Cleveland is the epitome of the rust belt; desperately poor, incredibly loyal to the sports teams, burgeoning arts scene, great music scene and so on. all the money is in the suburbs, all the the jobs are in mexico and overseas but the people are still here. they are definitely still here and for the remainder of the campaign. parts of them are me, parts of me are them. it's funny to acclimate yourself to a city. to know it gradually through its twisting arterial streets, beating neighborhoods, Ohio City, Tremont, and the industrial guts of the East Side. it's a strange but pleasing slow knowledge which comes from making wrong turns, long trips on the bus and walks around downtown.

going out and about in Cleveland, like josef and i did on saturday, is probably the starkest reminder of why i'm here working for dennis. saturday night, we went to coventry village, and hung out in a wine bar, drank a glass of white wine with some friends we met last weekend, and then attempted to head home. as we stood at the RTA (Cleveland metro) station around 1:30am, proud holders of tickets 'good until 3am' the realization dawned on us, that while the tickets may have been good until 3, that didn't preclude the trains from stopping at midnight. so, after ruling out hitching, we decided to walk at least part of the 12 miles which separated us from home. we walked for a long, long time, down Carnegie ave, aware the further we walked, the more abandoned warehouses and boarded up homes there were. as both of us we used to cities, we traveled on, figuring we'd walk until fortune favored us with a bus. well, no bus came and the tired faces of old apartment buildings and shut-down businesses began to crumble even further.

i was reluctant to admit i was nervous. i grew up in a city, i'm a big guy who can handle himself okay, i should be able to walk a ways in the dark. in the dark. eventually, josef and i decided to flag down a cab. the driver stopped for us after about fifteen feet of hesitation and let us get in. when we told him how far we were planning to walk, and where through, he let us know we were probably in the worst possible neighborhood to be unfamiliar with at night. 'drug dealer prostitution central,' he called it. part of me always rails against such proclamations, 'whaddaya mean WORST neighborhood? you sure you don't just mean most-BLACK neighborhood or most POOR?' because in my experience, that's what most people usually mean. but, the part of me that was glad for a ride home in the earliest hours of the morning quelled my initial response. i don't think the driver really meant anything, his concern was more for two people who were clearly in a fish-out-of-water situation.

after we got home, i thought about it some more. it's no secret poor folks live in the worst areas of major cities. let me be absolutely clear though; these places are not terrible because poor folks live in them. it has little to do with the quality or character of the people there but it has everything to do with the services provided, the businesses who stay or leave, the landlords who either keep up places or don't, and the jobs which are there and especially the jobs which AREN'T there. i've seen it all my life in Albany, and i'm seeing it again in Cleveland Cleveland. and i'm sure as much as i'm tired of observing these situations, the people who have to live them every single day of their lives are furious and exhausted by them.

i think a Kucinich Administration could do a lot to change the status quo here. i'm hoping,with him in office, we can take steps to having inner-city neighborhoods where the services are equal, the opportunities real, and the fear and reality of street crime is reduced to the meanest ghost. yeah, yeah, i know; pipe dreams. but you better be sure that i wouldn't be here, that all of us interns wouldn't be here unless we thought Dennis could make a difference, alleviate some of the suffering of our nation and maybe even the world. i don't really have faith in him per se as much as i doggedly accept his possibility he offers the country. we still need all the help we can though. so, please, check us out.