Citizen Engagement Efforts Strive to Revitalize Detroit and Cleveland

By Robbie Banks, Young Professionals Manager, Columbus Chamber

Last month, I attended the Great Lakes Cities: Urban Laboratories, a conference in Cleveland for emerging leaders who are creative, forward-thinking, and devoted to the revitalization of their home towns. It was my third year attending this annual GLUE (Great Lakes Urban Exchange) conference to proudly represent Columbus. I was intrigued with two volunteer-driven movements to engage citizens in local policy, elections, and public decision-making in Detroit and Cleveland: Declare Detroit and Cleveland Coalition.

Declare Detroit
The purpose of the Detroit Declaration is “to elect leadership who will be our allies in a new vision for Detroit and to hold them accountable for upholding the principles outlined in the Declaration.” By signing the Declaration, individuals are making a personal commitment to promote these principles in their daily life and work. Furthermore, they are agreeing to help elect leaders who support them and advocate for policies that uphold them. Approximately 4,000 individuals have signed the Detroit Declaration Detroit Declaration and more than 12,000 people like the group’s Facebook page.

Cleveland Coalition
The Cleveland Coalition is a civic organization of Clevelanders working to create and sustain a more vibrant, healthy and connected community by building civic imagination, community participation and leadership capacity. The coalition’s events allow citizens to participate in policy discussions and empower citizens to take action through the philosophy of “Educate. Collaborate. Act”. The issues and ideas engaged by the coalition focus on quality of life, economic innovation and social equity. The Coalition advocates for these issues through partnerships with existing institutions. To date, the Coalition has focused on one issue, Crooked River Gaming, in which the Coalition’s desire is to make the casino successful not only for its owner and operator but also for the city of Cleveland.

These movements reminded me of local initiatives, efforts and organizations that advocate for issues that are important such as Casino-Free Columbus and the Create Columbus Commission (Columbus’s Young Professionals Commission). However, I’m interested in your thoughts. What do you think about the movements in Detroit and Cleveland? Are there similar efforts in Columbus? What issues or ideas would you like to advocate for in Columbus?

Comments

[Robbie Banks]

Liz and Steve: Thank you both for your comments!

[Liz Hughes-Weaver]

Central Community House recently enacted a Community Organizing program with the support of United Way. Community Organizers gather neighborhood residents and empower them to look at challenges facing their communities and work on improving them. Some issues facing the near east side community include need for positive activities for teens, safer streets, increased jobs located within the community and/or affordable transportation to high commerce areas and several other quality of life issues. In our near east side area, more than one-in-three households live under the Federal Poverty Line, half of which are children.

[Steven Michalovich]

Robbie - those are two great initiatives that seem to maybe even take it up a notch from what the Commission and YPC and other groups are doing. I think as more YP groups form, this is going to be the norm for them to be even more actively engaged and promoting change in the community. I look forward to hearing more about this from you.