Production and distribution of City club forums and ideastream Public media are made possible by PNC and the United Black, Fond of Greater Cleveland, Inc.. Good afternoon and welcome to the City Club of Cleveland, where we are devoted to creating conversations of consequence that help democracy thrive.

It's Friday, January 17th.

And I'm Helen Forbes Fields, president and CEO of the YWCA, Greater Cleveland.

Thank you.

And it's my great privilege to be here to introduce the incredible Margaret Mitchell, CEO of the YWCA.

USA Today is a homecoming for Margaret.

Three years ago, Margaret Mitchell moved into the national spotlight, handing off the reins to the YWCA of Greater Cleveland, which she held for ten years.

Even though she has made a new home in Washington, D.C., Cleveland is still home.

We still claim Margaret, and she is considered our local hero right here in northeast Ohio.

Among her many accomplishments, she led along with the Greater United Way of Greater Cleveland and Urban League, the successful effort to declare racism a public health crisis in Cleveland and throughout Ohio.

It's true that her leadership has left an indelible mark on the fight to build a nation where all women and girls can thrive and survive.

The YWCA USA is a nationally based organization with 194 local association points across the United States, including the YWCA of Greater Cleveland.

It is one of the oldest and largest women's organizations in the nation, serving over 1 million women and girls and their families.

It has been at the forefront of the most pressing social movements for over 160 years.

The YWCA has an international arm as well.

World YWCA, which is a global movement working for women's empowerment, leadership and rights in more than 120 countries.

As we move into Martin Luther King Day weekend and we look to our Inauguration Day, today's conversation without a doubt rest at the crux of one of our country's most significant movements.

Today, we will hear first directly from Margaret on the progress made and the work ahead to eliminate racism, empower women and promote peace, justice, freedom and dignity for all.

Following Margaret's remarks, Danielle Sydnor will join Margaret for a moderated conversation.

Danielle is the CEO of the Rise Together Innovation Institute and the past president of the NAACP, Cleveland branch.

Danielle is a respected leader who we welcome home as well.

And she is an advocate in Ohio, known for her tireless work in social justice, economic empowerment and a deep background in financial education.

If you have a question for Margaret and Danielle, you can text it to 3305415794 in the City Club staff will try to work it into our question and answers portion of the program.

Members and Friends of the City Club of Cleveland.

Please join me in welcoming Margaret Mitchell.

I have to say this is it is it's extraordinary to see all of you.

I am already feeling emotional.

And you all know that I am a crier.

So here we go.

The first thing that I really want to say is that I've hired to be here, but this land is the ancestral land and the whole national people and the Potawatomi people.

And we have to remember that this land holds their wisdom, this land.

And the women brought balance for thousands of years before it was forcibly taken from them.

And today their descendants are doing everything to resist, to reclaim and sustain cultural, spiritual traditions despite challenges.

Cleveland This weekend in January, I'm asking you to recommit to the lake area.

Indigenous people recommit to them.

I also want to acknowledge the black women of Cleveland and the generations that they labored and built and sustain this city.

Women who were denied dignity and freedom, women who came to this city on the bus.

Their contribution to Cleveland is often denied and not acknowledged.

I honor them today, but this land also holds space for a little boy who is full of life and possibilities.

And every single day his name echoes in my heart.

The murder ten years ago of Tamir Rice changed my life.

Could be that he looked so much like my son.

He was playing a sister.

These are the moments that need to fuel.

We need to stand in stewardship of justice, equity and community.

Even in this moment.

This moment brings clarity to all of us.

Clarity of the past and the future.

And Monday, January 28, will celebrate MLK Day.

Monday, January 20th will celebrate MLK Day.

It is a new era, and that era began for me several months before this day.

I was in Madison, Wisconsin, and our CEO there, Jerry Valdez, comes running up to me and she had a book and she presses this book into my hands and she says, You have to read this book.

And the book was Si No Stranger by Valerie Kerr.

She's the sick woman who is a author and activist, a lawyer, one of the most extraordinary human beings.

And these are her words.

The future is dark, but what if the darkness is not the darkness of the tomb, but the darkness of the womb?

What if our America is not dead, but a country that is waiting to be born?

What if the story of America is one long labor?

What if our grandfathers and grandmothers are standing behind us now?

Those who survived occupation, genocide, war, slavery, Jim Crow, detention and political assault?

What if they are in our ear now?

Whispering.

You are brave.

What if this is our nation's greatest transition?

That's how I entered this era.

It is dark, but I believe that it is the darkness of the womb and not the darkness of the tomb.

YWCA has a long history as midwives working to usher in democracy that protects the rights and dignity for all.

And what does the midwife tell us to do?

Breathe.

Push.

During my first year as CEO of YWCA USA, I visited a college campus, and if I name the campus, you would know it immediately.

And I was there and I was meeting with young people.

It was absolutely amazing.

And as we were talking and discussing, someone asked me the question.

It was actually a staff person of the local YWCA on that college campus.

And they said, I'm going to ask you this question because I know you're here and you can do something about this.

But I want to ask you about that mission, eliminating racism and empowering women.

It's way too strong.

Can't you do something about that?

So I had a few feelings, but I kept them to myself because I had a new job and I was with my boss.

But my internal thermometer was going through the roof and for weeks and weeks I beat myself over what I coulda woulda should have said.

And none of it was nice.

And finally, about three weeks later, early in the morning, during my private devotional, he came to me.

Eliminating racism and empowering women is an invite to Haitian.

Everything better?

Everything better.

YWCA matters because we are pushing, pushing for everything better.

I as many of you came into the room, you may have heard that President Biden made a statement on the Erie.

He still needs to send a directive to the archivist for the archivist to publish the era in the Constitution.

He has made a very powerful statement.

And the era matters because women are equal, women are powerful and we are unstoppable.

YWCA matters because her roots are feminist and because feminism does not center on women of color trans people, indigenous women, disabled women.

And that is not feminism.

It is time to breathe and push.

YWCA brings in hope and power into the lives of women and girls.

When I think about the work that we all did together in this room, including the work the YWCA did and does with their racial justice challenge, when I think about the work that we did in launching 400 years of inequity, when we commemorated from 1619 to 2019 with a conference.

When I think about deeply, deeply understanding that racism is is a public health crisis must continue to breathe and push some of, you know.

Sometimes as women, we can be a little bit more quiet about our accomplishments and things that we have done.

And, you know, when I think about who embodies this the most, I think about Coretta Scott King.

We often sort of keep her in this frozen frame of a woman who walked three steps behind, was silent.

One of the things that I did during the pandemic was take a class at Stanford on the King's.

And the thing that I walked away was this incredible, deep love for her.

It was brilliant.

She was the intellectual giant in that family.

When you read the Riverside speech, that is her will often find a quote in which a reporter asked Dr. King, are you teaching your wife these things?

And he says, she is teaching me.

She was amazing.

She was in Europe reading Environmental justice is Coretta Scott King.

That invites Ruskin to the movement.

Is Coretta Scott King that says you could be all right with him.

Don't you worry about all those other things.

People are saying you need him.

She's an incredible advocate and we miss her.

We miss seeing him.

She really, really, really is.

She addressed AIDS.

Oh, long before it was a primary focus for anyone else.

It's amazing when you have a chance to speak with Carole Hoover and the treasure trove.

This should not be shrouded in silence.

The most amazing things that the YWCA is doing now revolves around financial trauma.

And when I mention financial trauma, I want you to understand that this is not.

I'm not talking about what happens to an individual, but there are financial traumas and abuses that happen to individuals.

But financial trauma is a system.

It is why women who reach Social Security age, you see the pay gap catching up with them.

It is the barriers that are in place today that are affecting women.

We have a national survey out that is led by one of our partners, Chloe Mackenzie of ten seven.

I remember running into Erica merritt at Race for a conference.

I can't even remember what city we were in.

And she says to me, You have to meet Chloe McKenzie.

And I did.

And this survey is going to give us a proprietary look at our communities and understand at a zip code level where trauma is happening.

Now, this is gender specific.

And in this data, you can literally see women and the challenges and the realities that they are facing.

She is also working with us for the very first time.

We are going to be able to tell our story of impact when your mission is eliminating racism and empowering women.

And you can't tell how you're moving the needle.

You have some problems.

So for the very first time, we are digging in to understand beneficiary impact, societal impact and institute impact.

And all of that work is happening here in Cleveland.

And now we're going to be able to tell the story.

We're going to be able to tell it all across our network.

This is absolutely game changing work for us.

And I am so proud, so proud to be part of how we breathe and push Cleveland together.

We are an army of compassion, equity and empowerment.

You are also midwives of change.

You are also midwives of change.

Two choices are going to present themselves on January 20th.

Two choices light and dark.

The future.

It is not dark.

What if this darkness is not the darkness of the tomb, but the darkness of the room?

What if America is not dead but is waiting to be born in this labor of love?

We will contain you to help others.

Cleveland.

We who help to deliver on the promise of a better future.

You.

I said this, Cynthia.

It's like being at your wake.

Except you're here.

I am here.

I am here.

And you look fabulous.

It's your charity.

You.

So, good afternoon, Margaret.

So glad to be with you.

And all of you today at the City Club.

I just want to thank you for something we talked about privately, but I always want to share publicly.

Margaret has been a person that I've had the pleasure of leading with, but also watching as an unofficial mentor show up very authentically and as a young black woman in leadership.

It is important to have women that you can look at as models.

And one of the things that Margaret taught me is just be authentic.

She's not afraid to show emotion when it's appropriate and necessary.

She's not afraid to say the things that people are uncomfortable.

She always says it with a smile like this.

She didn't say that racism is a public health crisis, and it's shown me how to be able to do the same.

So thank you.

I want to thank my team that came up from Columbus Rise Together Innovation Institute.

My in a deep Forever family.

Thank you all for being here today.

So, Margaret, I want to start the first question just to break the ice a little bit from the intensity you just heard.

So can I come to the YWCA and go to the gym and swim, or is that that other organization?

You can't in Cleveland, but you can in other parts of the country.

And the reason the YWCA is so important in the swim in gym, because it was often a place and the why do we see was we were we were segregated for probably in true segregation through the seventies, although we had on our bylaws the process of desegregating starting in 1930.

But it takes time for the heart and the head to align.

And but swimming, Jim, is important because it was a place for women to be able to recognize who they were.

And so body image and fitness and competitive sports, all of that for women is grounded at the YWCA.

So we played a very important role in this country.

We had a seat on the Olympic board four years, and it is I often because we did not have swimming gym in Cleveland, which sort of joke about it.

But I have as a national leader, come to just an amazing deep appreciation around our role in recreation and and physical fitness for women than I ever have before.

Yeah.

Okay.

Now that we get that out of the way, my second question is centered on something that you left off of, which was talking about Coretta Scott King and the influence that she's had continually on the movement.

I think about the fact that it was her efforts that led to King's last book being published after his assassination.

Where do we go from here as a community?

In 1968, In the forward of the book, she says, It is our common tragedy that we lost this prophetic voice, but it would be compounded a compounded tragedy if the lessons that he articulated are now ignored.

And so I think about the fact that we sit here near the 60th anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery march.

We're talking about King weekend and the inauguration.

That is soon to happen.

How we went from a moment of what people thought was our modern day civil rights movement after the murder of George Floyd.

And now that's almost all been eroded.

So my question is, how has the black community and our allies gotten comfortable with the progress that we saw and started to not pay attention to the lessons that we learned?

I think we saw that during King's time.

He talks about that in Why We Can't Wait.

That is really so much of that.

Comfort is a huge theme in that book and in his work.

And so that it's been something that has really that is part of the push and the pool always for us.

And I do think that there is a level of comfort and the pendulum is always swinging, even as what is always required in movements and the sacrifice.

And it is so incredibly important for us to always honor that and honor the people who gave their lives and who have given their lives historically.

Many, many women, many children.

And I do think we have to keep remembering that we are at a point in time.

There is amazing work has happened, but we are we are still behind.

We are still lost.

We are still not living our full and best as human beings.

So, Margaret, in that same vein of, you know, lives being or blood always being a part of the movement, sometimes that blood is our social standing.

It's whether or not people want to invite us to the events because we're the ones that say the things that nobody else wants to say, or we're the ones that do things like Project 400.

Before there was this outcry that every city and county now performatively in some spaces declared racism as a public health crisis.

You were one of the people on the forefront of bringing that conversation to the community and commemorating 400 years.

And you talked about it in your opening remarks.

How important was that moment and how are you leveraging that today in the work that you're doing nationally with the why?

I you know, in 2019, so in January 2019, a small group of us were like, oh, we need to commemorate.

And, you know, tried to talk with folks and there really wasn't a lot of interest and energy and in May, but we wanted a call to action.

We didn't want to just come together and do a thing.

We really wanted a call to action.

And in May, Milwaukee declared Milwaukee County declared racism a public health crisis.

And the YWCA there in Milwaukee really led that charge.

And I knew I remember calling the CEO Paul Becker, and just saying, Oh, my gosh.

And we knew that that was that was it.

We had all the data, all the things that this was the call to action.

But yeah, I could name names.

But yeah, people were.

Yeah, it was.

Mm hmm.

All the things like, yeah, don't do that.

Don't say that.

Go away.

And honestly, we did.

We, it was at the public auditorium.

Auditorium.

And the mayor gave us the public auditorium.

But we still, as we, the small group of us that came together to do the work, we you know, we had Isabel Wilkerson who came and she was finishing up cast.

We didn't know it at the time.

And she was talking what she was talking about.

I mean, the her talk was incredible.

But now, looking back, having when you read the book was like, oh, my gosh.

So Isabel Wilkerson came.

She kicked us off.

John Powell To us, it was just it was incredible.

And we out of pocket and it was like for six months we were paying everyone who came and did things for us that we promised we would pay because it was just there was no commitment, there were no sponsorship, there was no support.

And then in July of 2020, and then we went to the city and the county and said, Hey, this is you.

This is a crisis here in this city.

And it was the city of Cleveland that really allowed for the hearings and to take us seriously.

The county did not.

And at the time, but then in someone someone died and we witnessed it.

And people's hearts shifted and the interest came.

But to sustain, to sustain the work, you have to understand, you have to come from a different place when you are sustaining work.

And that is, I think, even in the moment as the pendulum and the swing was so strong, it just felt like it was there was so much performance in it.

Yeah, I was at a event last night in Columbus.

The Ohio Education Association had Symone Sanders Townsend as a keynote, and she is awesome.

She is.

She is just the woman with her face.

You have oh, my gosh.

And when you see her in DC, she like she remembers your name and she's just incredible.

Just an incredible human being.

Yeah.

And she mentioned something that you just said about the, you know, after the murder of George Floyd.

Then there was this desire to do these things in our work for racism as a public health crisis in began before that.

And but then you had other people kind of jumping on.

She asked the audience if they knew how or why the HUD bill passed.

Affordable housing passed in the United States Congress was after King's murder, and so he had been fighting for it prior to his murder and his allies who were standing with him around voting rights and other things became silent around housing after he was murdered.

There was this rush to do these things.

And so it's just eerie to me how many of these similarities we're finding are so many similarities.

And when you go in and you read that bill, isn't it shocking how much is not really standing up?

Yeah.

Imani Edwards, who was at HUD, I mean, you know, it's it's shocking when you actually go in and read the bill itself because you think and also, you know, the voting rights when you go in and read these when you read these this landmark legislation, it shocking.

I'm taking a class on the Constitution right now because I wanted to be able to be really grounded in what I was hearing and reading and seeing and understanding.

I didn't think I had a firm enough foundation in the Constitution in itself, man.

That is it's a work.

They actually know that bad actors are coming.

Yeah, they know bad actors are coming.

They're clear in the Constitution.

And.

And how the declaration and the constant how they speak to each other.

It's amazing.

And I am not an attorney.

Even though Wikipedia says that I have.

I try to cover it up and go down.

But I know what I know what I know.

Yeah, I'm a fake attorney as well.

People think I was president of the NAACP.

They call me.

I'm like, I'm not, but I've got a couple in the room that I can call.

We need something that's right.

That's right.

So, Margaret, how do you stay hopeful and optimistic in doing this work?

Because we see so many similarities from 56 years ago.

So it's like, are we boomeranging forward backwards to the same point?

You continue to have to show up every day and push and lead through these spaces.

How do you stay optimistic?

I stay optimistic, really, with seeing the power of young people and what young people are doing and why they're doing it and how they're doing it.

And and and the unapologetic way in which they are showing and leading and trailblazing.

It's just really incredible to be able to see.

And I'm deeply encouraged by that.

I also understand the remnant.

I know, you know, when you see the map and the things and the this and that and all this stuff, it's always been about a remnant.

It's always been about a small group of people who are going to do the thing.

We keep thinking that it's this this mass thing and the way in which we've had incredible gains, incredible gains and there's so much to learn is tons to learn from missteps that we've had and what we've lost with Roe.

And there's tons to learn with what we've gained with marriage equality.

There's just so much for us to be able to understand and learn and a lot to be hopeful in.

This is my last question before I open this up for Q&A.

And a part of the work that you're doing is around financial trauma.

Black women.

There are some women here who have been very instrumental in my career.

Aaron Kirkpatrick, Vanessa Whiting, Rene Rashad, Helen Forbes Fields.

These are business women who have blazed trails, but we know that not everybody gets a chance to be invited into rooms.

And so I've always been grateful that they've brought me into rooms with them.

I want to know how this work that you're doing around financial trauma is informed by women who are successful and who are navigating spaces, but likely also experienced that trauma at some point in their life as well.

Yeah, those barriers are there for women at every single economic strata.

It is.

Those barriers are there and we need to oftentimes we are still not even fully recognizing the barriers that exist.

And so it's so important.

The survey actually, you're able to go into this survey and have have be releasing data this year in 2025.

But you can literally see women making decisions and choices regarding childcare versus their health, regarding wellness.

And that, you know, the wellness will of what we understand and what needs to be there in terms of the spiritual emotional pieces in order to thrive.

There are financial decisions that women have to make at all economic levels that keep them from being able to fully access the life that they want to lead.

And so it's just incredible data just really, really it's a powerful survey and we're just thrilled to be entering into this new era of, you know, telling our story, having the quantitative and qualitative pieces to tell the story.

Is this survey still open?

The survey is still open.

And so we will make sure we can get that out to everybody and anybody can take the survey.

You know, we I just want to say one thing about, you know, we seen these horrific fires and we have we have three associations sort of in the path of the fires.

And, you know, you have to understand that even when there is a disaster, women are so impacted and impacted in so many different ways and their children and their ability to get back on their feet takes longer or is harder.

There are more nuances for women.

And, you know, we often aren't able to see all of that and recognize all of that.

And it is all there in the data, the way women are able to tell their story in that quantitative and qualitative way.

There's some beautiful data out.

I love what Michael McAfee is doing with policy link in that that zip code level data.

I love, love, love that.

But this our data is gender specific and no one has stepped in to tell the story of women and then center that on women of color.

That is it's just we're just kind of I'm just kind of excited about it.

I'm glad there's somebody else who's as excited about data as I am.

I know a lot of us up there.

Yeah.

So we are about to open audience Q&A, not testimony service Q&A.

So I'm just going to ask you a question.

Not a long comment, just a question for our live streaming radio audience.

I am Danielle Sydnor, CEO of Rise Together Innovation Institute and moderator for today's conversation.

Today, we are talking with Margaret Mitchell, CEO of YWCA, USA, one of the oldest and largest women's organizations in the nation, serving over 1 million women, girls and their families.

We welcome questions from everyone city club members, guests, students, as well as those joining the live stream at City Club dot org or live radio broadcast at 89.7 Ideastream Public Media.

If you'd like to text a question for Margaret, please text it to 3305415794.

That's 3305415794.

And the City Club staff will try to work it into the program.

May we have the first question, please?

Hello.

We're going to start with a text question.

What are the actions we can take immediately to help break through the darkness?

How do we use this time in history to elevate the city of Cleveland?

Such a great question.

I think, you know, what are the three things you you know, those three things?

It's the three things that scare the bejesus out of you.

Those are the three things that the things you can do easily.

Oh, my gosh.

That you could do quickly, that you feel comfortable doing, that you will do that.

You could do that.

You should do that.

You did do those kinds of things.

It's the thing that scared the bejesus out of you.

Those are the three things that you should do.

Good afternoon.

It's good to see you.

I want to thank you, Dan, for mentioning my radio show.

And I want to thank Margaret for being on my radio show April 24th, 2021.

I looked it up in my phone.

But my question, a lot of folks know that I'm an educator, and I always think about if I think about our students and when you think about a group that may be hopeless right now, I think it has a lot to do with our teenagers and the students in our schools.

So what can we to empower our students?

And also, do you get a chance to talk to young people in your national capacity?

I do.

And we did a we do a national poll with a black and Gen Z pollster.

Why?

Why women vote.

And literally in the in the poll, you can see the cynicism.

You can see the cynicism in young people 30 and under around voting politics, the election cynicism, you can literally see it in the poll.

And so this is such the the fix is complicated, but it is it needs immediate attention because the some people think like, oh, the democracy is at stake because of so and so and so and so.

But the cynicism and not participating in the democracy.

And it's it's one of those you don't often think of the YWCA and democracy.

But, you know, Bowling Alone helped us to understand how important it is to be in community.

And that is what when you see when you understand the decline of the YWCA and other organizations, you are seeing a decline of democracy.

And so being able to turn that tide, young people are absolutely essential in that they are ready to lead.

Now, we there was a little bit of a wait your turn that was prevalent and persistent and we need to eradicate that.

Wait, wait, your turn.

Feeling young people are ready to lead now?

Yeah.

Good morning, Ms..

Thank you.

Good morning, Miss Margaret, I would like to say is a pleasure to see you in person.

I have heard so much good about you.

And I had to make it my business to get down here.

My name is Linda.

How're in the name of my organization is City of Cleveland.

It's called Young Mothers of Cleveland.

And I had the pleasure to be able to put unleashed the business as a facility.

So I thought it was my business to be here today.

So my question, because, Ms.. Daniels, another testimonial, right, was I was gonna remind you that you got it.

So my question all I want to talk about from here on out 2025 in the future is housing.

And I want to thank you again for creating what you created.

I went to the YWCA and I didn't even know that it even existed.

And when I got there was a pleasure to work with Miss Cathy, and I know she's here, but she let me really.

Hey, Ms.. Cathy.

Hey.

She is here.

So today is my first day doing at least a B, so YWCA.

And I found that, like you say, young people are ready to show up and show out and figure this thing out, but we can't figure it out alone.

And me being and presenting to be a nonprofit is scary to talk about numbers or politics or anything, But when people don't want to listen to you about something so serious and how they so my question is, how do we figure it out?

How do we make the city officials come out and listen to us?

You only want to come for people that you know, I'm like a nobody to people, and I do everything I do with nothing.

So I'm just really trying to figure it out.

How do I make Mr. B come out and listen to Ms.. Our how do I gather my mother's?

Because my vision is to create a Million Mothers March and how do I navigate all my mother's and to see to be able to come and work with me at the Jefferson Building or the her building or the Edenville.

And when you talk about zip codes and order zip codes, because my phone rings so crazy and I'm like, it's not just an urban area.

It's everywhere.

It's everyone.

I'm a we all close.

Yes.

All right.

Think how housing is a human dignity.

It is a human right.

And it is all about dignity and housing.

And we are we can often lack dignity in our housing.

We can often want to decide who is deserving the deserving ness.

Code is something that plays a lot, and we have to begin eradicating that deserving this, who deserves and who does it.

But housing is just such an important right.

And I, I, I always felt like I mean, Cleveland is not a huge city.

It's nice.

It's 400, but it can happen.

Be bold.

Let's get our arms around this.

There are a lot of I think we're often like crabs in a barrel, sort of pulling each other down, preventing really great ideas is to rise up and people to rise up.

And we keep things, you know, too small.

Well, this person say that or this person can do that.

And I think we have to move away from it.

And, you know, movements are so dependent upon timing and momentum and being able to read all of those things to gather and harness.

But you're always working in the background, laying the foundation so that when it is able to go, it's able to go.

And so you are you are the track you are on is the right track.

And, you know, just find continuing to find your people and to advocate and to fight for housing.

Housing is just so incredibly important.

We've long been in the housing business.

We used to call it the bed and bread business.

And, you know, women would come and, you know, live at the YWCA, but underneath that, they were often fleeing violence.

They were had often been thrown away because of who they wanted to love or the fact that someone had forced them into a situation that left them in in in desperation.

And so they came to the YWCA people.

It's sort of this fantasy, but it's like the migration, you know, Hi.

Hi.

My name is Danielle.

I go to Saint Joseph Academy, the best school also, I have observed both at my school out on the street and other schools that I used to be in, that it is very, very common for people of color to want to defy black stereotypes.

But a lot of people have a different concept of that.

Some people believe that might look like just not being ghetto or talking differently, or maybe in the worst case, erasing their culture.

So I wanted to ask, how can someone actually do that?

How can they show that just being black does not mean that you are all of these other things and that you can be successful, that you can be looked up to and you can be in like position to power and have money and not struggle and be destitute without forgetting who you still are.

Well, thank you, Danielle and I, I have to say that I have a deep love for Saint Joe's.

I was on the board at Saint Joe's and really, really have spent significant time in that building and with the young girls there.

And I really have just such a great admiration for Saint Joe's.

And I, I think Sylvia said that you all were I was just like, Oh my gosh, overcome that you were coming.

I think, you know, we have to and and I'm this may not be for anybody else, but I'm just going to speak to Danielle and say that I think we have to give space and room for people for people, particularly black women, to be themselves and to show up however you show up.

And I, I got for me, I got a lot.

Oh, you talk so proper.

You think you're this you think you're that All the things there was always there was it There's an incredible sisterhood.

But we can also struggle our solidarity with each other.

And I think it is it can be mean spirited and closed and harmful and traumatizing.

And that we have to however you show up right in the skin and where you are, that is you and the solidarity to be able to support so that you can thrive and be who you want to be and not in in in the box.

We were talking earlier about children and expectations that you have.

And when the expectation goes in another direction, I was saying my son was the engineer and left that to become an adventurer.

It sounds familiar now, my initial reaction at being an adventurer after we had picked up Penny's trip to go to a university that will name nameless, I didn't have I don't have a I didn't have the space of like, oh my gosh, that is.

And now I have I have that space and that space.

And it was it was incredible to see that Sun Summit, Mount Everest as part of an all black expedition, to see his photo as photo of the year in National Geographic's.

But my initial response was not an adventure.

And, you know, to see a young to see a young black man skiing in the backcountry or all.

Didn't you know?

I can't tell you.

You know, my my son said, you know, the RTI people and the what's the other one know that.

Oh, I forget.

Anyway, that story.

Well, but you you not only you do you, but you allow others to be who they are.

And when people come in love and when people come in light and this is.

This is it.

This is it.

Yeah.

Thank you for much.

It's crazy.

It's.

Thank you very much to Margaret Mitchell and Daniel Sydnor for joining us today at the City Club.

I'm Cynthia Connolly the director of programing here.

Forums like this one are made possible thanks to generous support from individuals like you.

You can learn more about how to become a guardian of free speech at City Club, Dawg.

The City Club would like to welcome students joining us from the Saint Joseph Academy and Saint Martin de Paws High School.

We'd also like to welcome guests at the tables hosted by advocacy and Communication Solutions, The A-Team.

Collaborate Cleveland The Haven Home, The Legal Aid Society of Cleveland Lynx, Inc.. Rise Together Innovation Institute.

The Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District, the YWCA of Greater Cleveland and the YWCA of U.S.A..

Thank you so much all for being here.

Next Friday, January 24th, we'll hear from four top industry leaders in workforce development on how to boost retention and cultivate success for the workforce of today and the future.

Glenn Forbes With Ideastream, Public Media will moderate.

And then on Tuesday, January 28th, we will welcome the 2024 MLB American League Manager, Manager of the Year Stephen Vogt.

He will be in conversation with Guardian's play by play announcer Matt Underwood, Perseverance, a New Era of Leadership and what it means to be a Cleveland Guardian.

You can learn more about these forums and others at City Club dot org.

And that brings us to the end of today's forum.

Thank you once more to Margaret and Danielle.

I'm Cynthia.

Cynthia Connelly in this forum is now adjourned for information on upcoming speakers or for podcasts of the City Club.

Go to City Club Dawg Right.

Production and distribution of City club forums and ideastream Public media are made possible by PNC and the United Black Fund of Greater Cleveland, Inc..