Black Lives Matter Cleveland to protest June 23 to call for the defunding of Cleveland police, a rally to be held at the Free Stamp next to Cleveland City Hall....By editor Kathy Wray Coleman of Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, the most read Black digital newspaper in Ohio and in the Midwest
Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, the most read Black digital newspaper 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.
By Kathy Wray Coleman, associate publisher, editor-in-chief. A former biology teacher with no felony record, Coleman is a legal, political and investigative reporter who trained at the Call and Post Newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio for 17 years, covering the 2008 presidential election with 26 articles, an election that saw Barack Obama elected the nation's first Black president
CLEVELAND, Ohio-Black Lives Matter Cleveland Chapter will rally at the Free Stamp next to Cleveland City Hall in downtown Cleveland on Tuesday, June 23 beginning at 6 pm as part of an initiative that is taking place nationwide to seek to defund police departments across the country in the wake of the tragic killing last month of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.
Arrested on a forgery charge over a counterfeit $20 bill, the murder by police of Floyd, 46, has caught on nationwide as Black people and others are obviously fed-up with excessive force by police against America's Black community.
Riots broke out in downtown Cleveland May 30 as thousands of protesters, led by Black Lives Matter Cleveland, rallied for justice for Floyd, forcing Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson, the city's third Black mayor, to call for the National Guard to be called into the largely Black major American city.
The four-term mayor also set a curfew, which has since been lifted.
Rioters torched or completely destroyed some five police cars, broke out the windows of multiple businesses, including the downtown Arcade, destroyed some downtown shelters, and threw rocks and boulders at police.
They wrote messages and profanity on some government buildings, and a group of protesters clashed with police. Police shot off tear gas repeatedly, and in some instances unnecessarily, said activists, who said police allegedly started the riots by shooting off tear gas and allegedly harassing protesters. More that 99 protesters, most of them White, and young, were arrested with charges ranging from disorderly conduct to criminal damaging and aggravated rioting. There were over 50 felony arrests and practically all of those arrested were from Ohio, mainly Cleveland and its suburbs.
They shouted at police as some rode on horseback along the strip between City Hall and the Justice Center and the Justice Center and Public Square where more than three thousand protesters gathered.
"Am I next"? a sign read that was held up by a young Black woman as police and their horses trotted through the streets. Organizers had called for a peaceful protest before and during the rally, but to no avail. Most of the protesters were under 30 and many were White as well as Black with participants across ethic lines joining in one of at least three different marches and chanting such phrases of "No Justice No Peace," Black Lives Matter," and "Dump Trump." The rally, which began at 1:30 pm at the Free Stamp next to Cleveland City Hall where Tuesday rally will also be held, began peacefully as an array of speakers took to the platform. But by the time protesters had marched from the Free Stamp to the Justice Center and settled in, some became anxious and the once peaceful event quickly turned violent. One protester wore a t-shirt that read "F--- the police."
Given Cleveland's history of excessive force killings against Blacks and a pending consent decree with the U.S. Department of Justice for police reforms and the climate nationally relative to police brutality, the upheaval was not at all surprising, sources said, though Cleveland's Black leaders have said for years that Cleveland is a sleepy town when standing up against police brutality.
The George Floyd riots in Cleveland prove otherwise. City officials say that it was a small group of agitators who precipitated the violence. Others say the tension between police and the Black community in Cleveland, and elsewhere, is deeply rooted in systemic racism and that the violent episodes at protests nationwide cannot be laid at the feet of protesters alone.
The violence at Cleveland's George Floyd rally follows a national pattern of racial unrest since Floyd's death last month by Minneapolis police and this week Cleveland's safety director quit, or retired, Mayor Jackson replacing him with Karrie Howard, the acting safety director and a former chief city prosecutor and assistant U.S. district attorney.
Five people were arrested and two cops injured following two nights of protests over Floyd's death in Columbus, Ohio's state capital. And seven people were shot in Louisville, Kentucky , one critically, during a protest for Breonna Taylor, a 26-year Black EMS worker whom Louisville police shot and killed in March when three cops barged into her home.
Other violent incidents with police and protesters have occurred across the country during rallies since Floyd's was murdered, including during protests in Oakland, Detroit, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Louisville, Cincinnati, Columbus, and Chicago.
Also center stage at Cleveland's violent protest May 30 were Staten Island police murder victim Eric Garner, whom New York police choked to death in 2014, and 12-year-old Tamir Rice, whom Cleveland police gunned down in 2012 at a park and recreation center on the city's largely White west side, and the death of Sandra Bland, a 28-year-old community activist who was found hanged in a jail cell in Waller County, Texas in 2015. Malissa Williams and Timothy Russell, both Black and unarmed but gunned down in a car in 2012 by some 13 non-Black Cleveland cops slinging 137 bullets, were a subject of the Cleveland's protest too. Floyd died May 25 after since fired White cop Derek Chauvin, the arresting officer, held his knee on his neck until he killed him, and before a crowd of people as the Black man pleaded for his life and cried out that he could not breathe.
The unarmed Black man was pronounced dead an hour later at an area hospital.
The disturbing video of the incident, taken by a bystander, has shocked the conscience.
Chauvin and the other three involved officers, all of them White, were immediately fired.
Chauvin has since been charged with manslaughter and second degree murder and and is out of jail after positing 10 percent of a millions dollars bond, and the three involved former officers face aiding and abetting charges, only one of the three posting the 750,000 bond to get out of jail as their criminal cases progress through the courts.
Protesting in Minneapolis began shortly after police killed Floyd as protesters clashed with police, who met them with tear gas and rubber bullets.
Multiple businesses were destroyed and an unmanned police station and an airport were set on fire.
The governor of Minnesota was forced to call in the National Guard.
Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, the most read Black digital newspaper 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.
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