Global challenges are grounded in local places. The health and vitality of every single community, every single child, every single acre of land, every single tree is important to creating a livable future. Every single local effort to do so is significant.

This is why I personally intervene to protect communities and people’s quality of life. Here, in Cleveland, I’m working with local homeowners to save a grove of mature, legacy trees from being destroyed by the local school board, even though a deed restriction protects the trees and the parkland on which they stand.

Today, as we prepare for a new, more hopeful, peaceful, New Year, I appeal to you on behalf of the Cudell community residents in Cleveland, Ohio, for public help in funding the court case to save the trees.  

My wife, Elizabeth, and I paid the bond to halt the cutting down of 50 trees in the Cudell neighborhood park. We have attended each several court hearings in support of the people. The people trying to save their park and the trees have one lawyer. The school board has six!

This local struggle to save parkland and trees represents every community group which takes on arrogant, uncaring government officials who don’t give a damn about the rights of taxpayers or the neighborhoods.

Please help the humble families of the Cudell neighborhood as they courageously take on a corrupt, school board which is trying to run over the very citizens upon whose tax dollars it depends..  

Please send a contribution now, to help defray the $65,000 in legal expenses of “Friends of Cudell Park.” Large or small, every cent will be gratefully received.

Contributions can be made directly through this link to the payments page of Cudell neighbors’ law firm handling this tree protection case: https://payments.juris.com/juris/C85C9D9  

WHEN news came that the centuries-old Sycamore Gap tree at Hadrian’s Wall in the UK was cut down by vandals, it set off a wave of emotion, anguish, tears and outrage, far beyond the United Kingdom.  

Many of us understand that a tree is not simply a static object but a living system which provides essential ecosystem services, such as oxygen production, climate cooling, water cycle support, habitat and air cleaning. Many may have developed an emotional connection to trees much less historic than the Sycamore Gap, but are nevertheless evocative in our own personal experience. 

A linden tree was planted in front of my house over 50 years ago and it is now an old friend.  I was horrified when a vandal slashed a section of its trunk.  

My wife and I walk in a nearby park and observe trees, some over a hundred years old, and often discuss their condition with city officials, in order to help prolong the trees’ lives.   Such watchfulness is important in our home town, Cleveland, Ohio, which has gone from being ‘The Forest City’ to the deforest city, its tree canopy dwindling to about half of what it once was, due to destructive planning, construction and civic neglect. 

In September I received a call for help from people in a neighborhood in Cleveland trying to save a neighborhood park and its 50-plus mature trees from being cut down. The local school board, which had plenty of other options, decided to take the park and its trees in a last-minute revision of eight-year-old plans to build a new school.

The next morning, I went to the site and stood among the trees in Cudell Park, a witness to their beauty and the calm and peace they share.   I saw the trees gentle harboring of birds and small creatures.  As the sun rose, I experienced the power of their shade and their air-cleaning protection from pollution of nearby traffic. Then and there, I made a promise to stop the men with the chain saws from descending and killing the trees, ruining the park, damaging the quality of life in the neighborhood.  I joined with residents, and took on the school board and their high-priced lawyers in court. We posted a bond so the case could go forward.

At this very moment residents remain in a legal battle to uphold a century-old will which deeded land to the public, on condition that it remain a public park in perpetuity.  A temporary restraining order, (TRO) was obtained, but the school board is determined to ignore local residents.  The school board keeps dragging the case forward in hopes to make the legal costs, which are now at approximately $65,000, much too expensive for residents, many of them living on pensions, to endure.  

That is why I am appealing on behalf of the Cudell community residents for public help in funding the court case to save the trees and the park. It is not just their fight, this is part of a national battle of environmental protection which starts in our very neighborhoods.  

Global concerns about quality of life do not exist in the abstract, they are grounded in place.  They are expressed powerfully in tens of thousands of local areas. Cudell Park and its trees are everywhere.  This is your park and these are your trees, too.  

Please help the families of the Cudell neighborhood as they courageously take on a school board which is trying to run over the very citizens who support it.  

Please send a contribution today defray legal expenses to https://payments.juris.com/juris/C85C9D9      

Thank you so much for your support and Happy New Year!

Dennis Kucinich