From The Metro Desk Of 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- As Ariel Castro was arraigned this week in the Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas on a not guilty plea on 329 counts, including multiple counts of rape and kidnapping of Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight at his home on Cleveland's west side, Ward 2 Councilman Zack Reed (pictured), one of nine Black east side Cleveland City Council persons, presented a $2500 check from Walmart to the city for pepper spray for his constituents. Among others, he was flanked by Ward 8 Councilman Jeff Johnson, also an east side councilman.

Cleveland is divided along racial lines with Blacks dominating the east side of the Cuyahoga River and Whites primarily residing on the west side. But abduction, kidnapping,  rape, and murder of women have become universal for a  largely Black major American city fighting high unemployment, increased foreclosures, rapidly increasing crime rates, and struggling public schools.

Reed, whose ward includes the poverty stricken Mt Pleasant and Kinsman neighborhoods and  is among 18 members of Cleveland City Council, which is half White and half Black, has been speaking out in recent months on violence against women. He held a community forum earlier this year in his ward on the city's east side after Jazmine Trotter, 20, and Christine Malone, 45, both Black and both victims of rape and murder, were found in separate vacant lots less than a mile from each other near East 93rd St. and Bessemer Ave.

Just two weeks ago police found the murdered body of 21-year-old Ashley Leszynski in an open field near East 93rd St and Anderson Ave., and less than a mile from where Trotter and Malone were found.

While a suspect is in custody on Trotter's rape and murder, assailants of Malone and Leszinzki are still on the loose with no major leads, police said.

Local area community activists, including the Imperial Women, want a missing persons center and more resources from the city and county coffers to help deal with what they say is an epidemic of violence against women, including rape and murder, which disproportionately impact poor Black women, data show.

Community activists say that they appreciate Reed's advocacy relative to the attention he brings to highlighting violence against women and the need for more resources to help eradicate it.

By Kathy Wray Coleman, editor-in-chief,  Cleveland Urban News.Com and The Kathy Wray Coleman Online New 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 216-659-04

CLEVELAND, Ohio- Racial unrest continues to mount in Cleveland's Black community with Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson firing a police sergeant, demoting two other supervisors, and suspending a handful of other mid-level police managers on Monday following the gangsta-style deadly 137 bullets shooting late last year of unarmed Blacks Malissa Williams and Timothy Russell by a group of  13 Cleveland police officers, 12 White and one Hispanic.

And some Cleveland City Council members, mainly Ward 9 Councilman Kevin Conwell and Ward 8 Councilman Jeff Johnson, both outspoken and Black, are in an all out war with community activists around the controversy

Community activists say that Conwell and Johnson are protecting Cleveland Police Chief Michael McGrath, whom activists have called to resign, and Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Tim McGinty, also targeted for resignation by the activists, and who will not push for a Cuyahoga County Grand Jury indictment on criminal charges of the 13 police officers that did the shooting, none of whom have faced discipline and all of whom are still on the job.

Both councilmen endorsed the temperamental McGinty, a former common pleas judge, for election for county prosecutor last year.

During a heated community forum last Thursday at the Glenville YMCA on safety with Chief McGrath and sponsored by Conwell, who chairs city council's safety committee, Johnson became irate and snatched the mike from Community Activist Don Bryant, who leads the Greater Cleveland Immigrant Support Network.

Bryant wanted to ask a question around the shooting, an issue that he has become passionate about, and Johnson had decided that enough questions had been asked on the subject by activists, and sought to quell Bryant's free speech, activity that has seemingly backfired.

Bryant is an aggressive but smart activist, and he protested at City Hall in April during a rally by activists over the deadly shooting  with a sign calling for McGinty to recuse himself from investigating it since he took campaign money and an endorsement from the Cleveland Police Patrolmen's Association.

A seasoned community organizer who is White and 57 years old , and supported by a coalition of activist groups across racial lines such as Black on Black Crime, the Oppressed People's Nation, the Imperial Women and Peace in the Hood, Bryant filed a police report against Johnson saying that Johnson committed misdemeanor assault when he allegedly hit his wrist after snatching the mike.

On Friday Johnson, in turn, took on the matter on a local radio show on WERE AM and accused Bryant, in an on air dispute by the two, of being a "White man coming into the Black community."

Johnson was also angry after community activists hounded him and Conwell at Thursday's  forum for pushing a city ordinance that Conwell introduced and was passed by city council two weeks ago that puts 42 more traffic cameras at street intersections throughout Cleveland, an abundance of them in poor communities on the city's largely Black east side.

Whether anything will materialize of Bryant's police report against Johnson, who is not without support either, remains to be seen, and is unlikely, given the mayor's control over the prosecutorial process through his handpicked law director. But one thing is clear, community activists are not backing down around the celebrated shooting.

"Councilman Johnson must have forgotten that community activists fought for him when he got in trouble as a state senator and now he is turning his back on us to support police that have done wrong," said Community Activist Amy Hurd, who is among a coalition of activists and community affiliates still upset over the celebrated shooting.

By Call and Post reporters

CLEVELAND, Ohio –  Nationally recognized associate publisher of the Cleveland based Call & Post Newspaper, Constance D. Harper, has received the Business Trailblazer Tribute, which was recently presented by the Christian Business League at the “Faith and Finance” breakfast  at the Greenmont Party Center in greater Cleveland.

The Business Trailblazer Tribute recognizes individuals who are senior in their career for their outstanding and unique business contributions.

Harper is a graduate of Central State University and began her professional career as  an  elementary school  eacher in the Cleveland Public School District, now the Cleveland Municipal School District. Later she became the women’s editor and city editor for the Call & Post. She was once selected as one of two journalists to complete a fellowship in urban studies at the University of Chicago.

Additional career highlights took her to New York City where she became the vice president of Don King Productions, traveling across the United States, Canada, the Philippines, Africa and Europe promoting championship fights.

In a career of service to her community, Harper has always volunteered for organizations, working to assist the less fortunate. She is passionate about her immediate and extended family, her alma mater Central State and her sorority, Delta Sigma Theta Inc., that honored her as the recipient of the Ohio Image-Maker Award. She has received numerous awards, and most recently was honored by the Martin Luther King, Jr. Celebration Committee with their “In the footsteps of Martin Luther King, Jr. Award.” Connie is a 2004 graduate of Leadership Cleveland. She is a member of Olivet Institutional Baptist Church where she serves in a number of ministries.