By Johnette Jernigan and Kathy Wray Coleman. Reach us by phone at 216-659-0473 and by email at editor@clevelandurbannews.com
CLEVELAND, Ohio-After a morning White House press conference with a group of testy reporters demanding an explanation for the national uproar over his universal health care plan, Barack Obama boarded Air Force One on Thursday and flew home to Cleveland, Ohio for an afternoon speech at ArcelorMittal Steel Factory, one of the world's leading steel and manufacturing plants.
He immediately thanked Indian-born steel Baron Likshmi Mittal for investing in Cleveland, and in America.
"I want to thank CEO Lakshmi Mittal for investing in America and the Cleveland area," said Obama during his speech to steelworkers on Thursday.
A largely Black city with Black mayor Frank G. Jackson at the helm, and with 17 Democrats on the 18-member, half-Black Cleveland City Council, Cleveland may have felt like home to Obama last week.
Though Cleveland is not the president's hometown, his homecoming on Thursday did not suggest otherwise, particularly since he chose it for his safe haven for a key speech away from the White House at a time when ObamaCare, his health care initiative, was clearly under attack by the Republican regime.
The local mainstream media, which can be fickle, were gracious with headlines of his arrival.
Labor unions, Black people, and Democrats were among his allies, close up, and from a distance, many waiting for the president to step foot in the city of some 400,000 people, a largely Black major American city, and one struggling like other urban dwellings with heightened poverty, unemployment and failing public schools.
The president spoke for nearly 28 minutes at the steel plant located on Harvard Avenue on the city's largely Black east side , and he said that it felt good to be back in Cleveland since his visit late last year during a campaign stop. He said that the economy was in a free fall and on the brink of collapse when he became president and that its has improved tremendously under his leadership.
"It's a win, win," said Obama, who won a second term in 2012 against Republican Presidential Nominee Mitt Romney with help from a cadre of greater Cleveland politicians, many Black, and a handful of them who aggressively campaigned for the president, including state Sen. Nina Turner (D-25), a Cleveland Democrat, and Congresswoman Marcia L. Fudge, a Warrensville Heights Democrat and chair of the Congressional Black Caucus whose 11th congressional district includes the east side of Cleveland and
a small largely Black pocket of Akron.
"Our economy is growing, we are creating jobs," Obama said to cheers and applause.
The president thanked some key fellow Democrats, including Jackson, Cleveland's mayor since 2006 and a former city council president, and U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, Toledo Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur, and Cuyahoga County Executive Ed FitzGerald, the Democratic frontrunner to take on Ohio Republican Gov. John Kasich in next year's gubernatorial race.
After touching on issues such as natural gas, and what he said is the country's declining dependency on foreign oil, the former Illinois senator preached on the importance of working with schools and colleges to continue enhancing the nation's workforce.
As widely anticipated, the president focused on his universal healthcare plan, a comprehensive overhaul of the nation's health care system under a federal law, the Affordable Care Act, legislation passed by a divided Congress in 2010 that takes effect next year.
Obama complimented Gov. Kasich during his speech, who broke ranks with his fellow Republicans to endorse the sweeping health care reform plan. He teased a little on the malfunctioning government website that let's people apply for health care insurance online, though mail-in applications are accepted.
But he spoke in a serious tone in saying he expects improvement and better access to the web site, which has to date generated roughly 28,000 online applications from the 36 participating states, including some 1,200 from Ohio.
Later that day Cleveland NAACP, in partnership with the City of Cleveland Health Department and the Greater Cleveland Chapter of 100 Black men held a forum at the University Circle United Methodist Church in Cleveland to give people an opportunity to prepare applications on the spot to enroll for health care insurance on the spot and before next month's application deadline.
Efforts to eliminate disparities and achieve health equity have been at the cornerstone of Obama's presidential agenda, and while he has support for one of the most important domestic issues of his presidency, and primarily along partisan lines, he has caught all out hell for pushing it at the hands of some right wing congressional Republicans.
Those needing it most, studies show, are poor people and people in low income jobs.
A 2012 U.S. Census Bureau analysis found that 16 percent of Americans live below the poverty line, most of them White, but a disproportionate number of them Black or from other minority groups.
"This is to make sure that we take care of the least of us," said Cleveland NAACP Executive Director Sheila Wright.
"Tonight's forum was well attended and was to educate the community about the Affordable Care Act and the open enrollment process, said Dr. Charles S. Modlin, a kidney surgeon, director of the Minority Health Center for Glickman Urological and Kidney Institute at the Cleveland Clinic and chair of the Cleveland NAACP Health Committee.
"It was a critically important forum," said Terry Maynard, president of the Greater Cleveland Chapter of 100 Black Men
Karen Butler, director of the Department of Public Health for the City of Cleveland, took an opportunity at the forum to stress Jackson's support of Obama.
"The mayor supports the president," Butler said.
By Karl Kimbrough (pictured), Cleveland Urban News.Com Sportswriter (kimbrough@clevelandurbannews.com). 
