Confederate flag protest plans change

Violence in Virginia alters local response

Recent racial violence in Virginia will stifle plans to protest the sale of items with the Confederate flag at the Lorain County Fair.

But the Lorain County Fair Board should reconsider barring a flag that has become a symbol of hate, said those who want it removed.

Meanwhile, a fair board member called the events in Virginia “horrific” but unrelated to the local decision to allow the flag at the fair. Community leaders in the Fair Minded Coalition of Lorain County on Aug. 14 spoke publicly about the racial violence in Charlottesville, Va., and why the Confederate flag should not be allowed at the Lorain County Fair.

The coalition planned to protest the presence of the flag at next week’s county fair, said Jeanine Donaldson, coalition chairwoman and executive director of the Elyria YWCA.

But the racially charged violence Aug. 11 and 12 in Charlottesville, Va., will change that, she said.

“We want to use this press conference to announce that we’re reconsidering what actions we will be doing in Wellington, if we take any action at all,” said Donaldson, who joined with 12 others from Lorain, Elyria and Oberlin.

“It’s basically because if people can come out and do what they did in Charlottesville, Virginia … what’s stopping the same people that are pro-selling the flag at the fair, from organizing and coming down to Lorain County?”

In video footage and photographs from Charlottesville, there was one constant, said Lorain County Commissioner Matt Lundy.

“And the constant was the Confederate flag,” Lundy said.

“The flag clearly is a symbol of hate, not love,” he said. “The flag clearly is a divisive symbol, not a symbol used to unite us.”

Lorain County is proud of its history and heritage, including the Underground Railroad and the International City of Lorain, Lundy said.

“This flag does not represent the family values of Lorain County families,” Lundy said. “Our families embrace diversity and we want all, and I stress all, to feel welcomed in this county and at the county fair. We want our neighbors treated with dignity and respect.”

Other speakers included Lorain City Councilman Angel Arroyo Jr.; Lorain police Chief Cel Rivera; Lorain County Urban League President and Chief Executive Officer Frank Whitfield; and David Ashenhurst, a former Oberlin councilman and a member of the Lorain County Board of Mental Health.

They echoed the comments of Donaldson and Lundy and called for the removal of the flag.

Lorain County Fair Board member Kim Meyers did not attend the press conference but afterward he spoke about the claims of the flag opponents.

The Lorain County Fair does not take its lead from the Ohio State Fair, which banned the sale of the Confederate flag after the June 2015 mass murder by white supremacist Dylann Roof at Emanuel AME Church in South Carolina, Meyers said. He called that argument a “red herring.”