------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the May 24, 2001 issue of Workers World newspaper ------------------------- MARCH FOR JUSTICE JUNE 2: FROM SELMA TO CINCINNATI By Deirdre Griswold Will Cincinnati prove to be the Selma of the new century? No one can be sure in advance what unbearable injustice, indignity or act of cruelty will become forever identified as the spark igniting a new movement. But many ingredients are there to make the comparison. A police attack on peaceful marchers on a bridge in Selma, Ala., in 1965 became a watershed in the struggle against Southern segregation. The scenes of police clubbing and dragging women and men who had done nothing but march into that bastion of racist oppression stiffened the resolve of a movement for dignity and civil rights that had begun a decade earlier. Now the national spotlight is focused on Cincinnati, Ohio, technically a northern city but one very much in the grip of racism. It was one police murder too many that put Cincinnati on the political map. The fatal shooting of unarmed Timothy Thomas, 19, by officer Steven Roach on April 7 came after a string of other killings of Black youths by police--15 since 1995. The African American community, especially the young who are well aware of the horrendous statistics blighting their lives, rebelled for three days. It was a rebellion against police brutality, but also against the racist status quo that allocates more funds to new prisons than to new campuses and puts more Black men behind bars than in college classrooms. Many groups tried to hold demonstrations showing their opposition to what the city and the police were doing. The mayor declared a state of emergency and over 800 people were arrested. Details about what happened in Cincinnati are now coming out in a civil rights lawsuit filed by two dozen people against the city and unnamed police officers. William Edwards, who for three years has operated a store on Vine street, says he was maced by shotgun-toting cops who demanded he close his shop. When Edwards protested that the street was quiet and he was only standing in his doorway, the cops first broke a beer bottle on his stoop, then maced him in the face. "I told them, 'That's your answer to everything. That's why you've got this problem. You're losing the city,'" he says. The officers laughed at him as he stood in pain. John Conyers, who had known Timothy Thomas personally, says in the lawsuit that he was among a group of people leaving the funeral when two police cars swerved into the intersection of Liberty and Elm and about five cops began shooting non-lethal ammunition. One of the injured was a seven-year-old girl. Conyers says he worked his way through the chaos to block the child from being shot again. "They were going to shoot her again, and we went over there by her," Conyers says. She was crying and yelling for the shooting to stop. Conyers was repeatedly shot with beanbags and rubber bullets while this happened, but didn't realize he had been injured until later. "At the moment I was worried about that little girl," he says. "I was protecting that little girl." Conyers says officers were laughing as the crowd screamed for answers to why they were being shot. According to the suit, a schoolteacher from Kentucky was also injured by police. Conyers says bystanders took the teacher to an area shielded from the road and waited for help. "The ambulance wouldn't even come to get that teacher," Conyers told Cincinnati City Beat. On June 2, a march called by a coalition of Cincinnati groups will demand an end to racist police brutality in the city. People will be coming from all over the country. The International Action Center is organizing transportation from several East Coast cities and can be contacted at (212) 633-6646 or [EMAIL PROTECTED] The IAC will also raise the issue of freedom for Mumia Abu- Jamal at the Cincinnati march. - END - (Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For subscription info send message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.workers.org) ------------------ This message is sent to you by Workers World News Service. To subscribe, E-mail to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, E-mail to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To switch to the DIGEST mode, E-mail to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Send administrative queries to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
