, it becomes true without needing facts. And the mail – while perfectly fine for such non-essential matters as tax returns, paychecks, driver’s licenses, bank statements, passports, and Social Security cards – is no place to hold an election. First off, nobody even knows how to use the mail anymore. What if my buddy Jim thinks he’s redeeming an oil change coupon, only to find out he voted a straight Green Party ticket? Second off, it makes the election a “safe space,” putting the fate of the republic in the hands of the weak. My 90-year-old grandpa votes by mail. He claims he fought in Korea, even though he uses a walker. Are we supposed to believe he joined the charge at Inchon when he can only move 30-feet an hour? Liar. Then there’s the diabetics and cancer survivors who complain about their so-called “compromised immune systems.” I have seasonal allergies, and you don’t hear me whining about it. If single moms can’t get off work or find a babysitter, they shouldn’t get knocked up or have a job in the first place. As I’m sure we can all agree, government should be run like a business. And businesses know how to deal with malcontents. Have you ever called AT&T customer service? You wait on hold for 30 minutes before being disconnected. That’s how you weed out the snowflakes who aren’t serious about matters of state or getting their internet fixed. I could see why mail voting might be useful, like if I broke my legs, which is what the guys at work have threatened to do if I don’t stop talking about Fortnite. But what good is it when it only helps other people? It’s not fair that I diligently participate in democracy, only to get out-voted. If people who don’t matter can cast ballots, what will become of our great leaders like Jim Jordan, Ted Cruz, and that guy from Tennessee who thinks abortion is murder except when it involves his mistresses? If Mike DeWine and the radical left want to rig an election, they should at least have the self-respect to do it the right way. Like wiping out voter registrations. Or closing polling sites. Or making the lines three hours long in black neighborhoods. Or gerrymandering districts so they look like a sea dragon. On November 3, you’ll find me at the polls in my Stonewall Jackson dress grays, sword glimmering under the fluorescent lights, the old ladies trembling with reverence. A patriot doesn’t vote by mail. A patriot stands to be counted. -Pete Kotz | clevescene.com | July 15-21, 2020
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| clevescene.com | July 15-21, 2020
FEATURE BLIND SPOT
The city of Cleveland has declared racism a public health crisis. Staff say discrimination plagues its own health department Rachel Dissell and Jordyn Grzelewski Photo by Erik Drost/FlickrCC
Cleveland City Council, in an “emergency” move last month, declared racism a public health crisis.
The resolution, set against the backdrop of a nationwide reckoning over anti-Black racism and amid a pandemic that has taken a disproportionate toll on Black communities, followed downtown protests against police brutality. It was backed with promises to form a working group that would “develop strategies” to tackle inequities and was followed by a fiery screed adopted by more than 70 community organizations agreeing to face the issue “head on.” “We have to look at the City of Cleveland and ask ourselves, ‘Have we been a part of the problem? How have we been doing business?’” Councilman Basheer Jones, a cosponsor of the resolution, said at a June 5th press conference on the stairs of City Hall. Jones was talking about Cleveland’s safety forces, which don’t reflect the city’s racial makeup (about half of city residents are Black) , as well as local banks and foundations. But if the city wants to prove it’s ready to turn a tide that has resulted in an embarrassingly high Black infant mortality rate, a lead poisoning problem that all but throws open prison doors for Black boys before they start kindergarten, and acknowledge — not on paper or maps or at a press conference — that racism and the stress it causes is toxic to Black lives, there’s one place it might start: its own public health department. (Editor’s Note: After months of refusing to answer specific questions for this story, and after being told the story would be published this week, the city on Friday afternoon told Scene that, based on staff calls and emails, it re-launched an investigation into allegations of discrimination in the department, which will be led by Mayor Jackson’s executive assistant Martin Flask, but otherwise had no comment.)
Not a ‘healthy place to be’ No representative of the city’s public health department spoke at that June 5 press conference. It’s not clear why. “The timeliness of this couldn’t be more apropos,” Natoya Walker Minor, the city’s chief of public affairs, said speaking on behalf of the city administration that day. “This allows us to take a deep dive into structural racism and its health consequences.” It’s a message that at least one health department employee said felt “like a joke.” For nearly a year before the proclamations and promises, health department staff were filing complaints, resigning and, in recent months, talking to reporters about what they deemed to be a toxic culture within the department — one
that was particularly centered on and harmful to Black and brown women. It was these employees’ job to tackle public health issues compounded by the toxic stress of racism and long-standing racial inequities in health care, including infant mortality, HIV, and, now, COVID-19. Yet, many say that discrimination, micro-aggressions and outright racism within their own department made it difficult for them to carry out these urgent tasks. It was a problem so pronounced that several white women quit their jobs, citing the mistreatment of their coworkers of color. As Stephanie Pike Moore, a white data epidemiologist who resigned in February, put it: “This isn’t a healthy place to be.” It’s this department that will be tapped to help the city fulfill such
a grand promise, and for staffers who describe permissive racism and discrimination, that promise rings especially hollow.
A ‘bullying’ culture Six months earlier, CDPH, long beset by problems, was on the hot seat when it — once again — lost a big grant. This time it was $1.5 million in state funding to prevent the spread of HIV and other sexuallytransmitted infections. The city performed particularly poorly in its outreach to at-risk populations, including young Black men, state officials said. City Council hastily scheduled a meeting to call for answers. At the back of the room, the health workers who ran the program listened as higher-ups — Walker Minor, Public Health Director Merle | clevescene.com | July 15-21, 2020
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FEATURE Gordon and Health Commissioner Persis Sosiak — told council members that, despite the failure to manage the HIV grant, “deficiencies and problems” in the department were being addressed. Missing from the meeting was Tammie Jones, a Black woman, and the HIV program’s longtime coordinator. Jones was described that day by city officials as having “institutional knowledge and deep roots” in the community, and as the program’s “one constant.” What they didn’t share while heaping praise on her was that she had resigned in August, saying the stress and “nonexistent” support had become unbearable. “The current culture and atmosphere at [Cleveland Department of Public Health] is that of bullying, very demeaning, verbal put-downs of any work effort,” Jones wrote to her bosses in an exit interview. During the hearing, Walker Minor framed the issues as part of a transformation of the department. “We are, and have been, in a space of working towards a change in culture,” she said. Gordon and city leaders have said tough changes were needed to ensure the department was positioned for the future of public health. Former and current health department employees, including highly-respected and educated health professionals, however, say Gordon’s way of getting things done includes bullying employees and ostracizing anyone who questions her decisions. They acknowledged that Gordon inherited a chronically depleted department, but said her laser focus on documenting the department’s priorities, on paper, to attain national accreditation, overshadowed the onthe-ground work that matters most to citizens in a city with vast health challenges and disparities. And, they said, while she sought publicly to recognize racism’s impact on health and lifespan, she failed to face up to — and even exacerbated — the problems it caused within the ranks of the department she ran. In some cases, they said, Gordon privately sought to downplay the depth of Cleveland’s disproportionate health outcomes, ordering specific numbers withheld from public reports and telling workers to include more “positive” health data. The consequence of her management style, employees said,
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| clevescene.com | July 15-21, 2020
was a toxic work environment that caused or worsened stress-related health issues of employees. It led to formal complaints of harassment; retaliation against those who spoke up; and discrimination and microaggressions against Black and Latinx employees. Overwhelmingly, current and former employees said they were speaking out not only because the environment was unfair for employees, but because they were heartbroken that the department serving a city of nearly 400,000 is unable to respond to persistent public health issues like infant mortality. If the department is sick, Pike Moore, the former CDPH epidemiologist, said, it can’t help Clevelanders be healthy. Those worries have been amplified by the coronavirus pandemic, especially as the virus has infected and killed Black, Latinx and Native Americans at higher rates than white Americans, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention attributes to “long-standing systemic health and social inequities.” Cleveland appears to follow that trend, with 60% of reported coronavirus infections among Black residents, though they comprise only about half the city’s population.
New leadership, same challenges It was a tumultuous time at the public health department when Gordon became director in 2016. Her predecessor had been forced to resign in the wake of a Plain Dealer series revealing that the city’s lead investigation unit had failed to inspect thousands of homes where children were poisoned. The mayor had fired the health commissioner. The state had just suspended a minority health grant. Pressure was mounting to address urgent public health crises, including the city’s high infant mortality rate and the skyrocketing number of opioid-overdose deaths. On top of that, the Republican National Convention was coming to town, which required CDPH to do extensive planning, train staff, prepare for possible emergencies, coordinate with a slew of other agencies, and inspect food sold at the event. While there was some hope among health workers that Gordon would be an improvement from her predecessors, employees were “aghast,” as one former manager put it, that the city would hire yet another director who lacked public
health credentials. She was hired, inexplicably, over an individual who former employees described as a “gold standard” candidate. Most staff found out about the hiring in a city press release. Gossip followed that Gordon was hired because she had a cozy relationship with Mayor Frank Jackson from when they had served together on city council in the 1990s. Gordon saw her mission as righting the ship. For more than 50 years, helmed by a rotating cast of leaders with little public health experience, the department has struggled with inadequate staffing and funding — some of which comes from the city, but most of which comes from grants and other outside sources. When Gordon arrived, CDPH had a total budget of about $15 million, whittled down from about $25 million the decade prior before the foreclosure crisis. The numbers have rebounded a bit in the last few years under Gordon, with the help of an income tax increase, which was used to hire some new employees. Still, public health makes up just a sliver — 1.6% — of the city’s $675 million general-fund budget. General fund dollars fund just over half of CDPH’s positions, with the rest supported by grants. That means that jobs and programs are constantly in flux. That’s especially problematic for a department that does not have a strong record of administering grants or making hires in a timely manner. Meanwhile, the city devotes the lion’s share of its budget — 55% — to public safety, which includes the police department. Jackson was asked in June, during a video interview with The Appeal, which covers justice issues, whether he’d consider shifting 5% of the police budget to public health. The answer was blunt: No. (Jackson said that wasn’t because he didn’t think it was a decent idea, but it simply wasn’t a “panacea.” Businesses, philanthropy and the community had to pitch in too, he said in a familiar refrain.) Gordon’s tenure as director has had successes, including the department’s handling of preparations for the RNC; bringing the lead inspection program back into compliance; and CDPH attaining national accreditation. The progress the department has made, however, has come at a cost, according to current and former employees. Within a year of Gordon’s arrival, employees started jumping ship.
Since 2017, at least 30 employees, or more than a quarter of those employed that year, have resigned or fled to other city departments. That includes eight epidemiologists who help identify the causes and patterns of diseases and a few who have, until resigning in recent months, been involved with emergency preparedness and response during the coronavirus pandemic. These workers are responsible for everything from monitoring potentially worrisome upticks in the number of flu cases to studying ways to prevent violence in the community to tackling the city’s high rate of infant mortality. These are the workers that elsewhere have played a vital role in the response to coronavirus cases, which are again surging.
Corrective action Toward the end of her 17-year tenure with the city, it sometimes took Tammie Jones hours to convince herself to go to work. And when she did arrive at the health department, she was often so stressed that she cried at her desk. “No one seemed to care,” Jones wrote last year on an exit interview form. The HIV program Jones ran expanded in 2019 to cover a sixcounty area. The added territory would have been stressful under ideal circumstances, but even before that, the city was struggling with its obligations to hire staff, get provider contracts signed, and to step up testing of the populations most at risk for HIV exposure: young Black men and intravenous drug users. City workers mostly blamed a burdensome bureaucracy for the department’s inability to meet deadlines, a problem that for years the state had let slide. Late in 2018, the city was put on notice by the state that it would lose the grant if it couldn’t keep its promises. In December, Gordon publicly acknowledged that her health department didn’t meet those expectations, despite work the department had done to improve its accountability. In the previous five years, state health officials had put in place “corrective action plans” for at least four CDPH programs: the lead investigation unit that failed to inspect thousands of homes, a food inspection unit, a reproductive health program and the HIV program.
In the past, the department had been allowed to flub deadlines, miss testing targets and delay contracts, Gordon said. But no more. From Gordon’s perspective, she was doing the work necessary to change the department’s organization. That was not always welcomed by employees, she has told city leaders and reporters. Jones, however, wrote that HIV program workers were expected to accomplish the impossible with “non-existent” support from Health Commissioner Persis Sosiak and Gordon. Rather than helping Jones and the team work through city policy and bureaucracy, Jones said the women in charge verbally attacked and threatened the staff with changes or punishment if they didn’t meet the goals. The stress, eventually, was too much. “I was excited for a new leadership,” Jones wrote. “But that quickly turned out not to be a good match for the health department. “Having a leader who is unknowledgeable and unwilling to learn how you positively impact the community both internally and externally does not make for a good Cleveland Department of Public Health.” Gordon did not respond to multiple requests for comment, including a list of written questions sent in March to her, city communications officials and Walker Minor that included specific employee complaints. But in an interview with the city’s human resources department in January, Gordon defended herself against some of these claims. She denied that under her leadership the department hired more white employees or employees of color were targeted in disciplinary processes, saying she left most of those decisions to her commissioners. After rebuffing reporters’ requests for interviews about the allegations for months and declining to respond to detailed lists of questions about health department employees assertions and complaints, the city late Friday sent out an email to employees and City Council leaders announcing it was going to launch an investigation after receiving “several emails and telephone calls from staff within the Cleveland Department of Public Health “ that “center around questions and concerns on department moral, employee workplace complaints, workforce attrition and departmental management styles.”
It also announced that Marty Flask, an executive assistant to Jackson, would lead an investigation into complaints and help administer a workforce improvement plan. “The City of Cleveland promotes a workplace that values and respects the dignity of the individual and that is free of harassment and unlawful discrimination based on sex, race, color, religion, national origin, age, marital status, sexual orientation, disability, military/ veteran status and any other basis protected by state, or local law which has jurisdiction over the employee. Harassing and discriminatory behaviors are unlawful and will not be tolerated,” the email said.
A ‘divisive and hostile’ culture Some employees who left the department reported positive experiences, often noting in exit interviews that they were leaving for better pay or the chance to advance their careers after gaining experience with the city. But many who left cited one specific problem: culture. Over six months, reporters interviewed nearly 20 current and former CDPH employees, as well as others who work on public-health related issues in the city. Some agreed to be named. Others, who still work for the city or for agencies that rely on city contracts or cooperation, asked to remain anonymous. Reporters also reviewed dozens of resignation letters, exit interview forms, grievances, civil rights investigator interviews, and complaints of discrimination, harrassment and retaliation filed with the city or outside agencies. Those agencies included the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Ohio Civil Rights Commission. Some documents were obtained through public records requests; others were provided by the workers. What documents and interviews portray is a culture that is deeply toxic, particularly for Black women. A workplace where leaders are rude and threatening, where people who question decisions or speak up are ostracized. A place driven by politics and paperwork instead of public health outcomes. In December, the week following the city council hearing on the HIV grant, Lauren Bottoms, a highlyrespected epidemiologist for the MomsFirst program, an initiative central to reducing Black infant mortality, resigned. Bottoms listed salary inequities,
a lack of transparency and the way the department’s leaders treated staff among her reasons for leaving. Department leadership seemed to lose composure when they were stressed, she observed. “The tone leadership used to speak to others in the office sometimes came across as accusatory and condescending,” she wrote in a resignation letter. Multiple employees said the work environment took a toll on their mental or physical health, and in some cases, ironically, exacerbated existing health conditions. One former employee who had worked for the department for nine years wrote in her exit interview that her choice to leave in September 2019 was “purely because of the negative culture of the department and its leadership.” Toni Tell, who worked in health administration, called the culture “divisive and hostile.” She recounted one meeting where Gordon “pounded her fist on the table and growled at me.” “Leading by fear and punishment is the norm,” Tell, a Black woman, wrote. “There is no opportunity to disagree with decisions that may negatively impact the department and city.” Another former employee who worked in an administrative role told reporters the environment was “unstable,” “negative” and “toxic,” and that she left for another job because she felt her health was suffering. A “perfect storm” of systemic, flawed processes; management’s failure to leverage talent; and an inefficient bureaucracy set up employees for failure, she said. “There were just so many barriers, and so many reasons to get defeated, and things that just really harmed everyone’s morale,” she said. In many documented instances, it was Black women who felt disrespected and broken down by the culture — as if they were always being watched, held to a higher standard or prevented from succeeding. Take Sheena Fryerson, an epidemiologist who was given the task of using health, crime and other data to look at Cleveland’s violence issues — shootings and murders — through a public health lens. Fryerson, who talked to state civil rights investigators in March as part of a complaint filed by a colleague, explained that, on one hand, it felt like she “couldn’t go to the bathroom without it being assumed I wasn’t doing my work.” But then she’d meet nothing but
One former employee who had worked for the department for nine years said that her choice to leave in September 2019 was “purely because of the negative culture of the department and its leadership.” resistance from her own supervisor when it came to publishing reports or getting permission to share what she found with committees created for the purpose of coming up with violence prevention strategies. Fryerson said she went to human resources to no avail and, after it became clear her work was “blacklisted,” she stopped producing work for the health department, instead working with a different city office that focused on prevention and intervention. “We all go through our different struggles with the administration with the health department,” Fryerson told the investigator. “What is common is that they don’t treat white people this way … You can’t help but think, ‘Why do I have to be treated a different way?’” In an interview with the city’s human resources department, Gordon denied that management was not allowing Fryerson work to be published. She attributed this to not being able to publish all data on the department’s website and Fryerson’s work at times needing “multiple corrections.” “Ms. Fryerson’s work has not routinely been published for a variety of reasons; not because Ms. Fryerson is African American and Ms. Romig is Caucasian,” Gordon told an interviewer. White employees also lodged complaints about the department’s culture. David Gretick, the department’s mental health director, quietly resigned in 2017 after 9 years with the department after it became clear that, even with new leadership, the department would not change, he said. Gretick didn’t speak out because, as he put it: “I’m not a flamethrower.” | clevescene.com | July 15-21, 2020
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FEATURE In a personal email to Walker Minor, who had temporarily managed the department, Gretick, who is white, called the administration’s communications and actions toward staff “disrespectful, disingenuous, secretive, compartmentalized and opaque.” Transparency was expected of staff but they did not get it in return. The department never recognized the achievements of its employees, he wrote: “It is one of the reasons that morale in the division is abysmal. The significance of this cannot be downplayed. It is absolutely a contributor to the exodus which the division has been experiencing.” Gretick said he experienced this as opioid overdose deaths of Clevelanders jumped, killing 249 Clevelanders in 2016 and 353 in 2017. Despite years of addiction experience and community connections, he wasn’t tapped for help. As overdose deaths rose, Gretick sought to partner in 2015 with a well-regarded program to widely distribute naloxone and to provide opioid education. “It surprised me how ambivalent the department was when I was trying to bring Project Dawn to the city,” he said. Despite being stymied, he ran the clinic for two years, scheduling his life around when it was open, operating the clinic on Christmas and New Years Eve, and taking only a handful of vacation and sick days in a 2-year period. On one of those occasions, he was asked, “Who authorized this?” “I felt good doing it,” Gretick said. But the efforts were “never applauded.” At one point, Gretick said, an employee who processed claims resigned and wasn’t replaced. That meant he had to learn that job, too, and was castigated for falling behind and blamed for the program being deemed “unsustainable” by the city’s fiscal office. Gordon has said she has an “open door” policy and employees are free to bring her their concerns. Some employees, like Gretick, said they were met with defensiveness when they tried. Employee after employee described a boss who was calm, demure, and almost meek in public but who, in the office, screamed at staff and cut people out of conversations and decisions if they questioned or disagreed with her.
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One former employee recalled Gordon “going off” on her “about how people were undermining her efforts.” The woman, who worked for a health planning program for five years, asked that her name not be used because she still works in the health field. “She was literally yelling at me in her office … I was in tears. So then she yelled at me because I was crying. It was like being scolded by a parent. It wasn’t a professional work environment. And from that point on, it was like I didn’t exist to her.”
Allegations of discrimination While some employees walked away, others filed complaints or grievances that alleged they were treated unfairly or discriminated against. The city has rejected most of the allegations and many are still working their way through the grievance process. In one instance last year, employees in the Air Quality division of the department filed a complaint that they were interrogated by police officers to figure out who sent an anonymous email to the department head, David Hearne, about issues with his leadership. That grievance was still pending in March. One employee, Karen Aluma, whose work included identifying and tracking infectious disease patterns, filed three grievances in late 2018 and early 2019, accusing her supervisor of discrimination. A trained physician, born in Colombia, she argued that her work was subject to additional monitoring, her sick time was questioned and she was given housekeeping tasks that her co-workers were not. Eventually, she filed a complaint with the local office of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which is investigating. The office does not share information about complaints until investigations are completed. Aluma also filed a complaint with the Ohio Civil Rights Commission, which found there was not enough evidence that she was discriminated against based on her age or country of origin. The commission vacated that finding as part of an appeals process and is reconsidering the case, a spokeswoman said. Aluma, currently the city’s only specialist with experience in tracking infectious diseases (other than Romig), declined to discuss the grievances and complaints with reporters. Several of Aluma’s co-workers wrote letters, shared with city and
union officials, backing up her assertions that she and another employee, a Black woman, were treated differently. Others were witnesses for her case with the state civil right commission. They included Wendy Foster, who resigned from the department, in part, because she witnessed what she felt was “blatant discrimination” by Katie Romig, the city’s chief epidemiologist. Romig, who supervises disease surveillance employees, was “disrespectful, dismissive, impatient and rude” toward Aluma and made what she felt were unwarranted comments about the woman’s accented English and ability to do her job, according to an email written by Foster. “I didn’t feel like my speaking up at the time would have made any impact on improving the environment, so, unfortunately I decided to resign rather than continue to witness blatant discrimination and racism,” Foster wrote. Reached by reporters, Foster said she quit because the disease surveillance specialists were a team and she felt uncomfortable that Romig, who is white, seemed to view her as a buddy or confidant, while treating a woman of color differently. Pike Moore also spoke up, reporting to human resources that she was treated better than two of her colleagues who were minorities. She said she was encouraged to do work outside the scope of her position, and was allowed to reach out to the state health department and partner agencies with questions. Aluma, on the other hand, had to fill out a form to call anyone as part of her duties. While Pike Moore’s submitted work was accepted as-is with minimal edits, her two minority colleges were subject to “far more scrutiny,” she said. In an interview, Pike Moore cited a number of examples, some of which might seem minor on their own: employees having their names removed from work so they don’t get credit, being left off of emails thanking people for work or being more closely supervised for the same work. But when added up, those things were problematic, she said. Romig participated in a civil rights commission interview, telling the investigator that multiple hospitals complained about Aluma’s repeated calls to track down information on patients with infectious diseases and that she needed to learn a new state disease reporting system better. Romig provided emails from some hospitals
to document their concerns. A labor relations manager for the city concluded that Aluma and Romig shared the blame for the deterioration of their working relationship. “It appears that Ms. Aluma is a difficult employee to manage who has a hard time with authority, and Ms. Romig is a new inexperienced manager who needs classes to help her learn to treat employees and perhaps not engage in such stringent micromanagement,” he wrote. He determined that the department “has some work to do” but was “not confident that the issues stem from discriminatory or retaliatory animus.” It’s hard, though, employees argue, to look at what is a systemic and cultural problem on a caseby-case basis when it needs to be examined as a whole. “It’s very pronounced and has been called out even by white staff members, and it’s caused a problem regarding staff retention,” Frances Mills, the director of the Office of Minority Health told the commission investigator. “The operation of their office is completely toxic and has had a negative impact on the operation of the health department.” Mills pointed to Gordon as the larger influence for the department’s problems, according to the city labor relations report, calling the director’s behavior “rude and mean” and the organization as a whole a “disaster” that is led by politics, not plans or benchmarks for improvement.
Double standards Publicly, the department leaders talk about the importance of recognizing the effects of stress and racism on health and about how certain diseases disproportionately impact minority populations, Pike Moore said. Internally, she said, their actions seemed to perpetuate that stress for minority employees. In some cases, she said, Gordon sought to stifle data that she believed would make Cleveland “look bad” compared to the wider county. As an example, Pike Moore pointed out that Cleveland’s data was withheld from the 2019 Community Health Needs Assessment because Gordon didn’t want city disease statistics next to those for Cuyahoga County, which is whiter and healthier. After raising concerns, Pike Moore said she was removed from projects with no explanation, not
allowed to attend professional development and cut out of any direct conversations with department leaders. She later filed a retaliation complaint with the city, which was unresolved when she resigned on Feb. 14. Gordon, in the same human resources interview, was adamant that Pike Moore’s assertions about the report were not true. In the months prior to her resignation, Pike Moore also grew worried about the department’s lack of urgency in informing residents about an uptick in seasonal flu cases, after she spotted a concerning trend with younger patients being hospitalized. For several weeks, Pike Moore said she provided her supervisors with updates on rising hospitalization rates but got no response. Later, she was told it was her job to provide the information but not to decide when to tell the public about it, according to an email reviewed by reporters. About 11 days later, a young patient died. After a second young patient died from the flu, department leaders decided to put out a news release. The release included numbers incorrectly cut and pasted from Pike Moore’s weekly report, and a corrected version still included inaccurate numbers of flu hospitalizations, Pike Moore said. It was also disconcerting, she said, that she asked for, and never received, information about protocol around the rapidly spreading novel coronavirus, which the department was starting to receive calls about in late January as the virus spread beyond China. In response, she said Romig told her just to forward calls to Romig’s number. At that time, only a few calls had come in. Pike Moore was concerned about what would happen if the virus were to spread: “When you have untrained individuals taking over this space, they easily get overwhelmed and require a great deal of outside support, assistance and guidance which, during an outbreak such as this, you do not necessarily have the time to do.” When cases of coronavirus started to spread in Cleveland, Aluma and Fryerson, the department’s other epidemiologist, a Black woman, were not involved in the response, Instead, Gordon, Sosiak and Romig holed up and brought in medical students, the heads of other department divisions and students to contact patients who tested positive or those exposed to the virus, several department employees said. City communications officials
While Pike Moore’s submitted work was accepted as-is with minimal edits, she said, her two minority colleges were subject to “far more scrutiny.” did not respond to questions about the makeup or experience of those working on the department’s contact tracing team. Since March, in the midst of the pandemic, four health department employees intimately involved in the emergency response to the virus resigned from the department. The health department’s own human resource manager, who handled the complaints from Aluma and Pike Moore, filed his own complaint with the city last year. Dreyon Wynn, a Black man, alleged that Gordon retaliated against him by blocking him from doing his job, excluding him from meetings, spreading rumors about him and “sowing discord” with employees he supervised after rejecting his recommendations for handling one of the complaints, according to public records obtained from the city. “I am tired of the intimidation and bullying that I am experiencing for standing up for the right thing and doing what I am trained to do as an HR professional,” Wynn wrote. The city dismissed the internal complaint of retaliation. Wynn declined to comment for this story. Gordon denied Wynn’s claims to city labor relations staff and said it was Wynn who refused to do his job to properly investigate Karen Aluma’s grievance, even after she directed him to. City Councilman Blaine Griffin, who chairs the Health and Human Services committee, said there’s a “natural friction” that arises when fitting social initiatives into a government bureaucracy. “I think this is what we are seeing,” he said. On top of that, he said, there’s immense pressure to deal with the inequities and health disparities in Cleveland, which probably adds to the stress of the caregivers and employees who serve the public. As for the most serious allegations of discrimination and
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FEATURE retaliation, Griffin said those should be fully investigated by third parties outside City Hall. In the coming year, Griffin said the administration and council should examine what types of systems could be put in place to care for staff working in a stressful environment. As for how the city works toward treating racism as a public health crisis, with the discord in its own public health department? Part of that work, Griffin said, might need to be for the department to put its own “oxygen mask” on first.
No board
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In one important way, CDPH is unique: Out of 113 local health departments in Ohio, it is the only one that is not overseen by an independent board, which often includes medical experts. It doesn’t even have a full-time medical director. The department operates in the political swirl of City Hall, which makes for a working environment that is frequently hampered by politics and bureaucracy, according to CDPH employees. “The service aspect always seemed to be overshadowed by the political aspect,” one former employee said. “It didn’t matter if you were doing what’s right, it mattered who you were doing it with. That was always very frustrating. I had a little too romantic a vision of public service.” In the department’s longtroubled history, establishing an independent board or forming a city health commission with an advisory board have, at times, been suggested as possible solutions. Another recommendation has been merging with the Cuyahoga County Board of Health, whose members are appointed by an advisory council of government leaders from communities across the county. Walking away from the health department wasn’t an easy choice for Pike Moore or others interviewed for this story who shared how deeply they care about the mission of public health, and who envisioned spending their careers improving the lives and health outcomes for Cleveland residents. It can be hard for the public to appreciate the role of public health because much of the work is “invisible” until something goes
wrong, like an outbreak or epidemic, Pike Moore said. The emergence of coronavirus made it even tougher as it became painfully apparent how Cleveland was underperforming compared to the county department, whose leaders provide regular updates to the public and openly answer questions. There are bright spots, she said, like the work of Mills, who has raised the profile of the Office of Minority Health. That includes working with partners to bring the short film “Toxic: A Black Woman’s Story” into the community and pressing important and realistic conversations about how racism is harming Black women and contributes to their babies dying at far higher rates than white babies. But even Mills, who has been praised by community leaders for her work, can spot the irony inside of her own city hall department. Mills told state civil rights investigators on March 30 that Romig, “absolutely” treated people of color differently than white people. “There is no one holding [Romig] accountable for her behavior and I think that she could benefit a great deal from supervision and training on how to work with diverse people,” Mills told the investigator. “I say this from my expertise as an equity professional.” It seems that Mills will get her wish. On Sunday, June 28, Walker Minor emailed the health department staff to announce that, soon, diversity training would commence and would cover things like: bias, unconscious bias and other “barriers to diversity and inclusion that limit/impact a culture of positive behaviors, attitudes, and teamwork where everyone feels equally valued and appreciated.” The training, she wrote, was an “essential step toward creating and maintaining a meaningful, respectful and inclusive workplace.” (Not mentioned in the email was that “diversity and inclusion” training was recommended by the city’s human resources department in April.) But healing what ails the department will take more than a lecture, employees said. And more than a promise. It will take the city treating racism in its own public health department like the crisis its leaders say it is.
scene@clevescene.com @clevelandscene
EAT IT’S WEIRD OUT THERE
On All Saints’ gorgeous patio, life can look and feel normal, for better or worse
IF IT WEREN’T FOR THE SMALL pieces of fabric covering the faces of the servers, the scene on the patio at All Saints Public House in Battery Park could have been mistaken for one that took place pre-Covid. Approximately 60 guests were scattered across the picturesque landscape, one graced with towering trees, aromatic fire pit, murmuring water feature and pleasant soundtrack emanating from unseen speakers. Out here, it appeared as if everything was back to normal in the world. But of course nothing is back to normal, despite what some diners elect to believe. As case numbers continue to move in the wrong direction in Cuyahoga County, there is a simultaneous uptick in outdoor dining as glorious summer weather continues to lure weary quarantiners from their nests. After being forced to close in mid-March, restaurants were allowed to reopen for outdoor business on May 15 and indoor dining the following week. Many held off doing so for any number of personal and professional reasons, but now it seems like the floodgates are fully ajar. What I have observed over the course of a few weeks is a wide range of behavior from both operators and customers with respect to following mandated and suggested safety policies. One restaurant checked temperatures and required guests to wear masks when entering and moving throughout the restaurant, while others, like All Saints, appear to take a hands-off approach. That hands-off approach directly translates (during our visit at least) to a masks-off approach by most diners, almost none of whom opted to wear one when checking in with the host, moving through the public space or speaking with their server. Seated on this meticulously landscaped patch of earth, it’s easy to get lulled into a false sense of security, especially while sipping a bracing Apricot Smash ($10), an herby elixir made with Maker’s Mark, apricot preserves and fresh sage. The kitchen was sold out of
Photo by Doug Trattner
By Douglas Trattner
the gazpacho so we demanded to speak to the manager. Just kidding, we simply swapped it with the grilled Caesar salad ($8), a bisected canoe of romaine that is charred and garnished with parmesan
an evening, each server will have been in close proximity to dozens of people. The absolute least we can do is return the favor. We move onto a trio of excellent crab cakes ($12) and a pair of
ALL SAINTS PUBLIC HOUSE 1261 W. 76TH ST., CLEVELAND 216-675-0028 ALLSAINTSPUBLICHOUSE.COM
shavings, white anchovies, croutons and pink peppercorns. A thick, garlicky dressing is served on the side. Watching the scene play out as it did on that particular patio on that particular night, I couldn’t help but think of the laborers’ lament that goes, “We’re servers, not servants.” My wife and I elect to wear masks when entering a restaurant and speaking with our server because we believe that it reduces the risk of harm to the staff, most of whom do not enjoy employer-sponsored healthcare. As a diner, I am in contact with only one or two employees, but over the course of
Popeye-sized fried chicken legs ($9) in a curry-spiced batter. Those items are followed by a heaping platter of fish and chips ($14) sporting flaky white cod beneath a beer batter shell. More than just a moniker, the lobster risotto ($18) contains plump nuggets of the namesake seafood awash in a rich, satisfying rice base. Few businesses are struggling more than restaurants right now, so we need to support them if they are to have any chance of making it through the pandemic. Dire predictions estimate that anywhere from 20- to 50- and even 75-percent of independent restaurants will
close permanently before an effective vaccine is rolled out. Ordering take-out is a safe way to support them, as is dining out safely and quickly. Because seating is drastically reduced right now thanks to social distancing and a public that prefers eating under the stars, diners should eat and make way for the next table. This is no time to camp out. Already we’re seeing restaurants that recently reopened their doors for the first time in months close them after an employee tested positive. We are also seeing states reverse course for the entire industry, with governors forcing bars and restaurants to return to delivery and takeout-only service. With the numbers going the way they are, there’s no reason to think Ohio will be immune from the same fate. If all that separates us from that bleak future is a piece of fabric, the choice seems like a nobrainer.
dtrattner@clevescene.com t@dougtrattner | clevescene.com | July 15-21, 2020
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Photo courtesy Hibachi Japan Steak House
EAT BITES
Twin-concept eatery starring brunch and vegan food to replace Yours Truly at Shaker Square By Douglas Trattner LAST WEEK WE REPORTED that Yours Truly had closed its Shaker Square location after nearly 30 years. Only a few days latter, we learned who will be taking that space over. Akin Affrica of Angie’s Soul Café says that he will operate two separate concepts out of the same property: Cleveland Breakfast Club and Cleveland Vegan Club. The first will focus on breakfast, brunch and lunch service seven days a week, while the latter will offer vegan foods for carryout and delivery only during the evening hours. “For a long time I felt like we were lacking a really nice breakfast, brunch type place,” says Affrica. “I’m a breakfast guy; I cannot start my day unless I have breakfast seven days a week. I hated to wait for the weekends to go to a place to have a nice brunch. Yours Truly was doing a great job with breakfast and lunch. We’re trying to do something a little different.” Affrica says the menu will be full of healthy, flavorful, sweet and savory breakfast, brunch and lunch items that will be available until 4 p.m. Those foods will be paired with alcoholic beverages like champagne, mimosas, Bloody Marys and frozen drinks to provide that “brunch feel,” he explains. “You hear people asking for brunch all the time, but it’s only readily available on the weekends,” adds Affrica. “We’re going to have that brunch feel every day that we’re open.” The Yours Truly property has a secondary entrance that will be utilized as the access point for Cleveland Vegan Club, which will fire up just as Cleveland Breakfast Club winds down. The straightforward menu will feature items like smoothies, bowls, sandwiches and wraps available for pickup or delivery. Keys in hand, Affrica says that he will renovate the historic property to remove the 1950s-era décor and replace it with an
“industrial-chic” vibe with plenty of steel and wood. He is shooting to commence carryout business within two months followed a month or two later by full-service dining.
Hibachi Japan Steak House to Open in Former Akira Sushi and Hibachi Spot in Solon This hibachi saga begins, curiously enough, with a night on the town starring Baseball Hall of Famer Tom Seaver. In the 1970s, Paul Goetz was a sports agent living and working in New York. After a visit with Seaver to a Greenwich Connecticut Benihana, Goetz discovered the second career he was looking for. A couple years later he opened a similar concept in Akron. That restaurant, Hibachi Japan Steak House, was relocated to Cuyahoga Falls (1803 Front St., 330-928-3333) in 1990 and is still going strong. Now run by son Morgan Yagi, the popular eatery is ready to expand northward. Fittingly, it will open in the former home of another longrunning Japanese steak house, Akira, which operated for 20 years in its Solon home. When it opens in the next week or so, Hibachi Japan Steak House (6025 Kruse Dr.) will feature the same name, same concept and same menu as the sister establishment in Cuyahoga Falls. “Lock, stock and barrel,” says Yagi. “I’m pretty risk-averse.” Yagi recalls that when his dad opened the Akron restaurant in the 1970s, which featured the nowfamiliar formula of food prepared in front of customers on blazinghot teppanyaki grills, he was concerned that it might be a flashin-the-pan fad. Nearly 50 years later, both the restaurant and the style of dining are proving otherwise. Yagi says that the former Akira restaurant has gone through a “pretty comprehensive remodel,”
he reports. “I’d like to think that it looks like a whole different space, one that’s more modernized.” The sushi bar that long existed on the right side of the space now downplays the “sushi” while promoting the “bar.” The main dining room has 12 hibachi tables that will accommodate approximately 100 guests, fewer than the 180-seat dining room in Cuyahoga Falls. In addition to the time-honored teppanyaki-fired dinners built around soup, salad, fried rice and a choice of chicken, shrimp, lobster and steak, Hibachi Japan offers sushi in the form of rolls, combination platters and by the piece.
BottleHouse Brewery to Unveil New Food Concepts from Chef Michael Schoen at Cleveland Heights and Lakewood Locations Chef Michael Schoen has partnered with Bottlehouse Brewery to open food concepts at the brewery’s Cleveland Heights (2050 Lee Rd., 216-214-2120) and Lakewood (13368 Madison Ave., 216-926-0025) locations. Each has its own theme and menu, shaped by the needs of the neighborhood, Schoen explains. The original plan, says the chef, was to launch the Lakewood kitchen in March and the Cleveland Heights concept later in the year, but the pandemic convinced management to push back the former and speed up the latter. BottleHouse East opened last week for beverage service, but the kitchen, which Schoen is calling
LouieO, debuted on Wednesday, July 8. He describes the menu as “Tex-Mex barbecue” starring chicken and vegan chorizo tacos, tamales and smoked duck hot dogs. A host of fun side dishes includes Mexican-spiced heirloom popcorn, watermelon salad topped with cotija cheese and mint, and potato salad with pickled eggs and chiles. Schoen will be working out of the existing pop-up kitchen at the Cleveland Heights brewery, while utilizing the Lakewood kitchen as a central commissary. Guests who visit will see a renovated interior with all new seating, paint and art, adds the chef. “If you walk into the space now it’s completely different,” he says. “It’s a transformed space.” The Lakewood brewery will open its doors for drinkers on July 15, with food to follow on August 1. That kitchen will go by the name of Eugene, aka “home of the Tinman burger.” That crave-worthy double cheeseburger, which made a splash at the Ohio City Galley, will join simple “backyard barbecue” style foods like three-cheese mac and cheese, french bread pizzas, vegan sloppy joe and sides. “It will be a little bit different from what people were used to going into the Ohio City Galley,” explains Schoen. The focus at both locations will be on takeout, with meals being packaged up as “picnics in a box” for consumption onsite or off-premises. Online ordering and touchless transactions will promote safe enjoyment of the foods.
dtrattner@clevescene.com t@dougtrattner | clevescene.com | July 15-21, 2020
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Photo courtesy Ben Sidran, Nardis Press
MUSIC GLORY DAYS
New book captures the legacy of Clevelandbred producer and music industry executive Tommy LiPuma By Matt Wardlaw WHEN CLEVELAND NATIVE Tommy LiPuma passed away in March of 2017, he left behind an incredible legacy of work, time spent behind the boards and in collaboration with an impressive collective of artists — including Paul McCartney, Barbra Streisand, Dr. John, Miles Davis, George Benson, Diana Krall and many more. Musician and author Ben Sidran knew that he had come across somebody who was really special when he first met LiPuma in the early ’70s. Recording three albums for Blue Thumb Records, the label that LiPuma had co-founded with Bob Krasnow, Sidran embarked on what was ultimately a 45-year friendship with the Clevelandbred producer and music industry executive. Sidran, who has written a number of books over the years, knew that the story of LiPuma’s path to eventual success was one that should be documented. About a decade ago, he made the suggestion to LiPuma that he could interview him and get his stories down on tape. In each moment that followed, if the pair were together, there was a recorder nearby rolling as they talked and Sidran found himself with more than 80 hours of material to draw on. We spoke with Sidran via phone about the book as well as his own memories of Cleveland.
With your own extensive history in the industry, you’ve worked with all types. What’s the moment that you can point to where you realized that Tommy was different than your average music industry person? That’s a really interesting question. Of course, the music industry was like the elephant and the blind men. It depended on what part of the elephant you were near. I first encountered it working in a record store like Tommy did. I opened boxes of records in 1963 and 1964 working my way through college when the record business
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was just a little, you know, we sold ethnic music and Beethoven symphonies and a little folk music. Then there was a small jazz area, of course. I used to patrol that. And then, lo and behold, one day we started getting boxes of hundreds of records by this group called the Beatles. It started selling, and it didn’t stop and everything blew up. So here’s me opening the boxes of records and there’s Tommy packing the boxes of records in his youth. So there’s a parallel there. There was a business that was a pennies and nickels business. As crazy as Tommy was, he was totally the straightest guy I ever met. All of these other people were much crazier than Tommy, and I don’t mean more open to fun and improvisation; what I mean is, Tommy was really grounded. He loved the music, and he loved the culture it came out of. He had great taste, and he was so empathetic with the human condition. At the same time, he loved laughing and having fun. He was just a great character. But when you read his story, it seems like how wild and outside he was, but the truth is, he was much more grounded than most of these characters in the record business.
Moments like him meeting Wilson Pickett and eventually helping him to get his first big hit record and also being in the room the first day that Sonny and Cher met stand out. There’s so many different things like that in this book that are incredible to read. As you were having the conversations, were there things that you just were not familiar with that floored you as you heard the stories? It was endless, sure. I wasn’t prepared for half of it. And there’s a whole other half that didn’t get in the book and didn’t lend itself to the direction of where the narrative was going. It was the Wild West. Even Cleveland was the Wild West. You know, it started out, the business just took off, and when it took off, I
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mean, Tommy says it in the book, you know, the people who were in the business in the ‘60s, if it wasn’t for the record business, they’d have been vagrants on the street! [Laughs] The record business was a peculiar collection of peculiar guys at the time, and they were all in it for various reasons, but they were all in it for real. You know, they were in it up to their ears and down to their socks. There was a quality to Tommy that immediately struck people. When you walked into a studio with Tommy, people immediately recognized that he was a real guy and I think that was a big part of his production techniques. He was just showing up and being ruthlessly honest in a very pleasant way. He could say anything to anybody, and nobody ever minded. He was such a nice guy inherently that he could tell you something which basically wasn’t in the direction that you were going, and you’d still feel good about it.
What was the situation that put you in the path of Tommy and Blue Thumb? How did that happen? His partner was a guy named Bob Krasnow, a totally legendary record business guy. I had made my first record on Capitol in 1971. It had just come out in June. At three in the morning, I got a phone call from Bob Krasnow, who was obviously wired on substances. He
was at the house of a friend of mine who was a disc jockey in New York. He said, “Man, I’ve gotta sign you. How do I sign you?” First of all, my friend got on and said, “Listen, Ben, this is Bob Krasnow, he’s got a label called Blue Thumb, and he’s listening to your Capitol record, and he just loves it, and he needs to talk to you.” I mean, it’s three in the morning, and these guys are totally wired. So anyway, I said to Bob, “Call me back tomorrow” and he did. Within a month, I had flown out to Beverly Hills, negotiated my way off of Capitol, signed to Blue Thumb and that week when I had gone to L.A. to do that, I met Tommy in the Blue Thumb offices, which were in Beverly Hills. It was this little suite with two or three rooms in a New Orleans style building where you had to take an elevator that was a wrought iron outside elevator, up to the office. It was really funky and hip. I mean, classic Blue Thumb stuff. So that’s where I met him. I hung out with him that day. He had a recording session that evening that I went to with him. It was a Phil Upchurch session and I wound up hanging and playing on the session. The whole week I was out there, we just interacted. He was so easy to hang with; you couldn’t help but look forward to the next time.
scene@clevescene.com t@clevelandscene
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SAVAGE LOVE UNPLUGGED by Dan Savage asshole does. Your wife doubtless suspects the same thing I do: You aren’t coming in her because you’d rather blow your load in the shower. She sees you when you slip out of bed to go cram sex toys in your ass and blow your load down the down the drain instead of finishing in her. And if that’s what you’re doing — and I’m pretty sure that’s what you’re doing — then you’re treating PIV sex with your wife as foreplay and the time you spend alone with your ass toys as the main event. If I were your wife, SUBHUB, I would find that annoying too. And however much you love your plugs and dildos, I would hope you love your wife more. At any rate, you aren’t submissive to your plugs and dildos — you’re submissive to your wife, who isn’t made of silicone and who has needs and feelings that have to be taken into account. At the very least, SUBHUB, your wife’s pleasure should be your first priority during PIV sex — and it’s not like you can’t combine PIV with a little butt play. You can always shove one of your beloved plugs in your ass before you have PIV sex with the wife. And if you didn’t refrain from ejaculating every single time you had PIV, SUBHUB, if it was something you were allowed to once in a while with your wife’s permission, she might be willing to accommodate your desire every tenth time you have PIV.
You should come in your wife. If your wife is in charge — you proposed a “female-led relationship” and she accepted — then she gets to give the orders and you’re supposed to do what she says. (Within reason, of course.) So when she says, “Come in me,” you should say, “How high up your vaginal canal would you like me to come?” Even if you weren’t in a female-led relationship, SUBHUB, refusing to come in your wife when you know that feeling you come inside her is important to her pleasure is a weirdly literal kind of withholding behavior — and considering how GGG your wife has been, SUBHUB, refusing to come in her so you can “continue,” presumably without her, isn’t something a loving submissive would do. It’s something a selfish
Hey, Dan: I am a 53-year-old guy. Since I’ve been struggling with depression and anxiety all my life, I’ve never been in a situation where sex was a possibility. I’m really dying to know what it’s like. I’ve gotten much better over the years and the women who know me think the world of me. But they aren’t in a position to help me out. Other women seem to want someone much more outgoing and confident than I am or ever will be. Confidence comes from experience and I don’t have any. My one girlfriend could not hide the fact that my inexperience offended her. Other people on blogs and such have recommended a prostitute. But that’s not really what I’m looking for. It’s about more than sex. I want someone to care for me as I am. Is there hope for me? Or has the world
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just left me behind? Very Inexperienced Relationship Guy In Need I know it’s not what you want to hear, VIRGIN, but I agree with other blogs and such: I think you should find a sex worker. Find a nice, patient woman who does sex work and be completely upfront about why you’re seeing her: you’re so painfully self-conscious about your sexual inexperience that you find it hard to date. It may take some searching, VIRGIN, but there are sex workers who want to help their clients grow and heal. “Many people have the stereotypical misconception that all sex workers are disconnected, uncaring, and only there for the money,” said Ruby Ryder, a sex worker and sex educator. “While money is indeed a part of it, many of us understand that human beings need touch, connection, and acceptance. We provide an opportunity for clients to be vulnerable, whether it’s fulfilling their kinky fantasies or simply having sex.” And while the relationship you have with a sex worker you might see regularly for a year or two is certainly transactional, VIRGIN, it’s still a relationship and about more than sex. I’m not suggesting you see sex workers exclusively for the rest of your life (even if I’m not not suggesting that either), VIRGIN, I’m only suggesting you see a sex worker to find out what sex is like, gain a little self-confidence, and maybe feel a little more hopeful for your future. Ruby Ryder is on Twitter @ Ruby_Ryder and online at www. peggingparadise.com.
Hey, Dan: I’m a longtime reader who’s never had a question that your archives couldn’t answer. But
Joe Newton
Hey, Dan: My wife asked me to write to you about our situation. We’ve been married for fifteen years. I am 50 years old and my wife is a decade younger. We are a heterosexual couple with kids. I am a submissive male and I like to play with my ass using different sized dildos. I enormously enjoy being penetrated with sex toys. A few years ago I introduced the idea of a FLR — female led relationship — to my wife and she accepted it. We are a happy couple! My wife is more on the traditional side of sex and I respect that. We have PIV sex twice a week and I try to give her pleasure as much as I can. Looks like everything is OK, right? But recently she complained that I have stopped ejaculating when we have sex. And it’s true: When we engage in vaginal penetration, I no longer ejaculate. I like it this way because I don’t lose my sex drive and I can continue. But she doesn’t like it. For her my ejaculate is the “cherry on top” of the sex and my coming during sex is important for her pleasure and satisfaction. My wife thinks that I stopped ejaculating because I developed the habit of pleasuring myself with dildos and butt plugs in the shower. My wife thinks the toys are distracting me. Do you think it’s true? If that’s the case, what should we do? I love my wife but I also love my butt plugs and dildos. Spouse Unpleased By Husband’s Un Blasts
there is something I wanted to share with you and your readers! My wife and I have incorporated virtual reality (VR) goggles into our sex life with great success, Dan, and they could be the answer to a range of questions that you get at the column. They’re so useful, in fact, that your failure to mention them is starting to look like a glaring omission! Because let’s say someone writes in who wants to open their relationship or explore a cuckold fantasy (like one of last week’s letter writers!) but they’re worried about the emotions involved, potential STIs, or COVID-19? VR goggles! While the offerings for female POV VR porn is pretty paltry I’ve never seen my wife come harder than she did with me inside her and a pair of goggles on her face giving her the perspective of a man getting fucked by a beautiful trans woman. I love the idea that this turns her on and I actually think she looks hot with goggles on! Besides the cost of a subscription to a VR porn site, the financial barrier is really pretty low — most people can use their smartphone and a $20 headset to get started, which is much cheaper than seeing a sex worker and much less time consuming than engineering a consenting affair. And there’s no risk of STIs or COVID-19! Just wanted you to consider VR as a possibly overlooked tool for your otherwise always-outstanding advice in the future! Very Recent Purchase Optimizes Reality Nicely Thank you for writing in, VRPORN, and you’re right: VR porn sounds like a great way for an adventurous monogamous couple to have a little virtual variety — whether that couple is monogamous by choice or monogamous for the duration of this stupid pandemic. In addition to the technology, of course, you’ll need a partner who not only knows you fantasize about other people (like they do, like everybody does), but who’s also excited about helping you explore those fantasies. Thanks again for sharing, VRPORN!
mail@savagelove.net FakeDanSavage on Twitter www.savagelovecast.com
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