Mark Naymik. A lynch mob formed to hang a Samaritan. I went for the savage carrying the rope. Friendship had nothing to do with my Ken Johnson stories.

CLEVELAND, OH – On July 30, 2021 at 10:54 p.m. WKYC employee Mark Naymik sought some vindication for a series of stories about one member of the 17-member Cleveland city council’s adopted sons, their jobs, homes and employers.  The former councilman’s name is Kenneth Johnson.

The net result of Naymik’s WKYC and Cleveland.com stories is that the media outlets are responsible for pressuring over 44 American Negro men and women out of work.  The economic stability of their own lives and the lives of their families are disrupted; and he’s cackling on Facebook while being praised by his “friends” for a job well done.  Read his words.

The WKYC employee cannot prove the truth of the following statement. “Ken Johnson, who relied on his friend Eric Brewer to muddy the water against me and anyone questioning him.”  The WKYC employee’s statement implies that my only motivation for writing about the “matter of public concern” was friendship with the former member of Cleveland city council and his aide; and not that I am an editorial Samaritan who is aware of different facts.

I’ve been involved in three defamation actions and words when dissected before a judge take on a precise meaning.  I’ve never lost and I represented myself.

I would offer that if Johnson were to start with the first story Naymik wrote about his relationship with the Buckeye Shaker Square Development Corporation (BSSDC) on July 9, 2018, until his most recent comments on Facebook, he could file and should win a defamation claim against him and his employers.  Naymik’s work has been “malicious” and he’s operated “with a reckless disregard for the truth” in his coverage of the councilman’s statutory relationship with BSSDC versus his role as a private citizen donor.  It’s the same for the other cleveland.com writers repeating false information they can easily verify as false.  Now he’s maliciously and recklessly disseminating lies about me.  It’s going to stop.

The WKYC employee can’t prove Johnson “relied on his friend Eric Brewer” for anything.  The WKYC employee can’t prove Johnson and I are friends.  The WKYC can’t prove I was “relied” on by Johnson to “muddy the water against” him.  The WKYC employee can’t prove I was relied on to “muddy the water” against “anyone questioning” Johnson.

Much like he can’t prove his published claims about my interactions with Johnson that would describe us as “friends,” Naymik can’t prove “the city of Cleveland’s lack of response” to the “councilman’s actions,” that he “simply pointed out,” was because Mayor Frank Jackson, Sharon Dumas and Barbara Langhenry were concealing the crimes AdvanceOhio’s employee was accusing Johnson of committing.  That’s the latest not so subtle messaging coming from cleveland.com.  Why didn’t the Jackson administration act when Naymik presented his factually and legally unsupported allegations against Johnson?  Perhaps the answer is in John Caniglia’s cleveland.com piece that no official with the authority to act saw Johnson and Jamison’s acts as violations of state and local laws.

If either Johnson or I were to file a defamation claim against Naymik and WKYC, their corporates offices will assign Vladmir Putin’s unregistered foreign agent law firm, Squire, Patton & Boggs, to argue on behalf of Naymik, before a judge, that he meant words like “friend” to be “loose” and that his terms like “muddy the water” were casual and not intended to be precise.  Neither is his 8th grade level writing style in a school district he attended that grades students on the curve.  English may be his second language.  The facts found in a 40-year trail of clippings from every publication or website I’ve published is that Naymik is not the only local, national or international writer who’s work I’ve critiqued.

For “harm” there’s Lee Batdorff’s response to Naymik’s post for starters.  He wrote that I told him when we were younger how I wanted to eat at the “trough.”  The term is associated with how political pigs are fed.  They’re the people who have careers in politics like some of Naymik’s commenting “friends.”  That’s not been my life. The last I saw Lee he was a bit “different” and I’m thinking it’s been at least 20 years.  The point is Batdorff would have kept his “off” thoughts about me to himself had he not read Naymik’s false words.

Naymik’s delusional thinking about Johnson and me comes from not having worked like I did during a period when Clevelanders received information from two dailies, the Call & Post and weeklies like the Sun Newspapers before they were purchased and ruined by the Plain Dealer’s Russian owners.  Not all writers shared the same view of a public figure or the facts another writer chose to investigate.

The only evidence in existence about a relationship between Johnson and I is that we interacted over the matters of public concern Naymik called himself raising after the councilman publicly called out Neighborhood Progress, Inc.’s (NPI) investment of housing grant dollars away from the poor neighborhoods where HUD wants them invested.  NPI does business as Cleveland Neighborhood Progress.  The non-profit’s former chief executive officer, Joel Ratner, had asked his board to cut BSSDC’s funding and made a personal visit to a board meeting with demands for the members to resign.

After Ratner made his funding cut move, an alien Indian by the name of Tania MarMenesse – who may or may not be a lawful citizen of the United States of America eligible to work and oversee federal funds – decided to withhold $41,000 from the Buckeye Shaker Square Development Corporation (BSSDC) in violation of federal HUD laws.  44 American Negro men, women and youth who fell within the demographics of the type of American citizens Congress appropriated dollars to HUD to help were affected.

A class action lawsuit was filed in United States District Court on November 18, 2018 against BSSDC by attorney Scott Perlmuter of the Tittle Law Firm.  Menesse’s “trouble causing” unlawful decision was reversed by the Jackson administration and within three days Cross was signing for the check as the board’s “acting” president.  Menesse had made her fund cuttng decision in August before she was reversed in November.

Menesse – according to Cross – had told him it wasn’t her “intent” to enforce the city of Cleveland’s duties contained within the grant management agreement to deliver “technical assistance” to the non-profit as required by laws enacted by Congress. What the native of a Third World nation – that just celebrated 100 years of Communism – told American elected officials and appointed public officials was that this nation’s federal laws didn’t matter.  She wasn’t enforcing them.

Had Naymik read the Communist Control Act of 1954 codified at Title 50 of the United States Code, Section 23 under the heading “Internal Security” he would have seen her unlawful conduct as a characteristic assigned to Communist infiltrators. They ignore our laws while enriching themselves at the benefit of them.  The specific wording reads, in part, as follows:   “Unlike political parties, the Communist Party acknowledges no constitutional or statutory limitations upon its conduct or upon that of its members.”

What Naymik chose not to do as a journalist was to explore Johnson’ allegations against Ratner and its Neighborhood Progress, Inc. board for an “all sides” look at the “disparity of federal and grant funding” issue the veteran municipal legislator was raising.  He also chose to ignore the one question that should have redirected him away from Johnson.  Does a municipal legislator possess individual power beyond the collective powers assigned to municipal legislators pursuant to Section 731.05 of the Ohio Revised Code?

Naymik’s only focus was on Johnson; and he maliciously seemed bent on destroying an American Negro elected official who had pointed to possible criminal acts committed by one of the writer’s fellow Eastern Europeans.  So did federal prosecutors under acting United States Attorney Bridget Brennan’s direction.

I’ll use this analogy to describe the thinking of the prosecutors going after Johnson.  Because they believed he could fly by levitating, they prosecuted him for flying by levitation; although it is humanly impossible for him to fly by levitation.

Had Naymik chosen to investigate the facts presented in the Tittle law firm’s frivolous federal pleading, instead of blindly repeating those that supported his earlier wrong conclusions in follow-up stories about Johnson’s individual power as a municipal legislator during his interactions with BSSDC, some discrepancies would have been glaring. 

As an example, there were not more than 50 employees affected by Menesse’s unlawful decision to withhold BSSDC’s funds as Perlmuter claimed in the class action pleading.  The actual number was 44.

One “off” fact may lead to another so it’s best to check them all.  That’s especially since three previously non-existent names were added to the authenticated 44 in the “statement of damages” Perlmuter filed and testifed to in court.  Even at 47 that’s even three fewer employees than the 50 alleged in the federal court pleading except Perlmuter testified that none had yet been paid when they had.

Three days after Perlmuter filed the class action claim on November 18, 2018, by November 21, 2018 the Jackson administration cut the check.  By the first week of December 2018 all were paid but that’s not what Perlmuter told the court.

The Tittle Law Firm on its blog, after filing a class action claim on behalf of Brian Coffey, falsely claimed that Johnson and Jamison’s names were found in BSSDC’s 990 filing with the Internal Revenue Service.  The false claim on the Tittle law firm’s “Blog” features a photo credit to Mark Naymik of cleveland.com.  The headline reads: Tittle & Perlmuter Files Class-Action Lawsuit Against Buckeye-Shaker Group for Unpaid Wages.  The sub-headline reads:  Buckeye-Shaker Organization and Cleveland Councilman Ken Johnson Sued for Unpaid Wages.

“The lawsuit argues that “Assets of BSSDC have been transferred in substantial amounts to … John Hopkins, Garnell Jamison, and/or Kenneth L. Johnson”, as explained by BSSDC’s Form 990 in which “exorbitant salaries disproportionate to the services they rendered” can be observed.”

The only “exorbitant salary” was Hopkin’s $70,833.  NPI’s Ratner’s wages were $299,000 but like Perlmuter he’s Russian Jewish.  From Naymik’s perspective … a fellow Eastern European.  The Tittle law firm’s description of Hopkins’ $70,833 annual wages as “exorbitant” was ignorantly offensive.  Hopkins appears to have been the only paid full time employee while NPI’s workforce consisted of 30; with 7 earning between $111,000 and Ratner’s $299,000.

By naming Johnson in the litigation Perlmuter and co-counsel Thomas A. Downie “Civil Rule 11’d” themselves when the pleading repeated Naymik’s false information about Johnson’s individual powers as a municipal legislator. Had Naymik read the federal, state and local laws that explained the duties of each individual elected and appointed public official with whom he was interacting, and how the laws associated with each individual public record that recorded an official act were created and required to be used, he’d have seen the lies in the following statement he wrote and his former employer published.

The signs of trouble at BSSDC have been evident for years but have been discounted by Ward 4 Cleveland Councilman Ken Johnson, a 37-year veteran of City Hall politics and the organization’s biggest benefactor. Each year, Johnson earmarks federal money – community development block grants – to go to the organization and insists the money be poured into a grass-cutting and lot-cleaning program that consumes much of the organization’s time and resources. The program also employs one of Johnson’s sons, and his City Council assistant, Garnell Jamison.

At all times since his 1979 election to Cleveland city council, and his being sworn in to discharge the duties of a member of the legislative authority, Johnson’s had no “individual authority” to do anything other than attend council’s meetings and vote pursuant to Section 731.05 of the Ohio Revised Code.  Naymik’s claim that Johnson, individually, has earmark authority as a characteristic of the “office” of a member of a “legislative authority” is just plain wrong.

“The powers of the legislative authority of a city shall be legislative only, it shall perform no administrative duties, and it shall neither appoint nor confirm any officer or employee in the city government except those of its own body, unless otherwise provided in Title VII of the Revised Code. All contracts requiring the authority of the legislative authority for their execution shall be entered into and conducted to performance by the board or officers having charge of the matters to which they relate. After the authority to make such contracts has been given and the necessary appropriation made, the legislative authority shall take no further action thereon.“

Johnson’s name wasn’t in BSSDC’s 990’s. Naymik would have learned, had he bothered to consult with either the Plain Dealer or cleveland.com’s legal counsel, if an “individual” member of a “legislative” authority limited to discharging the duties found R.C. 731.05 has “earmark” authority under any local, state or federal law.  The only reference to “earmark” under Title 7 of the Ohio Revised Code is in Section 701.07 under the heading, “Cooperative Economic Development Agreements.”  The word is referenced only 13 times in different sections of the Ohio Revised Code.  Only once under Title 7’s instructions to “”Municipal Corporations.”  Earmark authority is given to the entire council.  Not one member.

Johnson’s only authority relative to the Community Development Department under Mayor Frank Jackson’s direct management, exclusively, was to approve the administrative law enforcement officer’s budget and contractual requests as but one member of a 17-member legislative authority.  It was Jackson’s duty to make sure his employees and the “officers” of the municipal corporation were “supervised” to discharge their official duties.  This authority is found in Section 733.34 of the Ohio Revised Code.  “Supervision of conduct of officers of the municipal corporation.”

It was Jackson’s duty to ensure the grant management agreement between the city and BSSDC was enforced, that the “CDC’s were monitored and technically assisted; and that block grant funds went to the designated census tracts instead of unlawfully being split up 17 ways.  Naymik should have been asking Jackson and not Johnson the BSSDC questions.

The state laws I’ve cited relative to the separation of powers between members of council and the mayor is detailed in Coyne v. Salavtor 2002 and decided by the justices of the Supreme Court of Ohio because they wanted to settle the matter.  Tom Coyne served as Brookpark’s mayor and Richard Salvator served as council president.  They got into a power dispute over who got to pick the law firm to handle labor negotations.  Attorney Kenneth Seminatore handled Tom’s side of the argument.  According to the Supreme Court of Ohio, there’s no way an “individual” member of council could do what Johnson was accused of by Naymik.

“The authority to contract is divided evenly between the mayor and council, and neither can contract without the cooperation of the other.”

Since Naymik reported about the Tittle law firm’s federal claim naming Johnson, Jamison and Hopkins as the IRS 990’d administrators controlling BSSDC; a review of the federal tax records would have exposed the factual falsehood.  Between the three men only Hopkin’s names appears in the IRS 990’s during his tenure as director.  Naymik knew or should have known by reading the city’s grant management agreement with BSSDC, and reading its publicly available IRS 990’s, that the Tittle lawyers were lying.

Naymik never explained how Johnson was the “biggest benefactor” of the financially-starved Ward 4 non-profit.  The contributions he described Johnson as making characterized him as its biggest public supporter and private donor.  The reporter seemed to have absolutely no curiousity about the other side of the story Johnson’s criticism of Ratner revealed.  That is, he never sought to learn how much money Ward 4 was being deprived of annually by the unlawful 17-way split of community development block grant funds that went to Cleveland wards with census tracts ineligible to receive them.  Naymik never sought to learn how the ineligible members of council on the west side and downtown were spending the federal dollars in violation of federal laws.  Neither did the FBI and federal prosecutors.

While focusing all his biased editorial energies on the destruction of Johnson, Jamison, Hopkins and BSSDC, Naymik also ignored Johnson’s documentable concerns about Ratner, Menesse and his other “personal” detractors since his role with the non-profit – after his vote on the annual block grant budget – was limited to that of private citizen donor.  After Johnson voted with his 16 council colleagues to award federal monies to BSSDC his official role was done.  What Naymik described as an “earmark” was a request from Johnson to apply block grant funds to BSSDC that needed the vote of the other 16 members because of the 17-way split legislation they enacted in 2000.  At that time the split of $30 million went 21 ways.

No federal, state or local laws prevented Johnson from interacting with BSSDC as an influential contributing American citizen exercising his 1st Amendment rights to use his time away from council for volunteer pursuits. There was nothing preventing him from making BSSDC, Ward 4 and his interest in the city’s parks and recreation program his philanthropy or a source of donated funds.  BSSDC was Johnson’s United Way.

That’s what the late Mayor George Voinovich recognized when he and the council George Forbes led as president decided to fund the non-profit agency with a lawn mower Johnson used to cut grass as a volunteer in 1983. There was no evil in Johnson’s “Little Buddy” program where older American Negro men mentored younger American Negro men, teenagers and adolescent males.  In Naymik’s mind an American Negro politician spending 40 years of his life in politics to uplift other American Negroes has to be exterminated.  The sickness in his thinking is that I have to be Johnson’s friend instead of a Samaritan.  It’s a Christian thing.  Luke 10: 30 – 37.  It’s all about Jesus.

“A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. ³¹ A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. ³² So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. ³³ But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. ³⁴ He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him. ³⁵ The next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have. “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”   The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.”

Had Naymik bothered to investigate and compare the IRS 990’s between BSSDC and Ratner’s NPI, and reviewed federal tax reporting and community development block grant laws, he would have seen verification of the spending allocation concerns Johnson publicly and officially directed at the better funded non-profit.

As an example, HUD caps costs for “planning and administration” of grants at 20 percent. The authority is found at Title 24 of the Code of Federal Regulations 570.200(g)(1) and (2).

Paragraph (g)(1) states that, “No more than 20 percent of any origin year grant shall be expended for planning and program administrative costs, as defined in § 570.205 and §570.206, respectively for origin year 2015 grants and subsequent grants.   Expenditures of program income for planning and program administrative costs are excluded from this calculation.”

Paragraph (g)(2) states that, “The amount of CDBG funds obligated during each program year for planning plus administrative costs, as defined in §570.205 and §570.206, respectively, shall be limited to an amount no greater than 20 percent of the sum of the grant made for that program year (if any) plus the program income received by the recipient and its subrecipients (if any) during that program year. Funds from a grant of any origin year may be used to pay planning and program administrative costs associated with any grant of any origin year.”

In the NPI 990’s submitted to the IRS not all employees or board members are identified as they are on the 501.c3 non-profit’s website.  Seven are identified as key employees with wages in excess of $100,000.  Ratner earned $299,320 and then apartheid-like wages followed the gender, ethnicity and religions of the other six workers.  Irish Catholic on the bottom.  NPI’s 990 identifies the city of Cleveland as a funding source.  Ratner earns almost twice as much as Jackson’s $154,000.  The same with Governor Richard Michael DeWine’s $159,000.  The President of the United States of America earns $400,000.

If Perlmuter of the Tittle lawyers believed BSSDC’s Hopkins’ $83,000 in wages were “exorbitant,” then Ratner’s wages were outrageous and so were those of the non-profit’s key team.  Naymik never questioned if NPI and Ratner were killing off funding BSSDC to cover their own outrageous salaries.  It never dawned on federal prosecutors that Menesse may have been scheming with Ratner to kill off BSSDC knowing it would leave money for her own wages as his replacement.

I have long thought attorneys should master the “statutory” powers of public entities and the “duties” of public officials as they’re written into laws federal, state and local laws rather than relying on court “rulings” coming from judges who haven’t read them either.  I think it’s negligent for defense attorneys, prosecutors and judges not to learn the federal, state and local administrative codes that instructs public officials on how to discharge their duties for the “missed” steps that point to criminal acts of “dereliction of duty” and other crimes.

Menesse has been given access to national defense secrets as an admitted Indian alien from a caste system nation that celebrated 100 years of “real” Communism last year.  The Tittle class lawsuit against BSSDC was stimulated by her decision to withhold technical assistance from the non-profit; which violated the terms and conditions of the city’s grant management agreement with the non-profit.  Naming Johnson and Jamison in it should have been viewed as “suspicious” since there was no legal basis for it based on the false claim that the two were identified in BSSDC’s 990’s to the IRS.

The Jackson administration’s decision to override Menesse’s cancellation within three days of the federal court filing should have caused Naymik to ask, “why?”  That’s if he were a diligent journalist being guided by a knowledgeable editor.

From the time he joined Cleveland city council in 1980 until after I wrote my first story about the matter of public concern Naymik called himself raising in 2018, Johnson and I never had a conversation.  In our first conversation that’s what Johnson and I discussed.  In 40 years I’ve never written a critical story about Johnson or thought to write one about him because there’s nothing that’s ever come across my attention by anyone that he’s been criminally-inclined.

There are obviously facts I know about Johnson and those I’ve observed.  I know he joined the city’s parks and recreation department in 1965 two years before Carl Stokes was elected mayor in 1967.  I know he campaigned for a Cleveland city council seat in 1979 and won when I was working for the Call & Post.

I know Johnson carried a lawn mower in his personal car that he used to cut the grass of senior citizens in his ward.  I knew BSSDC co-founder Dave Bailey better than I knew Johnson.  We met when I was organizing Curtis Sliwa’s Guardian Angel chapters in Cleveland, Columbus and Youngstown.  During Jim Trakas’ term as Cuyahoga County Republican Party chairman we were members of the executive committee.  My first introduction to BSSDC was around 1981 when Bailey invited me to speak to a group of business owners and residents about setting up a Guardian Angel patrol in the area.  He talked about the new councilman’s grass cutting.

I remember in 1983 when Mayor George Voinovich gave Johnson a riding mower with his name on it to do the job; and when Council President George Forbes and the council decided to support his efforts with equipment as a private citizen.  I remember seeing Johnson on the mower cutting the grass in lots with teams of young American Negro males helping him.

The bottom line is that everyone in “our” community saw the good Johnson was doing, and knew, personally, some of the American Negro men he was helping like Cross.  One of Johnson’s “sons” was a man I promoted to fire captain in East Cleveland; and he later became the fire department’s chief.  Rick Wilcox.  I had no knowledge about their relationship when he worked for the city and before I promoted him.  All I knew from his work with the East Cleveland Chief’s boys football, where he was helping other young American Negro males like he’d been helped by Johnson, was that he was “good people.”  Wilcox was good firefighter who had the confidence of Kenneth Adams: the man I appointed to manage fire and EMS as my deputy director of public safety.

In our last conversation Naymik told me he was “just a good ol’ Slovenian boy” from the Broadway – Fleet area.  I already knew that from his last name and his “target the jobs of American Negroes” consciousness having been raised in East Saint Louis, Illinois where Slovenians were among the Eastern Europeans “exterminating niggers” to eliminate job competition.

It’s all in the National Archives and a congressional hearing about the July 6, 1917 holocaust Eastern European “unionists” and “anarchists” committed when they took the lives of over 1000 American Negro men, women and children. The 1917 holocaust started when factory owners the “unions” were boycotting were hiring non-union American Negroes and Caucasian Protestant Christians from the Southern states; and the Eastern European Catholics and Jews immigrating to the northern states didn’t want the competition.  The “unionists,” according to the National Archives, left their hall to “exterminate all the niggers.”

The point to all this history is to underscore, culturally, why it’s my opinion that Naymik chose the subtly racist words he used to describe the stories I wrote about his editorial obsession with Kenneth Johnson.  In doing so he defamed us both.  I’m a Samaritan.  Naymik, Ratner and Menesse would fit the characteristics of Levites when it comes to Johnson; who from a Christian I see as a fellow Samaritan based on my 41 years of knowledge of his public life.

I “knew of” Kenneth Johnson before I started reviewing Naymik’s writings about the 41-year veteran councilman. What Naymik wrote didn’t conform with anything I’d heard about the councilman or knew about the management of a municipal HUD-funded block grant program; or a direct entitlement city’s interactions with the Community Housing Development Corporations (CHDO) federal dollars are funding.   Like the Tittle attorneys, Naymik’s writing showed him as lacking an inherent understanding of HUD laws, regulations and the programs Congress is funding.

The Plain Dealer’s circulation has dropped from 450,000 a day 7 days a week and 25 cents a copy, to 94,000 copies a day four days a week for $3.25 a copy with Naymik as a leading writer for the last 20 nearly years.   A publication whose former employee’s work was viewed so poorly that it suffers a loss of 366,000 paying readers and sharers of the information they’re “producing” daily is not being led by geniuses.

I’ve learned that Jackson’s decided to remove Johnson’s name from the recreation center that bears it.  Council owns the city’s property.  It’s not Jackson’s decision to make which is yet another law his administration has disobeyed like it did the laws identified in its terms and conditions with BSSDC, NPI and every other recipient of HUD block grant funds.

After 16 years as mayor and a once licensed attorney and city prosecutor, a mayor with that level of education and prior exposure to the laws he was required to ensure were uniformly enforced throughout his administration should have led the most statutorily-compliant government … ever.  Every member of council and employee should have been “protected” by his guiding them towards learning and mastering the Constitution of the United States, the Constitution of Ohio, the laws of the United States, the laws of the State of Ohio and the charter and ordinances of Cleveland.  Pursuant to Section 705.28 of the Revised Code of Ohio, everybody working at city hall was administered an oath of office to know what’s in those governing authorities.

Johnson earned his name on the recreation center.  His good works deserve to be remembered.  He “raised” the sons of others better than the biological or adopted sons and grandsons of half the politicians I know.

Frank.  If you do this for the Levites you disgrace the Samaritans.  You’re on your way out.  Do you really want people shitting all over your name after you leave?  Come on … Brother.

Mark.  Parents cash their kids checks and deposit them into their accounts in our community.  Friends do it for friends.  That’s what Ken’s going to jail for … people.  Bullshit.  So is Garnell.  That’s part of his testimony and of course, Mark, you, your employers and federal prosecutors just didn’t want to see it that way.  There aren’t many bank branches on the east side; nor is there a proliferation of check cashing facilities that once existed in “the ‘hood.”

Ken didn’t rely on me for anything … Mark.  We weren’t friends when I wrote my first story.  Even when I worked for former Mayor Michael White as a special assistant in 1999 and 2000, Ken and I had no interactions or conversations other than to say a pleasant “hello” if we crossed each other’s paths.  Council under White funded BSSDC to cut grass.

To answer your question about why I chose to offer a different editorial perspective about the matter of public concern you raised about Ken.  I saw mob trying to lynch a fellow Samaritan.  I went for the mutha fucka with the rope.