Scene December 30, 2020

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| clevescene.com | December 30, 2020-January 5, 2021

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CONTENTS

DECEMBER 30 - JANUARY 5, 2020 • VOL. 51 NO 26 Upfront .......................................6 Feature .......................................8

Eat ............................................ 15 Savage Love .............................. 18

REWIND: i979 Dedicated to Free Times founder Richard H. Siegel (1935-1993) and Scene founder Richard Kabat Publisher Andrew Zelman Editor Vince Grzegorek Editorial Music Editor Jeff Niesel Senior Writer Sam Allard Staff Writer Brett Zelman Dining Editor Douglas Trattner Visual Arts Writer Shawn Mishak Stage Editor Christine Howey Copy Editor Elaine Cicora Advertising Senior Multimedia Account Executive John Crobar, Shayne Rose Creative Services Production Manager Haimanti Germain Editorial Layout Evan Sult Staff Photographer Emanuel Wallace

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For the last issue before the 80’s arrived, Scene looked ahead to vinyl releases and welcomed back the Cleveland Comedy Club.

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“Cleveland Scene Magazine”

COVER ILLUSTRATION BY ANSON STEVENS-BOLEN

JANUARY 25-31, 2021 | CLEVELANDWINGWEEK.COM

Photo Courtesy CSU

UPFRONT

OP-ED: THE CASE FOR CHANGING THE NAME OF CLEVELAND-MARSHALL COLLEGE OF LAW THE CITY OF CLEVELAND finds itself in the middle of our world reckoning over race. Ever since the death of George Floyd on May 25th, the right and wrong sides of history have come into focus. More Confederate monuments have fallen stateside, of course. But how about those images of British protesters throwing the statue of Edward Colston, a seventeenth-century slave trader, into the River Thames?

And how about Bristol Beacon, the English concert hall which just three months ago changed its name from Colston Hall?

Paul Dolan, owner of the Cleveland Indians, just announced on Monday that: “[Indians is] a name that had its time, but this is not the time now, and certainly going forward, the name is no longer acceptable in our world.” He probably took note of the Washington Football Team, formerly known as the “Redskins.” Its owner, Dan Snyder, swore years ago that he would never change the name. But in July, several sponsors threatened to stop endorsing the team unless a name change was forthcoming. Later that same month he officially announced that the Native American racial slur would be dropped.

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Cleveland-Marshall College of Law faces a similar reckoning. It is named for John Marshall, the fourth chief justice of the Supreme Court, (1801 – 1835). Early in his tenure he authored the majority opinion in Marbury v. Madison (1803), which established judicial review. By giving the Court power to declare legislative acts and executive actions unconstitutional, he became a veritable unnamed co-author of all subsequent landmark decisions.

Without Marbury, there could be no Dred Scott nor Brown. It’s hard to overstate his influence.

But the Virginian slave lord owned 200 slaves and at one point auctioned off some of them to pay off his son’s debts. He heard roughly 50 cases involving slavery during his 34-year tenure as chief justice.

His jurisprudence was always proslavery, even when stare decisis, the rule that judges should abide by decided cases and apply their rules, favored the Black litigant. Nor did public policy, insofar as it supported Black freedom, ever persuade Marshall to rule for the Negro.

John Adams said ours is a “government of laws and not of men.” The rule of law had replaced the divine right of kings. But what

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does “rule of law” mean?

A maxim of the rule of law states: “no one should be a judge in their own cause.” In other words, a judge shouldn’t decide a case if they have a conflict of interest. Marshall’s slaveholding conflict of interest is clear. And yet, of the 14 freedom suits that came before the Marshall court, Marshall himself wrote seven opinions.

These freedom suits concerned Black people living in Washington, D.C. As federal territory it was within Supreme Court jurisdiction.

If Marshall had respected the rule of law in these cases, he would have applied Virginia or Maryland law to alleged slaves living in Washington.

But Marshall repeatedly ignored stare decisis to rule against Black plaintiffs. He never construed statutes if doing so led to Black freedom. A couple of examples should suffice: In Scott v. Negro London (1806), Marshall reversed a jury verdict for Black freedom. London sued for freedom in Washington under a Virginia law prohibiting importation of slaves. A jury of twelve white men, some probably slaveholders, concluded London was free because he was illegally imported into

the city. The trial court strictly construed Virginia slave law. As legal scholar Paul Finkelman observed: “This result was consistent with other decisions from American state courts of the period that strictly applied statutes regulating slavery and at the same time liberally construed the common law in favor of liberty.” Marshall, nevertheless, construed the statute for a proslavery result.

In Scott v. Negro Ben (1810), Ben had been brought into Washington County, the section of D.C. that was then governed by Maryland law. Ben’s owner failed to properly register him. So Ben sued for freedom. The jury declared him free, since Ben’s owner hadn’t followed the statutory procedure. Marshall reversed. And yet Marshall admitted in his opinion that: “The act, in its expression, is certainly ambiguous, and the one construction or the other may be admitted, without great violence to the words which are employed.”

Marshall concedes that he could have decided the case either way because of its ambiguity. He could have resolved it in favor of liberty and natural rights. He could simply have let the jury verdict stand. But

his double standard wad laid bare for all to see—natural rights for white litigants regarding contract and property law; total refusal to apply natural rights when it came to Black litigants. In fact, both of the above cases show how he lawlessly ignored a presumption of the common law called in favorem libertatis (in favor of liberty)—people are free unless they are proven otherwise.

John Adams misspoke. Ours was a government of slaveholders.

For Marshall’s Southern slavelord faction dominated the federal government until the Civil War, thanks largely to the Three Fifths Clause. (U.S. Const. art. I, § 2, cl.

3) It engorged Southern political power, with 60% of the enslaved population counted towards Southern representation in Congress and in the Electoral College. Most presidents, therefore, were Virginian slave lords before the Civil War. This summer George Floyd and

DIGIT WIDGET 500 Employees hired by the U.S. Postal Service at its Cleveland and Akron locations this year with at least 70 in the two weeks before Christmas as Covid caused widespread staffing issues.

$475,000 Settlement agreement between the city of Euclid and Lamar Wright, an unarmed Black man whom Euclid Police officers tased and pepper-sprayed as he reached for his colostomy bag in 2016.

$500,000 Amount included in State of Ohio’s proposed capital budget for “Phase 3” of the Flats East Bank development in Cleveland.

8,700 Minimum number of students, out of CMSD’s total 36,900, who have not been showing up to daily digital classes, at least doubling absenteeism rates from last year.

Breonna Taylor reminded us that government has yet to overcome its slaveholding legacy. That legacy’s judicial prime mover is championed by the name of Cleveland’s public law school. On a Zoom call two weeks ago, the dean of Cleveland-Marshall assured me that CSU’s president and board of trustees would likely vote, next year, on whether to change “John Marshall.” They should emulate the school board of Falls Church, Virginia, who just last week voted to take down the names of “Thomas Jefferson” and “George Mason” from its schools.

They voted down their native sons to get on the right side of history. Et tu, Cleveland?

Author Taru Taylor tried not to let law school interfere with his education. He’s now in the process of unlearning how to think like a lawyer. Email him at tytaylor521@ yahoo.com for further discussion of this piece or whatever.

BIBB’S EARLY FUNDRAISING MAKES HIM INSTANT CLEVELAND MAYORAL CONTENDER Local nonprofit founder and executive Justin Bibb was expected to announce his 2021 candidacy for Cleveland Mayor. His name had been on virtually every list of prospective candidates, and he had foreshadowed his intentions with increasingly public calls for citywide reforms.

Like other first-time candidates, Bibb has centered messages of urgency — #CleCantWait — and cultural change at City Hall. Unlike others, though, he has amassed a fortune in early campaign contributions. The strength of this early fundraising instantly puts him in contention with established candidates like incumbent Frank Jackson, City Council President Kevin Kelley, and former mayor and congressman Dennis Kucinich.

(Of those three, only Kucinich has formally declared that he will run.)

Bibb announced Monday that he had already raised $180,000, only three months after forming an exploratory committee, “Neighbors for Justin Bibb.” That’s a significant number, far more than any candidate other than Frank Jackson raised through the 2017 mayoral primaries.

In two, as-of-yet unaudited, campaign finance reports filed with the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections, this early fundraising was confirmed. Bibb raised $180,233 in contributions from Sept. 9 through Dec. 4, 2020. This towering total was driven by big contributions

from an array of local and non-local supporters, including 17 individual donors who chipped in $2,000 or more.

Bibb’s high-dollar backers include Vocon architecture principal Paul Voinovich ($2,500), developer Ezra Stark ($2,500), retired PNC Bank executive Paul Clark ($5,000), former Forest City chairman James Ratner ($2,500), and Shelly Saltzman, the retired founder of Citizen Leadership Academy charter schools ($5,000).

The young candidate has also received support from a variety of local non-profit professionals, business and finance executives, lawyers, consultants and those working in real estate. The contributions skewed upwards — there were more donations above $2,000 than there were below $50 — but early fundraising is not always representative of a candidate’s base.

(Bibb is popular among younger voters, for example, and those who are both exhausted by Mayor Frank Jackson and leery of Dennis Kucinich.) Moreover, Bibb’s early contributions were collected before the publicity of his candidacy, and were coordinated by a fundraising consultant, who likely approached known donors in the region. It remains to be seen whether Bibb can translate his big bucks into big votes.

But in recent elections, just like on the national level, fundraising has been a key indicator of electoral success. In 2017, the top two fundraisers in the mayoral race — Frank Jackson and City Councilman Zack Reed — won the primary.

Jackson, who dwarfed all other candidates in terms of fundraising even though he had no platform to speak of, won the November runoff in decisive fashion. -Sam Allard

AFTER SUPREME COURT DECISION, NEW CLEVELAND FOUNDATION HQ MAY GO FORWARD The Ohio Supreme Court last week declined to hear the case of Dunham Tavern Museum trustees who were seeking to invalidate the sale of its adjacent greenspace in Midtown to the Cleveland Foundation, where its new headquarters are planned.

Both the Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas and the state appellate court in Cuyahoga County had ruled against the Dunham Tavern Museum plaintiffs in their original 2019 lawsuit. The state’s high court was the final venue where an appeal might have been heard.

That means the coast is now clear for the Cleveland Foundation to build

its $22 million headquarters on the corner of Euclid Avenue and E. 66th Street, where it’s envisioned as the anchor of a proposed “innovation district” in Midtown. The three-floor building is currently scheduled for completion in 2022.

The legal case has been controversial, particularly among trustees and members of the Dunham Tavern Museum, Cleveland’s oldest standing structure. The land in question had been acquired by the museum via charitable contributions from 2012-2017 and was meant to have been converted to a publicly accessible park. Many of the trustees felt betrayed when a deal to sell that same land to the Cleveland Foundation was hashed out in secret.

The Cleveland Foundation and their supporters have framed the organization’s move from Playhouse Square to Midtown as a bold commitment to walking the talk, a reinvestment in Hough, one of Cleveland’s historically underresourced Black neighborhoods.

They are no doubt correct that new, radial developments could bring jobs and “community wealth” to the area.

The Dunham Tavern Museum plaintiffs have agreed in principle with the Foundation’s eastward move but have argued that the ends don’t justify the means. They’ve persisted in asking why the exact site the Museum had just acquired for another purpose was the only viable parcel for the Cleveland Foundation’s new home.

In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision, attorney for the plaintiffs Peter Pattakos* penned a doleful summation.

“The historic public greenspace will no longer be public or green, but will instead become more corporate office space in a city already full of vacant commercial real estate,” he wrote. “The interests of private developers in Cleveland have thus again been prioritized over the public’s, Cleveland Foundation CEO Ronn Richard will get his wish to have his office look out on a historic farmscape, and it will remain unexplained as to why the Foundation’s construction project otherwise couldn’t have been built on any of a number of underdeveloped parcels adjacent to the DTM campus.” -Sam Allard

*Pattakos is legally representing Scene in a concurrent, unrelated case.

scene@clevescene.com @clevelandscene

| clevescene.com | December 30, 2020-January 5, 2021

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Anson Stevens-Bollen

FEATURE

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| clevescene.com | December 30, 2020-January 5, 2021

PROJECT CENSOR’S TOP 10 STORIES 0F 2020 EVERY YEAR SINCE 1976, PROJECT CENSORED has performed an invaluable service — shedding light on the most significant news that’s somehow not fit to print. Censorship in an authoritarian society is obvious, from a distance, at least. There is a central agent or agency responsible for it, and the lines are clearly drawn. That’s not the case in America — yet some stories rarely, if ever, see the light of day, such as stories about violence against Native American women and girls, even though four out of five of them experience violence at some point in their lives, overwhelmingly at the hands of non-Native perpetrators.

“I wouldn’t say that we’re more vulnerable,” Annita Lucchesi, a Southern Cheyenne descendant and executive director of the Sovereign Bodies Institute, told The Guardian.

“I’d say that we’re targeted. It’s not about us being vulnerable victims, it’s about the system being designed to target and marginalize our women.”

And the media erasure of their stories is part of that same system of targeting and marginalization.

While journalists everyday work hard to expose injustices, they work within a system where some injustices are so deeply baked in that stories exposing them are rarely told and even more rarely expanded upon to give them their proper due.

That’s where Project Censored comes in.

“The primary purpose of Project Censored is to explore and publicize the extent of news censorship in our society by locating stories about significant issues of which the public should be aware, but is not, for a variety of reasons,” wrote founder Carl Jensen on its 20th anniversary.

Thus, the list of censored stories that’s the centerpiece of its annual

book, State of the Free Press | 2021, doesn’t just help us to see individual stories we might have otherwise missed. It helps us see patterns — patterns of censorship, of stories suppressed and patterns in how those stories fit together.

This year, for example, among its top 10 stories there are two stories about violence and victimization of women of color, including the role of media neglect: #1. Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (introduced above) and #7. Underreporting of Missing and Victimized Black Women and Girls.

There are similarities as well as differences between them, and being able to see them both together in Project Censored’s list helps us see them both more fully as distinct, yet connected stories.

There are also three stories concerning the media itself (#2.

Monsanto “Intelligence Center” Targeted Journalists and Activists, #6. Shadow Network of Conservative Outlets Emerges to Exploit Faith in Local News, and #10. Revive Journalism with a Stimulus Package and Public Option); there are two climate-

change stories about overlooked causes and risks (#3. U.S. Military — A Massive, Hidden Contributor to Climate Crisis and #9. Rising Risks of Nuclear Power Due to Climate Change) while a third (#4.

Congressional Investments and Conflicts of Interest) had a climatechange component — senators’ fossil fuel investments; and two related to income inequality (#5. Inequality Kills: Gap between Richest and Poorest Americans Largest in 50 Years, about the problem itself and #8. The Public Banking Revolution, about a promising way to support a more equitable economy).

There are also further climatechange threads woven through these stories — a highlighted connection between the extractive fossil-fuel industry and violence against Native women, as well as an unmentioned connection via Monsanto’s employment of FTI Consulting, which has been heavily involved in climate disinformation warfare.

The stories listed below are only part of what Project Censored does, however. State of the Free Press | 2021 has chapters devoted to other forms of obfuscation that help keep censored stories obscured. There’s a chapter devoted to “Junk Food News,” meaning cheaply produced stories focused on celebrityhood, industry-generated buzz, and other trivia in place of substantive investigative journalism, and another devoted to “News Abuse,” meaning genuinely important topics presented through a distorted lens or two. There’s also a chapter devoted to “Déjà Vu News,” tracking previous

Project Censored stories to update them and track whether they’ve gained some of the wider attention they deserve. And the chapter “Media Democracy in Action” highlights individuals and organizations engaged in building a more inclusive, equitable, and democratic society. So, if the Top 10 stories summarized below leave you hungry for more, Project Censored has all that and more waiting for you in State of the Free Press | 2021.

1. Missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls “In June 2019 the Canadian National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls released its final report, which received widespread news coverage in the United States,” Project Censored notes. “U.S. corporate news outlets have provided nearly nothing in the way of reporting on missing and murdered Indigenous women in the United States.”

That’s despite a problem of similar dimensions, and complexity, along with the election of the first two Native American congresswomen, Deb Holland and Sharice Davids, who, Ms. Magazine reported, “are supporting two bills that would address the federal government’s failure to track and respond to violence against indigenous women [and] are supported by a mass movement in the U.S. and Canada raising an alarm about missing and murdered indigenous women and girls (MMIWG).”

Four in five Native women

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experience violence at some time in their lives, according to a 2016 survey by the National Institute of Justice, cited in an August 2019 ThinkProgress report.

“About nine in 10 Native American rape or sexual-assault victims had assailants who were white or Black,” according to a 1999 Justice Department report.

“Although the number of Native Americans murdered or missing in 2016 exceeded 3,000 — roughly the number of people who died during the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attack — the Justice Department’s missing persons database logged only 116 cases that year,” ThinkProgress noted. “The sheer scale of the violence against Native women and the abysmal failure by the government to adequately address it, explains why the issue was given such prominence during this week’s presidential candidates’ forum in Sioux City — the first to focus entirely on Native American issues.”

But even that didn’t grab the media’s attention.

There are multiple complicating factors in reporting, tracking, investigating, and prosecuting, which were explored in coverage by The Guardian and YES! Magazine, as well as Ms. and ThinkProgress.

“Campaigners, including the Sovereign Bodies Institute, the Brave Heart Society, and the Urban Indian Health Institute, identify aspects of systemic racism — including the indelible legacies of settler colonialism, issues with law enforcement, a lack of reliable and comprehensive data, and flawed policymaking — as deep-rooted sources of the crisis,” Project Censored summed up. “As YES! Magazine reported, tribal communities in the United States often lack jurisdiction to respond to crimes.”

This was partially remedied in the 2013 reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, known as VAWA, but “it left sex trafficking and other forms of sexual violence outside tribal jurisdiction, YES! Magazine reported.”

The House voted to expand tribal jurisdiction in such cases in its 2019 VAWA reauthorization, but, Ms. reported, “The bill is now languishing in the Senate, where Republicans have so far blocked a vote.”

Another facet of the problem explored by YES! is the connection between the extractive fossil fuel industry and violence against Native women. The Canadian report “showed a strong link between extraction zones on the missing and murdered women crisis in Canada,” YES! noted.

“It specifically cited rotational

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shift work, sexual harassment in the workplace, substance abuse, economic insecurity, and a largely transient workforce as contributing to increased violence against Native women in communities near fossil fuel infrastructure.”

“It creates this culture of using and abuse,” said Annita Lucchesi, executive director of the Sovereign Bodies Institute. “If you can use and abuse the water and land, you can use and abuse the people around you too.”

Project Censored concluded, “As a result of limited news coverage, the United States is far from a national reckoning on its crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls.”

2. Monsanto “intelligence center” targeted journalists and activists In its fight to avoid liability for causing cancer, the agricultural giant Monsanto (now owned by Bayer) created an “intelligence fusion center” to “monitor and discredit” journalists and activists, Sam Levin reported for The Guardian in August 2019.

“More than 18,000 people have filed suit against Monsanto, alleging that exposure to Roundup [weedkiller] caused nonHodgkin’s lymphoma, and that Monsanto covered up the risks by manipulating scientific data and silencing critics,” The Hill summarized. “The company has lost three high-profile cases in the past year, and Bayer is reportedly offering $8 billion to settle all outstanding claims.”

“Monsanto adopted a multipronged strategy to target Carey Gillam, a Reuters journalist who investigated the company’s weedkiller,” The Guardian reported.

This took place while also targeting Neil Young (who released a 2015 record, The Monsanto Years), and creating a massive, multimillion dollar spying and disinformation campaign targeting journalists writing about it, as well as scientists and advocates exposing the risks its product posed. Creating a covert army of seemingly neutral allies to attack its critics was central to Monsanto’s strategy.

The Guardian’s report was based on internal documents (primarily from 2015 to 2017) released during trial. They showed that “Monsanto planned a series of ‘actions’ to attack a book authored by Gillam prior to its release, including writing ‘talking points’ for ‘third parties’ to criticize the book and directing ‘industry and farmer customers’ on

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how to post negative reviews.”

In addition, Monsanto paid Google to skew search results promoting criticism of Gillam’s work on Monsanto, and they discussed strategies for pressuring Reuters with the goal of getting her reassigned. The company “had a ‘Carey Gillam Book’ spreadsheet, with more than 20 actions dedicated to opposing her book before its publication.” They also “wrote a lengthy report about singer Neil Young’s anti-Monsanto advocacy, monitoring his impact on social media, and at one point considering ‘legal action.’”

The entire pool of journalists covering the third trial was also targeted in a covert influence operation, Paul Thacker reported for The Huffington Post. A purported “freelancer for the BBC” schmoozed other reporters, trying to steer them toward writing stories critical of the plaintiffs suing Monsanto. Their curiosity aroused, they discovered that “her LinkedIn account said she worked for FTI Consulting, a global business advisory firm that Monsanto and Bayer, Monsanto’s parent company, had engaged for consulting,” and she subsequently went into a digital disappearing act.

“FTI staff have previously attempted to obtain information under the guise of journalism,” Thacker added. “In January, two FTI consultants working for Western Wire — a ‘news and analysis’ website backed by the oil and gas trade group Western Energy Alliance — attempted to question an attorney who represents communities suing Exxon over climate change.”

Nor was FTI alone.

“Monsanto has also previously employed shadowy networks of consultants, PR firms, and front groups to spy on and influence reporters,” Thacker wrote. “And all of it appears to be part of a pattern at the company of using a variety of tactics to intimidate, mislead and discredit journalists and critics.”

“Monsanto officials were repeatedly worried about the release of documents on their financial relationships with scientists that could support the allegations they were ‘covering up unflattering research,” The Guardian noted.

At the same time, they tried to attack critics as “anti-science.”

“The internal communications add fuel to the ongoing claims in court that Monsanto has ‘bullied’ critics and scientists and worked to conceal the dangers of glyphosate, the world’s most widely used herbicide,” it summed up.

“Monsanto’s campaign to monitor

and discredit journalists and other critics has received almost no corporate news coverage,” Project Censored notes.

A rare exception was a June 2019, ABC News report which nonetheless “consistently emphasized the perspective of Monsanto and Bayer.”

3. U.S. Military — a massive, hidden contributor to climate crisis It’s said that an army travels on its stomach, but the Army itself has said, “Fuel is the ‘blood of the military,’” as quoted in a study, “Hidden Carbon Costs of the ‘Everywhere War,’” by Oliver Belcher, Patrick Bigger, Ben Neimark, and Cara Kennelly, who subsequently summarized their findings for The Conversation in June 2019.

The U.S. military is “one of the largest polluters in history, consuming more liquid fuels and emitting more climate-changing gases than most medium-sized countries,” they wrote.

If it were a country, it would rank as “the 47th largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world.”

Studies of greenhouse gas emissions usually focus on civilian use, but the U.S. military has a larger carbon footprint than any civilian corporation in the world.

“The U.S. military’s climate policy remains fundamentally contradictory,” their study notes.

On the one hand, “The U.S. military sees climate change as a ‘threat multiplier,’ or a condition that will exacerbate other threats, and is fast becoming one of the leading federal agencies in the United States to invest in research and adoption of renewable energy [but] it remains the largest single institutional consumer of hydrocarbons in the world, [and] this dependence on fossil fuels is unlikely to change as the USA continues to pursue open-ended operations around the globe.”

While the military has invested in developing biofuels, “the entire point of these fuels is that they are ‘dropin’ – they can be used in existing military kit – which means that, whenever convenient or cheaper, the infrastructure is already in place to undo whatever marginal gains have been made in decarbonisation.”

Things will only get worse.

“There is no shortage of evidence that the climate is on the brink of irreversible tipping points,” the study notes. “Once past those tipping points, the impacts of climate change will continue to be more intense, prolonged, and widespread, giving cover to even more extensive U.S. military interventions.”

Understanding the military’s climate impact requires a systems approach.

“We argue that to account for the U.S. military as a major climate actor, one must understand the logistical supply chain that makes its acquisition and consumption of hydrocarbon-based fuels possible,” the study states. “We show several ‘path dependencies’ – warfighting paradigms, weapons systems, bureaucratic requirements, and waste – that are put in place by military supply chains and undergird a heavy reliance on carbon-based fuels by the U.S. military for years to come.”

Data for their study was difficult to get.

“A loophole in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol exempted the United States from reporting military emissions,” Project Censored explains. “Although the Paris Accord closed this loophole, Neimark, Belcher, and Bigger noted that, ‘with the Trump administration due to withdraw from the accord in 2020, this gap ... will return.’”

They only obtained fuel purchase data through multiple Freedom of Information Act requests.

Finally, by way of conclusions, Project Censored stated: Noting that “action on climate change demands shuttering vast sections of the military machine,” Neimark, Belcher, and Bigger recommended that “money spent procuring and distributing fuel across the U.S. empire” be reinvested as “a peace dividend, helping to fund a Green New Deal in whatever form it might take.”

Not surprisingly, the report had received “little to no corporate news coverage” as of May 2020, beyond scattered republication of their Conversation piece.

4. Congressional investments and conflicts of interest Exposition, political corruption, and conflicts of interest are age-old staples of journalism. So it’s notable that two of the most glaring, farreaching examples of congressional conflicts of interest in the Trump era have been virtually ignored by corporate media: Republicans’ support for the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, and bipartisan failure to act on catastrophic climate change.

“The cuts likely saved members of Congress hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes collectively, while the corporate tax cut hiked the value of their holdings,” Peter Cary of the Center for Public Integrity reported for Vox in January 2020.

It was sold as a middle-class tax

cut that would benefit everyone.

“Promises that the tax act would boost investment have not panned out,” he noted. “Corporate investment is now at lower levels than before the act passed, according to the Commerce Department.”

Once again, “trickle down tax cuts” didn’t trickle down.

“The tax law’s centerpiece is its record cut in the corporate tax rate, from 35 percent to 21 percent,” Cary wrote. “At the time of its passage, most of the bill’s Republican supporters said the cut would result in higher wages, factory expansions, and more jobs. Instead, it was mainly exploited by corporations, which bought back stock and raised dividends.”

Buybacks exceeded $1 trillion for the first time ever, the year after the cuts were passed, and dividends topped a record $1.3 trillion high.

The benefits to Congressional Republicans were enormous.

“The 10 richest Republicans in Congress in 2017 who voted for the tax bill held more than $731 million in assets, almost two-thirds of which were in stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and other instruments,” which benefitted handsomely as a result of their votes that “doled out nearly $150 billion in corporate tax savings in 2018 alone,” Cary noted. “All but one of the 47 Republicans who sat on the three key committees overseeing the drafting of the tax bill own stocks and stock mutual funds.

“Democrats also stood to gain from the tax bill, though not one voted for it,” he wrote. “All but 12 Republicans voted for the tax bill.”

Two special features deserve notice. First is a newly created 20% deduction for income from ‘passthrough’ businesses, or smaller, single-owner corporations.

“At least 22 of the 47 members of the House and Senate tax-writing committees have investments in

pass-through businesses,” Project Censored noted.

Second was a provision allowing real estate companies with relatively few employees — like the Trump organization — to take a 20 percent deduction usually reserved for larger businesses with sizable payrolls.

“Out of the 47 Republicans responsible for drafting the bill, at least 29 held real estate interests at the time of its passage,” Project Censored pointed out.

As to the second major conflict, “Members of the U.S. Senate are heavily invested in the fossil fuel companies that drive the current climate crisis, creating a conflict between those senators’ financial interests as investors and their responsibilities as elected representatives,” Project Censored wrote.

“Twenty-nine U.S. senators and their spouses own between $3.5 million and $13.9 million worth of stock in companies that extract, transport, or burn fossil fuels, or provide services to fossil fuel companies,” Donald Shaw reported for Sludge in September 2019.

While unsurprising on the Republican side, this also includes two key Democrats. Sen. Tom Carper, of Delaware, is the top Democrat on the Environment and Public Works Committee. He has “up to $310,000 invested in more than a dozen oil, gas, and utility companies, as well as mutual funds with holdings in the fossil fuel industry,” Shaw reported.

But his record is not nearly as questionable as Sen. Joe Manchin, D-West Virginia, the ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, who “owns between $1 million and $5 million worth of non-public stock in a family coal business, Enersystems,” and reported earning “between $100,001 and $1 million” in reported dividends and interest in 2018, plus $470,000 in ‘ordinary business income,” Shaw reported.

His support for the industry was significant: Manchin was the only Democrat to vote against an amendment to protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge from oil drilling in 2017, and he was one of just three Democrats to vote against an amendment to phase out taxpayer subsidies for coal, oil, and gas producers in 2016. Manchin has also voted to approve construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline, expedite the approval process for natural gas pipelines, and override an Obama administration rule requiring coal companies to protect groundwater from toxic coal-mining waste.

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While there has been critical coverage of 2017 tax cuts, this has not included coverage of lawmakers’ personal profiting, Project Censored noted.

“In addition, despite the significant conflicts of interest exposed by Donald Shaw’s reporting for Sludge, the alarming facts about U.S. senators’ massive investments in the fossil fuel industry appear to have gone completely unreported in the corporate press.”

5. Gap between richest and poorest Americans largest in 50 years “In public health, decades of research are coming to a consensus: Inequality kills,” DePaul University sociologist Fernando De Maio wrote for Truthout in December 2019.

Even before COVID-19, his research added fine-grained evidence of broad trends highlighted in three prominent governmental reports: The gap between rich and poor Americans had grown larger than ever in half a century, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2019 annual survey, with dramatic evidence of its lethal impact: people in the poorest quintile die at twice the rate as those in the richest quintile, according to a report by the Congressional General Accounting Office. And this is partly because job-related deaths are increasingly rooted in the physical and psychological toll of low-wage work, as opposed to on-the-job accidents, as documented by the United Nations’ International Labor Organization.

All these conditions were made worse by COVID-19, but they could’ve been seen before the pandemic struck — if only the information hadn’t been censored by the corporate media, as Project Censored noted: As of May 2020, Project Censored has not been able to identify any corporate news coverage on the GAO or Census Bureau reports on inequality and premature mortality, or on the ILO report about workrelated illnesses, accidents, and deaths that take place when workers are off-duty.

The August 2019 GAO report was based on health and retirement surveys conducted by the Social Security Administration in 1992 and 2014, looking at those between 51 and 61 years old in 1992, and dividing them into five wealth quintiles. “[T]he GAO found that nearly half of those (48 percent) in the poorest quintile died before 2014, when they would have been between 73 and 83 years old. Of the wealthiest quintile, only a quarter (26 percent) died,”

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explained Patrick Martin, writing for the World Socialist Web Site.

Death rates increased for each quintile as the level of wealth declined.

It’s at the level of cities and communities “that the most striking links between inequality and health can be detected,” De Maio wrote. “At the city level, life expectancy varies from a low of 71.4 years in Gary, Indiana, to a high of 84.7 in Newton, Massachusetts — a gap of more than 13 years.”

And at the community level, “In Chicago, there is a nine-year gap between the life expectancy for Black and white people. This gap amounts to more than 3,000 ‘excess deaths’” among Black Chicagoans, due to “heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, and kidney disease. All of these are conditions that an equitable health care system would address,” he concluded.

“The poorest Americans are also more likely than their rich counterparts to face illness or premature death due to the inherent dangers of low-wage work,” Project Censored noted.

“In 2019, you no longer have to hang from scaffolding to risk your life on the job,” María José Carmona wrote for Inequality. org. “Precariousness, stress, and overwork can also make you sick, and even kill you, at a much higher rate than accidents.”

She reported on an ILO story that found that less than 14 percent of the 7,500 people who die “due to unsafe and unhealthy working conditions every day” die from workplace accidents.

The greatest risk comes from “increasing pressure, precarious contracts, and working hours incompatible with life, which, bit by bit, continue to feed the invisible accident rate that does not appear in the news,” Carmona wrote. “The most vulnerable workers are those employed on a temporary or casual basis, those subcontracted through agencies and the false self-employed.

ILO data shows the rate of accidents for these employees to be much higher than for any others.”

As of May 2020, Project Censored has not been able to identify any corporate news coverage on the GAO or Census Bureau reports on inequality and premature mortality, or on the ILO report about workrelated illnesses, accidents, and deaths that take place when workers are off-duty.

6. Shadow network of conservative outlets emerges to exploit faith

| clevescene.com | December 30, 2020-January 5, 2021

in local news In late October 2019, Carol Thompson reported in the Lansing State Journal that, “Dozens of websites branded as local news outlets launched throughout Michigan this fall … promising local news but also offering political messaging.” The websites’ ‘About Us’ sections “say they are published

by Metric Media LLC, a company that aims to fill the ‘growing void in local and community news after years of steady disinvestment in local reporting by legacy media,’” Thompson wrote. But it soon emerged that they weren’t filling that void with locally generated news, and the 40 or so sites Thompson found in Michigan were just the tip of the iceberg.

A follow-up investigation by The Michigan Daily reported that “Just this past week, additional statewide networks of these websites have sprung up in Montana and Iowa,” which was followed by a December 2019 report by the Columbia Journalism Review, revealing a network of 450 websites run by five corporate organizations in 12 states that “mimic the appearance and output of traditional news organizations” in order to “manipulate public opinion by exploiting faith in local media.”

All were associated with conservative businessman Brian Timpone.

“In 2012, Timpone’s company Journatic, an outlet known for its low-cost automated story generation, which became known as ‘pink slime journalism,’ attracted national attention and outrage for faking bylines and quotes, and for plagiarism,” CJR’s Priyanjana Bengani reported. Journatic was later rebranded as Locality Labs, whose content ran on the Metric Media websites.

“The different websites are nearly indistinguishable, sharing identical stories and using regional titles,” Michigan Daily reported. “The only articles with named authors contain politically skewed content. The rest of the articles on the sites are primarily composed of press releases from local organizations and articles written by the Local Labs News Service.”

“Despite the different organization and network names, it is evident these sites are connected,” Bengani wrote.

“Other than simply sharing network metadata as described above, they also share bylines (including ‘Metric Media News Service’ and ‘Local Labs News Service’ for templated stories), servers, layouts, and templates.”

Using a suite of investigative

tools, CJR was able to identify at least 189 sites in 10 states run by Metric Media — all created in 2019 — along with 179 run by Franklin Archer (with Timpone’s brother Michael as CEO).

“We tapped into the RSS feeds of these 189 Metric Media sites” over a period of two weeks, Bengani wrote, “and found over 15,000 unique stories had been published (over 50,000 when aggregated across the sites), but only about a hundred titles had the bylines of human reporters.”

That’s well below 1% with a byline — much less being local. “The rest cited automated services or press releases.”

“Their architecture and strategy is useful to understand the way they co-opt the language, design, and structure of news organizations,” Bengani explained.

Automation can make them seem far more prolific than they really are, and can help build credibility.

“Potentially adding to the credibility of these sites is their Google search ranking: in the case of some of the websites set up in 20152016, we observed that once sites had gained ample authority, they appeared on the first page of Google Search results just below the official government and social media pages.”

So the sites aim to fool people locally about the source of their “news,” and Google helps fool the world.

Although The New York Times did publish an article in October 2019 that credited the Lansing State Journal with breaking the story about pseudo-local news organizations, Project Censored notes that “Corporate coverage has been lacking…. The Columbia Journalism Review’s piece expands on the breadth and scope of previous coverage, but its findings do not appear to have been reported by any of the major establishment news outlets.”

7. Underreporting of missing and victimized Black women and girls Black women and girls go missing in the United States at a higher rate than that of their white counterparts. And that very fact goes missing, too.

“A 2010 study about the media coverage of missing children in the United States discovered that only 20% of reported stories focused on missing Black children despite it corresponding to 33% of the overall missing children cases,” Carma Henry reported for the Westside Gazette in February 2019.

And it’s only getting worse.

“A 2015 study discussed in the

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice found that the disparity listed in the 2010 study between the reportage and the reality of missing Black children had increased substantially,” Project Censored noted: 35% of missing children cases vs. just 7% of media stories.

That discussion appeared in a paper that made two other pertinent points. First, that Black criminal perpetrators are over-represented in the media, while Black victims are underrepresented, and second, that “because racial minorities are identified as criminals more often than not, non-minorities develop limited empathy toward racial minorities who are often perceived as offenders.”

Non-minorities in the media are obviously not exempt.

“Media coverage is often vital in missing-person cases because it raises community awareness and can drive funding and search efforts that support finding those missing persons,” Project Censored noted.

It went on to cite an illustrative extreme case: In October 2019, “The Atlanta Black Star shed light on perhaps the most prolific offender against Black women and girls in recent history, Jason Roger Pope, who has been indicted on charges relating to human trafficking and child sex crimes,” Project Censored wrote.

“Pope, a white South Carolina promoter and popular disc jockey better known as DJ Kid, has made claims suggesting he may have participated in the trafficking, assault, and/or rapes of nearly 700 African American girls — primarily underaged — right up until his arrest in August 2019.”

The arrest didn’t come out of the blue.

“Pope has police records going as far back as 2011 relating to sexual misconduct with minors. Yet outside of a few local news outlets, the corporate media has been silent on Pope’s crimes.”

Black people are also overrepresented as victims of sex trafficking, according to statistics from Human Trafficking Search: They account for more than 40% of confirmed victims compared to 13.1 percent of the population.

While there is some coverage from small independent sources, “this gap in coverage of missing Black women and girls has gone widely underreported,” Project Censored noted.

It cited two exceptions (one from ABC News, another from CNN).

“But, broadly, U.S. corporate media are not willing to discuss

their own shortcomings or to acknowledge the responsibilities they neglect by failing to provide coverage on the search for missing and victimized Black women and girls.”

8. The public banking revolution The year 2019 marked the 100th anniversary of the United States’ first publicly owned state bank, the Bank of North Dakota (BND), and in October, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the Public Banking Act, authorizing up to 10 similar such banks to be created

by California’s city and county governments. In response, the cities of San Francisco and Los Angeles both announced plans to do so. It was the culmination of a decade-long effort that began in the wake of the Great Recession that’s also been taken up in nearly two dozen other states.

Beyond the benefits North Dakota has reaped in the past, such banks could have greatly assisted in responding to COVID-19’s economic devastation, and could yet help fund a just transition to a decarbonized future, along the lines of a Green New Deal.

Yet despite California’s agendasetting reputation, Project Censored reports that “No major corporate media outlets appear to have devoted recent coverage to this important and timely topic.”

“The Bank of North Dakota was founded in 1919 in response to a farmers’ revolt against out-of-state banks that were foreclosing unfairly on their farms,” Ellen Brown, founder of the Public Banking Institute, wrote for Common Dreams.

“Since then it has evolved into a $7.4 billion bank that is reported to be even more profitable than JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, although its mandate is not actually to make a profit but simply to serve the interests of local North Dakota communities.”

“The state of North Dakota has six times as many financial institutions per capita as the rest of the country, and it’s because they have the Bank of North Dakota,” Sushil Jacob, an attorney who works with the California Public Banking Alliance told The Guardian. “When the great recession hit, the Bank of North Dakota stepped in and provided loans and allowed local banks to thrive.”

As a result, “North Dakota was the only state that escaped the credit crisis,” Brown told Ananya Garg, reporting for YES! Magazine. “It never went in the red [and had] the lowest unemployment rate in the country, the lowest foreclosure rate

at that time.”

“There are two ways in which a state bank can fund state investment for a greener future,” Eric Heath wrote in an op-ed for The Hill. “First, the bank can provide loans, bonds, and other forms of financing for investments to the state government and private organizations on better terms than those available in regular markets.”

Some such projects might not even be considered.

This is not because green investments are unprofitable, “but because their profits slowly accumulate and are widely shared across a community,” Heath explained. “Second, a public bank will improve a state’s fiscal health.

By holding state deposits as assets, the bank’s profits can be returned to state coffers to fund direct state investment. Additionally, the activity of the state bank — which will prioritize investing state assets and extending credit within the state for the benefit of the state — will improve the state economy,” just as has happened in North Dakota.

A new surge of interest in public banking came out of the Standing Rock movement’s Dakota Access Pipeline protests. While individuals could easily withdraw from doing business with fossil- fuel-financing banks — Wells Fargo, in this case — governments have no such similar options to meet all their banking needs.

In short, “From efforts to divest public employee pension funds from the fossil fuel industry and private prisons, to funding the proposed Green New Deal and counteracting the massive, rapid shutdown of the economy caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, public banking has never seemed more relevant,” Project Censored wrote.

It’s a time-tested practical solution the corporate media refuses to discuss.

9. Rising risks of nuclear power due to climate change As early as 2003, 30 nuclear units were either shut down or reduced power output during a deadly European summer heatwave in Europe.

But almost two decades later, the corporate media has yet to grasp that “Nuclear power plants are unprepared for climate change,” as Project Censored notes. “Rising sea levels and warmer waters will impact power plants’ infrastructure, posing increased risks of nuclear disasters, according to reports from the Natural Resources Defense

Council (NRDC) and Truthout from September 2019,” they explain. Yet “tracking back to 2013, corporate news media have only sporadically addressed the potential for climate change to impact nuclear power plants.”

“Nuclear power is uniquely vulnerable to increasing temperatures because of its reliance on cooling water to ensure operational safety within the core and spent fuel storage,” Christina Chen wrote for NRDC. In addition, Karen Charman, reporting for Truthout, noted that “nuclear reactors need an uninterrupted electricity supply to run the cooling systems that keep the reactors from melting down,” but this will be “increasingly difficult to guarantee in a world of climatefueled megastorms and other disasters.”

Sea level rise — combined with storm surges — represents the most serious threat. That was the focus of a 2018 report by John Vidal of Ensia, a solutions-focused media outlet, which found that “at least 100 U.S., European, and Asian nuclear power stations built just a few meters above sea level could be threatened by serious flooding caused by accelerating sea-level rise and more frequent storm surges.”

There have been more than 20 incidents of flooding at U.S. nuclear plants, according to David Lochbaum, a former nuclear engineer and director of the nuclear safety project at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

“The most likely [cause of flooding] is the increasing frequency of extreme events,” he told Vidal.

Yet in January 2019, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) decided to weaken staff recommendations to reassess the adequacy of hazard preparations. In dissent, Commissioner Jeff Baran wrote that the NRC would allow power plants “to be prepared only for the old, outdated hazards typically calculated decades ago when the science of seismology and hydrology was far less advanced.”

“As of September 2019, 444 nuclear reactors are operating in the world, with 54 under construction, 111 planned and 330 more proposed,” Charman reported.

“Many of the world’s new nuclear plants are being built on the coasts of Asian countries, which face floods, sea-level rise, and typhoons,” Vidal wrote. “At least 15 of China’s 39 reactors in operation, and many of the plants it has under construction, are on the coast.”

“Nuclear stations are on the front

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line of climate change impacts both figuratively and quite literally,” leading climate scientist Michael Mann told Vidal. “We are likely profoundly underestimating climate change risk and damages in coastal areas.”

10. Revive journalism with a stimulus package and public option

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| clevescene.com | December 30, 2020-January 5, 2021

In late March, Congress passed and President Trump signed a $2.2 trillion coronavirus rescue package, including direct payments of $1,200 per adult and more than $500 billion for large corporations. Before passage, Craig Aaron, the president of Free Press, argued that a stimulus package for journalism was also urgently needed. “In the face of this pandemic, the public needs good, economically secure journalists more than ever,” separating fact from fiction, and holding politicians and powerful institutions accountable,” Aaron wrote in the Columbia Journalism Review.

Aaron’s organization, Free Press, placed journalism’s needs at $5 billion in immediate emergency funds, “less than half of one percent of a trillion-dollar recovery package” and asked that “Congress put a foundation in place to help sustain journalism over the long term.”

Aaron presented a three-pronged plan: First, “Doubling federal funds for public media,” not for Downton Abbey reruns, but “earmarked specifically for emergency support, education, and especially local journalism.” For example, “The Los Angeles Unified School District teamed up with PBS SoCal/KCET to offer instruction over the airwaves while kids are out of school, with separate channels focused on different ages.”

Second, “Direct support for daily and weekly newsrooms,” which have lost tens of thousands of jobs over the past three decades. “Direct, emergency subsidies of say $25,000 per newsgathering position could make sure reporters everywhere stay on the local COVID beat,” he wrote.

“Just $625 million would help retain 25,000 newsroom jobs.”

Third, “New investments in the news we need … for a major investment in services that provide community information [and] to support new positions, outlets, and approaches to newsgathering, [which could] prioritize places and populations that the mainstream outlets have never served well.”

Arguing that a “resilient and community-centered media system” is necessary to get through the pandemic, Aaron concluded, “Now is

the time to act. We need significant public investments in all corners of the economy, and journalism is no exception.”

In an article in Jacobin, media scholar Victor Pickard advanced a more robust proposal, for $30 billion annually (less than 1.4 % of the coronavirus stimulus package, Project Censored noted).

“On the question of cost, we must first remind ourselves that a viable press system isn’t a luxury — it’s a necessity,” he wrote. “Similar to a classic ‘merit good,’ journalism isn’t a ‘want,’ but a ‘need. … Democratic nations around the globe heavily subsidize the media while enjoying democratic benefits that put the U.S. to shame.”

Writing for The Guardian, just after the McClatchy newspaper chain bankruptcy was announced in February, Pickard noted that, “For many areas across the U.S., there’s simply no commercial option. The market has failed us.” And thus, “With market failure, journalism’s survival requires public options.”

The need was fundamental.

“All foundational democratic theories — including the first amendment itself — assume a functional press system. The fourth estate’s current collapse is a profound social problem.”

And he suggested a broad range of funding possibilities: We could raise funds from taxing platforms like Facebook and Google, placing levees on communication devices, and repurposing international broadcasting subsidies.

Other sources include spectrum sales and individual tax vouchers.

We could leverage already-existing public infrastructures such as post offices, libraries, and public broadcasting stations to provide spaces for local news production.

“While corporate news outlets have reported the ongoing demise of newspapers and especially local news sources, they have rarely covered proposals such as Aaron’s and Pickard’s to revitalize journalism through public funding,” Project Censored wrote.

Paul Rosenberg is an activist turned journalist who has written for the Christian Science Monitor, the Los Angeles Times, the Denver Post, Al Jazeera English, Salon.com, and numerous other periodicals. He’s also written more than 300 book reviews.

He has worked as an editor at Random Lengths News since 2002.

scene@clevescene.com @clevelandscene

Photo by Emanuel Wallace

EAT THE BEST THINGS I ATE IN CLEVELAND IN 2020

By Douglas Trattner IN TERMS OF THE LOCAL dining scene, 2020 commenced with a bang. Those first heady months were illuminated with stellar meals at places like Alea, Zhug, Hola and Mojo, bold restaurants that portended a welcome shift from the fast-casual tsunami and towards creative independence. But alas, Covid threw a gigantic spanner in the works, stopping progress in its tracks. Silver linings abound, however, in the form of plucky upstarts like Proof, Home Bistro, Half Moon Bakery and Leavened, businesses that managed to bloom during the darkest of days.

Curried Lamb and Apricot Hummus at Zhug At Doug Katz’s dreamy Middle Eastern meeting place, hummus is used as a backdrop for various dishes, but none managed to captivate diners – including this one – like the curried lamb.

The interplay of warmly spiced braised lamb set against the silky, nutty spread is straight culinary witchcraft. Scoop that magic up with bits of plush clay bread, top it with the namesake electric-green zhug, and you’ll be placed under a perpetual spell.

Grilled Pork Chop at Alea For a demonstration on the transformative powers of real-fire cooking, reserve a table at tiny Alea in Ohio City. In place of the typical backbar of booze bottles sits a wood-burning cooking suite that fills the room with the irresistible charm of a backwoods chalet. Chefowner Athan Zarnas leans on wood as though it’s a spice, imbuing a corpulent heritage-breed pork chop with an intoxicating scent while branding the exterior with a seductive char. The juicy-pink chop is nestled into a pool of silky celery root puree and garnished with mouthwatering roasted grapes.

Brisket Tacos at Proof Few restaurants had to endure more hardships to reach opening day

than Proof, the barbecue joint that shares the same Tremont building as Visible Voice Books and Crust Pizza. From the untimely passing of its consulting chef to months of Covid delays, the persevering business finally debuted in May. From a trusty Southern Pride emerge wood-smoked brisket, pulled pork, pork belly and chicken.

That 14-hour brisket gets folded into tortillas to become some of the tastiest Texas-style tacos in town.

Bulgogi and Spaetzle at Home Bistro At first blush, a dish called bulgogi and spaetzle sounds like a convoluted mash-up dreamt up by a stoner in the import aisle. But this concoction, crafted by chef-owner Victor Morenz at Home Bistro in Little Italy, fires on all cylinders.

Thin-sliced beef is tossed with tender dumplings, coating them in that sweet/savory bulgogi sauce.

Bright pops of punchy kimchi light up every other bite, while a sunny, runny fried egg enriches it all.

Birria Tacos at Hola When Juan Vergara announced his plans to unveil a new taco shop, the disingenuous groans reverberated across the land. But those keens quickly quieted after he rolled up the windows of his “L.A.-style taco stand” in the Birdtown neighborhood of Lakewood. Hola, now with additional locations, succeeds thanks to stellar meats like wood-fired carne asada and spit-roasted al pastor. But it’s the birria tacos starring slowbraised beef that weaken the knees.

The tacos are seared on the griddle in rich broth and paired with hot consommé for dipping.

Empanadas at Half Moon Bakery From a small Puerto Rican bakery in the shadow of MetroHealth come some of the crispiest, most delicious empanadas around. The bakery is run by Gerson Velasquez and Lyz Otero, who have worked in some of Cleveland’s loftiest restaurant kitchens. The result is a selection of

flaky Argentinian empanadas and corn-scented Columbian empanadas, all stuffed with savory fillings like seasoned ground beef, shredded chicken or mixed veggies. The zippy aji, a spicy green chutney, is indispensable.

Spicy Salami Pizza at Roman Café As with tacos, burgers and barbecue, most folks think there’s nothing new under the sun to discover. But discovery is precisely what awaits at Roman Café, the new E. Fourth Street pizzeria from Citizen Pie impresario Vytauras Sasnauskas.

From all outward appearances, the rectangular slices look like standard-issue Sicilian, but this is Roman-style pizza, which translates to light, airy and crackly-crisp crusts crowned with a rainbow of meat and veggie toppings. The graband-go process is well suited to the current dining environment, but also the inevitable return of harried lunchbreaks.

Spam Musubi at Dang Good Foods Daniel Ang progressed from a food truck of the same name to a brickand-mortar restaurant in Lakewood only slightly roomier. There, he lovingly prepares a small roster of dishes culled from his childhood in Singapore, where he devoured foods rooted in Chinese, Indian and Malay traditions. When you visit, do try the curry noodle soup and braised pork belly rice, but if you want to experience Spam in its highest form, tack on an order of the musubi.

Slices of the sweet-salty canned ham are sauteed, painted with teriyaki,

sandwiched between steamed rice and bundled up in a tidy seaweed wrapper.

Jerk Chicken at Island Cuisine If I had a nickel for every time I passed by this unassuming Caribbean eatery without hitting the brakes, I could buy a small island of my own. When I did finally stop at this Warrensville Heights take-out shop, I surveyed a couple regulars for suggestions. The nearunanimous reply was: jerk chicken, extra-spicy. Unlike many of its brethren, where foods are plucked from a nearby steam table, Island wrangles the bird straight off the grill before dousing it in incendiary sauces. Paired with warm cabbage and rice and beans, the dish serves as a reminder that culinary delight can lurk in every nook and corner.

Fahsa at Yemen Gate Sometimes comfort arrives in the most unexpected of places.

Upon arriving at Yemen Gate on Cleveland’s west side, I was immersed in the sights, smells and sounds of a faraway land. The aromas of fresh-baked bread, exotic spices, savory stews and grilled meats hung in the air. While we enjoyed slow-braised lamb haneeth, orange-hued chicken mandi and charcoal-grilled chicken – all served atop buttery long-grained rice – it was the cauldron of bubbling fahsa that will lure me back. The heavenly spiced lamb stew is served with rashoush, a tire-size flat bread that arrives blistered and puffy from the hot tannour oven.

| clevescene.com | December 30, 2020-January 5, 2021

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Photo by Emanuel Wallace

Tonkotsu Ramen at Issho Ni Thanks to social media, I was persuaded to travel to Willoughby in search of ramen. What I encountered when I landed was some of the best bowls in Northeast Ohio. The Japanese eatery offers a wide array of sushi, hibachi and stir-fries, but the ramen options are exemplary.

Choices include a classic pork tonkotsu, kuro ramen with squid ink, Hokkaido-style yellow ramen, soy-based shoyu ramen and brothless mazemen ramen. The tonkotsu arrives characteristically milky, with a rich, savory broth made from long-simmering bones. In the bowl are bouncy noodles, thick wheels of chashu, tender braised pork belly and a soft-cooked egg. Order it as spicy as you dare.

Spuddy Rich Pizza at Corner Spot If there’s a bright side to 2020, it was the rise of quirky, nonconventional startups that aim to disrupt the status quo if only to survive these atypical times. One such arrival is Corner Spot, a ghost pizzeria that operates in a church and accepts new customers through Instagram.

These thick, rectangular pies are designed from the dough up for the delivery (here, pick-up) age. They are fully baked, but not hot, requiring a few minutes in a hot oven to achieve their intended outcome, namely sharp edges, singed-cheese corners and crusty bottoms. The subtly flavored Spuddy Rich is layered with thin-sliced potatoes, sweet melted onions, garlic confit and rosemary cream.

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| clevescene.com | December 30, 2020-January 5, 2021

Shrimp Veracruz at Chimi For a chef who ran a 20-yearold restaurant, Doug Katz rose remarkably quick to the challenges presented by Covid. This summer, he converted a kitchen typically bursting with catering gigs to Chimi, a South American-inspired

ghost restaurant. A lack of a dining room doesn’t stand in the way of a great meal thanks to vibrant dishes like peanut salsa and chips and jackfruit tamales. In the shrimp Veracruz, plump seafood shine in an earthy stew of tomatoes, olives, capers, nuts and mint. Swaddle it in warm white corn tortillas, hit it with the namesake chimichurri and savor a taste of the Tropics.

Crispy Chicken Thighs at Mojo When chef Michael Herschman announced his plans to revive Mojo, the pioneering small-plate restaurant he launched decades ago in Tremont, I was thrilled. So thrilled that the restaurant was the first I visited after the return of outdoor dining.

Like the original, this revival offers a dizzying selection of small, medium and large plates, each more tantalizing than the last. The chef’s rightfully famous calamari is here, as are classics like fried tofu and curry beef noodles. No bowl packed more of a punch, however, than the one layered with fried boneless chicken thighs, housemade kim chi, smoky-sweet kabayaki glaze and a runny fried egg.

Italian Sandwich at Leavened It’s a truism to state that all great sandwiches start with great bread.

That’s why bakeries like Leavened, which opened this fall in Tremont, have a leg up on the market. Ian Herrington and his team don’t offer many sandwiches, but when the Italian makes an appearance the supply does not last long. Built on horizontally sliced focaccia, the weighty sandwich is stuffed with pepperoni, salami, ham, provolone, tomato and mild but crunchy giardiniera.

dtrattner@clevescene.com t@dougtrattner

Courtesy Kate’s Fish

EAT

BITES

Kate’s Fish and Good Company team up

By Douglas Trattner WHILE HIS PLANS FOR A NEW England-style seafood shack the West Side Market are still on hold, Tom McIntyre is pushing forward on a separate retail fish concept.

McIntyre, owner of Kate’s Fish, will team up with Brett Sawyer of the Plum and Good Company to open Kate’s Good Fish Company. The take-out and delivery only kitchen will begin as a weekend-only pop-up January 15-17 before settling into a more consistent groove.

“I’ve been selling fish to Brett for years,” explains McIntyre. “We’ve been talking about doing something together forever but we didn’t know how. Obviously, these are unique circumstances and a unique opportunity.”

Kate’s Good Fish Company will operate out of Sawyer’s presently shuttered Good Company at Battery Park in Detroit Shoreway. The menu will offer items like clam chowder, lobster rolls, oyster po’ boys, fried fish sandwiches and seafood dinners – all made with the freshest possible seafood sourced and selected by McIntyre.

“I’m super-excited,” he says. “You know that I’ve wanted to do this for years at the market. If it goes well, if it’s well received and we like it, we’ll move forward with it on weekends during Lent.”

In addition to pick-up at the shop in Gordon Square, the food will be made available via the restaurant’s own delivery crew.

After the January pop-up, the team will take a break to evaluate the model and hopefully return to action in mid-February for weekly service through Lent.

And if that all goes well, adds McIntyre, “Hopefully it will be a springboard to other things. We want to do other projects together.”

Cru Uncorked in Moreland Hills to Expand Footprint with New Patios, Gardens, Greenhouse and Outdoor Kitchen In an attempt to create a Frenchinspired estate on par with some of the most sought-after dining destinations around the country, Cru Uncorked (34300 Chagrin Blvd., 440-903-1171) in Moreland Hills will increase its physical footprint in hopes of expanding its reach and appeal. The fine-dining restaurant, which opened in 2017, has just been granted approval to move forward with plans to develop an adjacent property in compliance with certain conditions and zoning regulations.

Earlier this year, Cru acquired a 2.7-acre parcel next door. Over the next three years, that property will be transformed into a scenic setting complete with wine cellar, tasting room, gardens and greenhouse.

These expanded facilities will provide room for a second covered patio for wine tastings and wine education classes, temperaturecontrolled storage for a world-class wine and cheese program, a farmto-kitchen garden and greenhouse, and, finally, an outdoor kitchen that will be ideal for alfresco cooking classes, weddings and other private events.

“This expansion is a testament to the work and dedication of our staff,” says general manager Bill Cutler. “We’re a very close-knit team, and there’s a lot of excitement about the direction we’re moving in and what we’ll be able to provide our guests.”

dtrattner@clevescene.com t@dougtrattner | clevescene.com | December 30, 2020-January 5, 2021

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SAVAGE LOVE LESBIAN DRAMA

By Dan Savage Hey, Dan: One of my very close friends, a lesbian, has been married for a couple of years now. It’s been nothing but drama since the day they met. My friend had a terrible home life growing up and doesn’t understand stability. She also has zero self-confidence. My friend and her wife are constantly calling the cops on each other, getting restraining orders, and then breaking them and getting back together. I told her that if she likes this drama, that’s one thing. It’s another if my friend got dragged into it and doesn’t want to live this way! But she cannot seem to quit their relationship. My friend tells me, “Lesbian relationships are drama,” and says I don’t get it because I’m “so damn straight.” Two questions: Are all lesbian relationships drama? And can you explain the whole “price of admission” thing again? It might help to open my friend’s eyes to how unacceptable this shit is. She says she wants out but she also wants to be loved and doesn’t think it would be any better with someone else.

Don’t Really Accept Melodramatic Actions If that lesbian friend of yours isn’t willing to listen to you because you’re straight, DRAMA, she’s not going to listen to my gay ass. So I shared your email with three lesbian friends of mine — think of them of a three-member circuit court of lesbian appeals — in the hopes that your lesbian would listen to their asses.

“Are lesbian relationships drama?” asked Tracey “Peaches” Cataldo, the executive director of the HUMP! Film Festival. “No. Maybe lesbian relationships are high intensity.

The shared experience of being gay, being women, communicating too much about everything — I mean, the U-Haul jokes resonate for a reason. However, big feelings and big commitments don’t mean big drama. In my own experience, lesbian drama involves disagreeing about how many coats of paint are needed on a bathroom wall, or one person wanting to fuck when the other wants to watch The Crown. It’s not normal for lesbian relationship ‘drama’ to require 911 calls and it’s definitely not okay for said drama to look like a cycle of violence or result in trauma. Don’t confuse drama for passion.”

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“I’m not sure lesbian relationships are any more drama than any other relationships,” said Katie Herzog, freelance dog-ball journalist (really) and cohost of the Blocked and Reported podcast, “but considering the surprisingly high rates of intimate partner violence in lesbian relationships, they might actually be. Still, just because some lesbian relationships are drama doesn’t mean that all lesbian relationships are drama. Personally, I was involved in my fair share of soap operas as a young dyke, including once dating a woman who said she was possessed by a demon. (She was: the demon was coke.) But as an adult, the biggest drama in my relationship is The Undoing on Sunday nights on HBO. Either way, DRAMA’s friend’s relationship sounds unhealthy, and that’s not a lesbian thing.”

“Drama is saying your ex looked cute the last time you saw them on your current’s birthday,” said Cameron Esposito, the comedian and host of the podcast Queery. “Lesbian drama is saying that while watching The L Word: Generation Q. Seems more like DRAMA’s pal may be in a cycle of abuse — using the clues of police, restraining orders, and a feeling that one cannot do better.

From my own experience, abuse isn’t something a friend can stop and DRAMA’s best option here may be to suggest a support group — perhaps offer to attend with her — and then lovingly detach from fixing this. Not because DRAMA doesn’t care but because we cannot control the lives of the ones we love.”

Thank you for your service, lesbians, I’ll take it from here.

Okay, DRAMA, I’ll explain the “price of admission” concept: You see, there are always gonna be things about someone that get on your nerves and/or certain needs a romantic partner cannot meet — sexual or emotional — but if they’re worth it, if that person has other qualities or strengths that compensate for their inability to, say, fill the dishwasher correctly or their disinterest in butt stuff, then clearing up after dinner or going without anal is the price of admission you have to pay to be with that person.

And those are reasonable prices to pay. But putting up with abuse — physical and/or emotional — isn’t a

| clevescene.com | December 30, 2020-January 5, 2021

price that anyone should pay to be in a relationship.

And the price of admission doesn’t just apply to romantic relationships, DRAMA. So if putting up with this drama isn’t a price you’re willing to pay to be friends with this woman, you can refuse to pay it — meaning, you have every right to end this friendship if drama is all you’re getting out of it.

Ending the friendship might actually help your lesbian friend.

People who confuse drama for passion often get off on having an audience, DRAMA, and always being available for a friend like that — always making yourself available for their drama — can have the opposite of its intended effect. So by dropping everything and rushing your friend’s side every time the shit hits the fan could be creating a perverse incentive for your friend to stay in this shitty relationship. In cases like this, DRAMA, detaching — like Cameron suggested — isn’t just the right thing to do for yourself but the right thing to do for your friend as well. Because once she sees there’s no audience she might decide to end the show.

Follow Katie Herzog on Twitter @KittyPurrzog and read her dog ball journalism at www. moosenuggets.substack.com. Follow Cameron Esposito on Twitter @ CameronEsposito. You can’t follow Tracey “Peaches” Cataldo on Twitter — because she isn’t on Twitter — but you can make and submit a film for HUMP!

Hey, Dan: I’m a 35-year-old gay cis woman in New Jersey. I’ve been in a wonderful relationship with an amazing woman since April. In typical lesbian fashion, she moved in over the summer and we’ve been inseparable ever since. My problem is that my sister and her nine-yearold son have been living in my home for the last four years. She has a ton of drama with her ex — her son’s father — and just this past week my girlfriend had her first interaction with the Department of Children and Family Services because of their drama. I’m used to it at this point but it freaked my girlfriend out.

When I purchased my home, I invited my sister to move in to help her get on her feet. It also meant I could try for a closer relationship to

my nephew. She was going to finish her nursing degree so she could support herself and her son. Four years later, she’s still an LPN and still living in my home with her bad attitude and so much drama. Last night, she had a huge argument with my girlfriend while I was at work — I’m an ICU nurse and I work overnight — and she told my GF that I don’t spend enough time with her or her son since we started dating and she’s sad because she has no help, no friends, no blah blah blah.

I need to cut the cord! I want a family and kids of my own and I’m planning to propose in the next few months. I love my sister, I do, and for years I’ve been there to help pick up the pieces from her shitty choices, but now is my time to prioritize myself and my happiness. How do I make her see that without making her feel like I’m abandoning her and her son?

Worried And Perplexed Even if there was some way to ask your sister to move out that didn’t make her feel like you were abandoning her and her son, WAP, she would still do everything she in her power to make you feel like you were abandoning them. She knows that if she can make you bad enough, and if she can sow enough discord between you and your girlfriend, she won’t have to get her own place or stand on her own two feet. So brace yourself for a lot of drama, WAP, and be unambiguous and firm: set a reasonable date for her to find her own place, offer whatever financial help you reasonably can, and make sure your nephew has your number.

It sounds like he’s going to need someplace safe to run away to in a year or two — or in a month or two — and here’s hoping your girlfriend has it in her heart to be there for him the way you have.

Cameron Esposito is hosting an online party on December 31 at 6 PM (PST) — Cameron Esposito’s New Year’s Steve—with special sets, guests, and an early ball drop! It’s free but donations are welcome. For more info and tickets to Cameron’s show, head over to www.dynastytypewriter.com.

mail@savagelove.net t@fakedansavage www.savagelovecast.com

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| clevescene.com | December 30, 2020-January 5, 2021