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News :: Miscellaneous |
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A Cincinnati Night |
Current rating: 0 |
by Sean Marquis
Email: lesmarquis (nospam) ziplip.com (unverified!) |
12 Jun 2001
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June 11 - It was a long hot day down at the Justice Center. I had been in the sun most of the day, hot, drained, tired, going on midnight. Friday night, the first new weekend since our Vigil began. Some good tings had happened that day and though my body didn't feel it, I had good spirits in my head. The place I was going to wasn't very far, it was just about a 7 or 8 minute walk. It was in Over The Rhine, a neighborhood that exploded less than two months ago. |
As I came up to the block I was staying on, familiar scents and sounds wafted through the air. Someone had a radio on, playing out the window. The music was just loud enough and of the right style to lend the street life and not overpower it with plain oppressive noise. The scent, well, I rounded the corner and was greeted by such a sweet, strong and pungent aroma of marijuana, kind of welcoming me to the street. The night was humid so the scent did not disperse or take off on the wind, but lingered and greeted you right where it wanted to.
Groups of adults sat in folding chairs drinking and talking or sitting around a small table playing cards. Doorways and steps, spattered with folks gossiping or just watching the night happen. Regardless of the hour children were out and playing on the sidewalks and street, mothers not so far away as not to be able to watch or discipline, but pretty much leaving the children be anyway.
About midway down the block I walked across something spraypainted on the sidewalk. It said, "We love you Timma". Looking across the street I could see the flowers and memoriaI that stood as a reminder of the shootings that happened on that street just a few weeks ago. The shooting that took the life of Jimmy Gordon, "Timma".
Black on black violence has run rampant through the City since April's uprising. The police have all but abandoned the Over The Rhine neighborhood in an effort "to allow tensions to cool". But what has been allowed to happen is a deteriorating community has been left to feed on itself and pry itself apart from the inside out, blindly striking out in frustration. During a three week period lasting until June 4th, one black male per day had been shot by another black male.
The week before I arrived in Cincinnati, four young men were gunned down on 13th street. Three of them lived, but Timma didn't. Two people tried to stop the blood as it poured onto the sidewalk, too much blood came out too quickly and as it left his body, it took Timma's life with it. The four were shot by another black male, Gary Smith, and now the State wants to take his life in turn.
The City never sent anyone around to properly clean up the the site of Timma's death, his blood just dried up and took residence right where it lay, an new urban fresco. A local resident told me that when it rains hard enough, streaks of blood flow down the street. Timma bleeds and dies again and again. Rain is a symbol of purification, healing, but there is no healing here in Cincinnati, just festering wounds that won't go away.
Eventually the rain may cleanse and heal the street, taking care of something that humans failed to do. But concrete is easy to fix. |
See also:
http://ohiovalleyimc.org/cgi-bin/imc.pl?where=display&article=562
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