By Kathy Wray Coleman, editor-in-chief

(www.clevelandurbannews.com) / (www.kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio-Famed Hollywood comedian Joan Rivers (pictured) has refused to apologize for a joke she made on Twitter and the Today Show on Tuesday where the 80-year-old compared living in the guestroom of her daughter Melissa as part of their reality show WEtv series “Joan and Melissa: Joan Knows Best?’’  to the captivity and small rooms that serial rapist and kidnapper Ariel Castro held victims Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight in for a decade.

"Those women in the basement in Cleveland had more room," Rivers told the audience on a segment of the Today Show Tuesday morning, though it was actually DeJesus and Knight that Castro housed in the basement while Berry slept upstairs in the since demolished Seymore Avenue home.

The attorneys for DeJesus and Berry had demanded an apology, calling Rivers' comments distasteful.

Rivers on yesterday told the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Ohio's largest newspaper, that she need not say how proud she is that the teens survived the ordeal and that her comments were a joke.

"I'm a comedienne,'' she said. "I know what those girls went through. It was a little, stupid joke. There is nothing to apologize for. I made a joke. That's what I do. Calm down. Calm f——— down. I'm a comedienne. They're free, so let's move on.''

She said later on Facebook that the three women had lived rent free for a decade in Castro's home and had book deals and reiterated her stance that no apology is forthcoming.

Pictured are Ariel Castro victim Amanda Berry and Ariel Castro himself

Cleveland Urban News. Com and The Cleveland Urban News.Com Blog,Ohio's Most Read Online Black Newspaper and Newspaper Blog. Tel: 216-659-0473 (www.clevelandurbannews.com) / (www.kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com)

CLEVELAND, Ohio-Today marks the 11-year anniversary of the kidnapping of Ariel Castro victim Amanda Berry on April 21, 2003 blocks from her home on Cleveland's largely White west side while she was leaving her job at the Burger King Restaurant at W. 110th Street and Lorain Avenue. Cleveland teen rapist and kidnapper Castro held Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight captive for a decade at his since demolished home on the city's west side of town until they and Berry's seven-year-old daughter by Castro were rescued by neighbor Charles Ramsey in May of last year. Ramsey is Black.

A fired Cleveland schools bus driver and hoggishly violent and abusive widower with two grown children, Castro, 53, pleaded guilty to numerous criminal charges, including multiple counts of rape and kidnapping, in exchange for a life sentence without the possibility of parole. He hanged himself in the Correctional Reception Center in  Orient, Ohio last September, just over a month into his sentence.

Castro admitted at sentencing as part  of a plea deal that Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Tim McGinty negotiated in under three months that he raped DeJesus,  Berry and Knight, and he told Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas Judge Michael Russo Judge Russo moments before his sentence was handed down, that he and the three girls, and the child he fathered with Berry, were one "happy family."

The serial rapist had also been charged with aggravated murder and faced the death penalty for allegedly murdering at least three of the unborn fetuses of Knight that he help create through rape and torture.

Over 100 feet of chain was found in the Castro home when police raided it in May.

With a 28th-year birthday coming up on April 22, Berry was nearly 17 when he kidnapped her, DeJesus, who knew his daughter, was 14 and also grew up close to the Castro home like Berry, and Knight, now 32 and a women's advocate spokesperson, was 21 at the time.

The ten- year anniversary of the abduction of DeJesus was April 2. Knight was taken captive nearly a year and a half earlier in August 2002.

Women activists groups of greater Cleveland had no mercy on the child rapist and kidnapper and commented as to the anniversary this year of the day Castro saw fit to snatch Berry and hold her captive for nearly 10 years along with Knight and DeJesus.

"We recognize this anniversary of the day of the kidnapping of innocent teen Amanda Berry by monster Ariel Castro less than a mile from her home as a reminder that rape and other violence against women and girls nationally, statewide and locally is an epidemic and we again applaud Amanda, Gina and Michelle for the courage and fortitude to get out alive," said Cleveland area community activist Kathy Wray Coleman, who leads the Imperial Women Coalition, a grassroots group founded in 2009 around the unprecedented murders of 11 Black women on  Imperial Avenue on the city's largely Black east side by convicted serial killer Anthony Sowell. "We again call for additional resources to address this crisis around violence against women and as to Ariel Castro, we are pleased that Mr. Castro has moved on to a better place for himself and we hope he rots in hell."

Like the home of Castro on Seymour Avenue that he turned over to the county land bank as part of a plea deal,  the home of Sowell on Imperial Avenue, the now infamous street by which the Imperial Avenue Murders drew its name , was demolished too.

A former marine, Sowell 53, raped three Black women and strangled and murdered 11 Black women whose bodies began surfacing at his family's home in 2009. He sits on death row  while his appeal of his rape, aggravated murder and other  convictions is before the seven-member largely Republican Ohio Supreme Court, which is led by popular Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor.(www.clevelandurbannews.com) / (www.kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com)

Pictured are Cuyahoga County Executive Ed FitzGerald (in red tie), the Democratic front -runner for Ohio governor, Cuyahoga County Council President C. Ellen Connally (in necklace)
and county council members Yvonne Conwell ( in White blouse), Pernel Jones Jr. (in blue tie)and Anthony Hairston ( in light-colored tie)

By Kathy Wray Coleman, editor-in-chief (www.clevelandurbannews.com) / (www.kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com)
CLEVELAND, Ohio – Cuyahoga County Council recently voted along partisan lines and adopted a voting rights law introduced by Cuyahoga County Executive Ed FitzGerald to counter a discriminatory state legislative law that passed earlier this year that Democrats say is designed to suppress voter participation in Ohio, particularly among poor, elderly and minority voters. (Editor's note: The 11- member Cuyahoga County Council is a distinct and separate governing entity from the 17-member Cleveland City Council, which also adopts laws known as city ordinances. State legislators, through the General Assembly of the Ohio House and Ohio Senate, adopt laws called statutes that can be found in the Ohio Revised Code, the book of chapters of state laws).

The new county law, passed last week by county council, requires the county board of elections to mail unsolicited absentee ballot applications to registered voters in the county, and in contrast to a Republican pushed state law that passed earlier this year that precludes the mailings.  County council members that voted for the law they adopted, and FitzGerald, a licensed attorney and former FBI agent, say that home rule governs and that that is the basis of their authority to adopt the controversial new law. Time and likely looming partisan minded litigation will tell.

All eight Democrats on the 11-member Cuyahoga County Council, including the four Blacks, Yvonne Conwell, Pernel Jones Jr., Anthony Hairston, and County Council President C. Ellen Connally, voted in favor of the new law, while the three Republicans, all White, voted against the measure. 

Meanwhile, the gubernatorial race this year that will likely pit FitzGerald, the Democratic front-runner, against incumbent Republican Gov. John Kasich is tied, some polls show.

"According to the newest numbers from Public Policy Polling, we are now even with Kasich at 44 percent," said FitzGerald Campaign Manager Nick Buis in a press release to Cleveland Urban News.Com, Ohio's most read digital Black newspaper. "The takeaway is clear, we have every chance to win this race."

Cuyahoga County includes 59 cities, villages and townships combined, including the largely Black cities of Cleveland, East Cleveland and Warrensville Heights. It is roughly 29 percent Black and is the largest of 88 counties statewide. And requests for absentee ballots in Cuyahoga are the highest statewide and at least 10 times more than any other county in the state, a Cleveland Plain Dealer Newspaper story said this week.
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WARRENSVILLE HEIGHTS, Ohio – 11th Congressional District Congresswoman Marcia L. Fudge (OH-11) will host the district’s first Agriculture College and Career Fair on Saturday, April 19, 2014 at Case Western Reserve University at the Veale Center Gymnasium, 2138 Adelbert Road, in Cleveland, Ohio. This free event, held from 9 am to 3 pm with the congresswoman scheduled to speak at 9:45 am,  is designed for high school and college-age students who may be considering a degree in agriculture or a related field. There is no cost but students are strongly encouraged to pre-register.  Please contact Ariella Brown in the congresswoman’s Cuyahoga County District office by phone (216)-522-4900 or by email at Ariella.Brown@mail.house.gov