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Nobody ever said youth and enthusiasm can't go hand in hand with irrational mean-spiritedness. Consider Cincinnati City Council candidate Nick Spencer's suggestion for cutting crime in Over-the-Rhine: kick out the agencies serving the poor. Ever since Spencer, a Charter Committee candidate, became the owner of alchemize, a nightclub on Walnut Street, he has worked to draw attention to the problem of violence in the neighborhood. But his sometimes shrill protestations turned positively ugly in a recent entry on his campaign blog (spencer2005.com). Lamenting yet another shooting in the Main Street Entertainment District, Spencer promises a letter to the mayor and council calling on them to force two charities to move, without explaining how they're in any way responsible for the violence.
"It will call for the use of eminent domain powers against the Mary Magdalene House and the Greater Cincinnati Coalition for the Homeless...," Spencer wrote. "It's time to stop playing around and get tough here. More shootings like this could kill the progress we've made on Main. The city must use all of its powers to protect the civic and financial investments that have been made in the area. The glut of social services that encourage panhandling in the district must be addressed."
Spencer's discussion of the crime problem is telling. These bothersome shootings are just bad for business, and so is the presence of all those unfortunates getting help from the social service agencies.
Meanwhile, a progressive alternative to the kind of development favored by Spencer, the Cincinnati Center City Development Corp. and other regentrification advocates has received an award. The Community Development Corporation Association (CDCA) of Greater Cincinnati recently gave its "most outstanding collaboration" award to a comprehensive housing development plan for the Washington Park area presented by ReStoc and generated by Miami University's Center for Community Engagement in Over-the-Rhine and the University of Cincinnati's Niehoff Studio. The Washington Park plan is the result of the On-the-Ground Design Charrette for Social Justice that was held in September (see "Designs Worth a Damn," issue of Sept. 15-21, 2004). The charrette — a collaborative planning process — brought together 60 artists, architects, students, activists and others from around the country to consider design advocacy as a way to address homelessness, poverty and civil rights.
While stumping for Democratic congressional candidate Paul Hackett last week, former U.S. senators John Glenn and Max Cleland took time to lend support to striking workers at Cognis Corp. The United Steelworkers (USW) hosted the two Democratic leaders July 30 at the Hartwell Recreation Community Center. About 260 members of USW Local 14340 have been on strike at Cognis Corp.'s Cincinnati plant since February.
Women Still Working for Less
A first-ever examination of the condition of women and girls in Greater Cincinnati began in July 2004 and concluded with the release last week of Pulse: A Study on the Status of Women and Girls in Greater Cincinnati. The Women's Fund of the Greater Cincinnati Foundation commissioned the study. Some of the key findings:
· Expect ever-increasing minority representation. African-American and Hispanic girls under the age of 18 outnumber white girls under 18. That foretells a rapidly growing minority population as these young women begin having kids.
· There are many more single-mother households in the African-American community than in the white community. Only 9.2 percent of Greater Cincinnati's white families are headed by single mothers, compared to 41.3 percent of African-American families. Single African-American mothers are fewest in Warren County, which is enjoying booming economic development, and highest in Hamilton County, which is steadily losing both jobs and population.
· Women work hard here. More women work in Greater Cincinnati (between 59 and 65 percent) than the national average (57 percent). They own 34,064, or 29 percent, of the region's businesses and head some of the area's largest foundations. They are especially well represented in education and social service agencies.
· It's still hard for women to work here. They might own their own businesses because they can't stand the local work climates: "Forum participants described a professional climate that is fraught with conflict, blatant racism and some remaining sexism, as well as a conservative aura that seems to blanket all social, professional and economic issues and concerns," the study says.
· And they still earn less than men. Local women earn 65.1 to 72.9 percent of male earnings. That proportion is even lower than the national percentage, which has women earning 75.5 percent of what men do. Not only do African-American women earn less than white men, they also earn less than white women.
· Health coverage is pretty good: 85 percent of women are covered by some kind of health insurance. But health itself is not so good: Infant mortality is higher than state average, and African Americans have twice the infant mortality that whites do. The study links this to high rates of cigarette smoking.
· Many women don't feel safe in their communities. Twenty-three percent of all area women worry about their safety walking alone in their neighborhoods; for African-American women, the figure jumps to 30 percent.
To read the study, visit pulsecincinnati.com.
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