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Cincinnati City Council will vote tomorrow, Monday, June 28, 2010, whether to give $12 -$14 million to 3CDC to create a dog park out of the current Washington Park.  Washington Park is located in downtown Cincinnati, Ohio in front of the new School for Creative and Performing Arts school building and adjacent to Music Hall. One of the goals of the politicians has always been to move the Drop Inn Center which is a facility for the homeless in the same vicinity.  Homeless citizens also use Washington Park and this has always made the people who use Music Hall uncomfortable.  "I am a graduate of Cincinnati's School for Creative and Performing Arts.  As a student, I was a aware everyday that the poor and homeless were around us and it has shaped my public policy to help and support human beings in need; not push humans away or make them invisible.  City Council consistently makes it a crime to be poor," says Christopher Smitherman, President of the Cincinnati Branch of the NAACP.  

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City Council wants to give the money to 3CDC so that the opponents of this proposal will blame 3CDC and not individual City Councilmembers.  If City Council gives 3CDC the public money to create the dog park in place of the basketball and swimming pool recreation activities that poor African American children use, both entities will be responsible for another step of gentrification in downtown Cincinnati.  Smitherman predicts, "This decision will directly contirbute to more divisiveness between race and class." The $14 million that City Council is considering giving to 3CDC is public money. There are many Cincinnati residents who do not want public money used to criminalize the poor nor gentrify neighborhoods.

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In the same week, the West End Health Center is closing. The Health Center needs $500,000 to remain open through January 1, 2011.  The infant mortality rate in the West End is 26.9%. The national infant mortality rate is 6.9%. Almost four times as many West End babies die compared to babies all around the United States. "As City Council makes room for dogs (a $14 million value) and allows the West End Health Center to close (a $500,000 value), the health indicator for children will continue to decline. In my opinion, as the City faces a $51 million budget deficit, a dog park is not a financial priority," says Smitherman. The Cincinnati NAACP president has asked its Legal Redress Chair, Attorney Chris Finney, to investigate whether the Branch should respond with a petition. 

All Cincinnati NAACP members should be on red alert if the Legal Redress Committee recommends that the Branch respond via petition.