January 13, 2025

Thank you everyone for allowing me to be here. I want to first of all say Happy New Year to everyone, and the things that I'll be trying to make sense out of and asking for some undivided attention on or really a lot of issues that's going on.

First of all I would like to thank you Mr. Griffin for some of the comments that I seen that you were concerned about, and that was one to be more involved with the commission dealing with the consent decree. That is a great idea. Secondly, I want to thank you again for exercising your position and wanting to do due diligence before you pass out tax dollars to, I believe it's DigitalC or organization that was supposed to do some things that haven't done anything, they didn't reach the mark at all. So I want to thank you again for protecting taxpayers dollars.

Okay now, systematically, I've did a report on the whole city of Cleveland and I just want to point these things out to you guys, not to beat you up about it, but to get you to see if we're going to think about and be conscious, because whether you guys realize it or not, everyone that sits in this space, the city and the community is counting on you guys to get each and every thing right that you can get right as a whole, okay. Each time that you don't get these things right the city residents are the ones who go without things, okay. That's just my intake on that. I'm going to systematically try to come down here and be articulated as I possibly can to help each and as one of you guys come up with great solutions for the betterment of our community. The one thing I would stick out for you Mr. Blaine and Mr. Bibb is that we need more accountability from the positions in the city, and I'll stick to the water department, and I'll stick to the utility department. Maybe if we emphasize a little more on public services then we won't have a lot of these things that we're experiencing now in our communities. See, because all of you guys in this realm here are intelligent enough to understand everything that's going on within your city. I've identified out of 17 City Council members we have 10 positive city council members. That doesn't mean that the seven is not doing their jobs, but seven of them are not connected like the 10 that I've been communicating with, that I can see personally that want to do everything right within their wards and for the city of Cleveland, okay. And I appreciate this opportunity and I'm going to continue to appreciate this opportunity to come and speak to you guys. Respectfully I've systematically came around and introduced myself to each and last one of you guys so you would know who I am. Thank you.

First of all, Happy New Year to everybody. Couple of things I want to touch on. First off, residents, voters have to understand the position of Council. Council technically is just here to write legislation, that's it. Nothing else, however, they get involved with things when you call them because they're your council person, but I have to remind people Council can be gone at any time. They are elected, they're not on payroll. There's a difference between payroll and elected. Kevin could call Department of Aging and Department of Aging can flip them off and say I'mma do it the way that it's supposed to be done. You're the councilman, I understand, but I don't have to listen to you because they work for the city, their employee. That's a big difference.

Now I want to shift for a minute, I want to talk about a little bit about the maps. The people that I've been speaking to about the maps in our community feel as though the council rushed through this, and they give the opportunity the people in the community an opportunity to speak. Now I do know it was some meetings, I went to one meeting. Now back in 2008, I did not vote to reduce Council. You know why, Kevin is my councilman, but now he has more territory to cover, so he may not can get to me when I need him to get to me on a issue or an emergency. That's why I voted against that in 2008, because I personally don't believe if the population reduced a council person should lose their seat. That's my own personal opinion.

Now third thing I want to talk about, and you guys just talked about it today, integrity and character. That's what we want to see out of our Council people. Just like Mr. Griffin, Councilman Griffin, and Kevin Conwell, and Mr. St, he's not here today. When we rally to get rid of the person that was going to be over Public Safety, you backed us up and that's what we want to see, we want to see you back us up more. We understand that we're not making you a punching bag councilman Griffin. It's constructive criticism, and sometimes you've giving me constructive criticism. I didn't like it, but I listen. Kevin, sometimes you've did it. I don't like it but I listen. Sometimes Councilwoman Gray did, I don't like it but I listen. And Mr. Slife, if you do it I may not like it but I'm going to listen to you and I'm also glad that you're more in tune with the consent decree and the commission because that's let me know you guys are listening. And I'm happy, I'm happy to say I saw four Council people come to the court status hearing. That was Joe Jones, Councilwoman Gray, Councilwoman Jones, and Councilman Slife. Slife came walking up in there, I stuck my chest out, I said go on councilman Slife. So that's what I got to say, and thank you.

Good evening. I'm here, I just want to talk, be selfish tonight, talk about myself cuz I'm done asking you. You voted for the MBS and thank the two members that voted no, thank you. Thanks the rest, especially my friend Joe Jones and he's not here, Richard Starr who voted DS in 2010. Just want to tell you my relationship to the community that you ripped through it in 2010. I decided to run for County Council. I made the decision to run one day before the deadline, went down to the Board of Election. They tried to convince me that I will not make it, got the forms at 1:00, 1:30 I'm back home. By 8:00 I had more 28 more valid signature then the signatures I needed to to put me on the ballot. The next day I went down to the Board of Election and I was on the ballot. My opponents were Chris Rand and Brady Nelson Centrum and my friendship Joseph. Soon after I found out that the donation things and the endorsement thing have a price. I decided I don't want to win, I don't want it. I decided that I'm too good to be a politician. The other story I want to tell you, about 30 years ago and that's painful story. Kids were playing at Cudell Park and a thug came driving his car in the park and he was asking the kids about Cleveland Lumber, and one of the kids, a Hispanic Puerto Rican kid, told him it's right there and he said to him I'm stranger here I don't know can you come with me and he hand him KingSize candy bar, and the kid went with him trusting the humanity in that evil. He raped him, dumped him at W. 96th and Madison bleeding and crying. There was a bar, the kid went into the bar. They called the police. The police came, sent him to the hospital and the detectives called me. They said Faouzi we need you and they told me they said the kids at Cudell won't talk to us, they'll talk to you. That's story. One years ago, I went to the kids and the kids some of them took the license plate number, some of them took the letters, some of them took the numbers, gave them to me, I gave them to the police. He was arrested. Million stories, if you want some more stories, just ask your former colleague Jay Westbrook. He was partner with me in those things. That's the community Kel to me Kel a you ried it through with a knife. Please don't take it personally when I speaking to you. We will win at the end. Thank you.

Thank you Councilman Griffin. I appreciate the opportunity to explain a situation that's very dangerous to our business right now. During the spring, the construction to Carnegie from East 55th Street east has closed the streets and prohibited cars to drive any beyond to get to the Clinic or whatever. When I'm talking and I say me, I really mean myself, fenna meets, Cleveland Bagel, papey the merchants on that area from East 55th to the Clinic. So if you're coming from downtown and you're going east, when you get to East 55th you have two options, there's a big barricade saying caution or whatever, the stop, and then you have the option of either going right and then taking an immediate left and go up Cedar to go East parallel to Carnegie, or you can Cod to the left and take Euclid and go east on Euclid and then come back to Carnegie but our business is almost dead. We've this thing started in the spring and we don't have any, our customers can't physically get to our business and the um the car washing PES and in particular, when we started that place my brother and I 57 years ago, and it's been there ever since. We've been owned the same owners and same operators and been a successful business, but now the car customers can't get to us, so what you're doing by not making some adequate changes to allow the traffic to flow. They now there are other constructions on Euclid, on Chester, etc. where they have flagmen or they have some arrangements so that you can keep the maybe a little bit slower, but they keep the traffic coming by you when you get to East 55th on Park Carnegie and it says the detour what you don't even know where you know how to continue unless you've been familiar with the neighborhood. So I'm asking hopefully to sit down with the city engineers or the traffic or whatever or the construction company and work out a plan so we could stay in business, because it's just impossible to do business with our cars without customers. So I'm hoping you can maybe come up with an idea or we can get somebody a group together. They had a couple of suggestions about signs, but it has to be more explicit. Okay, thank you.

Good evening. Happy New Year to everybody. I'm happy to be here today. I want to speak about MLK and his legacy.

Next week everybody's going to be preparing to celebrate MLK and his legacy, but one thing that's often forgotten is the traumas that leaders of the Civil Rights era had to endure, and so I'm just going to read something off to you all. During the Civil Rights era, leaders like MLK had to persevere through things like beatings during stings, during attempts to vote, death threats, police dogs, water hoses, and the murder of his mother and his brother. Dr. Martin Luther King was arrested, in jail 29 times during his involvement in civil rights movement. These arrests were often charges that were later recognized as politically motivated and unjust, solely aimed at disrupting his activism. He was arrested for actions like leading protests, boycotts, sit-ins, and other forms of civil disobedience which challenged segregation laws and racial injustice. There were four notable boycotts during the Civil Rights era. The primary one that everybody remembers is the Montgomery bus bus boycotts. These boycotts underscore Dr. King's commitment to resistance and economic pressure as effective tools in the fight for civil rights. The power of economic pressure as a non-violent strategy to combat racial Injustice by organizing boycotts strikes and other forms of economic activism. He and the Civil Rights movement use financial impact to force businesses governments and institutions to address systemic inequalities. Dr. King understood that the financial influence can be harnessed for social change. Dr. King was murdered not for forcing integration but instead for pushing economic empowerment amongst the black community, specifically a man that preached and modeled nonviolence was assassinated in the most violent manner possible. So I encourage you all to listen to his final speech given the day before he was murdered in Memphis, Tennessee, I believe it was April 3rd. "I've Been to the Mountain Top", that's the name of the speech, when he stated that, and he made this statement in reference to the American Constitution: "Somewhere I read the freedom of assembly, somewhere I read of the freedom of speech, somewhere I read of the freedom of press, somewhere I read that the greatness of America is in the right to protest for right", and just like MLK, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has this place, but I'm not concerned with that now, I just want to do God's will. He has allowed me to go up to the mountain top, and I've looked over and I've seen the promised land, and I may say I may not get there with you, but we as a people will get to the promised land." And I'll close with this quote from MLK. "Those who love peace must learn to organize as effectively as those who love war."

Good evening, members of city council. I am here to express my deepest disappointment in the lack of engagement and action regarding John's Law, a proposal designed to address the systematic challenges in our juvenile and family court systems.

Families in Cleveland are being torn apart because we are quick to apply punitive solutions, but slow or unwilling to address the root causes of family instability. John's Law isn't just about reforming the courts, it's about breaking cycles of dysfunction, empowering families, and healing our communities. Yet despite the urgency of these issues and my outreach, no one has followed up. It feels as though addressing the root causes of violence and instability is being ignored in favor of maintaining a broken system that continues to fail Cleveland families.

I also want to address the barrier and push back faced by New Era Cleveland, an organization committed to uplifting and empowering the people. Time and time again, we have been met with resistance, silenced, and and blacklisted. Numerous organizations have shared with us that they have received calls, some from the city, others from law enforcement, telling them not to fund us, allow us to speak at their events or work with us. Why are we reliving this history, why do administrations continue to alienate and blacklist organizations that have the capacity to elevate our city? Is it because there is a fear that empowering the people means a loss of power and control? This mindset isn't just counterproductive, it's dangerous. The solution to our city's challenges lies in working together to uplift the people, not in treating community-led organizations as adversaries. New Era Cleveland is not a threat. We are fueled by love, not hate. We model what is what it means to serve and protect our communities, showing our youth that leadership and accountability are about empowerment, not destruction. Yet despite our efforts, the energy spent on discrediting and obstructing us could have been used to build healthier and safer neighborhoods. Many of you have worked with me personally, you know my heart, my dedication, and my work ethic. I have served in the United States Marine Corps for over a decade. I've worked for respected organizations like Burton Bell Carr, where I've sat on boards and committees addressing these very issues, but too often progress was stifled by red tape and concerns about job security. So I left those spaces and brought my skills, knowledge, and love back to the community, creating solutions with the people for the people. I am not fueled by money or clout, but by God's love and purpose in my life. To serve this administration is not the Savior. Our collective power is together we can elevate Cleveland. Even if a fraction of the energy used to discredit New Era Cleveland was redirected towards collaboration, our communities will be thriving. Thank you.

Good afternoon, evening Council. Before I get to it, there's kind of a lot of things I don't want to talk about and that's cuz like I've been trying to talk about them, but it's really hard to get here to talk about anything. So firstly, I just like to say the public comment process is really something that should be examined, because it's really not accessible for people. The expectation that they register online on a Wednesday at noon previous to the meeting coming up and have that kind of access and availability, especially when that portal usually fills up in the matter of minutes, and only a half an hour or so is dedicated to this time for an entire city of people to speak to their Council people. I think we should reexamine that.

But I want to start with a thank you, a couple thank yous. The Home for Every Neighbor program has been absolutely incredible, and it really is an example of what happens when we utilize the capital that we have, the expertise that we have, and leverage that into a space of need for our community. So many have been able to take advantage of that. We do recognize that like, that is not the long-term solution to housing in Cleveland, right, because that kind of funding cannot perpetually be dumped in to supplement folks' rents from the city apparatus itself, which is why we need like more avenues of funding to create affordability for folks. So those are things that continually we need to be examining, but this is a great example of what the city can do when leveraging community assets such as organizations like New Era and others who are doing this work um to address a place of real harm, and that's what safety is about, right? It's protection from harm so whether that is the harm from the elements right now, which we are in this instance still seeing a lack because there is not a single seasonal shelter in operation right now, which is unfathomable. Last year we ended up that we started late, we got up to four. Right now we have zero and it is mid January. We've seen the cold snap that we've had, we know about one death in our community, but we do not know of others that we undoubtedly will discover so that is not protecting in a holistic way, right? We understand that the aging housing stock presents real problems as far as health with lead, and we know that we have not instituted the protections that people need and the availability of options for people to leave when their children are sick so they're not forced to continually see their children get sick. And then lastly I want to just say that like, recognizing all these problems and they very much are and people are concerned about their safety, but leveraging those concerns and those fears to be hurled back at the community in ways that are dehumanizing and demonizing is not helpful for this body, it's not helpful for this community. These children who walk outside their door and see decrepit buildings falling apart. When they walk out of school door their the school, and they see an entire street abandoned buildings when there's trash everywhere, when there isn't hope in sight, when it does not seem that they've been invested in, it is very understandable for them to make choices that are not in the best interest of their future because they're not seeing one from around them. So please, watch our language. Thank you.

much for giving me the time. First I would like to thank Council for passing the built environment collaborative and the funding. We've been able to do a lot of really great work, including getting more women into unionized positions, and we know that in a union, a woman makes the same amount as a man, so we would like to encourage Council to make the pay equity legislation a priority in the new year to give us tools to enable us to take the best pieces of collective bargaining and apply those to non-unionized positions, to help to continue to close the gap in gender-based pay. We know that in Ohio, women make 82 cents that a man makes, and that gap is furthered when you disaggregate by race, so black women make less PL know women make even less, and so with these tools we will be able to take a data-driven approach to begin to close those gender-based gaps. And it helps us in a city where we know that women age 25 to 34 make up the largest percent of those in poverty. So we encourage you to give us the tools, and thank you for the tools that you have given us to help us make women a priority in the city. Thank you so much.

Council President, thank you council members. It's good to be here. Up on the wall in this room, it says that Cleveland is in the finest tradition of local self-government. Last week, I spoke about the council maps, the ward maps, and there was some comments made after the fact, after the vote, and I want to respond to those not as sour grapes, the map process is done, but to seek that finest tradition of local self-government.

First of all, there was a sentiment among some of you that you were, quote, pounded by concerned citizens regarding the maps. We look at it differently. Government should be of the people, by the people, and for the people. Our critique has not been mean-spirited, we've not sent hate mail, we've calmly approached the microphone. We see our role as concerned citizens to provide meaningful feedback and constructive criticism to public servants. I'm a pastor. I ask my elders please critique my sermons, please tell me how I can do better, because I sure need it, and that's the spirit in which we offered our map comments.

Number two, there was much defense of the process, comparing it to previous redrawings, saying that it was more transparent. But the bar was set so, so low, in fact there was no bar with no citizen input. So the fact that you put up a bar at such a low height isn't a victory. It felt honestly more like pandering to make the process look good, like your proud removal of the dragon's tail in Edgewater. There needed to be meaningful engagement 6, 9, 12 months ago, followed by meaningful debate amongst yourselves, but instead there were three public meetings. Thank you for that, but no administrative or committee review here, and then you voted without debate and only made comments in this body after the vote.

Finally we continue to stand by our belief that these maps were heavily gerrymandered. 21 candidates for Council in 2021 were drawn out of their wards, three, four, five. We could say that was coincidental, population changes, etc. But that large a number reveals that politics trumped everything else in your process. In our view, again and again we found the map lines drawn within blocks of the homes of former competitors. This ensures that if those folks decide to run, their supporters will be unable to vote for them. That that's a huge concern. So again, our desire was to seek the finest tradition of local self-government and we hope that if you're on the council later, next time that the wards are drawn, that you'll do better and seek to raise the bar. Thank you.