CLEVELAND, Ohio-Led by Cleveland activist and head organizer Kathy Wray Coleman, who also leads Women's March Cleveland and the Imperial Women Coalition, greater Cleveland women and their supporters rallied and marched on Tues, March 8 to celebrate International Women Day, a 6th annual event that was held on Market Square in the Ohio City neighborhood across from the Westside Market. Keynote speakers were Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Morgan Harper, a Columbus-based attorney and progressive activist who worked under then D.C. consumer watch dog Richard Cordray when Barack Obama was president, Cuyahoga County Councilwoman Cheryl Stephens, a former Cleveland Heights Mayor and the lieutenant governor candidate on the gubernatorial ticket of former Democratic Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley, and activist Cheryl Lessin of Refusefacism and Rise Up for Abortion Rights
The theme of this year's march in Cleveland, and internationally, was #Stand Against Bias.
Last year's keynote speakers for the rally in Cleveland were Whaley and state Rep. Emilia Sykes, who is a former minority leader in the Ohio House of Representatives out of Akron who is running for Congress this year in Ohio's 13th congressional district. Ohio 11th Congressional District Congresswoman Shontel Brown, then a candidate for the seat in a crowded primary that includes former Ohio senator Nina Turner, was also among the speakers last year.
"We are pleased to have had two Black women, one a superior candidate for the U.S. Senate in Morgan Harper, and the other a worthy lieutenant governor candidate and county elected official in Cheryl Stephens, as well as longtime activist fighter Cheryl Lessin as our keynote speakers this year in Cleveland on March 8 for International Women's Day March Cleveland as we continue to fight for the reproductive, Civil and other rights for women internationally," said Coleman at the rally.
Also at issue, said Coleman, among so many other concerns relative to women's rights, is violence against women, and racism, sexism, voting rights, unnecessary war on women in Ukraine and other places in the world like Ethiopia, and the widespread miseducation of Black girls in our European-led institutions of learning."
Other event speakers were Cuyahoga County executive candidate Tariq Shabazz, who talked about what he would do for women and Black people if elected, and activist Dorothy Walwyn of Father's Lives Matter, who spoke up for domestic violence victims in Cleveland, and Black women in general.
During her keynote speech at Tuesday's rally, Morgan Harper stressed that she is the only U.S. Senate candidate in the U.S. senate race in Ohio this year who has been consistently outspoken in her support of abortion access, and Councilwoman Stephens, a Cleveland Heights Democrat and the only elected official to speak said she is honored to run for lieutenant governor on the gubernatorial ticket of Nan Whaley and to be one of the three keynote speakers chosen by activist women to speak in Cleveland on International Women's Day.
Activist Cheryl Lessin, the last to speak of the three keynote speakers, spoke at length on legislation statewide and nationally that denies women abortion access, and the importance of preserving Roe v Wade, the landmark 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision that made abortion legal nationwide.
