Saturday May 30 was a perfect day for a demonstration in Cleveland — sunny and warm but not too hot. A crowd that appeared to number close to 5,000 gathered at the Free Stamp to launch an afternoon dedicated to the memory of George Floyd, who was murdered on May 25 by a Minneapolis cop, and to take a stand against police violence in general.
There free water, food and masks were being passed out, impromptu speeches being made, and chalk distributed to write messages on the sidewalk. The crowd, predominantly young women, two/one white and virtually all wearing masks, carried handmade signs with messages such as “Black Lives Matter” and “Justice for George Floyd” scrawled on torn pieces of cardboard or craft poster board.
The organizers — Black Lives Matter Cleveland, a group led by young black women — then lined the crowd up to march to the Cleveland Justice Center, followed by a march around the building and up Ontario to Public Square, with more impromptu speakers at each location. As the crowd chanted “Black Lives Matter!” and “No Justice, No Peace,” another chant rose from a section of marchers, invoking a 12-year-old boy whose name appeared over and over on posters and whose specter haunted the event: “Justice for Tamir!” Tamir Rice, murdered by police at the Cudell Rec Center in November 2014, would have turned 18 this coming month.
Following the gathering at Public Square, the crowd began to disperse, with many drifting back east to Willard Park (Free Stamp) and others returning to the Justice Center.
It was then that the trouble started. From the Convention Center area on Lakeside Avenue there were explosions and trails of white smoke as tear gas was lobbed into the crowd in front of the Justice Center, apparently from both sides of the street. As I stood a block away from the Justice Center, I ran into an acquaintance who told me that a small group was throwing things at the Justice Center doors and windows trying to break glass. It’s unclear why the police didn’t move in to arrest them immediately — a move that would surely have been supported by the crowd — instead of tossing tear gas into a mostly peaceful crowd, many of whom fled the scene.
About 30-45 minutes later, a plume of black smoke rose behind the Justice Center, and I went up on the roof of the Convention Center for a better look. From there, you could see the flames rising from a pair of police cars that had been set on fire on West 3rd Street just west of the Justice Center. Again, it’s unclear why the police were unable to protect their cars and isolate those who were trying to set them on fire; as my photos show, the area was not very crowded by that point and it shouldn’t have been hard to identify them. You have to wonder whether, if the police had identified and arrested the vandals at the Justice Center, the damage done to downtown Cleveland after the demonstration dispersed could have been avoided.
It’s still unclear who did the damage in downtown Cleveland and what their motivation was. All kinds of theories have been advanced, including that it was out-of-state provocateurs, right-wing infiltrators wanting to start a race war, far-left self-styled “revolutionaries” or simply opportunistic looters. What is clear is that the vandalism had little to do with the initial protest organized by Black Lives Matter Cleveland, and that across the country, elected officials, civic leaders and police departments need to address the ineffective and wrong-headed ways they deal with such gatherings.
View the PHOTOSTREAM here.
One Response to “PHOTOSTREAM: Peaceful Demonstration for Justice Turns Violent in Downtown Cleveland”
Teresa James
This is the most balanced and accurate article on Saturday´s George Floyd protest I´ve read.