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Lead article
News & Letters, May 2001
Cincinnati's Black rebellion exposes U.S. racial injustice
by Peter Hudis
Cincinnati, Ohio--"When I heard about the murder of Timothy Thomas I got
together with a few friends in the park to talk about what happened. More
and more people began showing up and in less than an hour a few hundred
were gathered around, talking and arguing. It was incredible, out of
nowhere people came out and wanted to do something. Everyone is fed up with
the cops, the racial profiling, the abuse. I was amazed at how fast this
thing grew. It was like a spark went off in people's minds, all at once. It
was like, this is enough, no more, we're going to do something."
This is what a 20-year-old Black resident of the Walnut Hills neighborhood
of Cincinnati told me about his participation in the protests which erupted
after the murder of 19-year-old Timothy Thomas by a white cop on April 7.
Thomas was the fifteenth man gunned down by Cincinnati police in the last
six years. Every one was Black. Thomas, who was unarmed, was killed when
Stephen Roach shot him through his chest. Roach was trying to arrest Thomas
for having 14 outstanding warrants--all of them for misdemeanor offenses, 12
for traffic violations, five of those for not wearing a seat belt.
Though racial profiling, harassment, and murder of Blacks by the police has
become an everyday fact of life in this country, Cincinnati included, the
events which followed Thomas' death were anything but normal. The ensuing
events represented one of those unusual moments when the everyday becomes
extraordinary, when what is considered normal suddenly becomes the object
of discussion, argument, and critique. In response to Thomas' death, Black
Cincinnati exploded in the most massive urban upheaval since the Los
Angeles rebellion of 1992.
ANATOMY OF A REVOLT
Cincinnati is no newcomer to police abuse, racism, and disenfranchisement.
It is one of the most segregated cities in America, and its mainly white
police force is notorious for a long history of abuse against African
Americans who make up 43% of the city's populace. Last November another
Black man, Roger Owensby Jr., was strangled to death while in police
custody. In mid-March the ACLU and Cincinnati Black United Front filed a
lawsuit charging the police department with 30 years of illegally targeting
and harassing Blacks on the basis of race. Still, no one anticipated the
explosion which erupted after the killing of Timothy Thomas.
As news spread of his death, several hundred mainly Black protesters,
including Thomas' mother, came to City Hall on Monday, April 9. It became a
clash between two different worlds. Police Chief Streicher refused to
apologize for the killing, saying the police thought that Thomas was armed.
Mayor Charlie Luken acknowledged the city's "racial problems" but denied
that had anything to do with Thomas' death. City Council members said there
was little they could do since the city charter limits their power to hire
or fire police chiefs.
Angered at these responses, the crowd proceeded to take over City Hall.
Windows were smashed, the American flag was removed from the flagpole and
turned upside down, and the mayor was forced to leave via the back door.
Hundreds more protesters arrived at City Hall that night. As the crowd
swelled to 1,000, they marched to the central police station. At midnight
the police fired tear gas and beanbags filled with metal pellets to
disperse the crowd.
The next day 20 youth held a protest at the corner of Vine and 13th
Streets. The crowd soon swelled into the hundreds. Many then marched to
Findlay Market, throwing rocks at police, breaking into stores, clearing
out shelves. By the evening a full scale urban revolt (dubbed "riot" by the
press) was underway. Though merchants who gouged the community were a
target, most of the anger was directed at the police. At 10 p.m. the police
substation at Montgomery Road and Woodburn Avenue was set ablaze.
Byron Jones, 30, of Bond Hill, who joined protesters as they made their way
through downtown and Over-the-Rhine (the neighborhood in which Thomas was
shot) said what happened Tuesday was "the only way to get their attention.
We've asked and we've asked and we've asked. We're not going to ask
anymore."
A Black youth who took part in the revolt told me, "I decided to do
something because what happened to Timothy Thomas could've happened to
every Black I know. How many white 19-year-olds have been stopped and
ticketed five times for not wearing a seat belt? How many whites have to
worry about being shot by a cop on their way home from buying a pack of
cigarettes? We've got to tell them we are not going to let this continue."
VICIOUS POLICE REPRESSION
The police responded with brute force. Enya Kirksey, a 23-year-old and
three months pregnant, was shot by police with rubber bullets as she was
trying to get to her home near Washington Park. Leroy Pearson, 52, was
standing outside his Elm Street apartment with his three grandchildren when
police told him to move. When he refused, saying this was his home, he was
shot four times with rubber projectiles. Dozens more were injured and
hundreds arrested.
Yet the unrest continued. On Wednesday, April 11, it spread from downtown
and Over-the-Rhine to other Black areas like Evanston, Avondale, Walnut
Hills, and the West End.
Faced with this, Mayor Luken imposed martial law and an 8 p.m.-to-6 a.m.
curfew on April 12. He stated, "The situation has become unthinkable; it's
like Beirut." It would have been more accurate to say the West Bank or Gaza
Strip. Hundreds of youth in red and blue bandannas throwing rocks at
police...stores and shops ablaze...cops firing off rubber bullets and
beanbag projectiles at 11- and 12-year-olds...whole areas sealed off from
the rest of the city by a wall of shotgun-toting cops...it COULD have been
the Middle East.
Yet the situation was distinctively "American." It was a response to the
constant racial profiling by police that has affected virtually every man,
woman and child in the Black community. It was a response to a social
reality in which 40% are unemployed in Over-the-Rhine, compared to 4% in
Cincinnati as a whole. It was a response to the gutting of public housing,
education, and welfare. Only blocks from where Thomas was shot public
housing is being torn down. Recently the state sent letters to Ohio's
welfare recipients warning them that their benefits will be cut off in 36
months. This is the social context of the revolt which broke out in
response to Thomas' murder.
While the imposition of martial law and the curfew got people off the
streets, it did not silence the revolt. Meetings, forums, and protests
continue to be held. They have exposed not only the chasm separating the
African-American community from the white power structure, but also the
division of the Black masses from Black political leadership.
TWO WORLDS OF MASSES VS. LEADERS
At Thomas' funeral on April 14, an array of Black political officials spoke
of "restoring civil peace" in Cincinnati. Rev. Damon Lynch III of
Cincinnati's Black United Front called on several city officials to be
fired, adding, "There is enough violence in our city right now without us
adding to it." Kweisi Mfume of the NAACP called for changes in the city's
power structure but urged the youth to "remain calm." Jamal Muhammed of
Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam said, "Don't get angry and tear up your
neighborhood. Get angry and register to vote."
The youth who spearheaded the week of actions, however, had a decidedly
different perspective. As one declared at a rally following the funeral,
"These preachers and politicians are the same ones who a week ago were
calling us undisciplined and shiftless. But if it weren't for what we did
over the last few days, no one would even be here to listen to them. We're
the ones who did something by taking over the streets, but you don't hear
about us now. I'm tired of all their talk."
Darryl, a Black man living in Over-the-Rhine, said, "The Black leadership
and civil rights organizations are trying to quiet everything down, but
it's not working. You can't quiet this down so easily. Many here don't have
a job. Almost everyone has had some run-in with the law. After you get out
of jail, it's almost impossible to get a good paying job. Then they turn it
around and say because you have a record, it's all your fault. There needs
to be a change, because if it doesn't change, things are going to get a lot
scarier than what we saw this week."
The separation of the youth from Black political leadership was reflected
in the virtual absence of any established political organization in the
street protests. All of the posters and placards at the protests that I saw
before and after Thomas' funeral were handmade, by local residents. They
included: "If my son runs, will you kill him too?"; "Stop killing Blacks or
else"; "No peace and no police"; "Bush is part of this too--he belongs with
the cops."
The chasm between masses and leaders came out sharply at a forum held April
16 at New Friendship Baptist Church in Avondale, after the curfew was
lifted. Dozens of Black teenagers, emboldened by their actions of the past
week, said the established community leaders don't speak for them. "The
older generation could have prevented this," said Derrick Blassingame, age
14, president of the newly formed Black Youth Coalition Against Civil
Injustice. "Our leaders are not leading us. Some of our Black leaders just
want their faces on TV. They are in this for four things only: reputation,
power, politics and money."
The emergence of such voices gives the lie to those who claim that the
"riots" were "disorganized," chaotic, without reason or direction. As in
Los Angeles 1992, we are witnessing the emergence of new forms of revolt,
resistance, and self-organization which point us beyond the parameters of
existing political structures.
When people move to tear up a world that doesn't belong to them, that is
hostile to them; when they come together in collective action on the
streets; when they take commodities from the shelves without paying--why is
this not recognized as an act of liberation, as a drive toward something
new, as a refusal to accept what is? It is that REASON which needs to be
developed and discussed--not a condemnation of the masses' activity or a
mere "solidarity" with it based on tactics.
Cincinnati shows that the struggle to be free is real, is as much a part of
the actuality of this world as its opposite--the stifling oppression we all
live under. The concrete content, the self-development gained through
confrontation with oppressive conditions and internal contradictions, is
the point of departure for any further meaningful development.
WHERE TO NOW?
The recent events in Cincinnati will not easily be forgotten. The power
structure has been forced to at least pretend to listen to some complaints
of the Black community, as seen in Mayor Luken's announcement on April 17
that he will form a race relations commission to explore problems in
housing, employment, education, and police abuse.
Such commissions have been formed before, and it is very doubtful that much
will come of it. But much can come from the new consciousness generated by
the revolt. Its development can provide a new basis for opposing this
oppressive system and projecting a genuine alternative to it.
In this sense, it is worthwhile to recall the last time major arrests of
protesters occurred in Cincinnati. It was last November when 53
anti-globalization activists were arrested for "vandalism" at the
Transatlantic Business Dialogue conference, a group which brought together
100 executives from the U.S. and West Europe to recommend lower trade
barriers. That protest may seem a world away from the revolt in the Black
community. And yet the revolt of Black masses is not so far from the
globalization of capital as it may seem.
No sector of U.S. society has been more negatively affected by the
globalization of capital than Black America. Capital's ability to migrate
overseas in search of low wages goes hand in hand with deindustrialization
and the mass displacement of Black labor at home. Capital's increased
mobility has also led to the flight of industries from urban areas like
Cincinnati to rural areas and the South. Moreover, the cutting of welfare
and other social services in the U.S. is a form of "structural adjustment"
long known to Third World countries.
Racism is an integral part of this logic of capitalist accumulation. The
gutting of jobs, public housing, welfare, and the growth of homelessness,
prison construction, and police abuse all flow from the specific strategy
employed by U.S. capital for the past two decades.
In hitting out against these conditions, the Black masses of Cincinnati
have challenged a central dynamic of capital itself. Their actions call
upon us all to deepen our consciousness of the nature of capital and the
alternative to it. In lieu of that, anger at existing conditions risks
consuming itself in opposing the many forms of oppression, without ever
getting to articulate what the revolt is for.
As Marx wrote long ago, "We do not tell the world, 'Cease your struggles,
they are stupid; we want to give you the true watchword of the struggle.'
We merely show the world why it actually struggles; and consciousness is
something that the world MUST acquire even if it does not want to."
--April 18, 2001
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