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Pictured are former 11th Congressional District Congressman Louis Stokes (in red tie), and Cuyahoga County Executive Ed FitzGerald, the democratic candidate for Ohio governor

By former Congressman Louis Stokes,  a Shaker Heights, Ohio Democrat and former senior counsel with the Squire, Sanders and Dempsey law firm who led the 11th congressional district, which is now led by Congresswoman Marcia L. Fudge,  a Warrensville Heights Democrat and chair of the Congressional Black Caucus of Blacks in Congress. Congressman Stokes addresses below efforts to steal the Black vote in Ohio via voter suppression bills signed into law this year by Republican Governor John Kasich. The new state laws limit early voting, among other strategies to intimidate Black, elderly and low-income voters, Click here to join the fight for voting rights in Ohio. That fight is also being taken up by Democratic candidate for governor Ed FitzGerald, the Cuyahoga County executive. Cuyahoga County is the state's largest of 88 counties and includes the largely Blacks cities of Cleveland and East Cleveland. It is roughly 29 percent Black. Congresswoman Fudge , state Sen. Nina Turner (D-25),  the Cleveland NAACP, the United Pastor's in Mission of greater Cleveland and others that oppose the voter suppression laws and a Plain Dealer Newspaper editorial called them anti-Black and against low-income people. CLICK THIS LINK HERE TO GO TO THE CLEVELAND PLAIN DEALER AT CLEVELAND.COM TO READ THE EDITORIAL

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By Former Congressman Louis Stokes, Ohio's First Black Congressperson

CLEVELAND, Ohio-I was raised in the first housing projects in Cleveland, and went on to serve our country in WWII, and then as the first African American elected to Congress from Ohio. I was afforded those opportunities because my mother had left the south years earlier in search of a better life, and found it as a domestic worker making $8 a day.

We both witnessed the punishing struggle for equal rights, but I have lived the political and economic mobility of its success. Neither would have been possible without Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who I first met in 1965. He was traveling around Cleveland registering voters from the back of a flatbed truck. He’d say that we must vote, because Southern blacks could not. And fresh in our minds was the memory of the three boys killed for registering voters in Mississippi the year before.So we registered voters, and we voted ourselves – and eventually, America passed the Voting Rights Act.

Ever since, Dr. King’s long walk has resulted in expanded access to the ballot box and empowered citizens with a say in their future. That’s how each generation has bent the arc of the moral universe toward justice.Governor Kasich is restricting the vote – and the ability of Ohio’s citizens to make their voices heard. Once again, we need to make our voices heard. Join me and Ed [Cuyahoga County Executive Ed FitzGerald, the Democratic candidate this year for governor] and tell Governor Kasich that the right to vote deserves to be protected, not restricted.

Ohio’s Republican leaders are unraveling decades of progress expanding the vote. Stand with me – and Ed and let’s fight to ensure every Ohioan has the right to vote without restriction.

Pictured are Former Cuyahoga County Commissioner Jimmy Dimora, also a former chair of the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party (in eye glasses), Federal District Court Judge Sara Lioi (in Black attire), Former Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas Judge Bridget McCafferty (in red attire) and Former Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas Judge Steven Terry ( Black man in grey attire)

By Kathy Wray Coleman, editor-in-chief

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CINCINNATI, Ohio-Former Cuyahoga County Commissioner Jimmy Dimora, also a former chair of the powerful Cuyahoga County Democratic Party,  is asking a federal appeals court to reverse his convictions on 32 corruption-related charges, including racketeering, and his attorneys want a new trial.

Oral arguments were held yesterday morning before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati, which will issue its ruling in upcoming months.  Dimora did not attend the hearing.

His lawyers say that Federal District Court Judge Sara Lioi out of Akron is biased and that she erred to the extent that a new trial is warranted.

Appeals are typically about whether a trial court judge erred or did wrong in civil, criminal and other court cases, and whether that wrongdoing merits a reversal of the trial court proceedings at issue, sometimes via a new trial, and other times overturning the convictions outright, among other remedies the appeals court panel might order.

Dimora, 59, was sentenced to 28 years in prison. He is now serving his sentence at the Federal Transfer Center in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

In a brief filed by attorney Christian J. Grostic on behalf of Dimora, the former county commissioner's attorneys told the appeals court that "Dimora was deprived of a fair trial" and that the government convinced Lioi to "exclude relevant, admissible and powerful exculpatory evidence of Dimora's intent."

In the brief, Dimora argues in part that he "did not solicit or accept things of value knowing they were given in exchange for official acts." And that he reported the gifts on ethics reports.

A three-judge panel heard the oral arguments by both sides, federal prosecutors telling the three judges that a mountain of evidence supports Dimora's bribery and other convictions.

But whether arguments made to the appellate panel and in briefs filed by Dimora's legal team, including the judge's  refusal to admit evidence at trial that Dimora reported the gifts on ethics reports , gifts the prosecution says were bribes, are enough for a new trial, remains to be seen.

The former county commissioner's convictions came as part of an ongoing county corruption probe that has netted over 60 convictions or guilty pleas, including two former Cuyahoga County Common Pleas judges and former county auditor Frank Russo, who is serving a 22-year sentence.

Pictured are Cleveland Urban News.Com Sportswriter Karl Kinbrough and Cleveland Cavaliers Center Spenser Hawes

By Cleveland Urban News.Con Sportswriter Karl Kimbrough

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CLEVELAND, Ohio-Several NBA teams, including our Cleveland Cavaliers, made moves recently to strengthen their teams for the playoff run this year. Some teams made trades, some cleared roster space to add players, and some did both.

There were not many high profiled players changing teams late this season. But most of the players who went to contending teams have helped them.

The Cavaliers, who have not lived up to their own expectations as a strong contender for a playoff position all season, made one last effort by trading forwards Earl Clark, Henry Sims for Philadelphia 76ers center Spencer Hawes. That trade also gives the 76eres bids on two second round draft picks in upcoming drafts that would ordinarily be given to the Cavaliers.

Press Release To All Media: Contact Imperial Women Activists Group, Kathy Wray Coleman, 216-659-0473

Community activists women are applauding the appointment on Monday by Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson of Capt. Joellen O' Neil (pictured), a White woman, as a deputy police chief, the first female executive police officer in Cleveland since 2001 when Mary Bounds, who is Black, was appointed chief of police.

CLEVELAND, Ohio- Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson, the city's third Black mayor who is two months into his third four-year term, gave his State of the City address on Wednesday at Public Auditorium and surprised people by giving the Cleveland Police Department a 'B' grade and an 'A' for professionalism, even in the wake of a deadly 137 shots gunning down of unarmed Blacks Malissa Williams and Timothy Russell by 13 all non-Black police officers who are still on the job. Moreover, the Ohio Bureau of Identification and Investigation, led by Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine, is re-enacting the shooting this morning that occurred on November 29, 2012 following a police car chase that began in downtown Cleveland and ended in neighboring East Cleveland in the parking lot at Heritage Middle School. And the U.S. Department of Justice is currently investigating police procedures and excessive force complaints.