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

CLEVELAND, Ohio-The union busting Cleveland Plain Dealer Newspaper's editorial titled "Fixing Cleveland’s low voter turnout starts at the top, with officials truly dedicated to engaging all," is a somewhat scathing editorial published Nov. 13 at its online affiliate of Cleveland.com that primarily blames Cleveland's dismal voter turnout for this year's Nov. 3 presidential election on Democratic Black elected officials like Mayor Frank Jackson and Black members of city council, and Congresswoman Marcia L. Fudge.

Criticism is also directed at Democratic U.S. Sen Sherrod Brown of Cleveland, though loosely.

Some Black leaders are upset over the editorial because they are the focus of the hit piece, and they say it is unfair.

"They do not know us or even come into our communities,'' Ward 9 Councilman Kevin Conwell said during an interview Monday with Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com over the controversial PD editorial.

A Black and seasoned east side councilman who leads the city's historic Glenville Neighborhood, Conwell said part of the problem is that voters are distrustful because Washington politicians have not "delivered on their promises to the Black community."

"The Plain Dealer and Cleveland.com," Conwell said, "have their own problems and need to hire Blacks who usually cannot get employed there."

Below is our necessary editorial response  here at Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com to that Plain Dealer editorial published Nov 13 that has Black leaders in Cleveland upset.

RESPONSE-By Kathy Wray Coleman, editor, associate publisher

We disagree here at Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com with the Plain Dealer Newspaper's Nov 13 editorial that blames Cleveland's election night voter turnout on Black elected officials in isolation of others. It's a high tech lynching of these Black leaders by a newspaper that does not have any Black columnists, a telling sign of its commitment to diversity, or lack thereof.

Ohio's largest newspaper, the Plain Dealer should work on its diversity problem in its hiring and firing practices and its coverage of the Black community before it points fingers at Black leaders, Black leaders who have traditionally said the newspaper is seemingly racist, and by all accounts.

Owned by Advance Publications, the Plain Dealer is ranked as one of the top 25 newspapers in the country as it increasingly becomes outsourced and operated by outsiders to Cleveland who believe they can do as they please to Black people and their elected officials.

"Clevelanders feel alienated from governance and barred from the table where decisions are made," the editorial reads , and goes on to say that Black elected officials are essentially responsible for the low voter turnout by the city.

The alienation of voters  may be true, but what fought do White folks share relative to this voter apathy?

Where does voter suppression by Republicans come into play?

A former chair of the congressional Black caucus and a Warrensville Heights Democrat and former city mayor, Fudge's largely Black 11th congressional district includes Cleveland and several of its eastern suburbs of Cuyahoga County.

Both Cleveland and Cuyahoga County are Democratic strongholds.

Jackson is a still popular four- term city mayor of a city that in 1967 elected the first Black mayor of a major American city in electing Carl B. Stokes for the post, a historical election that put Black Cleveland on the political map.

"Where was Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson in generating enthusiasm in voting this year?" asked the Plain Dealer in its Nov 13 editorial against Black leaders.  Where was the state's top elected Democrat, Sen. Sherrod Brown, who lives in Cleveland?" Where was Rep. Marcia Fudge...?"

Voter turnout in the largely Black major American city of some 385,000 people was at roughly 53 percent, compared to 70 percent nationwide, the county turnout of which was 68 percent.

Figures aside, it was the worst voter turnout in the city of the last five presidential elections.

Ward 5 Councilwoman Phyllis Cleveland, the only Black woman on the 17-member all Democratic city council that is composed of equal parts Black and White council members with one Hispanic, rookie councilwoman Jasmin Santanta, is at fought too, the editorial says, Cleveland's ward with a voter turnout of 36 percent.

All of the west side council members, none of whom were cited in the editorial, are White but Santana, and Blacks represent most of the majority Black east side of the city.

Councilwoman Cleveland has the poorest ward in the city, a ward that encompasses the Central Neighborhood that was once led by Jackson, a former city council president whose seat is up for grabs next year as are city council seats.

But more than 30 percent of Clevelanders , by stats, live in poverty anyway, the city just ranked the poorest city in America by U.S. Census officials

Poverty and the coronavirus are acknowledged as small contributing factors in the editorial as to why at least half of Cleveland voters, Blacks and Whites alike, did not vote this year, Blacks in Georgia and some other places showing up in record breaking numbers, the editorial said.

We know though that Blacks turned out to vote this year, and with the help of progressive women and other minority groups, put Biden in the White House.

Cleveland may not have voted in large numbers, but Black people still helped the Biden-Harris ticket

Of course the controversial PD editorial at issue says Black Lives Matter, the Cleveland NAACP and the Tamir Rice Foundation did more in energizing voters than Black elected officials .

By emphasizing this the editorial pits Blacks against Blacks, a strategy often used to divide the Black community

Clever editorializing does not keep the editorial from being anti-Black, and elitist by inadvertently targeting Blacks, particularly from a newspaper that this year busted the Guild, a union representing journalists, photojournalists, unit editors and a host of other unionized newspaper employees, a bulk of them fired or ceremoniously laid off over the past three years.

Intellectuals can be racist too, and oftentimes are just that.

Whether the contents of the Plain Dealer editorial on voting and Black leaders are true is not the central issue here, and the assessment of the voter turnout was put on the largely Black major America city, not the 29 percent Black county it sits in largely because Armond Budish, who is certainly not Black, was not to be criticized, sources said.

And it's not true that Blacks are largely to blame for voter apathy in Cleveland's Black community as the editorial says.

What is true is that the blame is selectively applied to Black leaders, and thus Black people.

No doubt, some of the problem falls at the feet of Black leaders, but the brunt of low voter turnout in Cleveland and so many other major American cities is racism, coupled with poverty, and a coronavirus pandemic that disproportionately impacts the Black community across the spectrum.

The Biden campaign did not fight to win Ohio, President Trump carrying Ohio by eight points but losing both the popular vote and the electoral college to Biden and his more clever campaign team.

It is no secret in the Black community that the Biden campaign ignored Cleveland and Ohio in terms of getting out the vote money.

And what role does a candidate play in waking up voters as former president Obama, the nation's first Black president, did in 2008 in Cleveland and across the country when he first won election, and again for reelection in 2012?

Biden was Obama's vice president for two terms and he knows full well what it takes to engage Black voters in urban dwellings like Cleveland, or does he?

Ohio has 18 electoral votes and will remain a pivotal state for the presidential election for years to come, Cleveland the second largest city in the state behind Columbus, the state capital.

Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, the 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