Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, Ohio's most read Black digital newspaper and Black blog.Tel: (216) 659-0473 and Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com.

By Kathy Wray Coleman, associate publisher, editor-in-chief

CLEVELANDURBANNEWS.COM,LOUISVILLE, Kentucky-Ridden by jockey Brian L. Hernandes Jr. and trained by Kennny McPeek, and with odds of 18-1, Mystik Dan pulled off an upset and  won the 150th running of the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs Saturday in Louisville, Kentucky, the first leg of the coveted Triple Crown.

The 20 horses that took to the racetrack for a two and a half mile run competed for a winning purse of $3.1 million, which went to Mystik Dan, a purse that nearly doubled last year's $1.86 million winnings.The total purse was $5 million and the top five horses received payouts, including $1 million for second place, $500,000 for third, $250, 000 for fourth, and $150,000 for fifth place.

Sierra Leone (9-2) finished in second, and Forever Young (6-1) finished third, with the trio only fractions apart as Mystik Dan crossed the finish line first before a roaring crowd of spectators.

This year's race was not controversial like last year's Derby where some 12 horses died weeks leading up to race, upsetting PETA, which demanded an explanation for the fiasco from Derby officials.

A strong favorite, Fierceness finished 15th, 24½ lengths behind the trio of winners.

Mystik Dan paid $39.22 to win, $16.32 to place and $10 to show. The $1 exacta paid $129.88, the fifty cents trifecta paid $556.92, and a $1 superfecta for a winning bet on the first second and third place finishers brought home roughly $$8, 544 dollars, thanks to the long-shot Mystik Dan coming in first.

The cheering crowd at the 150th run for the roses was roughly at $56,000, the largest crowd since the 2018 Derby of 57,000 and up from 2020-2023 that saw lesser numbers due the COVID-19 pandemic, with the crowd in 2020 virtually silent as Breonna Taylor protests outside of the racetrack clouded the event.

If Mystik Dan wins the Preakness on May 18 in Baltimore and subsequently the Belmont Stakes at Belmont Park in Belmont New York, the second and third legs of the Triple Crown respectively, he will have won the Triple Crown, behind Justify in 2018 and Seattle Slew in 1977.

Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, the most read Black digital newspaper and Black blog in Ohio and in the Midwest. Tel: (216) 659-0473. Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com. We interviewed former president Barack Obama one-on-one when he was campaigning for president. As to the Obama interview. CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE AT CLEVELAND URBAN NEWS.COM, OHIO'S LEADER IN BLACK DIGITAL NEWS.

Staff article

Staff article: COLUMBUS, Ohio-Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose (pictured) has announced the launch of the 2024 Grads Vote program, a civic engagement initiative designed to assist high school seniors with learning how to become active in Ohio’s election process. The initiative also encourages high school juniors and seniors to become election day poll workers as part of the Youth at the Booth program.

LaRose, a Republican, announced the launch for what he says is part of "a rigorous statewide election integrity initiative aimed at ensuring the accuracy of Ohio's statewide voter registration database.

"Beginning this week, the secretary of state's office will work with Ohio's 88 county boards of elections to conduct legally required list maintenance on out-of-date registrations from individuals who have permanently moved," LaRose said in a statement.

LaRose also directed the county boards of elections to review their records for "past-due removals, data mismatches, and bad addresses to ensure they are complying with state and federal law."

Ohio Democratic leaders and the NAACP, however, remain concerned that any efforts by LaRose to purge voter rolls in Ohio serve only to disenfranchise voters, including Black people and poor people. LaRose argues that he is acting within the confines of state and federal law, and is merely doing his job.

Ohioans will vote this November relative to the 2024 presidential election between former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden, a rematch of the 2020 election that Biden won amid controversy and claims by Trump and his supporters that the election that culminated in a pro-Trump riot on Jan 6, 2021 at the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. was fixed against him.

Trump won Ohio in 2016 when he was first elected president, and again in 2020 when he was ousted from office by voters.

He has been indicted in four separate cases, one for which he is currently on trial as to whether he interfered with the 2016 election that he won over Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton by allegedly paying off adult film star Stormy Daniels to be quiet about an alleged affair he denies.

He has pleaded not guilty in all four cases, including the Stormy Daniels hush money, election interference prosecution, and says they are all a witch hunt by Democrats and are designed to interfere with his current run for president.

Prosecutors after him say presidents are no more above the law than anybody else.

All of it is constant fodder for talented media pundits and political talk show hosts across the country, with some Blacks and others who distrust the nation's systemically racist legal system looking on for comparisons and analyses.

Trump has said that Black people should identify with him because they too are routine victims of a criminal justice system that wreaks of impropriety and is weaponized against innocent people the government wants to silence for speaking out on issues of public concern.

A recent CNN poll found that only 13 percent of Americans nationwide believe that he is being treated like other criminal defendants, though race was not a factor in the poll.

To the contrary, a similar Pew study has shown that Black and Hispanic individuals are more likely than White people with similar criminal histories and charges to be arrested and held in jail before trial and that they tend to have higher bails set and receive lengthier and more punitive sanctions, such as incarceration rather than probation.

Ohio is no different, with research showing that Cuyahoga County, the state's second largest of its 88 counties, has the highest rate of convictions of Blacks, many of them poor, and of binding over Black juveniles to adult court for prosecution where they are regularly convicted and imprisoned. This often occurs with ineffective assistance of counsel, and at the hands of racist and corrupt White common pleas judges, White county prosecutors, and White men who lead the county's racist public defender's office.

Black Cleveland area community activists have called for a consent decree for common pleas court reforms between the county of Cuyahoga, which includes Cleveland, and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) under U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, a Biden appointee.

LaRose has not announced an endorsement of Trump but has said efforts to keep the former president off the November ballot in various states  are uncalled for as the U.S. Supreme Court is poised to decide Trump's claim that he has absolute immunity from prosecution charges that accuse him of interfering with the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, and criminal charges against him in general regarding his time as president and thereafter. He says it sets a bad precedent for presidents in the future who come under fire and are persecuted for political reasons.

Also on the ballot in November in Ohio, among other less prominent races, is a nationally watched contest for the U.S. Senate between Republican nominee Bernie Moreno, who won Ohio's March 19 primary over LaRose and state Sen. Matt Dolan with Trump's endorsement, and senior U.S. Sen Sherrod Brown, a popular Cleveland Democrat who is running for reelection.

Democrats hold a slim majority in the U.S. Senate while Republicans hold the majority in the House of Representatives, with Republicans vying like hell to win the White House and to dominate both chambers of Congress come November. Only time will tell, pundits have said, as Trump aggressively fights for his political survival, his freedom, and a second term as president of the United States of America.

Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, the most read Black digital newspaper and Black blog in Ohio and in the Midwest. Tel: (216) 659-0473. Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com. We interviewed former president Barack Obama one-on-one when he was campaigning for president. As to the Obama interview. CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE AT CLEVELAND URBAN NEWS.COM, OHIO'S LEADER IN BLACK DIGITAL NEWS.

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Staff article by: Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio – Cleveland activists and Women's March Cleveland, the largest grassroots activist women's rights group in Northeast Ohio, are praising Cleveland WEWS News 5 Investigator Joe Pagonakis (pictured) after he and the news station announced earlier this week that he will retire, effective Mon., April 29, after nearly five decades in television news.

Pagonakis will sign off from WEWS News 5 for the final time Monday, ending a storied 48-year career in television, with 40 years on the air reporting in local communities and more than 30 years at News 5, the news station reported this week.

“My sincere thanks and gratitude to Northeast Ohio viewers for turning to News 5 and trusting me to tell their stories for more than three decades,” Pagonakis said via the story. “It has been such an honor and a blessing to have the opportunity to try and help others in need in my hometown for all these years.”

Women's March Cleveland head organizer Kathy Wray Coleman, a longtime Black Cleveland organizer and community activist who also leads the Imperial Women Coalition, called Pagonakis "a Cleveland television media legend who is widely respected and intuitive on issues impacting women, Blacks, poor people, and other marginalized groups," and said that he is "irreplaceable."

Coleman said that when organizing for women's marches and rallies in the fight against violence against women and for reproductive and other rights for Cleveland and Ohio women it was sometimes exhausting trying to engage the mainstream media in event coverage due in part to political and other reasons, particularly when key organizers were Black women, but Joe Pagonakis would often step to the plate and do worthwhile stories.

"His coverage was always thorough and fair, and he was always professional, even when the women would sometimes tease him about his suave-style and good looks," said Coleman, who has led  Women's March Cleveland for about six years, including helping relative to the successful passage of the Issue 1 referendum approved by voters last November that enshrined the legal right to abortion and other reproductive measures into the Ohio Constitution. It came after the U.S. Supreme Court, in June of 2022, overturned the longstanding Roe. v. Wade and gave respective states broad-ranging authority to regulate and legislate abortion.

Coleman said that Pagonakis also covered rallies she led for the Imperial Women Coalition as to the unprecedented murders of 11 Black women on Imperial Avenue in Cleveland by the late serial killer Anthony Sowell, who died in 2021 while on death row.

His presence in sometimes covering anniversary rallies on the murders helped to minimize routine harassment, she said, from former city officials who told her that "the rallies made the city look bad because they highlighted heightened crime against Black women at a time when city leaders wanted to position the city as a great place to live and raise a family."

When her group pushed for more local, county and federal funding for the Cleveland Rape Crisis Center and the Journey Center for Safety and Healing (domestic violence center) as cases of rape were increasing, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, activists could count on him to publicize the effort, Coleman said, adding that his coverage and that of News 5 on the issue was "neutral, timely, and unbiased."

"He would sometimes say Kathy I must tell both sides," the activist said, "sometimes to my annoyance, particularly regarding the fight by activists to preserve the right to abortion access for Ohio women currently, and for generations to come."

Coleman said that her response would sometimes be that "there is only one side to equality for women and we cannot reach equality when men in power, primarily White men and some state and federal lawmakers, seek to deny Ohio women the choice to decide what to do with our bodies through draconian, anti-female policies that we view as unconstitutional in every respect."

Activists say they worry that as some seasoned television journalists respected in the Black community and other community circles like Pagonakis prepare to retire, the largely Black major American city of Cleveland and activists will be left with a void.

"As women in Cleveland, Northeast Ohio and nationwide prepare to likely take to the streets in protests before the 2024 presidential election against an anticipated and potential national ban on abortion at the federal level we hope that our mainstream media of Cleveland that Blacks and women have continually supported over the years will be on the right side and with women every step of the way."

Activist Alfred Porter Jr. of Black on Black Crime Inc, who often helped Coleman in organizing women's marches and rallies, described Joe Pagonakis as "a part of Cleveland's history and a legendary, investigative reporter who was fair to activists and the Black community."

Delores Gray, also a community activist, organizer and community advocate, also agrees that Pagonakis will be missed by activists in the trenches of Cleveland as they continue their fight for equal opportunity and fair play for disenfranchised Blacks, women and poor people.

Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, the most read Black digital newspaper and Black blog in Ohio and in the Midwest. Tel: (216) 659-0473. Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com. We interviewed former president Barack Obama one-on-one when he was campaigning for president. As to the Obama interview. CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE AT CLEVELAND URBAN NEWS.COM, OHIO'S LEADER IN BLACK DIGITAL NEWS.