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Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, Ohio's leader in Black digital news

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2020, 2019-176 , 2018-181, 2017-173, 2016-137, 2015-213, 2014-266, 2013-226, 2012-221, 2011-135, 2010-109, 2009-5


Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, Ohio's most read Black digital newspaper and Black blog with some 5 million views on Google Plus alone.Tel: (216) 659-0473 and Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com. Kathy Wray Coleman, editor-in-chief, and who trained for 17 years at the Call and Post Newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio. We interviewed former president Barack Obama one-on-one when he was campaigning for president. As to the Obama interview, CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE AT CLEVELAND URBAN NEWS.COM, OHIO'S LEADER IN BLACK DIGITAL NEWS.

Black Lives Matter Cleveland to protest June 12 for Euclid police killing victim Luke Stewart and other Blacks questionably killed by police, a protest that follows a peaceful protest for 23-year-old Cleveland police killing victim Desmond Franklin

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Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.comthe most read Black digital newspaper in Ohio and in the Midwest. Tel: (216) 659-0473. Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com. We interviewed former president Barack Obama one-on-one when he was campaigning for president. As to the Obama interview. CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE AT CLEVELAND URBAN NEWS.COM, OHIO'S LEADER IN BLACK DIGITAL NEWS.

 

By Kathy Wray Coleman, associate publisher, editor-in-chief. A former biology teacher, Coleman is a legal, political and investigative reporter who trained at the Call and Post Newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio for 17 years.


CLEVELAND URBAN NEWS-COM, CLEVELAND Ohio- Greater Cleveland community activists, led by Black Lives Matter Cleveland, will protest Friday, June 12, 2020 beginning at 6 pm outside of FirstEnergy Stadium in downtown Cleveland where the Cleveland Browns play NFL football with the family of Luke Stewart (pictured), a 23-year-old Black man killed by a White Euclid, Ohio cop in March of 2017, Euclid a neighboring Cleveland suburb that is roughly 60 percent Black but is run by White folks.


There is no Browns game Friday, the team's first preseason game Aug 15 at 1 pm against the Cincinnati Bears.


According to the Black Lives Matter Facebook event page for the protest activists said that they will demand justice for Stewart at the public event, and all Black men and women gunned down or otherwise erroneously killed by overanxious police officers, usually White cops.


"That was my son and we want justice," said Stewart's mother, Mary Stewart, to ClevelandUrbanNews.Com and KathyWrayColemanOnlineNewsBlog.Com editor-in-chief Kathy Wray Coleman at a sit-in rally led by Black Lives Matter Cleveland at Euclid City Hall after the tragic incident occurred some two year ago, an incident that has sparked racial unrest in the middle and lower middle class city of some 50,000 people.

 

Stewart's  sister, Tierra Stewart, told ClevelandUrbanNews.Com and the KathyWrayColemanOnlineNewsBlog.Com that "we need officer Mathew Rhodes off the streets."


Friday's  upcoming Black Lives Matter protest comes on the heels of a peaceful protest for justice for 23-year-old Desmond Franklin, whom Cleveland police shot and killed in April on the city's largely White west side, and rioting that broke out in downtown Cleveland during the George Floyd protest May 30, Floyd killed by a White Minneapolis cop who publicly set on his neck following an arrest until he killed him, action that brought nationwide protests and criminal charges and the firings of the arresting cop and the three other involved Minneapolis police officers.

 

Stewart was shot and killed by Euclid police officer Matthew Rhodes.


Rhodes is White and escaped an indictment in 2017 by a Cuyahoga County grand jury even after activists, led by Black Lives Matter Cleveland, shut down a Euclid City Council meeting that summer during a sit-in over Stewart's killing by police and excessive force by the largely White City of Euclid Police Department.


This is how the incident leading up to Stewart's shooting death purportedly  unfolds.

 

Rhodes and his partner, both of them still employed and on the job with the city of Euclid, were purportedly investigating a report of a suspicious vehicle in the area of South Lakeshore Boulevard and East 215th Street on the day in question.


As Stewart allegedly tried to pull away, police say, officer Rhodes allegedly tried to pull him from the car and then jumped into the moving car ultimately shooting the young Black man five times and killing him.


Police say that Stewart allegedly tried to run them over with his car, a claim his family members and attorneys say they believe is bogus.


Stewart's family sued in federal district court behind the police killing alleging wrong death and a host of other claims.


The suit says in relevant part that Stewart was unnecessarily beaten by officer Rhodes, tasered and fatally shot simply because he tried to drive away from cops that approached him while he was asleep in a parking lot.


A federal district court judge has since dismissed the suit, ruling that the White cop that shot and killed Stewart was justified in doing so, an all too familiar outcome relative to the shooting deaths by White cops of Black men in America.

 

Stewart's killing by Euclid police is not the only high profile excessive force incident in that town of a young Black man, Black motorist Richard Hubbard, 25, was beaten by a White Euclid police officer on Aug. 12, 2017  during a traffic stop for a suspended driver's license.


A video of that incident went viral.


It was a routine traffic stop, police said of Hubbard's beating, ignoring the fact that the Black young man was beaten unmercifully, his face bruised, and swollen.


Police sad Hubbard resisted arrest, Hubbard later pleading not guilty to initial charges of resisting arrest, driving without a license and a traffic signal violation, charges that prosecutors later dismissed.

 

Officer Michael Amiott, the culprit, is seen on the dash cam punching Hubbard several times while he was on the ground, and with his partner, another cop, and and other witnesses watching.


Amiott, who was first suspended for 45 days, was later fired, and thereafter reinstated by an arbitrator, who also reduced his 45 day suspension to 15 days.


The officer is now facing misdemeanor charges of two counts of assault and one count of interfering with civil rights as a result of the incident.

 

Hubbard and a girlfriend in the car he was pulled from and beaten by police have both  filed  suit against the city, Euclid Mayor Kirsten Holzheimer Gail, who is White, and a number of other defendants, Hubbard also alleging  excessive force and other claims against officer Amiott, his partner on the scene, and a third involved officer.


Both the criminal charges against officer Amiott and Hubbard's lawsuit are pending.


Both Euclid and Cleveland are in Cuyahoga County, the state's second largest of its 88 counties that is 29 percent Black.


Cleveland is a party to a court-monitored consent decree for police reforms with the U.S. Department of Justice following several police killings of unarmed Black people since 2012 , including the shooting deaths of Malissa Williams and Timothy Russell in 2012 and the police killings of Tanisha Anderson and 12-year-old Tamir Rice in 2014.


Others shot and killed by Cleveland police since 2012, or just simply killed by them like Anderson, who was slammed to the ground and killed by a cop  during her arrest outside her home on the city's east side following a 9-1-1 call from the family for mental health assistance, include rapper Kenneth Smith, Brandon Jones, and Daniel Ficker, who was White.

 

Ficker, Smith and Junes were all three under 28-year-old when Cleveland police shot and killed them.

 


Last Updated on Friday, 12 June 2020 22:40

Funeral services held for Minneapolis police murder victim George Floyd in Houston as the Reverend Al Sharpton delivers the fury eulogy, the mayor of Houston and two members of Congress also among the speakers-By Kathy Wray Coleman-Clevelandurbannews.com

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Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, the most read Black digital newspaper in Ohio and in the Midwest

 

By Kathy Wray Coleman, associate publisher, editor-in-chief. A former biology teacher, Coleman is a legal, political and investigative reporter who trained at the Call and Post Newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio for 17 years.

 

CLEVELANDURBANNEWS.COM, HOUSTON, Texas-Funeral services were held for Minneapolis police murder victim George Floyd Tuesday in his hometown of Houston, Texas as Black dignitaries, clergy, community activists, friends and community members in general paid their respects to Floyd and his family, a nationally televised home-going celebration that follows two weeks of protests and rioting across the country since a White Minnesota cop viciously took the unarmed Black man's life and sparked a nationwide Civil Rights movement and a discussion on institutional racism and police brutality.


It was the third event honoring Floyd, the first a memorial in Minneapolis where the tragic incident occurred, and where Floyd, a 46-year-old father of two, lived


Some 500 people were at the private funeral services at the Fountain of Praise Church in Houston Tuesday, practically all of them wearing masks.


It was difficult to find a White person in the audience, the singing and music appropriately chosen as the atmosphere was that of southern Black funeral with Blacks dressed to the nines and Black leaders, politicians and preachers who spoke showcasing their oratorical talents.

 

 

Among a litany of speakers, two members of Congress spoke, as did Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, who also announced that he will be issuing an executive order banning certain police practices in his city such as choke-holds.

 


U.S. Reps Al Green and Sheila Jackson Lee, both Texas Democrats, spoke early on, Green announcing that Congress had just introduced the Justice in Police Policing Act and Lee saying Blacks are sick and tired of being sick and tired of racism and police abuse.


Rep Lee, who has represented Texas's 18th congressional district since 1995, said that people around the world are up in arms in response to Floyd's death and centuries of racial prejudice, police brutality and the disenfranchisement of Black people in the country."


"There are people rising up who will never sit down until you get justice," said Congresswoman Lee.

 

The articulate Rev Al. Sharpton delivered a brilliant and powerful eulogy.


Sharpton preached that Floyd, who will be buried next to his mother in Houston, was an ordinary person who sparked a worldwide movement.


"Floyd was an ordinary brother from Houston's housing projects who nobody thought much about, though he was loved by his family," said Sharpton, also a national Civil Rights figure who leads the New York- based National Action Network and an MSNBC talk show host.

 

Sharpton said that God has made Floyd and his unprecedented death "the cornerstone of a movement that's going to change the whole world."


Floyd's niece, Brooke Williams, spoke for the family along with an aunt, who is his late mother's sister, and Floyd's two younger bothers, both of them brought to tears.


Williams said her uncle's death should not be in vain and that protests must continue if necessary.


And she said that it is a myth to suggest that America can be made great again, because "America was never great."


The 'Make America Great Again' slogan is a popular campaign slogan of President Trump and his supporters, as is the theme 'Make America Great' that Trump used as a campaign slogan when he won the presidency in 2016 over Democrat Hillary Clinton, Clinton winning the popular vote but losing the electoral college.


The Republican president will face Joe Biden for a general election contest for president in November, Trump expressing his condolences to the Floyd family but not much more, Sharpton said during his eulogy.


The Democratic presidential nominee, Biden was not there by design, he said, the former vice president who served two terms served under Barack Obama, the nation's first Black president, expressing condolences before the funeral in a meeting with Floyd's family and Black leaders.


Biden said he did not want to show boat and that his attendance would have required security that would have taken away from the gathering


Arrested on a forgery charge over a counterfeit $20 bill, the murder by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin of Floyd has resurrected racial unrest and anger in the Black community relative to unarmed Blacks questionably killed by anxious White cops.


This includes Staten Island police murder victim Eric Garner, whom New York police choked to death in 2014, the same year Cleveland police gunned down 12-year-old Tamir Rice at a park and recreation center on the city's largely White west side, and the death of Sandra Bland, a 28-year-old community activist who was found hanged in a jail cell in Waller County, Texas in 2015.


Floyd died May 25 and after Chauvin, the arresting officer, held his knee on his neck until he killed him, and before a crowd of people as the Black man pleaded for his life, yelled for his dead mother, and cried out that he could not breathe.


Riots immediately broke out in Minneapolis, and thereafter in cities across the country, including Cleveland, Columbus, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Chicago, Oakland, Louisville, and Indianapolis, which had three fatalities.

 

Chauvin and the other three involved officers, all of them White, were immediately fired.


Chauvin has since been charged with second degree murder and manslaughter and the other three former officers have been charged with aiding and abetting, all four in jail in custody with bail ultimately set at $1 million for Chauvin.


A judge set a bond of 750,000 each for the other three former police officers, who, if convicted, face up to 40 years in prison.

Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.comthe most read Black digital newspaper in Ohio and in the Midwest. Tel: (216) 659-0473. Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com. We interviewed former president Barack Obama one-on-one when he was campaigning for president. As to the Obama interview. CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE AT CLEVELAND URBAN NEWS.COM, OHIO'S LEADER IN BLACK DIGITAL NEWS.

Last Updated on Tuesday, 23 June 2020 19:58

Congress introduces the Justice in Policing Act that Congresswoman Fudge originally co-sponsored, Fudge's largely Black 11th congressional district of which includes Cleveland and the bill a byproduct of nationwide protests against excessive force

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Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.comthe most read Black digital newspaper in Ohio and in the Midwest. Tel: (216) 659-0473. Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com.


By Kathy Wray Coleman, associate publisher, editor-in-chief. A former biology teavher, Coleman is a legal, political and investigative reporter who trained at the Call and Post Newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio for 17 years.


CLEVELANDURBANNEWS.COM, WASHINGTON, D.C. Today, U.S. Rep. Marcia L. Fudge (OH-11) (pictured), a Warrensville Heights Democrat whose largely Black 11th congressional district includes Cleveland, announced her support of the Justice in Policing Act, comprehensive legislation introduced today in both the House and Senate that is aimed at increasing police accountability and transparency and building trust between members of law enforcement and the communities they are sworn to protect and serve.

 

In large part, the Justice in Policing Act, which follows national protests in the past two weeks that followed the killing by a Minneapolis police officer of George Floyd, and ongoing racism and excessive force by police against the Black community countrywide, prohibits federal, state, and local law enforcement from racial, religious and discriminatory profiling, and mandates training on racial, religious, and discriminatory profiling for all law enforcement.


Also a former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, Rep. Fudge, one of two Blacks in Congress from Ohio, is an original cosponsor of the bill, which was introduced by Rep Karen Bass (CA-37), who is also chair of the CBC, House Judiciary Committee Chair Jerrold Nadler (NY-10), and former presidential candidates Sens. Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Kamala Harris (D-CA).


Bass, Booker and Harris are Black, and Rep. Nader is White, and all four are Democrats, the bill needing passage in the Democratically-controlled House, and the majority Republican Senate before it can be sent to the desk of the president, who could veto any such measure.


President Donald Trump, a Republican, faces Democratic nominee Joe Biden for the 2020 presidential election in November, Biden leading Trump in the polls following fallout from the coronavirus pandemic and the president's unorthodox response to rioting by protesters.

 

“When we heard George Floyd’s plea, ‘I can’t breathe,’ and witnessed the last eight minutes and 46 seconds of his life, it was hard not to be reminded of the hundreds of unarmed Black men and women killed at the hands of law enforcement,” said Rep. Fudge. “As people all over the country band together in outrage, it is time for Congress to hear and answer their cries for help by taking legislative action. "

 

Fudge said that "the Justice in Policing Act includes long overdue, bold reforms that will help end the police brutality and racial profiling that have plagued our communities for too many years. "


"By holding police accountable, increasing transparency of police misconduct, banning choke-holds, and making a number of other needed changes," said Fudge, "we can begin to rebuild the severed relationship between the police and the people they are sworn to serve.”

 

Arrested on a forgery charge over a counterfeit $20 bill, the murder by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin of Floyd, 46, has resurrected anger in the Black community relative to Blacks questionably killed by anxious White cops.


This includes Staten Island police murder victim Eric Garner, whom New York police choked to death in 2014, the same year Cleveland police gunned down 12-year-old Tamir Rice at a park and recreation center on the city's largely White west side, and the death of Sandra Bland, a 28-year-old community activist who was found hanged in a jail cell in Waller County, Texas in 2015.


Floyd died May 25 and after Chauvin, the arresting officer, held his knee on his neck until he killed him, and before a crowd of people as the Black man pleaded for his life and cried out that he could not breathe.


Riots immediately broke out in Minneapolis and thereafter in cities across the country, including Cleveland, Columbus, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Chicago, Oakland, and Indianapolis, which had three fatalities.

 

Chauvin and the other three involved officers, all of them White, were immediately fired.


Chauvin has since been charged with second degree murder and manslaughter and the other three officers have been charged with aiding and abetting, all four in jail in custody with bail upped today by a federal judge from $500 thousand to $1 million for Chauvin, as the other three former police officers, who, if convicted, face up to 40 years in prison, were previously handed a bond set at 750 thousand each.

 

Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.comthe most read Black digital newspaper in Ohio and in the Midwest. Tel: (216) 659-0473. Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com. We interviewed former president Barack Obama one-on-one when he was campaigning for president. As to the Obama interview. CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE AT CLEVELAND URBAN NEWS.COM, OHIO'S LEADER IN BLACK DIGITAL NEWS.

 

Last Updated on Wednesday, 10 June 2020 04:22

Joe Biden officially clinches the Democratic nomination for president, the Black vote crucial to him winning the presidency over President Trump in November....Voter turnout fell 21 percent in Cuyahoga County, which includes Cleveland, for Ohio's primary

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Pictured is former vice president Joe Biden, who, on Saturday, clinched the Democratic nomination for president

Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, the most read Black digital newspaper and Black blog in Ohio and in the Midwest. Tel: (216) 659-0473. Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com.


By Kathy Wray Coleman, associate publisher, editor-in-chief. (Coleman is a former biology teacher and longtime legal, political and investigative reporter who trained at the Call and Post Newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio for 17 years. She covered, via 26 articles, the 2008 presidential election for the Call and Post, former president Barack Obama, the nation's first Black president, elected president in 2008 and reelected in 2012).

 

CLEVELANDURBANNEWS.COM, CLEVELAND, Ohio- Former vice president Joe Biden, who served under former president Barack Obama, the nation's first Black president, has officially clinched the Democratic nomination for president and will face incumbent Republican President Donald Trump for the 2020 presidential election in November.


Biden needed 1,991 of the 3,979 pledged delegates to win the nomination.


He won an electoral victory in Guam on Saturday and, in turn, surpassed the necessary 1,991 delegates to claim the nomination on the first ballot of the party's convention.


The Democratic National Committee (DNC) will hold its presidential nominating convention the week of Aug. 17 in Milwaukee.


Winning the nomination was all but ensured when Biden's closest opponent dropped out of the race, U.S. Sen Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a socialist Democrat who was making his second bid for president after losing the nomination to Hillary Clinton in 2016, Clinton going on to lose the general election to Trump, a real estate mogul and former television personality.


During his bid this time around for the Democratic nomination Sanders, as was Biden, was effective in narrowing the more than 28 Democratic candidates down to the two of them.


Sanders nearly won Iowa, coming in second place to Pete Buttigieg, who left the race and announced his endorsement of Biden.

 

Sanders went on to win New Hampshire and Nevada.


But Biden, powered by the Black vote and an endorsement from Black U.S. Rep James Clyburn, subsequently won South Carolina, and Super Tuesday, and never looked back.


Obama and Sanders, and nearly all of the other Democratic candidates for president, and the Dems in general, have endorsed Biden.


Biden, 77, remains the pragmatic choice of Black voters for president, and southern and elderly Black voters simply adore him.


A popular Republican among his strong base of supporters, President Trump still lags behind him in nearly every poll, including Quinnipiac, CNN, ABC News/Washington Post, and Emerson polls.


Such polls have Biden anywhere from four to seven percentage points ahead if the election were held today, the Emerson poll showing a Biden Trump election night showdown in November at 53-47%, and the ABC News/Washington Post poll showing him ahead of Trump by 10 points at 53-43%.

 

Even the conservative-leaning Fox News poll shows Biden ahead of Trump by 8 points 48-40%.


And while polls show Biden is the favorite to win the presidency this year, when Democrats and Black people stay home and do not vote, or, since the coronavirus outbreak, choose not to vote by mail, it helps the Republicans, data show.


While Black voter turnout for the first time in history outpaced White in 2012 when Obama ran for reelection, it declined by 7 percentage points in 2016 when Clinton lost the presidency to Trump, pundits saying that if Blacks vote in this year's election like they did in 2012 Biden has a good chance of beating Trump.


There is no question that both Blacks and Democrats must vote in large numbers for a win for Biden to materialize


Cuyahoga County Board of Elections officials in Cleveland were on target in predicting a 25 percent voter turnout and at least a 15 percent decrease in voter turnout in the county for this year's primary compared to 2016 in response to the coronavirus outbreak as Ohio's no-voting-at-the-polls deadline was April 28, a rescheduled mail-in ballot election authorized under a new state law approved overwhelming by the state legislature.


Except for special cases, such as the legally blind who could vote in person at boards of elections, Ohio's primary was essentially relegated to a mail-in-only ballot election.

 

Some 192,065 voters casts ballots in the county for this year's primary out of 858, 057 registered voters, a 23 percent voter turnout compared to 44 percent relative to county results for the March 2016 primary election in Ohio.


In short, there was a 21 percent decrease in voter turnout in the county in comparison to 2016, notwithstanding that neither Trump nor Biden, who won Ohio's primary, had any relevant opposition.


The 29 percent Black Cuyahoga County has a population of some 1.2 million people and includes Cleveland, a largely Black major American city led by four-term Black Democratic mayor Frank Jackson.

 

The county is a Democratic stronghold.

 

Among those registered in Cuyahoga County for this year's election are roughly 225,000 Democratic voters, 100,000 Republicans, and 500,000 non-party or Independent voters, county board of elections officials said.

Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, the most read Black digital newspaper and Black blog in Ohio and in the Midwest. Tel: (216) 659-0473. Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com. We interviewed former president Barack Obama one-on-one when he was campaigning for president. As to the Obama interview, CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE AT CLEVELAND URBAN NEWS.COM, OHIO'S LEADER IN BLACK DIGITAL NEWS.

 


 

 

Last Updated on Monday, 13 July 2020 01:06

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