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Community Organizations Protest the City’s Recent Violence
Sojourner’s Truth Staff
The recent uptick in
violence in Toledo, particularly the shooting deaths of a
number of young black men in the last couple of weeks, has
prompted the Toledo NAACP to bring together a number of
community organizations to speak out against the violence
and to demand that city government and safety forces work
with citizens to stem the tide.
“The community deserves a
response,” said Ray Wood, president of the NAACP, during a
press conference last Friday to outline a plan of action to
address the rise in city murders. As of this past Friday,
there were 37 homicides this year compared to 38 for all of
2019 and five murders in the past five days, four involving
youths.
Among the organizations
present at the event were the Junction Coalition,
represented by Donald Lynn, who spoke of his group’s
“solidarity with the other agencies.” Junction Coalition’s
president, Robert Rivers, echoed that sentiment and added,
“we need better policing in our community.”
Rivers noted that too
often, central city residents hear shots fired and wait far
too long for police response. “We are waiting for better
police officers with better training,” said Rivers.
Pastor Charles C. Allen,
of The Power of One, and also Faith Leaders United for
Change, said “today we are remembering every family that has
lost a child.” Thanking the NAACP for bringing the groups
together, Allen said, “This is a community issue we must
solve together; we have to be man and woman enough to know
if we have failed our children in any way, it’s a city
effort.”
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Rev. Charles Allen
Ray Wood at Community
Violence Protest
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“We want to hear from the
administration,” added Wood in his closing remarks. “ Know
that we're not going to sit silent because All Lives Matter,
All Black Lives Matter and we want to make sure we're at the
table and doing all that we can to make sure our young black
men are not being extinguished.”
Recently, 20 firearms were
reported stolen by four individuals from a Sylvania Township
home and were located in a central Toledo abandoned
warehouse along with a number of disassembled autos. Wood
said that the organizations will be looking closely at what
develops with that situation.
As for calls to defund the
police, Wood suggested that now is not the time to focus on
that movement. “Our children are being killed and no
defunding is going on now – that’s down the road.”
Albert Earl of the
Frederick Douglass Community Association emphasized that the
murder of Black Toledoans is heinous no matter who the
murderers are.
“We don’t know who is
doing the murdering,” he said. We can no longer assume who
is doing it because no conversation is happening with the
administration or police.”
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