Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2001 22:07:09 -0400
Subject: Re: cincinatti riots (fwd)




"F. Leon Wilson" wrote:
> 
> What is happening in Cincinnati this is a RACE riot.
> 
> It should not be refereed to in any other manner than a RACE riot.


Being at Ground Zero here....

Yeah, that's a pretty significant component of what's going on, not
entirely but there is a significant racial component.  It simplifies a
lot of what is going on.

There was a lot of simply "lets fuck shit up and take some loot"
business floating around that had nothing to do with politics or race,
pure thuggery.  Many Black owned or operated businesses have been
trashed than businesses owned by White non locals. Locally owned and
operated businesses that were tight with the community.  (Though the
main street dot com and bar yuppie corridor was thoroughly trashed)
almost ALL of the property damage excepting the afore mentioned race
street business and a few other businesses was meted out in
neighborhoods inhabited by blacks, a lot of the overt violence was
directed at Blacks, neighborhoods trashed were by and large Black or in
Norwood poor whites.  A few local community businesses were spared
(including one really popular Fish place) but really there were a lot of
innocents fucked over on the first few days.  After that everyone locked
up early and put plywood over exposed windows so the property damage bit
sort of died sown.  Racial rage was a real component in the protests but
a lot of the property damage had nothing to do with that.

A lot of the property owners and political elements in Cincinnati have
been planning on running an "urban renewal" campaign through Over the
Rhine, lots of property bought up in a low volume way, slowly
rennovated, tennants sent packing, and trendy businesses brought in
(mostly around main street).  Fiber optic cable and telecom
infrastructure laid in, streets that were formally one way converted to
two way to route a lot of downtown traffic through certain
neighbourhoods, splitting them in half effectivly and making the
property in these coridors more valuable (due to exposure).  After these
riots this process will continue on an accelerated basis.  Local efforts
have tried to stop this, buying and rennovating property with community
money and putting them to community uses or leasing them to business
startups and recycling the rent/lease money back into community
ventures.  These people have been besieged by developer interests, they
have only a couple of voices in the city council.  who knows what will
happen now.

Its sobering, I was actually smack in the middle of Over the Rhine at
the time of the shootings, heard the shots, I thought that it was some
gangbangers at the time... now I know better, pretty sobering now in
retrospect.

In reality the riots are a lot smaller and more localized than the media
is portraying around the country, and Internationally (I've had emails
from around the world asking me if I was safe).  Many of the protests
have been peaceful with a bit of rioting by a few individuals, most of
the protests and riots have been confined to Avondale, Eveston, and Over
The Rhine, with some stuff going on in the city of Norwood.  The curfews
going on have been mostly regarded, there are not a whole lot of people
going out, period.  The first night 125 people were arrested, since then
things were calmer.

Some folks are monitoring the police frequencies through this, so far
over the last 3 or 4 days there have been a few shootings, (about 3 or 4
per night) and a few break ins, some kids fucking on tombstones in
cemeteries (I kid you not) and a bit of stone/bottle throwing.  

According to some eyewitnesses (White and black) The police instigated
the riots when they roughed up some peaceful protesters, people were
really doing nothing more than protesting peacefully, there was some
shouting but things were reasonably clam until some of the police got
nervous and started forcibly pushing protesters around and roughing up
some people.  Some people snapped, the rest followed.  There was a
peaceful protest organized by the socialist club at the University of
Cincinnati, had a pretty nice sized turnout from across the political
and racial spectrum they operated an open mike and anyone with a story
to tell was allowed to speak.

The impression that I'm getting from folks outside of Cincinnati is a
lot different from what is going on here.
The media in Cincinnati have exaggerated some aspects of the riots while
covering others.  The police were definitely on edge the first few days
and were roughing up anyone in the area, whether they were peaceful
protesters or throwing stuff.

Cincinnati hasn't had anything like this in decades so reactions are
pretty mixed.  Some people sympathize with them, others have a more "law
'n order" type of attitude towards them