Retirement of a Local Organizing Legend

Photo by Toni Anderson of the NEOCH Photo Project from 2009. Tim Walters is on the right and Steve Cagan is on the left.

Tim Walters Retired from May Dugan Center

Community organizing is not as valued as it was in Cleveland in the 1970s and early 1980s. Curiously, homelessness exploded in Cleveland in the late 1980s when community organizing began to decline. But one of the legends of organizing retired last month from the May Dugan Center here in Cleveland. Tim regularly attended the Homeless Congress, and kept MetroHealth honest (obviously not with regard to capital contracting) for the last 20 years. One of the most important services offered by Tim was his expertise on utility issues locally. No one who represents the interests of consumers knows more about the utility regulations than Tim Walters. This is a huge hole for the community to fill. There is no funding for this type of activity, and there is no one else who has this knowledge. We all thought that Tim was going to work fighting the good fight until the end of this century. Tim had to sit in on hundreds of meetings and hear politicians blather on and on just to stay informed about potential roadblocks or table scraps that may be available for the neighborhood.

Community organizing is no longer valued in the Cleveland. We all have to prove with deliverables and logic models and measurable outcomes our value. No one seems to see the value of just getting poor people together in the same room to talk about their own community. No one will give money anymore to have agencies host meetings between the disenfranchised and the power structure. Foundations and government do not understand the insight of the people receiving the government assistance or social services. We pay lip service as a society to asking for feedback, but we do not pay hard cash for this service.

Tim is the modern day monk scraping together a living from various agencies, but everyday listening to his constituents and working to solve problems. His faded jeans were his community organizing robes. He tried to work out the problem of how do you order your birth certificate at City Hall if you have to have ID to get to the birth certificate office? He worked on the problems of out of state slum lords in the neighborhood, and the attempts to preserve access to health care on the near west side. He was involved in Civil Rights issues and voting, but he never grandstanded for publicity. Tim has done a ton of walking for peace, universal health care, universal housing, and against unfair labor practices over the years.

Tim is still going to be around and is going to spend more time with his grandchildren. We are going to miss being able to call over to get an answer to a question. We are not going to have his ear on the West Side to pick up issues and pass them along when he heard about a problem at a meeting or talking to people he sees at the Center. Tim was the glue that bound lower income people together on the near West Side and prevented corporate interests from destroying the neighborhood. Tim has had a great career as an agent of change and a defender of social justice. I was able to see Tim receive a resolution from Congressman Kucinich on Monday recognizing his long career in community organizing. It was read or will be read soon on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Brian
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