(Click here for images and complete TABD coverage.)
Ah, the radical left in all its disheveled glory! The best thing about the TABD corporate confab in Cincinnati is the accompaniment of protest that provided some color and energy to our staid streets.
But away from the crowd — and the cops — protesters put their principles into plaster, a “demonstration” worthy of the name.
Thursday afternoon, after the protest at the Kroger Building disperses, I am left wondering what’s next, certain something must be happening in Over-the-Rhine.
A small crowd is gathered in Washington Park, and I perch atop a nearby park bench to see what’s up.
A beautiful young woman in splattered clothes is organizing volunteers into groups.
“OK, who wants to fill holes?” she calls, then spots me. “You want to fill holes?”
I’m rather taken aback by the irony of the question; but rather than respond from the depths of my dirty mind, I ask what’s going on.
“We’re doing a housing action,” she says. “You wanna help?”
I identify myself and ask if it’s OK to observe for the paper, and the crowd consents. Their task is to fix walls, spackle, sand, paint and generally clean apartments for low-income occupancy.
Four properties are on the list for today.
“We don’t have an overall estimate, we’re just taking it as it goes,” says Swine, who helps answer my questions while she continues organizing. After splitting up into teams, we head to East 13th Street in Pendleton. I join a team that consists of women from Ohio, Colorado, North Carolina and Michigan. I’d met these girls earlier at the Kroger Building. They liked the horses but didn’t care for the police.
I decide to fetch my truck, rather than trek all the way across downtown. After stopping to help a band of demonstrators from Minnesota find their way to a campsite, I meet the group at a building owned by the Cincinnati Housing Network. A Todd Portune campaign sign still clings to the wrought-iron fence, while an upstairs window sports a placard reading, “No Nazis, No KKK, No racist U.S.A.” Inside, the women are busily at work, been joined by Robert and Drew, both from Detroit.
This is the most positive thing I experience the whole weekend, as Soledad, the organizer, and I enthusiastically discuss the challenge of getting beyond sloganeering and actually creating positive change.
She is turned off by activism limited to intellectualism.
“Who can buy books?” she says. “Who has access to computers? The whole activist movement is white, middle-class kids. The point is keeping it real. We’re taking the activist movement out of the abstract and making it tangible.”
I can’t think of a better way to do that than what I’m witnessing here. Take all that youthful energy, all these folks from all over the country and put them to work in a practical way. Get something out of the weekend’s protest other than a cold and a raw throat from screaming.
Focus on something you can actually achieve, and move forward from there. ©
(Click here for images and complete TABD coverage.)
This article appears in Nov 22-28, 2000.