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The
existential condition for African Americans can be described
as being “a long way from home.” Whether due to disparities,
inequality, slow public response to human tragedy or lack of
equal protection under the law, the lived experience for
American citizens who are racial and other minorities is
like that of “pilgrims, tourists or strangers in their own
land.”
Yet, the
experience of one current city council person has helped to
foster sensitivity to the desolation and alienation
experienced by marginalized persons and people of color.
Born in
Toledo, Councilman Kurt Young, a candidate for one of six
at-large council seats in the November 7 election, grew up
living in San Juan, Puerto Rico; Newport, Rhode Island;
Virginia and everywhere in between, but describes Toledo as
“where home was.” Young finished college in Akron, law
school in Cleveland and found his first job back in Toledo.
He has been on the battlefield of social justice activism
ever since.
I sat
down with Mr. Young in his office to talk about his work for
the citizens of Toledo and agenda should he be elected in
November. This is part one of our two-part conversation.
Perryman:
You are a hidden gem in Toledo. Please tell our readers a
little bit about you and your work.
Young:
Well, my mom and dad were high school sweethearts from
Libbey High School and my dad, out of high school, went into
the Navy. So I come from a family of service. Basically, we
lived, except for a couple years of me growing up,
everywhere but Toledo, but I made my way back because this
was home no matter where we lived. Been practicing law for
24 years now. Worker’s Comp, on the injured worker’s side is
what we do. I’m a graduate of the Leadership Toledo Program,
I won an award from them for asking the tough questions and
standing up for my beliefs, or as I used to say to my wife
Cheri every three weeks during the year, ‘I went and I
ticked off the police chief now and now I’ve ticked off the
doctors now, and now I’ve ticked off the bankers now.’
But
anyway, so I went through that. I also went through the
Servant Leadership Program, my wife’s a pastor so I’m a
person of faith and have been involved now with two church
turnarounds with her and one church start from scratch and
served as a leader in all three of those churches.
I’ve
been pretty active in the community, as you said; working on
voting issues is my primary passion. I helped found our
voter protection team in Lucas County so we train and equip
and deploy in presidential years about 100 attorneys and in
non-presidential years we put together about a dozen to go
out and make sure everybody gets the right to vote.
I’m a
life member of the NAACP and I’ve worked with them on issues
of voter protection and also voter registration, because
again, too many people in this country have died for people
to get that right to vote and stood up to dogs and fire
hoses and everything else and I don’t want to see it go
away.
For the
last 10 years I’ve been working with Toledo Area Jobs with
Justice to make sure that, again, people have rides to the
polls every year so we shut my law office down on primary
and general election day. I’ve been very active with Lilly
Briggs and the folks at Promise House Project; trying to
work on youth homelessness because I have a real passion
obviously for kids as well. My kids are very privileged and
haven’t experienced anything like that, but I don’t want a
kid, especially an LGBTQ kid out on the street because
parents don’t accept him. Also, when my wife pastored
Central United Methodist, I was a volunteer and a board
member for their afterschool program for the kids at
Glenwood School called Grand Central Station.
I’ve
also been very active with the Toledo Bar Association,
chairing their worker’s comp committee and the Ohio State
Bar Association, on their worker’s comp committee. I’m a
board member of the Ohio Association for Justice, f/k/a Ohio
Academy of Trial Lawyers, so working hard, helping out
people with disabilities and people who have been injured on
the job, too, is where I’ve been trying to put my faith in
action and be a servant.
Perryman:
Your background and community work is certainly impressive
but I’m not sure if the public is aware of your service.
Young:
That’s one of the things I’m combating as a candidate is
that not enough people know about all this stuff and it’s
really hard to get that word out to people and with having
4-1/2 – 5 months of incumbency, I haven’t made a lot of
waves and gotten a lot of publicity.
Perryman:
That’s a good segue to my next question. You’ve been
endorsed by the Democratic Party and currently serve on
Council. Please describe how you got there.
Young:
Well, again, I’ve been someone who’s been pretty active in
the Democratic Party with the voter protection thing and
then I was made a central committeeman. I took over Paula
Hicks-Hudson’s seat on the central committee and been
elected twice to that. I was then elected by the folks in
Ward 10 as the ward chair. Having worked for a while on the
constitution and bylaws, I was made the parliamentarian of
the central and executive committee of the party. Was asked
to consider running for City Council a few years ago when
Jack Ford died and they considered Cecelia Adams and I and
the screening committee of the party chose Dr. Adams and I
asked, because there was some contention in the party about
that, to be the one to nominate Dr. Adams. Cecelia is a
wonderful asset in council and I didn’t want there to be a
fight about getting her on there, but the party asked me to
consider running now.
So I’ve
gotten everything together and was ready to do that, and
then Theresa Gabriel stepped aside from council and
basically I went to the party and asked for their support
and they supported me, and then I went to the members of
council and I called. At the time, there were 11 of them,
and I called all 11 of which nine of them agreed to meet
with me and six of them told me they would vote for me.
That’s what happened, so they appointed me to that open seat
on council.
When I
got on council, President [Steve] Steele took me in his
office the first night and said, “Now Kurt, we want to
appoint you to all of our committees” and I’m like
“absolutely.” It didn’t make any sense, nine months at the
end of a term to shuffle the committees around. And he says
that includes her committee leadership positions, and I’m
like wait a minute now, hold on a second, time out, Doc!
Ms. Gabriel was the chair of the Public Safety and Criminal
Justice Reform Committee and the vice chair of the Water
Quality, Streets and Infrastructure Committee, I’m like
isn’t that about 80 some-odd percent of what a city does?
And he says, “Yeah, 89 percent, welcome aboard.” So I’ve
been serving as a public safety chair now for five months.
In that time, we’ve taken a look at the process as far as
liquor permits and that type of thing because we wanted to
make sure there was more transparency for everybody on how
that was done, so we’re fixing that. I’ve also been working
with the police department on trying to get more diversity
on the police force. We’ve got to work on that because we’re
losing the generation of police officers to retirement that
we had to get in through court order to give some diversity
to the police department so we can’t afford to continue to
lose officers. The force needs to represent the community.
One of
the things I’m going to be working on next is the Civilian
Review Board. We’ve had one for years now, but we’ve never
formally put that into our actual Toledo Municipal Code that
we have to have one. Well, we’re working on drafting that
legislation right now, so whether I am done in January or
continue on we can make sure that is preserved for the
future. And then with the infrastructure committee we’ve
been busy dealing with the situation as far as the water
supply and the roads. So like I said, council’s been kind
of exciting and busy so far.
Perryman:
What are your thoughts about your finish in the primary?
Young:
Well, I finished in ninth and that wasn’t where we wanted to
be. We would prefer top six. Half of the folks ahead of me
are incumbents and they have name recognition and they have
been out there for a while in the community. Some others
have family names that transferred into more recognition
than I have. We knew we had a lot of work to do and that’s
what we’ve been trying to do. Brittany Moore is my campaign
manager and we’ve been out there ever since pretty hard
knocking on doors and calling on the phone and trying to get
the word out about me. So we’re going to keep fighting on
until Election Day and hopefully we can get up in the top
six.
Perryman:
You’ve already spent in excess of $35,000 in the primary,
what do you think your chances are of finishing in the top
six?
Young:
Better than anybody else who’s ever finished ninth, let’s
just put it that way. Between now and election day we are
going to do some advertising on Urban FM, try to get the
word out, because again, one of my failings I think is to
get out in the African-American community as far as being
known and so we’re going to try to reach out that way.
Citywide, we focused on Democrats for the primary, this time
we’re going to do direct mail to people who vote often and
hope to reach voters of all stripes.
Perryman:
Thank you.
Next
week join us for the conclusion of our conversation as we
talk about the racial divide and violence in the community.
Contact Rev. Donald Perryman, D.Min, at
drdlperryman@centerofhopebaptist.org
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