CLEVELAND,Ohio- Cleveland Urban News.Com News Brief

By Kathy Wray Coleman, publisher, editor-in-chief

CLEVELAND,Ohio-The Task Force for Community Mobilization and the Oppressed People's Nation (OPN) will lead two separate rallies today, Friday, March 1, around the 137 bullets deadly shooting late last year of unarmed Blacks Malissa Williams and Timothy Ray Russell by a group of  White Cleveland police officers.

Community Activist Khalid Samad, who also leads Peace in the Hood, will lead the task force rally at 4:30 pm on Public Square in downtown Cleveland and Ernest Smith, chairman of OPN, will lead his group in a rally and candlelight vigil beginning at 5 pm near Heritage Middle School in East Cleveland at Lee and Terrace Roads.

"We urge everybody to come and stand with us and to speak out about this injustice," said Smith, ,whose followers are young Blacks in theirs 20s and 30s and whose group fights against injustices and for the immobilization of young people

Samad is a longtime community activist and former assistant safety director for the city of Cleveland. His group of strong Black men and women, some of whom are also members of the Cleveland Chapter of the New Black Panther Party, are angry  over the Russell  Williams shooting too.

"137 shots and no Black police involved," the task force press release says in part.

Russell, 43, was gunned down late last year by a group of Cleveland police officers along with Williams, 30. Neither was armed and police shot at the pair with an unprecedented 137 rounds of ammunition following a car chase that began in downtown Cleveland and ended near Heritage Middle School in the neighboring largely Black city of East Cleveland.

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