By Kathy Wray Coleman, editor-in-chief,  Cleveland Urban News.Com and The Kathy Wray Coleman Online News Blog.Com, Ohio's No 1 and No 2 online Black newspapers

Reach Cleveland Urban News.Com by email at editor@clevelandurbannews.com and by phone at 216-659-0473

CLEVELAND, Ohio-11th Congressional District Congresswoman Marcia L. Fudge (D-11) (pictured), one of two Black congresspersons from Ohio and whose majority Black congressional district includes the cities of Cleveland and Akron and some neighboring and adjacent suburbs of both municipalities, gave her State of the District speech Friday afternoon to a capacity crowd at the City Club in Cleveland.

Among the Black dignitaries there were retired congressman Louis Stokes of Shaker Hts., Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson, state senators Shirley Smith (D-21) and Nina Turner (D-25), Cuyahoga County Council President C. Ellen Connally (D-9), county Councilwoman Yvonne Conwell (D-7), Cleveland Councilmen Zack Reed and Kevin Conwell, Warrensville Hts. Mayor Brad Sellers, Cleveland NAACP President the Rev. Hilton Smith and Cleveland NAACP Executive Director Sheila Wright.

The Democrat Fudge, a former Warrensville Hts. mayor and past national president of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Inc. who leads the Congressional Black Caucus of the nation's Black members of Congress, came off as almost presidential, winning over the audience with her wit and charm, and a database of information.

"If you ask the Republicans what Democrats they know, I guarantee you I'm in their top three to five," she said.

The congresswoman joked that  Republican House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio and Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California should not be left in a room together in response to a question from the audience on how to help dissolve bipartisan conflict so prevalent in Congress and that earlier this year caused a sequester, a term for across the board cuts in federal funding .

Fudge, 60, touched on public education, agriculture, foreclosures, veterans, America's child obesity problem, and what she called the country's insensitivity to the poor, whom she says represent 44 percent of her constituents.

"A five year old should not get a Big Mac but a happy meal," said Fudge, who stressed that much more is needed through a commitment by all stakeholders nationally, statewide and locally to improve the nation's public school system, and that she had brought greater Cleveland superintendents together with U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who traveled to Cleveland for a networking session in April of this year.

The congresswoman also  mentioned the Restore Our Neighborhoods Act of 2013, a bill she sponsored earlier this year with Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur (D-9), a Toledo Democrat, and GOP Congressman Dave Joyce (R-14), a Russell Township Republican, that would abolish abandoned and foreclosed homes in 49 states that are community eyesores.

In addition to the Cleveland NAACP, BakerHostetler law firm, University Hospitals and the Cleveland Clinic were among prominent organizations that bought a table at the event, the first of its kind at the City Club as dubbed a State of the District speech.

Asked by Cleveland Urban News.Com if she would address the allegation that federal monies administered by county officials to Cuyahoga County residents under the Violence Against Women Act, which Congress renewed earlier this year, are being misappropriated in the wake of the abduction, rape and subsequent release from capture two weeks ago of Gina DeJesus, Amanda Berry and Michelle Knight, and the rape and murders of three Black women on Cleveland's largely Black east side over the past three months, Fudge spoke up.

"Kathy if you know that those resources aren't being spent or are not being spent appropriately than you need to notify my office," said Fudge, a licensed attorney. "In this country we do not treat women with the same kind of respect that I believe we should."

On the question  by Cleveland Urban News.Com of whether she believes the passage by Cleveland City Council last week of an ordinance to add 42 more traffic cameras at select street intersections, most in poor Blacks areas, violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment by inequitably targeting the Black community, the congresswoman said that Ohio courts have ruled the traffic cameras legal in general and that she does not know that they disproportionately target the Black community.

Mayor Jackson, a Fudge ally who sat through the congresswoman's half hour long speech and the accompanying question and answer session without unfolding his hands and in an almost robotic manner, supports the traffic cameras as city crime and poverty rates under his tenure as a two-term Black mayor have soared during a slow national economy that is gradually gaining ground.

While the Ohio Supreme Court has held that Ohio traffic cameras, which track red light and speeding violations, are constitutional under the Ohio Constitution, the U.S. Supreme Court had not been asked to hear the controversial issue, and the courts have not been asked to rule on whether the cameras violate the U.S. Constitution.

Moreover, the constitutional question of whether Blacks are subjected to unnecessary surveillance and fiscal hardship in a discriminatory fashion because the city's traffic cameras are mostly in the Black community with Blacks getting some 69 percent of the tickets they generate by snapshot has not been brought in federal court by the filing of a lawsuit, or before any Ohio court of competent jurisdiction, data reveal.

Cleveland Urban News.Com, Copyright 2012