Greater Cleveland Congregations Is Back With A New Director

The Greater Cleveland Congregations (GCC) and its new executive director plan to continue a public campaign in support of mental health and addiction crisis centers.

While Cuyahoga County has requested $2.5 million in its 2020-2021 budget for a new center, and hired a consultant to study proposals for running it, there are no plans to build one. And it remains unclear who would be eligible for admittance to the center and when they would be taken there.

Keisha Krumm took over as executive director and lead organizer at GCC in November. Krumm previously worked at GCC’s sister organization in Milwaukee, Common Ground. Both are part of the Industrial Areas Foundation.

“What I think we’re accomplishing with our work around criminal justice and the crisis centers is getting us closer to what a democracy looks like,” Krumm said.

GCC’s criminal justice organizer Donna Weinberger said the organization has renewed dicussions with the county on possiblities for the crisis center.

The model Weinberger points to as the most well-established is the one used by San Antonio. There, the police department has a mental health unit meant to convince people in crisis to go voluntarily to the diversion center. Authorities there were able to reduce the jail population by 21 percent, or about 1,000 people, since the plan was launched 20 years ago.

GCC is pushing for a voluntary program in Cleveland, Weinberger said, where people can be brought in for treatment without being arrested and going to jail first.

“We think it’s paramount that we begin with a pre-booking facility because if we can help people avoid a criminal record altogether, we want to do that,” Weinberger said.

GCC has been pushing for two diversion centers, one on the East Side and the other on the West Side, for years. In 2017, the group was at the forefront of a campaign to block public support for a $140 million renovation of Quicken Loans Arena. The group called for matching support for neighborhood development.

After pushback from local political leaders, the departure of four GCC member congregations and an announcement by the Cleveland Cavaliers that the team was abandoning renovation plans because of the referendum, GCC dropped its campaign. In return for withdrawing the referendum, GCC announced a promise from Cuyahoga County Council Executive Armond Budish to explore building mental health and addiction crisis centers.

The arena was ultimately renovated, with public financing, and is now known as Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse. In the three years since the Q deal campaign, GCC has kept a much lower public profile.

Krumm said the fallout from the Q deal campaign and its abrupt end, which led to complaints from other organizers that had partnered with GCC, would not change what the group does.

“The moral courage that it really takes to challenge the questions about how we use our public dollars is very much a part of who we are,” Krumm said. “We’ll be a 9-year-old organization in June. We haven’t gone anywhere and we’re not going anywhere. We’re committed to continuing to do this work.”

The next step in the campaign for crisis centers will be a public assembly at Olivet Institutional Baptist Church in Cleveland on Thursday night.