05.15.13 - Ohio State Sen. Shirley A. Smith  (pictured) To Hold Workforce Re-Entry Training & Clinic (Her Columbus, Oh. Statehouse Telephone Number Is 216-466-4857)

Cleveland, Ohio – Today, Thursday, May 23, state Sen. Shirley A. Smith (D-21) will hold a full day of events from 9:00 AM to 7:00 PM at the Wolstein Center (2000 Prospect Avenue Cleveland, OH 44115) on the campus of Cleveland State University related to workforce re-entry for ex-offenders. The event will feature workshops surrounding records expungement and the Certificate of Qualification for Employment (CQE), provisions of law that became effective with the passage of Senate Bill 337 last year.

By Kathy Wray Coleman, editor-in-chief,  Cleveland Urban News.Com and The Kathy Wray Coleman Online News Blog.Com, Ohio's No 1 and No 2 online Black news venues

Reach Cleveland Urban News.Com by email at editor@clevelandurbannews.com and by phone at 216-659-0473

CLEVELAND, Ohio-Cleveland Mayoral Candidate Ken Lanci, who announced earlier this month that he is in the race to try to unseat two-term mayor Frank Jackson this year, will participate in a community forum moderated by state Rep Bill Patmon (D-10) and sponsored by Cleveland Urban News.Com, Imperial Women, The Fairfax Business Association, and other community activists and advocates groups at 6 pm on Thursday, May 30 at Lil Africa, 6816 Superior Ave in Cleveland.  The event is free and open to the public. Restaurant food by Lil Africa will be available at reasonable prices. For more information contact Imperial Women at 216-659-0473.

"I look forward to it," said Lanci about attending the inner city grassroots forum on the majority Black east side of the largely Black major metropolitan city.

The theme of the event is "Getting to Know Ken Lanci."

Ward 7 Councilman T.J. Dow is invited to give remarks since Lil Africa is in his ward.

Sponsors said the forum is not to take sides or endorse a candidate but to find out Lanci's position on City of Cleveland issues dear to community activists and other community affiliate groups. A subsequent forum will be held after the June 27 Cuyahoga County Board of Elections petitions filing deadline with both Jackson and Lanci invited to attend, activists said.

Lanci, 63, is a millionaire businessman who ran unsuccessfully for Cuyahoga County executive as a Independent in 2010. He is now a Democrat.

Lanci will face questions from a panel on various issues including education, city government, tax abatement, red light cameras,  jobs and economics, and city contracts. Other questions from the panelists will address Cuyahoga County foreclosures, Cleveland police shootings and judicial justice matters. Whether Lanci will have a racially diverse law enforcement leadership team if he wins the mayor-ship, and issues relative to abduction, rape and murder in Cleveland of women and children across racial lines will be discussed too.

Questions from the audience will also be a part of the forum.

Community Activist Art McKoy will introduce Lanci and Community Activist Genevieve Mitchell, a member of both The Carl Stokes Brigade and the legal redress committee of the Cleveland NAACP, will do a 5 minute presentation on Cleveland schools from desegregation to now and on deadly police shootings of unarmed people such as Malissa Williams, Tim Russell, Daniel Ficker and Kenneth Smith (AKA Rapper Kenn Ball).

Donna Walker Brown, a community activist running this year for a Cleveland City Council seat in Ward 10, will address the red lights cameras controversy that has community activists claiming that the Black community is the target as some 69 percent of the camera are on the majority Black east side of Cleveland.

Panelists include Greg Roberts, president of the Fairfax Business Association, Black on Black Crime Vice President Al Porter, Imperial Women Member and Ohio Family Rights President Roz McAllister,  and Cleveland Urban News.Com editor and Imperial Women Leader Kathy Wray Coleman.

Members of the following organizations will also attend:

The Carl Stokes Brigade, Organize Ohio, The Imperial Women, Black on Black Crime Inc., The Northeast Ohio Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign, People for the Imperial Act, The Cleveland Chapter of the New Black Panther Party, Peace in the Hood, Audacity of Hope Foundation, The People's Forum, The Greater Cleveland Immigrant Support Network, The Task Force for Community Mobilization, The People' Fight Back Center, Revolution Books, Workers World, The Oppressed People's Nation, The Fairfax Business Association, Stop Targeting Ohio's Poor, The National Organization for Parental Equality and The Black Contractors Association of Cleveland.

By Kathy Wray Coleman, editor-in-chief,  Cleveland Urban News.Com and The Kathy Wray Coleman Online News Blog.Com, Ohio's No 1 and No 2 online Black news venues

Reach Cleveland Urban News.Com by email at editor@clevelandurbannews.com and by phone at 216-659-0473

Pictured are Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson (in beard), Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Tim McGinty (the Caucasian in red tie), and Cleveland NAACP President The Rev. Hilton Smith (the African-American in red tie)

CLEVELAND,Ohio- Cleveland area community activists groups have voted to picket Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Tim McGinty, Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson and Cleveland NAACP President The Rev. Hilton Smith, though Smith and Jackson can get a reprieve, activists said, if a meeting date is scheduled at an inner city forum to address their community-related concerns that is void of the typical police harassment and intimidation they sometimes bring with them. Those concerns include the deadly Cleveland police shootings of Malissa Williams,Tim Russell, Daniel Ficker and Kenneth Smith (AKA Rapper Kenn Ball), all of whom were unarmed, foreclosure fraud, judicial impropriety, orchestrated unemployment of Black people and Black contractors,  and police negligence around the abduction, rape and murder of women and children across racial lines. (For more information contact Black on Black Crime Inc. at 216-253-4070, The Task Force for Community Mobilization at 216-538-4043 and The Imperial Women at 216-659-0473).

McGinty is under fire for refusing to recuse himself and inturn seek a special prosecutor after taking campaign monies and an endorsement last year from the Cleveland police union relative to his successful bid for Cuyahoga County prosecutor and then refusing to push a county grand jury indictment of a group of Cleveland police officers, 12 White and 1 Hispanic, that gunned down Williams and Russell with an unprecedented 137 bullets on Nov. 29 following a car chase from downtown Cleveland that ended in neighboring East Cleveland. Also, employees of his office like Lily Miller are accused of calling Blacks nigger and then defaming community activists that complain with McGinty's blessing with lies on the Internet and through emails sent on company time in alleged violation of state law. (Editor's Note: The vote to picket McGinty was taken two weeks ago at a Black on Black Crime meeting that included activists groups of Imperial Women, The Carl Stokes Brigade, The Oppressed People's Nation, The Cleveland Chapter of the New Black Panther Party, The People's Forum, People for The Imperial Act, Survivors/Victims of Tragedy, and The Greater Cleveland Immigrant Support Network. Also there were members of The Task Force for Community Mobilization, a grassroots group led by Community Activist Khalid Samad that has a petition of over 1,300 signatures to date for McGinty's recusal in the  Williams-Russell case).

Activists voted at a meeting on Thursday to ask Jackson to meet with them to explain why police have not been charged relative to the Williams-Russell shooting and other shootings of unarmed people like Kenneth Smith and Daniel Ficker They are also upset about alleged impropriety around the rape and murder in March of Christine Malone, and  police harassment of Imperial Women members at peaceful protests. Activists say they also will discuss the failure of police and the Jackson administration to implement the 27 recommendations issued by the mayor's three-member commission. That commission, that does not include community activists, was formed in 2009 around the Imperial Avenue Murders of 11 Black women on Imperial Ave by convicted serial killer Anthony Sowell.

Two other pickets by Imperial Women .at the mayor's home in the city's Central Neighborhood, both held in the last four years, dealt with the Imperial Avenue Murders.

Rev Smith took the helm as Cleveland NAACP president this year and according to activists is doing what White folks and some sellout greater Cleveland Black elected officials are telling him to do , and allegedly to the detriment of the Black community. Activists, many of whom are dues paying members of the organization, want a meeting with Smith as repeatedly promised, regular committee meetings, and for the group to stand for jobs, and against the gunning down of unarmed innocent people by Cleveland police, documented Cuyahoga County foreclosure fraud, judicial impropriety and the abduction, rape and murders of women and children. (Editors Note: The latter include Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus, Michelle Knight, the 11 Imperial Ave. murdered women and Malone).

By Kathy Wray Coleman, editor-in-chief,  Cleveland Urban News.Com and The Kathy Wray Coleman Online News Blog.Com, Ohio's No 1 and No 2 online Black news venues (www.clevelandurbannews.com) Reach Cleveland Urban News.Com by email at editor@clevelandurbannews.com and by phone at 216-659-0473

LAS VEGAS, Nevada-Legendary former pro football player O.J. Simpson (pictured) testified this week against the lawyer that got him a prejudicial nine to 33 year prison sentence nearly five years ago on kidnapping and armed robbery charges, hoping to get a new trial.

Simpson, 65, took the stand in a Nevada courtroom on Wednesday after not doing so by his former attorney's advice during his trial in 2008 and said that Miami attorney Yale Galanter knew that he did not  know that two companions had guns in a 2007 confrontation with memorabilia dealers that he says were scamming him. He testified that Galanter advised him to "go get his stuff" and that the attorney did not tell him of a plea deal.

And Simpson, who is Black, reminded a prejudicial public that 33 years in the slammer is a bit much since he did not have a gun and "nobody got hurt."

Galanter contradicted much of Simpson's allegations during his testimony Thursday afternoon but could not produce anything in writing confirming that he told his client of a plea deal.  As legal pundits predicted, he told the judge that Simpson got a raw deal but that Simpson allegedly knew guns would be involved.

Simpson's current attorneys have accused Galanter of ineffective assistance of counsel at trial, and on appeal, and argued that all he wanted was O.J.'s money in exchange for selling him out.

The Black community is divided on the issue, some admitting that O.J. is still a target by the White establishment for beating criminal charges in 1995 that he murdered ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman, both White. Other Blacks say that even after standing behind him in that case, O.J. continued to run around with White women and thumbed his nose at being Black.