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

CLEVELAND, Ohio- The wife of Cleveland NAACP President The Rev Hilton Smith passed away on Saturday, October 12, 2013, after a long illness, officials of the local chapter of the nation's most renowned Civil Rights organization said Monday. Arrangements for Delores W. Smith are by Strowder's Funeral Home in Cleveland. The wake is at the Greater Abyssinia Baptist Church in Cleveland where Rev Smith is an associate minister, 1161 East 105th St, at 10:30 am, on  Friday, October 18, with the funeral following at 11:30 am.  The viewing is on Thursday, October 17 from 10:00 am to 7:30 pm at Strowder's Funeral Home, 822 East 105th Street in Cleveland, phone 216-761-3092.

Cleveland Ward 6 Councilwoman Mamie Mitchell, a member of the Cleveland NAACP Executive Board, said that Smith and his wife "were always together at public events and that they were such a nice and pleasant couple and role models who always dressed well."

"She was quiet and he is friendly and the consummate gentleman," said Mitchell.

"We offer condolences to Rev Smith and his family," said Community Activist Mary Seawright, a member of the grassroots groups Imperial Women and Black on Black Crime Inc who owns and operates Seawright Enterprises in Cleveland and is also a member of the Cleveland NAACP.

Senior Greater Abyssinia Pastor the Rev. Dr. E. T. Caviness, the first vice president of the Cleveland NAACP and the executive director of the Cleveland Chapter Southern Christian Leadership Conference, will do the eulogy.

Rev Smith, 66, is senor vice president for corporate and community affairs with Turner Construction Company in Cleveland and a former Cleveland School Board president. He took the helm of president of the local NAACP late last year and replaced longtime president George Forbes, 82, a former Cleveland City Council president and current general counsel for the Call and Post Newspaper, Ohio's Black press.

Delores Smith was once a model, her friends said.

Regarding her age at death, NAACP officials would only say that she was "sixty something." Her obituary is being written and will be released prior to the wake and funeral, Cleveland NAACP officials said.

The Smith's have three grown children, and four grandchildren.

CLEVELAND, Ohio-Steve Loomis (pictured), the outspoken president of Cleveland's Police Patrolmen's Association who regularly quarreled with Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson and at one time gave the mayor a 'D plus' for leadership skills, was ousted this weekend in a close election.

After a successful front line campaign with other union leaders against Issue 2, a state measure on the Nov. ballot that voters rejected that would have dismantled collective bargaining in Ohio for public sector unions, Loomis lost reelection Sat. to the union presidency by 10 votes to Jeffrey Follmer, a 21-year veteran on the force.

CLEVELAND, Ohio-Grassroots groups including Black on Black Crime Inc., the Imperial Women, Cleveland Jobs With Justice, the Northeast Ohio's Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign, Stop Targeting Ohio's Poor, Occupy Cleveland and a host of others will rally over corporate greed and malfeasance with the sponsoring group Empowering And Strengthening Ohio's People (ESOP) on Tue., Dec 6, at 11:00 am at Chase Bank in Cleveland Hts., Oh at 12388 Cedar Rd. (Editor's Note: Cleveland Hts. is a suburb of Cleveland that is 43 percent Black. In addition to Cleveland, it borders Shaker Hts., E. Cleveland, University Hts. and other cities of Cuyahoga County. Like Cleveland, it too has been hit hard with illegal foreclosures furthered through corporate fraud that is tearing at the fabric of the middle class community that also enjoys prominent physicians and other medical associates from places like the renowned Cleveland Clinic Foundation, Case Western Reserve University Medical School and University Hospitals).

Contacts for the rally are ESTOP organizers Geoff Englebret and James Rudyk at 216-361-0718 and ESOP and Imperial Women Member Marvetta Rutherford at 216-938-6627.

Several community activists will meet at the ESOP Bld at 3631 Perkins Ave . in Cleveland, Suit 4C, at 10:00 am on on Dec. 6 for a free lunch and then leave on ESOP buses to head to Chase Bank on Cedar Hill at 12388 Cedar Rd in Cleveland Hts. (Take downtown Chester Ave and turn left onto E. 36th St., and take the first right on to Perkins for the ESOP Building. Follow Cedar Rd in Cleveland all the way to Cedar Hill in Cleveland Hts for Chase Bank).

Tuesday's protest, which seeks to draw people tired of greed and malfeasance by mortgage companies and banks like Chase that charge exorbitant fees, comes at a time when the Occupy Wall Street Movement is gaining momentum as are its affiliate movements in respective cities throughout the country like the major metropolitan predominantly Black city of Cleveland, and in international venues such as Toronto Canada's Occupy Toronto.

Chase Bank and its finance companies are also under fire for allegedly stealing the homes of Cuyahoga County residents via mortgage and foreclosure fraud including paying less than a fourth of what a foreclosure home is worth to illegally buy it back at a foreclosure sheriff's sale, charging the former home owner with the difference, and then reselling the home to make an additional profit. And data also show that the reduced foreclosed homes of Cuyahoga County are also going to friends of mortgage company executives, politicians, and affiliates of big wigs from the Cuyahoga County Republican and Democratic Parties.

"Wall street and the banks like Chase and Wells Fargo got bailed out and homeowners, renters and the little people got sold out," said Community Activist Marvetta Rutherford. "I am willing to fight for the community partly because they cannot take anything else from me."

Activists will also demand that Chase Bank pay what is in excess of $2 million in back taxes, that its officials pledge to no longer steal foreclosed homes at a fraction of the price in violation of state law, and for it to agree to push federal authorities to reduce the principal on mortgages during the nation's economic decline and because they say the interest rates on homes are illegal under the Fair Lending Act and derived in bad faith. Even low interest loans, say activists, are bogus because the monies a homeowner has paid in interest at the end of a 30 year home mortgage loan is preposterous.

Art McKoy, the founder of Black on Black Crime, said that he will attend Tuesday's rally at Chase Bank and that it is time for community activists of the Black community especially to now turn their focus more toward corporate impropriety and any elected officials that are perpetuating it to the detriment of the community.

"I will be at the rally," said McKoy."And I look forward to picketing Chase Bank and in the future other banks and mortgage companies that have done harm to our communities."

Pictured are Cleveland Mayoral Candidate Ken Lanci (in Black suit), Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson, and Community Activist Art McKoy, founder of the Easty Cleveland, Ohio activist group Black on Black Crime Inc.

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

CLEVELAND, Ohio-Cleveland Mayoral Candidate Ken Lanci took on Black elected officials and Black leaders, both  locally and nationally, and the local mainstream media, including the Plain Dealer, at a community forum held last night at Black on Black Crime headquarters in East Cleveland, a neighboring majority Black and impoverished suburb of Cleveland. And the 63-year-old Italian-American multimillionaire and businessman who grew up in a housing project on the largely Black east side of Cleveland was at ease with a packed room full of aggressive community activists and others from Cleveland, East Cleveland and elsewhere that came to hear his political pitch prior to the November 5 general election,  a non-partisan election that pits him against fellow Democrat and two-term Black Mayor Frank Jackson.

Jackson, 67, a former Cleveland City Council president, also grew up in the ghetto on the east side of the majority Black major metropolitan city of some 400,000 people.

"Why is it that they want to keep you down and out?," Lanci said of Black politicians and other Black leaders.

Lanci said that Black leaders like the Reverends Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, former Congressman Louis Stokes, and Mayor Jackson have gotten rich while the Black community is deteriorating, and that he last week pledged $5,000 to help pay for a building roof for the Cleveland African-American Museum in Cleveland's Huff neighborhood in Ward 7, partly because Black leaders would not help. He said that the mainstream media, including television stations and the Plain Dealer, Ohio's largest newspaper, were bought and sold by the Jackson for Mayor Campaign.

He said that all public policy makers and other elected officials and city leaders have to do to improve the quality of life for Cleveland residents is to do the right thing.

"You can be very successful just by doing the right thing," said Lanci.

Jackson spokesperson Maureen Harper said that she could not comment on the campaign and Plain Dealer Editor Debra Adams Simmons could not be reached for comment.

The likable multimillionaire who owns and operates a graphics and printing business on East 30th St and Payne Avenue in Cleveland said at the activists forum that if he wins for mayor his appointed police chief and other top law enforcement brass will be selected in cooperation with the Cleveland Police Patrolmen's Association, the rank and file union of the Cleveland police which has endorsed him.

A married father of three with six grandchildren, Lanci said that

"activists will not have to picket City Hall because they will have an office  at  City Hall if I am elected mayor."

Asked his views by community activists on the 137 shots fiasco by Cleveland police that left two unarmed Blacks dead late last year, the mayoral candidate said that Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Tim McGinty had decided not to charge the 13 police officers that did the killing, none of whom are Black and all of whom are back on the job, and that he would not second guess him. He pledged efficient plans for better safety, more jobs, and improving the city's public schools. He called for a moratorium on foreclosures after Community Activist and Clevelander Marva Patterson asked what he will do to minimize foreclosure fraud and the theft of homes in Cuyahoga County by officials.

Lanci said that he will hold Cleveland schools principals and teachers accountable.

Lanci said that "our school system is worse than when he [Mayor Frank Jackson] came in [as mayor] eight years ago."

Jackson controls the city schools pursuant to state law.

Most activists at last night's gathering backed Lanci. But activists like retired Plain Dealer reporter Dick Peery questioned his stance in not demanding that the police officers involved in the 137 shots tragedy that began with a car chase in Cleveland and ended in East Cleveland with the deaths of unarmed Blacks Malissa Williams 30, and Timothy Russell, 43, on November 29, 2012, be disciplined.

A few, but not many,  said his criticism of Black leaders was uncalled for.

"People like Rev Sharpton, Mayor Jackson and Congressman Stokes have done some good things for the Black community but they cannot be all things to all people all of the time, and neither can President Obama," said Community Activist Amy Hurd of Cleveland, who said she skipped the forum because Black women are often silenced by male leaders of Black on Black Crime, a grassroots group led by group President Ernie Harris and founded by Community Activist Art McKoy.

Both McKoy and Harris support Lanci for mayor.

Donnie Pastard, an activist member of Black on Black Crime and the Carl Stokes Brigade, said that she agrees with Lanci on his stance on Black leaders and elected officials and she said that they have "sold out."

Activist and entrepreneur Mary Seawright wanted to know if Lanci could help as to the rape of incarcerated Black men in prisons in Ohio. And another member of Black on Black Crime asked if he would promote an African-Centered school curriculum for the majority Black Cleveland schools children.

Black on Black Crime Vice President Al Porter, who lives in Ward 10 in Cleveland,  told Cleveland Urban News.Com after the forum that "Ken Lanci highlighted what leaders are not doing to help the community."

Longtime Community Activist Ada Averyhart, a Clevelander and Lanci supporter, applauded Lanci for his donation to the city's struggling Black museum.

"What are Black leaders doing to help the museum and Black people?" asked Averyhart.