By Kathy Wray Coleman, Editor-in-Chief,
Cleveland Urban News. Com and The Cleveland Urban News.Com Blog,
Ohio's Most Read Online Black Newspaper and Newspaper Blog. Tel: 216-659-0473
CLEVELAND, Ohio- The housing committee of the
Cleveland Chapter NAACP will take testimony for the NAACP in efforts to promote state and federal legislation to address the problems of housing discrimination, foreclosures, mortgage impropriety and the abundance of abandoned homes that draw crime and heightened violence against women of greater Cleveland and elsewhere. The open-to-the-public meeting in which all community members that want to listen in or testify are invited, particularly victims and their family members, is at 5:30 pm on Tuesday, January 21, 2014, at Bright Star Missionary Baptist Church in East Cleveland, 13028 Shaw Ave. For more information contact the Cleveland Chapter NAACP at 216-231-6260 and Bright Star at 216-249-5213. (For directions to Bright Star take Euclid Avenue in downtown Cleveland to Shaw High School in East Cleveland and turn left on to Shaw Avenue and go down about one-half mile).
A stenographer and videographer secured by Cleveland NAACP will be present and everyone is invited said Cleveland NAACP Housing Committee Chairperson the Rev David Hunter, senior pastor at Bright Star and president of the Baptist Ministers Alliance. The meeting is a follow up to the housing committee meeting on January 14 that drew nearly 60 people including John Hairston as executive director from the office of Congresswoman Marcia L. Fudge, Steven Caviness, also of Fudge's office, and Nick Turner, a representative on mortgage and foreclosures from the office of Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur. Representatives of both Fudge and Kaptur will also be on hand at the testimony session on Tuesday, meeting organizers said.
Among those slated to testify are Black on Black Crime Vice President Al Porter on violence against women and abandoned homes, Cleveland Ward 6 Councilwoman Mamie Mitchell, also on the issue of the violence against women and abandoned homes., Others will testify on violence against women, abandoned homes or mortgage impropriety including Community activists Genevieve Mitchell, Marva Patterson, Bettie Simpson, Kathy Wray Coleman, Frances Caldwell, Christine Wilson, Mariah Crenshaw, Valerie Robinson, Dr. Stuart Robinson, and the Rev. Pamela Pinkney Butts. Family members of victims of women raped or murdered near abandoned homes and some of the victims themselves will also testify.
The Cleveland NAACP is led by the Rev Hilton Smith, an associate minister at Greater Abyssinia Baptist Church in Cleveland and a community relations vice president for Turner Construction Company. Sheila Wright is the local chapter's executive director.
Participating grassroots activists groups or some of their group members include the Imperial Women Activists Group, the Carl Stokes Brigade, Communities United, the Cleveland African-American Museum, the Cleveland Black Contractors Group, Peace in the Hood, the Task Force for Community Mobilization, the People's Forum, The Greater Cleveland Immigrant Support Network, Sister to Sister, Stop Targeting Ohio's Poor, People for the Imperial Act, the Fairfax Business Association , the Oppressed People's Nation, and Black on Black Crime Inc.
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