BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY. WEST SIXTH TODAY, EAST FOURTH TOMORROW…OHIO CITY AND COVENTRY THE DAY AFTER THAT.
Where does it end? Lakewood? Shaker? The thin blue line is all that is stopping this from happening, but it’s probably too late. Cleveland…the domino theory at work.

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grizzster commening on Reported beating of a Morehouse graduate by off-duty officer adds to controversy in Cleveland’s Warehouse District

Seriously, (almost) every single comment on this article is intensely racist.  Thank god the plain dealer comments are here to make sure everyone knows that Cleveland is serious about keeping black people in their place (as the commenter says, keeping them from ‘ruining’ certain neighborhoods)  and cracking down on black troublemakers BAMN.

from the original article:

The men said they had gone out that night with white co-workers from a downtown bank, members of the same executive training program. The two were in the lobby near the door, preparing to leave, when a security guard pointedly told them it was time to go.

Ruiz, who recently moved here from Charlotte, N.C., said they responded that they were waiting for friends to come down from upstairs. He said the security guard shoved them out the door and onto the sidewalk.

Ruiz said that when he objected, another security guard grabbed him and slammed him onto the roof of a parked car and began punching him.

The street was busy with people and police, and Ruiz said he assumed police would come to his aid. Soon, he said, he realized he was dealing with a police officer.

In a police report, Officer Anthony J. Sauto said he was working off-duty and in plain clothes for Velvet Dog when he saw Ruiz and Parilla refusing to leave and he intervened. He said Ruiz became “verbally and physically aggressive,” then resisted arrest and tried to hit him.

I hear a lot of people from the northern part of the United States talk about how racist the southern part of this country is, but honestly I am not sure I have been anywhere in this country where serious racism and open/outward support of segregation is more a part of public/private discussion than cleveland. And I know you obviously can’t judge a whole city by the people who comment on newspaper webpages, but its a bizarrely frequent part of normal conversation.

Ohio has a complicated white supremacist history, and it seems like we might fare better in the future if we really seriously got down to business and dealt with our white supremacist present.

For months, the Bureau of Motor Vehicles has quietly refused to accept most Puerto Rican birth certificates, the primary document for people applying for a driver’s license or for a state identification card.
State officials say they judge the document to be untrustworthy and note the prohibition is temporary.
By Sept. 30, all Puerto Ricans born on the island are expected to have newly issued birth certificates with enhanced security features. The Ohio BMV is ready to accept those documents, said spokeswoman Lindsay Komlanc.

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Ohio BMV policy leaves people from Puerto Rico with identity crisis

Cleveland is in the midst of a puerto-ricans-are-not-to-be-trusted-and-probably-aren’t-u.s.-citizens-anyway freakout (and, you know, maybe they should just go home instead of Cleveland going to all the trouble of making ballots in more languages than just English).

It never dies, because it is at the heart of the beast that is US capitalism and imperialism. To mix a monster metaphor; it is well past time that a stake be driven into the heart of this demon. To destroy white supremacy it will be necessary to ‘expropriate the expropriators’. Comrades, look at the horizon! Arm yourselves! The zombies are coming and they want blood!

— The Summer of Zombie White Supremacy

This hospital has a c-section rate that is well above what the World Health Organization deems a safe c-section rate; if women are consenting to a c-section right off the bat (not to mention fetal heart-rate monitoring, antibiotics, episiotomies, and epidurals!) regardless of whether one is actually medically indicated, it’s certainly blurring the lines between what’s medically necessary and the power of suggestion from a medical “authority.” Where does an individual’s right to make an informed choice begin and hospital legal policy end?

— Does Refusing a C-Section = Child Abuse? [via]