Wednesday, May 14, 2025
Gratitude and Guardians of Free Speech
Hello, everybody. It’s so great to see all of you.
Kristen—thank you so much. Your partnership in this effort has been so supportive and sustaining. You and I have known each other for at least 17 years. You go back to the beginning, and I don’t think either of us could have predicted we’d collaborate like we have to be a part of all this… I love working with you. Thank you.
This event is all about gratitude, so I’m going to be thanking a lot of people. I just want to set expectations here. But I promise not to go on too long. 90 minutes, tops. I promise.
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I want to thank my family. My mother’s here. Mom—as if all you’ve already done wasn’t enough, you also contributed to the campaign. You’re the best.
My in-laws gave, too. Sal and Lisa Russo. Mom, Dad—thank you. You’ve been so supportive of everything Dorothy and I have put our effort towards in this community. Thank you.
Speaking of Dorothy—the better 85% of Team Moulthrop. Dorothy couldn’t be here tonight—many of you know this, but this is what non-profit leadership and civic leadership looks like. Sometimes, you have these unavoidable conflicts. Let me just say that no one has provided me with more emotional support than Dr. Dorothy Moulthrop. She has been there for every moment. Two of my three kids are here, as well. Nico, Elisa—thank you, and please tell Mom I love her.
We’re going to keep rolling with the gratitude for a moment here. Kristen Baird Adams was joined by Paul Harris and Fareed Siddiq in co-chairing our campaign. You guys have been absolutely incredible. At any moment when I might have been tempted to give up, you three believed and showed us how to keep moving forward, often providing just the right incentive for us and for others. You created the momentum that got us across the finish line.
I want to also thank our Honorary Co-Chairs—Dick Pogue… Carol Hoover… Char Fowler, who with her husband provided the City Club’s first million dollar gift! And of course Bob Gries, who passed away last year. Thank you all so much!
Those leaders were joined by a roster of others on our campaign committee—you see all their names in the impact report. At this moment I’d like to invite our campaign committee, including our chairs and our honorary chairs to stand to be recognized. Thank you. You stood with us, with democracy, with free speech, and you did so without fear—knowing our work, our mission, makes this community and our democracy stronger. Thank you.
And then there’s all of you—the donors who stepped up, whose contributions total more than 12 million dollars. Some of you have never pledged to a campaign like this before and we are so grateful to be the beneficiaries of your growing philanthropic impulses. Some of you have added this institution to the roster of things you care most about. We are honored that you have done so.
Kristen mentioned my colleagues before, and I thank them, too. I’d also like to recognize a few external folks who helped us out: Lindsey Marciniak and her colleagues at CCS did the feasibility study that gave us the catalyst to begin this journey so long ago. And Megan Granson and Kate Newsome of InBloom walked with us every step of the way. Megan and Kate—you are the engine. You are also the guardrails. You are the secretary and the archivist. The brains and the brawn. You are the butter and also the bread. Thank you.
I mentioned Bob Gries before. He’s one of two—individuals who were critical to this campaign and left us too soon. Alyssa Giannirakis Raybuck was a treasured colleague of all of ours. She joined us specifically to help us make this happen. Alyssa’s husband Will Raybuck and her sister Marina are here. We love you guys.
You know, when I applied for this job, back in the beginning of 2013, I had this sense about the organization—I LOVED it. I had loved it from the day Jim Foster put me on the stage to moderate the mayoral primary debate in 2005. Mayor Campbell was running against City Council President Frank Jackson, Safety Director Jim Draper, Euclid Mayor David Lynch, some guy in a cowboy hat, and probably two other people. I fell in love with the city and the community that day, and also with the City Club. And from that day on, whenever the City Club asked me to do something, I said yes. And what I always sensed about it was its potential.
In this community, and I suppose many communities, we get used to the way things are. And it’s hard to see what they could be. You know, you buy a house, take down a wall and blow out the kitchen and you think why didn’t the previous owners ever do that? Communities can be like that with their assets. Sometimes someone needs to come along with fresh eyes and take what’s familiar and make it more. Our friends at Ideastream did that with a couple of broadcast stations. Brian Zimmerman has done that with the Metroparks. And in 2013, I thought we might be able to do that with our City Club. The bones of the organization were great. The mission was solid. I just wanted to see how much more we could do with it.
From those very early days in my time here, I heard from the board that we should do a campaign, that we should grow the endowment, that we should think about possibly moving to a new home at some point. For a long time, it wasn’t clear how we might do any of that.
It was in 2017 that some of you were willing to meet with our consultants to tell them whether you thought we would be successful in a major fundraising campaign. What we heard back was a resounding yes, and a projection that if we worked really hard, we might be able to raise 7 million dollars.
Along the way, we decided an endowment campaign wasn’t big enough—we added a new home to our dreams—we got our first million dollar pledge from Char and Chuck Fowler, with one strong attached—that we would never sell naming rights on the forum. The City Club Forum would always be the City Club Forum. A place for the people of this great community.
So we were raising money! So that pledge was finalized in, uh—what was it? Oh yeah. February 2020.
We were off to the races… ready to go.
and then … March 2020.
I’ll spare you the traumatic retelling of what happened when Covid hit, but let’s just put it at this: 16 months of online forums and then figuring out how to restart our work, not just the programing but also the fundraising for the campaign. Here’s the best part of that story: when that first vision of a new home was stalled by the pandemic, an amazing opportunity opened up.
By the time we restarted the campaign, Mark Ross had joined our board—he was also on the board at Playhouse Square, and he suggested one day in 2022 that we meet with Gina Vernaci and Art Falco. Julie and I had met with them before Covid, and there hadn’t been the right space then. But we knew that post-Covid, there were a lot of different spaces available.
So we had this fateful meeting—one that would never had happened if not for Mark Ross—and we walked around the district, looking at one space and then another—an empty restaurant, a gallery—and then this space. It wasn’t actually available. I asked if it might be possible for us to rent it, and it turned out that though Dwellworks was leasing the whole building, they no longer wanted to lease it all.
We began meeting and dreaming in earnest about this space, space that had been originally designed as retail space for Woolworth’s that opened its doors 100 years ago. A space where, prior to Dwellworks, all sorts of products had been sold. I’m pretty sure I bought a piece of luggage here back in 2006 or 2007.
We had a special opportunity to remake retail space as a space for a retail civic engagement experience at street level, where you could, as you walk by, see the conversation happening and see yourself with a seat at the table, where forum participants and speakers could feel the very city through the window, where the forum itself could become an extension of the public realm.
And in meeting after meeting with our architects and designers at DLR—Chris Loeser and Charlie Olivo are here—those ideas of transparency and openness and a space that would create a sense of belonging, a space of retail civic engagement began to take shape.
And we’ve seen this come to fruition. The day we cut the ribbon and opened our doors, we had protesters—they were mad at Craig Hassall for some reason. Twice in the past few months, we’ve had protesters, too. And when State Senator Jerry Cirino spoke from this stage the other day, he looked at the protesters and talked about them in the middle of his speech. The architecture, the design of this space—it makes it possible. This forum truly is an extension of the public realm.
I always had big aspirations for our City Club—I think we all have—and together we have created a place that is worthy of those aspirations. We’ve done that in a neighborhood that truly welcomes and amplifies those aspirations.
Noelle likes to speak about creating a City Club for All. I think that’s right. Earlier today, this room was full of high school students who are members of the LGBT community and their allies. They had planned a small summit for students across the Cleveland School district, and venue after venue was either too expensive or unavailable because of the executive orders coming out of the White House. We welcomed them.
We are a City Club for All.
Last week we welcomed to our stage a former official from the first Trump Administration and an author and Harvard professor who was a finalist for the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards.
We are a City Club for All.
In this new space, on this new stage, we have welcomed the President of the Jewish Federations of North America and members of our local Arab American communities who have family in Gaza.
We are a City Club for All.
This is a place where everyone feels welcome, a house of fellowship, if you will, where strangers need no introduction.
That last line is from our creed, which was written 109 years ago by Ralph Hayes who was the City Club’s first paid executive.
I’m going to share it with you:
I hail and harbor and hear people of every belief and party; for within my portals prejudice grows less and bias dwindles.
I have a forum – as wholly uncensored as it is rigidly impartial. “Freedom of Speech” is graven above my rostrum; and beside it, “Fairness of Speech.”
I am the product of the people, a cross section of their community—weak as they are weak, and strong in their strength; believing that knowledge of our failings and our powers begets a greater strength.
I have a house of fellowship; under my roof informality reigns and strangers need no introduction.
I welcome to my platform the discussion of any theory or dogma of reform; but I bind my household to the espousal of none of them, for I cherish the freedom of every person’s conviction and each of my kin retains their own responsibility.
I have no axe to grind, no logs to roll. My abode shall be the rendezvous of strong but open-minded individuals and my watchword shall be “information” not “reformation.”
I am accessible to people of all sides—literally and figuratively—for I am located in the heart of the city—spiritually and geographically.
I am the city’s club—The City Club.
If that’s the job description, I think we are kind of nailing it.
Last week, we hosted the former Secretary of Commerce, Wilbur Ross. He was in the Trump administration, one of a small number of cabinet secretaries who lasted the full four years. And listening to Secretary Ross describe what it’s like to work with President Trump when he was a casino developer, I have to say, prejudice grew less and my bias dwindled. It was not insignificant.
It happens at every forum. I know each of you can think of a forum you came to where you have come here pre-judging somebody or their message. And when you left, there was less of that prejudice. The bias you may have felt dissipated… at least a bit.
That’s what we’re doing here. We are Guardians of Free Speech.
We listen to challenging ideas without fear.
We protect the platform where those ideas are shared.
We encourage debate and we ask the best questions.
We believe the right conversation at the right time can change how our community deals with a really challenging issue.
We stick around afterwards to hash it out with others and sometimes the speaker.
In a moment, two things are going to happen. First, we’re going to share once again, for one last time, our campaign video. And after that, you can get dessert and you’re invited to check out the donor wall, which is just outside the forum. That wall honors and recognizes the generosity of donors who contributed anywhere from $10,000 to a million dollars.
Now, if you look at that wall, and you think, man, I would really like my name to be on there… well it’s not too late. We’d love to help you make that happen.
So now, one last time, the video that tells the story of our campaign, a story that you helped to write, and a story that you helped us bring to a really satisfying resolution.
View the video of Dan's remarks here:
