Fighting Racism from Charlottesville to Cincinnati

Thanks for allowing me to speak this afternoon (as part of this protest against the neo-Nazis at U Va in 2017), as I’d like to offer some perspective on U Va history from 40+ years ago and how I see that it’s connected to the struggles against racists and Nazis today.

I’m primarily a volunteer organizer for the Interfaith Workers Center here, supporting low wage and unorganized workers in their struggles, but I lived and studied in Charlottesville for 9 years in the 60s and 70s. That’s where I first got involved in the anti-war and anti-racist movements on campus, and early on we realized that we needed to extend our message off campus to make real change.

Of course, Jefferson is central to Charlottesville and U Va’s history and his example shows both the good and bad of US history. On the good side, I still remember often walking under an archway at the U, saying something like ‘never fear to follow the truth wherever it may lead’. At the same time that he was a champion of independence and education, he was a slave owner with a now-recognized slave-mistress, who was also aware that 10 year olds were whipped in his ‘nailery’ if they were not sufficiently productive.

One early example of our activism, from about 1968, included knocking on doors in a white neighborhood to ask people how they would react if a Black family moved onto their block. Background, of course, is the residential segregation that often follows from ‘white flight’ when people get scared that residential integration is not possible and that their neighborhood will ‘go bad’ when Blacks arrive.

I bring up this example since I believe that racist stereotypes that provide the groundwork for the right wing and Nazi organizing – are found in the residential segregation and institutional racism that pervade various sectors of US society today. Our struggle is not just against a few hundred misguided individuals, or against the perpetrators of some especially racist murders. Yes, I believe that James Fields and Ray Tensing are both guilty of murder – but the conditions that led to the assumptions they made are all around us.

To come back to present day Cincinnati, many of our liberal leaders would rather push the problems of homelessness and crime into neighborhoods where they won’t be seen, rather than dealing with job and residential segregation by offering development solutions that benefit all of our people.

I’ll grant you that present-day Over the Rhine looks nicer than it did 20 years ago, but what has happened to the former residents of this neighborhood? They certainly seem not to be employed in the many restaurants and bars that have sprung up, with major tax breaks from a succession of city administrations. Three times in the past year and a half I’ve walked by the kitchen for one of the high end restaurants, The Mercer; and despite there being a cooking school a few blocks away, this restaurant seems to only employ whites.

This sounds like ‘development for the few’ that does not provide jobs for all, and does not take into account the need for affordable housing; to me these are examples of the institutional racism that lies behind the terrible right wing violence that we’ve witnessed this weekend.

To close I want to encourage all of you to stay involved in whatever way you’re comfortable, since it’s going to be a long struggle. We can be demanding clear answers from City Council candidates; we can be insisting on real tax reform so that the rich pay their share; or we can organize in our neighborhoods or workplaces for concrete improvements.

Thank you – stay strong and stay active.