
ILSR’s 50th Anniversary Racial Justice Storytelling Project
Exploring how ILSR’s history, ongoing work, and mission intersect with the movement for racial equity.
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The destruction of Dorr Street in Toledo, Ohio isn’t just a story of physical destruction; it’s about the dismantling of crucial social infrastructure that once allowed residents to communicate, organize, and thrive.
In the final episode of our Toledo season, we are joined by board president of the Lucas County Commission, Pete Gerken to discuss the legacy of Dorr Street — a once-thriving hub of Black culture, commerce, and community in Lucas County that was fractured by the construction of the interstate highway system.
Today, Dorr Street struggles with another legacy of failed government policy: chain dollar stores. These dollar stores highlight a broader trend of disinvestment in communities of color. But, Gerken is committed to reinvesting in Dorr Street. He champions using local tax dollars to support small businesses and combat corporate greed, advocating for a food overlay district to address food apartheid and uplift community health. His philosophy is clear: power yields nothing without a demand, and the fight for local power must be relentless.
Lucas County Commissioner Pete GerkenThere’s no community benefit that you can put on any one of these dollar stores that will overcome the tragedy that they put in place… It’s a sham.
With the support of local activists and a dedicated political class in Lucas County, Gerken believes that real, positive change is within reach. The journey to revitalize Dorr Street will be long and challenging, but as Gerken puts it, “You don’t start till you start.”
Pete Gerken:
God knows government gives away corporate incentives every day in the trillions of dollars for people that don’t serve the people on the corners here. That’s our economy model right now, that large corporations can get incentives to keep doing things. We can use small tax dollars, our own dollars to incent small businesses to cover some gap. There’s some gaps sometime in getting a business up and running. They need help on the financing side. They need help with small infusions of either loans or grants. We can do that locally.
Reggie Rucker:
Hello and welcome back to another episode of Building Local Power. I am your co-host, Reggie Rucker, back with my co-host Luke Gannon. What’s up, Luke?
Luke Gannon:
Hey, Reggie. I can’t believe I’m saying it, but this is my last episode.
Reggie Rucker:
Your last one, huh? Wow. I’ve probably exhausted all of the words I can say about what you’ve meant to this podcast and to me personally and professionally. But I think the one thing I’ll add for our audience is that this podcast is more than just a podcast as I see it, it’s a project to put front and center the stories of the people who are engaged in this work of building local power and fighting corporate control on the ground in their communities. And your commitment to sharing these stories of all kinds, to reflect the diversity of what it looks like to engage in this work in communities and to do it with the authenticity and passion and excellence that you’ve exhibited in these last couple of years, I’ve had the privilege of working on this show with you, you will be missed, by me and I suspect from our listeners as well based on the feedback we’ve gotten on the pod over the last couple of years. So for one last time, take it away, Luke.
Luke Gannon:
We are bringing our Toledo series to a close. This final episode takes a bird’s eye view of Toledo, which is located in Lucas County, Ohio. Lucas County Commission President Pete Gerken spoke with ILSR’s Ron Knox for our racial justice storytelling project, created to recognize 50 years of working to build local power in communities of color across the United States. Here’s Commissioner Gerken from that conversation.
Pete Gerken:
My name is Pete Gerken, presently president of the board of the Lucas County Commissioners, which run the affairs, the three-person board that runs the affairs for Lucas County. It’s not my entire career. I did 30 years in an auto plant called The Jeep, it’s the only place in America where you make the Jeep Wrangler. I’m a retiree of that. Spent most of my career in that, in union leadership, working for the rights of people on the shop floor and then later on the international staff of the UAW. So I kind of bring to my public service the same kind of attitude that led us to be successful working in an auto plant.
I’ll say this, why that’s important, if you work in an auto plant in America, you work in United Nations. Especially in our plant, we had people from Latinos, Latinas, blacks, whites, Lebanese, it was completely a meld of the neighborhoods of Toledo, which are diverse. So I was fortunate enough to thrive in an area where I had lots of diversity, lots of food, lots of language, lots of music, lots of culture. And it kind of fit Toledo. As a young man, I traversed up and down Detroit Avenue, in Dorr and Detroit and those things in the late ’60s and were there at a time of transformational change that wasn’t positive. But I think I’m drawn to this work because of my background, because of my history of Toledo and the roots of the neighborhood and the experience of the people of Toledo.
Luke Gannon:
Commissioner Gerken began his career as a union representative at UAW Local 12 rising through the ranks of union leadership for over 30 years in the auto industry. His union work propelled him into public service on Toledo City Council, where he made a significant impact by passing Ohio’s first domestic partnership and living wage ordinances. Elected as Lucas County Commissioner in 2005, he now serves as president of the board of Lucas County Commissioners. Born in 1952, Commissioner Gerken has had a long and dynamic career and vividly recalls the vibrancy of Dorr Street in its heyday.
Pete Gerken:
It was vibrant. And this is in the late ’60s, ’65 through ’71-ish. It still had its panache and its jazz. It was the spot. It was ours. It was nightclubs, it wasn’t that it was just that was on street retail, two story retail living and all the things that we’d like to recreate now. Let’s do this, retail on the bottom. It had that. It had grand houses just off it. There was the woods, the Fernwoods, the Palmwoods, the Oakwoods. These were nice homes, two story homes, populated by working class folks. There was a nice mix of both African-American and a lot of Polish and Eastern European. My contacts was my Eastern European friends I played in the garage band with. We traveled all up and down those neighborhoods. But the music was lively, the food was lively, the density was lively. It was a statement.
Luke Gannon:
Dorr Street was walkable and it was the manifestation of black power.
Pete Gerken:
Well, you would start more toward downtown, toward Detroit and Collingwood, and if you could walk up those few miles to Dorr in Detroit and just beyond, you saw everything you needed to see for a community. Like I said, you saw some legendary night spots, you saw some great local restaurants, you saw retail, fashion wear, large pointed to the African-American culture and style of the time. You saw the cultural input of that period of time. It was a bit revolutionary. You had the Black Panthers on the corner. You had the dashiki look. You had people really embracing the culture of the power of black people. It was reminiscent of black power, not in the sense of just the raised fist, but you could feel the power of that community, which was black, on the street corners and through it. And it wasn’t scary at all for people that weren’t black. I never felt uncomfortable as a young skinny white guy walking around because you had friends. But it was powerful and it was black.
Luke Gannon:
Despite the strong people power presence on Dorr Street, the construction of the interstate highway system by the federal government posed an overwhelming challenge. Some Toledoans living on Dorr Street felt powerless to resist the government’s forceful plans.
Pete Gerken:
There was a sense of power fighting back the man, “This is our neighborhood. We’re not buying all this.” But there was also a sense of wealth and people that had made investments there that I think really did kind of read the tea leaves and started fleeing rather than fighting. Some of the people that had good power and money and connection said, “I don’t think I can stop this bulldozer. I don’t want to lose what I have.” And they started relocating farther west. And then other people. The people that left behind had left resources. There was not significant black leadership in the political theater at that point. There were some legendary leaders that did that, but there wasn’t a power on the city council or a power in the statehouse that was strong enough.
Yes, they had, we had representation, but there was a wave of this new modernism in America that we’re going to impose this idea of tear down and reconstruct the way other people wanted it. And that affected not only Dorr Street, but I’m sitting in an office that looks on downtown that that same model city has divided the north and south of downtown to this day that has not been reconstructed. The people north of Cherry Street got nothing. The people south of Cherry Street got everything. And it was divided on racial lines.
Luke Gannon:
How do you build power without communication? Think about that. Policies that destroyed the neighborhood’s vibrancy also robbed the community of vital social infrastructure necessary for communicating with each other, severing its autonomy.
Pete Gerken:
When you talk about being sold to the people, I’m not sure the people were widely consulted.
Reggie Rucker:
Yeah.
Pete Gerken:
I think the power brokers, mostly the White Power Society had the concept of we’re going to come down there and gentrify this because you guys ain’t got it right. And it was complete institutional racist thinking that was prevalent of that, that we know better. So I am pretty sure, even though I was only in my late teens and early twenties, there wasn’t community meetings that had any power to them that, “We’re going to take Dorr Street, this great two-lane, vibrant and we’re going to make it a boulevard and push everything off the margins and then we will recreate some housing that you might want.” But that didn’t recreate business activity. It didn’t recreate or improve. It destroyed the street. In any urban community that’s dense like that of any ethnicity, whether it be Hispanic or poor whites or blacks, when you take away their gathering on the street corner, you’ve taken away some abilities to communicate pre-Facebook, pre-social media. That’s what you got for your information. Now everybody’s got pushed into the margins. There’s this boulevard down the middle, which is a divider. And some people stayed, some people left.
One of the things that was great about Dorr Street is that when you start at Dorr in Detroit, went back, people would actually drive slowly with their cars and holler out the window. There was that. And the Boulevard just destroys that and people now go fast. There’s still public housing lining the sides of it from Collingwood up a lot. There was destruction, was never reconstructed. It was destruction, not reconstruction.
Luke Gannon:
The dollar stores that now bookend Dorr Street represent a new form of the interstate highway system’s impact one rooted in policy choices, allowing chain stores to dominate and deprive neighborhoods of access to fresh food is a deliberate decision. Prioritizing chain stores with policies that favor bigness over small, independent businesses is a policy choice. Failing to invest in the vibrancy of main streets is too a choice. These decisions shape the landscape of our communities and strip away essential rights and opportunities.
Pete Gerken:
The dollar stores can’t recreate the shopping experience of a full grocery store. And there’s been a national pattern, not in just in Toledo, but everywhere, the Kroger’s, the giants have gotten away from any kind of 24 to 26,000, 50,000 foot store have been replaced by 100,000 foot stores that aren’t going to exist in the central city. You’re going to have to go out to do it. That has left this void that in towns like Detroit and Toledo have struggled to replace grocery. A dollar store is not a grocery store. Let’s be clear, right, it’s a place to separate you from your dollar on items that are not in bulk and large, prices go up when the sizes get smaller. It’s by design and keeps people coming back.
It takes away choice and people settle for what the resources allow them to have. That settling is unhealthy food. It’s processed food. It’s food that tastes good that we all like to eat sometimes, but ramen noodles and macaroni and cheese and canned to meat and canned vegetables don’t serve the body. And the ability and we’ve struggled vitally to incent people in the central city to have fresh food and up close to the counters. It hasn’t worked. We went through a phase where we did and incent those folks that were still in the community in the smaller storefronts and they tried to put apples and bananas and things near the cash register, but people had been taught or allowed to only pick things that were quick and convenient.
People in poverty are the best problem solvers in the world because they always have to make the next decision to make their life go. And I’ve found that if you’re in the throes of poverty, you’re a decision maker because you can’t wait on stuff. But it doesn’t give you any future story either. You have to decide so fast, you don’t know what you’re going to decide for, Saturday means nothing to you on Wednesday because I got to get through Thursday and Friday. So what’s quick and easy? A grab and go, not a fruit or an apple that you may have to keep or maintain or consume quickly. So we’ve set this entire thing up for poor health, for great profit, for people that don’t live there and continually trap people in a poverty of nutritional poverty.
Luke Gannon:
Commissioner Gerken is actively working at the county level to reinvest in Dorr Street and combat corporate greed.
Pete Gerken:
So one of the role, my philosophy of government at the county and I was a city councilman for 10 years, is to reinvest people’s tax dollars into things that will benefit its citizens. We know that the economic model of the grocery has changed to the corporatism, that they only want to sell, they sell in areas where profit margins are more predictable, people have higher disposable income. So I think it is, God knows government gives away corporate incentives every day into trillions of dollars for people that don’t serve the people on the corners here, that’s our economy model right now, that large corporations can get incentives to keep doing things. We can use small tax dollars, our own dollars to incent small businesses to cover some gap. There’s some gaps sometime in getting a business up and running. They need help on the financing side. They need help with small infusions of either loans or grants. We can do that locally in a more targeted way, continue to try to restrict the profit takers and the health takers away from their predatory people.
We did that in the state of Ohio. We shut down for a while, cash loans are predatory loans, that was led by a movement that came out of Toledo into the State House until they got overturned. So we do have a history where we can, if we’re targeted and together, we can shut down some of this stuff. But it’s going to take, as a politician, I get more incentivized when I hear from the people to do it. So when you show up at a commissioners meeting or a city council meeting, only there are the corporate lawyers and their fronts and they’re fronts that don’t look like the corporate lawyers saying what a great job they’re going to do, “Community benefits for everybody.” There’s no community benefit that you can put on any one of these dollar stores that will overcome the tragedy that they put in place. There just isn’t.
So it’s a sham. So you have to be able to see through the sham and get people that know what they need, get organized and come. I’ve always said this, I’ve learned this, power seeds nothing without a demand. It’s in local or state, power seeds nothing without a demand. The neighborhood has to keep coming making demand.
Luke Gannon:
Commissioner Gerken has seen the demand. A local activist, Dr. Reverend Perryman and the United Pastors have called for action, leading this charge. A committed political class in Lucas County is now pushing to redirect tax dollars back to the people aiming for real and positive change.
Pete Gerken:
It’s an uphill fight. This is something that does not get won in a night, it’s a continual fight, but small victories increase your chance of a bigger victory. Next, it takes both a city and a county to have policies to do it. If they’re going to put the overlay district in, then that creates certain demands of other things that we can feed into from county government. So you have to have that partnership with the community, the city and the county because that’s your local power base to do it. And I think Dr. Perryman and this whole food movement has been successful. The city just put a million dollars of ARPA money into creating a community kitchens. That’s a big deal.
Commissioners themselves, we dedicate over a million dollars every year for micro-grants, just for community support. So they can come every year and get a grant. Sometimes $50,000, $60,000 will change a project’s dynamic if it’s accessible locally and isn’t stuffed with all these grant requirements that everybody thinks everybody can do. It’s hard to get a grant, we make it simple, we make it needs-based, we make it community-based and you put our [inaudible 00:16:52] in with the cities to do overlay and regulation and you connect with the community. We can get some stuff done. I think we have.
Luke Gannon:
The city is also exploring the creation of a food overlay district, a strategic zoning tool designed to enhance access to healthy food. When Commissioner Gerken mentions an overlay district, he’s specifically advocating for this targeted initiative to combat food deserts and uplift community health.
Pete Gerken:
I think Toledo, we have less of that. We try to stay adjacent to the people and with the people. But broadly, sure, you tell people you’re a politician and then they go, they give you a look right away. So it takes the work of the local political class to be different than the state and the federal government, which we don’t have to be as aloof. And I think as a county and city government, I think we’ve tried, you’ll find us in the community, you’ll find us successful in the community. And we’re proud that. I’ve got calls on my desk from people I meet on the street corner every day. I just put a letter away from an inmate who wrote me who was wrongly convicted.
I think there is a chance for local governments to connect with the people on the corner. What I like to hear is what I call street corner talking. I get the truth out of the street corner talking. We’ve worked hard to, we’ve just renovated the worst housing project in the city of Toledo between the government and a grassroot movement, the Greenbelt Parkway, which is the place nobody would live in. A year and a half later, they have vacancies we’re referring people to. It can be done, but it takes that strong local commitment and knowledge of each other.
Luke Gannon:
Many people have lost faith in the government’s ability to succeed because it is the very entity that created this mess in the first place.
Pete Gerken:
It’s going to be a struggle to get food there, to get resources there. But here’s what I do see, I see a re-emerging community demanding the power that we talked about. Power seeds nothing without a demand. I see the Englewood and Junction groups in Toledo, I see United Pastors, I see Tina Butts and the movement. I see a wellspring of communities that have found out once I can connect to some government resources, can get a lot of work done. We have a lot of examples of that. I see a burgeoning demand from the community that we react in the way that we can.
So in the next five years, we’re not going to recreate, destroy and rebuild all the public housing that’s there. We’re going to find ways to get appropriate housing built. We’re going to try to find ways to partner as a community to get health, wellness and mental health and food to them. But it’s going to be a struggle. And if it wasn’t much of a struggle because the powers that be could tear it down, but it’s going to be a generational struggle to get it back. But you don’t start till you start.
Luke Gannon:
Commissioner Gerken acknowledges that the journey to revitalize Dorr Street will be long and challenging, but he believes it is achievable.
Pete Gerken:
It’s probably going to be required because corporatism and corporate profit dollars have no interest in doing other, maintaining the status quo that they reap profits from. You need sophisticated operation that can operate within the margins of a grocery. That will take some public dollars support. But I got to tell you, for any dollars we’d put into a good grocery and anywhere, it will reap the benefits. I’ll have less people at Job and Family Services. I’ll have less people at the health department. I’ll have less people in the emergency rooms. Upgraded mental health through people eating healthy and feeling part of something.
So absolutely, it’s going to take that public-private partnership. Look, they do it all around the countries for sports arenas, right? Billionaire owners come to places like Kansas City or Detroit or anywhere else and say, “You have to build this stadium for your people to come to and I’ll take their profits out.” So we know that public-private partnerships can work, we just have to make it work at the right level. It’s a relationship between the city of Toledo and the county of Lucas working together on these targeted problems is as high as it’s ever been. And I’ve been an elected official since 1996. It’s here now, but we have to keep it.
Luke Gannon:
Thank you so much, Commissioner Gerken, for joining the show and for your honesty and unwavering dedication to Toledo throughout your lifetime. I also want to extend my heartfelt thanks to ILSR, all of our building local power guests and especially to Reggie for giving me the opportunity to take the reins of the Building Local Power Podcast. I feel truly, truly blessed to have worked with you, Reggie, and the ILSR team and to have played a small part in sharing so many of these incredible stories. Thank you.
Reggie Rucker:
Thank you, Luke. What a fantastic way to bring this Toledo series and this Luke era to a close. I truly can’t wait to see what you do next. To Commissioner Gerken and our Ron Knox for your work in collecting these stories from on the ground in Toledo, thank you. And to our listeners, thanks for staying tuned in to these important stories, revealing the ramifications of poor policy choices that are so destructive to our communities. We’ll be back again in two weeks with more inspiring stories of Building Local Power. But in the meantime, be sure to check out the show notes from today’s episode, which includes a link to our racial justice storytelling project to dive deeper into how monopoly power is deeply intertwined with the racist policies that destroyed black communities in the name of “urban renewal.” And as always, you can visit ilsr.org for more on our work to fight corporate control and build local power.
And if you want to send a farewell note to our favorite podcast host, Luke Gannon, or share some ideas on what you want to hear next from the Building Local Power team, you can do that by emailing [email protected], we would love to hear from you. This show has been produced by Luke Gannon and me, Reggie Rucker. The podcast has been edited by Luke Gannon and Taya Noel. The music for the season is also composed by Taya Noel. Thank you so much for listening to Building Local Power.
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