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New: Protesting the Republicans in Cleveland

Chris Krohn
Wednesday July 20, 2016 - 03:45:00 PM
Ohio is an open-carry state
Chris Krohn
Ohio is an open-carry state
Chris Krohn

You can openly carry an AR-15 automatic weapon around Cleveland, but don’t get caught with a tennis ball or they might lock you up. Tennis balls are on a lengthy list of prohibited articles in and around the Republican National Convention this week. To test the open tennis ball law, Code Pink’s, Medea Benjamin order five hundred and began distributing them, throwing, catching and otherwise playing with these spherical objects right outside the main pedestrian entrance of the RNC.

“People can walk around with assault weapons, but not tennis balls,” Benjamin told me as she watched other members of Code Pink perform a playful ‘Myth America pageant,’ in which each contestant says what kind of America they want to live in.

Also occurring yesterday afternoon in Cleveland’s Public Square, less than a half mile from the the Code Pink tennis ball confiscation, a group of a dozen men in various forms military dress and toting automatic weapons decided to exercise their open-carry law rights. When asked by the Planet what they were doing, a man wrapped in an ammunition cartridge belt and carrying an AR-15 said, “We are the West Ohio Minutemen, and our mission statement is to support the Second Amendment, and what we’re doing here pretty much makes that statement.” The group continued to march around an area that already held some 3000 protesters, many of whom were also exercising their rights of free speech, debating, discussing and carrying signs promoting a variety of political, social and religious issues. 

Suddenly, according to two witnesses, the Austin-based talk show host, Alex Jones of The Alex Jones Show “was either punched or hit with a pole,” according to Andrew Smith of Myrtle Beach, S.C. Smith, a Donald Trump supporter and listener to Jones’s radio show said it was hard to see what happened, “but Jones definitely got hit.” The police moved in quickly and hustled Jones away. It was not immediately clear if any arrests were made. 

Just after this incident on the opposite other side of Public Square, Carl Dix of the group, Stop Mass Incarceration Network, was addressing a crowd of a few hundred. The group was chanting, “Indict, convict, send those killer cops to jail. The whole damn system is guilty as hell.” And Dix was urging the group to “not back down to the Nuremburg rally happening down the street,” presumably referring to the RNC. 

Dix later passed the microphone to Dr. Cornel West who was a key endorser of the Bernie Sanders for President campaign, but has now switched his allegiance to the Green Party candidate, Jill Stein. West’s voice was a palpable calming presence in the midst of the increasing tension. “We come together in all colors,” he said “and we are talking about standing for humanity because it’s about hating injustice, and that’s why we are going to march,” West said as the crowd cheered raucously. He then added, “And we want people to know some of us are willing to die.” Pretty strong words during tense moments. 

On the edge of this gathering was Stevedore Crawford wearing a t-shirt with the words: “Tamir Rice, he will never R.I.P., Murdered by a P.I.G.” Crawford refuses to let the police shooting of Tamir Rice in November of 2014 go away he says. Rice was shot while holding a plastic replica gun at the Cudell Recreation Center here in Cleveland. 

He is out here protesting this single issue because “politics is not more important than a 12-year old boy from Cleveland, Ohio being murdered by police in the playground,” Crawford told the Planet. He had just performed his own street theater rendition of the shooting: Plastic gun stuck inside his pants, he feigned writhing in pain on the cement in front of a line of riot police. “They are scared of us in the ‘hood, and the most important thing in Cleveland, Ohio is Tamir Rice,” Crawford said. Then he turned to his young daughter to ask her to stand on the other side of the large circle of police line that was closing in slowly on the large group Cornel West was addressing. 

As West said goodbye to a loud ovation, a group of about one hundred protesters proceeded to march down Euclid Avenue. They were trailed by an equal number of security people including a couple dozen cops on bicycle. 

Many more signs and causes continued to be present on the square. The signs read: “America was never great. We need to over throw the system,” “Black men Built the White House,” and a woman, Marni Halasa, was dressed in a one-piece red sparkling bathing suit with a sash that read, “Make America Hate Again.” Halasa is from Akron, but runs a “protest consulting firm” she says, in New York City called, Revolution is Sexy. Her web side says that Revolution is Sexy is a consulting service “on how to effect real change in America, staging protests and events that will catapult your message into the media…” 

Two days before, the Rev. Bruce Wright was running on fumes over at the Ohio City Masonic Arts Center, an organizing nucleus for this week’s events. After an all-night car ride from Miami, Florida where he runs an organization called, Refuge Ministries, he’s responding to a reporter’s questions and trying to keep an all-day people’s convention going. He said he’s come to Cleveland to assist in organizing protests during the RNC. “Trump is racist and classist and he targets immigrants, people of color, and Muslims…and we believe neither party is talking about poverty.”  

The next day, Chuck D and Tom Morello of the group, Prophets of Rage, headlined an action titled, “End Poverty Now.” After an hour-long concert a group of over a thousand headed toward the RNC gathering a few miles away trailed by several hundred law enforcement officers. It was a spirited and loud march in the mid-day heat with both protesters and police going out of their way to be well, nice. 

During the march the Planet caught up with one of the organizers, Amir el-hajj Khalid Samad who is the CEO for “A Better Life Aka Peace in the Hood.” He said the goal of this march “was first and foremost to call an end to injustice and send a message to the visitors of Cleveland.” And what is that message? “That we are people of this land, we pay taxes and we own the streets,” said Samad. “Our job is to teach liberation and how to organize.” 

At the very end of the march line the rapper Chuck D was being slowed by by a half dozen journalists. He was frequently asked about Donald Trump. 

“He’s most arrogant if he thinks he can run a country,” he said. 

Chuck D’s fingers punctuated the air. He is a serious man: “Why doesn’t he start by running a city or county…start with a damn town first.” 

Chuck D said it was “disrespectful” of Trump to start with his first job in politics with the presidency. 

Marita Hayes, a retired attorney from Cleveland, was also marching. Hayes said she came today “to remind the Republicans that there’s people who care about one another, and that people are actually feeling safe and protected today by the police, but in communities across America we have to heighten the discussion of police-community relations.” 

Amy Delgado, a retail manager from Florida decided to spend part of her vacation this year with her husband on the streets surrounding the RNC. saying “Primarily, we are here because we’re tired of people waging war on poor people.” She added, “We really hate Trump because of his message of hate, this country was founded by immigrants.” 

Another event organizer, Randy Cunningham, was expecting a larger turnout and was only somewhat satisfied with the march. He is retired from the non-profit housing sector and has lived in Cleveland since 1980. Cunningham was recently represented by the American Civil Liberties Union in a law suit to force the city of Cleveland to issue a permit for this march. “We won the law suit and in fact, the group was made up of not only ‘Organize Ohio” and the “Northeast Coalition for the Homeless,” but “Citizens for Trump” too. 

The protesting effort in Cleveland began before the Republican National Convention’s first gavel even came down. It started last Friday night with “A People’s Justice and Peace Convention” at the Olivet Institutional Baptist Church on Quincy Street. An eighty-two point statement was published and signed onto by seventeen “conveners” including the Cleveland Environmental Action Network, Cleveland Peace Action, Organize Ohio, Sierra Club and Women Speak Out for Peace and Justice. The group’s intentions, according to their booklet, which is itself a kind of alternative convention manifesto published by the coalition, were to “lift up issues and problems that the Republican National Convention (RNC) will not authentically address.” 

These topics include the most pressing political and social issues of today’s progressive agenda: economic and environmental justice, healthcare and immigration reform, adequate funding for public education, a moratorium on deportations, gender equality, ending mass incarceration, and protection from discrimination of all lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer individuals. The document also included “international justice planks” that dealt with ending the travel ban to Cuba, the relationship between Israel and Palestine, as well as “end[ing] the militarization of the U.S./Mexican border.” 

The schedule of the week’s alternative convention events reflected the diverse interests of the many organizations involved in collective dissent of the RNC’s platform. The idea seemed to be to fill the streets of Cleveland with a constant drumbeat of ideas and policies so that Clevelanders might not be overwhelmed by the drum beat of a 4-day Republican invasion. This seventeen-member coalition at least wanted to offer multiple opportunities for locals to speak up and speak out on issues important to them. Inherent in these activities was a profound distrust and real differences with the Donald Trump vision of building walls, deporting people and sending more police and military into American communities. 

From an outsider’s perspective it was tailor-made to come out looking chaotic, marginalized and a bit repetitive. If compared with what went on inside “The Q,” the arena where the Republicans were meeting, the people’s convention events were less stage-managed, more ethnically diverse, and with outcomes always uncertain. 

Marches, rallies, neighborhood canvassing, film screenings, public art, non-violence trainings and spoken-word poetry have all been taking place this week and can be followed on the web site, counterRNC.com. It was built just for Cleveland’s progressive community response to the RNC. But by some measures, the number of protesters who’ve turned out this week has been disappointing “Anemic” is how one long-time activist who wished not to be identified put it. He felt that the small crowds of dissenters may in fact marginalize progressive issues even more than they already are. 

Veteran journalist, Jose Lopez, who lives in Maryland and is bureau chief in Washington, D.C. of Notimex, the Mexican news agency, told the Planet he was expecting far bigger crowds of demonstrators when he arrived. “I came with an expectation that the mobilization [because of Trump] would be huge. They’ve been interesting, but not very big.” 

Code Pink’s, Benjamin has a theory. “A lot of protesters were scared away with the ‘open-carry’ issues and white supremacist rhetoric, and as a result these protests are smaller than they would otherwise be.” On the other hand, she also believes the protests that have taken place have been effective. “We had people get into the convention on both nights so far and unfurl banners reading, ‘We can live in peace’ and ‘No hatred, no racism.’ All three members of Code Pink were able to do “major interruptions,” according to Benjamin, “and of course, they were thrown out.” And not to be deterred she added, “We’ll be at the DNC too next week.”