As a long time Clevelander I am always happy to see articles about Mayor Tom Johnson. You'll notice that the statue of Johnson that sits in Cleveland's Public Square is holding a book. If you actually come and see the statue you will see that the book is Progress and Poverty.
In the future you might want to write more about Rex Tugwell and Green Belt project. Tugwell was a student of Scott Nearing, spent time as a child at the Chautauqua Institution, and was influenced by George. If you've never been to Greenbelt Maryland, they have a great museum and it's worth the trip.
Also you might be interested in Toledo's progressive mayor "Golden Rule" Jones.
> In what came to be known as the “dictatorship of the city clerk,” Witt sent police to the town hall with orders to arrest councilmen if they convened to vote. Other officers were sent to track down the councilmen and intervene if they tried to meet surreptitiously in a private location. The incident ended without further event. However, the story testifies to how important one of the most celebrated urban governments in American history thought it was to cut through process.
"Our noble cutting through process. Their barbaric disrespect for the rule of law."
It should provoke, at best, ambivalence but a small, defunct municipality passing a bill to encumber the municipality it is being absorbed into would not be democratic, just legal chicanery. Johnson's stunts were celebrated because the system had long been seen as totally unresponsive to voters. The point is that if a democratic system is not sufficiently flexible to accommodate the will of the people, it will ultimately break.
No, this was easily the most troubling passage in the article to me as well. And "<police intimidation and suppression of political enemies> should provoke, at best, ambivalence" is a pretty troubling follow-up.
Even from the point of agreeing in broad strokes on the need for systemic change, use of state force to intimidate and suppress political enemies doesn't get a pass under any circumstances that I'm comfortable with. Like, it wasn't a one or two day "dictatorship" in scare quotes, it was a one or two day capital-D Dictatorship in at least a few important ways. Just because you liked the outcome or because the populace was temporarily aligned with the wannabe dictator doesn't make it less authoritarian.
Several other political and practical gambits you describe were indeed daring bets against a sclerotic system that paid off, apparently for the better. Good on Johnson et al; we could probably more creativity in the name of improving society and getting good things done. That doesn't mean we need to pretend that some of the bets _didn't_ pay off or work out for the better and it DEFINITELY doesn't mean that we excuse the really bad shit or pretend that it wasn't exactly that.
That implies norms that were, at the time, not in fact normal. Courts systematically impinged on freedom of assembly by establishing injunctions that made workers subject to arrest for assembling to form a union and imposed penalties on unions leaders attempting to use their speech rights. Companies employed private armies, and resistance often took the form of violent strikes that employed cannons and sometimes devolved into virtual civil war or in some cases the mass execution of children. At the time, this "dictatorship" was not remarkable enough to attract anyone's attention; I've only ever found reference to it the papers of Johnson's crowd. The only people, that I can tell, who thought twice about it, were the one's responsible.
Sounds like a great and fascinating guy - Johnson. I always liked Cleveland area and the people there, when I visited. Henry George inspired so many! My generation was not taught much/enough about him.
As a long time Clevelander I am always happy to see articles about Mayor Tom Johnson. You'll notice that the statue of Johnson that sits in Cleveland's Public Square is holding a book. If you actually come and see the statue you will see that the book is Progress and Poverty.
In the future you might want to write more about Rex Tugwell and Green Belt project. Tugwell was a student of Scott Nearing, spent time as a child at the Chautauqua Institution, and was influenced by George. If you've never been to Greenbelt Maryland, they have a great museum and it's worth the trip.
Also you might be interested in Toledo's progressive mayor "Golden Rule" Jones.
There are some unfortunate things going on with commas in this article. I'm a Georgist and would gladly do free editing for this blog.
> In what came to be known as the “dictatorship of the city clerk,” Witt sent police to the town hall with orders to arrest councilmen if they convened to vote. Other officers were sent to track down the councilmen and intervene if they tried to meet surreptitiously in a private location. The incident ended without further event. However, the story testifies to how important one of the most celebrated urban governments in American history thought it was to cut through process.
"Our noble cutting through process. Their barbaric disrespect for the rule of law."
It should provoke, at best, ambivalence but a small, defunct municipality passing a bill to encumber the municipality it is being absorbed into would not be democratic, just legal chicanery. Johnson's stunts were celebrated because the system had long been seen as totally unresponsive to voters. The point is that if a democratic system is not sufficiently flexible to accommodate the will of the people, it will ultimately break.
No, this was easily the most troubling passage in the article to me as well. And "<police intimidation and suppression of political enemies> should provoke, at best, ambivalence" is a pretty troubling follow-up.
Even from the point of agreeing in broad strokes on the need for systemic change, use of state force to intimidate and suppress political enemies doesn't get a pass under any circumstances that I'm comfortable with. Like, it wasn't a one or two day "dictatorship" in scare quotes, it was a one or two day capital-D Dictatorship in at least a few important ways. Just because you liked the outcome or because the populace was temporarily aligned with the wannabe dictator doesn't make it less authoritarian.
Several other political and practical gambits you describe were indeed daring bets against a sclerotic system that paid off, apparently for the better. Good on Johnson et al; we could probably more creativity in the name of improving society and getting good things done. That doesn't mean we need to pretend that some of the bets _didn't_ pay off or work out for the better and it DEFINITELY doesn't mean that we excuse the really bad shit or pretend that it wasn't exactly that.
That implies norms that were, at the time, not in fact normal. Courts systematically impinged on freedom of assembly by establishing injunctions that made workers subject to arrest for assembling to form a union and imposed penalties on unions leaders attempting to use their speech rights. Companies employed private armies, and resistance often took the form of violent strikes that employed cannons and sometimes devolved into virtual civil war or in some cases the mass execution of children. At the time, this "dictatorship" was not remarkable enough to attract anyone's attention; I've only ever found reference to it the papers of Johnson's crowd. The only people, that I can tell, who thought twice about it, were the one's responsible.
Sounds like a great and fascinating guy - Johnson. I always liked Cleveland area and the people there, when I visited. Henry George inspired so many! My generation was not taught much/enough about him.