By Johnette Jernigan and Kathy Wray Coleman, Cleveland Urban New.Com

CLEVELAND, Ohio- Cleveland Urban News.Com has snagged the exclusive below interview with Blaine Griffin (pictured), the highest ranking Black as the elected vice chairperson of the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party, and a ranking member of Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson's administrative cabinet as the director of the city's community relations board. (Editor's note: The mayor announced last week that Griffin is on leave until after the November 6 election from his city job to lead the campaign for the 15 mill property tax levy for Cleveland schools that is on the November ballot. Under state law the city mayor controls the schools and appoints the Cleveland Board of Education).

A married father of three Cleveland schools students who lives in the city's Larchmere neighborhood sandwiched by street between the Shaker Hts. border and the Morris Black Housing Projects, Griffin, 42, has a grassroots thrust, and he had it before joining the mayor's administrative leadership team

Before landing the community relations job, he ran unsuccessfully for city council in Ward 6 , which is led now by Councilwoman Mamie Mitchell.

He quickly stepped to the plate for calm along with the mayor and other city leaders when the remains of 11 Black women were uncovered in late 2009 at the Imperial Ave. home of convicted serial killer Anthony Sowell on Cleveland's majority Black east side.

He welcomes community activists to his office for meetings on controversial issues and networks with residents on both the east and west sides of the Cuyahoga River, a river that  geographically divides the segregated city, which is Cuyahoga County's largest.

He has a husky built but a gentle and innocent style that makes him easy going, his supporters say.

He will say that's not my expertise in certain areas rather than to act as a know it all. Yet he is smart too, and walks easily among the intellectual elite of the mayor's administration.

But he is loyal to the mayor, a Democratic mayor some 20 years his senior.

And while he is the mayor's ear on community matters, Griffin limited the below one-on-one interview to President Obama's reelection campaign, voter registration strategies, Republican perpetuated voter suppression tactics, and his role as the second in charge of the county's Democratic party, one rocked by scandal via a political corruption probe made public three years ago.

That unprecedented probe has brought some 50 convictions or guilty pleas from Democratic party affiliates including two former judges, former Cuyahoga County Auditor Frank Russo, and former Cuyahoga County Commissioner Jimmy Dimora, the prior party chairperson before the FBI came knocking. (Editor's note: Cleveland area attorney Stuart Garson is currently the chairperson of the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party).

Cleveland Urban News.Com Staff Reporter Johnette Jernigan:

What is your relationship with Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson?

Blaine Griffin:

Now Johnette you have to understand, and let me make it clear, I work as a director for Mayor Jackson. I am a government employee. I could not have done this interview on my day job. This interview is in my role as vice chairman of the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party.

Cleveland Urban News.Com:

What has been your greatest challenge and your greatest success in your role as vice chairman of the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party?

Griffin:

The greatest challenge has been the corruption scandal and the greatest success has been my working with Chairman Garson on that scandal. We had to restore the confidence of Cuyahoga County Democrats in the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party. I think we have done a good job of re-positioning the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party in a good light.

And another thing we did was to repeal SB 5 [Senate Bill 5] (Editor's note: Senate Bill 5 was a state law passed early last year that cripples Ohio's public sector unions by stripping them of collective bargaining rights such as the right to strike for fair wages and working conditions, a Republican pushed state law that voters knocked down at the ballot box last November).

And we got the first Cuyahoga County Executive elected, who is a Democrat, and won eight of the 11 Cuyahoga County Council seats. (Editor's Note: Cuyahoga County voters adopted Issue 6 in 2009 swapping the three-member Board of Commissioners with a county executive and 11-member Cuyahga County Council, which is led by county council president C. Ellen Connally (D-9), who is Black, female, and a Democrat. In addition to the commissioners, the county council replaces the elected positions of county sheriff, auditor, treasurer, clerk of courts , coroner and engineer. Though four of the 11county council seats are held by Blacks, Black elected officials of Cuyahoga County, all but state Sen. Nina Turner (D-25), opposed Issue 6 and said that the county executive has too much power. That powerful county executive is Ed FitzGerald, who is White, a former mayor of Lakewood, Oh,  and a prior FBI agent. Cuyahoga County Council is a separate and distinct venue from the 19-member Cleveland City Council ).

Cleveland Urban News.Com:

What do you think about the recent 28-year federal prison sentence given to Jimmy Dimora? Do you think it was a fair sentence?

From the Metro Desk of Cleveland Urban News.Com and the Kathy Wray Coleman Online News Blog.Com

CLEVELAND, Ohio-The education committee of the Cleveland Chapter of the New Black Panther Party in cooperation with the Urban Education Justice League will host an educational forum in opposition to the Cleveland schools property tax levy from 6 pm to 8 pm on Monday, August 20, at Cleveland State University's Main Classroom Building, room 134, 2121 Euclid Ave. in Cleveland.

For more information contact Al Porter at 216-704-5036.

Donna Walker Brown, a community activist who says she will run for Cleveland mayor in 2013, told Cleveland Urban News.Com that she will speak at the event and  that she is against the schools levy because it is "the same ole levy with the same ole crooks to misappropriate the levy money." (Editor's Note: Walker Brown and Kimberly Brown will debate Cleveland Ward 8 Councilman Jeff Johnson on the schools levy at a grassroots forum sponsored by Cleveland Urban News.Com, the Imperial Women, Cleveland African American Museum, the Carl Stokes Brigade, the Underground Railroad, Organize Ohio, Ohio Family Rights, the Oppressed People's Nation, Black on Black Crime, the Family Connection Center, Cleveland Jobs With Justice and others on Thursday, August 30, 2012 from 6 to 8 pm at Lil Africa, 6816 Superior Ave. The moderator is state Rep. Bill Patmon (D-10). For more information on the debate contact Kathy Wray Coleman at 216-659-0473 and ktcoleman8@aol.com)

Other speakers at the CSU forum include Community Activist Norma Freeman, and Rhonda Hill, a Cleveland schools parent.

Cleveland voters will decide the schools levy at the ballot box on November 6.

From the Metro Desk of Cleveland Urban News.Com and the Kathy Wray Coleman Online News Blog.Com

CLEVELAND, Ohio- The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals has reinstated a previously dismissed malicious prosecution and First Amendment lawsuit filed in federal court in 2010 by Community Activist and Cleveland Urban News.Com Publisher and Associate Editor Kathy Wray Coleman against Ohio Eighth District Court of Appeals Judge Kathleen Ann Keough (pictured), the City of Cleveland, and several city officials and other alleged culprits.

The defendants also include former Cleveland Law Director Robert Triozzi, Cleveland Chief Prosecutor Victor Perez, and assistant city prosecutors Joan Bascone and Lorraine Coyne, all of whom are White, though Coleman is Black.

Judge Donald Nugent, the presiding judge over the case from the Federal District Court of the Northern District of Ohio in Cleveland, had dismissed the suit, ruling that Coleman had missed a single status conference after her then attorney Wayne Kerek withdrew from the case.

That so-called scheduled conference, wrote Coleman in her successful brief on appeal, never really was set with any notice to her, and she was never given "prior notice of potential dismissal of the case before the dismissal as mandated by the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure."

In reinstating the lawsuit the panel of judges of the Sixth Circuit said that Nugent abused his discretion by throwing out the case without prior notice and an opportunity to respond and possibly cure any defect.

Now back before Nugent, the suit is pending for further court proceedings, including a possible jury trial.

"Free speech is not always free because one must often pay a price for it and Blacks, women and the little people truly have a difficult time getting fair court proceedings to seek redress for statutory and constitutional wrongs in state and federal courts that serve the politically corrupt Cuyahoga County," said Coleman, who acted as her own attorney for the successful appeal but says she is now searching for representative counsel to prosecute the case. "We want this case heard on the merits at a public trial and we call for an investigation of the number of credible Civil Rights lawsuits filed by Blacks, women, activists, journalists and others that have been dismissed erroneously by Judge Nugent and other federal and state court judges of Ohio for the establishment."

By Kathy Wray Coleman, Associate Publisher, Editor, Cleveland Urban News.Com and the Kathy Wray Coleman Online News Blog.Com

CLEVELAND, Ohio-California Attorney General Kamala Harris (pictured), the first Black to win a statewide election there, flew to Cleveland from San Francisco last week to thank Obama campaign volunteers, and to warn Blacks that Mitt Romney's proposed tax plan is what she dubs elitist and hostile to middle class Americans and the Black community, particularly in comparison to the tax platform the president offers.

"The president has created jobs outside of the corporate tax policy and wants tax reform, and Mitt Romney wants to raise taxes on the middle class, cut taxes for the richest Americans, and eliminate cuts to college tuition." said Harris, who added that she is African American and proud of it, a comment that came after Cleveland Urban News.Com asked what nationality she claims, given that she is Black and of Chinese and Indian American descent.

Labeled the female Obama by some of her admirers, and possibly by her political foes,  Harris said that Romney, the presumptive nominee for president for the Republican Party, wants middle class Americans to bear the brunt of the fallout from the failed economic policies of the George W. Bush administration.

Obama's tax  plan, she says, is not deficit driven as is Romney's, and it stops the Bush tax cuts and keeps tax cuts in place for middle and working class people.

Volunteers at Obama's campaign office at the Shaker Square location in the majority Black city of Cleveland were elated that Harris thought enough of their public service to stop through and say thanks.

"Attorney General Kamala Harris laid out the stark contrast between President Obama and Mitt Romney, especially when it comes to building an economy from the middle out rather than the top down," said Frances Hunter, a volunteer with the Obama for America Campaign. "Like President Obama, I believe that we can no longer ask everything from the middle class and seniors like myself while asking nothing from  the top, and it is not fair that folks like me pay a higher tax rate than millionaires and billionaires like Mitt Romney.'"

From the Metro Desk of Cleveland Urban News.Com and the Kathy Wray Coleman Online News Blog.Com

CLEVELAND, Ohio-The Rev. Al Sharpton was in Cleveland, Oh. today to push voter registration at a prominent Black church, to stomp for President Obama, and to talk on voter suppression and other Civil Rights matters during a key presidential election year.

U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson,  state Sen. Nina Turner (D-25), state Rep. Sandra Williams (D-11), and Cuyahoga County Councilman Julian Rogers (D-10) were among the host of dignitaries that attended.

The luncheon event, held at Greater Abyssinia Baptist Church in Cleveland, was sponsored by the Cuyahoga County Chapter of the National Action Network, which is led by Marcia McCoy as its president and the Rev. E. Theophilus Caviness, the executive director of the organization and the senior pastor of Greater Abyssinia.