Author: Benjamin C. Roy Cory Garrett Rev History Rev 00. - 11/17/2000 Rev .01 - 03/08/2022
November 17th 2000 Cincinnati…
We can win this war.
N17 Battle Report: CINCI –
Today we won this city’s streets. Tonight, out of burning dumpsters, we hold feast to our victory! Years of protest–years of yelling at cops and klan–years of feeling like there had to be more to it than waiting for someone else to light the match–are over.
Finally, I understand why we call it a riot.
Three days ago I dreamed of Moses:
I stand before a sea of blood with the promise of freedom on the distant shore and death behind me. Hand in hand, Miriam and I place our faith in this moment–that what will be will be–the red waters would part and my people–our people–will walk to freedom. Stories from the future tell me that Miriam was Moses’ sister. Feeling the warmth in her had, I knew this must be true in the way that these stories must always be true–when the love between a married man and true prophet save an entire people from death or slavery. But I was there. I looked into her eyes and knew God will deliver us. There will be sadness, and lies written on skins that will never be forgotten. Women will suffer for the sins of men and I will die alone and in the desert.
But I will be free.
We will be free.
And we will never be slaves again.
Before 11:30 am I did not know the taste of tear gas. I did not know how hard a rubber bullet hits you when you can see the fear–liquid in the eyes–of the man shooting it. I did not know what it was like to trust a stranger like a sister, and to know she will stand by my side under an onslaught of pepper spray and steel reinforced batons.
Before 11:30am, I did not know that this revolution was even possible. But know I know. I know that the will of 350 dirty kids and uncountable local citizens could break the will of one of the most racist and violent police forces in the United States, and it will again tomorrow.
FUCK YOU, TOM STREICHER!
You let your officers get away with strangling Rodger Owensby Jr in policy custody. You let your officers shoot Jeffory Irons as he was being arrested for stealing a bar of deodorant. You let this happen days before your city would be hosting a summit that was drawing in anti-authoritarian revolutionaries and radicals from all over the world, and yet you remained so arrogant and assured of your ability to “take out the trash” and yet we caught you off-guard? May you and all those who follow you stay so fucking stupid.
It all began with the first planned march of the day.
Fountain square: Four blocks from the National north of the Underground railroad freedom center. Five blocks from the International headquarters of Proctor and gamble. Two blocks from the OMNI hotel and Meeting place for the Trans-Atlantic Business Dialogue.
THEM: The police. The pigs. The enemy–had cordoned off a route from fountain square plaza to the hotel and lined that route with men and women hiding their humanity behind bullet-proof shields and full body armor.
US: A random assortment of kids in hoodies with rags tied over our faces.
The Unions and social justice organizations that planned this officially sanctioned demonstration set off stoically along the designated march route to the OMNI. These professional picketers were almost a thousand strong and the pigs were deployed to cordon off the streets along that route. What the pigs did not expect was for a bloc of radical protestors to ignore the designated march route, pick up the aluminum fence blocking off the road to the east, and march along a route of our own making.
Afraid to pull pork out of rank, the lines of pigs stood and watched as a band of merrily-singing malcontents waving red and black flags made off with their barricade.
Two of us…
Ashley and I
…anchored one side of the portable fence–transformed into a mobile defensive-shell-and-property-alteration-device, while two other members of our affinity group…
Michael and Jimmy
…carried the right. A stream of random strangers-turned-sister-brothers took turns supporting the middle as we made our way east along 5th street, destroying corporate property everywhere we could. Years of rage against broken promises and lies took control of our bodies on the streets of Cincinnati. Our unorganized resistance rebellion gained bodies as we went, drawing in locals from the Over-the-Rhine neighborhood as many took to the streets with us to smash the windows of companies that had boycotted the city’s annual jazz festival a few months earlier amidst rumors of building racial tension in the city.
Our growing and growingly militant bloc marched on to Broadway and headed north–thoroughly expressing a myriad of thoughtful and nuanced opinions to the executives of US bank and P&G in words of broken glass and spraypaint. Reserve forces of riot-pigs finally began to arrive by the time we reached 6th St, but there were too few of them to stop us. They tried to funnel us north but we forced our way west again one block over to sycamore. We were trying to evade the inevitable trap they were trying to set for us, but as a collective group, we were lost in a maze of Graystone monuments that were not our home, not even for the locals.
No one was in charge and we all knew our only hope was to stick together.
Outrage over the city’s recent police shootings drew us north towards the sheriff’s department and the city jail at the corner of sycamore and 9th. The pigs had been gathering here in force and, in retrospect, it might not the best strategic decision, but as we got closer, we could hear chanting and yelling coming from the narrow little windows of the correctional facility and it gave us strength. Sensing our building momentum, the pigs finally decided to counter and began firing tear gas canisters and rubber bullets into the crowd.
Jimmy dropped the steel fence
to try to pick up a tear gas canister
–to throw back at the police
–but the heat of decompressing gas
burned his hand.
He dropped it to the ground
And kicked it off into a nearby parking lot.
The pigs
–with their “non-lethal” weapons
–made him pay for that act of defiance.
Behind us
the bloc had begun to break up
under the onslaught
and split off in multiple directions.
We had no choice but to run
or lay down and be arrested.
The caged bird cannot sing.
The next half an hour was a chaos of toxic clouds, screaming radicals and the droning of mumbling megaphone threats that no one could understand. It is hard to see when your eyes are burning hotter than your lungs, but we had a vision we could share without our eyes.
The police presence intensified as the official march had made it to the hotel and the pigs along the parade route could be cleared out to focus on the rabble running wild to the east. We, the radicals still on the loose, had been fragmented into two main groups.
I don’t know when it happened
but Ashley and Jimmy were separated from Michael and I.
We cannot make mistakes like this in the future.
We cannot let them know we were so easily divided.
Our Bloc rounded the corner of main street on to 5th only to be met by a line of pigs blocking any further progress East. The pigs trailing us, bashing their batons on their shields, caught up quickly and we were trapped along the wall of a nameless concrete tower. They pushed us with shields and baton out of the street, back up on to the sidewalk and then against the wall. Fifty of us were pinned surrounded by at least twice as many cops, spread out into a single line pressing in around us. Water bottles filled with paint burst forth from our huddled mass of protesters, exploding against the line of cops in front of us into bursts of bright red, coating their clear shields and visors.
Michael,
for all your rhetoric,
you never could resist an opportunity for poetry.
In retaliation, Three tear gas canisters were shot right into the middle of our bloc along with a hail of rubber bullets.
instead of blinding me,
the tear gas cleared my vision
and right in front of me I could see
Ashley approaching with reinforcements
behind the line of cops.
While the pigs had corralled us in, several groups of reconverging radicals swooped in behind the pigs, hoping to break through the line and giving us a chance to pull ourselves off the wall. The plan looked to be failing badly as the other bloc of protesters no bigger than our own was met by fierce violence from the pigs blocking off 5th street. The police fired off a volley of rubber bullets before charging the second group.
Ashley took a rubber bullet to the leg
And went down right in the middle of 5th street.
her head hit pavement as she fell
Only a few feet in front of me,
on the other side of a sea of pigs.
I could see blood, red
rushing down her forehead.
An officer with a fire extinguisher
–filled with pepper spray
–blasted her in the face
As he moved through prone protesters
Trying to keep them
–us
–down in the street.
Something inside me snapped.
I stepped forward
one hand extended
one holding Michael’s.
I shouted over the din
“Ashley, you are hurt. I am right here. I will help you.”
I do not know why,
But the two officers in front of me
–covered in paint
–lowered their red shields
Enough for me to reach down
and grab Ashley’s outstretched hand.
Like a wave–
whose force had already crashed against the shore–
the line of officers melted away
and I was able to pull Ashley up
onto her feet.
Amidst a sea of violence and chaos sown by police officers lost in the monstrous urge to destroy those that resisted their authority, the two groups of protesters were able to part the gauntlet of pigs and reunite in the street once again. We made our way south and I have no more memories of the police following.
We were exhausted.
Blind from chemicals, tears, paint and blood.
But we knew that in the face of their worst they could not keep us apart.
Rejuvenated, we ran–screaming–laughing–banging on street signs–and singing our hymn:
Hey Hey all the kids around say,
Hey hey all the kids around say,
take no prisoners take your streets today.
HEY! HEY! HEY!
Take no prisoners take your town tonight.
Fight, fight, fight, FIGHT, FIGHT!
Hey Hey…
***
It was at that moment that I fell in love with Ashley.
Like a sister, I will tell myself
but like the Moses in my dream loved Miriam as well.
This will lead to sadness, and disaster
and it will certainly mean pain for KC
–whenever I find the courage to tell her
–but not tonight
Tonight we are free.
I will have to burn these words after writing them
they could put all of us in jail
for a very long time
but while others reflect the day’s battle
howling at the moon
and dancing naked in our new parking lot village
I know that the secrets I hide
can only be shared between myself and I
Promises must be kept.