Top Stories 2005
Cincinnati Change believes we can change Cincinnati NOW. We started in 1988 and where incorporated in 2005. The Enquirer lists their top local stories and they limit it to 5. Here are Cincinnati Changes top local stories for 2005.
I - The Hurricanes
Katrina, Rita and Wilma should be the top story on everyone A list, we have over 800 people from the affected areas living in greater Cincinnati now. What else has affected, negatively, 25 million Americans, except for number 2.
What can we say except we are going to help 100,000 people affected by creating a fast response infrastructure for relief and rebuilding. This enterprise is being developed so that when this happens again we can be their to help rebuild based on the model we are developing in Cincinnati in 2006 in cooperation with Port Arthur, Texas where Rita visited for 12 hours.
II - The War
The War on Terrorism and the hope for Democracy is number 2. It will have even a longer term affect on us as citizens of the United States of America. We have spent 8 trillion dollars since September 11th 2001 and have a president who says, "I see a global terrorist movement that exploits Islam in the service of radical political aims -- a vision in which books are burned, and women are oppressed, and all dissent is crushed.
Terrorist operatives conduct their campaign of murder with a set of declared and specific goals -- to de-moralize free nations, to drive us out of the Middle East, to spread an empire of fear across that region, and to wage a perpetual war against America and our friends. These terrorists view the world as a giant battlefield -- and they seek to attack us wherever they can."
Our nation stands as a shining example to all the world of freedom and democracy, a unique honor that comes with a responsibility to lead. 2005 showed we are in the business of nation building. We can and have to win the War on Terror. We believe the 2006 has to be a transition year. The year 2005 showed us that we need to serve our troops better and support true freedom movements around the world.
Cincinnati Change believes in America should preserve our national strength and pride while working to extend peace, freedom and human rights throughout the world. We want to serve our people better and we want to do it smart with all the Third Frontier resources available.
III - The New Mayor
The election of Mark Mallory as Mayor. New leadership brings with it a chance to improve the city. He can use the assets of the city which are more than a billion dollars to make fundamental changes in the lives of the residents of the city. He can coordinate the leadership in the region to create a Cincinnati lifestyle that benefits everyone in the region. At Cincinnati Change we know they have the tools to deal with the problems of the city and look forward to this council to have the will to use them to benefit the residents of the city.
Cincinnati Change and its minority small business founders are going to propose to them that they work with the mayor and his designated City Manager on a program for development that creates or retains over 50,000 jobs for Cincinnatians (who by the way are residents of Hamilton County and citizens in the state of Ohio) and sustains 12,000 low to moderate income homes while building 8,000 market rate homes in the city.
IV - The New City Council of Cincinnati
After the election of a City Council that got down to business right away. They passed a budget and set the stage for a consensus to develop on how we define public safety and go about achieving it when City Council Law & Public Safety Committee reviewed the shooting incident that occurred on Christmas Eve. This incident in Roselawn which resulted in the death of one 19 year old Chanel Jordan, who was coming to pick her brother up and was not at the "dance", and the wounding of another youth.
Cincinnati Councilman Cecil Thomas, chair of the Committee, has said it was a productive meeting, but now a holistic approach is needed to attack the problem, with council, police and parents working together. A number of community members spoke about the violence in the community and the need to take action against the problem. Cincinnati Change has declared 2006 as the year of Peace In the Hood along with Jobs in the Hood.
V - UC
The firing of Bob Huggins is cause for cheer, if it is part of cleaning up University of Cincinnati sport program into a program that treats all sports equally and increases their graduation. We believe that it should be the most important goal of all Division I schools. Although, at first, UC may not win tournaments, but they have improved not only the ethical standards of their sports program 100%. They have set a bar for the region to do no less.
Little known fact - the University of Cincinnati was the second-oldest and second-largest municipal university in the country. It became one of Ohio's state universities in 19977.
VI - Race
In 2005 racial division has not been reduced under previous leadership, but we have hope for 2006. We still had to much disconnect between the African American and poor in Cincinnati and the Cincinnati Police Department even with the Department of Justice Memorandum of Understanding (DOJ) and the Collaborative Agreement (CA). The Big story is the change in leadership of the FOP and the coming together of the African American community around the issue race and crime.
The image of police officers and the city as a whole is still recovering from race riots that erupted in April 2001, following the shooting death of an unarmed black man who ran from a white police officer trying and subsequent police slow down. The perception that emerged has been said to have embarrassed Specialist Kathy Harrell, the first woman elected president of Queen City Lodge No. 69 of the Fraternal Order of Police.
"The whole city got a black eye from it," she said in an interview. "But did we grow from it? Yes. Have we proven we're still an excellent city? Yes. Are there concerns that have to be dealt with? Definitely." We hope to work with her and other interested parties who believe that we can have Peace in the Hood along with Jobs in the Hood.
VII - Third Frontier
Ohio Governor Bob Taft pleas guilty to crime. This was a first for a sitting Ohio governor who has the lowest poll rating of any governor in polling history. Yet he has a chance during this his last year in office to make changes in Ohio's technology landscape for the future that will overshadow his past. He has the resources at hand in Ohioians passed his Third Frontier Program. For those ready it the program offers a chance to growth businesses, like the ones we currently partner with, into major global companies using Third Frontier funding.
VIII - Civic Pride
WHO-DEY: The Bengals making the playoffs is important for a simple thing that will make a big difference in 2006, increased civic pride. The bengals could be a central point of this pride campaign driven by Cincinnati Change to met the goals that are defined by the residents of the city in 2006 through an electronic village which will be in operation on our birthday June 19th 2006.
IX - The gowth of the Internet and Bloggers
The internet has 60 million home pages and over a billion possiable conncetions currently. The growth in 2005 of the blogsphere in the big news. A blog is a website in which hypertext and images (and links to video, audio and other files) are posted on a regular basis and in generally reverse chronological order. The term is a shortened form of weblog. Authoring a blog, maintaining a blog or adding an article to an existing blog is called "blogging". Individual articles on a blog are called "blog posts," "posts," or "entries". A person who posts these entries is called a "blogger".
Many bloggers support the Open Source movement. The free speech nature of its technology has helped blogging to have a social impact. Blogging makes it easy for employees to irritate their bosses, and a number have been fired. many say blogs changed the election of the Mayor in Cincinnati.
Open Source Politics, or the ability of people to participate more directly in politics, is reframing terms of debate (see George Lakoff). Many bloggers differentiate themselves from the mainstream media, while others are members of that media working through a different channel. Some institutions see blogging as a means of "getting around the filter" and pushing messages directly to the public.
An example of this growth is Wikipedia, in 2005 it was 4 years old online based on a very radical idea, the realization of the dreams most of us have always had for what the Internet can and should become. Thousands of people, all over the world, from all cultures, working together in harmony to freely share clear, factual, unbiased information… a simple and pure desire to make the world a better place. In 2005, it achieved 6-fold growth in pageviews with spending of less than $750,000.
Cincinnati Change has several blogs:
Cincinnati Change General Information About US
Cincinnati Change Response to Hurricane Katrina & Rita It Says It All - help those in need
MBE's in the Nati Minority - The Business Journal on Cincinnati
Nati Action Agency - a community action agency just for the city using city money
Nati Water Working for Cincinnatians - it's worth 400M plus lets use it for us NOW
Uptown Security - we can run our own police force as well as own CPD it's in the city rules
X- Cincinnati Change was "born" this year
Cincinnati Change was incorporated Juneteenth 2005, June 19th 2005, as a not for profit organization. Development efforts, that succeeded and failed in 2005, set the state for the mission of Cincinnati Change. We will serve as an innovative, proactive partner in supporting comprehensive economic development, workforce needs creation along it's development, quality housing development that is lead free and environmentally safe, supportive of historic conservation efforts where they make sense, land use management based on creating a land trust for the city, supportive of creating in Cincinnati a worldwide arts and cultural amenities infrastructure that is a tourism destination and creation of a comprehensive human and social services infrastructure for all Cincinnati's citizens to be Nati Action Agency.
In 2005 Cincinnati Change bought interest in it's headquarters at 2439 Auburn Avenue in preparation for starting operations in February 2006. Cincinnati Change believes that the strength of our nation lies with the individual and that each person's dignity, freedom, ability and responsibility must be honored by each other and those who we elect.
Cincinnati Change believes in the equal rights, equal justice and equal opportunity for all, regardless of race, creed, sex, age or disability, including, if needed, timed affirmative action. Cincinnati Change believes in free enterprise and encouraging individual initiative have brought this nation opportunity, economic growth and prosperity.
