Abstract
Steve Cagan, a native New Yorker, details a life of art and activism in Cleveland since the 1970s. Cagan's description of Cleveland as a center of social and political activism sheds light on the political and social culture of Cleveland in the wake of economic transformation. The correlation between art and politics is discussed at length.
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Interviewee
Cagan, Steve (interviewee)
Interviewer
Hons, Justin (interviewer); Yanoshik-Wing, Emma (interviewer)
Project
Ingenuity Fest
Date
7-14-2006
Document Type
Oral History
Duration
16 minutes
Recommended Citation
"Steve Cagan Interview, 14 July 2006" (2006). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 905004.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/271
Transcript
Steve Cagan [00:00:00] Okay. My name is Steve Kagan. It’s July 14, 2006.
Justin Hons [00:00:05] Steve, what are you doing here at the Ingenuity Festival?
Steve Cagan [00:00:08] I’m exhibiting photography. I’m a photographer and I have an exhibit inside one of the buildings.
Justin Hons [00:00:13] How long have you been doing photography?
Steve Cagan [00:00:19] Really seriously since 1972, so 34 years almost. But this work that I’m exhibiting here, which is what I call Latin American solidarity photography, I’ve been doing very seriously for 25 years, traveling to different countries and trying to build connections between people here and people there.
Justin Hons [00:00:39] Are you from Cleveland?
Steve Cagan [00:00:40] No, I’m from New York. New York, New York, you know, so good they had to name it twice. When did you move to Cleveland? In 1970, in August.
Justin Hons [00:00:50] What were your initial impressions when you first came?
Steve Cagan [00:00:55] I can tell you my very first impression. I drove here from New York. I drove ahead of my wife, who came about a month later, and we had a little one-year-old baby then. And so I drove on 80 and then I got on I-271. And as I drove up around I-271 towards Mayfield, I saw cars zipping through yield signs. Oh my God, where am I? That was my very first impression of Cleveland, you know. But the other thing that struck me a lot when I came here was the racial divide in the city. This was something, I mean, New York has plenty of racism and plenty of racial problems and had in 1970, but I never experienced the extent of racial division, I mean, physical division in New York that, I mean, there are Black neighborhoods and Latino neighborhoods and neighborhoods are all white. But I remember 1971, I walked St. Clair from East 152nd Street to Public Square. I walked the whole length of St. Clair, right? And taking pictures and just looking around. And especially in the area in the ’70s and ’80s, you know, around where crosses M.L. or East Boulevard. M.L. King. The northern side of the street was all Eastern Europeans and the southern side of the street was all Black. And I’m telling you, there wasn’t one. I may have that reversed, but one side of the street was all Black, one side of the street was all white. There wasn’t a single white face on the Black side and nor a single Black face on the white side. Except- Except for me, because I crossed back and forth, but not a single person. Work crews were entirely segregated. If you went into a work situation, everyone in the crew was white or everyone in the crew was Black. I never experienced that in New York or Little Italy, you know, I mean, I remember in the Feast of the Consumption, as we call it in Little Italy, that the Cleveland cops would prevent Blacks from walking in. And after a while, I understood that they probably were saving their lives by doing that because it was so dangerous for a Black person to walk in there, especially if people were drinking. So that was a very important early impression. And then as a photographer and as a social activist, the industrial base. In 1970, this was still a very industrial city, even though, of course, it had declined. The peak was in 1950 or the ’50s, and population was declining. The industrial base was declining. But in those days, in the early ’70s, I used to go down to the Flats to take pictures. And I don’t know if you drive around in the Flats, but you could hardly drive through the Flats. There were so many trains and they were making up trains all the time, and the trains would be backing back and forth across the roads that you had to be very patient to drive through the Flats. That’s changed. Like, you know, if you look from University on the other side, on the west side, you look down, you know where that German restaurant is? I forget. Big German restaurant just off of West 14th Street, you know, from the Tremont area. Just looking down that bluff, if you look down there now, you see these mountains of construction material. In 1970, it was a railroad yard and there must have been 30 tracks. It was just unbelievable, you know. So there was lots of activity, there was lots of smoke, there was lots of noise. It was wonderful. I loved it. So those are my- Those are my first impressions.
Justin Hons [00:04:19] Where did you live at initially?
Steve Cagan [00:04:22] The first year, we lived in the area that’s called North Coventry in Cleveland Heights, which is more of a poorer section of Cleveland Heights. We were- We came here to work for a political organization, left organization. So we didn’t have any money. And then we moved. We moved in with friends or moved into a house that was divided into apartments with friends in East Cleveland. We were there for about four years and then back to Cleveland Heights. We’ve been in a couple places in Cleveland Heights, so we’ve lived on the east side.
Justin Hons [00:04:52] What has been the- What are some of the issues that you’ve worked on through your social activities?
Steve Cagan [00:05:00] Well, I’ve worked a lot on war and peace issues, so I was very active in the anti-Vietnam movement and then very active in the movement to stop US intervention in Nicaragua and El Salvador and a lot in what we call the solidarity movements with those people. What brought me here, and Beth, my wife, was that we worked. We came here to be organizers for a Group called New University Conference, which hasn’t existed since 1972, but it was- We thought of it as the adult SDS. We were all university faculty and graduate students who were attached to the university somehow. And it was a left organization. And so there we were working a lot on education, education questions, but a lot of war and peace issues, some environmental stuff that I’ve done some labor work between 1990. My last full-time job between 1997 and 2004, I worked for an organization called Jobs with Justice. I was the Cleveland staff person.
Justin Hons [00:06:05] Can you give me maybe a glimpse into what the anti-Vietnam War scene or that type of actors involved was like in Cleveland in the ’70s, right as it was ending?
Steve Cagan [00:06:19] Well, it wasn’t quite ending yet. I mean, it was five years of Cleveland was a center of activity, you know, before we came here. I was very active in the ’60s in the civil rights movement when I was a university student and in the student movement. And Cleveland was a center of civil rights activities, was one of the national centers. We all knew about Cleveland when there was an incident when a white pastor, Reverend Bruce Klunder, was run over by a construction vehicle and killed. I remember that very well, you know, as if I were here. And then in this, coming out of that in the ’60s, the welfare rights movement started in Cleveland. National Welfare Rights Organization, NWRO started in Cleveland. There were progressive social workers. I mean, we knew all about that, even though we lived in New York, you know. And then in the ’70s, this was a real hot center of community organizing. So when we came here and we were very involved, especially in antiwar stuff, we thought this is going to be such a town, you know, for organizing. So here’s the first. Oh, this is another first impression. But it has to do with this. I forgot about this one. The geographical divide between east and west. That was like, everybody I know who comes here thinks this is crazy, you know, and I’m not going to fall for it. So there was a period when we lived on Coventry when this is 1970. A lot of- I guess the late ’60s was when it was community organizing ERAP project here. So a lot of people, 1970 still were coming to Cleveland because they wanted to be involved in political activity, believe it or not. I mean, it was really a very. There was a magnet for the left here as it had been in the 1940s. And so- So we would have these people knock on our door essentially and say, oh, you know, so and so said that you were here and that I could stay with you for A week or two while I find a place to live. Oh, sure, fine, great. You know, and so people would stay with us and the first thing they’d say is, what’s this east west thing? You know, well, I’m not going to fall for that. And then they would move to Tremont or the- Not to Tremont so much, but to near, near west side, you know, and. And that’s it. And they started resenting people on the east side. Everybody, everybody, everybody. You know, but there was, in the ’70s, there were a number of communities here, real communities on the left. And, and they were overlapping and there was a tremendous- Within the antiwar movement, I mean, not everybody was in the same community, but you know, there were very religious people and then there were more non-religious people like me. And we just had these attachments to each other that were very strong. It was a very positive and very mutually supportive environment. It was a very supportive environment. We were also very involved in the movement for socialism. I mean, that’s sort of kind of hard to support right now, but it was, you know, and it was very active. And actually the house where we lived in East Cleveland was a real center because it was a three-story house that had been divided into three apartments. And we were friends that lived in all three apartments. And our house was a center and we had all kinds of meetings there. We used to have these Sunday night dinners that everyone would just show up for. And then I remember we had friends that would come in. We were active in an organization called New American Movement and an organization called the Indochina Peace Campaign. And people would come and stay for a couple years, you know, from Chicago or from New York, you know, and then they’d go home and then they’d come back to visit and they’d say, wow, you know, I don’t have the supportive community in Chicago that I had when I was in Cleveland. So that was really wonderful. Now that’s not so strong. There was a very strong women’s movement in Cleveland and a very strong lesbian community. And they were very supportive of each other. They did a lot of cultural work. I remember there was something called Red Hen Productions and then there was a group called Oven Productions. And Oven Productions was a group of lesbian, mostly lesbian women who wanted to produce concerts, you know, and they did and they were great. We did a lot of cultural work. The antiwar movement and then later the Central America movement. We used to bring in performers, singers, you know, and theater people. And there was a lot of that stuff connected to our work. So it was very good. It was a good period.
Justin Hons [00:10:37] How has your photography reflected that, or has it?
Steve Cagan [00:10:44] Come to the- Oh, you’re going to be here on Sunday. On Sunday, you know, this Poor People’s Tribunal that is meeting in Lincoln Park Sunday afternoon. There are going to be a couple panels on culture and art. I’m going to be on one of those panels. My goal in the last 30, almost 35 years has been to try to carve out a place for what I call activist photography. Activist photography. And the idea is I taught for eight years. I taught photography in the art school at Rutgers University. I was commuting back and forth and I got some real insights there. And one of the things I saw was that a lot of people who consider themselves political artists and who have a very strong conscience and very strong ideas and very good ideas, what it means to them to be a political artist is that, as I used to say, that politics was grist for their artistic mill, that they would do paintings or videotapes or photography or whatever it was that were. That had political subjects. And of course, that’s great, but still, the criteria for success were the internal criteria of the art world. So for me, I want my work to be both successful with those criteria. I mean, I want it to be beautiful, I want it to be formally interesting. I want all those things, you know. But the ultimate measure of success is the impact it has. So how does it have an impact if it gets published in ways that affect people, you know, like writing does, if it gets used in journalism and/or propaganda of the movement, if it gets exhibited in ways that are connected to trying to change people’s minds about things. So for instance, one of the things I’m not so happy about with this exhibit right here is that I, except for one big text, I have- I’m not asking people to do anything when they look at this, but normally I would have had the Inter-Religious Task Force come and bring literature or something like that, you know, so. So I try to make those connections. It’s very difficult to do. It’s very difficult to do. I haven’t- I can’t say that I’ve been successful at it. And I’ve been successful at moments. At moments. You know, when we did this book about El Salvador, that was a peak and we were active in the organization that was in solidarity with that community and we were active here. This may be before your consciousness, but around, I want to say in the late ’80s, mid-’80s, the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York and CISPES, which was the big El Salvador organization, worked out a negotiation with the government, with the Justice Department, to publish the FBI files on this El Salvador movement. Right? With an agreement, with an understanding, that all of the names would be blacked out. All of the names would be blacked out. And that suited everybody’s purposes. That’s fine, right? And then nothing else would be blacked out. So all the names are blacked out, except two name, three names on the very front page of these thousands of pages. And it was Beth’s name, my wife’s name, mine. And a nun here in. Cindy Drennan here in Cleveland. And somehow they missed it. Everyone agrees it was just a mistake. They just missed it, you know, so it was kind of funny. I’m not quite sure how I got there, but it was funny. And it had to do with being in Cleveland. And it’s been very hard to make those connections. Cleveland is a town that I think is very proud of all it does to support the arts, but it doesn’t do. It’s enough. Do you ever have the experience of you said, I gotta write a letter about this. I do this all the time. I gotta write a letter about this. And I’m walking down the street and I work out the whole letter in my head, and by the time I’m done, well, I’ve worked out the whole letter. I don’t have to write it anymore. You know, I’m done with the process. Right. So I think that’s the case with Cleveland. They talk about how much they love the arts and how important the arts are and how much they support the arts, and then they’re done. They don’t actually. There’s no money, there’s no support. There’s no institutional support for artists, for individual artists, and not that much for the organizations either, but none for individual artists. So it’s a very tough town. It’s a town where image. I don’t even understand where they get the image from. I heard Chris Carmody. Is that his name? From the film commission, the head of the film commission on the radio the other day, and he was talking about. Oh, they were talking about this movie. O as in Cleveland. O as in Ohio. O as in Ohio or whatever it’s called. And, oh, how much they loved working in Cleveland. And Carmen, just saying, yeah, because, you know, the renaissance, the downtown renaissance, and how everything is booming downtown. Does he. This guy ever walk on Euclid Avenue? I mean, what downtown? Does he look? Does he look at this? You know, I mean, it’s nice to see all the. All of the ingenuity stuff out here, but you take it away, it’s like a wasteland. So, I don’t know. There’s a lot of image and that much support. So it’s been very difficult to make that. To make those combinations. The best way of doing it, in my experience, has been to teach, you know, and students want to hear that stuff, so that’s good.
Justin Hons [00:15:54] Well, we’re actually at time, but it’d be great if you could come back for a full interview in the future.
Steve Cagan [00:16:00] I’d love to. [crosstalk] Okay. Let me- You should take one of my cards. So if I don’t call you, don’t be shy to call me. Okay. Great. You betcha.
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