Ohio state Representative Bill Patmon opposes arming Ohio classroom teachers with guns as does the Federation of Teachers, an anti-Black proposal offered by President Trump and supported by the two Republican candidates for Ohio governor, though it is opposed by U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan, a Republican, and the NAACP, among others.... A former Cleveland councilman of 12 years, Patmon is Black and has introduced some six bills on gun control, and he is term-limited as a state representative in Ohio and faces three Black Democrats in the May 8 primary election in his bid for the state senate.... Eight Democratic candidates are vying to replace Patmon as state representative of Ohio's tenth state house district....By editor Kathy Wray Coleman of Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, Ohio's most read Black digital newspaper and Black blog with some 5 million views on Google Plus alone.Tel: (216) 659-0473 and Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com
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| Ohio state Representative Bill Patmon (D-10), a Cleveland Democrat and former city councilman who opposes guns in the hands of classroom teachers in Ohio, and nationwide |
Comprehensive article by editor Kathy Wray Coleman
CLEVELANDURBANNEWS.COM-CLEVELAND, Ohio-Ohio state Rep. Bill Patmon (D-10), a Cleveland Democrat, said in an interview yesterday that arming teachers with guns in classrooms in the nation's public schools as recently proposed by President Donald Trump following the shooting deaths in February of 17 people at a High School in Parkland, Florida would be disastrous for Black children already stigmatized by hostile educational environments that routinely disenfranchise them.
"Guns in the classroom in Ohio and elsewhere is like having gasoline to put out a fire, and teachers are educators, not policemen," said Patmon, a former city councilman and state representative since 2011 who is term- limited and running for election to the Ohio Senate against former state senator Jeff Johnson, also a former city councilman, Willie Britt, and incumbent state Sen. Sandra Williams, all four of them Black and seeking election to Ohio's 22nd state senate district in a four -way race relative to the May 8 Democratic primary election. (Editor's note: The winner of the Democratic primary will face Republican write-in candidate Thomas Pekarek, who is White, in the Nov. 6 general election).
President Trump was slammed by Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten and a host of Civil Rights organizations for his school guns proposal, including the NAACP.
U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan has said that while he supports guns in classrooms in some instances, congress will not entertain the president's proposal on the matter.
Republican gubernatorial candidates Mike DeWine, a former U.S. senator and currently the state attorney general, and Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor, the underdog Republican candidate for governor, both support guns in classrooms, which is largely a right-wing phenomenon.
The Democratic gubernatorial candidates, namely Richard Chordray, a former state attorney general and former state treasurer, former Cleveland mayor and former congressman Dennis Kucinich, former Ohio Supreme Court justice Bill O'Neil, state Sen. Joe Schiavoni (D-33), and former state representative Connie Pillich, are straddling the fence on the controversial issue, at least from a public standpoint.
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| Ohio state Representative Bill Patmon (D-10) of Cleveland, and his wife, Sharon Patmon |
A seasoned lawmaker who has four grown children from a previous marriage and resides with his wife Sharon in the historical Glenville neighborhood on Cleveland's largely Black east side, Patmon says he opposes guns in general that fall into the hands of irresponsible people, regardless of race, ethnicity or gender, and he said that education is often a deterrent to crime.
Cleveland felt the wrath of 14-year old Asa Coon in October 2007 at its since- closed SuccessTech alternative high school, Coon shooting two students and two teachers, none of them fatally, before committing suicide on the fourth floor of the building.
Ohio's tenth state house district is roughly 47 percent Black with about 116,000 residents, and the average voter is 77-years-old, far beyond secondary, and likely post-secondary school years.
"We will do well to focus our attention on educating our children instead of arming classroom teachers with guns to kill students," said Patmon, an intellectual, and a gun control advocate who has introduced some six gun control bills in his time as a state legislature ranging from universal background checks, to metal detectors in schools, and a statewide ban against bum stocks.
His proposed gun control legislation, which he has no problem reintroducing, has repeatedly stalled in the Republican-controlled Ohio General Assembly, Patmon saying he will continue to lobby for support of the measures as he completes his fourth and final two year term after this year, his departure as a term-limited state legislator a loss to Cleveland , and Ohio, unless he catapults himself to a state senate seat in the closely watched Democratic primary.
Regularly in the trenches in Cleveland when called upon by community activists regarding heightened rape and murder of poor Black women and girls, some of their assailants who remain at large, Patmon admits that his support of state legislation against abortion has annoyed some women's advocates, mainly Democratic White women.
But he says people must examine his overall record as a community servant, including helping to bring in dollars to impoverished Cleveland neighborhoods as a former councilman of 12 years, and as a state legislator, including monies for the Opportunity Corridor, a $306 million tax-funded, three-mile boulevard transportation project on the city's east side that will provide direct access from Cleveland's University Circle to Interstates I-490- and I-77 to minimize traffic congestion.
The Ohio Department of Transportation will kick in $200 million of the projected $306 million necessary for the project, which is supported by term-limited Gov. John Kasich, a popular governor who ran unsuccessfully for the Republican nomination for president in 2016, losing to the controversial Trump, who went on to become the country's 45th president, after narrowly defeating Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in the general election.
Eight Democratic candidates are vying to replace Patmon as state representative, two of them former Cleveland councilmen.
They are former city councilmen T.J. Dow, who lost a heated reelection campaign last year against Basheer Jones, a Muslim community activist and Morehouse graduate, and Nelson Cintron, and the Rev. Kyle Earley, Ronnie B. Jones, Aanand Mehta, Billy Sharp, Danielle Shepherd, and Terrence Upchurch.
No Republican filed petitions for the state legislative race in house district 10, the Democratic primary winner of whom will head to the state house next year.
According to Department of Education statistics, inner city Black public school students are four times more likely to be disciplined by largely White teachers often removed from the community and residing in outer suburbs, and Black children, particularly those living in poverty, regularly attend schools with a police presence unlike their affluent White counterparts.
Whites are more likely than Blacks to carry out mass shootings, data show, and men and boys are more likely to kill in mass numbers than women and girls.
Ninety-two of 95 mass shootings in the U.S. between 1982 and 2017 were carried out largely by White men or White teens.
Only one of those shootings involved a woman.
"The relationship between teachers and students also complicates the debate on arming educators with guns in public school classrooms," said Patmon, who can brag of getting some bills through the legislature with bipartisan support, including statewide recognition for first responders on May 24 each year, legislation passed with lobbying by one his grandchildren, Daniel Herrington Patmon, 17 and a high school senior with aspirations of becoming a politician like is grandfather, but after college, and possibly law school.
The Lizzie B. Byrd Act, a state law adopted in 2014 that was sponsored by Patmon and named after his mother, a breast cancer survivor, requires that doctors considering a mastectomy provide women with access to options for reconstructive and plastic surgery.
And dogs are more secure in Ohio, given Patmon's dog bill, an amended state law that makes what was once a misdemeanor a felony for deliberately harming an innocent dog, legislation dubbed Dick Godard's Law and named after long time Cleveland Fox 8 News weatherman Dick Goddard, a dog advocate.
Gun advocates, including the National Rifle Association (NRA), argue that people, not guns, kill, and that the second amendment should extend to teachers in the classroom.
Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, Ohio's most read Black digital newspaper and Black blog with some 5 million views on Google Plus alone.Tel: (216) 659-0473 and Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com. Kathy Wray Coleman, editor-in-chief, and who trained for 17 years at the Call and Post Newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio. 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.
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