Following the near-total bungling of reaction to the U.S. Department of Justice report on the Cleveland Police Department’s pattern of excessive use of force, a group of citizens is beginning a push for the recall of Mayor Frank Jackson. The first public forum for such will take place on March 4.

Jackson wrote on Friday: “It is the right of citizens within the charter to request a recall of any City of Cleveland elected official if they believe that is what they need to do.”

At issue is the mayor’s tacit support for a system that regularly dispenses injustice — via the police department, the housing department, the health department, etc. 19 Action News cites Ken Bender of the Black Contractors Group: “African Americans are continued to be denied the opportunity to build their neighborhoods. Build their communities and go home and feed their families too.” These issues have been on the table for decades, stretching back to administrations predating Carl Stokes and the late-1960s’ Cleveland: Now! campaign. Jackson’s administration, all nine years of it at this point, has kept its ken focused neatly on downtown development. Conversations urging on a greater sense of action in Cleveland’s more isolated, poorer neighborhoods form a constant and thrumming node of daily life in this city. In both local media and in the halls of government, those problems have long gone unresolved.

Still, the organizers are centering their work around the DOJ report and the systemic cause-and-effect events that surrounded the Nov. 22, 2014, shooting death of Tamir Rice.

Recall efforts necessitate some 12,000 voter signatures before landing on the ballot. Through three campaigns for election, Jackson has handily picked up at least 55 percent of the citywide vote each time. He picked up 66 percent of the vote in 2013 when he defeated Ken Lanci. 

The first meeting of this recall effort will take place at 5 p.m. March 4 at the Kinsman Square Party Center, 3224 East 93rd Street.

This article appears in Feb 11-17, 2015.

Eric Sandy is an award-winning Cleveland-based journalist. For a while, he was the managing editor of Scene. He now contributes jam band features every now and then.

4 replies on “Movement to Recall Mayor Frank Jackson Is Under Way”

  3. he has done nothing but put money in his friends and family`s pockets, the things that are happening in Cleveland and moving it forward has nothing to do with him,other organizations and people who care are responsible for them. Now the rouge police who think they are at war with the citizens and (I would like to call them firefighter but the only fire they are putting out is all the crap they create by stealing our money. The crooked inspectors lying
    are the people he has hired and promoted and justified their actions. send his ass to find a real job. Oh wait he has friends who will give him a cushy job as payback for all the perks they received .RECALL THE B!T(H .

  4. Wow ! Anyone scared call the police. HA Satan , Lucifer , Devil, Obstacle , Adversary Personification of Evil The watchers fell from heaven to bring corruption and destruction had sex with women who offspring became Giants on Earth and got destroyed by God and put into pits in a underworld. Lesson learned : don’t get to big and forget to do what you know is morally right Mayor Jackson. I am a firm believer that God makes the final call on our destiny not someone so minuscule as Mayor Frank Jackson and a Black police Chief who both are Christian that barley even understands that they our operating incorrectly with good or bad intent … Satan uses people ..but your time will come you get to the point it’s not even worth it to ask or be involved in the thought of what will come to them as they reap what they have sewn.,,

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