About Ohio. Ohio is great. Cleveland and it's metropolitan suburbs are getting a bad rap. We have planes, trains, and automobiles. In addition to that we have access to a number of seaworthy waterways including the ocean via the Great Lakes. We have inexpensive real estate and just about all the infrastructure you could need for a booming local economy. Our infrastructure is world class.
But, you can't get far on that infrastructure without seeing our people. Good, hard-working people. Skilled people, educated people, people that are smart enough to live in a place with an excellent 'cost of living'.
Smart and successful companies have already made their decision to be here. The Cleveland area has world-class medical and educational facilities. People fly in from all over the world to be admitted to The Cleveland Clinic. Last I heard Case Western University received upwards of 5,000 applications for it's 100 or so first year medical student seats. Marc Canter, founder of Macromind which eventually became Macromedia, is starting to work with many companies in the Polymer Valley near the Akron-Canton area. Sherwin Williams and Lubrizol are the names on the tip of my toungue, but they aren't alone. We have armed guards protecting the welding wire manufacturing plant of Lincoln-Electric in Mentor. Ernst and Young, one of the Big Three accounting firms, has it's headquarters here. General Electric started calling back laid off workers. Chevrolet has several plants in Cleveland suburbs and further out in the Ohio hills. The list is long.
It hurts me that good jobs are so hard to come by. I am furious that so many people can't even find mediocre work.
I wake up angry. I have peered too long into the abyss and I took too much of it with me when I looked away. But, I am hopeful. And I have two hands. So many people from my past pushed me to be better. During an interview someone asked me, "If you are so smart-- what have you done with it?" It changed my life. Sometimes I wonder if I saw him again if I would punch him or thank him.
The bottom line is that I am certain I can do better and I can bring people up with me. There is a paraphrased saying from an old rabbi, "If not me, then who? If not now, then when?"
Thanks for reading, time to change the little patch of the world I live in.
-Brad Chesney
Rebel Leader
The Rust Belt Rebellion
http://rustbeltrebellion.com
