Cleveland Power Alliance, New Local Coalition, Aims to Boost Democratic Participation and Working Class Policies

Erika Anthony, a co-founder of Cleveland VOTES, kicked off the announcement at City Hall on Tuesday of the Cleveland Power Alliance, a coalition of 21 local nonprofits hoping to influence City Council with a massive democracy-focused policy agenda. Credit: Mark Oprea

Nearly two dozen community-driven organizations, from immigrant advocates to members of Legal Aid, have banded together to fine-tune a policy wishlist a month before the September primary election and possible shakeup of City Council.

The Cleveland Power Alliance, a diverse coalition of 21 nonprofits, announced its presence on the steps of City Hall on Tuesday morning, in a bid to see if a collective bastion of leftist values—equality, workers rights, pure democracy—can rouse a new set of voters in the next few months and push for change in the future.

The alliance includes Cleveland Votes, the Northeast Ohio Workers Center, NEOCH, All Voting is Local Ohio and many others.

Because CPA is a nonprofit, it is barred from publicly endorsing candidates. Instead, as six members explained from the podium, the alliance will act as a unifying body that puts pressure on City Council, and whoever fills those seats, to try and inch toward more community-focused policies in 2026.

Which all begins with actually getting people motivated to get to the polls. It’s reasonable and long-standing concern. Last November was the lowest turnout for a presidential election — at 48 percent — since President Obama’s first bid in 2008, Cleveland.com found.

“We know that get-out-the-vote is often tied to education,” Kayla Griffin, president of the Cleveland branch of the NAACP, said from behind the podium on Tuesday.

“We have been struggling in this city to really get voters engaged over the last decade,” she said. “We want voters to feel empowered in their democracy. We want them to know that they have a place in this government. That this is their City Hall.”

Months after a Republican-majority Congress passed Trump’s Big, Beautiful Bill, which slashed Medicaid and SNAP, Democrats have been organizing to rethink how to pitch voters. Especially those moderates and former Democratic strongholds that shifted to Trump.

What’s emerged — whether out of a July Democratic mayor’s conference downtown, the campaign of New York City hopeful (and Democratic Socialist) Zohran Mamdan, or the myriad conversations happening within and about the party in the aftermath of Trump’s election — is a call to focus on policies that actually help the working class, rather than lambasting the president’s endless controversies.

Nia Gatewood, a Rising Star barista and organizer, spoke alongside colleagues at Tuesday’s press conference. She and her colleagues, Clay Reid and Caleb Reese, said they joined the Cleveland Power Alliance as a kind of fortification as they unionize. Credit: Mark Oprea

Which is what CPA seems to be serious about. In a 22-page policy packet handed out after the press conference, the group is calling for a wide range of legislative policies. A list so long that it’s indicative of how far a Democratic city like Cleveland still has to go.

There’s a call for Council to aid voter registration and 2030 Census turnout; a call for guaranteed paid family leave; a push for grocery co-ops and city-owned grocers; a nod for more mental health specialists and policies like Tanisha’s Law; a call for universal language access ordinance, which would guarantee brochures and translators to any immigrant in a public facility that may need one.

And also calls for second tries at policies Clevelanders weren’t sold on the first go-around—from re-doing the redraw of City Council’s new 15, to getting participatory budgeting (letting Clevelanders have a say in “at least” $500,000 of the general fund) on the ballot again.

Many of those decisions lie with those 15 people who will occupy Council. (Ward 12 Councilwoman Rebecca Maurer and Ward 4 candidate Rehan Waheed were present at CPA’s announcement.)

An underlying political philosophy pervaded the press conference: that local governments need to ramp up their support of the marginalized in an era when the federal administration surely isn’t.

“This is about ensuring that every single resident, regardless of their religion, culture, nationality or identity,” Melaak Rashid, a director with Smart Development, said, “can feel as though they are finally a part of the Cleveland that we all aspire to have.”

Nia Gatewood, who helped organize fellow baristas at Rising Star Coffee in Lakewood, told Scene that joining CPA gave her and her coworkers more confidence to unionize in the face of intimidation.

What leaders can do, she said, is push legislation clearly in-line with workers’ rights.

“The only way workers can have rights, have their concerns addressed,” Gatewood said at the podium, “is only if you hear it from the workers themselves. Because only the workers are able—are truly able to know what we need.”