“For those that are not aware or what’s going on I’ll keep it simple and to the point. The mother of Tamir Rice has planned a 2 day protest at our park and plans on walking through the neighborhood and going to a prosecutors home to make waves supposedly in the name of justice. Well we all seen how well that worked out for Ferguson recently. Let’s not give them an inch of space in this park first off. Fill the lot full of vehicles, fill the park full of law abiding citizens and keep them from doing any destruction to our city…”
The event, organized Monday by Tommy Gunn Snider (who refused to speak to Scene for fear of being misrepresented), now has more than 300 attendees ready to descend upon Impett Park Saturday afternoon, and to take up arms if necessary. Many of the event page’s commenters are residents of West Park (and/or relatives of police officers) who perceive the Tamir Rice rally as a threat to their safety.
Resident Justin Kowalczyk told Scene he may attend Saturday’s “event,” but says he would do so out of affection for his neighborhood and for Cleveland, not because he’s anti-protest. He grew up in West Park and moved back with his wife and kids just last month.
He said he disagrees with the racist rhetoric on the Facebook page — there’s plenty of the familiar “thug” paranoia — and thinks that those who use the event to push a negative agenda give West Park a bad name.
Still, he said, the tone of the Tamir Rice rally rubbed him and his neighbors the wrong way.
“When the Tamir protest’s flier states that their goal is to get the neighbors to pressure the prosecutor into taking action and specifically states “no justice no peace” then there are some serious concerns,” Kowalczyk wrote in an email.
Kowalczyk is referencing the following language in the #Occupy4Tamir Facebook Event:
“We will be joining hundreds on Saturday May 23 at Impett park to march to Prosecutor McGinty’s house to bring the urgency of the matter to his front door. If he does not move swiftly, we will continue to come back until his neighbors want justice as badly as we do.”
That phrase in particular, until his neighbors want justice as badly as we do, has been interpreted as a credible threat of violence by some parents in the neighborhood. A few of them — this has been gleaned primarily through Facebook comments — accuse the Tamir protesters of targeting West Park because it’s a predominantly white neighborhood where police officers are concentrated.
And though the fears of violence are off-base, organizer Malaya Davis says that it is important to expand the conversation beyond the Justice Center and the streets of downtown, where almost all of the police-brutality protesting has taken place for the past six months.
Davis is an organizer with the Ohio Student Association, an organizing team that has worked as part a collaborative to help Samaria Rice structure and strategize a “non-violent direct action.”
“When we say ‘no justice, no peace,’ we don’t mean we want violence. Nobody wants that. We mean you don’t get to live comfortably and quietly in your neighborhood while you come into ours and cause havoc,” she said. “We want our passion and our frustration to be visible. Not physical, but visible.”
In a phone conversation with Scene, Davis said that part of her group’s action was going into the neighborhood and talking to residents about how they felt (prior to Saturday’s rally).
“Some of the folks who helped us canvas lived in West Park” Davis said, to show that the ‘Protect our City’ group wasn’t representative of all residents there.
When asked why this particular protest was focused on Prosecutor McGinty’s house — as opposed to the home of Sheriff Clifford Pinkney, who’s investigating the shooting — Davis said it was a fair question.
“But obviously it’s not up to me,” she said. “Basically everything that’s happened has been the family’s decision. I want to support them in their efforts.”
Davis said that the organizing collaborative has been meeting for three weeks to discuss the action, and that they planned to meet again Wednesday evening to discuss contingencies if the ‘Protect Our City’ crowd complicates things.
“The reason we’re doing this is so Tamir’s story doesn’t die,” Davis said. “This isn’t to be Baltimore. That is honestly crazy.”
But that’s a tough pill to swallow for many of the residents in West Park, the most outspoken of whom continue to chastise Samaria Rice’s parenting and loft erroneous accusations about the police confrontation at Cudell as valid justifications for opposing the #Occupy4Tamir gathering.
One parent, who asked to remain nameless to protect the safety of his family, said he’s taking his child to the zoo on Saturday. It was a pre-planned trip, he said, but he feels better getting his son away from potential violence.
He, too, was bothered by all the talk of concealed carry weapons and confrontations on the Facebook page — “It’s nothing but empty words, the sort that gives the majority of the community a bad name,” he said — and is annoyed that such a stark line in the sand has been drawn with this issue.
“You’re either a cop hater or a racist (among other things) if you are asked about this case and start answering one way or another,” he wrote Scene in an email.
He said, though, that the idea of protesters putting pressure on neighbors is “a little twisted.”
“Why choose to threaten a community of families until the prosecutor files charges that he can’t file yet? Why not go to the Sheriffs station, courthouse or prosecutors office?” He wrote. “These are people’s homes and families. How do these protesters that want us to want justice like they do (because apparently it is believed that we don’t because of who we are and where we live) not see how their actions could be deemed threatening?”
This parent, Kowalczyk and others are especially nervous about “outside agitators.” Even the event organizer, the brash Tommy Gunn Snider, said he would in no way infringe upon protesters First Amendment rights if they remained peaceful (though the idea of filling every parking spot and preventing protesters from gathering at Impett seems pretty directly in contempt of the right to free assembly, if not to free speech).
Still, Kowalczyk and others say they definitely don’t want a turf war. They say they will of course defer to law enforcement officers and will only intervene if things get out of hand, especially if the “outside agitators” arrive and start breaking windows. One reason frustration is mounting, Kowalczyk added, is that they haven’t been able to get a straight answer from the city about what they’re doing in response to planned protests. (The city’s preparations have been characterized as a “clusterfuck” by at least two sources Scene spoke with, independently).
Malaya Davis, when asked point-blank, confirmed that no violence was part of the planned action Saturday. (For the record, we were embarrassed that we had to ask).
As for outside agitators, no one really has any idea what that’s about.
Councilman Jeff Johnson first floated the idea during a Sound of Ideas broadcast earlier this month, during which he said he expected and encouraged nonviolent protest but was worried about folks from elsewhere coming to Cleveland and causing a ruckus.
Since then, City Hall has been promulgating the fear of outside agitators on the reg — that was the narrative Baltimore City Hall was running with too, for awhile — and frankly, all these “intelligence briefings” and “violence interruption” preparation is fueling fires that need never have been lit in the first place.
We all need to join hands as #OneCleveland, Mayor Jackson has instructed us. (Although the marketing campaign had to be at least temporarily changed to #OneCle, because #OneCleveland was already taken by a high school in Cleveland,Tennessee).
Great nite to celebrate our team. Congrats girls on a season filled with so much. Your coaches love you all! #OneCleveland #CantBragEnough
— CHSGirlsBBall (@CHS_Hoops) April 16, 2015
Too good to be true.
But that’s beside the point! We must band together — not “ban together,” as the Protect Our City organizers Freudianly declare — and refuse to let ne’er-do-wells from parts unknown poison our otherwise nonviolent protests.
But who are these ne’er-do-wells, exactly? The one time a small group from Ferguson bused up to Cleveland to join local demonstrations, they were assaulted by employees at their hotel in Middleburg Heights… not the other way around.
That intel has been conveniently left out of the the Protect-our-City Facebook page, the most ardent rabble-rousers on which continue to use “Ferguson” and “Baltimore” as catch-all euphemisms for “bad people” and “bad situations.” There’s no real awareness of (to say nothing of empathy for) the factors that led to the chaos in those cities. Sparring sessions on both the Protect our City and the #Occupy4Tamir page make for great lunchtime entertainment, but the lack of meaningful exchange is disheartening.
One resident told Scene that a rumor is now afoot that rioters from Ferguson and Baltimore have already arrived en masse and are stationed at hotels nearby, presumably waiting to pounce.
Certainly, the Protect our City group doesn’t seem to acknowledge the fact that no protest in Cleveland has resulted in violence to date.
In part, that’s because of a calm and professional police force. Calvin Wiliams and co. have done an excellent job maintaining order and trouble-shooting emergent traffic delays downtown.
But the lack of violence is also because of an organized corps of demonstrators and activists who are well-schooled in protest etiquette and who — even if their views are unsavory to some, and even if they are loud and passionate — recognize the efficacy of non-violent direct action. (The inconvenience is supposed to make us reflect on an issue. We see marches downtown or in the newspaper and we talk about it, right?)
So if the West Park residents are concerned foremost about the safety of their children and the structural integrity of their storefronts, as they claim — and a lot of these people are swayed by hardwired parental instincts and the mood of the neighborhood and are thereby rationally concerned, (please do be apprised that they’re not all wackjobs) — the last thing they ought to do is watch 300 Friday night and show up to Impett Saturday with automatic rifles.
For those who are more concerned by the presence of chanting black folks, with zero history of or inclination towards grand-scale violence, in the streets of a white neighborhood, they’re better off taking that up with the United States Constitution.
This article appears in May 13-19, 2015.
If West Park residents want peace, let them embrace Tamir Rice’s family and join them in demanding justice. Seeking to eject the heartbroken, the outraged and the righteous from a public space because they are black is so morally repugnant as to shock the conscience.
Behave like human beings if you want your humanity to be seen.
I grew up in West Park, on Orchard Park, right around the corner from Impett. I still live in the neighborhood and am about to have my first child to raise in that neighborhood.
This makes me sad.
We are better than this.
I hope it rains.
I’m sure that most people in West Park are better than this. Maybe some need to get out there with the Tamir Rice protestors and mingle, so this racist message gets lost.
Wow Sam, way to play things out of context. This story is an exact example of how the media attempts to incite a riot. Shame on you. This story is a disgrace as is your reporting skills.
Now is the time to not play the role of the victim. All lives matter.
I HOPE EVERYBODY READING THIS CAN SEE THAT SCENE MAGAZINE IS TRYING TO PIN PEOPLE AGAINST EACH OTHER. THIS GROUP IS NOT A VIGILANTE. THESE ARE PEOPLE WHO SIMPLY WANT TO MEDIATE THE PROTESTS SO THAT THEY DONT GET OUT OF HAND. SCENE IS SAYING THAT THEY DONT WANT PEOPLE TO PROTEST AND THAT IS NOT THE TRUTH. SHAME ON THIS MAGAZINE FOR TRYING TO START A WAR BETWEEN PEOPLE WHO HAVE COMMON GROUND IN OUR CITY. DONT BE FOOLED. EVERYBODY BE RESPECTFUL AND APPRECIATE EACH OTHER WHILE “PROTESTING” WHAT IS RIGHT AND YOU CAN ACTUALLY MAKE A DIFFERENCE. COME TOGETHER. DONT START A WAR THAT DOES NOT EXIST.
I participated in the conversations. If there is any doubt that the people who promoted this event were violence-minded FIRST, and (maybe) thoughtful AFTER, please refer to this evidence: http://ja1me.net/Violence.png. Thank you.
There’s no reason this protest needs to be at Impett in West Park. This used to be a family park that had to have their basketball hoops pulled down because the the thugs that would hang out there. Broken beer bottles were the norm on the court while hoops were still up. Kids weren’t able to play because of the ignorant adults. Now they want to protest to a prosecutors house? The prosecutor can’t do anything until the investigation is complete. They’re trying to intimidate the prosecutor like witness tampering.
To clarify the above picture, Jerry Krause Sr. referred to the black people protesting as “the natives” who were attacking. And then Tommy Gunn Snider said the people of Westpark should “kill them all”.
Oh, yeah, this is helpful. How about ignoring the whole thing if you don’t want things to heat up?
How many people actually understand that justice is the whole system; judge, jury, trial, and verdict. The verdict IS JUSTICE, whether it’s guilty or innocent. It seems as if “justice” is being used as a synonym for “vengence”.
Hmm, I guess this reporter did figure that he should follow up with Samir Rice and ask her why she was not protesting at Sheriff Pinkney’s neighborhood. Wouldn’t a responsible and intrepid reporter follow that up and get an answer to that question? I am tired of reporters doing a half ass job and then blaming their laziness/ineptitude on having to make a deadline. As it is this reporter didn’t even bother to follow up with Malaya Davis on that question. I guess her one sentence answer that can be best summed up as “it’s not my rally, I’m not in charge” was adequate for him. How about following this up with a question about why, if she has no say as to where the rally is held is she speaking as an authority on the purpose of the rally and the justification for why it is being held in that neighborhood.
It may be time to fully comprehend the meaning of some lyrics by Joe Strummer — “Are you taking over / Or are you taking orders? / Are you going backwards / Or are you going forwards?” — from a classic song by The Clash…..that was misunderstood by fools who could not get past the song title , which also meant twisting things into a ridiculous interpretation for the “weiss und stolz” set; — “White Riot”.
Attention Geniuses!!!
Racism exists!! It’s in West Park! It’s in Tremont! It’s in Mt Pleasant! It’s in Detroit-Shoreway! It’s in Ohio City! It’s in Union/Miles! It’s in Central! It’s in Collinwood! It’s in Glenville!
What we in West Park don’t want is what we see on TV in Ferguson & Baltimore. How is that racist? If some folks are worried that the wrong element joins the peaceful group, what’s wrong with that worry? Fires aren’t scary?
And besides, Malaya Davis said herself, we shouldn’t be allowed to love quietly in our peaceful neighborhood if others aren’t satisfied. That’s pretty dam threatening. And screw you Sam for saying it’s embarrassing to ask if violence is planned. You should be embarrassed to not challenge her threat to disrupt our peace.
white trash will never learn. and yes tommy “water pistol” , you are a traitor to your race. the human race.
I have photo proof from the conversations in this group of racist and violent threats made by this Tommy Gunn person among others. I am disgusted by these people.
I’m not sure if I was banned or if the page has been removed, but it’s not there for me anymore.
“Behave like human beings if you want your humanity to be seen” is not illustrated by someone threatening others or infringing upon others right to the feeling of safety and security in thier own neighborhood or in a place where kids play by waving a gun around and pointing at people……if that had never happened all of this would be a moot point. JUST SAYING!!!
I envisage “Dad bods”, not the bodybuilders from 300.
“Yeah, have another slice of pizza”.
This is not about peace, it’s about intimidation. I hope my West Park neighbors do the right thing and ignore these people. Don’t give them an audience. Don’t give them a reason to act out. Let them have their drama and then go back to wherever it is they came from.
This is a great idea… Everyone who shows up will for sure be a racist or bigot. There’s literally no other sort of personality type who will show up in support of such an event. I know the racists and bigots who have deluded themselves into believing that they aren’t racists and bigots will read this and get upset that someone would say such a thing, but that’s the problem with being a racist or bigot, it’s not something you see in yourself. It’s something others see in you. You don’t control the conclusions others make about you. You only control the behavior which they draw their conclusions from.
I find it interesting that Tommy Gunn is concerned about a park where his kids play.. considering he has been jailed for not supporting those same kids… He owns a business too where his attitude shines loud and clear….
I understand there is total frustration. Everyone acts as though these “Protests’ that have taken place have been peaceful. The reality is, they have not all been. When they attempted to turn the man’s vehicle who was just waiting at a red light on W130th & Lorain and damaged his vehicle, was that peaceful? When they cause potential harm to themselves and others by blocking the highways and the streets from traffic and emergency vehicles if the need arises, was that peaceful? When parents could not get to the day care centers to pick up there children because their path was blocked? But there is a way to deal with it and you don’t need to be racist to do it. There are many who probably want to do something at Impett to make a stand who want to do it for the right reason: To protect the neighborhood and say that people can not intimidated Prosecutor McGinty or the police for doing their jobs. Not every person, black or white, is racist. Most just want to do what they think will matter.
Let’s take a look at the bigger picture. Forget all this nonsense at impett. I see wrong on both side there. According to the 2010 National crime survey, 62,593 White on Black violent crimes were committed. …wow, that’s a big number right? Well, 320,082 Black on White violent crimes were committed. Mind you whites account for 67% of the population and blacks account for only 13%. Now of course I’m a racist for simply typing those numbers, and of course those numbers are twisted because the people reporting to the survey or charging these people must be racist too. Wrong. I’m am not a racist, I just don’t buy all of what the national media is selling. And let’s assume those numbers are indeed skewed…it may be a safer bet to say 100,000 white on black violent crimes occurred and maybe only 200,000 black on white violent crimes occurred. Take those numbers and factor in racial disparity and what does it tell you? There is indeed a racial epidemic, it’s just not the epidemic the national mainstream media would lead you to believe. But of course don’t take my word for it because I must be a racist simply for saying so.
Grew up in Westpark..still a very active community member there, and yes, the racism is alive and thriving in WEST PARK. It is not hidden and is not just coming out into the light bc of the Tamir Rice MURDER. Yes he was murdered by a police officer and it will never be right. Not ever, no matter how Cleveland deals with it. But the racism has always existed since before Kamms Corners was what it is now. This “Little Ireland” crap that is going in West Park now is just a way to keep it as WHITE as can be. And boo hoo so there are like 10 mixed or Af. American families that live there, that doesn’t make it diverse. Drive down Rocky River Drive to “The Rock” projects and tell me that its OKAY that WESTPARK is trendy and cute and the only store “The Rock” residents can shop at is Drug Mart and a discount hair store. So YES PROTEST WEST PARK!!! Throw the shit in our faces that we are responsible for making CLEVELAND this way! WE all are. It is our fault for letting this police state take over and for living life like everyone in CLEVELAND doesn’t matter. Tamir mattered. Go get em!
No snowflake ever feels responsible for an avalanche. And Westpark is full of irresponsible snowflakes!
Of course you dislike it ^^^. It doesn’t support the popular opinion but the opposite. Truth hurts I guess.