From the Metro Desk of Cleveland Urban News.Com and the Kathy Wray Coleman Online News Blog.Com

CLEVELAND, Ohio-The Rev. Al Sharpton was in Cleveland, Oh. today to push voter registration at a prominent Black church, to stomp for President Obama, and to talk on voter suppression and other Civil Rights matters during a key presidential election year.

U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson,  state Sen. Nina Turner (D-25), state Rep. Sandra Williams (D-11), and Cuyahoga County Councilman Julian Rogers (D-10) were among the host of dignitaries that attended.

The luncheon event, held at Greater Abyssinia Baptist Church in Cleveland, was sponsored by the Cuyahoga County Chapter of the National Action Network, which is led by Marcia McCoy as its president and the Rev. E. Theophilus Caviness, the executive director of the organization and the senior pastor of Greater Abyssinia.

Later that evening the groups reconvened for a rally at the church on voter registration.

Sharpton said to the audience that gathered to hear the nationally renowned Civil Rights leaders that leads the National Action Network and is a CNN news commentator, that the political landscape as it relates to the Black community is drastically changing.

He argued that state laws enacted recently by many Republican controlled state legislatures across America, including Senate Bill 295 in Ohio, is evidence that the pendulum has swung to the 1960s when Civil Rights violations were at an all time him and that Blacks and poor people are the target of the disenfranchisement.

And he said that he is not fooled by the voter suppression laws passed by some 19 state legislatures across the country, including SB 295 in Ohio, and that the main reason for them is to allegedly try to undermine a fair election for Obama, the first Black president of the United States of America .

The president will face presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romey, a former Massachusetts governor, in November for political pundits predict a close race and all out show down between the nations Democratic and Republican Parties.

Sharpton noted that claims by Republicans such as Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted that government issued photo identification is necessary at the ballot box to curtail voter fraud are self serving and ludicrous.

He told the predominantly Black audience that “the only fraud in voting fraud is the fraud of voting fraud.”

Sharpton also challenged Cleveland’s Back elected officials and other Black leaders who work downtown in comfortable office buildings to remember from whence they came.

He accused the Republicans of not requiring any voter identification at Republican- centered caucuses or primary voting sites for the Republican primary and then demanding it relative to the Obama-Romney upcoming presidential election.

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