Rowena Ventura paints a picture of life in Cleveland's Clark- Fulton neighborhood that is reminiscent of a war zone, and of a home that slowly being turned into a fortress to protect her family from stray bullets.
Rowena Ventura: By building a fence that is extremely thick, reinforcing, doubl-layering our porch, and reinforcing our inside walls - things like that - that's how we've tried to protect ourselves.
Ventura's story reveals how the citizens of Cleveland's inner city are living lives most of us can scarcely imagine - and yesterday on the Sound of Ideas, she described a community that is plagued by violence -- of night club fights that end in shootings, and a desperate need to save her dying neighborhood and so many others just like it.
Rowena Ventura: I don't ever want to search for bullets in a grandchild or a person again. I never want to witness someone getting shot again. I'm trying to do the best that I can do before I make the decision to go into foreclosure and board up my house.
Ventura said it wasn't always like this - and she blamed the city's leaders for not doing something about it.
Rowena Ventura: As far as our community, the reason that it's gotten this way is that we've had, in my opinion, two councilmen that have pretty much let this section of the city go and concentrated on other issues.
Although neither represents the Ward where Ventura lives, City council members Joe Cimperman and Nina Turner appeared on the program to respond to the articles and to claims that the council bears responsibility for the crime and decay that plagues so many of Cleveland's neighborhoods. Cimperman doesn't think it's productive or fair to blame city council for a problem this big.
Joe Cimperman: If people wait for government to save them it's not going to happen. Our job as lawmakers is to support and to lead and to do whatever we can, but the police can't do it alone, the mayor can't do it alone and I think the way out is exactly through the energy that is happening in these articles. There are a lot of people in the city of Cleveland who care and who really give a hoot and want to fight for their city.
Stories like those of the Ventura family are an honest snapshot of the problem Cimperman admitted - but he insists that problem has roots in social policy that legislature alone can't fix. Fellow council member Nina Turner agrees that a solution will involve more than just government.
Nina Turner: If we could legislate our way out of this we would have done that a long time ago. We have to stop pointing fingers. Stop pointing the finger at city hall, stop pointing the finger at police. It is really about us. There is work for all of us to do - the police can be better, council could do more - citizens should do more.
And some citizens are doing more - taking to the streets to get to know their neighbors, and replacing abandoned lots with community gardens - and in many cases their actions have been met with success. And a garden, Cimperman said is a good metaphor for the work ahead of Cleveland.
Joe Cimperman: We're weeding. We gotta weed crime, weve gotta weed foreclosure, we've gotta weed drug activity, we gotta weed malaise. But we've also got to water. So Youv'e gotta weed the bad stuff and you've gotta water the good stuff.
But it all starts with admitting there's a weed problem in the first place - something Turner says Cleveland has been reluctant to do in the past.
Nina Turner: We cannot be afraid to confront the things that plague us. We have frailties as government officials we have frailties as a city, but together collectively we can face those frailties and our demons, and make a change, but first we have to admit that we have a problem -
And that problem Turner says goes far beyond the imaginary lines of city limits.
Nina Turner: This is about a moral compass that is missing in a culture that is bigger than Cleveland. We have to start to talk about rebuilding families. Families make up communities, make up cities, make up states, make up nations, and that's where we're failing. And that's not just a Cleveland problem, that's a suburban problem as well.
But despite the bleak picture, neither council member lacked hope. We have to dream big dreams for our city, Council members said. But we're going to have to be willing to do the work that brings them to life. Gretchen Cuda, 90.3.