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Photo By Jymi Bolden
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Natalie Mathis earned a business degree before joining
the struggle against corporate power.
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It's hard not to like the young radicals. They're purists, but they're anything but puritanical. Indeed, their nose rings and funky hairstyles belie a political movement that's provocative precisely because it is so pragmatic.
Kim Burden isn't unique for her tattoos or for the heavy earrings that deliberately stretch the lobes of her ears or even for having once worked for a phone-sex line. What sets her apart is her knack for making the Cincinnati Police Division look brutish in court.
Twice arrested this year for protesting police violence, she was acquitted both times, nicely illustrating the very point of her protest -- that police in Cincinnati violate citizens' rights.
Burden, 25, is in many ways emblematic of the year-old radical movement in Cincinnati, but especially in this regard: She has her rights, and she knows how to use them.
The next step in the radical movement is sure to attract attention -- which is, of course, the sine qua non of politics. But more important, the plan has a high likelihood of being effective.
Cincinnati CopWatch is about to get underway. If you think the handful of demonstrations against police brutality this year caused a stir, wait until this program starts.
CopWatch is brilliant in its simplicity: In order to discourage police misconduct, volunteers follow cops and videotape them making arrests. The program combines all the elements that define the vibrant radical movement in Cincinnati -- direct action, media savvy and a readiness to stand up to state power.
The law in their own hands
Life Allah is living the American dream. He's a businessman, an entrepreneur. The Sun City barbershop he opened last year in Over-the-Rhine attracts a steady flow of customers and serves as home base for a handful of people committed to protecting their neighborhood -- from police.
Allah, 24, is an organizer for CopWatch.
"It takes conscious people who ain't scared to stand up," he says. "The police can come and threaten you and threaten your family. It's the citizens down here in Over-the-Rhine who's living with it. CopWatch lets them know we're watching. They got cameras in their cars, we got cameras in our palms."
Islord Allah, who works with Life Allah in the barbershop and in CopWatch, says people must maintain surveillance on police officers.
"We've seen cops get off in court," he says. "We've seen cops fumble over their testimony. The problem we have is cops who abuse their authority. The system is created in a way that they can do it and get away with it. We're saying, 'We know what you're doing. We're going to tell the world about it.' "
Gavin Leonard, who's also helping set up CopWatch, sees it as a practical democratic tool, a way to deal with an immediate problem, but also a step toward larger gains.
"It's an issue of empowerment," Leonard says. "We're working toward empowerment, so people feel they have a voice in what's going on. I'm not expecting anybody to get the next Rodney King video. What we're doing is watching cops. In terms of police brutality, harassment, misconduct, there's a process of accountability."
At age 21, Leonard is already a veteran of the radical movement, having participated in several demonstrations against globalization of the economy. A native of Chicago, he moved to Cincinnati in January.
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Photo By Jymi Bolden
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Islord Allah says citizens have to begin surveillance on
police.
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"If you're in the social justice business, Cincinnati is a good place to be," he says. "Cincinnati is ripe for change."
CopWatch is one of several grassroots efforts to turn the law into a weapon for defending people's rights. Molly Lyons is involved with another. When mounted police officers recently talked to a group of homeless men in Piatt Park, Lyons walked up to make sure the men weren't being harassed.
Police officers sometimes tell the homeless they cannot sit on a sidewalk, citing a city ordinance, according to Lyons -- even though the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated the ordinance years ago.
Lyons, who works for the Greater Cincinnati Coalition for the Homeless (GCCH), distributes leaflets telling street people not to fall for the lie; they're allowed to sit on the sidewalk.
During protests downtown against the TransAtlantic Business Dialogue (TABD) in November 2000, Lyons helped run a legal collective -- think of it as a kind of lawyers' auxiliary -- to help participants understand their rights and risks and to assist protesters arrested by police.
The legal collective's mission was cunningly simple: Tell people their rights, then use them. The results have been impressive, as more than two dozen people arrested by Cincinnati Police in the past year -- during protests against globalization, police violence, selective curfew enforcement and racism -- have been found not guilty. Lyons is one of them.
A record like that proves either the radicals are very smart or the police in Cincinnati have a pattern of violating citizens' rights. Or both.
The legal collective is a combination of public education and direct action -- the formula that largely defines the radicals' political strategy. Their politics has little to do with ballots and fund-raising; it is a politics of the streets, a politics of daily life.
'Be the Media'
The great irony of the radical movement is that anti-corporation activists are avid consumers of communications technology, the very element of the economy so essential to globalization.
Video cameras have played a big role in the protesters' courtroom victories. The same videotapes likely will figure in the dozens of pending civil-rights lawsuits involving Cincinnati Police (see Unpatriotic Acts).
Just as some activists are making the law a tool for their cause, others are doing the same with mass media. The Internet, the most democratic of media, is tailor-made for radical organizing. LeeAnn McNabb, the prime mover behind the Cincinnati Zapatista Coalition (CZC), says she logs 200 to 400 e-mails a day -- the kind of participation any local mainstream political party would be proud to have.
The Coalition for a Humane Economy (CHE) used the Internet to arrange lodging and car pools for people coming to Cincinnati for protests against the TABD. The March for Justice Organizing Committee used the Web to attract endorsements, as well as marchers, from across the country for its June 2 event.
A slogan frequently heard among the young radicals is "Be the Media." The Independent Media Centre (IMC), with branches on six continents, including 32 in the United States, provides access to news available almost nowhere else, original videotape and on-site reports of protests and police response.
The IMC is an all-volunteer operation, another example of radicals using direct action to address a social problem -- in this case, the corporate homogeneity of the news.
The radicals have a love-hate relationship with the media, distrustful of reporters and yet perpetually seeking exposure for their cause. In interviews, they sometimes give only a nom de guerre or -- if the publication or station has somehow given offense in previous reports -- refuse to talk altogether.
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Photo By Jymi Bolden
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LeeAnn McNabb helped organize N-16, which birthed
the radical movement in Cincinnati.
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Contempt for The Cincinnati Enquirer is so strong that its Aug. 5 front-page story "The N Word" landed the newspaper on the list of boycott targets for the Coalition for a Just Cincinnati.
"You hear a lot about the media blackout," says Amanda Mayes, a member of the coalition. "To me, it's worse than that. It's outright lies. Black people are offended by what they read in The Enquirer. During Taste of Cincinnati, they increased the number of people down there for the festivities and decreased the number of protesters that were there."
McNabb and Mayes use e-mail to update fellow radicals about protests, teach-ins, letter drives and other activities that get short shrift in the mainstream media.
In addition to its utility for organizing locally, the Internet makes radicals feel part of a global struggle. The first night of Ujima Cinci-Bration, when Kim Burden was passing out "Boycott Cincinnati" leaflets downtown, she already knew about the anti-globalization protester shot dead by carabinieri in Genoa, Italy, just hours earlier; she read about it on the Internet.
"The reason I'm involved in your liberation is because my liberation is tied up in it," Lyons says. "I recognize that we're tied together. I can't be free if you're not."
Birth of a notion
Two events launched the new radical movement in Cincinnati, or at least made it coalesce. The genesis of the movement -- it goes by many names: Youth Anti-War League (YAWL), International Socialist Organization (ISO), Coalition for a Just Cincinnati, CHE -- was the protests against TABD.
"That was one of the first events that brought activists together in Cincinnati, and since then it has snowballed," says Natalie Mathis, a member of ISO.
McNabb, with the Cincinnati Zapatista Coalition, says the protests "radicalized" many people in Cincinnati. She was a major organizer for the event, which participants call N-16 (for Nov. 16, 2000, opening day of the TABD conference).
"I definitely think N-16, in many ways, changed activism in Cincinnati," McNabb says. "It got groups that had never worked together to work together. There was a common goal. It brought a lot of new people into activism in Cincinnati. It definitely gave it some energy. It definitely emboldened some people."
McNabb was sprayed with chemical irritant by police during N-16, an experience that added to the growth of the radical movement.
"For white activists, the radicalism that came out of N-16 led many to become involved in organizing against police brutality," she says.
Therein lies the secret to the movement's continued vitality in Cincinnati. Soon after N-16, African-American activists and young white radicals began working together.
The final day of N-16 featured the "Don't Beat Me March," when the bulk of the 55 protesters eventually charged by police were arrested. Members of the Black United Front -- which formed earlier in 2000 to protest discrimination by downtown restaurants -- joined the march.
But even on the first night of protests against the TABD, Black United Front members were involved, sometimes adding to the anti-globalization rhetoric their own chants about police racism.
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Photo By Jymi Bolden
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Amanda Mayes
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Susan Knight and other activists with CHE were listening, and they began nurturing contacts with the Black United Front. Their efforts paid dividends in April. CHE had scheduled another round of protests against globalization that month but canceled them after Officer Stephen Roach shot and killed Timothy Thomas, setting off a week of protests and rioting.
CHE announced it would put aside the issue of globalization and stand in solidarity with African Americans in Over-the-Rhine.
"In April, white activists got together with black activists and said, 'How can we do things together?' " Lyons says. "The movement I see now is a lot less white."
The events of April, which Cincinnati officialdom uniformly condemn, were in fact good for the city, according to the majority of radicals. Mayes calls what happened "the so-called riot."
"When it happens again, people will end up acting shocked about it," Mayes says. "But they should have known it was coming. I know it's going to happen again. You can't keep backing people into a corner without them acting. When I heard folks were tearing up in the streets, I thought, 'It's about damn time.' And then I jumped in my car to see what I could do to help. It wasn't as bad as they were saying on TV, but it was encouraging nonetheless."
Shane J. of the ISO -- he withholds his last name while seeking employment -- is equally enthusiastic.
"I think it was great," he says. "Anyone who sees police brutality, racism, general harassment by the state as a bad thing can look at April and say April was a success for the people, especially in Over-the-Rhine. If you look at what the city deems the dispossessed, what April meant to them, it was a great thing, people standing up and saying, 'This is enough! We've had it!' "
The rebellion in April was a spontaneous development, most say.
"Nobody could have planned April," says Brian Garry, an activist involved with CHE and the Coalition for a Just Cincinnati. "It was completely spontaneous."
A combination of circumstances provided the right mix of outrage and opportunity, according to the radicals' analysis. The weather was pleasant and many students were on spring break. But it was city officials -- first city council's law committee and then the police -- who unwittingly sparked the rebellion.
"The reason April happened was everybody was gathered in one place, city council, and city council wouldn't listen, so people decided to take it to the streets," Lyons says. "April was really spontaneous. People came out of their houses to join. The escalating point was when people were gathered in front of District 1."
Mathis largely shares this analysis. While police have said the crowd that left City Hall and marched to District 1 police headquarters began throwing rocks, Mathis says it was police who initiated violence.
"I think about how everybody went to District 1 and was peaceful, and then the cops fired on them, enraging them," she says. "I think it was sparked by emotion and rage rather than strategic political thought."
That's not to say people involved in the movement see the rebellion in blithe terms. Lora Jost, a 1988 graduate of the School for the Creative and Performing Arts, found the turmoil painful.
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Photo By Jymi Bolden
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Susan Knight (left) and Molly Lyons work for the
Greater Cincinnati Coalition for the Homeless.
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"What happened in April affected me profoundly," she says. "I grew up in Over-the-Rhine. I went to school here. I always felt safe here, both physically and emotionally. To see something you feel is your own going through all this trouble -- I still haven't dealt with that emotion yet."
Yet Jost, too, sees the rebellion as a pivotal development in the Cincinnati political landscape. So does Life Allah.
"When the riots were going on, everybody in the world heard about it," he says. "People from Oakland and Columbus who are involved in CopWatch called and said, 'We got some ways to help.' "
The revolution will not be on time
The activists call what they do "organizing," a term with roots in the labor movement. But the movement is sometimes so unorganized as to be unpredictable and, some would say, so undisciplined as to be unreliable.
Organizing is the radicals' greatest strength and their biggest weakness. When they do it well, they perform rather amazing feats. Within hours of the verdict acquitting Roach, for example, Gavin Leonard of CopWatch had designed, printed and distributed fliers urging protesters to gather at a 2 p.m. meeting of city council and a series of rallies and marches in Over-the-Rhine that night. Hundreds responded.
By contrast, two days later a group announced an afternoon protest at the Hamilton County Courthouse. The turnout was so pitiful that police easily outnumbered demonstrators.
Hours after the United States started bombing Afghanistan, more than 50 people met for a protest at the John Weld Peck Federal Building, a plan that had been established weeks before. But once gathered, the protesters started wandering through downtown without a clear agenda.
During the debate over a city ordinance to restrict low-income housing, advocates for the homeless announced a press conference on the steps of City Hall, then canceled it without telling the reporters they had invited.
Sometimes the activists have a pretty good sense of what's needed but aren't sure how to get it or what to do once they've got it. Outside experts are needed in Cincinnati, according to Amanda Mayes of the Coalition for Justice.
"Getting some outside help is one thing that is definitely going to happen, something to encourage people: 'If they can do it, I can, too,' " Mayes says. "I think it's going to take outside leadership to come in and challenge the forces that be in numbers large enough that people will say, 'I never figured this was an option.' "
But when the movement reaps a bonanza -- for example, an international celebrity stopping by for a visit -- the activists miss the opportunity presented them. It happened last month when singer Harry Belafonte walked through Over-the-Rhine with the Rev. Damon Lynch III, president of the Black United Front. Only about 25 people were on hand.
"Information is a commodity in this city," Mayes says. "People act so secretive about everything. For instance, who knew about the Black United Front's march with Harry Belafonte? I hadn't even heard anything about it until after the march had already taken place, and I consider myself pretty well connected. ... What makes things additionally hard is when civil rights organizations won't communicate with each other.
"Everyone is so suspicious of everyone else, even amongst those in the struggle. People like to keep access to information exclusive out of fear that control over an event or a demonstration will be lost to a more radical element. I believe it holds the whole movement back."
Cincinnati radicals lost an important tool when the Ohio Valley Independent Media Centre (OVIMC) shut down last month, for reasons that remain unclear. During N-16, the April rebellion and the two-week vigil that followed June's March for Justice, OVIMC provided up-to-the-minute reports on action in the streets of Cincinnati.
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Photo By Jymi Bolden
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Hannah Stampe has decided volunteering is more
effective than protests.
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Repeated e-mails to IMC activists in Louisville and the national headquarters have gone unanswered.
Sometimes plain human nature interferes with the radicals' efforts. They are, after all, as prone to misunderstandings, hurt feelings, stress and disagreement as anyone else.
Jost, 28, says she's seen the painful effect of utterly sincere disputes about whether tactics are radical enough or too extreme, whether confrontation with police or cooperation is in order.
"I had so many accuse me of 'being CHE,' or they thought I 'was ISO' or they thought I was that," she says. "That's when I realized it's much harder to be political as an individual. You don't learn anything if you always surround yourself with people who always think like you do. I've been snubbed by both groups, and both groups still call me and ask me to help."
When nine protesters were arrested June 2 in Mount Adams after attempting to impose a "citizen's state of emergency," the people who had organized the March for Justice earlier that day seemed almost peevish, Jost says.
"They were criticizing an action, a brave but flawed action, saying things like, 'Why should we pay to get them out of jail? They're not my kids,' " she says.
With both N-16 and the March for Justice, activists of a more radical bent felt compromised and constrained by the organizers of the official events.
"If you noticed, the March for Justice was not really youth-driven," Jost says. "That's because all the young people were alienated when they weren't listened to. They left. By the end of the (planning) meeting, the 100-plus people were 20 or 30."
Listening to others' views is sometimes as difficult for activists as for city officials. Hannah Stampe, a 10th-grader at Walnut Hills High School, got involved with Cincinnati Radical Youth (CRY) after N-16. She left after deciding she couldn't support CRY's method of decision-making.
"They heard a speaker about the boycott and decided to endorse it right away without hearing from the other side," Stampe says. "Most of what CRY does is protests. I think a better way to be involved is volunteering."
Jost has reached a similar decision. Burnout after the tumultuous spring made her examine her activism and decide it was time to go to work making change.
"From the beginning of April 'til the beginning of June, I was going to a lot of meetings," she says. "I had a job that was very flexible and I'd rather do political stuff anyway. That much in such a short time -- I burned myself out. I also had to look at my own faults and weaknesses and how they might be hurting the movement. What I realized is there is no one way of doing political work. There is no one way of solving all the problems in this city. That said, some ways are more effective than others."
For her, for now, being effective means being a social worker for a small nonprofit agency.
"You go to these big demonstrations and sometimes the result is you feel good about yourself," Jost says. "Well, what does that change? You know when I really feel like an activist? When I'm in Walgreen's and see a black person in front of me treated rudely. Personal choices are political whether we want them to be or not."
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Photo By Jymi Bolden
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Rebecca Hammond is a socialist and a substitute
teacher.
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'Do they know about you?'
Adrian Carsotis would certainly agree with that conclusion. Walking through Piatt Park, he stops a reporter who's just crushed a cigarette butt underfoot. Carsotis picks up the butt and carries it to a trashcan.
"There's a new movement," he says. "We don't leave butts on the ground."
Such a simple act hardly constitutes a movement, but it points to both the earnestness and the sense of personal responsibility that characterizes the young radicals.
When Carsotis was arrested for putting a "Boycott Cincinnati" sticker on a police car -- the kind of harmless deviltry that marks much of the activists' conduct -- he agreed to a plea bargain, pleading guilty to a reduced charge. Why not fight the arrest in court?
"Because I was guilty," Carsotis says. "I did put the sticker on the police car."
One is tempted to view the new radicals as a throwback to their counterparts in the 1960s and 1970s. Similarities abound: a distrust of police, opposition to militarism, a rejection of conventional norms about dress. But in important ways, the contemporary movement is different.
The new radicals seem more reflective and less strident than the hippies of the Vietnam War era. Protests against globalization have been remarkably nonviolent. In Quebec City in April, demonstrators built a catapult and bombarded riot police with stuffed animals. At Taste of Cincinnati this spring, boycott supporters formed a "penny brigade" to tie up the lines at beer booths.
The new radicals don't tout drugs as a path to liberation. Indeed, this crowd is more likely to offer herbal tea than a good, old-fashioned joint.
Far from having dropped out, the young radicals seem sometimes to have melded in. Rebecca Hammond of ISO is a substitute teacher for Cincinnati Public Schools. Mayes, active in support of the boycott of Cincinnati, is a receptionist for one of the area's largest public relations agencies, Dan Pinger Public Relations.
"One day (County Commissioner) Todd Portune walked into the office and saw me," she says. "I thought his teeth were going to fall out. He said, 'What are you doing here? Do they know about you?' "
Natalie Mathis of ISO ended up in the radical movement after receiving formal training in the ways of the very establishment she now organizes to change. A 1997 graduate of the University of Kentucky with a degree in business, she began accounting work for a sheet-metal company, where she saw the union sidestepped by a corporate restructuring.
"I went to school and learned how to do that," Mathis says. "It gives me a different perspective. I didn't feel rewarded. I didn't feel satisfied."
The daughter of a prosecutor, Mathis, 26, has seen both sides of the political spectrum.
"His job was to put people on death row," she says. "He was always the knight in shining armor. He would come home and say, 'Girls, I put a very bad man in prison today.' "
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Photo By Jymi Bolden
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The April rebellion was a positive development,
according to Shane J. of the International Socialist
Organization.
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Lyons got her start in political activism as a Catholic schoolgirl. A graduate of McAuley High School, she went to Washington, D.C., to protest abortion. Her father, an attorney, and her mother, who recently published a book, are politically conservative.
"My mother is really passionate about things and feels strongly about them," Lyons says. "She's very radical in her own way. Our politics differ greatly, but the way we live in the world is pretty similar."
The same can be said for Susan Knight, who works with Lyons at the Coalition for the Homeless. To understand the radical movement in Cincinnati, it helps to know Knight. And to understand her, you have to know something about her grandfather.
Knight, 24, is the granddaughter of none other than Bryce Harlow, former congressional liaison for presidents Eisenhower, Nixon and Reagan and former lobbyist for the Procter and Gamble Co. When Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld took the oath of office in January, he cited Harlow as an influence.
Knight, one of Cincinnati's most active radicals in the struggle against globalization and U.S. foreign policy, moved to Cincinnati in 1994 from Washington. Her mother was a Reagan appointee to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; her father is an attorney.
"I come from an extremely conservative, very political background," Knight says. "Every time I went to the White House, I got bags full of Jelly Bellies. In grad school, I remember thinking Reagan was a good guy because he was obsessed with Jelly Bellies."
Knight dates her political transformation to a trip to Nicaragua in 1996, when she was a student at Xavier University. After living in Nicaragua for four months, she started reading voluminously about multinational corporations.
"The biggest contention with my parents is my views about the Latin American issues and my family's ties to the Reagan Administration," Knight says. "I saw the pain and scars of our policies."
Like Burden and Garry, Knight exudes a sort of gentleness that -- for all their anger about police brutality and racism -- makes them easily approachable. Being radical doesn't have to mean being angry, according to Lyons.
"If we're talking about creating a different world we want to live in, I can't do that if I'm angry all the time," she says.
Nor does being radical inure a young woman from being charmed by a celebrity. Rebecca Hammond of ISO was in Washington to protest George W. Bush's inauguration when she happened upon a crew from Comedy Central's The Daily Show.
"There were long lines of touristy Texans," Hammond says. "I'd never seen so many fur coats. I had on my Army issue polypropylene underwear. We were chanting, 'Racist, sexist, anti-gay: George Bush must go today!' Someone said, 'Would you mind doing that again for the camera?' I said, 'Fuck the media!' But it was Mo Rocca. Oh my God, he is so cute. So we did it again."
Dress codes and rebellion
If, as some argue, Cincinnati should have seen the April riots coming, what can be made of the quiet that's followed recent verdicts acquitting three Cincinnati Police officers in the deaths of unarmed suspects?
"It's nihilism, a sense of hopelessness and helplessness that shows itself in symptoms of seeming unconcerned, seeming indifferent, just a sense that you don't matter and neither does anything you do," Mayes says. "You have to think enough of yourself to know the victory is not in achieving the goal. The victory is in trying. You might win, but not without me having something to say about it."
Others are less sanguine.
"Any momentum that had been gained in April had the rug pulled from under it," says Shane J. of ISO. "Did people grow tired of it? Do they feel the issue is solved? Do they think individual lives can be made better by electing certain council members? Do I think we've lost momentum? Yes. It's a question that everybody involved in the movement is asking."
Hammond, 24, got her start in politics like Lyons, in Catholic school. As a sophomore at Roger Bacon High School, Hammond objected to a dress code that gave boys more choices than girls.
As a member of ISO, her outrage at Timothy Thomas' death put her right in the thick of the action in April.
"We were involved from the get-go," she says. "We got a call and ran down to District 1, where people were amassed. The next night there were meetings being called. I got suspended for a week from my job, so I was free during the week of the rebellion to go to meetings at any minute of the day or night."
Since April, the struggle against police violence has gone into a kind of convalescent phase, Hammond says.
"You have such a disappointment that justice has not prevailed," she says. "It seems the only thing coming out of the April events was a lot of lip service, with the council and the corporations forming their little task forces. It's not apathy. People, I think, are tired. We're tired."
Mathis, Hammond's roommate, disagrees.
"There's definitely momentum," Mathis says.
She points to the continuing fury over the boycott led by Coalition for a Just Cincinnati, the possibility of a drive to repeal anti-gay sections of the city charter and the vigor of the Youth Anti-War League, the newest radical group in town.
"They're really active, and they're awesome," Mathis says.
Knight says events outside Cincinnati have inevitably effected the radical movement here.
"Globalization is not the happening issue right now," she says. "It's race relations and the war and finding out where people want to participate in these."
After a year that's seen more people carrying signs and chanting slogans downtown than perhaps any other time in Cincinnati's history, the young radicals seem to be shifting from protests to more mundane, but equally important, tasks. Knight is helping organize the Cincinnati Activists Network. Burden is working with Students Transforming and Resisting Corporations to plan a conference to help young people learn from activists in causes from the 1960s and 1970s.
After its first year, the radical movement in Cincinnati is starting to mature, with activists finding their roles.
"I've struggled with whether to do the day-to day or be on the front line," Knight says. "I've come to terms with it. If I go to another city, I'm going to be on the front lines. Locally, my role is more of an organizer."
Burden, who moved to Cincinnati from Washington state two years ago, says she first started to think of herself as an activist after N-16. Now she's thinking long-term.
"After that event, I would not have called it a success," she says. "It gave a lot of white, middle-class kids a chance to come out and shake their fists. Now I view the situation differently. I do think it was a success.
"We are involved in a movement. It's all about seeing that this piece builds to the next piece, which builds to the next piece. You have to see the work you're doing as important." ©
