CLEVELAND, Ohio-Over 200 people, including prominent area Civil Rights attorneys, elected officials, Cleveland NAACP officials and leaders of grassroots groups such as the Imperial Women, Black on Black Crime, Occupy Cleveland, Revolution Books, the Oppressed People's Nation, the Carl Stokes Brigade, Peace in the Hood, Occupy the Hood Cleveland, the Committee to Bring Home Jamela and Jamyla, the Cleveland Chapter of the New Black Panther Party, the Cleveland African American Museum, Organize Ohio, the Northeast Ohio Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign, People for the Imperial Act, the Joaquin Hicks Real People's Movement, and the Underground Railroad participated in a rally on Fri., March 30 at Public Square in Cleveland to demand the repeal of Florida's "Stand Your Ground" law and in support of slain unarmed Florida teen Trayvon Martin.
"Gunning somebody down is not standing your ground," said famed Cleveland Civil Rights Attorney Avery Friedman, who produces and stars in a cable television show on constitutional issues and other legal matters at noon weekly on CNN.
"I am over six feet tall and weigh 250 pounds and if somebody feels threatened by me in a shopping mall and shoots me is that Stand Your Ground?" asked state Rep. Bill Patmon (D-10), a Cleveland Democrat. "Elected officials have got to stand up in Cleveland and elsewhere on what is happening to Black people in Cleveland and around this country."
Florida's Stand Your Ground law, which is duplicated in other states but not in Ohio, a state that does have a recently passed law that allows concealed weapons carry in bars and sports stadiums, is being tested as unconstitutional, though some people confuse it with self defense, which has a higher standard of justification.
Bill Swain of Revolution Books had harsher words than both Friedman and Patmon on the circumstances surrounding Martin's unprecedented murder.
"It is nothing but a modern day lynching," said Swain, a White community activist.
CLEVELAND, Ohio-A coalition of over 50 greater Cleveland grassroots, Civil Rights, college, faith-based community organizations and Cleveland area elected officials dubbed "The Greater Cleveland Coalition Of 50 Plus Organizations For Justice For Trayvon Martin," will gather on Fri., March 30, 2012 with Cleveland NAACP officials from 4-6m pm at the Southwest Quadrant at Public Square in downtown Cleveland for a mass rally in support of Trayvon Martin. (Editor's note: Plans for a march to the Justice Center have changed and the march will be around Public Square).
CLEVELAND, Ohio-West side activist groups of Cleveland during a poor people's conference on Sat. called for Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson (pictured) to direct his appointed city prosecutor to drop all criminal charges against Occupy Cleveland members, to back off of plans to build trash incinerators throughout the city to pollute it, and called for a Cleveland School Board of Education policy that mandates parents and teachers at the table in the hiring of the school district CEO and school principals and the crafting of far reaching education plans.
EAST CLEVELAND, Ohio-About 150 people gathered for a "Trayvon Martin Skittles Rally" on Sat., March 24 at Black on Black Crime Headquarters in East Cleveland, Oh. led by Ernie Smith and Patricia Rowell of the Oppressed People's Nation in cooperation with a host of other Cleveland area activist groups such as the Imperial Women Coalition, the Cleveland Chapter of the New Black Panther Party, the Carl Stokes Brigade, the Cleveland African American Museum and Occupy Cleveland. (Editors note: Watch the videos below of the rally with speeches by Smith and other community activists such as Art McKoy and Imperial Women Leader Kathy Wray Coleman)
