By Kathy Wray Coleman, editor-in-chief, Cleveland Urban News.Com, and the Kathy Wray Coleman Online News Blog.com, Ohio's most read digital Black newspaper and newspaper blog. Tel: (216) 659-0473. Kathy Wray Coleman is a community activist, educator and 21-year investigative journalist who trained at the Call and Post Newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio for 17 years. (www.clevelandurbannews.com) / (www.kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com)
WASHINGTON, D.C.-During his sixth State of the Union address Tuesday night before the two chambers of Congress, and for the first time before a Republican controlled Congress, President Barack Obama (pictured), among a host of other issues, called for free tuition for community college, decried racism, sexism, and religious and gay persecution, and spoke on the outcries out of Ferguson, Missouri.
Those outcries have spurred anti-police brutality protests across the country.
"Man, woman, Black and White, Latino, Asian, immigrant, Native-American, gay, straight, Americans with mental illness or physical disability, everybody matters," said Obama, whose speech promoted a broad agenda on both domestic and foreign policy.
"We may have different takes on the events of Ferguson, and New York," said Obama, referencing the high profile shooting death last year of unarmed Black teen Michael Brown by a White Ferguson cop, and recent controversial police killings across the nation of Black boys and men in general, including Eric Garner in New York, and 12-year-old Tamir Rice at a public park on Cleveland's west side.
"But surely we can understand a father who fears his son can't walk home without being harassed," the president said relative to the police killings. "And surely we can understand a wife who can't rest until the police officer she married walks through the front door at the end of a shift."
The focus of the president's 60-minute speech, the second shortest of his presidency, was the middle class, and what he dubbed "middle class economics."
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Pictured are Ohio Democratic Party Chairman David Pepper and ODP chair of Political Engagement Nina Turner, a Cleveland Democrat and former state senator.
By Kathy Wray Coleman, editor-in-chief, 
