Lead
I spent the week in Albuquerque, New Mexico, which, when it comes to the sky, is the anti-Cleveland. I do not understand that blue, or that light, but I know it shoots into me and forces me look outside myself at once.
While I was away I received lots of press releases from new-to-me (and new) Cleveland organizations in my inbox. They were all about lead. I spent a lot of time thinking about the word lead. Pronounce it both ways.
It’s all in the pronunciation.
Pronouncing a new initiative to deal with the extremely not-new problem of lead in Cleveland, a newly formed coalition held a press conference to announce a “Lead Safe Cleveland Coalition.” ““Our aim is to reduce lead exposure in both rental properties and owner-occupied homes… Lead Safe Cleveland is rolling up its sleeves, ready to get the job done.” The coalition is, of course, a public-private partnership. Here are the members . Our mayor said it as only our mayor can: “Should it have happened 10 years ago, probably so. Should it have happened 50 years ago, probably so,”
On twitter, there were grumblings.
For years, Rachel Dissell and Brie Zeltner have been reporting on Cleveland’s lead poisoning, showing us ways that other cities have successfully managed to tackle it. Click, click, click their series, Toxic Neglect. That, plus these stories earlier in January may have prompted this coalition, or at least I choose to believe so, because the stories we tell about what lead to change matter, and if we choose to tell a story that two underfunded journalists, whose boss makes fun of them publicly, doggedly kept at it until action was taken—well, then, that is a story that is enabling, that might help others persist when it seems no one is listening. (Relatedly, since I was staying in a hotel this week, I watched a lot of MSNBC—I don’t have ‘real’ tv at home—and we are now telling lots of stories about Nancy Pelosi, stories about a strong woman who triumphed, and that is a good story to tell—but, also, what about the power of labor, or the air traffic controllers who called in sick? Tony Schwartz, with wet eyes, always reckoning with his decision ages ago to say yes to a ghostwriting gig for Donald Trump—Tony Schwartz, with wet eyes, told Joy Reid it was the power of the people that ended the shut down, that it was the decision to call in sick that caused change. Which story we tell—both are good! what an unusual turn of events!—-will matter going forward.) ( and yes—sorry for the sudden Jamesian-ism today—we can tell both stories, together. It is never either/or; it is always both/and.))
But I’m not sure those underfunded journalists were celebrating, because the New Coalition To Say Things Should Be Done offered no budget for the things, and no timeline for the doing. And, thus, the press releases.
CLASH (Cleveland Leadership Advocates for Safe Housing) writes: “We do not need years of commissions and summits to tell us what needs to be done. We know,” said Jeff Johnson, member of the Cleveland Lead Safe Network. “We need a mandatory lead safe testing requirement for Cleveland’s rental properties and the funding to support it.” They are pushing for a ballot inititiative to hold landlords accountable for certifying that properties built before 1978 are lead-safe. The city is not in favor of such a law, as it deems it would be hard to enforce.
I also received a press release from the Northeast Ohio Black Health Coalition, which was founded in 2011, whose executive director, Yvonka Marie Hill, founded the CLSN, or Cleveland Lead Safe Initiative, in 2015. It is titled: “Meetings Won’t Save The Thousands of Children Poisoned.”
It doesn’t matter that there are maybe too many acronyms for the organizations pushing back on Cleveland’s New Coalition To Talk About Doing Things: they are coalescing, like-minded, actively calling out empty promises, and pressuring the powers-that-be to do more.
They need all the support they can get, and it will be hard. Not just because all such efforts are hard, or because the city is hard to go up against, or that Cleveland tends towards passivity, but also because of this: people really do not want to read about lead poisoning. I learned this when Belt Magazine covered the Flint water crisis. We ran as many stories as we could afford. We even crashed the publication of our anthology about Flint, titled Happy Anyway, which sought to define the city outside the water crisis, so it would not be subsumed within it—because the story we tell about Flint should not only be about poisoned water. But what I learned is that while people really do love to tweet FLINT STILL DOES NOT HAVE CLEAN WATER in order to call attention to Other Problems, very few people are interested in learning more. My theory? It really is so dispiriting, and so difficult to find a toehold as a narrative in which an invested reader can feel useful, and move towards action.
Can we find a narrative about Cleveland’s lead problem that will enrage people enough to act? Can we pitch this tragedy so to unleash the power of liberal white women with time at their disposal? How cynical this sounds, but I am entirely sincere: we need a narrative that gets people angry, and headed to the ramparts.
I am guilty, too. Of not clicking. Of not showing up. Two years ago, my friend Marvin Brown explained to me, over beers at Academy Tavern, why he was helping forming a group to advocate about lead poisoning in Cleveland, a group that would become CLSN, which would then lead to CLASH. From him I learned what the League of Nations has to do with all of this— which never fails to shocks me. I bought a copy of Lead Wars upon his suggestion, and made notes towards attending his meetings and writing about the situation. I never followed through. It was so dispiriting, so difficult to find a toehold. The best I did was commission a (very good) piece about Cleveland’s inability to act for Belt, in summer 2016. It didn’t receive enough clicks.
Let us angle it so the light changes. Let us angle the story differently. Let us see it in a new light.
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