Protesters speak out against killings, racial injustice
Adrienne Hood clapped along with the crowd as she stood beneath a cardboard poster bearing her son’s name in bright teal paint.
It’s been nearly a year since Hood’s son, Henry Green, 23, was shot and killed in a confrontation with two plainclothes Columbus police officers in South Linden, and the need for police reform and accountability from elected officials hasn’t gone away, she said.
“We ain’t going nowhere. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever,” she shouted into a megaphone to a group of demonstrators gathered outside the governor’s mansion in Bexley late Saturday afternoon.
“You all get to go home to your children every day,” she said, directing her comments to the more than 30 police officers on hand monitoring the protest. “We get to go to the cemetery.”
Hood was one of several hundred who gathered Saturday to speak out against killings by police, mass incarceration and racial injustice. The protest began at Franklin Park on the East Side before demonstrators marched down East Broad, shouting chants of “black lives matter” and “enough is enough,” spilling into the roadway before police on bicycles guided them back onto the sidewalks.
Protesters called for justice in the policeinvolved fatal shootings of Green, as well 13-yearold Tyre King, who was fatally shot by police in September during a chase after pulling a BB gun that police said looked like a real handgun. A grand jury voted in March not to indict the officers involved in Green’s death, while the investigation into King’s death is ongoing.
The group of between 300 and 400 protesters, some coming from Cleveland, Cincinnati and other Ohio cities, marched to the governor’s mansion, with some protesters shouting at police as they walked.
Though Ohio Gov. John Kasich does not live at the mansion, the group’s presence there was symbolic, said Tammy FournierAlsaada, lead organizer with the People’s Justice Project as she called on protesters to hold all their elected officials accountable.
“We’re sick and tired of our children dying,” said Fournier-Alsaada. “We’re sick and tired of no investment in our community. We’re sick and tired of people telling us that we need to step up.
“If you’re asking us to step up, here we stand, committed to justice,” she said.
Cheri Erby of the Linden area attended the march, along with her 15-year-old daughter and her friend, because she said she’s “tired of black lives being taken in the streets of Columbus and other places.”
“I’m tired of racial inequality,” she said. “I’m tired of this being the accepted norm in our community. We’ve got to turn this around.”