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Above: Women's March Cleveland on Oct. 2, 2021 at a march from Market Square Park in Cleveland that drew some 2,500 people. Photo by David Petkiewicz of Cleveland.com
CLEVELAND, Ohio-Women's March Cleveland will host its "Third Anniversary of Roe Reversal March and Leave Women Alone Rally" on Sat., June 21, 2025 with a noon rally and 1 pm march from the steps of City Hall in downtown Cleveland.
Facebook event page link: https://www.facebook.com/event..
Organizers say the event is a rally and mass march for reproductive and Civil Rights and an effort to continue the fight for choice for women in Cleveland and Northeast Ohio, including Black women.
"We must keep up the fight for Civil Rights for women and the fight for Black and other women to have a choice to decide what to do with their bodies," said Women's March Cleveland head organizer Kathy Wray Coleman, a seasoned Black Cleveland activist and community organizer who leads Women's March Cleveland. "The fall of Roe on June 24, 2022, per the Dobbs decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, is a day that will live in infamy, and activists of greater Cleveland will continue to remember this day annually with a rally and march, and we want Roe restored, period."
Women's March Cleveland activists Elaine Gohlstin of the Black Women's PAC, Alysa Cooper Moskey, Sierra Mason and Alfred Porter Jr. of Black on Black Crime Inc. are also helping to organize the event, Coleman said.
Speakers for the event include Ohio state Sen. and Senate Minority Leader Nickie Antonio, state school board member Delores Gray, Cleveland councilpersons Joe Jones, Stephanie Howse Jones, and Deborah Gray, Cuyahoga County Democratic Party Chairman David Brock, and activists and women's rights advocates.
In addition to reproductive rights, the issues addressed at the rally and march will include the attacks by Washington, D.C. operatives against DEI, immigrants, public and higher education, federal workers, and a host of others, organizers said.
Other activist groups supporting the event include the Black Women's PAC of Ohio, Cuyahoga Democratic Women's Caucus, Black on Black Crime Inc., Black Man's Army, Black Women's Army, Carl Stokes Brigade, Refuse Fascism, Rise Up For Abortion Rights CLE, and the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party.
Roe v Wade, a landmark 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision that made abortion legal nationwide, was reversed by the Supreme Court on June 24, 2022 via its Dobbs decision. It stripped women of federal protection for abortion access and gave states the authority to legislate abortion and reproductive rights.
Abortion in Ohio, however, is legal after Ohio voters, in 2023, passed an Issue 1 referendum to enshrine the constitutional right to abortion in the Ohio Constitution. But activists who pushed for Issue 1 fear a national abortion ban is looming by conservatives and that state measures are underway in Ohio to try to undermine their victory in getting Issue 1 passed. And they have vowed to fight to the end.
"Women cannot afford to sit idly by while our opponents trample on our constitutional rights and slip in a national abortion ban, and we will not go away quietly," Coleman said. "A choice is a terrible thing to lose, whether at the voting box or with respect to a woman's body."
Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com are the most-read Black digital newspaper and blog in Ohio. Tel. 216-659-0473. Email-editor@clevelandurbannews.com.
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