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Congresswoman Marcia Fudge Posted Saturday, October 3, 2009 (Regional and Cleveland, Ohio Area News) By Kathy Wray Coleman (Editor of The Determiner Weekly (www.determinerweekly.com) and the Kathy Wray Coleman Online News Blog and Media Network) A Black Ohio state senator got booed and Cuyahoga County's most influential Black leader took on powerful county prosecutor Bill Mason at a meeting earlier today at Euclid High School where a controversial county reform measure on the November 3 general election ballot was rejected by the Executive Committee of the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party. If adopted by voters Issue 6, crafted by Mason and an all White group of county Democrats, would strip voters of their own right to elect nine of the 11 county offices such as the sheriff, recorder, auditor, engineer, coroner, and commissioners, and give an elected county head and an elected 11 member county council the power to appoint. Mason's position and that of the county treasur...

Cleveland Municipal Court Judge Kathleen Ann Keough was allegedly in rare form at the sentencing of September 25, 2009, according to my attorney, Wayne Kerek, who appeared in my absence. I was advised not to attend for safety reasons and for other reasons explained more fully hereinafter. She, of course, could not sentence me on the unjust verdict of the misdemeanor charge of resisting arrest that followed a two day trial where I was acquitted by a jury of all charges of which I was arrested (aggravated disorderly conduct, obstruction of official business and making false alarms). This is because the Ohio Rules of Criminal Procedure preclude sentencing in the absence of a defendant, of which Keough was reminded of. Many know that last year I was dragged to the county jail over my articles in the Call & Post Newspaper and investigations, administered a knockout drug, held naked, supervised by a disgruntled male employee, and released four days later without charges. The harassment v...

Posted Saturday, September 26, 2009 (Cleveland , Ohio Area News) Cleveland Municipal Court Judge Kathleen Ann Keough was sued on Thursday in the Ohio Supreme Court by a Black journalist who has asked the court to stop the judge's alleged harassment of her. Kathy Wray Coleman, a journalist of 15 years out of the Cleveland, Oh. area, claims in the suit that Keough is targeting her to get at “higher ups at the Call and Post,” a weekly newspaper that targets Cleveland's Black community and one that has published articles by Coleman as a freelance journalist since 1993. Such articles include allegations of housing discrimination against Blacks in Shaker Heights, Oh., a one-on-one interview with now U.S. President Barack Obama, and claims that county reform measures that strip voters of the right to directly elect county officials would disenfranchise the Black community. The reform measure at issue, which Coleman has not written about specifically, is now on the November ballot and...

Posted Tuesday, September 22, 2009 By Kathy Wray Coleman (Cleveland, Ohio Area News) Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Presiding Judge Nancy McDonnell is recovering from double lung transplant surgery that was undertaken on Sunday at the Cleveland Clinic Hospital in Cleveland Oh. A judge of 11 years, she began presiding over the Common Pleas Court General Division in 2006 when a majority of her colleagues dumped Richard McMonagle, a Republican, and chose the 49-year-old McDonnell, a Democrat with ties to the Democratic Party. She also serves as the administrative judge in that court, which has only three Black judges in spite of a Black population in Cuyahoga County that is roughly 30 percent. The county is the largest in Ohio and includes Cleveland and its outer suburbs. As the administrative and presiding judge of the court's general (criminal and civil) division, McDonnell handles a reduced case load for her own docket, a wide range of bureaucratic and procedural matters for the ...

Posted Tuesday, September 15, 2009 (National and Cleveland, Ohio Area News) A Black journalist from the Cleveland, Oh. area says she shall appeal what she calls an illegal and retaliatory dismissal on Sept. 9th of a non-monetary lawsuit filed in the Ohio Eighth District Court of Appeals against Cleveland Municipal Court Judge Kathleen Ann Keough. The suit, filed on behalf of seasoned journalist Kathy Wray Coleman, also an outspoken community activist, seeks an order from the appellate court of Cuyahoga County to order Keough to vacate orders she issued in a case before her that involves Coleman that impacted Coleman's constitutional and statutory rights, allegedly in violation of Ohio state law. Cuyahoga County is the largest county in Ohio and is roughly 30 percent Black. Of such orders issued by Keough one includes an order scheduling a hearing on a motion for a new trial and a second order has the judge overriding that prior order. A motion for a new trial affects Cole...

Posted Sunday, September 13, 2009 I fell in love with Harvard Law Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. Thursday evening, where we met for the first time and only for the minutes that I had the privilege of tagging close behind the cane wielding Gates as I gave my spill seeking to write for “The Root,” an online magazine that he edits that provides national and other news from a Black perspective. That love is, of course, limited to my admiration of him for his skill in winning friends and influencing enemies. I had closely followed the summer controversy around Professor Gates that aroused a national discussion on race relations and racial profiling after Cambridge MA. police arrested him at his university furnished home. This was even after he allegedly proved to police that he lived there and that the alleged complaint of a minority burglar on the Gates' premises lacked merit. Gates was essentially accused of making police mad by allegedly saying “do you know who I am,?” apparently ...

By Kathy Wray Coleman Posted Friday, September 11, 2009 (National and Cleveland, Ohio Area News) (Coleman is a journalist of 15 years who covered the 2008 Democratic Primary and general elections for the Call & Post Newspaper, Ohio's Black Press with distributions in Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati. This includes a one-on-one interview with now U.S. President Barack Obama shortly before Ohio's March 4, 2008 Democratic Primary, as well as an interview with the president on his controversial health care plan) Harvard Law Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. on Thursday moderated the 74th Annual Anisfield -Wolf Book Awards Ceremony at the Cleveland Playhouse to a packed house. The event was sponsored by the Cleveland Foundation, as it has been since 1963, and drew participation from some area movers and shakers including Plain Dealer Newspaper Publisher Terry Egger, Cleveland Ward 6 Councilwoman Mamie Mitchell, and Cleveland Foundation President and CEO Ronald B. Richard....

Posted Wednesday, September 9, 2009 By Kathy Wray Coleman (National and Cleveland, Ohio Area News- Coleman is a freelance journalist who last year interviewed now U.S. President Barack Obama one-on-one for the Call & Post newspaper, Ohio's Black press, shortly before Ohio's March 4 Primary for the Democratic nomination for president of the United States of America) Frank G. Jackson, the 56th mayor of the predominantly Black major metropolitan city of Cleveland, Oh., silenced his critics Tuesday evening, winning the nonpartisan primary election with 72 percent of the vote in a stunning blowout. Embarrassing his four opponents, and surprising some of his critics, Jackson out distanced his closest challenger, former city councilman Bill Patmon, by a 5 to 1 margin. Two additional opponents of the mayor, both write-ins, went essentially unnoticed by voters, as did the four noticeable ones, apparently. Cleveland voters easily handed the former Cleveland City Council President and...

By Kathy Wray Coleman (Cleveland, Ohio Area News) Posted Wednesday, September 9, 2009 The Sept. 8 non-partisan primary race for the 19 Cleveland City Council seats up for grabs brought no surprising outcomes, though the neck and neck race between Ward 5 Councilwoman Phyllis Cleveland and Pernel Jones Jr., an owner an operator of Pernel Jones Funeral Home in Cleveland, is being closely watched. Cleveland, council's majority leader, finished with 674 votes, and Jones with 575. Like the others council races, Cleveland and Jones, as the two top vote getters, will square off for the Nov. 3 general election, though as Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson's hand picked successor to Ward 5 few would rule out Jackson's active role in campaigning for Cleveland in the general election. He sailed to victory with 72 percent of the vote and will face former Cleveland Ward 8 Councilman Bill Patmon, hoping to retain his job as mayor of the predominantly Black major metropolitan city. War...

By Kathy Wray Coleman (National and Cleveland, Ohio Area News) Posted September 6, 2009 (Originally published in the Call & Post Newspaper, Ohio's Black Press with distributions in Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati, Oh, where Coleman served in the capacity of a freelance journalist. It is being reprinted below for a closer look since the issues that the president promoted when campaigning in Cleveland last year during the Democratic Primary are now a part of the president's controversial push for universal health care for all Americans) Illinois Sen. Barack Obama spoke with the Call & Post last Thursday about his health care plan and its impact on the American community, the Black community in particular. Obama said that he would finance the comprehensive plan by rolling back Bush tax cuts on families making $250,000 or more annually and keeping the estate tax at its 2009 level. The first Black presidential nominee of a major American political party has made ...