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(www.kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com)

CLEVELAND, Ohio- The housing committee of the Cleveland Chapter NAACP will take testimony for the NAACP in efforts to promote state and federal legislation to address the problems of  housing discrimination, foreclosures, mortgage impropriety and the abundance of abandoned homes that draw crime and heightened violence against women of greater Cleveland and elsewhere. The open-to-the-public meeting in which all community members that want to listen in or testify are invited, particularly victims and their family members, is at 5:00 pm on Monday, March 31, 2014, at the west side Cleveland headquarters of The Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign at 3500 Loraine Ave at East 35th St and Fulton Road in Cleveland in the basement of the Fifth Third Bank Building. For more information contact the Cleveland Chapter NAACP at 216-231-6260, The Imperial Women Activists Group at 216-659-0473, The Northeast Ohio Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign at 216-651-2606, and Bright Star Missionary Baptist Church at 216-249-5213.

The meeting is a follow up to the Cleveland NAACP Housing Committee meeting earlier this year that drew nearly 60 people including John Hairston  as executive director from the office of Congresswoman Marcia L. Fudge, Stephen Caviness, also from Fudge's office, and Nick Turner, a representative on mortgage and foreclosures from the office of Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur. Representatives of  Fudge will also be on hand at the testimony session, organizers said. Fudge and Kaptur, along with Congressman Dave Joyce, have proposed The Restore Our Neighborhoods Act of 2013 that provides federal monies to tear down blighted abandoned and foreclosed homes.

Monday's upcoming event marks the second time this year for the aforementioned testimony and will include victims of illegal foreclosures, community activists and Black elected officials. Also discussed will be the Cleveland Opportunity Corridor issue (city highway or thoroughfare)and tips on how to minimize foreclosure impropriety by Cuyahoga County officials and judges, and big banks and mortgage companies such as JPMorgan Chase Bank, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America.

A videographer secured by Cleveland NAACP will be present and everyone is invited said Cleveland NAACP Housing Committee Chairperson the Rev. Dr. David Hunter, senior pastor at Bright Star and president of the Baptist Ministers Alliance.

The Cleveland NAACP is led by the Rev Hilton Smith, an associate minister at Greater Abyssinia Baptist Church in Cleveland and a community relations vice president for Turner Construction Company. Sheila Wright is the local chapter's executive director.

By Kathy Wray Coleman, editor-in-chief

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(www.kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com)

CINCINNATI, Ohio-A three-judge panel of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati on Friday upheld the 2012 prison sentences of four young White men that were active in the now defunct Occupy Cleveland movement who pleaded guilty to plotting to bomb Route 82 bridge in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park in Sagamore Hills between Cleveland and Akron, Ohio with dummy explosives provided by an FBI Informant Shaquille Azir.

Akron is a city some 35 miles south of Cleveland.

Federal District Court Judge David Dowd sentenced Brandon Baxter, then 21, of Lakewood, Oh., to 9 years and 9 months in prison, Connor Stephens, 21 at the time, of Berea, Oh., to an 8 year prison sentence, and gave Anthony Hayne of Cleveland, then 35, who cooperated  with federal prosecutors, six years.

Ring Leader Douglas White, then 27, and of Indianapolis, Indiana, was handed a sentence of 11 and 1/2 years.

Fifth suspect Joshua Safford, 25, of Cleveland, is undergoing psychiatric analysis and his case is still pending.

The defendants also argued on appeal, through their attorneys,  that they were set up and that the bomb plot was not terrorism. The appeals court panel disagreed.

"A defendant has the requisite intent if he or she acted with the purpose of influencing or affecting government conduct and planned his or her actions with this objective in mind," the 21-page opinion reads in part.

Pictured are Fat-boy Berea Municipal Court Judge Mark Comstock (in robe), Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor, Former Cleveland NAACP President George Forbes (in stripped blue tie), Cleveland Attorney Michael Nelson ( in red tie), and Cleveland Attorney James Hardiman (in brown turtleneck sweater), also legal director for the Ohio ACLU

MIDDLEBURG HEIGHTS, Ohio- Cuyahoga County deputy sheriffs killed a man at his home in Middleburg Heights earlier today. The man, Israel London, died of a gunshot wound to the head, the Cuyahoga County medical examiner said.

Cuyahoga County is Ohio's largest of 88 counties and has 59 municipalities, villages and townships including the largely Black cities of Cleveland, East Cleveland and Warrensville Heights.

The predominantly White city of Middleburg Heights is a Cleveland suburb and is situated some 25 miles south of Cleveland.

London, 65, was wanted for a parole violation, and assault on a police officer, police said. Sources say the assault charge is bogus.

But what led up to the deadly shooting, such as routine ongoing harassment by police and deputy sheriffs of Cuyahoga County prior to it, is not yet known.

What is clear through an investigation by Cleveland Urban News.Com, Ohio's most read digital Black newspaper, is that Blacks have been routinely harassed for decades by county deputy sheriffs and the Middleburg Heights Police Department has a history of harassing Black people too.

Middleburg Heights has its court cases heard in Berea Municipal Court by Fatboy Judge Mark Comstock, a White judge with a record of being forced by common pleas court Judgte Dick Ambrose in the case of Lingo vs. State to return monies illegally taken when Blacks and others win cases and of overstepping the jurisdiction of the Middelburg Heights Mayor's Court to secure cases illegally against Blacks and women that he and his Ohio Supreme Court buddies and political cronies have it in for. (Editor's Note: An appeals court refused Ambrose and the Ohio Supreme Court upheld it in part ruling that the practice must stop but that the monies taken by the Berea Court even when a defendant wins the case, dating back to 1995, do not have to be returned).

Comstock is also accused of making Blacks pay triple bonds through visiting retired judges without the required bond forfeiture hearings and demanding that indigent Blacks represent themselves with support from former Cleveland NAACP President George Forbes and Cleveland Attorneys Michael Nelson Sr. and James Hardiman, also the legal director for the Ohio ACLU.

Hardiman and Nelson also serve as co-chairs of the Cleveland NAACP legal redress and criminal justice committees and allegedly block helping Blacks  relative to legal system discrimination allegations in the alleged exchange from monies from self serving politicians like Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Tim McGinty for their law firms, data show. Forbes, in his role as chapter president, did the same thing, the investigation reveals.

The ring leader for the police corruption in Middleburg Heights is allegedly Sgt Kevin Hoover, a dirty cop who is White and had allegedly harassed the shooting victim with a bogus assault on a police officer charge.  Hoover, data show, has Blacks lured to the city and then follows cars to maliciously pull them over for harassment purposes with support from Comstock  and   Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor, a White female Republican and former lieutenant governor.

Data also show that Comstock harasses innocent Blacks and women in malicious criminal cases before him, and then withdraws from the cases, only to have O'Connor send in a corrupt, retired visiting judge paid in excess of $500 a day to allegedly further the corruption and harass them with malicious warrants and other illegal activity.

Forbes, who resigned as Cleveland NAACP president in 2012, is also accused of using his cronies to try to silence Black and female victims that complained to the NAACP about the public corruption.

By Kathy Wray Coleman, editor-in-chief

(www.clevelandurbannews.com) / (www.kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com)

Pictured are murder victims Jazmine Trotter, Christine Malone, and Ashley Leszyeski. Their assailants are still at large, Cleveland police said.

CLEVELAND, Ohio- Community activists and victims family members will hold The First Anniversary of the E. 93rd Street Cleveland Rape and Murders and Stop Violence Against Women Rally at 5 pm on Thursday, March 27, 2014 at the intersection of E. 93rd St and Bessemer Ave on Cleveland's east side. (From Cleveland at 55th St. take Kinsman Ave to E. 93rd St, make a right and go about a mile  and a half to Bessemer Ave). For more information contact the Imperial Women  Activists Group at 216-659-0473. (Editor's Note: Cleveland Councilpersons Mamie Mitchell and Zack Reed and State Representatives John Barnes Jr. (D-12) and Bill Patmon (D-10) are among rally speakers)

Jazmine Trotter, 20, and Christine Malone, 45, both Black and both victims of rape and murder, were found in separate vacant lots less than a mile from each other near East 93rd St. and Bessemer Ave on Cleveland's majority Black east side, and police found the murdered body of 21-year-old Ashley Leszyeski, who is White,  in an open field near East 93rd St and Anderson Ave. less than a mile from where Trotter and Malone were found.

This week marks the first anniversary of the onset of their murders. Malone's body was found on May 28, 2013.

The  assailants of the murdered women are still on the loose with no major leads, police said. And since their murders more greater Cleveland women have been raped and found dead in large numbers and there is an increase in rapes and murders in Cleveland this year, data show.