Pictured is Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb

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Seasoned Wall Street Journal reporter Zusha Elinson and Cleveland activist and organizer Kathy Wray Coleman, who leads Imperial Women Coalition and Women's March Cleveland. Elinson recently met with Coleman in Cleveland regarding the increase in murdered Black women and girls nationwide during the pandemic, including in Cleveland, Chicago, Los Angeles and some other largely Black major American cities Above Coleman speaks at a Women's March Cleveland rally and march at Public square in downtown Cleveland, Ohio

Staff article

CLEVELAND, Ohio-The number of unsolved homicides of Black women and girls rose by 89% in 2020 and 2021 compared with 2018 and 2019, according to a recent survey of 21 U.S. cities by the Wall Street Journal, and in 2019 the murder rate for Black women and girls rose 33%, an increase from 2018, studies show. In 2020, where homicides increased in the midst of the pandemic, the death rate for Black women was nearly equal to that of Black men.

The CDC also reports that roughly 2,077 Black women and girls were killed in 2021, a 51% increase over 2019. Also that year, the number of killings nationwide increased 34% during that time frame, the Wall Street Journal reports. Data for 2022 is being compiled and sources say that, though conclusive, the outcomes are not much better.

Meanwhile, nothing significant is being done by authorities and policy makers regarding the epidemic of crime against Black women, which has alarmed community activists and  organizers of largely Black major American cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, and Cleveland, an impoverished city of some 372,000 people, and could prove worse..

Cleveland activist and organizer Kathy Wray Coleman, a seasoned activist and organizer who leads Women's March Cleveland and Imperial Women Coalition, a group founded around the murders of 11 Black women on Imperial Avenue in Cleveland by the late serial killer Anthony Sowell, recently interviewed with Wall Street Journal Reporter Zusha Elinson on the matter. According to Coleman, Elinson, a purported San Francisco resident, was in Cleveland in October for a Wall Street Journal article published last week and met with city officials, police and activists for interviews that he recorded, as well as the families of some young Black women murdered in Cleveland over the past few years. He met with some of them over dinner or lunch, including Coleman, compliments, he said, of the Wall Street Journal and its publisher Alma Latour, whose name he freely mentioned during interviews and dinner for leverage.

"It is unconscionable to do nothing regarding this epidemic of murdered Black women and girls in largely Black major American cities like Cleveland, Los Angeles and Chicago when an avalanche of data by the CDC and other credible venues continue to show that this has been a crisis for years, and more so since the pandemic" said Coleman. "We call on all stakeholders, including elected officials and policy makers in Cleveland and greater Cleveland, to come together to address this growing problem."

Coleman said that Elinson told her that though he ultimately got them, that city officials in Cleveland were being difficult as to handing over public records on the murders of Black women and girls and that of the major cities he has been investigating relative to the matter Cleveland was allegedly the most reluctant to hand over requested information.

"They are not cooperating," said Elinson of Cleveland city officials and their alleged impropriety in failing to hand over public records in a timely manner upon request.

Per his request, Coleman referred Elinson to family members of unsolved Cleveland murders and community activists for interviews In turn, he interviewed them and recorded them, including activist Alfred Porter Jr, who leads Black on Black Crime Inc., and Sandra Dawkins, 62, the mother of 22-year old Cleveland murder victim Britney Hardwick.

Hardwick was shot and killed in her car in her boyfriend's mother's driveway in the Collinwood neighborhood on Cleveland's east side in December of 2020, and like so many other unsolved murders in Cleveland, her killer remains at large and police say that they have no suspects. Her mother has been critical of Cleveland detectives and investigators saying that "they are not doing enough to find my baby's killer and the killers of so many other Black women are still out there."

Dawkins said that Britney was the youngest of her four adult children and that "they murder Black women with ease because they know they can get away with it and that they will not get caught."

Porter Jr, a seasoned president of Black on Black Crime Inc in Cleveland, said that he is disappointed with Elinson and the Wall Street Journal  because "after meeting with activists and pretending that a fair story would be done, they refused to hold city officials and police accountable for ignoring an epidemic of homicides of Black women and girls in Cleveland and nationwide regarding their investigation." He went on  to call the investigation by Elinson and the Wall Street Journal "a cover up for police and Cleveland city officials and officials elsewhere as to their apathy and the failure to act though obviously knowing that Black women and girls are being murdered in large numbers in Cleveland and throughout this country."

Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com the most read Black digital newspaper and blog in Ohio and in the Midwest Tel: (216) 659-0473. Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com. 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.

Pictured are newly elected minority leader of the U.S. House of Representatives Hakeem Jeffries , a New York Democrat and the first Black to hold the post and to lead a political party in Congress, and newly elected House speaker Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican who won election on the 15th vote by his Republican colleagues

By Kathy Wray Coleman, associate publisher, editor-in-chief

WASHINGTON, D.C.-House Republicans elected Congressman Kevin McCarthy speaker Friday night on the 15th vote, an unprecedented win and the longest speaker's race since Nathaniel Banks was elected speaker in 1896.

In Congress since 2007 and currently representing California's 23rd congressional district, McCarthy won with 216 votes out of 222.  After the vote he accepted the gavel from new House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of Brooklyn, New York, the first Black elected to lead a political party in Congress and of whom fellow Democrats had elected unanimously to the post by a vote of 212.

Jeffries gave his acceptance speech before introducing Mccarthy to lawmakers as their new speaker. Both had to capture a majority of votes from their respective party, which is what McCarthy had difficulty doing until the 15th vote.

The son of a firefighter and the grandson of immigrants, McCarthy commended Jeffries, 52, for getting "100 percent of the vote" from  his party and said that  he would not be playing party politics because "my responsibility, our responsibility is to our country."  He added that he will make sure that "law enforcement is respected and criminals are prosecuted." And he went on to announce a litany of pro Republican agendas for the 118th Congress from what he said would be secure borders to a decrease in government spending and intense investigations of political wrongdoing, though he did not specifically refer to the Biden administration as he as done in the past.

He also pledged to remain professional relative to his congressional dealings with Democrats.

"I promise our debates will be passionate but they will not be personal, that is my commitment to you," McCarthy told Jeffries before a full chamber of Democratic and Republican federal lawmakers, including Jeffries' mentor and McCarthy's predecessor, former speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat and former minority leader who served as the 52nd speaker from 2007 to 2011 and again from 2019 to 2023.

"It's an honor to stand on your broad shoulders. Thank you madam speaker for all you have done," said McCarthy of Pelosi, in spite of a lukewarm relationship with the former speaker with whom he was often at odds regarding congressional matters.

Republicans were able to wrestle control of the House of Representatives from the Democrats via the November midterm elections but they only have a slim majority, the Democrats holding on to the Senate, and with also a slim majority, all of it fodder, say pundits, for continual infighting and the partisan bickering that has become all so routine.

The congressman representing New York's 57th congressional district and a former state representative and corporate lawyer, Jeffries spoke at length via his acceptance speech before handing the gavel to McCarthy and introducing him as the new speaker, his speech a world apart from the conservative McCarthy.  After praising Pelosi, 82, as his mentor and an iconic former speaker, the minority leader said that he intends to fight racism, and sexism, and xenophobia, and he promoted  a gambit of issues dear to congressional Democrats such as climate and gun control, education, immigration and legal system reforms, and middle class tax cuts.

He remembered the late congressman and Civil Rights leader John Lewis, and he took aim as he often does against the House GOP's assault on women, saying that he will do everything in his power to fight for women and "reproductive freedoms."

While both McCarthy and Jeffries received standing ovations, Jeffries is obviously a motivational speaker, and a charismatic Barack Obama-type orator, which will likely prove beneficial to Democrats, sources said.

By Kathy Wray Coleman. Coleman is a seasoned Black political, legal and investigative journalist out of Cleveland, Ohio who trained for 17 years with the Call and Post Newspaper.

Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com the most read Black digital newspaper and blog in Ohio and in the Midwest Tel: (216) 659-0473. Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com. 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.