The Courage to Speak

From Jeff Griffiths, Executive Director-HandsOn Northeast Ohio:

This holiday season, we have had several reminders of the power of an individual or group of individuals to create a positive change. Whether it has been the CNN Heroes show, the local Plain Dealer Heroes section or others, each story is a powerful example of the power of caring, of how simple acts can be transformative, of how standing up for what is right is never wrong.

This fall, I was at a volunteer project and had the pleasure to meet a few of the many quiet heroes working daily to make their neighborhoods great. During our Make A Difference Day events in October, we had the pleasure of supporting the E. 73rd Street Block Club in Cleveland. The E. 73rd Street Block Club is a collection of amazing, older women who have transformed a street devastated at one time by drugs, crime and prostitution. When these ladies moved onto the street, they were told by the drug dealers that they were not going to last, that the street was not going to change. That wasn’t acceptable to the ladies of the E. 73rd Street Block Club. For them, silence was acceptance. These citizens had the courage to speak and act in ways that would redefine their neighborhood.

Over the time that the current group of women have led the Block Club, they have fought for vacant homes, havens for crime, to be destroyed. They have fought for new homes, now in beautiful rows down their street, to be built. They fought and received funding for a KaBoom playground to be built for the neighborhood children. Over time, these courageous women have transformed their street into a safer place for families to live. The women of the 73rd Street Block Club could have been silent in the face of the threats that the encountered. It would have been easy to just stay in their homes in fear or with the excuse of being “too busy”. They could have let the minority of bad people in their community set the tone and standard of living for the majority of good, hardworking people. But they didn’t. The E. 73rd Street Block Club had the courage to speak, to stand up for what is right. This small number of diminutive women stood like giants for a cleaner, safer and nicer place to live. Today, E. 73rd Street is still not a perfect place. There is still crime to combat and there is still a daily battle for right and wrong. I can say with confidence after hearing their story and serving with them in Oct. that my money is on the Block Club to win this battle outright.

To hear stories about the economic and social cost of emptiness on places, here is a recent story by Changing Gears .

To read a recent story on the foreclosure crisis in Cleveland on 60 minutes, click here .