Tanmay Shah Running for Cleveland City Council in New Ward 12

Tanmay Shah says the decision to run for Cleveland City Council has been building for years.

A former attorney at The Legal Aid Society of Cleveland, where he helped lead the recent unionization efforts, Shah is now a truck driver for Rust Belt Riders, a career decision he says he made after becoming disillusioned with the criminal justice system and to give him more time to work as a community and labor organizer.

“I saw a law degree as a tool to make change,” he says. “I believed I could do that in a bigger way. The pace of change is frustrating and I could do things I couldn’t as a lawyer.”

And a seat at the table at City Hall is his next goal to represent the new Ward 12, which encompasses parts of Edgewater, Cudell and the West Boulevard corridor.

“Council is not speaking to the reality working class people are facing,” the 29-year-old Jefferson resident says. “I was representing low-income tenants who were not able to afford $500 or $600 in rent, and all I see are townhomes and luxury apartments going up. There’s a disconnect. Officials aren’t up to the challenge right now. They haven’t really laid out a vision for the challenges the city is facing.”

For Shah, that vision should include the basics — food, shelter, transportation.

“We have to get those fundamentals right before we talk about bigger things,” he says. “I don’t think the city’s in a place where we’ve done that for the working class.”

Shah is was born in India and moved to Northeast Ohio when he was 10, and says being an immigrant is a crucial part of his identity.

“I’m proud of being an immigrant. Going through that process has been enlightening, seeing the differences in our societies and structures.”

Cleveland, he says, is facing big, systemic challenges in its structure. And councilmembers’ focus on constituent services above all else has led them to failing on the big issues, which he says is a disservice to all residents.

He points to multiple problems: There’s a lack of good public transportation options, especially in the new Ward 12. There’s a lack of community gardens and parks. The sizable Hispanic immigrant population in the southern part of the ward has been ignored. There’s been a lack of speaking to the residents, a lack of base-building.

As for his ability to drive change in those areas, Shah points to his experience in community organizing. He worked with the Cleveland Housing Organizing Project during the pandemic to get word out to tenants who were being evicted about available resources and rental assistance. His work at Legal Aid focused on those Clevelanders most in need. Recently he’s worked to champion transgender rights during a particularly harsh period of attack in the state. And he’s proud of advocating for Palestinians — in urging the City of Cleveland to address a Gaza ceasefire resolution and Cuyahoga County to freeze investments in Israel bonds.

And he’s galvanized by recent efforts in Cleveland to get residents more engaged, pointing to the success of the participatory budgeting vote despite its ultimate failure at the ballot box.

“People are paying more attention,” he says. “We have power at the city level, and we have to tap that energy and speak to the reality people are facing. We can build there. I’m excited to get us back to being a union town and being built on labor, and that means working for the working class.”

As for who he’ll be running against, incumbent Danny Kelly is expected to run in Ward 12 and challenger Andrew DeFratis has also thrown his hat into the ring.