By Kathy Wray Coleman, editor-in-chief, Cleveland Urban News.Com and The Kathy Wray Coleman Online News Blog.Com, Ohio's No 1 and No 2 online Black news venues
Reach Cleveland Urban News.Com by email at editor@clevelandurbannews.com and by phone at 216-659-0473
CLEVELAND,Ohio- The Imperial Women and other community activists groups will vote on Thursday, May 16, 2013 on whether to picket the home of Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson in response to harassment of Black women and community activists by his predominantly White police force as to free speech rallies on issues of public concern and because police and the Jackson administration have failed to implement the 27 recommendations issued by the mayor's three-member commission formed around the murders of 11 Black women on Imperial Avenue in Cleveland.
The meeting is open to community activists only and will be held at 7504 Cedar Ave in Cleveland. For more information contact The Imperial Women at 216-659-0473.
Two other pickets at the mayor's home in the city's Central Neighborhood, both held in the last four years, dealt with the Imperial Avenue Murders, murders undertaken at the home of convicted serial killer Anthony Sowell on the city's largely Black east side.
Activists are upset also because the mayor sent blond, blue-eyed Seventh District Police Station cops to harass and intimidate Black women and community activists at a rally scheduled for Monday, May 11 to seek help from the Cleveland NAACP. Activists want the Civil Rights organization to stand for jobs, and against the gunning down of unarmed Blacks Malissa Williams, and Timothy Russell, foreclosure fraud, judicial impropriety and the abduction, rape and murders of women across racial lines.
At the rally on Cleveland's east side on Monday cops from the Seventh District Police Station threatened activists and the children of Black women raped and murdered in Cleveland that were there to rally. Specifically, they pulled their cars over without reasonable suspension as required by law, ran licence plates and harassed them, including a daughter of Christine Malone.
Malone, 45, was found raped and murdered in an open field on Cleveland's east side in late March after Fourth District police allegedly told family members to find her on their own and to call after they located her. Her killer is still at large and police have arrested no suspects in the case.
Abduction, rape and murders in Cleveland across racial lines have become an epidemic and activists say that the mayor wants to harass, intimidate, jail and maliciously prosecute Black women that speak out against the crimes.
