As we reported last year, the Fair-Minded Coalition of Lorain County with funding from the Lorain YWCA, put up three billboards around the area calling for the end of flag sales at the fair. Yet, despite the public outcry for years, fair administrators sill allow the flags to fly.
This year, the YWCA has not only paid for four billboards, but has planned a protest for the same night the rock band Foreigner is set to play the fair’s main stage, Aug. 20.
“For folks coming from the northern part of the state, which is most of the people coming to the fair, you will be able to see us. You will see our signs. We are not going anywhere,” Jeanine Donaldson, executive director of the Elyria and Lorain YWCA, told FOX 8.
The president of the Lorain Fair Board, Ron Pickworth, told the Chronicle-Telegram that his organization sees the selling of Civil War memorabilia as a First Amendment issue.
“We still believe in freedom of speech,” he told the Chronicle-Telegram. “I’m sorry this issue keeps coming up.”
The Confederate flag, as Scene has covered in depth here and here, continues to have a mystifying pull over many in Northeast Ohio, a state which fought for the Union during the Civil War.
The flag protest is being held at Black River Organics Farm in Wellington, not far from the Lorain County Fairgrounds.
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This article appears in Aug 14-20, 2019.
Cool I love this flag
I love this flag
You mean I can just go, pay $10 cash and have one the same day? Thanks for the heads up Scene!!!
I like it when idiots instantly reveal themselves to me by waving a Confederate flag. It saves me the effort of having to waste a few seconds to figure it out myself.
I understand why it offends, im not a confed. Flag waiver, im pretty much liberal to a fault. But i do believe in free speech, association,to gather peacefully,ect if i didnt, id be a terrible American.these ppl have every right to do this.regardless of your protests.i believe i have the right to protest Trump rallies withoit getting beat up.Or arrested under some stupid new law to stop me from doing so.we dont need this constant division of our own peoples rightful actions.we should be focusing on outside infuences hurting our freedom of choice at the polls.or finding the factors causing so many odd mental issues that end in someone using a weapon to kill random ppl. Or exposing the worldwide network of pedophiles..Not chasing after some cloth marker of history.that is like hating a scarecrow dressed like adolf Hitler in some crow filled field…
I’m glad that someone like the Lorain county fairgrounds and board members still believes in freedoms that we all take very lightly these days.
Cant wait to go to the fair again this year. Drive a hour just to show support for them.
When you are the ignorant one that depended on a textbook or another propagandists voice to emulate, them you are the problem. Ignorance is the only offense and you wear that well! Research before you think you are saving the world, buffoon, you arent! The flag has the right to be there, if you are benighted this offended, dont look at it, I certainly dont look at you!
The flag may be decisive, but this is a First Amendment right. The flag is not illegal, so you cannot outlaw the sale. The best action to take is to ignore those selling the flag and purchase nothing from their stands. Being offended is an emotional issue but disallowing something that is a given right is a legal one.
An ISIS flag is not illegal either, but we shouldnt have either at the fair. Both flags were enemies of America.
if losers won’t to buy the LOSERS flag…that of a rogue “nation” of traitors and racists and losers in battle, in a state that saw one of the highest percentage of enlistees who voluntarily joined up and often gave their lives to help DEFEAT that sorry cause, I guess it’s their right and their privilege. Why not just by a flag with a poop emjoi’ on it and fly it proudly? Flying the “Rebel” flag does not make one a “rebel’…it just makes it that much easier to tell who the asshats are. So go ahead, look like a shmuck!
The Confederate flag is the flag of TRAITORS. Ohio men died in the thousands fighting against what this flag represents. I am personally offended by this flag. I have ancestors who died fighting these traitors. One of them died at the age of 24. You can take your nasty flag and shove where the sun don’t shine – along with the Nazi flag.
Always makes me laugh to see Ohioans waving the Confederate flag. Do you dummies not realize that the people who created and endorsed that flag would consider you a dirty Northern POS and during the Civil War they would’ve happily slit your throat? Move to the South if you want to fly that disgusting symbol of racial oppression, just like if you want to fly the ISIS flag you should move to wherever they do that, so you can be beheaded and we can get rid of one more moron.
As someone already pointed out, banning isn’t the answer. Like them I’m grateful to those who let me know up front just what kind of despicable idiot they are, that way I don’t have to waste my time talking to you to find out that you’re a racist dipshit.
Get ur History straight before u call it racist. And what we did is nothing more than what we did in 1776. Lincoln the only president in history to attack his own. Long live Dixie.
Who’s “we” anyhoo? And learn how to spell, Johnny, before you spew your Rebel rant. “U” and “ur” have no place here. This is not some kid board, Johnny. Adults talking to other adults. Try to type like one or GTFO. I H8 that chatspeak shit. What are you gonna do with the two seconds you saved by eliminating those “extra’ keystrokes…shoot a Yankee? Go back down home where you and your ilk belong.
Johnny Reb, wtf are you even talking about? I’d love for you to point out my historical error, but before you embarass yourself any further, I’d suggest you go read the Confederate States Declaration of Secession.
These documents make it very clear that in their opinion, the slave (aka black people) was both politically and socially inferior to the white man, and thus unworthy of equal treatment. This was their founding cause, they didn’t want to give up their lives of leisure, made possible by literal mountains of dead and enslaved blacks. You can read it in their own words, it’s not a matter of opinion, these are facts.
That’s what that ugly piece of shit flag stands for, the killing and mass enslavement of human beings, exceeded in brutality and sheer numbers only by, perhaps, the holocaust. Given that you type like you’re 11, maybe you haven’t gotten to that part in history class yet, but that’s the reality and that’s who you choose to ally yourself with when you fly that disgusting symbol of racial oppression.
Maybe think about that for awhile, before you respond. Is that really who you want to be? If the answer is yes, do the rest of us a favor and go move to some backwoods, inbred corner of the south so you can marry your cousin and wave your losers flag. It has no place here, where good men died to fight against the notion that only all “white” men were created equal.
Most of the people that fought under that flag either ended up dead or swearing a loyalty oath. Most of the people from that area have been there for generations and had family fight for the Union. Mine included having had a great great grandfather wounded at Fredricksburg and his brother killed in northern Georgia , another at Vicksburg and their father, too old to fight, enlisted to be a camp guard on Johnson Island. We are the sons of Grant and Sherman. This is settled history and that flag a relic.