A photo collage of two Black women, a white woman and a white man.
The My Cleveland Agenda fellows are (from left) Dru Thompson, Emma Sendlak, Teralawanda Aaron and Tucker Handley.

If you were an elected official in Cleveland, what would your first act be? 

That’s one of the questions that four Clevelanders will ask residents over the next few months as part of My Cleveland Agenda, a community news fellowship organized by the Journalism + Design lab (J+D) at The New School in New York, Cuyahoga Community College (Tri-C) and Cleveland’s Neighborhood Media Foundation and supported by Signal Cleveland.

The four Community Listening Fellows — Dru Thompson, Teralawanda Aaron and Cleveland Documenters Emma Sedlak and Tucker Handley — will interview Clevelanders at bus stops, public events and community gathering places like Greater Cleveland Food Bank and Tri-C Access Centers. The feedback they gather will be used to produce a people-centered agenda to share back with Clevelanders and candidates for mayor and city council.

Their work will also support original reporting by four local news organizations and Neighborhood Media Foundation members: The Lotus, the Erie Chinese Journal, Profile News Ohio and La Villa CLE.

This is the second followship in Cleveland. The project is modeled on a similar effort that J+D piloted in Oakland in 2022 and 2024 in partnership with Oakland North, a publication of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.

J+D recently won a $1.5 million grant from Press Forward, a national coalition that invests in community news efforts, to keep building on its work to involve colleges in local reporting initiatives.

“This new investment will allow us to grow the collaboration we’ve built together and enable more people in Cleveland, and other communities in Ohio, to produce, share and act on the news,” said Cole Goins, managing director of J+D. “It was a highly competitive grant, which is a big vote of confidence in the work we’re doing together.”

Meet the My Cleveland Agenda fellows (from left in the photo):

Dru Thompson is founder of Dru Christine Fabrics & Design and an instructor at Tri-C’s Corporate College.

Emma Sedlak is a recent graduate of Pitzer College in Claremont, California, where she studied Politics and Philosophy.

Teralawanda Aaron is founder and president of The Spot Youth Empowerment Organization.

Tucker Handley works for an agency that provides mental health services for children and adolescents. 

So, what would your first act be as an elected official in Cleveland? Share it with us here. You can also share your contact information below if you’re a Cleveland resident and would like to talk to one of the fellows and answer the rest of the My Cleveland Agenda questions.

Name
Can we share your contact information with a My Cleveland Agenda fellow for a possible interview?

Associate Editor (he/him)
Important stories are hiding everywhere, and my favorite part of journalism has always been the collaboration, working with colleagues to find the patterns in the information we’re constantly gathering. I don’t care whose name appears in the byline; the work is its own reward. As Batman said to Commissioner Gordon in “The Dark Knight,” “I’m whatever Gotham needs me to be.”