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Next Up · Saturday, October 3 · 10 AM–12 Noon
Good food. Real conversations. A stronger Cleveland.
Warrensville Heights Civic & Senior Center · 4567 Green Road, Warrensville Heights
Free breakfast · Special guests · Community mobilization. If your organization moves people to the polls, there is a seat for you. RSVPs by Wednesday, September 30 help us set the room right — but nobody gets turned away.
Sponsored by Concerned Citizens, Cleveland City Council President Blaine A. Griffin, RealPower.TV, Councilman Richard A. Starr, State Representative Terrence Upchurch, the Cleveland Clergy Coalition and the Fraternal Orders.
See the full event detailsRSVP right here

Tuesday, October 6 · 3:30 PM · First day of early voting
Roll to the Polls: Cleveland’s Early Vote Kickoff at the Board of Elections
Free food · Live music · 1803 Superior Ave, Cleveland

Ohio has required a photo ID to vote in person since 2023. If Issue 3 passes in November, you will walk into the same polling place, hand over the same license, and vote the same way you did last year. Nothing about your Tuesday changes.
So ask the question that actually matters: if it changes nothing, what is it for? It moves the rule out of statute and into the constitution — and after that, undoing it takes a statewide vote of the people.
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If you have been following this case, you already know the verdict that never came. Eleven to one. Seven days. A mistrial on September 4 and a courthouse full of people who could not believe one man held.
There were twelve people in that room. Eleven of them were white. One of them was not. The Black man was the holdout — and since the mistrial, reporters have pulled his court records and a blogger has published his photograph. Eleven people voted the other way. Not one of them got a background check run on them for it.
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What happens after treatment? At Northern Ohio Recovery Association, we believe that question is just as important as what happens during treatment.
Recovery is about more than completing a program. It is about having a safe place to live, reconnecting with family, finding purpose, getting a job, becoming financially stable and having the opportunity to build a life in recovery.
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There are moments when the ballot stops being an election-day errand and becomes a statement about who we are and what we intend to leave our children. This is one of those moments.
For African Americans, the right to vote has never been theoretical. It was purchased at an extraordinary price. Men and women marched for it, organized for it, were arrested for it, lost jobs over it, and some were beaten and killed for daring to demand what the Constitution said citizenship already guaranteed.
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When we began this series, we established the structural reality of Cleveland’s housing market: a median sale price of $148,000 paired with a fast-moving inventory averaging 33 days on the market. It is a rare environment where a single income can still secure a deed.
But recognizing an entry point is only half the equation. The other half requires looking at the ledger from the opposite side — measuring the exact, long-term financial cost of choosing to remain a renter.
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We are down another warrior in the fight for what’s right. Stan Griffin.
We called him the sign man. That was the job he wanted and the job he owned. Yard signs. Corner signs. Signs out on the highway in spots I still cannot figure out how he reached. Judges. School levies. County levies. Mayors. Congresspeople. Council people. If you ran for anything in this town in the last fifteen years, I would bet money Stan put your signs up.
Steve Linton introduced us. We lost Steve ten, twelve years back. Stan was rolling with me before Deametrius St. John ever came around, and I gave Deametrius his eulogy this year. Now Stan. That is the part nobody warns you about when you do this work long enough. You do not just build campaigns. You build a crew. And then you start losing them.
Stan never asked for the credit. He asked for the signs. He showed up every time, he was loyal every time, and there is no version of my career that happens without him.
We did so many campaigns together that I cannot remember them all. But this is the first season I am going to remember that you are not with me.
Rest well, my friend. You deserve it.
P.S. Tell Steve I said what’s up.
— Kenn Dowell
Please keep the Griffin family in your prayers. Our condolences go out to every one of them. Big shout out to Stan.
Cleveland has never been short on organizations doing this work. What it has never had is one table where all of them sit down together.
Concerned Citizens, Cleveland City Council President Blaine A. Griffin, RealPower.TV, Councilman Richard A. Starr, Ohio State Rep. Terrence Upchurch, the Cleveland Clergy Coalition and the Fraternal Orders are hosting one room, one morning — to put everybody’s turnout work on the table. Who is knocking which doors. Who is registering whom. Where the gaps are, while there is still time to close them.
This is about turnout, and nothing else. No candidate, no party, no endorsement. If your organization moves people to the polls, there is a seat for you.

Sponsor Message
Voices for a Better Future PAC was in this fight before this network existed. Voting rights, criminal justice, job access, and the ground game that turns all of it into votes.
They are also one of the sponsors who make REAL POWER.TV possible. Supporting them is how we keep doing this.

He hasn’t worked for another man since he was 21. He has made over a million dollars in a single month. He has also lost $3.2 million — and he will tell you exactly whose fault that was.
Derrick Grace II came to Cleveland for Freedom Summer 2026 and sat down with Kenn Dowell for the longest, most unguarded conversation he has given anybody. Money, fatherhood, self-reliance, and the arguments neither man backed off. Nothing was cut.
Watch the full episode →The Power Desk on stories breaking elsewhere. Not affiliated with the outlets referenced below.
Video still: MS NOWA seat nobody was contesting is contested. Ohio’s two Republican senators have called on Congressman Max Miller to resign over abuse allegations from his ex-wife; he denies them and is not leaving. His challenger, 20-year union ironworker and councilman Brian Poindexter, told MS NOW he is not running on any of that. He is running on cost of living, the PRO Act, no corporate PAC money, and a ban on members of Congress trading stocks. Read that as strategy, not restraint — the scandal moves the seat, the ironworker still has to move the voters. OH-7 is not our district. The lesson is: a safe seat stays safe only while the people holding it keep protecting it.
Photo illustration · RealPower.TVMore than a thousand federal personnel are being sent to polling places for the midterms, and the NAACP is asking the question nobody at the podium wants on the record: sent there to do what, exactly. Reported by Phenix S. Halley, The Root. A federal presence at a polling place does not have to turn a single voter away to work. It only has to make enough people decide the trip is not worth it. Ohio early voting opens October 6. Watch who gets posted where, and in which wards.
Video still: Native Land PodAngela Rye spent National Voter Registration Day doing the unglamorous thing — reading the numbers out loud. Florida has removed more than a million people from its rolls since 2022 and inactivated a million more. South Carolina removed 1.2 million between 2022 and 2025, most of them people who missed four years of elections and never answered a notice. Chenét Jackson of Florida for All found her own registration flagged after voting from the same address since 1997. Also on: Rep. Bennie Thompson, launching So Vote through the CBC Institute alongside Jim Clyburn, Cedric Richmond and former HUD Secretary Marcia Fudge — money and message aimed at the low-propensity voter who shows up for a president and sits out everything else. None of this required a new law. A purge is a filing deadline nobody told you about. Check your status before you finish this edition, then read what Issue 3 is actually for.
Every conversation goes deeper the moment it hits the digital newsprint — the strategy behind the story, in plain English, every week. And if you want to fund the ground game behind it, Voices for a Better Future PAC is where that happens.
No fluff. No filler. Just the moves that matter — straight to your inbox the moment we go live.
Events
Saturday, October 3 · 10 AM–12 Noon · Warrensville Heights Civic & Senior Center, 4567 Green Road, Warrensville Heights. Free breakfast, special guests, and every organization’s turnout work on one table.
RSVP & See All EventsGet notified the moment we go live, plus the strategic breakdown every week.
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RealPower.TV is Cleveland’s Black digital newsprint — a Black-owned media outlet covering African American news, politics, health, business and culture across Cleveland, Cuyahoga County and Ohio. Cleveland went years without a Black paper. We picked it back up.
Published by Strategic Moves Media Network, RealPower.TV also produces Black podcasts and radio out of Cleveland: the The RealPower Radio Show with Kenn Dowell and Dr. Heather E. Burton, live Tuesdays 12–1PM on 95.9 FM WOVU and streaming here; The RealPower.TV Podcast with Kenn Dowell; Sanctified & Stilettos with Dr. Heather E. Burton; and A-1 Conversations with Joe Little III.
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