Johnette Jernican, Cleveland.Com Staff Reporter
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Last update10:29:52 pm
Johnette Jernican, Cleveland.Com Staff Reporter
Last Updated on Monday, 30 July 2012 07:45
By Johnette Jernican, Cleveland.Com Staff Reporte
By Johnette Jernican, Cleveland.Com Staff Reporter
CLEVELAND, Ohio-Slim and poised, First Lady Michelle Obama (pictured), the most photographed first lady in American and world history, thanked a group of approximately 150 Obama campaign committee volunteers from Cleveland and surrounding suburbs before attending an intimate fundraiser of roughly 250 supporters at Progressive Field on Mon. afternoon in Cleveland.
Campaign organizers said that the volunteers, who were invited as special guests to meet the first lady, have made tons of phone calls and knocked on more than 8,500 doors in Cuyahoga County,the state's largest county and a Democratic stronghold.
Last Updated on Friday, 21 February 2014 04:14
By Kathy Wray Coleman, Editor, Cleveland Urban News. Com and The Kathy Wray Coleman Online News Blog.Com
LOS ANGELES, CA-Green Bay Packers wide receiver Donald Driver (pictured) won ABC'S Dancing With The Stars 14th season mirrorball trophy last night, the second Black man to take home the coveted prize next to NFL player Emmett Smith.
Driver's limber pro partner Peta Murgatroy, who is White, was just as talented as the duo performed a free style country kickin dance during this week's finale that rocked the house and sealed their victory.
Driver, 37, beat out his fellow finalists, Welsh singer Katherine Jenkins and Cuban actor William Levy.
Watch the video of his electrifying and finale winning performance at http://www.kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com/2012/05/green-bay-packers-wide-receiver-wins.html
Reach Cleveland Urban News. Com by email at editor@clevelandurbannews.com and by telephone at 216-932-3114.
Last Updated on Wednesday, 23 May 2012 09:48
By Kathy Wray Coleman, Editor, Cleveland Urban News. Com and The Kathy Wray Coleman Online News Blog.Com
COLUMBUS, Ohio- The Ohio State Legislature last week removed an amendment added a day earlier to the budget bill that required that Ohioans on food stamps and other welfare be drug tested for potential illegal drugs in order to get or to continue getting federally allocated public assistance, a proposed state law pushed mainly by Republicans that some Ohio lawmakers and community activists say is racist, sexist, elitist, and an unconstitutional stretch that goes too far.
"It's unconstitutional and targets Blacks, women, poor people and other minorities," said Dr. Eugene Jordan, an East Cleveland dentist, community activist and second vice president of the Cleveland NAACP. "It is ludicrous."
Ohio State Sen. Shirley Smith (D-Cleveland)
State Sen. Shirley Smith (D-22), a Cleveland Democrat, told the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Ohio's largest newspaper, that poor, people and minorities were being harassed by the bill and that it is "crazy."
She did not return phone calls seeking comment from Cleveland Urban News.Com and the Kathy Wray Coleman Online News Blog.Com.
State Sen. Nina Turner, also a Cleveland Democrat, (pictured first above) got so angry over the insensitive legislative gesture that she told her colleagues that if they continue to seek to undermine poor people and minorities with the drug testing bill that she will counter by introducing a bill that requires that state employees and elected state officials are drug tested too.
“If we are going to be sincere in preventing individuals from obtaining public funds while also using illegal drugs, then we should start with the people who have the greatest impact on state dollars, politicians,” said Turner, in a press release.
The proposed legislation follows a national trend with 22 other state legislatures introducing, and some adopting, drug testing provisions for welfare recipients.
How state legislatures can dictate federal funds is puzzling some say, and possibly lacking in authority, particularly since federal law, by most authorities, tramples state law in a conflict, absent some collective bargaining and other type of provision that specifies otherwise.
Race, sex, age, religion and discrimination due to national origin, however, are plainly addressed independent of a collective bargaining agreement and by state law, under the constitutional provisions of the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, and by federal statutes such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as Amended .
Whether state legislatures can require unprecedented mandates like drug testing for food when a wide portion of those impacted like Blacks, single women and other minorities are members of a protected class under the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, remains to be seen, if civil liberty groups upset over the trend like the American Civil Liberties Union sue over the controversy.
Ohio State Sen Tim Schaffer (R-Lancaster)
The now removed budget amendment, added last Tuesday to House Bill 487, the mid-biennium budget review, was introduced by state Sen. Tim Schaffer (R-31), a Lancaster Republican and conservative White lawmaker who routinely introduces bills, such as gun toting legislation and now the welfare drug testing bill, that most Black lawmakers and many Democrats find offensive and detrimental to the Black community and other disenfranchised groups.
Data show that while most Americans on food stamps and other public assistance are White, a disproportionate of recipients are Black, partly, say historians, because racism is still alive in America and the vestiges of slavery and racial discrimination have never been remedied to the extent practicable.
Advocates of the bill claim that the state government should not be used to fund illegal drug use.
Reach Cleveland Urban News. Com by email at editor@clevelandurbannews.com and by telephone at 216-932-3114.
Last Updated on Wednesday, 11 August 2021 17:15
There is an Organized Effort to Block the Vote in Ohio and elsewhere in America
Come rally for fair voter Rrghts (Contacts for the rally are Larry Bresler at 216-651-2606, Debbie Kline at 216-310-7657, Kathy Wray Coleman at 216-932-3114 and Art McKoy at 217-253-4070)
Monday May 7, 2012 8:30 A.M
Carl Stokes Federal Courthouse
Corner of Huron and Superior Ave.
(801 West Superior Ave., near Detroit Superior Bridge)
Senator Dick Durbin (IL) and Sherrod Brown (OH) will be holding a hearing as part of the judiciary committee examination of voting changes throughout the United States beginning at 9:30 am inside the courthouse with testimony by Ohio Congresswoman Marcia L. Fudge and others on House Bill 194, the state law that suppresses our right to vote by slashing the time for early voting, requiring id., etc., anything to interfere with the November and other elections. HB 194 is on the November ballot to be repealed . We will rally outside from 8:40 am-9:20 am and then Attend the Hearing inside!
We will rally to demand the right to vote and for the Ohio State Legislature and other state legislatures across the country to stop voter suppression. Rallying groups include the North Shore AFLCIO Federation of Labor, Organize Ohio, the Young Democrats, Cleveland Jobs With Justice, the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless, the Northeast Ohio Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign, the Imperial Women Coalition, Stop Targeting Ohio's Poor, Black on Black Crime Inc, Peace in the Hood, the Oppressed People's Nation and the Carl Stokes Brigade. Tentative speakers include , AFLCIO North Shore AFLCIO Federation of Labor Executive Secretary Harriet Applegate, Cleveland Ward 9 Councilman Kevin Conwell, Cleveland Ward 6 Councilwoman Mamie Mitchell, Organize Ohio and the Northeast Ohio Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign Leader Larry Bresler, Cleveland Jobs With Justice Leader Debbie Kline, Peace in the Hood Leader Khalid Samad, Cleveland NAACP Affiliate Jocelyn Travis, Imperial Women Coalition Leader Kathy Wray Coleman, Black on Black Crime Leader Art McKoy (chants), Oppressed People's Nation Leader Ernest Smith (chants), Cleveland Jobs With Justice Executive Director Debbie Kline, United Pastors in Mission Executive Director Tony Minor, Tony Anderson and Young Democrats Leader Paul Sadler.
Last Updated on Tuesday, 08 May 2012 04:23
CLEVELAND , Ohio-The executive board of the Cleveland Chapter of the NAACP unanimously accepted the resignation of its president, George Forbes, at its monthly meeting on Tues. evening, putting to rest controversy over who was leading the Civil Rights organization while the 81-year-old Forbes has been in Florida with his wife in recent months or years.
James Hardiman, the Cleveland attorney who represented the NAACP in the now defunct Cleveland schools desegregation case and the first vice president, will, by organization charter, take the helm until the November general election, one that is expected to draw a cross section of candidates including the Rev. Hilton Smith, an associate minister at Greater Abyssinia Baptist Church in Cleveland, Rev. Tony Minor, executive director of the United Pastor's in Mission, Mount Olive Baptist Church Pastor Larry Harris, and Dr. Eugene Jordan, an East Cleveland dentist and second vice president for the group.
Hardiman,70, has said that he will not run for president.
Last Updated on Thursday, 20 March 2014 04:44