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.