Late last year, at the culmination of a long high-speed chase, 13 Cleveland police fired 137 rounds into a car in East Cleveland killing two unarmed people.
State and local authorities are currently investigating the case: why the chase — which violates official department policies — occurred; why police thought the fleeing couple was armed.
The case has raised charges of brutality and discrimination within the police department. None of the 13 shooters was black, but the victims were.
Anyway, one of the more upsetting elements of this case is that the shooting …

The worst part about living in Hough is that you can’t talk about living in Hough.

Not unless you want to experience Horrible Things from your friends, family and colleagues. There are three types of Horrible Things: 1) The LOOK, 2) The pat on the back, and 3) The argument.

Horrible Thing 1: the LOOK:
Several of my high school friends went out to dinner, the ladies who have been there through the highs and lows, from the hilariously awkward middle school dances through baby showers and funerals. One friend was looking to buy a house and I chimed in, “Oh yeah, the neighborhood is everything.”

My friend, Youngstown celebrity Phil Kidd, told me a hahafunny recently. After consistently being ranked as one of the poorest cities in the country, Youngstown has recently seen a small reversal of fortunes in its downtown. A handful of new bars, some housing development, and viola — old-school Youngstowners are now complaining about “gentrification.”

I have a message for these people: Stop it!

If you’ve got some time to kill, check out this vintage video about how racial change impacted Cleveland’s Buckeye neighborhood. Sad and unfortunate, but this history is still impacting the city in a big way.
One of the biggest take aways for me, and my friend Charlotte, whose father is a Hungarian immigrant who grew up in this neighborhood, is the packed sidewalks in Buckeye Road. Sheesh. It looks like Madison Avenue in New York. What a contrast with today!
Another thing, I apologize some of the wording in this video is …

People often accuse me of being angry or negative. It’s a pretty highly charged accusation and I have to admit that sometimes it stings; but more and more I’m used to it.
I’ve thought it over a little bit, you see, and I don’t really have an anger problem in my personal life. Not in my family. Not in my relationship with my boyfriend. Not at my job. But, oh my gosh, a land use issue in Cleveland can really set me off. It raises my blood pressure. I had to …

As famed Bronx, NY environmental activist Majoria Carter said, “I believe that you shouldn’t have to move to live in a better neighborhood.” Indeed, the best — and perhaps only — way for the rust belt to be reinvented as a sustainable, thriving, and inclusive region is by accomplishing the task in community after community … one at a
time.

The most valuable takeaway from the decade’s old civil rights movement is that, while workplace integration is achievable via legislative mandates and judicial rulings, no amount of governmental pressure can force individuals of different races to live side-by- side if they have no desire to do so.

Unfortunately, there’s a strong perception that small town people are clueless about “big city” life. While it’s true that the rural “deep South” is where many African Americans have faced (and continue to face) some of the worst discrimination, that does not mean small-town people are unprepared for transplanting to a black, inner city neighborhood. I grew up in an affluent suburb of Pittsburgh and my husband comes from a small town of about 4,000 residents. He was definitely more prepared for living in Hough than me. Why? Here are …

What do YOU think it’s like? Here’s an exclusive, behind-the-scenes look at the typical week for a white woman living in Hough, a 97% African-American neighborhood in Cleveland, Ohio:

–Check email and Facebook every day. It’s way better than TV.
–Push my kids on the swings in our backyard.
–Feed our six chickens.
–Teach the neighborhood kids that eggs come from chickens.
–Do the laundry and then fall asleep and forget about it in the dryer and my husband has to fold
the clothes so our sons have pants to wear.

We write about transit on this blog a lot because we think it is essential to turning around our cities. The city of Detroit, more than others, has been undergoing a transit crisis. There are calls to finally develop a decent, sustainable system. We are hoping that they do.
In the meantime, here’s a taste of what Detroit’s transit dependent deal with on a day to day basis:

Faces of Transportation 11-30-11 from Project S.N.A.P. on Vimeo.
-A.S.

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I love TV’s The Wire. When I heard about this self-guided, Wire-themed tour of Baltimore, I thought, “That’s the self-guided tour of Baltimore I’ve been waiting for.” But I read something a few days later that paralyzed my ambitions. Christian Lander, author of the blog and book “Stuff White People Like,” explained in an interview:

When and how did you get the idea for the site?

January 18th. A friend and I were having an IM conversation about The Wire. He said, “Not enough white people watch The Wire.” I said, “Don’t worry, they do.” We started talking about what they’re doing instead of watching The Wire : therapy, getting divorced, going to plays…