Americans have always believed that theirs is a government of the people, by the people, for the people, but a clear message we heard at the town hall we hosted Wednesday evening is that Abe Lincoln’s description no longer fits. Especially that “for the people” part. Over and over, people stood to tell us that the government is failing them, in so many ways, and they don’t want to be powerless to stop it. The town hall did exactly what we hoped in providing a forum for people to offer their thoughts and ask their questions, with Republicans in Congress refusing to meet with constituents. Multiple times, people asked what they can do to change things. They asked who will lead the charge to stop our slide into fascism. And they asked what we, in our newsroom, are doing about it. It’s a tough question, but I don’t think our answer is more town halls. If we’re going to host a gathering of our readers again, I think we need action to be the goal. First, though, a quick note about fascism. I’ve received several emails from people who interpreted what they heard Wednesday to mean that our newsroom is neutral on that evil. Absolutely not. Few newsrooms have condemned this nation’s slide into fascism more than we have. I’ve said it repeatedly myself on our Today in Ohio podcast. I say it here. Donald Trump is a fascist. Almost every step he takes is a move toward fascism and the loss of civil rights. In our newsroom, there aren’t two sides to fascism. We condemn what is happening, and we will continue to point out how our elected leaders are failing to halt Trump’s authoritarian work. Back to next steps from the town hall. This was a group of fully informed people. They clearly get news from multiple sources and are informed on many issues. Further, use their power of independent thought to consider solutions and action. It was a terrific crowd. They spoke of the need to promote fledging leaders. Could they, and others like them, be the solution to problems that vex us? Follow me here. This is a little wacky. Let’s start with the example I used on a podcast discussion this week: regionalism. The vast majority of people in Cuyahoga County know that converting the entire county into the city of Cleveland would make us an overnight economic powerhouse. (We published a story about this a while back.) But we can never get there because every elected official in every one of our dozens of municipalities is a pig at the trough, greedily holding on to their positions at the expense of the public good. What if we could convene 200 or 250 people – no elected leaders allowed – into an exercise of designing the countywide city of Cleveland with an ultimate aim of putting a charter before the voters? It would be a mammoth undertaking affecting many areas of our lives, but if we set up those 200 or 250 people into groups of six or eight around tables, we could tackle every one of those areas, with redundancy. Let’s start with taxes. We have a patchwork of municipal income taxes in the county, so what if we tasked three of our tables to independently tackle that. You’d put a municipal finance expert at each of the three tables, along with a conversation facilitator. Ultimately, we’d have three different strategies for solving the problem. Fire protection is a vital service. So, what if you tasked three tables to design a countywide fire department, with a firefighting expert at each table to bring reality to the discussion. You’d do the same with policing. Trash collection. Leaf pickup. Road maintenance. Parks. Code enforcement. Municipal courts. Every service that local government provides. And – to make sure we focus on restoring power to the people – you’d have three tables work on designing a new form of government for our new city of Cleveland. Personally, I’d hope we’d come up with a plan to have a mayor and a 7-member City Council, with three at-large seats and four ward seats representing entire quadrants of the county. And I’d hope we would use ranked choice voting, to ensure fair representation. Whatever, we’d have three tables of people, along with experts, come up with designs. Once each group of three tables finished its work, you’d reconcile them to build the best proposal. Then you’d put it all into a charter and seek countywide approval. To make this work, you’d need a deadline. A year, maybe. The tables would have to meet regularly, collecting information and consulting experts as needed. There’d be a cost to it all, for research, meeting space and some staffing to organize things. In the end, though, the process would restore the power to the people, creating a system where new leaders could emerge outside the corrupted party primary system that gives us the worst leaders I’ve ever seen. Basically, smart and dedicated people would design a new system aimed at public service. Of course, this example is not about what people discussed at our town hall. We’d need a bit of brainstorming to figure out ways to use this model to fix our broken state and federal governments. I use regionalism just to illustrate an idea. As for our role, we could be the convener. We could help put the call out to get things started, and we could have a team of three or four reporters who do nothing but report on the many aspects of whatever is being tackled Again, this is a bit wacky, but if the goal is to get back to a government of the people and for the people, tapping into the energy and commitment of folks like those who attended our town hall is one way to do it. Northeast Ohio is loaded with smart people. We need to tap into that. I’m at [email protected] Thanks for reading. | 