The City Club of Cleveland Podcast

Theodore Ginn, Sr. is a man of many titles: He is the Founder and Executive Director of the Ginn Academy, which is the first all-male public high school in the City of Cleveland. He is a native Clevelander, a visionary, and leader in the community for over 45 years--25 of which he has been called Coach Ginn. And now - together with the Glenville High School Football Team - State Champions has been added to the long list of much-deserved accolades.\r\n\r\nLast December, the Glenville Tarblooders entered the Ohio Division IV state championship game with an already storied legacy. The team had made the playoffs 19 times since 1999 under Coach Ginn\'s leadership. But this time, they soundly beat the Wyoming High School Cowboys 26-2, and finished a perfect 15-0 season. The Tarblooders became the first Cleveland Metropolitan School District (CMSD) football team to win a state football championship, and rightfully celebrated with an escorted parade and rally at Cleveland\'s Public Hall later that month.\r\n\r\nWhat does this all mean for the City of Cleveland and CMSD athletics? Join us at the City Club as Mike McIntyre with Ideastream Public Media sits down with Coach Ginn for a conversation on perseverance and what is next for the Glenville Tarblooders.

Two months after a Norfolk Southern freight train carrying hazardous materials derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, the community is still reeling. Columbiana County, where East Palestine is located, is no stranger to environmental concerns. The city of Salem is home to the Nease Chemical Superfund Site. And East Liverpool nearby is home to a hazardous waste incinerator with a past dotted with lawsuits and air quality violations--and just last month was slated to burn soil contaminated by the derailment.\r\n\r\nWe now know that very train made its way through Cleveland and other major cities and communities that are also facing their own challenges with environmental hazards. Add to this, thousands more were impacted by the smoke plume generated by the chemical burn-off. The conversation on environmental justice continues.\r\n\r\nJoin us at the Happy Dog in Cleveland\'s Gordon Square District for a conversation led by Stephen Love, featuring voices from those on the ground responding to the East Palestine disaster, and working to build healthier, more environmentally equitable communities for all.

The mental health of teenagers has become a significant issue in America, and that\'s not just because of the pandemic we\'ve endured. Parents, mental health professionals, and policy makers are concerned about how teens are managing the impact of social media, and the stress that seems to be built into the high school experience, in addition to larger issues shaping an uncertain future--the rise in gun violence, climate change, and the threats to democracy and civil rights.\r\n\r\nU.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy has made youth mental health a priority for his office, and in December 2021, he issued a public advisory urging a response. In a special live recording of his House Calls podcast, Dr. Murthy will interview author and clinical child psychologist Lisa Damour about her recent New York Times best selling book, The Emotional Lives of Teeenagers: Raising Connected, Capable, and Compassionate Adolescents.\r\n\r\nDr. Damour is also the author of two other New York Times best sellers, Untangled: Guiding Teenage Girls Through the Seven Transitions into Adulthood and Under Pressure: Confronting the Epidemic of Stress and Anxiety in Girls. She is a Senior Advisor to the Schubert Center for Child Studies at Case Western Reserve University and frequently writes for national publications, including The New York Times and The Washington Post.\r\n\r\nDr. Vivek Murthy is the nation\'s 21st Surgeon General, a post he previously held under President Obama. As \"The Nation\'s Doctor\" he holds the rank of Vice Admiral of the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, commanding a uniformed service of over 6,000 public health officers.\r\n\r\nThis special recording of House Calls will include a live audience of parents of teens from across Greater Cleveland.

One of the enduring legacies of the Trump administration was a remaking of the Supreme Court and the rest of the federal judiciary. In four years, Trump appointed three Supreme Court justices and more than 220 federal judges, shifting the balance not only on the nation\'s highest court but also on a significant number of appellate courts, as well. Appointments to the federal bench are lifetime, and many of these appointees are relatively young, ensuring decades of influence. From their distinct vantage points, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Slate writer and podcast host Dahlia Lithwick see these shifts as presenting significant challenges for American society.\r\n\r\nFirst elected in 2006, Senator Whitehouse serves on the judiciary committee. He\'s also the author of The Scheme: How the Right Wing Used Dark Money to Capture the Supreme Court, which chronicles the efforts of major corporations and organizations to fill the bench with hard-line conservative judges. Whitehouse traces this movement from the Reagan administration to the landmark Supreme Court decision Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission to the present. Kirkus Reviews called the book "a maddening indictment of a corrupt and corrupted judiciary."\r\n\r\nLithwick is Slate\'s senior legal correspondent and host of the Slate podcast \"?micus.\" She is also the author of Lady Justice: Women, the Law, and the Battle to Save America, highlighting the women who, in the wake of Donald Trump's election, worked to protect the country's most marginalized groups and safeguard the rights of Americans.\r\n\r\nSenator Whitehouse and Lithwick will join one another in conversation at the City Club to discuss their books and the state of the judiciary.

Film can serve as an agent of change. It shares stories, amplifies voices, and draws attention to our world\'s most pressing issues. Today, all eyes are on Ukraine\'s fight for freedom and peace--which they have fought for since their declaration of independence in 1991. In partnership with the Cleveland International Film Festival, the City Club will be joined by two renowned directors whose frontline films redefine wartime documentaries.\r\n\r\nDirected by Lesya Kalynska, \"A Rising Fury\" was filmed over nearly a decade and begins with 2014\'s Maidan Revolution. It captured a portrait of resistance in Ukraine during the years before and right up to the 2022 Russian invasion. The film provides an intense look at the intimate tactics taken by Russian forces to infiltrate Ukraine and make possible the devastating invasions to come.\r\n\r\nEvgeny Afineevsky\'s \"Freedom on Fire\" is narrated by Helen Mirren, and follows the war in Ukraine from a ground-level view. Focusing largely on the experiences of average citizens, including mothers, volunteers, and journalists, the documentary portrays life as Ukrainians lived during the 2022 invasion and the fraught years leading up to it.\r\n\r\nJoin these two directors at the City Club as we learn more about the challenges of filming a war documentary, and what it took to share ground-level accounts of Ukraine\'s ongoing fight for survival and independence.

In the 2022 election, Ohioans voted overwhelmingly in favor of Issue 1. The new amendment to the state constitutions that will allow judges to use cash bail to address circumstances when they have concerns about public safety.\r\n\r\nOver the past two decades, the use of cash bail has grown substantially. At the same time, bail amounts have also risen. This has led to an increase in the number of people who are unable to make bail. According to a report issued last year from the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, more than 60 percent of defendants are detained pre-trial because they can't afford to post bail. Those numbers are higher for women and people of color.\r\n\r\nAmerica's cash bail system is based on the idea that money is necessary to ensure that a person returns to court--but The Bail Project is on a mission to prove that idea wrong. Founded in 2018, the nonprofit aims to combat mass incarceration through bail reform. Using a national revolving bail fund, The Bail Project has worked with community partners in cities across the country to bring free bail assistance to more than 28,000 low-income people to date. Since August 2019, The Bail Project has operated a site serving low-income clients in Cuyahoga County and secured release for more than 1,000 people and counting.\r\n\r\nJoin Robin Steinberg, Founder of The Bail Project, and David Gaspar, Incoming CEO of The Bail Project, for a discussion about the future of bail reform and how communities can utilize grassroots organizations to create a more just and equitable pretrial system.\r\n\r\nSteinberg is also the author of the forthcoming book, The Courage of Compassion: A Journey from Judgment to Connection, which explores what it will really take for us to reimagine and transform criminal justice in America.

Many changes have happened at the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo since Executive Director Christopher Kuhar's previous visit to the City Club in March 2022. This summer, the zoo will open Bear Hollow, an expanded habitat for its tropical bears. The zoo also welcomed Dalia, a new baby Eastern black rhino, and celebrated the first birthday of Kayembe, the first gorilla born at Cleveland Metroparks Zoo in its 140 years. The zoo continues to design and plan Primate Forest, a long-term project that will expand the zoo\'s Rain Forest and create a new home for gorillas and orangutans.\r\n\r\nZoos have evolved from simple menageries to science-based education institutions, but zoos are uniquely positioned in our communities to be more important in the future. Omnipresent in cities throughout the country and around the world, zoos have the opportunity to connect communities with not just STEM learning, but also cultural and social aspects of a global community. During his visit, Kuhar will discuss new initiatives and programs at Cleveland Metroparks Zoo, as well as the organization\'s continued focus on wildlife conservation and environmental stewardship.\r\n\r\nDr. Christopher Kuhar has served in a variety of leadership roles in the zoo and aquarium community. He has been the Executive Director of Cleveland Metroparks Zoo since 2013 and served as the Chair of the Board of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums during the COVID pandemic shutdown. Before coming to Cleveland, Kuhar spent five years at Disney's Animal Kingdom in Florida.\r\n\r\nJoin us at the City Club as we hear from Chris Kuhar on the Zoo\'s role in conservation, science and education in a changing world.

For more than a century, the West Side Market has remained a pillar of the Cleveland community with more than 60 independent businesses selling fresh produce, meats and seafood, baked goods, dairy products, and ready-to-eat foods. Cleveland\'s public market tradition dates back to 1840, when land at the intersection of West 25th and Lorain was deeded to Ohio City with the stipulation it remain a public market.\r\n\r\nLike others around the country-from Cincinnati's Findlay Market to Detroit's Eastern Market-the West Side Market plays an important role in the economic and cultural landscape of Northeast Ohio.\r\n\r\nMayor Justin Bibb made revitalizing West Side Market a key initiative of his administration. With plans to transition management and operations of the market to a newly created nonprofit later this year, the Bibb administration is focused on maintaining the authenticity and unique characteristics that make West Side Market a cherished institution. To do that, Mayor Bibb is working with an advisory committee and a national consultant to develop a comprehensive plan and identify the resources needed for capital improvements and operations.\r\n\r\nMayor Bibb will be joined by panelists from leading public markets around the country to discuss the history of their markets, their markets' roles as community anchors, and their efforts to further community development and support small businesses.

For more than two decades, The City Club of Cleveland has hosted the annual High School Debate Championship.\r\n\r\nEvery year, the top two area high school debaters square off in a classic \"Lincoln-Douglas\" style debate at a Friday forum. This allows the debaters to compete-not only for the judges and audience in the room-but also for our radio and television audiences.\r\n\r\nThe debaters will be Kaitlyn Ernst of Laurel School, coached by Rachel Rothschild and Rich Kawolics; and Sam Bowen of Hawken School, coached by Robert Shurtz and Eva Lamberson.\r\n\r\nThe finalists will debate the topic Resolved: Justice requires open borders for human migration.

In 2021, Black women were mayors of eight of the 100 U.S. cities with the largest populations. It was a record number. In a November 2021 New York Times article about the rise of Black women mayors, scholar and voting rights expert David Bositis said, "This is the age of Black women in politics. This has been culminating for a long time."\r\n\r\nThis rise in Black women in elected positions can be attributed to community activism, changing demographics, targeted recruitment efforts, and increased support from major organizations. "Before, it used to be that Black women didn't run. They were the organizers and the campaign volunteers, but the men were the ones who were running for office," Sharon Wright Austin, a professor at the University of Florida, said in the same article. "But now you're seeing Black women not only organizing campaigns and working in communities but having the confidence that they can run for office themselves."\r\n\r\nIn Northeast Ohio, Black women lead three of our towns-Maple Heights, Richmond Heights, and Newburgh Heights-representing a combined total of more than 33,000 residents. Two of the mayors are the first Black women to lead their respective cities.\r\n\r\nJoin the City Club as we mark International Women\'s Day for a conversation led by Sheila Wright with Mayors Annette Blackwell, Kim Thomas, and Gigi Traore about the role Black women leaders play in our changing political landscape.