Written by CCPC member Richard May
We humbly ask the Black Pastors of Greater Cleveland to do whatever you can to help defeat the racist Republican Party this November.
Pride is a sin. Today we put our pride aside for this request. We have been in conflict recently with some of you for our support of former State Senator Nina Turner in her two recent congressional campaigns against Congresswoman Shontel Brown. But as America is bracing for a terrorist civil war fueled by former President Donald Trump, we plead for your assistance.
The first preliminary shots of that terror war have already been fired. Last May we had a New York state teenager, armed with an automatic weapon driving over 200 miles, kill 11 Black people at a Buffalo supermarket inspired by Republican rhetoric of the White Replacement Theory. Plus the white insurrectionist mob of January 6, 2021 sent directly to the U.S. Capitol by the former president fueled by the Big Lie of a stolen 2020 presidential election.
We must always be mindful of Trump’s racist past. His demand for President Obama to produce his birth certificate over the lie that Obama was not born in America. His calling for the return of the death penalty in New York State in a full page newspaper ad as five innocent minority teenagers was railroaded for the rape of a white woman jogger in New York City’s Central Park. Those five teenagers were later released from prison as young men when the real rapist was found. Trump’s control and influence on the Ohio Republican Party is unquestioned and worrisome.
The Republican Ohio U.S. Senate nominee that Trump endorsed in the primary, J.D. Vance, told FOX News earlier this year that Democrats, “have decided that they can’t win re-election in 2022 unless they bring a large number of new voters to replace the voters that are already here.” This quote is often brought up as Republicans promote the racist “Great Replacement Theory.” Along those lines, the GOP-run Ohio legislature are about to place a November ballot initiative to ban non-citizens from voting in municipal elections to inspire Republican turnout this fall.
Last year we saw a great number of Republicans run for local school boards inspired by the falsehood that Critical Race Theory is being taught in public schools. Nonsense of course, yet a recent Cuyahoga County Republican Party Co-Chair, Peter Corrigan, was elected to the Rocky River Board of Education as part of that anti-CRT slate. For white people, Critical Race Theory is simply Black history, and they do not want their children to reject their white privilege.
We know that you knew of the urgent need of this election, but some people need some of that totality to be brought up in order to inspire action. Lord knows there are some matters we have forgotten here.
But why we are here is what you can achieve that we cannot. We wish we could motivate your congregations to vote like you can. But you are the ones that have earned their trust. You are the ones that can put them on a bus after October Sunday services to the Board of Elections and stretch a human line from Euclid Avenue to Chester Avenue.
To show us your ability I looked at the turnout of Cleveland’s Ward One. In 2020’s presidential election 10,228 residents of that ward voted with your encouragement. In 2018’s governor election 8597 residents of Ward One voted. There were 1631 fewer voters in an area that gave Republican Governor Mike DeWine less than 3.5 percent of the vote in 2018. If those 1631 presidential voters came out this fall they would outnumber the voters of quite a few townships combined between here and Columbus.
That is just Cleveland’s Ward One. Add the other eight Black Cleveland wards plus the many East Side Black and integrated suburbs and it will be promising. After all, Cuyahoga County is more than ten percent of the vote in the state of Ohio.
Do not be dissuaded by recent statewide Republican victories and the legal wrangling over state legislative districts. The bottom line is if Democrat Nan Whaley becomes Governor this November along with the rest of the statewide Democratic slate, they will draw the new state legislature districts for 2024.
So invite our Black state legislators to your pulpits this fall. They will tell you and your congregations of the danger we are in. We ask Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb to assist in this effort as well. Please share this post and we hope that our local media will assist as well.
As we see armed Trump supporters attempt to kill and intimidate FBI agents in Cincinnati and Arizona respectively we clearly see the danger to us all. Only Democratic victories nationwide can motivate Republican leaders to reject Trump’s irresponsible leadership and join us in our pleas for peace.
Faced with this hatred, we must respond inspired by the love, character and organization Dr. Martin Luther King and his followers demonstrated three generations ago. We pray we are up to the task.
