Community activists meet with Cleveland NAACP officials to discuss foreclosure impropriety, abandoned homes, rape and murder of greater Cleveland women, education, the legal system and courts, and the 137 shots deadly Cleveland police shooting of unarmed Blacks Malissa Williams and Tim Russell, Cleveland NAACP Attorneys Michael Nelson and James Hardiman leave meeting pouting after failing to convince Smith to ignore activists while they continue taking money to allegedly sellout the Black community as co-chairs of the Cleveland NAACP legal redress and criminal justice committees
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CLEVELAND, Ohio- The Cleveland Chapter NAACP entertained
Cleveland NAACP is led by the Rev Hilton Smith, an associate minister at Greater Abyssinia Baptist Church in Cleveland and a communications relations vice president for Turner Construction Company in Cleveland.
Attorneys Michael Nelson and James Hardiman, co-chairs of the Cleveland NAACP criminal justice and legal redress committees, attended the executive committee meeting held prior to the general meeting but left pouting because Smith agreed to hear out the activists.
The activists have demanded that Nelson and Hardiman hold monthly meetings or resign as co-chairs of the committees and have accused the slick duo of taking monies from the office of the county prosecutor and the city of Cleveland and then selling out the Black community by refusing meetings and allegedly harassing people that complain of police and judicial misconduct and seek assistance by the local Civil Rights organization.
Smith led the meeting and promised to help on the issues presented from police brutality to violence against women to legal system improprieties.
Coleman led the activists at the meeting and thanked Smith for having the courage to allow an open discussion on pertinent issues of public concern impacting the greater Cleveland Black community.
Other activists at the meeting include Dr Stewart Robinson, Valerie Robinson, William Clarence Marshall, Pier Nappier, Vickie Trotter, Shawn Hillard, Gilder Malone, Khalid Samad, Marva Patterson, David Patterson, Frances Caldwell, Rev. Pam Pinkney, Dick Peery and Genevieve Mitchell.
Nappier and Peery called for the 13 all non- Black cops that gunned down unarmed Blacks Malissa Williams and Tim Russell with a hail of 137 bullets in November 2012 to be indicted as the case is currently before a Cuyahoga County Grand Jury.
General requests by community activists relative to the April 14, 2014 meeting with Cleveland NAACP President the Rev. Hilton Smith, Executive Director Shelia Wright and executive committee members, and via previous meetings with NAACP affiliates, are as follows:
The agreement of monthly open door Cleveland NAACP legal redress and criminal justice committee meetings with a monthly report to the executive committee and general body on who sought help and the outcome; A stance by the Cleveland NAACP as to the racist and sexist treatment of Cleveland Municipal Court Judge Angela Stokes by Ohio Supreme Court Disciplinary Counsel Scott Drexel and a request for the group to fight against the slated take over of the largely Black Cleveland Municipal Court; The need to request that Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson step in to ensure that the majority Black Cleveland Municipal School District does not turn lily White as to administrators and teachers; A protocol policy pushed by Cleveland NAACP for Cleveland police to do their jobs as to missing persons, the rape and murder of greater Cleveland women, negligent shootings and other community issues;The need to address the illegal and unconstitutional denial of attorneys to Blacks deemed indigent by judges of the Berea and Bedford municipal courts of Cuyahoga County and the malicious prosecutions of Blacks in Berea at the urging of Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor, who handpicks visiting judges to send to courts throughout the state to allegedly harass Blacks, Democrats and her enemies;The need to address racial epithets via the n-word by employees of the Cuyahoga County prosecutors offices, who have also demanded that Blacks are hanged and to "hang him high;" The need for more resources relative to abduction, rape and murder of greater Cleveland women and for a county wide police missing persons communications unit as well as the implementation of the 27 recommendations by Mayor Frank Jackson's three-member commission around the Imperial Avenue Murders; The need for a mechanism for monitoring the successes and failures of Black children in the absence of a Cleveland schools desegregation court order; The support from the Cleveland NAACP in requesting felony murder and other charges against the group of Cleveland police officers, none of whom are Black, responsible for gunning down unarmed Blacks Malissa Williams and Timothy Russell; The support of area Black contractors for contracts, work and other amenities; An amendment of the state law (O.R.C. 2939.02) that permits common pleas judges to choose grand jury foremen and for the grand jury itself to choose, the latter of which is also permitted under the law; An amendment to the state law that gives welfare recipients, mainly poor women and children, three years for the subsidy when up to five years is permitted under federal law; An investigation of the foreclosure process in the Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas and an amendment of the state law (O.R.C. 2359.17) that allows county sheriffs to supervise the appraisal process and sale foreclosed homes for cheap with the amended state law precluding participation by the sheriff and appraisals based upon the last legal county appraisal; The compliance with the DeRolph decision handed down in 1997 by the Ohio Supreme Court that deemed Ohio's method of funding public education unconstitutional, or a sliding scale of student assessment by the Ohio Department of Education based upon how rich or how poor a school district might be; The support of a bill (Ohio House Bill 216) by state Rep. Bill Patmon (D-10) for Ohio trial court judges in multi-judge municipal and common pleas courts to at all times be assigned and reassigned to criminal and civil cases at random; A request for a push for Cleveland prosecutors to secure criminal charges under a city ordinance that secures malfeasance by corrupt mortgage companies and banks such as JPMorgan Chase Bank; A discussion with Cleveland NAACP officials and Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas Chief Judge John Russo as to a study commissioned by the group that shows that the 34 majority White judges of the Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas where felony criminal cases and other matters are heard give harsher sentences to Blacks than their similarly situated White counterparts; An amendment of state law (O.R.C.2701.03) that gives the chief justice of the Ohio Supreme Court sole authority to decide if an Ohio trial common pleas court judge is removed from a case for bias or conflict and for the entire seven-member Ohio Supreme to decide; and, An amendment of state law (O. R.C. 2701.031) that gives the chief judge of the county common pleas court sole authority to decide if an Ohio municipal court is removed from a case for bias or conflict and for a panel of judges to decide coupled with the statutory right to appeal the decision to a state appellate court.
Participating grassroots activists groups or some of their group members include the the Imperial Women Coalition, the Imperial Women Activists Group, the Carl Stokes Brigade, Communities United, the Cleveland African-American Museum, Sister to Sister, Stop Targeting Ohio's Poor, People for the Imperial Act, Black on Black Crime Inc. and the Fairfax Business Association.
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