LOS ANGELES, California-Rodney King (pictured), whose 1991 brutal and videotaped beating by a group of White Los Angeles policemen generated a week of costly riots that killed 55 people and heightened racial tensions across the country after a predominantly White jury acquitted the officers was found dead Sun. afternoon in his swimming pool in a home he shared with his fiancee in Rialto, Calif., a Los Angeles suburb. (Watch the video of the beating at www.kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com) .

He was 47, and there was no evidence of foul play,  police said.

Famous for going off script from his lawyers and saying "can we all get along?" at a press conference calling for peace around the riots, King publicly admitted that he had alcohol and drug abuse problems.

By Kathy Wray Coleman, Editor

CLEVELAND, Ohio-President Barack Obama (pictured first) gave Cleveland its proper respect and met briefly with about 10 grassroots volunteers and area movers and shakers on Thurs afternoon, moments before his 53 minute speech at the Cuyahoga Community College campus in Cleveland that drew over 1500 people.

Among the special guests that the president courted before his address to a capacity crowd at Tri-C were Congresswomen Marcia Fudge of Warrensville Hts.  (D-11), Betty Sutton (D-13) of Copley Township, and Toledo's Marcy Kaptor (D-9), ( all three pictured second, third and  fourth  respectively), and Blaine Griffin (pictured fifth), the director of the community relations board for the City of Cleveland and the highest ranking Black in the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party as its vice chairperson.

With his always appealing style and finesse, Obama reminded the audience of why voters catapulted him to president of the United States of America, and he stayed on task with highlights on key issues such as the economy, foreign policy, jobs, and research development.

The president took on Mitt Romney, a millionaire and the presidential nominee for the Republican Party, saying that Romney has not one substantive plan for reducing the country's financial deficit and creating more jobs for the American people, and that his economic recovery proposal would, in reality, create more debt.

"I haven't seen a single independent analysis that my opponent's economic plan would actually reduce the deficit, not one," said Obama. "Even analysts that might agree with parts of his economic theory don't believe that his plan would create more jobs in the short term."

The president said in almost an emergent tone that he and Romney have distinctively different political philosophies and suggested that Romney might even be irrational and possibly dangerous in how he views public policy matters.

"At stake is not simply a choice between two candidates or two political parties," the president said. "But between two paths for our country."

Under the George W. Bush presidential regime the rich got richer and the poor got poorer, and it was the failed economic policies of the Bush administration that drew the current recession, preached Obama.

"Over the last few decades the income of the top one percent grew by more that 275 percent to an average of 1.3 million a year and big financial institutions saw their profits soar, " said Obama. "But prosperity never trickled down to the middle class. From 2001 to 2008 we had the slowest job growth in half a century. The typical family saw their incomes halt."

He emphasized a campaign platform centered on core issues  such as "education, energy, innovation, infrastructure, and a tax code focused on American job creation and balanced deficit reduction."

And those that Obama gave special attention by gathering for a meet and greet session before his speech praised him, including Griffin and Fudge, Ohio's only Black congressperson.

"I enjoyed  meeting with the president and his speech, to me, was one of his best," said Griffin, 42, a rising star in the county's Democratic Party who caught the president's attention after inviting Black leaders to a meeting earlier last week to strengthen strategies to help the Obama campaign while a few members of Cleveland's Old Black Political Guard, like former Cleveland NAACP President George Forbes, were spearheading a meeting at the Cleveland Clinic as Democrats with Republican Ohio Gov John Kasich, a staunch Romney supporter.

Forbes, 81, and now a part time Cleveland attorney who resides much of the time with his wife in Florida, was not invited to the Obama meet session and is a longtime opportunist and insignificant old man, an Obama campaign official has said on condition of anonymity.

Fudge, whose 11th congressional district includes Cleveland's majority Black east side and its eastern suburbs, and beginning next year will also include a predominantly Black pocket of Akron and staggering parts of its Summit County suburbs, said that Obama hit the necessary points and that the president is moving the country in the right direction.

"Congresswoman Fudge believes that the president is on the right path to investing in education, rebuilding our infrastructure, and not causing the poor and middle class to suffer to pay for more tax cuts for the wealthy," said Fudge spokesperson Belinda Prinz.

Reach Cleveland Urban News. Com by email at editor@clevelandurbannews.com and by telephone at 216-932-3114.

By Frances Caldwell and Kathy Wray Coleman

CLEVELAND,Ohio-A host of prominent members of Ohio's Republican Party and a few Black Cleveland Democrats remembered former Cleveland Ward 7 Councilman Fannie Lewis (pictured first) for her support of the school choice movement at the Renaissance Hotel in Cleveland Monday evening during the tenth year anniversary celebration of the U.S. Supreme Court's 2002 upholding of the Cleveland School Voucher Program that gives vouchers for public state funds for under privileged Cleveland children to attend parochial and private schools.

The  keynote speaker was Ken Starr, whose report as then U.S. in house counsel broke the Clinton- Lewenski scandal and initiated the impeachment process against former president Bill Clinton, who ultimately received a brief suspension of his law license for lying in a deposition about his celebrated affair with the then 21-year-old Monica Lewinski, at the time a White House aid.

Democrats state Rep. Bill Patmon (D-10) (pictured second) and  state Sen. Nina Turner (D-25) (pictured third), both got an award for community service, an indication by some standards that Ohio Republicans and some Democrats are trying to bridge the bi-partisan divide, or are they?

Other Ohio Republican operatives that were among the more than 800 attendees of students, lawmakers, attorneys and community affiliates include retired U.S. Sen. and former Cleveland Mayor George Voinovich, former Ohio Attorney General Betty Montgomery, former Ohio House Speaker Jo Ann Davidson, now chair of the Ohio Casino Control Commission, and Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas Judge Annette Butler, a Black Republican.

State Rep. John Barnes Jr. (D-12), a Black Cleveland Democrat like Turner and Patmon, went too, but to support Patmon, who like Turner and recipient John Zitzner, got the Fannie Lewis Heritage Award from the groups that sponsored the event, which include Ohio School Choice, a non profit school voucher advocacy organization out of Columbus.

"I am very proud of my association with Ms. Lewis, and all she did to help Cleveland's children," said Patmon in accepting his award.

A former Cleveland councilman elected as a state lawmaker in 2010, Patmon sponsored legislation that waives the 10 to 25 percent fee that Cleveland parents previously had to pay for the school vouchers.

Turner said that she was also honored to be recognized with an award that bears Lewis' name and gave a brief sermon to the majority Republican crowd, one that drew a standing ovation

"Every child deserves the right to choose the best schools available, whether charter, private, public or religious. This is a Matthews: 25 moment," Turner said, with a tone similar to that of an articulate and talented baptist preacher.

Lewis, a Black Democrat who served on Cleveland City Council for more than two decades until her death in 2011 at  the age of 82 and went from welfare recipient  to one of city council's most outspoken and respected lawmakers, broke political ranks to help  lobby the U.S. Supreme Court for school vouchers, or now about $34 hundred each annually of pubic funds for some five thousand K-8 Cleveland kids to go to private schools. She believed that private schools were an out for poor Black children in Cleveland's Hough neighborhood trapped by poverty in a failing school district, and she had Republican support, and Akron millionaire David Brennan, who owns and operates voucher schools through his company, White Hat Management.

By Kathy Wray Coleman, Editor

SANDFORD, Florida-The wife of accused teen killer George Zimmerman, who is facing a charge of second-degree murder for allegedly stalking and gunning down unarmed Black teen Trayvon Martin earlier this year in a Florida suburb, was charged on Tues. with perjury.

Shellie Zimmerman (pictured) was arrested without incident by Seminole County sheriffs at her home, authorities said.

By Kathy Wray Coleman, Editor

CLEVELAND, Ohio-President Barack Obama (pictured first) will visit the recreation center at Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland at E. 38th St and Community College Ave. in the early afternoon on Thurs., Obama for America campaign officials announced Sun.

The campaign event is free and open to the public.

Tickets are needed to attend and can be picked up one-person-a-ticket- beginning at  5 p.m. on Mon at the Tri-C recreation center; Cuyahoga County Democratic Party Headquarters, 1466 St. Clair Ave., Cleveland; and campaign offices at 13100 Shaker Square in Cleveland and 5734 Ridge Road in Parma.

Meanwhile, African-American Cleveland area Black elected officials and other Black leaders for Obama will meet Mon. from 6:30 pm to 8:30 pm at Woodlawn Academy in Cleveland, 2950 Martin Luther King Drive, for a campaign strategy session that is open to the public, said Blaine Griffin, vice president of the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party and the director of the community relations board for the City of Cleveland.

For more information on that public meeting contact Obama for America African-American Vote Director Ashley Allison at 614-286-9486 or Obama for America Shaker Square campaign headquarters in Cleveland at 216- 416-2017.

The telephone number to the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party offices in Cleveland is 216-621-9750.

Griffin said that the meeting is also an opportunity for Black people to give input relative to the Obama campaign.

The president is in a neck and neck race with Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, and Ohio remains a battleground state.

Obama, America's first Black president, comes to town at a time when Black leaders are calling on him to embrace them more firmly into his campaign, about 50 of them even meeting just last week with Republican Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who supports Romney, and at the urging of George Forbes (pictured third), the former president of the Cleveland NAACP and longtime general counsel for the Call and Post Newspaper, Ohio's Black press.

Whether the president's upcoming visit to Cleveland was planned before Gov. Kasich began meeting with Black leaders as a group last week in Cleveland has not been announced publicly, though an Obama campaign official said under condition of anonymity that it had been planned long ago and that Forbes is insignificant.

Reach Cleveland Urban News. Com by email at editor@clevelandurbannews.com and by telephone at 216-932-3114.