Like almost all other cities, Lakewood is chasing dreams. That is not a negative; I’ll take a chance on the pursuit of the extraordinary over the ordinary any day. There are innumerable “best of” lists for cities, and Lakewood has been glowingly recognized in several recently – but if you drill down to what distinguishes the highest-ranked cities, it’s always related to livability and sustainability. Our dreams need to encompass a wide-angle lens view of sustainability as it applies to community-building. If we desire our dreams to be everlasting and our efforts fruitful, true sustainability can only be achieved if it takes into account economic, social, and environmental aspects. It’s becoming very clear that how our cities are planned, developed and re-developed, how they welcome new residents, how they accommodate all income groups, and how they prioritize human capital and natural resources are becoming more and more crucial to urban sustainability.

We need to look at Lakewood and beyond through the general recognition that we have not always been open enough to rewarding those who can imagine the impossible. This not only applies to Lakewood, but also to the big city next door – Cleveland. We may at times dream big, but act timidly – when these times demand bold and decisive actions. As Lakewood teeters on the edge of exceptional, we must acknowledge that the world is governed not by the predictable and the average, but by the random, the unknown, the unpredictable – big events or discoveries or unusual people that have big consequences. Change, more often than not, comes not uniformly but in unpredictable spurts.

Change is coming to Lakewood, but how much and in what form will often come from outside forces. We need to balance our habit of making predictions in a largely unpredictable world with our perpetual surprise when events not predicted happen. I argue that we can do more to not be caught by surprise, but rather be pleasantly surprised. There is no place else I would rather live in Ohio than Lakewood. As another year draws to a close and a new year beckons, we have much to be grateful for here in the ‘city of homes’. Scattered here and there, in our fine city, the seeds of a new, more local and durable economy are taking root. But sowing the seeds of change is always a delicate process and the proverbial economic storm clouds are an everpresent menace looming on the near horizon. We need to take stronger measures to buttress ourselves from the worst elements of development and re-development. It will be the fierce preservation of what we already have that will best position our city to capture the growing thirst for Lakewood-model livability sweeping the nation – in particular the younger generations.

Simply put, there has been a profound structural shift – a reversal of what took place when the majority of the baby boomer generation chose to drive more and be home less, when far-flung and isolated suburbs boomed and flourished as center cities emptied and many inner-ring suburbs withered. Lakewood never withered, in spite of national and state land use policies stacked against us; we have stood the test of time. There is now an ever-growing understanding that for too long, we over-invested in the wrong places. It is time to instead preserve what the market increasingly wants: mixed-income, mixed-use walkable cities and inner-ring suburbs. Another survey shows that baby boomers want yet another redo of their economic misadventures and seek to join with the Gen X and Gen Y generations in a desire by many to live in more pedestrian-friendly, transit-oriented, mixed-use environments that de-emphasize auto dependency. Recent surveys show that majority of all age groups are likely to prefer historic inner-ring suburbs as their high density destination – not the isolated subdivisions of the 20th century.

I relocated to Lakewood from Oregon in 2008, and I spent ten years in Portland, Oregon from 1992-2002; during the height of its renaissance in which I witnessed many of the intrepid urban planning decisions take shape  People often look to Portland as the ‘Holy Grail’ of high density urban planning and design. Portland is one of the most-praised cities in contemporary America. Many people ask me – Is the hype real? To some extent, yes it is. The second question I’m always asked is – Why did you leave? At the time, I chose to pursue this life-long romantic notion I had to live in a small town rural setting – which was both an educational experience and a cultural abyss, but that is a story for another day. But the important point I always make is this: Portland didn’t invent bicycles, warehouse districts, fine coffee, good beer, organic and local food, high-density or light rail, but it understood the future implications of them for America’s smaller cities first, and put that knowledge to use before anyone else.

The longest journey begins with a step, but you have to take it. Portland did it at a time when nobody else did. In an era where most American cities went one direction – malls and sprawl, Portland went another, either capturing or even creating the energy of a new age. Portland’s old neighborhoods and city center once teetered on the edge of ruin. The inner-city home and neighborhood where I once lived was considered a slum just thirty years ago. Lakewood compares very favorably to Portland. Having a much smaller population (52,131 versus over 500,000 people), it is like and smaller, more condensed version of Portland’s many older neighborhoods. My wife and I often comment on the parallel universe of our Portland/Lakewood experiences – we often refer to Lakewood as being Portland without the annoying ego.

Just like Lakewood, Portland is real. It’s not about marketing gimmicks pushing false benefits, rather it’s about addressing very real issues regarding how cities change and sustain themselves. Portland’s legacy is largely a positive one. It is undeniable that Portland played a major role in making the nation respect cities again, seeing their potential with fresh eyes. Portland was the right city, in the right place, at the right time. Here in Northeast Ohio, I feel that Lakewood teeters on the edge of being the same if we position ourselves accordingly– the right city, in the right place, at the right time. I have that feeling living here– I have felt it before.

But though Portland can’t be copied, it can be an inspiration. Many of its ideas can and have been adopted elsewhere. Whether most cities will succeed in reclaiming their urban cores is not yet known, but it’s a fight worth fighting. Without Portland, we might not even be trying. Cleveland is trying and may finally be getting it right as well over 10,000 people now call downtown Cleveland home– that can only benefit Lakewood more and more as those numbers continue to increase. However, there is one way Portland today is very unlike Lakewood. Portland now routinely tops “worst of” lists for being one of the most expensive places to live in America; in particular when you compare wages and home prices. Even though real estate values have plunged by over 20% in Portland, housing still remains prohibitively expensive for too many residents as unemployment there has exceeded 11% for nearly four years and underemployment remains a chronic two-decade long problem. Today, Portland’s performance isn’t bad, but given all of its advantages and low degree of difficulty, it should be a lot better. Why is this? I have been thinking that perhaps Portland was a bit too livable. Portland was in the 1990s what San Francisco was in the 1960s: a hip, not too expensive place for young slackers to go. Ohio will never be as hip as Oregon – but Northeast Ohio is hip in a more subtle way – we just don’t go around beating our chests about it. Excessive chest-beating can have its disadvantages. When the promo for the cable television series “Portlandia” makes the claim that, “Portland is where the young go to retire,” it is an attempt at humor but also is an absolutely true statement. People, myself included at the time, move to Portland for values and lifestyle; more for personal than professional reasons– just like so many of us here in Lakewood. However, over the course of the past twenty years, Portland has become the “Mecca” for American trust fund youth. In fact, the term “trustafarian” was coined during my time in Portland to describe the preponderance of non-working, free-spending, ultra-wealthy under forty populations. I don’t foresee that dynamic overtaking Lakewood anytime soon, but I’m sure we all wouldn’t mind a modest level of home value appreciation. It will be forthcoming in random fits and spurts with the cultural shift taking place.

Lakewood, our ‘city of homes’, remains affordable to diverse income groups. That, in my opinion makes us stronger than Portland – more real, more grounded and more welcoming. The working class can actually afford to live and enjoy the Lakewood lifestyle. That is something that we must preserve for our long-term sustainability. Lakewood counters the dirty little secret that Portland tries to suppress – the fact that it has become a revolving door of short-term residents, as nearly one-half of the people who have moved to Portland in the past two decades have been recycled every five years. As the people who’ve had to leave Portland because they couldn’t find affordable housing or real employment there can attest, in order to take advantage of its justly famous high quality, sustainable lifestyle, you first need a roof over your head, a mortgage you can afford and a decent job. It’s not livable if you can’t live there. Thankfully for many of us, Lakewood is and remains livable– like Portland once was when I first moved there nearly twenty years ago.

When I am asked to compare the states of Ohio and Oregon, I don’t think of “the lake” versus “the mountains”; “snow” versus “rain”; “Maple Trees” versus “Douglas Firs” -– no, I think of the year 1979. That was the year that the Portland metro area adopted an Urban Growth Boundary (it became a statewide mandate for all cities and towns by 1990), thereby restricting development in rural and open land while targeting development, preservation and re-development in denser, urban, and older parts of the metropolitan area. This, in effect, was the birth of the Portland story– proof that good policy solutions offer lasting benefits, in particular the prevention of sprawl. If there were to be a policy solution to the Ohio sprawl problem, this would be a great place to start. Sprawl, in my opinion, is the biggest environmental problem for the Northeastern Ohio region. The fact that we have basically flat-lined as a regional population-base the past two decades while at the same time paved over 25% more land is both a tragedy and a blow to our regional sustainability. This dynamic greatly impacts Lakewood and hinders our efforts to enhance, preserve and build upon our cities assets. Sprawl is one thing when the regional population is growing. When population is stagnant, as it is in our region, sprawl simply means more miles of roads to maintain for the same number of commuters, more schools for the same number of students, and more sewer lines for the same amount of…well, you know what I mean.

So where do we go from here? We are already there. People are looking at us and looking for us. We teeter on the edge of everything people desire in a more livable and sustainable future. We also teeter on the edge of economic challenges as the rest of society catches up to places like Lakewood. Public attitudes and desires are dramatically shifting and we need to capture the energy of a new age. Lakewood is the right city, in the right place, at the right time.

I recently went to hear what ‘the smartest guys in the room’ had to say about the future prospects of Lakewood. No, I did not go to a screening of “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room,” the documentary about the collapse of a mammoth corporation in which the top executives of America’s seventh largest company walked away with over one billion dollars while investors and employees lost everything – a chronicle that plays out like a drama with the emotional power of Greek tragedy. On November 16, I attended the LakewoodAlive forum, “Ensuring a Vibrant Future: A Community Conversation,” in which a panel of some very smart individuals assembled for a conversation on what is impacting Lakewood in the present and what measures Lakewood should take to prevent our future from unfolding like a Greek tragedy.

Mayor Summers summed up the Census Data in a concise statement: “Slightly fewer of us, younger, better educated, poorer, slightly more diverse.”

 The confines of the Masonic Temple provided the right atmosphere for a Lakewood clairvoyance session to gaze upon what secrets the economic crystal ball may hold for our collective future. While economics was the order of the evening, the table was first set by Mayor Mike Summers giving us a quick overview of the Lakewood 2010 Census, and by Gus Frangos, President and General Counsel for the Cuyahoga County Land Bank, who spoke of the impact that the ongoing foreclosure crises has had upon Lakewood, and how we have weathered that storm in comparison to other Cuyahoga County municipalities. Mayor Summers summed up the Census Data in a concise statement: “Slightly fewer of us, younger, better educated, poorer, slightly more diverse.”

Our total Lakewood population fell by 8% from the year 2000 as we now sit at 52,131 people. But there is much more to that number. It has been determined via the volume of research and facts gathered throughout the extensive 2010 Census process, that Lakewood’s population loss is due primarily to the fact that people today are having smaller families. Our racial breakdown is as follows: White – 84%; African American – 6%; Latino – 4%; Multi-race – 3%; Asian – 2%; Other Races – 1%. Our two largest age group populations are the 20-29 and 30-39 year-old-age groups. Not only have we become younger since 2000, but also more educated as 46% of all adults have a two-year degree or more with 25% having obtained a Bachelor’s degree. The most telling tale of the 2010 census is not surprising given our current economic doldrums. The percentage of poverty in Lakewood nearly doubled from the year 2000, as 16% of us fall under the poverty threshold, up from 8.9% ten years earlier. That poverty figure points to the ongoing foreclosure pandemic that has wreaked havoc on a national level and also right here in our backyard.

 ..The number of foreclosures in Lakewood has been trending down since 2009; to below the year 2006 figures – a time before our national economic meltdown.

Gus Frangos from the Cuyahoga County Land Bank, was one of the forum panelists and he presented to us the hyper-local Lakewood statistical analysis of the severity of the foreclosure crises. Lakewood encompasses 93 miles of roadways and all but a couple of streets within that network have suffered multiple foreclosures. Since the year 2006, the number of foreclosures filed within our city has reached 1,586 homes – being 8% of all properties in Lakewood. Yes, Lakewood has been adversely affected and tremendously challenged by the foreclosure crises – virtually no street has gone unscathed as the numbers blanket the entire city. But recently there have been flickers of light at the end of this tunnel of distress as Mr. Frangos pointed out that countywide data shows Lakewood has been less affected by this crises than other inner-ring suburbs and the number of foreclosures has been trending down since 2009; to below the year 2006 figures – a time before our national economic meltdown.

While I am acutely aware that we are not out of the woods yet, we seemed to have weathered the worst of it. It is worth noting here that the city has taken an aggressive stance in combating foreclosures the past two years. They have acquired nearly thirty foreclosed properties and salvaged the ones worth salvaging and demolished the most derelict of properties to remove the blight. I have been inside one of the properties the city recently renovated and sold to a young couple – it was well done and helped stabilize that particular stretch of street. And for those of you who disdain government intervention, the city has to date broken even in this strategic process and this effort will pay significant financial and social dividends in both the short-term and long-term.

After having confirmed my worst fear that I am in fact getting older and that much of Lakewood is younger than me,  and establishing that the next generation may still have solid Lakewood housing stock to choose from, the four esteemed panelists were asked a series of questions by the forum moderator – former Lakewood Director of Planning and Development, Nathan Kelly. The exchange between the panelists was on both micro-economic and macro-economic levels for which there was much cross-panel consensus. In regard to Lakewood commercial development potential – the obvious was pointed out that on a macro level, the nation’s largest retailers dominate the market and that banks, by and large, are refusing to make loans for smaller commercial ventures within already built-out cities like Lakewood. 

Many of us who may have the means and wherewithal to live elsewhere have chosen Lakewood as home because of its unique value – its alternative to suburban sprawl.

This is the curse of bigness – the financial crisis has provided us all with a crash course on how much of our economy is based not on the creation of real value, but on speculation. The way for Lakewood to combat that is to offer unique value. It is our unique value that makes us a community of choice or an alternative community – as the members of the panel phrased in many ways. A significant point was made that the high educational attainment of Lakewood residents bodes well for our future, in that many of us who may have the means and wherewithal to live elsewhere have chosen Lakewood as home because of its unique value – its alternative to suburban sprawl. Our strengths lie in our openness and diversity and that we are not anti-tax zealots, rather pro-responsible spending. Our taxes may be high, but so is the value we receive in return. The panel recognized that it is our social and human capital (and our investment thereto) that form the foundation of many of our strengths.

It has been my observation that in terms of city planning and development and how it affects civic life, all you need to do is spend time watching people in a neighborhood business district like Lakewood. What you see is lots of interaction. Business owners know their customers. People run into friends and neighbors on the sidewalk or while waiting in line at the bakery or coffee shop. This is an environment that slows the pace of life and encourages people to loiter and converse. This is the environment we choose.

Then undertake the same observation in the car-park of a big out-of-town shopping center and watch how differently people behave in this setting. You see very little interaction. This is a landscape built for cars, not people. The stores are sized to serve regions, not neighborhoods, so there’s much less chance that you’ll bump into someone you know. And even if you do, the store itself is designed to facilitate speedy consumption and deter loitering. This is an environment that fosters separation and disengagement. This is the environment we disdain.

Indeed, I have read studies showing that in places with many small, locally-owned businesses, people are much more engaged in community life than those living in towns dominated by national chains and big-box businesses. Residents of communities with a vibrant local business district are more likely to know their neighbors and to join civic and social groups. They attend public meetings more often and even vote in greater numbers than their counterparts in towns overrun by superstores.

A corporate attempt at “being local like Lakewood” is the counterfeit and contrived Faux Local Park – I mean Crocker Park…  Lakewood does not need to make any attempts at imitation, we are already the real ideal that other communities are trying to replicate.

As the evening progressed, someone had to yet again mention Crocker Park as the development ideal we should all hook our unique little first-ring suburb to. Many massive, globe-spanning corporations are now trying to figure out how they can be local like Lakewood. A corporate attempt at that is the counterfeit and contrived Faux Local Park – I mean Crocker Park. Corporations desperately want to turn the local economy movement into nothing more than a cheap marketing trick they can appropriate for their own ends. These attempts at imitation are unnerving. But in the end I think this new variation on corporate green-washing — I call it local-washing — will backfire. Lakewood does not need to make any attempts at imitation, we are already the real ideal that other communities are trying to replicate. In the meantime, I’m heartened by what this attempt at imitation says about the current state of consciousness of developers. After all, these companies spend massive sums on market research and they would not be doing this unless they had detected a sizable shift in public attitudes. It is that shift that Lakewood needs to continue to embrace and promote.

It is not about people creating and exchanging real value. Corporations and chains exist not to create value, but to extract it. Just like colonialism, when mega-retailers, move into a community, their aim is not to enrich the local inhabitants. There presence eradicates local businesses and severs the web of economic relationships that link the people of a community together. Whie chains siphon money out of a community, local businesses spend much of their revenue buying goods and services from other local businesses. They bank at a local bank, hire a local accountant, get their printing done at the local print shop and so on. In place of this robust system of local trade and mutual benefit, national chains erect a single-track economy in which wealth flows in only one direction – out.

…People are rediscovering local food… But I think people are as hungry for the community experience as they are for the fresh broccoli.

This brings me to a theory I have about the growth of farmers markets, community gardens, community-supported agriculture and urban farming. The conventional explanation is that people are rediscovering local food. That’s certainly true and a very good and healthy thing. But I think people are as hungry for the community experience as they are for the fresh broccoli. It’s this social pleasure that I think is driving the regeneration of local businesses in some communities. Many of us in Lakewood get this. A member of the audience asked a question in regard to the burgeoning local food movement not only here in Lakewood, but throughout the greater Cleveland area, and its economic impact. I took exception to a member of the panel scoffing at local food being an economic driver – in total disregard of the positive social and financial elements associated with it. Local food is not about the challenges faced by the economics of scale, it is part and parcel of the right-sizing movement – making our community and its developments designed to benefit its people for generation to come.

Lakewood has unique value because of us–who we are now– and because of what we inherited from the past.

As the forum concluded, I found myself feeling somewhat ambivalent – wanting more, but not more of the same. I prefer my economic fare to be somewhat unconventional. Slowly freezing our economy so it fits into an ever more rigid crystal ball, that every day is more vulnerable to collapse again from some sudden shock, is poor economics. When I got home I was trying to remember a particular quote from Henry David Thoreau. I found it: “Observe how the greatest minds yield in some degree to the superstitions of their age.” Lakewood faces some serious challenges and pressures in a new age and the key is not to become apathetic in the face of them. Lakewood does have unique value because of us–who we are now– and because of what we inherited from the past. We are the people that choose independent businesses and locally produced goods more often – it is part of our DNA and part of why we choose to live here. We need to continue to make the compelling case that supporting local businesses and locally-produced goods is critical to a sustainable Lakewood, and critical to ensuring that our daily lives are not smothered by corporate uniformity.

Yes, it is true that the McDonald’s proposal to demolish the Detroit Theater has been hyper-focused upon the intersection of Woodward and Detroit Avenues. But what this saga really boils down to is a struggle for our commons. Our commercial corridors are our commons–an asset that belongs to all of us. Its function links us together. As our many residential streets intersect with our commercial corridors, they are much more than intersections of asphalt and curbs, they are intersections that bring us together as a community and work to solidify many of the reasons we call Lakewood our home. For many of us, our common bond is formed by what is not here.

This is a story about the defense of our commons–a struggle for our collective wealth–which is the architecture and function we inherited from the streetcar era. It is that architecture and function that sets the table for the lifestyle and culture we so strongly desire and that we purposefully sought out when we chose to live here.

In essence, the commons means everything that belongs to all of us, and the many ways we work together to use these assets to build a better society. Tragically, our wealth is slowly being stolen from us in the name of economic efficiency, orchestrated by faceless and distant forces, and undermined by regional and global competitiveness.

The McDonald’s scenario is but a symptom of a patient who is sick–a larger underlying condition that needs our help. Is our inheritance slipping away from us? Is our commons becoming too commonplace? Many of us have refused to stand aside and go quietly into the night. Those of us who live on Woodward Avenue, as well as those who reside on other streets impacted by this development, are not going to let McDonald’s write our narrative. We will write our narrative.

We are not victims. We are heroes! In the face of the brute force of McDonald’s, the citizens of Lakewood have done something desperate and audacious–we have put our faith and hope in the last seemingly credible force left in this country: each other. Many of us have immersed ourselves in this entire process to make the best that we can of a dreadful development. We have refused to roll over.

On Nov. 2, a glorious fall night, over fifty of us came together in front of the Detroit Theater and occupied our corner of Lakewood. It was a both a protest against McDonald’s–letting them know “we’re not lovin’ it”–and an example of what a close-knit community can achieve through collectivism. We’re non-hierarchical, self-regulating, self-deliberating and self-organizing. Everyone created their own signs and shouted their own slogans. The positive response we got from so many passing motorists and pedestrians exceeded our most optimistic expectations. Everyone has played his or her own unique individual role during this entire process but always remained connected to the larger hub. Never in my life have I been so proud to be part of a neighborhood.

With that, well over a hundred and twenty of us gathered at the Nov. 3 Planning Commission meeting for the McDonald’s development proposal for the Detroit Theater property. This meeting was a continuation of the same request presented to the Planning Commission two weeks prior at the Oct. 19 special session–that being McDonald’s seeking the merger of two vacant parcels of land (the south 70 feet of the subject parcel) currently zoned as residential use, into one tax lot in order to obtain a conditional-use permit from the city to allow for an accessory parking lot in a residential district.

I realize that at the onset of the Planning Commission review of the McDonald’s development, some residents thought that an opportunity existed to bring to a halt the entire McDonald’s proposal, but it must be stated that the Planning Commission did not have the authority to do so–their authority lies solely on whether or not to approve the request for a conditional-use permit. McDonald’s acquisition of the Detroit Theater could not be stopped, given our current zoning codes.

The Planning Commission members need to be commended for extending this review process to allow more time for certain key questions to be answered and key components to be resolved before they could render a decision on a conditional-use permit. As citizens, our objective has been to seek as many conditions as possible to be attached to this use permit to minimize the many negative impacts associated with this development.

Yes, at the end of the evening, the Planning Commission did approve the merger of the two vacant parcels of land currently zoned for residential use into one tax lot, and granted a conditional-use permit to allow for an accessory parking lot in a residential district. Going into this meeting, it seemed that the Planning Commission’s hands were tied in that they had to choose between the lesser of two evils. In that regard, I can understand their rationale for approving the McDonald’s request and inserting conditions into the use permit that must be met by McDonald’s in order for it not to be revoked by this commission at a future date.

What do I mean about the lesser of two evils? It boils down to local control–and most importantly, ongoing residential concerns. The Detroit Theater became a non-conforming property 40 years ago, when the owner at that time acquired and knocked down two houses for more parking behind the theater. No permit has ever been granted for commercial parking on those two lots located in a residential district–hence it being a non-conforming parcel, as far as the south 70 feet are concerned. McDonald’s could choose to operate in the same manner and use that portion for parking as the theater has and just be done with it all. Any effort by the city to try to stop its use would result in a land use discrimination lawsuit by McDonald’s. With countless millions stockpiled in reserve for its many legal fights, we would be hard pressed to win that case given the nearly 40 years in which the theater was never challenged about its non-conforming status.

Therefore, the Planning Commission acted in our best interests in giving McDonald’s what it was seeking, but attaching certain conditions to the use-permit–thereby giving us some control over how events may unfold. Speaking of us, once again many of us took a turn at the podium to state our concerns and grievances and ask that certain conditions be attached to any approval. Initially, we were asked respectfully to come forward to speak only if we had any new information to share since the prior meeting. That request quickly went by the wayside as, one by one, we spoke from our hearts and minds. One could feel the passion and energy that filled the room. That level of energy does not emanate from victims. It pulsates from heroes–those of us who refuse to accept things as they are.

Many of us now feel a sense of loss. A couple of our neighbors have sold, or plan to try to sell, their homes on Woodward Avenue and leave because of this development. One couple has not only left Woodward, but also left Lakewood entirely–that pains me. We need to be proud of the fact that it was in large part due to our activism that a few key aspects of this development were changed for the better.

What were we able to change? A condition that added “No Right Turn” signs and left-turn-only directional painting at each Woodward Avenue exit in an effort to better orient traffic flow back to Detroit Avenue, ensuring that no right turn be allowed to head south onto Woodward Avenue from the parking lot or drive-thru exits– saving one of Lakewood’s busiest cut-thru residential streets from becoming an intolerable traffic-volume nightmare. Another condition is that after one year, McDonald’s pays for another comprehensive traffic-impact study to see if further measures need to be taken to calm traffic–such as adding concrete curb barriers to physically stop cars from making right turns down Woodward.

In addition, the city has recognized the need to put a traffic light and crosswalks at the Woodward/Detroit intersection (the Hall Avenue light will be removed), not only to address the negative vehicle traffic flow repercussions associated with the new McDonald’s but also to address the even more important pedestrian crossing aspect with so many school kids walking to and from Harding Middle School. The cost of the traffic signal is $120,000. A proposal has been submitted to Ohio Department of Transportation asking that they pay for $100,000 of the cost with the remaining $20,000 to be split by the city and McDonald’s.

We also amplified our voices for the whole of Lakewood. That is something which we should take pride from–we made it more than just about us. After the McDonald’s decision was rendered, I stayed for the Planning Commission work session to hear about the changes being made to the zoning code in regard to future drive-thru regulations. Councilman David Anderson initiated this process in response to many of us coming to him with our concerns, not just with McDonald’s, but also with an eye towards all of Lakewood’s future development. Although these new regulations can’t be applied retroactively to the McDonald’s development, I like what I heard—namely updating the zoning code with an actual ordinance that spells out what we need, and more importantly what we don’t need, which will help limit the McDonald’s-type developments of the future.

I recognize that my neighbors and I will soon be having to contend with a McDonald’s on our corner of Lakewood and that it may seem to many of us that the end is near–the end of Lakewood as we know it. But I am trying my best to look at things under the banner that the beginning is near. By that I mean that this has spurred a renewed sense of becoming better stewards of our inheritance. In the near future, the City of Lakewood will undergo a complete zoning code review. I, for one, will bring all the energy and passion I can muster to that important project. We need to ensure that our city has the best tools to help shape how its major commercial districts should look, feel, function and coexist with surrounding residential streets and neighborhoods.

I call upon all citizens of Lakewood to deepen the notion of “the commons.” We already do that better than many communities, but our resolve will be greatly tested in the years to come. Lakewood is a place where the out-of-control individualism of modern society can be balanced with an even deeper appreciation of what we can accomplish together. This whole McDonald’s development has brought many of us closer together–a welcome shift from “Me” to “We.” We don’t want the history book about Lakewood’s second century to be titled “The Tragedy of The Commons”–we want that narrative to read, “In Defense of The Commons.”

It is the mass movement match of the 21st Century: Occupy Wall Street vs. The Tea Party.

The events of the past three decades have been ominous. The events of recent months even more so, as today’s mainstream media marginalizes meaningful populist movements with endless attempts to paint participants as nothing more than bands of merry pranksters–in effect laughing at us and laughing at human suffering.

I’m somewhat baffled by the notion that the Occupy Wall Street and Tea Party movements are the same. Yes, the enemy is clearly identified. In this respect, Occupy Wall Street does mirror the Tea Party. Any similarity ends there. To the Tea Party, government is the enemy. Occupy Wall Street also sees government as an enemy, but only when democracy has been corrupted by money and has been seized by corporations. However, Occupy Wall Street recognizes that in the end, government remains the only vehicle we have through which the majority can fashion rules that increase personal security and place limits on unbridled greed and corporate dominance. If we choose to give up on government, we will have given up on our ability to collectively influence our future.

Occupy Wall Street wants to raise taxes on millionaires and billionaires and make huge corporations actually pay taxes. The Tea Party wants to greatly reduce them. For Occupy Wall Street, unfairness means that billionaires pay taxes at half the rate their secretaries do while the top 1% of the population earn as much collectively as the bottom 65% of the population. To the Tea Party, taxes themselves are unfair and inequality is desirable. They want to give the top 1% an even larger share of the nation’s wealth. Occupy Wall Street wants to rebuild and strengthen the social safety net. The Tea Party wants to eliminate it.

Both Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party are mass movements, but their attitudes toward the masses could not be further apart. Occupy Wall Street and the other Occupy protests lack leaders and a concise platform, but their demands clearly emerge from the thousands of individual grievances expressed in homemade signs and letters. Thousands of people have posted personal statements on the We are the 99% Tumblr website. I find them not to be ideological, but rather very practical. I’m sure that many of us can relate to or have personally experienced what people have shared on this site and I encourage you to take a look.

If you take the time to read some of these stories from people who have shared them there, it becomes obvious what the root causes of the suffering are. There is no universal health care to handle the random nature of poor health. There is no affordable higher education to allow people to develop their skills outside the logic and relations of indentured servitude. There is no realistic living wage guaranteed to each citizen willing to work to keep poverty and poor circumstances at bay.

Wall Street is the pinnacle of corporate greed (thus Occupy Wall Street) that bankrupted our country, and is now further complicit in imposing severe cuts on the middle and working classes. Yet, they have seen no consequences for the financial depression that they caused. It is about time we came together to recognize that corporations have been rewarded for their criminal behavior as they sit upon mountains of cash reserves as after-tax corporate profits are currently at an all-time historical high, while at the same time squeezing the American Dream to the point of near-collapse.

If you want to draw a clear distinction between Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party, it boils down to one movement based on a fear-driven rage and the other movement galvanized by its pursuit of a more humane and civil society. To the Tea Party, it’s not about saving money or balancing budgets, it’s about punishing those who teeter on the economic margins. It’s about raging that we are not our brothers’ keeper. Occupy Wall Street demonizes powerful banks; the Tea Party demonizes the working class and weakest of us all.

During the earliest days of the Tea Party, their demands were fragmented fits of rage, as people would show up at town halls to shout down their political representatives. One would scream about them taking guns away, another would rage about keeping government out of Medicare, others would fume against the unemployed, the poor, minorities, Obamacare, birth certificates, death panels, socialism, etc. etc. It was not until corporations and their adjunct conservative think tanks and media conglomerates co-opted the Tea Party movement that they centralized and amplified their anti-government manifesto. As one would expect, given its relative longevity and political impact, the Tea Party does have national leaders and a clear program.

By comparison, Occupy Wall Street is a more independent group, still in its embryonic stage. It is not close to finding a central rallying point and I don’t feel one is needed–this is more like big-tent civic engagement revivalism sparked by an evolving energy of people stepping forward in a myriad of ways and actions. I don’t know whether the absence of specific policy proposals is intentional or accidental, but I do know that it’s part of what lends such power to this movement and renders its targets so noticeably uncomfortable. It is made up of individuals that have come together in the name of humanity or better yet, in the defense of humanity.

Franklin Roosevelt once said in the midst of the largest legislative reformation in American History that “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” The only thing the Tea Party has to offer is fear. The thuggish masses of Americans who not only are venting about insane nonsense, not only are undermining their own interests acting as puppets of laughing corporate predators, and not only are taking down democracy around themselves in order to do so, but are in fact also destroying the entire social safety net fabric of this country. The single most frightening characteristic of this movement is that no amount of evidence or logic could persuade these folks to abandon the corporate manufactured lies they’ve attached themselves too.

Sadly, the crowning achievement of the Tea Party movement is how it created this rage-based atmosphere of disdain and lack of empathy for what Occupy Wall Street calls the 99% of us. This rage against the 99% is demonstrated wherever Tea Party Republicans come to power. Many within the Tea Party movement were happy to take government initiatives when it was helping to bring them into the middle class, but then immediately pulled the ladder up behind themselves afterwards, demanding tax cuts, responding to any line of political propaganda that would harmonize with their embarrassing victimization mantra by promising a feel-good response offering the muscular bludgeoning of people of color and people in poverty.

I prefer the Tea Party alternative of Occupy Wall Street. People are coming together to understand the single most fundamental fact of American politics in our time. The economic elites have walked away from the long-standing grand bargain of the 1930s through the 1970s. They are, simply put, no longer satisfied to be ridiculously wealthy, and now demand to be obscenely so. Instead of looking at the middle class as a source of national pride, it is for them an irritant to see even that small pittance of money in other people’s hands. And, thus, they are succeeding at reversing the basic deal that created the middle class and brought so much prosperity to so many American families in the mid-twentieth century. Today’s Tea Party has become an instrument to fast-forward that process. Perhaps the best example of this imperative is the (so far) unsuccessful play at privatizing Social Security. Wall Street looks at that mountain of cash–within view, but just beyond reach–in utter frustration. It is one of the few government activities (as opposed to health care, military hardware, prisons, utilities, highways, stadiums, ports, natural resources, etc.) that the overclass hasn’t yet been able to profitize. Why should seniors have that money when financial institutions could instead? In short, the whole purpose of the political right has shifted dramatically in the past three decades. Now, it’s entirely about the money. Occupy Wall Street seeks to counter that.

The Tea Party level of deceit has grown exponentially. This should not be taken lightly. There is huge anger out there, being stoked incessantly by those who profit from it, in one way or another. Most frightening of all, it is, as far as I can see, completely impervious to rational discourse. The sophistication of presentation has grown dramatically. This is a full-court press by clever people who know how to market. There are many examples of this, but one of the cleverest has been the defining of corporate center-right political figures like Barack Obama as extreme leftists, and the defining of the mainstream media as biased toward liberalism. “Obama is left of Europe!” they shout. If only. There have always been regressive predators in American politics. But in years past they would have been identified as such and marginalized accordingly. Today, they are more likely to become President, Speaker of the House, Governor, Senator or given a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court.

Until recently, the progressive counter-narrative has all but vanished from the mainstream. Occupy Wall Street seeks to amplify the voice of the people and counter the fact that the Democratic Party has become the sorta not-Republican Party, and stands for little more than a quieter and more slowly-unfolding version of the corporate take-over agenda. Nobody ever votes Democratic anymore. They vote against the Republicans when they rise to their most noxious behavior. We have a president who is supposed to be a radical leftist, and says almost nothing to combat the tide of thuggery now threatening the country. Instead, he continues to seek approval from those who never give it to him, game him at every turn, and repay his conciliatory efforts by asking for investigations into his birth certificate.

Most of the discussion about the Occupy Wall Street protests have focused on the indictment of the economic elite, but Occupy Wall Street makes an equally profound critique of our political system. The protests around the nation are driving home this profound realization that this fight can’t be won today simply by voting. The crisis that most fundamentally shapes our lives cannot be solved through the legislative process because the system is corrupted beyond repair. This slowly emerging realization is both invigorating–an invitation to engage in the kind of bold strategic thinking that those on the left have not entertained for decades–and disturbing, an indication of just how nasty the future may get.

And this is, at the end of the day, the scariest aspect of all concerning the current political climate. America now possesses a massive cohort of people who have simply transcended rational discourse–the Tea Party. Today I see the incoherent rage, the senseless foaming at the mouth that not only doesn’t fit reality, but in fact runs completely contrary to it. Occupy Wall Street seeks to counter that. In reality, what we have here today is a battle for America’s soul, a battle between False Populism (the Tea Party) and True Populism (Occupy Wall Street). Can Occupy Wall Street transform the Democratic Party? Will the truth set us free? If humanity acts as our guide, it will.

On Oct. 19, the Lakewood Planning Commission convened a special session for the pending McDonald’s development proposal for the Detroit Theater property.

On the agenda was McDonald’s request seeking the merger of two vacant parcels of land currently zoned for residential use (being the south 70 feet of the subject parcel) into one tax lo,t as an ingredient for its desire to obtain a conditional-use permit from the city to allow for an accessory parking lot in a residential district.

Without this necessary conditional-use approval for the south 70 feet (which also includes a portion of the proposed drive-thru), the McDonald’s development would already be a done deal and would have proceeded much more unimpeded without this additional piece of oversight from our fellow citizens on the Lakewood Planning Commission.

In a word, the Planning Commission said “Whoa!” As the meeting progressed, they recognized that much still remains unresolved and unanswered in regard to this McDonald’s proposal.

The Planning Commission has not said no to the project as a whole, but wisely chose to defer any decision on the conditional-use permit until the next Planning Commission meeting scheduled for Nov. 3–as they requested additional, more specific traffic studies be done by McDonald’s, and that the city look into traffic signal scenarios at both the Detroit/Woodward and Detroit/Hall intersections.

As the evening’s events unfolded, I could sense a certain amount of unease with the Planning Commission members, as their questions were not always met with clear or concise answers given the gravity of this development proposal. The members of Lakewood’s Planning Commission took this special session very seriously, and for that we should all be appreciative.

Once again, my fellow Woodward Avenue residents turned out in large numbers to express our concerns and apprehensions. At this meeting we were also joined by residents from Hall Avenue and residents from various other locations throughout Lakewood. In all, nearly 30 residents came forward to take a turn at the podium before the Planning Commission, as we presented our own unique perspectives, our own unique range of emotions and our own unique set of concerns. Yes, it was emotional, but that was but a small part of it–this is an emotionally charged development–we are talking about people’s homes and the quality of life we derive from them. People came forward with thoughtful, rational and meaningful concerns, grievances and proposed solutions–they did Lakewood proud.

The meeting began with a brief site plan overview presentation by Mike Lewis, McDonald’s Regional Real Estate Coordinator; it was pretty much the same song and dance that was trotted out at September’s Architectural Board of Review meeting. Speaking of the Lakewood Architectural Board of Review, after they gave conditional approval to the proposed McDonald’s building design and site plan, they went back to McDonald’s with a further condition that they alter the parking lot and drive-thru exits onto Woodward Avenue by adding “No Right Turn” signs and left-turn-only directional painting at each exit in an effort to better orient traffic flow back to Detroit Avenue. I would like to thank the members of the Architectural Board of Review for listening to the voices of Woodward Avenue residents by adding this condition to the proposal.

That being said, I shared with the Planning Commission our request and strong desire to take this significant development one step further by adding a fixed concrete curb as part of the directional painting as an additional assurance measure to better force that left turn back to Detroit Avenue and not have to rely on hope and a prayer that we count on the good will of people to abide by the “No Right Turn” signs and directional painting. It has been my observation, and many others can also attest to this, that the “No Left Turn” sign at the Lakewood Library at the Arthur Street exit is routinely ignored by library patrons as they take a left to head south on Arthur rather than turn right towards Detroit Avenue as the sign directs. We do not want the negative impacts associated with that scenario being played out on a much larger scale.

This may seem a trivial matter to some, but it means the world to us in our corner of Lakewood. I think that the emotions of this development are rooted in the quest to strike a balance between commercial development and residential amenity– that human capital be on equal footing with commercial capital. We desire to achieve that equilibrium needed for Lakewood to grow into the 21st century in terms of meeting the needs of its citizens–such as providing some sense of assurance that measures will be in place to avoid adverse effects on residential property in the face of commercial development.

By adverse effects I mean traffic impact–the main topic of the evening as elements of the McDonald’s traffic study were given much scrutiny by Planning Commission members and residents alike. The traffic impact study was done by GDP Group, an Akron-based engineering firm, and paid for by McDonald’s to measure the current and potential post-construction traffic impact in and around the Woodward Avenue/Detroit Avenue intersection. All the data presented was based on three days of manual traffic counting that occurred on Sept. 20-22 from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. at four different intersections along Detroit between Edwards and Westwood Avenues; and by road tube counts along Woodward Avenue from Sept. 27-29; which verified residential concerns that Woodward Avenue is used daily as a “thru” roadway for vehicles traveling through the area to the tune of 2,000 cars per weekday.

The city has also reviewed the traffic study and finds its methodology typical of other traffic studies done on behalf of the city for prior projects. The McDonald’s traffic impact study also included a review of historical traffic data and found that volume along Detroit Avenue has not changed since 1992, with the average being just over 9,000 vehicles per weekday.

The traffic impact study reached several key conclusions and makes a number of recommendations–the most poignant being the conclusion that the proposed McDonald’s will have no adverse impact on the surrounding roadway network–while at the same time estimating that there will be approximately 400 total additional traffic trips generated to the McDonald’s during the peak morning and evening rush hours. That figure alone warrants an adverse impact in my estimation.

Speaking of warranted, it was determined that the traffic light at the Detroit and Hall intersection is not warranted based on present and projected traffic volume–in its place should be a stop sign. It must be mentioned here that the city is also toying with the idea of removing that traffic signal as part of its ongoing Detroit Avenue Streetscape Plan. It is also recommended that no traffic light be constructed at the Detroit and Woodward intersection, as it too is deemed not warranted–in spite of all the drive-thru traffic exiting onto Woodward at this intersection. The study also recommends the removal of the pedestrian crosswalk on the west side of the Detroit/Hall intersection, as it would impede the proposed driveway entrance on Detroit Avenue.

One conclusion that jumped out at me, and with a member of the Planning Commission as well, is that this study has rated the attempt (post construction) to make a left or right turn at the Detroit/Woodward intersection as sub-standard–degraded to a “Level E” intersection on a scale of A (being no-delay) to F (being a significant delay longer than 45 seconds). Presently the intersection is rated a “Level C.” The McDonald’s traffic study deemed this impact as acceptable and not adverse to the existing traffic pattern wholly on the basis that a traffic signal is not warranted for the intersection based on a single-day traffic count and Ohio Department of Transportation signalization guidelines.

This conclusion alarmed the Planning Commission and is one of the primary aspects of the study which they found to be inadequate, and left too many unresolved questions that need to be answered at the next Planning Commission meeting. Can a signal not be warranted for the good of the community? We are our own city; we have our own autonomy to warrant what is needed within our city limits and not be indebted to statewide statistical data or succumb to the overgeneralization of traffic study software. The human beings who reside here know what is needed, and can better define adverse commercial development.

Another aspect of the traffic impact study is that when the study was undertaken, and all the traffic simulations shown at the meeting, it did not take into account the fact that the current proposal calls for “No Right Turn” signs and left-turn-only directional painting at each exit onto Woodward Avenue in an effort to orient traffic flow back to Detroit Avenue. The Planning Commission asked that the traffic impact study be revised to include this aspect of the proposal and how it may adversely impact the Detroit/Woodward intersection.

The Planning Commission deserves our praise; they recognized that much remains unresolved for this development. They recognize that McDonald’s is not the face of Lakewood and that the pursuit of such development may irreparably harm and alter our city, the people who live in it and the democracy with which we govern ourselves. One of the tenets of future Lakewood development–that it not adversely affect residential property–guided them. The Planning Commission was right to defer this process until key components are resolved to our citizens’ satisfaction.

As Lakewood enters its second century, we find ourselves at a relative political peace at this time–a time that should not be squandered. A time that should foster an environment in which citizens, the mayor and city council, together with the expertise of our Planning Director and his department and our volunteer citizen Planning and Architecture Commissions pursue the preservation of what our city’s founders bequeathed to us–the inheritance of the streetcar era and the economic and lifestyle assets still in place from that era that define the architecture and function that differentiate our streets and neighborhoods from the evils of post-WWII suburban-sprawl development.

I hope to see as many of you as possible at the Nov. 3 Planning Commission meeting at 6:30 p.m. in the City Hall Auditorium. If we truly desire to empower our city with the best defenses and tools necessary to preserve and accentuate the Lakewood we already have, we need to insert ourselves within the process and play a role in the preservation of our Lakewood. “Truth between candid minds can never do harm” -Thomas Jefferson.

My wife and I recently took our two young children down to Cleveland Public Square. It was our intent to join the Occupy Cleveland crowd gathered there to protest Wall Street greed as part of the Occupy Wall Street movements sprouting up across the nation and expose them to one of history’s most important acts–civil disobedience.

They were both fascinated by the stories my wife and I told them of the many protests and acts of civil disobedience (some were very significant) that we have been part of in the past twenty-five years. We explained to them in great detail that the vast majority of gains made in the realm of social justice in this country would never have been achieved if people did not take to the streets in solidarity.

As fate would have it, I nearly bumped shoulders with former Lakewood Mayor and now Cuyahoga County Executive Ed FitzGerald as I was demonstrating to my children how to hold your protest sign aloft so that it could be read and potentially caught on camera. It was quite the contrast to watch he who could very well be the most powerful man in Cuyahoga County walk through the midst of a group of approximately 75 protesters with not a soul knowing who he was other than myself. To Ed FitzGerald’s credit, he acted like it was nothing out of the ordinary and carried on with his stroll along Public Square–or as I later thought–maybe we all were just invisible to him.

The lords of finance in the looming towers surrounding Public Square, who, like their brethren on Wall Street, toy with money and lives; who make the political class, the press and the judiciary jump at their demands; who destroy the ecosystem for profit and drain the United States Treasury to gamble and speculate, took little notice of my family or any of the other activists on the street below them. The elites consider everyone outside their sphere marginal or invisible.

I have heard the corporate mouthpieces in the press, as they continue to puzzle over what those “Occupy People” want. What are their demands? Why can’t they articulate an agenda? The goal of these so-called “Occupy People” is very simple and very clear. It can be articulated in one word—revolution. These protesters have not come to camp out on sidewalks to work within the system. They are not pleading with Congress for electoral reform. They know national electoral politics is a farce and have found another way to be heard and exercise power. They have no faith, nor should they, in the political system or the two major political parties. They know the press will not amplify their voices, and so they created a voice of their own. They know the economy serves the top one percent, so they formed their own communal system. This movement is an effort to take our country back. It has to start somewhere…why not with civil disobedience?

This is a goal the power elite cannot understand. They cannot picture a day when they will not be in charge of our lives. The elites believe, and seek to make us believe, that globalization and unfettered capitalism is a permanent and eternal dynamic that can never be altered. What those at the top fail to realize is that the revolution will not stop until the corporate state is extinguished. It will not stop until there is an end to the corporate abuse of the poor, the working class, the elderly, the sick, children and those being slaughtered in our imperial wars. It will not stop until foreclosures and bank repossessions stop. It will not stop until students and families no longer have to go into massive debt to pursue an education, and families no longer have to go bankrupt to pay medical bills. It will not stop until the corporate destruction of the environment stops, and our relationships with each other and the planet are radically changed. And that is why the elites, and the rotted system of corporate power they sustain, are in trouble. That is why they keep asking what the demands are. They just don’t understand what is happening.

A couple more rants and raves later, I noticed a young woman standing next to us clutching a book tightly with both arms. I was most curious to know what this so obviously important book was that this person held so tightly to her body. And then, I caught a glimpse of the title and it was the most appropriate and relevant book that one could think of to bring to a protest–Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States.”

I have been thinking incessantly about Howard Zinn ever since. He was one of my personal heroes who died a year ago at the age of 87. With his death, we lost a man who did nothing less than rewrite the narrative of the United States. We lost a historian who also made history. On a more personal level, Howard Zinn altered the course of my history–changed my narrative. Forever altering how I view America and the world.

Of course I’m referring to the way Howard Zinn spoke about history; it was from the perspective of having written “A People’s History of the United States,” a book that changed the lives of countless people like that young woman at Occupy Cleveland.

Count me among them. Back in 1985, when I was 20 and picked up a copy of Zinn’s book, I thought history was about learning that the Magna Carta was signed in 1215. I couldn’t tell then what the Magna Carta was, but I knew it was signed in 1215. Howard Zinn took this history of great men in powdered wigs and turned it on its pompous head.

In Zinn’s book, the central actors were the runaway slaves, the labor radicals, the masses and the misfits. Howard Zinn wrote history as if written by Robin Hood, speaking to a desire so many share –to actually make history instead of being history’s victim. His book made me come alive.

Anyone who believes that the United States is now immune to radical politics never attended a lecture by Howard Zinn. I am fortunate to have twice seen and heard him speak. The rooms would be packed to the rafters, as entire families, black, white and brown, would arrive to hear their own history made humorous as well as heroic. I will always remember that famous Zinn quote: “What matters is not who’s sitting in the White House. What matters is who’s sitting in!”

Like the people he wrote about, Howard Zinn was entirely authentic. When he spoke against poverty it was from the perspective of someone whose family became homeless during the Great Depression. When he spoke against war, it was from the perspective of someone who flew as a bombardier during World War II, and was forever changed by the experience. When he spoke against racism it was from the perspective of someone who taught at Spelman College during the civil rights movement and was arrested sitting in with his students.

I always wondered why Howard Zinn was considered a radical. He was an unbelievably decent man who felt obliged to challenge injustice and unfairness wherever he found it. What is so radical about believing that workers should get a fair shake on the job, that corporations have too much power over our lives and much too much influence within government, that wars are so murderously destructive that alternatives to warfare should be found, that the interests of powerful political leaders and corporate elites are not the same as those of ordinary people who are struggling from week to week to make ends meet?

In addition to the shouts one can hear at Occupy Cleveland, I want to shout out a thank you to Howard Zinn for having the courage to peel back the rosy veneer of much of American history to reveal sordid realities that had remained hidden for too long until the printing of “A People’s History of the United States.”

Is this too radical? Hardly. I remember the propaganda that filled my old high school textbooks in American History–you will find our Founding Fathers portrayed as rugged frontiersman, soldier, democrat, man of the people–not the slaveholder, land speculator, executioner of dissident soldiers, exterminator of Indians. Thankfully, I was a receptive audience for his message, and Howard Zinn became my rock star.

It’s easy to feel helpless about the ruthless corporate politics of our day, but the legacy of Howard Zinn will always continue to hold up a mirror to the power that we already possess to make change: the potency of our words, the strength of our convictions, and the long history of activism and resistance that is our birthright.

That he was considered radical says way more about this society than it does about him. We should strive to build on Howard Zinn’s work and go out and make some history.

My family and I attended the Fallen Firefighter Memorial Ceremony on September 11, 2011. We were deeply moved by the unveiling of the new memorial created using two steel beams from the World Trade Center. Touching those beams unleashed a wave of emotions about what took place that day. Reflecting on the events that have unfolded in the ten years since that attack still leave us with much to grieve about–not only the loss of life that day, but a lost decade for America.

The attacks of September 11, 2001 were many things. Among the most important, we can see now that a decade has passed, is that they were a portal into an alter-reality world, which America has wandered through ever since. Four hundred fifteen firefighters and law enforcement officers–public workers–died that day and were justly honored at that time as heroes. That is a fact we would do well to remember today, as their counterparts, and all public workers for that matter, are pilloried as gluttonous anchors on the economy and denigrated as needless government bloat.

The 9/11 attacks and immediate aftermath eerily foreshadowed the trend by fusing the real with the unreal, the actual with the mythical and forsaking fact for falsehood. With its use of passenger aircraft to smash into giant buildings filled with innocent workers, it was designed to create a horrific spectacle. The World Trade Center and the Pentagon were clearly chosen for their symbolic value. And then, by chance and likely unanticipated by even the attackers themselves, the consequences expanded further into the realm of fantasy when not one but both of the towers fell, as if mischievous gods had sided for the moment with the evil perpetrators.

The United States, as if picking up Osama bin Laden’s cue, oriented its response to the mythical symbolism of Al Qaeda and bin Laden’s stage-managed inflation of their own importance. Soon, our foreign policy and domestic politics were revolving like a merry-go-round around Al Qaeda and the global threat it allegedly posed. Al Qaeda was absurdly likened to the Soviet Union during the cold war and Hitler during World War II, and treated accordingly.

Now real and immense forces were in play, as the power of the United States was real and immense, and what it did was truly global in its reach and consequences. The policy of “regime change” was born and the 1.5-trillion-dollar wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were launched in its name. Yet no sooner had America’s global imperialism been proclaimed that it began to disintegrate. The two regime-change wars quickly turned into studies in bloody futility that they remain a decade later, with no clear end in sight for either. The pseudo-threat had given rise to a pseudo-empire, which was no sooner launched than it began to unravel–undone by the stark reality of our manufactured alter-reality. The lost decade of America was prompted but not forced by 9/11; we have turned our power against ourselves in both foreign and domestic policy.

For ten years now, the habit of exaggerating or making up threats has persisted and spread as a new inclination to manufacture and create illusion infected the public discourse. The list of delusions and absurdities that played such an active role in our political sphere this past decade has been orchestrated in a perverse pattern. It consists of falsely alleging the existence of some problem to which your proposed solution is something you want to do anyway, for some other reason that you prefer not to make public. The false allegation in the case of Iraq was, of course, that weapons of mass destruction existed in that country–we all know how that illusion has played out.

Unfortunately, that pattern is now rooted at the center of economic policy. The strategy of manufacturing a threat in order to respond to it is a familiar one, but it has never played such a significant role in our politics as it has since 9/11. I feel that the most disturbing element of our lost decade is the fact that the United States has been exhausting itself trying to find solutions to unreal problems, while the real problems facing our country go largely unattended. The nation that was absorbed in its misguided wars failed to notice the looming financial crisis that overtook it in 2008. Our belligerent acts of self-destruction since 9/11 have more been acts of self-distraction in that we have summoned up imaginary demons precisely in order to spare ourselves from facing the real burdens of our time.

That belligerence brings us to Ohio Governor John Kasich’s favorite manufactured foil to demonize–public sector workers. I have laid out a long and winding road to speak to the root cause of how the anti-union-worker fires of scorn and scapegoatism have been ignited by the smoldering ashes of 9/11–manufactured by conservatives and funded by America’s largest corporations. In our post-9/11 world, any conversation in regard to John Kasich and Ohio’s Republicans’ dominance of our state legislative process begins and ends with four letters–ALEC.

ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) is a toxic alliance of corporations and state legislatures that work together to ensure that corporate interests stay at the top of legislative agendas across the country. This alliance is anti-union, anti-working class, anti-regulation, and is pushing their corporate interests with complete disregard for any regulatory measure that could lessen their profits.

ALEC, not Ohio’s elected officials, drafted the bulk of Ohio’s union-busting Senate Bill 5–which a “No” vote on Issue 2 this upcoming election seeks to repeal. How do we know this? Recently, a leak of ALEC documents obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy revealed how ALEC’s model legislation has spread to the Ohio Republican legislature. The details of ALEC’s model bills had once only been available to the group’s 2,000 legislative and 350 corporate members. But thanks to Ohio’s own Aliya Rahman, an economic justice activist, who was able to secure a leak of over 800 secret documents from a southern Ohio state legislator–we now have ALEC’s blueprints for the wholesale dismantling of labor and the privatization profiteering schemes set to unfold as part of the manufactured working-class downfall.

In the world according to ALEC, government contributes nothing to profit from other than a bloated military contract apparatus through which to pipeline public money. Outside of this role, it should be demonized, starved and privatized. Any force in a civil society, especially labor, that contests the rights of corporations to grab all social surplus for themselves, and that prevents the wholesale privatization of government services and functions in order to treat people like liabilities and the earth like a sewer, should be eliminated.

This view of the world dominated the Ohio legislative sessions as Republican leaders pushed a consistent message–“Public sector workers are to blame”–and deployed legislative tools and language drafted by ALEC for a sweeping range of anti-union laws, the broad aim of which is to make it harder to be a union and easier for workers not to pay the costs of collective bargaining or union political activity. The Right to Work Act eliminates employee obligation to pay the costs of collective bargaining; the Public Employee Freedom Act bars almost any action to induce it; the Public Employer Payroll Deduction Act bars automatic dues collection; the Voluntary Contribution Act bars the use of dues for political activity. Yet, via the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling allowing corporations to direct unlimited amounts of money into political races and ballot issue initiatives, over six million dollars has been raised so far by corporations in an effort to defeat the repeal of Senate Bill 5. It is estimated that by Election Day, over ten million dollars will be spent on public worker attack ads alone.

I don’t know about you, but I would prefer that even ruinous legislation at least be drafted by those who were elected to occupy the Ohio Statehouse and not by a team of out-of-state lobbyists holed up in shadowy corporate bunkers. This spring, ALEC-model anti-labor laws–in the form of Senate Bill 5– reached their tentacles into Ohio to create, among other things, laws to restrict the scope of collective bargaining; to eliminate “project labor agreements” and eliminate state “prevailing wage” requirements; and to preempt local living-wage ordinances or other labor standards. Just keeping track of all the anti-union legislation is often daunting.

I will be the first to acknowledge that unions are not as pure as the driven snow, but it has been well documented that states with high union membership equates to higher wages across the board for ALL workers within those states. Are there inept and indolent public employees? Yes, of course, but every single sector of the economy has its share of personnel that just don’t live up to certain standards. I have had the opportunity to work in the private sector, non-profit sector and now within the public sector, and no one sector trumps the other for worker productivity, passion and quality. I currently work for the City of Lakewood as a member of AFSCME Local 1043, and each and every day I recognize that it is a privilege to work on important public works projects for my community. It is not something I take for granted–I care deeply for my community and take pride in doing the job right and to the utmost satisfaction of our residents. I am not alone in that regard.

The willingness of people to blame unions for our economic crises is because there’s so much anger in the public about the economy, but we haven’t figured out who the real enemy is. People need more time to figure out the connection of the forces lined up against them, but they’re getting there. It may be that unions and other progressive organizations, moved by the carnage, will work together and with the public to build a mass movement to reverse it. Many people are trying to do that now. The “No on Issue 2” campaign has become a virtual melting pot of the entire cross-section of the diverse economic, spiritual, racial, urban, rural, environmental and social justice interests and passions found throughout the State of Ohio–we have found a common bond that unites us. That common bond is the universal acknowledgement that capitalism has been corrupted. This is a problem where left and right can agree. When government and private finance are in bed with each other, it’s not a left versus right issue; it’s a haves versus have-nots issue.

Two important events happened this past month that I found most disturbing–they both point to the post-9/11 decline of America. At the September 16th Republican Tea Party debate, a cheering jeering crowd supported the idea that a sick person who didn’t get health care insurance should be allowed to die. The very next day, the Census Bureau reported that poverty in the US reached its highest level since 1992. One in six Americans lives in poverty. These events are connected. When greed defines us and becomes our moral compass, then tolerance and humanity die, and prosperity is a casualty.

Yes, I have a problem with an attack on people who are a bright light in our economy–people who are committed to our communities and the welfare of our friends and families–and target them as the problem. I urge you to vote No on Issue 2 this November. The repeal of Senate Bill 5 will become a catalyst to help end the decade-long-running circus featuring illusion, delusion, distraction and deception.

In what has become an ever-common theme here in Lakewood recently, yet another standing room only crowd packed the auditorium at City Hall for the Architectural Board of Review meeting held to consider the proposed McDonald’s site plan for the Detroit Theater property.

Woodward Avenue residents turned out in large numbers, myself included, to hear from both McDonald’s Corporation representatives and the Architectural Board of Review about what may transpire on our street and our corner of Lakewood.

The meeting was called to order and the first order of business was rather mundane as we all sat through ten minutes of garage re-construction reviews before the McDonald’s delegation was called forward to present its proposal. There was an eerie and prolonged moment of silence (for the Detroit Theater perhaps) in the City Hall auditorium as the folks from McDonald’s spent a couple of minutes to queue up their power point presentation.

It should be noted that this was Architectural Board of Review Part II for McDonald’s Corporation as their initial site plan proposal was denied for failing to meet the historical architecture standards as set forth by the City of Lakewood and reaffirmed by this board. In affect, the board said come back with something better and we will talk.

McDonald’s Corporation brought in some of its ‘big guns’ to pitch their latest proposal to the Architectural Board of Review and in effect to the residents of Lakewood. As expected, the presentation was slick and crisp, as the Big Mac contingent set forth its new building design, lot design, greenspace (they kept calling it a park) complete with butterflies (seriously), landscaping, fencing, lighting, limiting storm-water runoff, sound and signage together with feel-good sustainability concepts and good neighbor assurances. For a moment, we were all transplanted to one giant Happy Meal ecotopia.

However, beyond the two-tone brick facade lies the drive-thru and its three – yes three – points of ingress and egress to and from Woodward Avenue. McDonald’s calls it two points of access (into and out of the drive-thru), but the traffic flow pattern as delineated on the site plan also allows for restaurant parking/patrons to leave the parking lot via Woodward Avenue – hence the three points of ingress and egress. Woodward Avenue is yet further impacted by the addition of three dedicated parking spaces adjacent to the proposed McDonald’s on the street. Speaking on behalf of Woodward Avenue residents, this is unacceptable and must be addressed firmly in the upcoming Planning Commission meeting.

I will admit that the building proposal itself was an upgrade over the initial building design, but it will never be mistaken for an architectural treasure, rather just a step or two above the standard utilitarian McDonald’s – it’s not bad or good – it just reeks of mediocrity and Lakewood deserves better.

As the evening progressed, culminating in the Architectural Board of Review’s conditional approval to the McDonald’s building and property site plan, the only serious objections raised by the board as part of their conditional approval were building and property signage issues and what the proper color and materials used for the perimeter fence should be. In addition, the board also requested as a condition that windows be added to the corner of the proposed structure in lieu of a brick wall. It was obvious to the Woodward Avenue residents that the impact and design of the drive-thru and its traffic flow burden placed on our street fell far down the list of priorities for this project review.

At the prior Architectural Board of Review meeting in regard to this proposal, a member of the board stated that one of the primary goals of this review process is “all about traffic circulation” – in that regard this board failed Woodward Avenue residents and the concept of residential amenity.

At this Architectural Board of Review meeting, a member of the board stated that “traffic flow is a Planning Commission issue”. My question to the board is what changed or transpired from one meeting to the next in regard to traffic circulation falling off the radar?

Mike Lewis, McDonald’s lead spokesperson for this proposal, stated that McDonald’s primary business practice is to capture the existing traffic flow along a particular street and he further acknowledged that they are not a destination type restaurant. Per McDonald’s Detroit Avenue traffic flow study, over 10,000 cars a day travel past the Detroit Theater property and it is their primary goal to capture as many of those cars as possible on a daily basis. The problem lies in the fact that if the proposed site plan is approved, Woodward Avenue will be inadvertently capturing much of the McDonald’s traffic to the detriment of our residents.

As previously mentioned, the board raised its most serious objection to the proposed size of the monument sign that McDonald’s depicted in its presentation to be located at the Detroit Avenue entrance. In this regard, I feel that the Architectural Board of Review played right into McDonald’s hands and fell for the manipulative tactics they use to make the McDonald’s corporation appear to be willing and able to compromise without much of a fight.

The board fell for the show/stunt presented by the McDonald’s contingent, as they claimed that they needed this massive and ugly 8-foot high, fire-engine red monument entrance sign as their dominant corporate presence display, knowing full and well that it would be universally rejected by the board. As soon as the board raised its objections to the size and scale of the entrance monument, low and behold, someone standing along the back wall of the auditorium sprang forward with an alternative concept drawing showing a much smaller signage monument to placate the board. It was theatrics designed to show that they are willing to willingly compromise in hopes that the board would gloss over other critical aspects, such as traffic flow and residential impact – and it worked.

After the meeting adjourned, I quickly sought out Mike Lewis, McDonald’s lead spokesperson for this proposal, and asked him to clarify a comment he made in response to my public comments to the Architectural Board of Review, that if in fact it was true that they had a prior site plan denied at the onset of this process by the Architectural Board of Review, and that plan had the entrance and exit for the drive-thru solely on Detroit Avenue, with no point of access to and from Woodward Avenue – he said yes. I asked him to re-confirm and he said yes again.

It seems that the Architectural Board of Review was deeply rooted, and dare I say fixated, on the concept of the new McDonald’s structure abutting the sidewalks along the corner of Detroit and Woodward, which, by the way, the Detroit Theater currently does not. I know it’s the board’s job to look at the big picture for the preservation of Lakewood and the qualities that make it an attractive and desirable place to live.

Having lived elsewhere, in places where no Architectural Board of Review even existed, I value our volunteer board’s service to Lakewood and the protective oversight and due diligence they bring to the preservation and planning process, but I feel they lost sight of the big picture on this project in regard to the overwhelmingly negative impact it will have on the residents of Woodward Avenue as they try to deal with a drive thru entrance and exit AND an additional parking lot exit, part of the McDonald’s plan which every member of the board approved.

My greatest fear, aside from the obvious negative impact this decision places on the residents of Woodward Avenue, is that this ruling now establishes a precedent for future Lakewood drive-thru commercial development in which residential streets are willingly sacrificed in favor of the siting of a particular structure.

I, along with my many friends and neighbors on Woodward Avenue, feel that given the relatively small footprint of the proposed McDonald’s structure in relation to the size of the parcel, that there is ample room to both accommodate the building abutting the sidewalk of Detroit Avenue (as it architecturally should) along with placing the entrance to the drive-thru and restaurant parking off of Detroit Avenue; and having said drive-thru wrap around the back of the structure and exit back onto Detroit, on the other side of the building. This would preserve the urban architectural environment so justifiably important to Lakewoodites and the members of the Architectural Board of Review, as well as preserving the equally important quality of life issues for Woodward Avenue residents.

Councilman David Anderson eloquently stated the case on behalf of his constituents: that there is a need to more strongly consider and measure the impact of drive-thru business as it negatively impacts our residential amenity. This is the case not only with regard to the proposed McDonald’s, Councilman Anderson said, but also for proposed construction yet to come. The city does not want to be caught flat-footed as future development unfolds. We should all appreciate his leadership on this issue.

The elephant in the room, the obvious solution to this equation, is an outright ban on drive-thru business in Lakewood from a go-forward basis, allowing those that presently exist to remain. Every Lakewood resident that I have spoken with about a drive-thru ban thoroughly supports the idea – regardless of which  address they may reside.

If Lakewoodites truly desire to empower our city with the best defenses and tools necessary to preserve and accentuate the Lakewood we already have – the protection of our best economic and lifestyle assets being in large part the architecture and function that physically distinguishes our streets and neighborhoods from the doldrums of suburbia – taking up the cause of a drive-thru ban is path well worth taking. Do we have the guts and fortitude to pursue this worthy endeavor? This would help marginalize those people who want to knock Lakewood down because they think that’s the best way to make money. We far too often seem to pre-occupy ourselves with obtaining shiny new objects rather than accentuating and building upon the many great assets we already have.

As the evening drew to a close, Lakewood Planning and Development Director Dru Siley, made some terrific closing comments. He reminded us that the south 70-feet of the Detroit Theater property is not zoned commercial, but rather residential, and that a conditional-use variance would have to be granted to McDonald’s as part of the Planning Commission approval process. Apparently, it can also be revoked at any time due to traffic impact issues.

At this point, it appears that the Planning Commission may offer us a glimmer of hope in addressing our grievances and brokering a more residential amenity-centric solution on behalf of Woodward Avenue residents which would set the proper precedent going forward for future commercial/residential development scenarios.

Not to sound melodramatic, but I keep thinking about the last words ever spoken by Robert F. Kennedy, the night he won the 1968 California primary just before he was assassinated. His last words were, “And now it’s on to Chicago and let’s win there.”

So, fellow Woodward Avenue residents and Lakewood concerned citizens, it’s on to the Planning Commission and let’s win there.