CLEVELAND, OH – Anyone who’s read the Dennis Kucinich Wikipedia page is informed about his one, two-year term as mayor that the Cleveland mafia put a death contract on him because he wanted to save Cleveland’s Municipal Light and Power plant. The Wiki-story never says if the mafia who wanted him dead were the Russians, Irish, Italians, Serbians or his fellow Croatians.
The death contract was pulled after the city entered default. Dennis – the Progressive boy mayor – saved Muny Light. That’s been the truncated version of Kucinich’s story about his two years of heroics as Cleveland mayor and he’s stuck with it. It’s “made for television” bullshit.
A week after his announcement that he was seeking to be elected, again, to the office of Cleveland mayor, Kucinich emailed another biography with yet another story as he asked for campaign donations. I received a copy of it. In his email Kucinich described that half his mayoral cabinet appointments were African American; that a mayor with no voting authority over a public utility controlled by council saved Muny Light; and that he cut the city’s budget by 18 percent without reducing services. More lies.
I was employed in the production department at the Call & Post weekly newspaper as it was published and edited by Mr. William O. Walker between 1978 and 1979 when the son of an illegal Croatian alien from a fascist police state was serving as mayor. The Kucinich administration and his career on council, and in the clerk of the municipal court’s office, are well-covered in the 1967 through 1980 editions of the Call & Post. He’s a liar.
I am the last journalist to publish interviews with both Mr. Walker and Mayor Carl Stokes before their deaths which reflects the relationship we had when they were living. Kucinich’s safety director, the late James Barrett and my cousin, Wilson Howard, were married to sisters. Barrett is the political contradiction in Kucinich’s relationship with American Negroes.
He’d been one of Stokes police bodyguards. Kucinich hired him to work in the clerk of court’s office and endorsed him for Cuyahoga County Sheriff in 1976 against Gerald McFaul. Kucinich appointed him as his safety director. In 1978 Barrett was accused of helping direct the Cleveland police investigation of Kucinich’s enemies.
The “first” political hit piece I ever pasted up as a Call & Post employee was one the late John Lenear designed for a special supplement in favor of recalling Kucinich in 1978. It featured a cut-out of Kucinich’s sneering face and a headline inside about Bob Weissman calling “Black women bitches and whores.” Weissman was one of Kucinich’s Russian Jewish “executive assistants.”
Kucinich fired police chief Richard Hongisto because he was responding to the civil rights issues American Negroes had been raising about unconstitutional and racist policing during the aftermath of the rioting. All the “diversity” Kucinich now touts was behind Hongisto’s departure.
Hongisto wanted real constitutional reforms. Kucinich wanted a “loyal to me” police chief. Had Kucinich read the United States Department of Justice’s three “civil” investigations of the city’s policing he’d be on a “please forgive me tour” instead of campaigning to let police pursue and kill and maim.
Kucinich joined council three years after United States Representative Louis Stokes, as a civil rights attorney, fought Terry v. Ohio to the Supreme Court of the United States of America. 1966 was the year the Supreme Court told Cleveland police to stop detaining anyone without a reasonable, articulable suspicion they were committing a crime. This was three years before Kucinich joined council.
A lot of police evil could have been avoided had Kucinich demanded enforcement of the 1974 civil rights ordinance council enacted after he was elected to the clerk of court’s office. He should have directed Barrett and Hongisto to enforce it. He should have appointed a director of law and chief prosecuting attorney to enforce it.
As clerk of court he could have asked the judges to write a local rule allowing citizens to file complaints against officials who have violated their duties or constitutional rights using Section 2935.09 and 2935.10 of the Ohio Revised Code as the legal basis for it.
The truth about Kucinich’s single two-year term in office is found in the Call & Post archives that are available online under the “Research Databases” link through the Cleveland Public Library. He’s also been a guest on Vladmir Putin’s RT or Russia Today television program that’s registered with the United States Department of Justice as the propaganda machine of a foreign government. Kucinich can’t be trusted by Americans to be loyal or truthful as a perennial candidate whose job in life has been to seek damn near any elected office. That includes the U.S. Presidency.
There was nothing Mr. Walker saw “good” in Kucinich as a politician so he exposed him in the Call & Post like I have written about ex-politicians such as Gary Norton and current ones such as Kevin Kelley, Basheer Jones and others. Mr. Walker’s Call & Post described the “boy mayor” and his city hall staff as “anti-Black” and “racist.”
He saw them as the worst kind of racists despite the powerless four “Blacks” Kucinich appointed to his administration. In an interview with Tom Snyder of the Tomorrow show in August 1978, Kucinich described his diverse administration as consisting of “four Jews, four Blacks and four ethnics.” Four out of 12 in a city where the American Negro population was 40 percent or 348,000 out of 870,000 – and the overwhelmingly largest ethnic demographic even today – is not “half.”
Mr. Walker offered his thoughts about Kucinich and other matters of public concern in his “Down the Big Road” weekly editorial column. “Down the big road” was a phrase from his upbringing as a child in Selma, Alabama when someone would ask for directions.
Mr. Walker’s Call & Post had been covering Cleveland as a weekly newspaper publisher and meeting weekly payroll for 50 uninterrupted years since 1929; and he had seen Kucinich’s political archetype repeated in other politicians throughout the generations prior to the young politician’s birth on October 8, 1946. Mr. Walker had also served on Cleveland city council between 1939 and 1945. The aberations in Kucinich’s politics and conduct in office were easy for him to spot.
Mr. Walker from the beginning of Kucinich’s public career in 1969 would describe him as a “race baiter” and a “demagogue.” From Mr. Walker’s editorial perspective Kucinich was in opposition to any and every public action that benefitted Cleveland by elevating American Negroes.
Kucinich was elected to city council in November 1969 after beating John Belinsky in Ward 7 when it was a predominantly Caucasian west side political district. Stokes was seeking his second two year term of office as mayor.
The first American Negro to lead a major American city as mayor was elected in November 1967 as an Independent and not a Democrat. The Democrats didn’t elect Stokes though he’d been a loyal member of the party. As part of his strategy for winning a seat on Cleveland city council from Ward 7 in 1969, the Call & Post revealed how Kucinich labeled incumbent Belinsky a “Stokes supporter” to racially-ignite his ethnic political base.
Cleveland city council consisted of 33 members in 1967 and during Kucinich’s term as mayor. The 17 ward boundaries today aren’t even close to those that existed between 1967 and 1980 when the city’s population was around 870,000. 13 American Negroes served on the council out of the 33; and Mr. Walker was expecting to add at least another 3 for 16.
Cleveland’s American Negro population was 40 percent of the 870,000 or an estimated 348,000 to 350,000. The city’s entire population today is roughly 380,000. Council and mayor terms were for two years. Primary elections were partisan between Republicans, Democrats, Independents or whichever existing party could field candidates.
Kucinich and his team were editorially portrayed as abusive while he held the offices of a council member in 1969, clerk of the municipal court in 1973 and as mayor in 1977. Call & Post headlines offer a description of Kucinich as an elected official who committed crimes in office that were excused by Caucasians in power like so many elected and appointed public office holders today. Only the “Ken Johnson’s” are guilty to the racist Russian Jews who’ve manipulated Clevelanders through the Plain Dealer since March 1967.
As a councilman the Call & Post reported how Kucinich was caught sneaking into the finance department at night to review and acquire financial records. Kucinich thought his reckless disregard for the statutory lines of authority was justified because he “distrusted Mayor Stokes.” Once attorney George Forbes was elected council president the first American Negro to hold the office had Kucinich removed from council’s internal meetings after he was elected to serve as the clerk of the municipal court.
On council Kucinich opposed and then campaigned against Mayor Stokes’ request for voters to back a tax increase from 1 percent to 1.8 percent to support the city utility known today as Cleveland Public Power. As mayor Kucinich in 1978 asked council to support the same tax increase to fund “Muny Light” that he fought against during Stokes’ administration. The Call & Post observed how Kucinich had no problem with hypocrisy.
On council Kucinich led the initiative to give the Cleveland Transit System (CTS) to Cuyahoga County. Where CTS served all of Cleveland with bus lines that connected residents to jobs inside the city, and to each other, suburbs without transit lines wanted access to what had been exclusively reserved for residents of Cleveland.
Kucinich sold Clevelanders out with his “for the regionalism” advocacy. Bus service inside the city became more expensive, the elderly no longer rode for free and service was reduced to virtually nothing. Cleveland became less desirable for employers.
The Call & Post exposed how Kucinich had a running political theme about American Negroes like Carl Stokes, George Forbes and Arnold Pinkney and their achievements. To him they were “incompetent.” If another Caucasian supported the candidates or interests of American Negro’s, Mr. Walker exposed how Kucinich told Caucasian supporters they were race traitors. To Kucinich United States Representative Ronald Mottl, Sr. was a sellout for supporting a holiday for Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and so was State Senator Charles Butts.
Kucinich before and during his time on city council from 1967 through 1973 was a student between Cleveland State University and Case Western Reserve University working on degrees in “speech and communication.” His late father had been an illegal Croatian alien whose uneducated and unskilled background would have made him inadmissible for legal immigration.
Joseph Kucinich also appears to have been a career criminal the United States Department of Justice investigated. Published reports show him fleeing the police at the scene of accidents he caused with his truck during the 1940’s. In one accident Dennis’ older brother, Frank, was left alone bleeding from head injuries while his illegal alien father fled police. A man was killed in another accident.
Kucinich says his parents, together, and then his mother after his father died, moved 21 times but he doesn’t really know why. He was born in 1946 and his father appears to have died between 1951 and 1955. If he’s the Joseph Mile Kucinic who entered the nation unlawfully after the Balkan War in 1913; a less than 10-year-old Dennis would have no real knowledge about his father or his life 49 years before he was born. By his own description of his family Kucinich had a low-life and child endangering upbringing. While he was mayor in 1978 Kucinich’s brother, Perry, tried to rob a bank.
The Call & Post portrayal of Kucinich was that in his own mind a poor, white ethnic college student of low-descent knew more about everything than everybody. Through the years as a perennial candidate Kucinich’s ability to sustain himself economically has come almost exclusively from elected office. Walker’s view of Kucinich was that he had an over-exaggerated view of his whiteness.
Kucinich was portrayed by the Call & Post as operating on the belief that Negroes in authority are incompetent and it was his white man’s duty to keep them in line. In Congress Kucinich introduced Articles of Impeachment against then President Barack Obama just like he attempted and failed in his attempt to launch a recall against Mayor Stokes.
There is no section of Cleveland’s charter or an Ohio law that authorizes a court clerk to deliberate in the overall affairs of the legislative authority. Before she was finally elected to city council in 1977 after 10 tries, the late Fannie Lewis in 1975 blasted “clerk of court” Kucinich for advocating the use of federal block grant funds for police instead of the city’s impoverished neighborhoods for which the money was intended.
Like he thought wrong about the block grant money in 1975, Kucinich today thinks Cleveland’s mayor should be “creative” instead of one who obeys the laws Congress enacted for spending federal stimulus money. Federal stimulus money is not for police. Walker heavily-criticized Kucinich for operating on his own ideas instead of laws and two constitutions he still hasn’t mastered. So did Council President Forbes.
In one article the Call & Post described the clerk of court’s office as worse under Jerome Krakowski who had replaced Kucinich when he won the mayor’s election in 1977. Under both Krakowski and Kucinich, clerk of court employees were known for the abusive treatment of citizens, theft in office and shakedowns of employees for campaign donations.
The Call & Post was observing how Krakowski had taken all three offenses in office that existed under Kucinich to new levels. Kucinich does not appear to have been investigated. Benny Bonnano’s decision to pick up on where Kucinich left off as the clerk of Cleveland municipal court put him in jail for 90 days in 1993.
The Plain Dealer under publisher Thomas Vail endorsed Kucinich for mayor and it was the only Cleveland newspaper to do so. Mr. Walker’s Call & Post didn’t endorse him. Neither did the Cleveland Press under Editor Herb Kamm (Russian name Kaminsky). Vail and the Plain Dealer endorsed the sale of “Muny Light.”
Kucinich was “inaugurated” as Cleveland’s 52nd mayor on November 14, 1977 after prevailing over Mayor Ralph Perk, Sr. The clearest indication of Kucinich’s disregard for the state’s sworn duties for elected officials came when the new mayor added language to the oath of office that was not authorized by the state’s “oath” laws.
Kucinich proved to be as obnoxious a mayor as he had been a councilman during Stokes’ years as mayor. He described his conduct as creative. By August 14, 1978 Kucinich was facing a recall after Ward 8 Councilman William Sullivan of the near west side coordinated a citywide campaign to remove him from office. Sid Frost was handling the recall committee’s east side operations for Operation Alert whose offices were inside the Call & Post’s building. Clevelanders weren’t feeling Kucinich’s “creative” way of governing.
37,000 signatures were gathered and 120,000 Cleveland voters showed up at the polls to decide his fate on August 14, 1978. The margin of votes between those who wanted to let Kucinich finish the term versus those who wanted him gone was 275. What Kucinich had attempted and failed against Stokes was actually done to him. He’d been in office from only November 14, 1977 until August 14, 1978 before the day of the recall vote. 10 months.
What underscores his confusion about how popular he wrongly believed he was is how Kucinich didn’t get or seemed to have ignored the memo the 120,000 vote recall message delivered. He’d won by only 275 votes and his re-election was coming the very next year in 1979. Instead of backing off the behavior that had earned him a recall after 8 months in office, Kucinich dug in and so did Mr. Walker’s Call & Post.
There was no way for Kucinich to launch an investigation that resulted in police making house calls to American citizens who’d signed recall petitions to remove him from office without word getting back to Mr. Walker. The Call & Post under Mr. Walker was literally the center of American Negro political, economic, cultural, social and civil rights life.
The Cleveland NAACP chapter was headquartered on the first floor of the Call & Post building. Operation Alert and Operation Big Vote had offices on the 4th floor.
The late attorney and Cleveland Municipal Court Judge Pauline Tarver worked for the NAACP and took citizens with complaints about police brutality upstairs to the Call & Post for pictures of the assault and a story. That’s how and where I met her before she attended law school.
Cleveland Municipal Court Judge Michael Nelson taught in the Cleveland school district in 1978 and was also studying law. He led a sit-in at the board of education’s lobby during Kucinich’s mishandling of the violence associated with school desegregation in 1977 – 1979.
Mr. Walker – through reporter Larry Bivins – exposed in the Call & Post how Kucinich had created a secret police “organized crime and corruption unit” without council or the Civil Service Commission’s knowledge or approval. Kucinich’s secret police unit was nicknamed the KIA for the Kucinich Intelligence Agency by Councilman Walter Cox, Jr.
In addition to investigating and visiting voters who’d signed recall petitions, Kucinich’s secret police had targeted 9 out of 10 American Negro members of council who had supported the recall against him. The investigations were led by Lt. Andrew Vanyo who Ward 24 Councilman Michael Reed White had accused of acquiring tax records on private citizens. The media described the council investigations as the “Carnival kickback scheme.”
As the Plain Dealer’s publisher, Thomas Vail, fanned the flames Kucinich was spreading against Council President George Forbes and the others with the indictments, Mr. Walker used the Call & Post to go the fuck off on Kucinich after his secret police unit was revealed. Forbes had just backed a recall against Kucinich and it didn’t seem right that he and the other recall backers were facing manufactured criminal charges against them two months after the election. Mr. Walker wouldn’t let the “White media” touch Forbes or loyal American Negro politicians without an editorial retaliation.
The characteristics of the “carnival kickback featured a claim that “just” the American Negro councilman, and one Caucasian female, out of the 33 had accepted a kickback from a carnival operator whose mobile equipment was brought to the city’s wards. All 33 wards held carnivals.
Irish Catholic prosecuting attorney John T. Corrigan had no problem pursuing 498 charges against 18 defendants. 10 named members of council. 9 were American Negroes. Mary Ann Lecate was the lone Caucasian councilmember and a woman. John Barnes, Sr., Lonnie Burten, Walter Cox, Sr., Cesar Moss, Carol McClendon, Carlton Rush and Curtis Watkins were all indicted by Corrigan as a result of Kucinich’s politically-motivated police investigation in October 1978. This racist was the perfect prosecuting attorney for Kucinich’s secret police state consciousness.
The indictments were exposed as politically and intended to “keep the Blacks in line” and the outrage against the politically suicidal Kucinich was immediate. None of the unlawful behind the scenes acts police had engaged in under Kucinich mattered to the Plain Dealer. If a Caucasian accuses an American Negro the “Black man” is guilty even when the accuser is the real criminal.
It was later revealed how investigations of Euclid Avenue property owner Winston Willis and construction contractor William Seawright had been initiated by Kucinich’s “secret police.” Mr. Seawright was investigated for being the winning bidder on public construction projects.
The Russian Jews and ethnics controlling University Circle’s development didn’t want Mr. Willis or American Negroes owning any property along and around Euclid Avenue. Kucinich convinced a majority of council to back an ordinance that converted housing and building violations from civil to criminal offenses. Instead of paying fines for housing violations Kucinich wanted property owners to receive criminal records and jail time. Racists now had a tool to attack American Negro and low-income Caucasian home ownership.
Anyone following stories about men being released from prison by Innocence Project attorneys are seeing the results of the ruthlessly unconstitutional style of policing Kucinich influenced while on council, as the clerk of court and as mayor from 1968 through 1985. Clevelanders have spent the last 40 years trying to undo the effects of his police state-style law enforcement influence.
One of the remnants of Kucinich’s secret police, Lt. Howard Rudolph, ended up with an assignment to the narcotics unit under George Voinovich’s administration. Voinovich inherited a political bureaucracy with which he had no historical perspective as cops like Rudolph carried over between administrations.
Rudolph under Voinovich secretly led police to control Arthur Feckner and Leonard Brooks’ crack cocaine operation around Woodhill Estates to raise $600,000 for a drug buy in Florida to have bragging rights at a police convention. During Kucinich’s last six months on council , his boy Rudolph’s “A Team” was running a secret $60,000 a day drug operation between June and July of 1985. Kucinich had been back on city council during this evil shit between August 1983 and December 1985. $60,000 a day times 45 days is $2.7 million. Cops reported only $600,000.
There was not a fucking word from Kucinich as American Negroes inside the CMHA estate were terrorized by the addicts police created and encouraged. Police Kucinich had appointed and inspired during his two years as mayor were trafficking in drugs they were taking off and putting back on the streets; and ripping Cleveland taxpayers off for overtime to pad their pensions.
Kucinich’s ex-safety director, James Barrett, wasn’t as silent his old boss when he joined with Bertram “Bert” Jennings to demand a federal investigation be requested by United States Representative Louis Stokes: which he did. Barrett had also made policing and a civilian review board an issue in 1985 when he challenged Voinovich for mayor.
I had joined George James’ administration at CMHA by 1989 and was witnessing the after and current effects of the police-controlled drug operation on Woodhill residents and others around all of CMHA’s properties. I mean … all. East side. West side. George James had been appointed by the board to serve as CMHA’s first American Negro executive director.
The late Darlice Ogletree served in James cabinet as chief of police. I served as chief of communications and had created an estate-wide newspaper for James called the CMHA Chronicle. I remember discussing with Ogletree an incident involving a mother who’d sold her 6-year-old son to one of Feckner’s dealers to pay her crack bill. The boy was sold to perform oral sex on him. One of the exterior walls of a 2nd floor unit at Woodhill Estates was blown out when an addicted man chained himself to the refrigerator, turned on the stove’s gas and lit up.
When Voinovich faced re-election in 1989 his days as Cleveland’s mayor because of policing were over. I have every confidence that Mike White would have trashed Voinovich in a heads up race for mayor over Rudolph, Feckner and Brooks.
I’d joined Curtis Sliwa’s Guardian Angels after working as a police beat reporter for the Cleveland Press in 1981. I had organized 300 volunteers in street patrols between Cleveland, Youngstown and Columbus, Ohio. Some of the young people in drug gangs, and wanting to get out, were joining. A lot of “street intelligence” was coming my way about who was doing what in the Central area and the near west side.
There’d been no Cleveland Police Patrolmen’s Association (CPPA) until 1967 and Stokes’ election as mayor. The Eastern European ethnics controlling the city’s police department didn’t want an American Negro overseeing them so they organized into an obstruction-minded labor union. Kucinich backed the racistly-motivated union and the “dirty policing” status quo its police members wanted.
Kucinich came across politically as if he wanted to pour gasoline over the emotions that led to the Hough and Glenville riots of 1966 and 1968 with his repeated attacks on Stokes and antagonistic opposition to requests that would help him succeed.
85 percent of voting American Negroes living in Cleveland, and who had been born during the 1880’s into the 1960’s, did not support Kucinich. His politics had created a psychological brick wall that separated him from Cleveland’s American Negro community; and from Protestant and Catholic non-immigrant Caucasians who shared American Revolution roots with American Negroes.
He was too “Eastern European” racist for the majority of the city’s taste in a state that had been free for American Negroes since its beginnings in 1801. Cleveland was an Underground Railroad site. The world’s first billionaire and East Cleveland resident, John D. Rockefeller, Sr., was an abolitionist and so were all his Standard Oil board members. Kucinich’s old school Eastern European “divide the classes” Bolshevikism didn’t fit into Cleveland’s abolitionist character.
The Call & Post was the 5th largest American Negro owned newspaper in the United States of America; and it was a trusted and award winning publication both locally and nationally. The Harrisburg web press the PW Publishing Company owned in the basement, and his ability to buy paper by the ton and ink by the barrel, gave Mr. Walker “instant messaging” ability with his readers long before social media. Stories published in the Call & Post were picked up by Jet and Ebony magazines; as well as a news network of American Negro publishers nationwide.
Cleveland’s “Black Wall Street” was being wiped out one business and one property at a time right before everyone’s eyes. Mr. Walker served on Cleveland city council with Dr. Leroy Bundy of East Saint Louis, Illinois. Dr. Bundy had witnessed and survived the East Saint Louis Holocaust that began on July 6, 1917 when Eastern European and Irish Catholic unionists left their labor hall with the intent on “exterminating all the niggers.”
Dr. Bundy is famous in East Saint Louis for arming American Negro men to defend themselves and their families against illegal alien terrorists who’d armed themselves into “unions” and wanted them dead. Congressional records show the number of American Negro men, women and children slaughtered by alien and immigrant ethnic terrorists exceeded 1000.
Mr. Walker was born September 19, 1896. He died of a heart attack inside the elevator of the Call & Post building on October 29, 1981. The events I’m reciting were during his 82nd and 83rd year of life in 1978 and 1979; and God was giving him another two.
After all he’d witnessed happening to American Negroes, and all he’d done to advance, defend and to uplift the spirit and intellect of the American Negro, his last years were “masterfully string pulling” and editorially fearless. A man in touch with his mortality has no master but God.
Kucinich can say what he wants about the heroics of his time in office as Cleveland’s mayor, but the headlines and audits don’t support his version of the facts.
He didn’t “save” Muny Light. The city council George Forbes led as president saved Muny Light. Council, not the mayor, controls the property and assets of a municipal corporation as the authority is written into Section 715.06 of the Ohio Revised Code for the creation of a public utility.
It’s been on the books since October 1, 1953 with Section 715.01 when Kucinich was seven years old. It’s the section explaining how control of property is through an ordinance.
So when Kucinich claims to have prevented the sale of Muny Light in his official capacity as mayor he had no power to stop council if a sale is what a majority of the 33 members wanted. Especially since he didn’t last beyond 26 months in office.
Mr. Walker can’t speak for himself and neither can Mayor Carl Stokes. I don’t think George Forbes cares and he’s left his words about Kucinich and Muny Light in an interview with Brent Larkin of the Plain Dealer. Brent remembers details the same way as I remember them in his questions to George. Especially the “George Forbes Coup” story that involved Judge Larry Jones as a council freshman. The way Larry tells it is the funniest shit ever. Kudos to Mike White! LOL!
What I can offer as someone who worked for the Call & Post between 1978 and 1979 when Kucinich was serving as mayor is the perspective of American Negro political leaders who had a better historical understanding of the events of the time. I trust Mr. Walker’s commitment and diligence. I trusted Carl Stokes. I trusted George Forbes.
I worked for Mike White as one of his special assistants; and he was one of my favorite councilmen. Mike didn’t limit his issues and perspective. I appreciated how he took up and did battle for the “elders” like George Forbes, Mr. Walker, the Stokes brothers and others. Even when they’ve had political fights Mike maintained respect for the elders. He handled the fuck out of Dennis.
