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By editor and Cleveland journalist and activist Kathy Wray Coleman of the Imperial Women Coalition, who was among some 10 speakers at the 15,000-person Women's March Cleveland event on Jan 21, 2017, a sister march to the Women's March Washington event held that day in the nation's capital.
Led by its president, Pete Brownell, the NRA was founded in 1871 and now boast some 5 million members and an annual spending budget of more that $300 million.
Rhiannon Childs of Columbus, executive director of Women's March Washington, Ohio Chapter, was among a group of activists that traveled from Ohio to Washington for the rally and march. Child's says that violence against women and others thrives when good people do nothing, and that public policy changes to reduce gun violence are a must. "We don't have the right to do nothing," said Childs, 38.
Childs says she marched for her cousin Shana White, who was murdered at the hands of gun violence and whose two children she has reared for the past 10 years. The march, which began with a rally in front of the NRA that was followed by a 17-mile march to the Justice Center, comes after the acquittal on manslaughter charges of Saint Anthony Minnesota police officer Jeronimo Yanez in the celebrated shooting death last July of Philando Castile, who was Black, unarmed and pulled over as a passenger in a suburb of St Paul, his girlfriend, who was driving the car, posting a now infamous video of the aftermath of the shooting on Facebook live. A jury, after deliberating for 29 hours over a five -day period, acquitted officer Yanez of manslaughter and all other charges on June 16, 2017, the same day he was fired from his job, Black America and others, including community activists across racial lines, Civil Rights organizations such as the NAACP and some women's rights groups, still up in arms about what they say was an unjust verdict. With no supporting evidence, Yanez testified at trial that Castile was reaching for his gun, a lie by all accounts, say some experts, his supporters and girlfriend, whose four-year-old daughter was also in the car at the time of the killing. Casrtro had a permit to carry the gun, public records reveal. The NRA has not issued an official statement on the Castile verdict. The activists' women say Castile's unprecedented death was a by-product of racism and excessive force and NRA's pro-gun stances on loose gun laws adopted by state legislators and congress that glorify guns while women and others are at increased risk to be harmed with guns, and even erroneously killed. The women's movement, say organizers, is about the larger issue of gender equality and fair treatment for men, women, immigrants, children, Muslims, Blacks, Latinos, and other minority groups, the LGBT community, and all disenfranchised people. "It's not about one gender," said Women's March Washington co-chair Carmen Perez. "It's about all of us." Women's rights, however, remain the cornerstone of the women's movement, activists say, and rightfully so.
Domestic violence, which dominates among women and girls as victims, is a gun's best friend, data show. According to the Division of Violence Prevention, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, CDC gun violence claims more than 2,000 lives annually by way of domestic violence, 75 percent of them women, Black women are even more at risk. A study released by the organization the Violence Policy Center for Domestic Violence Awareness Month found that Black women are murdered by men at a rate more than two and a half times higher than White women. The women's march to the Justice Department on Friday was timely.
The U.S. Department of Justice, led by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a former GOP senator in congress, is an arm of the executive branch of federal government with some 113, 000 employees. The DOJ, by authority, can prosecute cops that arbitrarily gun down innocent Black people, and enters into court-monitored consent decrees for police reforms with municipalities across the country, Cleveland included, which follows the Cleveland police killings in 2012 of unarmed Blacks Malissa Williams and Timothy Russell, and Tanisha Anderson and 12-year-old Tamir Rice in 2014.
Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com , Ohio's most read Black digital newspaper and Black blog with some 4.5 million views on Google Plus alone.Tel: (216) 659-0473 and Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com. Kathy Wray Coleman, editor-in-chief, and who trained for 17 years at the Call and Post Newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio. We interviewed former president Barack Obama one-on-one when he was campaigning for president. As to the Obama interview, CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE AT CLEVELAND URBAN NEWS.COM, OHIO'S LEADER IN BLACK DIGITAL NEWS.
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Women's March Ohio among Washington protesters against what the national women's movement says is 'a racist NRA' at the anti-gun violence march on July 14, 2017, the acquittal of the cop that killed Philando Castile also among the issues
- Sunday, 16 July 2017 21:34
- Kathy
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Last Updated on Tuesday, 18 July 2017 16:24
