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Above: Women's March Cleveland on Oct. 2, 2021 at a march from Market Square Park in Cleveland that drew some 2,500 people. Photo by David Petkiewicz of Cleveland.com. The next march is Sat, Sept 20 2005. Read more below.
CLEVELAND, Ohio-Women's March Cleveland will host a "Cleveland, Oh Make Billionaires Pay & Fight For Women's Rights Rally & March" on Sat., Sept 20, 2025 with a noon rally and 1 pm march from the steps of City Hall in downtown Cleveland. The event is part of a national day of action.
Facebook event page link: https://www.facebook.com/event...
Organizers say the event is a rally and mass march for reproductive and Civil Rights and an effort to continue the fight for choice for women in Cleveland and Northeast Ohio, including Black women.
"We must keep up the fight for Civil Rights for women and the fight for Black and other women to have a choice to decide what to do with their bodies," said Women's March Cleveland head organizer Kathy Wray Coleman, a seasoned Black Cleveland activist and community organizer who leads Women's March Cleveland.
Women's March Cleveland activists Alysa Cooper Moskey, Sierra Mason and Alfred Porter Jr. of Black on Black Crime Inc. are also helping to organize the event, Coleman said, as wells as the Cuyahoga Democratic Women's Caucus, a group that works to get Democratic women into office.
Speakers for the event are forthcoming.
In addition to reproductive rights, the issues addressed at the rally and march will include the attacks by Washington, D.C. operatives against DEI, immigrants, public and higher education, federal workers, and a host of others, and the actions of D.C. billionaires and policy-makers in subordinating poor people and the underprivileged, organizers said.
Data show that since the attack on DEI and federal workers, the unemployment rate for Blacks in America has increased, and the Black community remains at risk.
"This is deplorable and unacceptable, and the data are real," Coleman said, adding that "we are grassroots activists of Cleveland and we will continue to fight in the trenches on these issues."
Other activist groups supporting the event include Cuyahoga Democratic Women's Caucus, Black on Black Crime Inc., Black Man's Army, Black Women's Army, Carl Stokes Brigade, Refuse Fascism, and Rise Up For Abortion Rights CLE.
Roe v. Wade, a landmark 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision that made abortion legal nationwide, was reversed by the Supreme Court on June 24, 2022 via its Dobbs decision. It stripped women of federal protection for abortion access and gave states the authority to legislate abortion and reproductive rights.
Abortion in Ohio, however, is legal after Ohio voters, in 2023, passed an Issue 1 referendum to enshrine the constitutional right to abortion in the Ohio Constitution. But activists who pushed for Issue 1 fear a national abortion ban is looming by conservatives and that state measures are underway in Ohio to try to undermine their victory in getting Issue 1 passed. And they have vowed to fight to the end.
"Women cannot afford to sit idly by while our opponents trample on our civil and constitutional rights and slip in a national abortion ban, and we will not go away quietly," Coleman said. "A choice is a terrible thing to lose, whether at the voting box or with respect to a woman's body."
Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com are the most-read Black digital newspaper and blog in Ohio. Tel. 216-659-0473. Email-editor@clevelandurbannews.com.
