Cincinnati: Recipe for a Riot

By Nicholas Stix

April 23, 2001
Toogood Reports/A Different Drummer

Cincinnati’s riot was in many ways generic.

The “Queen City,” as Cincinnati is known, has its own generic (but considerably younger), Maxine Waters-style, racist politician, Councilwoman Alicia Reece. As reported by Jane Prendergast and Robert Anglen in the April 10 Cincinnati Enquirer, Councilwoman Reece demanded, to the cheers of a black mob that had taken over City Hall, and refused to let any white leaders speak, that “Every member of the council, from the mayor on down, needs to be here today. Leadership needs to deal with the diversity that exists in the city.”

Translation: “White leaders need to grovel before racist, black mobs ... and before me.”

The city also has its own, Al Sharpton-style, racist demagogue of a preacher, the Rev. Damon Lynch III, who leads a protection racket, er, “civil rights group,” Cincinnati Black United Front, and who controls the New Prospect Baptist Church. What no mainstream media outlet would say, is that Black United Front is a nationwide, black supremacist organization, which is out front, in demanding that reparations be paid to all black Americans.

In the April 16 Detroit News, propaganda officer Jodi S. Cohen quoted the Rev. Lynch as saying, “If we don’t get our leaders to realize that race relations has to be the first priority, before the economic development, we’re not going anywhere.”

Translation: “Screw economic development — apartheid now! Uhuru sasa!

When being interviewed by the likes of Komrade Ted Koppell, the Rev. Lynch has been careful to speak of the violence as “tragic.” At the same time, Koppell, who loves abusing white guests as supposed “racists,” in order to earn brownie points from black guests, is equally careful not to be a real journalist, and press the good reverend, on the latter’s racism. But during the April 9 City Hall meeting, the Rev. Lynch threatened to have his men hold the city’s councilmen, and even the chief of police, hostage. And while leading last Saturday’s funeral service for Timothy Thomas, the Rev. Lynch called on mourners, “Stand up black men, stand up for black rights! Stand up for black children!

He might as well have been a Jerusalem imam, calling on “Palestinians” to stone Jews.

And then, while being interviewed on NPR by Bob Edwards on April 17, the good reverend thanked the rioters, though in a Clintonesque, passive fashion.

Bob Edwards: “What kinds of discussions have taken place with the Cincinnati police force?”

The Rev. Damon Lynch III: “The discussion that’s taken place with the police has been on the street through confrontation. The police force is just not somebody you talk to here in Cincinnati....

Bob Edwards: “What are you saying to teenagers about what’s happened?

The Rev. Damon Lynch III: “One of the things that’s being said to teenagers is ‘thank you,’ because the honest reality, while nobody advocates violence, and while it wasn’t just teenagers, but there was a large group of young people that hit the streets, if there had been no violence, there wouldn’t have been the international media, there wouldn’t have been the business community coming out of the woodwork nor the religious community....

In 1991, convicted kidnapper and attempted murderer, Robert “Sonny” Carson, spoke similarly after the black pogrom against orthodox and Chassidic Jews in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, which included the lynching of Yankel Rosenbaum. New York’s black supremacist radio station, WLIB, broadcast Carson saying, “They want me to criticize you, but I’m proud of you.”

The difference is, that Sonny Carson didn’t hide behind the passive voice.

Cincinnati has its own black supremacist counter-police, The Sentinels. Led by Scotty Johnson, The Sentinels is an organization of black police officers who never met a gangbanger they didn’t like, or a white brother in blue they didn’t hate.

And of course, there is the obsequious, white mayor from central casting, Democrat Charlie Luken, himself the son of a previous mayor. (New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani is the only white, urban mayor I know of, who has in recent years stood up to black racists, but Rudy Giuliani is the original Brother from Another Planet!)

Appearing on Ted Koppel’s show, Nightline, on April 12 with the Rev. Damon Lynch III, Mayor Luken did everything but say, “Yassuh, Massa,” to the Rev. Lynch.

“It’s unthinkable,” Mayor Luken said of Cincinnati’s race relations. “It’s unthinkable that 15 men could have died in five years” at the hands of the police.

Agreeing with his echo, the Rev. Lynch maintained that, “fundamental and systematic changes have to be made.... The city faces a number of events by next summer.... For the good of the community, I think it is necessary that some people resign.... The most pressing problem Cincinnati has, is race relations.”

Mayor Echo: “I think that because of the rash of shootings, this is on the surface.... Obviously, something substantive is going to have to happen this weekend.... Many of the issues Rev. Lynch has identified, we agree with at City Hall.

On April 14, Mayor Luken illegally fired, er “reassigned” white Public Safety Director Kent Ryan, in apparent violation of the police chief’s civil service protection. The Rev. Lynch had demanded that such protection be eliminated; in Mayor Luken’s rush to serve his new master, he did not bother with trivialities like changing the law.

And on April 17, Mayor Luken did everything but get on his hands and knees, before a racist black mob at a City Council meeting at City Hall.

According to Associated Press operative James Hannah, “About 200 people turned a City Council meeting into a forum on race relations as they vented their anger over the police shooting of an unarmed black man ...

“Several residents warned Cincinnati officials of more violence if police are not brought to justice over the shooting.

“‘You’ve got all these kids out there ready to explode,’ Lamonte Jordan said.

“‘It’s going to be war,’ added George Weaver.

Some translations are in order. When James Hannah says, “people,” he means “black people.” Likewise, “a forum on race relations” means, “blacks may rage, while whites must shut up or suck up.”

“If police are not brought to justice ...” If you didn’t know better, you’d think it was the police who had destroyed, looted, and torched businesses, smashed white drivers’ cars, and beaten many whites almost to death with bricks and baseball bats.

Mayor Echo’s response: “This can’t continue. We must do better as a community... We have to listen to one another.

Imagine if there had been a town meeting in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1921, following the white race riot that destroyed a beautiful, thriving black neighborhood, and beat and murdered blacks. I’ll bet white supremacists would have struck poses remarkably similar to those of Cincinnati’s black supremacists in 2001.

James Hannah writes, “Norma Payne said that when she looks at city officials, she sees ‘the same old slave masters,’ and ‘the same Gestapo of Hitler’s regime. When I look at you, I think you may be the KKK in disguise.

Had the irony-deficient Norma Payne ever known such conditions, she would not have been able to make such accusations, and live.

My own historical parallel also has its limits. After all, in Tulsa, white racists destroyed a black neighborhood; in Cincinnati, black racists destroyed a ... black neighborhood. And while Tulsa’s white rioters knew they were killing off a thriving neighborhood, Cincinnati’s black rioters knew that black race riots today result in federally-funded boondoggles tomorrow.

Cincinnati Black United Front’s (i.e., the Rev. Lynch’s) many demands, include hiring “200 community resource workers” (read: subsidizing muggers), and providing “more training resources for black youth” (read: subsidizing muggers).

How many times have we been there, done that? “Training” means paying people who refuse to work, to take one worthless “training course” after another. Remember the billion-dollar, 1970’s boondoggle, the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA)? Of course, the Rev. Lynch (or Councilwoman Reece) or his stooges would chair the committees in charge of these programs, and “disburse” the federal money.

The Rev. Lynch’s contemporary angle, is his attempt at a racial takeover of the police department through demands for “reform.” He sees a golden opportunity to turn Cincinnati into another Detroit or Washington, D.C. His fantasy is apparently to disarm the police, and deputize gangbangers.

(Something like that already happened, on a small scale, in Miami, some ten years ago. In an aggressive, “don’t ask, don’t tell” affirmative action program that provided a vision for multicultural reform in law enforcement, the police department hired scores of convicted felons as police officers.)

Last but not least, come the generic, politically correct media, who refuse to report the facts, misrepresent them in their best “a half-truth is a whole lie” fashion, or who “report” events that may not have even happened.

And so it was, that media outlets reported that immediately after the April 14 funeral service for Timothy Thomas, during which the Rev. Lynch had called on blacks to spill yet more white blood, police assaulted yet more, innocent blacks.

On New York’s WABC-TV, 11 p.m. Eyewitness News broadcast, an anchor intoned, “Police are trying to explain why police fired bean bags into a crowd at a peaceful demonstration.”

Black assistant police chief, Lt. Col. Ron Twitty, told a reporter, “We have a witness.”

“We have a witness”? As Chief Twitty knows, there’s always a “witness.” Like the “witness” who called 911, claiming to have seen Officer Steven Roach kill “the wrong man”? A demonstration takes place outside the highest-profile local funeral in years, yet there is no videotape, and no journalists have come forward to bear witness?

Cincinnati also got help from the usual out-of-town suspects. Frizzel Gray, aka Kweisi Mfume, president of the NAACP, swooped in, and said that Cincinnati was for him, well, a generic city, while Malik Zulu Shabazz, Grand Wizard of the New Black Panthers following the February death of his mentor, Khalid Muhammad, sought to help along the “uprising.”

In one respect, Cincinnati is NOT generic.

Derrick Blassingame, all of 14 years old, is the president of Cincinnati’s newly-formed, Black Coalition Against Youth Violence.

On April 17, AP operative Terry Kinney quoted young Blassingame as saying, “The older generation could have prevented this.... Our black leaders are not leading us.

Blassingame “blamed last week’s racial tension [!] on police, the media, and the black men considered their spokesmen.

Despite his youth, Derrick Blassingame speaks already with the forked-tongue of the career politician. He’s not angry that riots happened; he’s angry that no demagogue had set off the explosion earlier. He should call his group, “Black Coalition for Ultra-Violence.”

Derrick Blassingame gives new meaning to the Biblical phrase, “And a child shall lead them.”

The Feds will surely subsidize Cincinnati’s rioters, as they did Los Angeles’ rioters in 1992 and again in 2000.

And though the Rev. Damon Lynch III will see many of his demands met, he will not be satisfied. After a brief respite, he will begin working —perhaps with a new, young assistant — toward setting the fire next time.


P.S. In 2002, I received the following e-mail from the Rev. Timothy Lynch III:

“Nick you have a lot of anger misconceptions and hatred. I’m sorry justice is such a foreign concept. I wish you well in your struggle.”