CLEVELANDURBANNEWS.COM-CLEVELAND, Ohio-Community activists, led by Black on Black Crime Inc, held a protest in downtown Cleveland near City Hall on Monday, July 27 to address heightened violence in the city and efforts by President Trump to bring federal troops down on the city in coming weeks in response to increased inner city crime, and behind the George Floyd riots in the city on May 30.

Speakers included Art McKoy and Alfred Porter Jr of Black on Black Crime Inc, Angela Davis of Black Lives Matter Cleveland, Joe Jones of Fathers Lives Matter, and family members of Cleveland murder victims. Activist Alfred Porter Jr., who said more events on the issue are coming and that City Hall was essentially blocked off from activists, read the following statement at the rally.

MEDIA/COMMUNITY STATEMENT

My name is Alfred Porter Jr and I am a community activist and organizer, and president of  Black on Black Crime Incorporated. I have collaborated with Imperial Avenue Murders leader  and head Women's March Cleveland organizer Kathy Wray Coleman on this statement. Kathy Wray Coleman is also an organizer of this event as well as activist and Black on Black Crime founder Art McKoy, our leader.

We need to remind the establishment that activists are watching cops, judges, prosecutors and others as to any harassment of Ms Coleman in her role as a top Black journalist and a respected and informed community activist and community organizer. We unequivocally support Ms. Coleman. She has done nothing to any of you. Leave her alone or we will picket you, again.

We continue to demand the defunding of police venues across the country and in Cleveland and for affiliated resources, including monies, to be redirected to the community sector. There is too much undercurrent between police and the Black community, and police are not doing their jobs as crime is on the rise, crime against our children, who are getting murdered unnecessarily, most of it at the hands of our own people.  Stop the violence and save our children. Rape and murder of Black women since the Imperial Avenue Murders in 2009 by serial killer and death row inmate Anthony Sowell that police routinely ignore are still prevalent. Let the community hire the police who will serve them.

Community activists call for the heightened violence in this city to immediately cease. We also must denounce efforts by President Donald Trump to bring down federal troops on the Black community and community activists whom he despises and does commercials against. Federal troops are not the answer to this violence as a cop in Texas shot and killed a protester at a rally just last week. These troops, who can harm and kill our Black children with impunity, and innocent activists, are being sent down by our president under the guise of his helping to bring peace to a largely Black major American city facing heightened crime during a coronavirus pandemic that has no mercy on people no matter who they may be.  This is all a forest people. And the George Floyd riots that plagued Cleveland following a May 30 protest in downtown Cleveland  have come and gone so that too is no excuse to target Blacks and activists with unorthodox activity such as sending government-supported insurgents down on us without any jurisdiction whatsoever.

Instead of federal troops coming into Cleveland without jurisdiction, a move that U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown of Cleveland and Congresswoman Marcia Fudge, whose congressional district includes Cleveland, say is unconstitutional, we want changes in local, state and federal policies to address gun violence and gun control and for the reallocation of funds at the state and federal levels to assist inner city Black neighborhoods across the country like Cleveland to deal with poverty, racism, gentrification, high unemployment, crime, legal system biases, and mass incarceration. Other public policy concerns include public corruption, educational inequities, housing disparities, violence against women, and urban decay.

Finally, we call for the president and city, state and federal leaders and elected officials to stand up against excessive force by police and other law enforcement entities, and against a criminal justice system that targets Black people, disrespects and illegally prosecutes our women, and sends innocent Black men to prison for decades who are later found innocent. This troubled and racist criminal justice system also maliciously indicts, prosecutes, and sentences Black people, many of whom are poor, and indigent, and  often denied adequate legal counsel.

Spend resources slated for federal troops to come into Cleveland  to  intimidate Blacks and activists on investigating and monitoring the Cuyahoga County Jail in Cleveland. It has been deemed unconstitutional by federal marshals, a jail where more than 10 people have died in the past two years and where the former warden and jail director, and several jail guards, have faced or face prosecution for alleged malfeasance against inmates and a host of other alleged  impropriety.

No Justice. No Peace. We urge Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson, Cleveland City Council, Police Chief Calvin Williams, Safety Director Karrie Howard and policy makers across the board, and the community, to join us in this Civil Rights movement and as to our fight for equality relative to the aforementioned.