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Cleveland

The Lancer – an opportunity for Lebron and Shaq

by Tim Russo on December 8, 2009 · Comments

As with all tragedy, there is opportunity.  The destruction by fire of one of Cleveland’s most treasured African American institutions is yielding a lot of declarations of support.  But in a city that has been careening downhill for decades, there is precious little money to bring the Lancer back to life.

Hmmm….now who in town has a lot of money?  I wonder…….

If I were Lebron James or Shaquille O’Neal, I’d be considering an investment in not only the history of Cleveland’s African American community, but in their own legacy, via the rebirth of The Lancer.  Who wouldn’t applaud that?

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George Dixon vows to rebuild The Lancer, suspicions build on cause of the fire

by Tim Russo on December 8, 2009 · Comments

PD’s been on top of this story, good for them.

A passerby reported the building ablaze at 5:30 a.m. Sunday. Fire officials said Monday they are still seeking the cause but that, so far, nothing appears suspicious.

Dixon is not so sure. His alarm company notified him of something amiss before dawn and he drove to the restaurant with his wife and son.

“When I turned the corner, I knew it was gone,” he said. “I watched it burn.”

He said he noticed that glass was shattered on a side door. Maybe the force of the fire blew it out, he said. Maybe someone broke in. “There’s always threats in this business,” Dixon said, “usually for something small.”

I’d rather not speculate here, but there is no better time for an arsonist to make sure a building goes down than pre-dawn on a Sunday morning.   I do like hearing this from George, who was incredibly gracious to me on election night as I live-blogged from the place.

Dixon, his face resolute, said those good times will return. “Same location, same name,” he vowed. “There’s too much history.”

If George pulls this off, it would be quite the destination.

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The Lancer, a Cleveland institution, burned to the ground this morning

by Tim Russo on December 6, 2009 · Comments

What a sad piece of news.  The Lancer Steakhouse, one of the most venerable African American businesses in Cleveland, was completely destroyed by fire early this morning. No one was injured, but there was no insurance.

The Lancer was one of the centers of African American political and social circles in Cleveland for decades.  I spent much of election night in 2008 there, and unveiled a portrait of Barack Obama across the street from the Lancer with artist Loren Naji on inauguration night.  My favorite food there was the fried Lake Erie perch….so damn good.

I hope something fills its place, the last thing Cleveland needs is another empty lot.  But like a lot of things in that part of Cleveland, when they go, they’re gone forever.

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The Cleveland racial circus goes big time – pull up a chair

by Tim Russo on December 2, 2009 · Comments

Welcome to the circus of Cleveland racial politics, everyone!  Woohoo!  Make sure you have plenty of popcorn!  So what the hell is going on here?  Simple.

If you had any doubt that Issue 6’s passage in Cuyahoga County has created in a single county executive one of the most powerful elected positions in the entire state, erase that doubt now.  How can you tell?  George Forbes has crawled out of his hole.

And who the fuck is George Forbes?  He’s the most powerful clown act to ever grace Cleveland politics.  From 1973 to 1989, Forbes was president of Cleveland City Council, spanning multiple mayors, including Dennis Kucinich & George Voinovich.  Forbes was bombastic to a vaudevillian degree, throwing chairs at people, launching verbal bombs almost daily, but most of all, playing racial politics.

Between George Forbes and long time congressman Lou Stokes, racial politics metasticized into old school vs. everyone else, to the point of rot.  The Forbes-Stokes old guard has stunted the political growth of any potential black leadership on Cleveland’s east side for decades.  The biggest throwdown in this arena was the 1989 mayoral election, when Forbes ran against then state rep. Mike White, who the Forbes-Stokes crowd saw as an Uncle Tom.

Mike White crushed Forbes, sending him out of council and into oblivion, largely running against the Forbes-style of politics, winning the white west side handily, becoming the most powerful black man in Ohio.  Along the way, Forbes was so buffoonish, the campaign deteriorated into a Three Stooges episode, at one point Forbes attacking White in a televised debate, with that oh-so-blacker-than-thou flourish he loves so much, “you a slumlord!  Bottom line!”  To this day, Forbes nurses that grudge.

And Nina Turner is heir to the grudge.  Why?  Because Mike White made Nina Turner, by making Turner city council liaison, where she watched over all the former Forbes allies like a hawk.

She quickly earned a reputation among council members — and not a particularly good one. As White’s eyes and ears at council meetings, she was responsible for keeping tabs on who criticized the mayor publicly and who spent time huddling with news reporters.

She also was White’s messenger when the mayor decided to hold up or pull the plug on council members’ preferred neighborhood projects as retaliation for stalling his agenda.

“I used to call her the assassin,” said Councilman Joe Cimperman, who was in White’s doghouse at the time. “I was nervous when she came to council. People were intimidated by her. She had this attitude of ‘don’t mess with me.’

Mike White is long gone from the scene, having himself imploded to an alpaca farm somewhere.  George Forbes ain’t gone – somehow, Forbes still is president of the Cleveland NAACP.  That’s why last week, the Don King owned Call & Post, (yes, THAT Don King) Cleveland’s black newspaper over which George Forbes still ridiculously holds power as its “legal advisor”, printed the cartoon depicting Turner as Aunt Jemima.  Nina Turner’s been an Aunt Jemima to Forbes and his old guard since Forbes first heard of her, because she worked for Mike White, who is an Uncle Tom to Forbes.  But why now?

Because now, Nina Turner could become the most powerful black person in the state of Ohio.  If Turner runs for county executive and wins, the old guard power structure which Forbes sits atop will lose every ounce of whatever sad, pathetic remaining power they still hold over the black community in Cleveland.   It used to be real power,  leveraged not to help the black community who to this day suffer amidst dry rot right under Forbes’ nose, but for themselves.

Everyone knows this, so thus begins the scrum.  Enter Peter Lawson Jones, who once was as much of an Uncle Tom to Forbes and Stokes as Turner is an Aunt Jemima.  Jones has no job at the end of 2010, and we now know where he’s looking for his next one – county executive.  Because Peter is suddenly defending the Call & Post cartoon, finger duly up in the air, smelling that the fetid Forbes swamp is looking for someone to ratfuck Nina Turner.  Well played, Peter, but not well enough.  You’re a fool if you think you can play in this league.

Confused yet?  Get more popcorn, this is just getting started.  There’s a county party angle to play out, a US Senate primary angle to play out, 11 county council seats to play out…..THANK GOD this isn’t going on during a presidential election.

The Stokes-Forbes-Don King circus has been slow to end, but it is dying out.  There apparently is one last song and dance left in them.  And if I were Nina Turner, I’d be thrilled to be the one calling the tune.

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State Senator Nina Turner doesn’t deserve this, especially from the African-American community

by ModernEsquire on December 1, 2009 · Comments

nina-just-didnt-know-.jpg

This is the editorial cartoon accompanying this week’s article in Cleveland’s Call & Post attacking State Senator Nina Turner for her support of county reform Issue 6 instead of the “Old Guard” African-American leadership/union back Issue 5.  Amazingly, the article states:

Lastly, Nina Turner should stop telling the lie that Black leaders have threatened her. When asked by this newspaper who issued such threats, she refused to answer.

Senator Turner didn’t need to answer.  Your column is graphed with a depiction of an accomplished, intelligent, political leader as an ignorant, ebonic speakin’, house slave.  It’s pretty obvious that the “Old Guard” of the African-American leadership is punishing Turner for “goin’ rogue” by publicly depicting her as being “owned” by the white power establishment.

The rub, the column claims, is that Turner went off the reservation by supporting Issue 6, and not Issue 5:

Obviously, State Sen. Nina Turner didn’t know the damage she did to her career when she became the only Black elected official to jump headstrong and support Issue 6 – county government reform.

To no avail, all of the advocates of the reform approached most of the Black leadership of Cleveland for support. But, when questioned about the advantages for Black people if this reform passed, no sensible answers were given.

And yet, nobody could point to any language in Issue 5 that would advantage the African-American community, particular schoolchildren, if it had passed.  And yet, the Old Guard of the African-American community supported it anyway, so this criticism seems to be a post hoc rationalization.

I’m hundreds of miles away from Cleveland and I’m white, but this criticism strikes me more as an aging power structure is threatened by the independence of a new generation of African-American leaders.  It’s like the leaders in Chicago who initially opposed Obama because he was “uppity,” “not genuinely black enough,” and was an “outsider.”

Mark Naymik from the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports on the division in the African-American leadership over the Turner cartoon.  Naymik notes that Call & Post’s legal advisor is the President of the Cleveland chapter of the NAACP, George Forbes.  However, the Executive Director of the NAACP, Stanley Miller, promises that he will ask his Board to address the cartoon tonight.

Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson has gone on record calling the depiction inappropriate.   Cuyahoga County Commissioner Peter Lawson Jones defended the cartoon:

“As I have said previously, although I vigorously disagreed with Nina’s stance on Issues 5 and Issue 6, I defend her right to express her opinion,” he said. “Unfortunately, she has now unwittingly become a pawn in a battle between the Call & Post and The Plain Dealer. Sadly, politics today is bloodsport, and the treatment Nina has received from the Call & Post is no more harsh than that which those who have disagreed with the Plain Dealer have experienced in editorials and caricatures.”

If the Plain Dealer depicts you as an antebellum-era house slave, Commissioner Jones, let me know, and I’ll condemn them, too.  But I seriously doubt they’ve EVER done that.  And you should be ashamed of trying to defend this.

[UPDATE:]  Yeah, I noticed the obvious crop lines around the text, too.  I don’t know if that means they just have a poor production process, or God forbid, there was text they actually vetoed in favor of what they went with.

I’ve left messages with both the Ohio Black Legislative Caucus and its President, State Rep. Sandra Williams asking them for comment on this editorial cartoon.  I’d note that State Senator Nina Turner is the Treasurer of the OBLC.

Disclosure: I briefly worked with Nina Turner when I used to work for former State Senator Minority Whip  Rhine McLin.  During that time, I was impressed with Nina, we all were, and we all knew that she had a future in politics.  That’s why I’m shocked at this treatment.  Nina Turner should be the kind of person the leadership in the African-American community should be embracing and promoting, not degrading because they lost on a power struggle and now hold a grudge against her.

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Breaking: Stephanie Tubbs Jones Suffers Brain Aneurysm, Was Rumored Passed Away (Updatedx2)

by Eric on August 20, 2008 · Comments

Update 2: CNN reporting that she has NOT died. WTF? I’m seeing headlines change left and right. It must be a situation where she probably will not make it, but hasn’t officially passed away. Hopefully someone will get what really is happening soon.

Update: I’m hearing now that Tubbs Jones has passed away. Massive brain trauma and she was taken off life support this morning. Rumors of her demise appear to be true.

ht brewedfresh tweet, via PD:

CLEVELAND — Representatives for U.S. Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones are expected to update her condition around noon.

Her condition is believed to be serious and rumors are flying that she had died.

Her spokesman Joe Hewitt said “she has not passed.”

The update will come about 15 hours after Tubbs Jones is believed to have suffered a brain aneurysm while driving in Cleveland Heights. She was rushed to Huron Road Hospital Tuesday night.

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