“I feel like it’s more secure now,” one woman said. “I know my son can walk home and be OK.”

Summary

Following a February 7th neo-Nazi rally, residents of Lincoln Heights, a majority-Black Ohio town, formed an armed Safety and Watch Program to protect against hate groups.

The rally, where participants waved swastikas and shouted slurs, received little police intervention, sparking fears of future threats when no arrests or identifications were made during the incident.

Volunteers now patrol bus stops and neighborhoods. “I’ve never felt safer as a Black man in my community,” said spokesperson Daronce Daniels.

The historically underserved and self-governing community shows strong support for the initiative with yard signs and sees this as a continuation of its legacy of self-reliance and community defense.

  • peoplebeproblems@midwest.socialEnglish
    118·
    17 hours ago

    Wanna bet this community sees a temporary decrease in crime?

    Hell, I personally would feel safer as an opponent of facism there too.

    History shows us that this will not be tolerated for long though, regardless of the constitutional right. I hope this idea is picked up elsewhere. There are a lot of places that could benefit from running their own regulated militia: cities, towns, and neighborhoods.

    • Eezyville@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      75·
      16 hours ago

      You wanna bet they’re gonna make some laws now to restrict them because black people are exercising their 2nd amendment rights.

      • peoplebeproblems@midwest.socialEnglish
        40·
        16 hours ago

        That’s the part I’m curious about. California did enact a law in 1967 requiring permits to openly carry loaded firearms, but the Black Panthers didn’t just go away.

        Anything enacted at a federal level will get pushback, and I’m very curious about how it will be constructed to avoid pissing off their support. In either way, I would presume that people aren’t just going to passively hand over their guns. We know how that ends up.

        • chingadera@lemmy.world
          2·
          6 hours ago

          That will be the true test on how strong fascism is in this country. I have ten bucks on Republicans willingly handing their firearms over at the direction of the current administration after decades of not being able to shut the fuck up about keeping their 2a rights.

        • Jikiya@lemmynsfw.com
          14·
          14 hours ago

          Black father’s are why Reagan, and the NRA passed gun control in the past. Fox will be fully utilized to push an agenda of dis-arming pigmented people. And when enough of the community has forgotten the experiment, they will go back to pushing ‘gun rights’.

  • boaratio@lemmy.world
    2701·
    18 hours ago

    The cops didn’t didn’t show up for the same reason that you never see Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus at the same time.

  • Diplomjodler@lemmy.world
    155·
    18 hours ago

    I think letting everybody have a gun is absolutely moronic. But if i was living in the US right now i would definitely be stocking up on assault rifles and ammo.

    • MagicShel@lemmy.zipEnglish
      819·
      16 hours ago

      An assault rifle just tells everyone you can’t aim and are happy with indiscriminate targeting. They are fine when you are fighting 1000 of something, but there’s a reason the army sharpshooting badge doesn’t include burst fire (or didn’t thirty year’s ago, anyway).

      I’d recommend just about anything else for self defense, actually.

      I can’t because of some mental health concerns in my household (not the least of which, my own), but otherwise I’d have a revolver.

      • grue@lemmy.world
        12·
        16 hours ago

        [Assault rifles] are fine when you are fighting 1000 of something, but… I’d recommend just about anything else for self defense, actually.

        (Pointedly) Yeah, we know.

      • MoistOwlette@lemmy.world
        143·
        14 hours ago

        An assault rifle just tells everyone you can’t aim and are happy with indiscriminate targeting.

        Tell me you’ve never shot a gun, without telling me you’ve never shot a gun

        • MagicShel@lemmy.zipEnglish
          74·
          13 hours ago

          Qualified expert with an M-16. Which also implies I’ve fired an M-60, but that’s not really relevant to the discussion.

      • Diplomjodler@lemmy.world
        101·
        15 hours ago

        I’m not thinking about self defense against some burglar. I’m talking about self defense in the sense the US gun nuts have been talking about for decades. Now that tyranny has actually arrived, they’re very quiet all of a sudden. Who would have thought.

        • ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.worldEnglish
          31·
          12 hours ago

          WWI more than a hundred years ago demonstrated conclusively the military worthlessness of a bunch of dudes armed with rifles, when faced with the real elements of state military power: artillery, tanks and airplanes. The US government has no fear of a bunch of fat old dudes with closets full of peashooters.

          • dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️@lemmy.world
            4·
            7 hours ago

            Oh yes, on an open battlefield against declared combatants, absolutely. However, that’s not how it’s going to go down in the US. This is where we get to dredge up that old quote about a rifle behind every blade of grass.

            Take a look at any “anti-insurgency” operation in the last ~80 years or any situation that devolved into door-to-door warfare in a city full of both nongovernment combatants and also where basically every single civilian also hates you and your army. Except in our case about a third (32%) of those civilians are armed.

            Even if only half of those civilians are on our side, we’d outnumber the entirety of the US police and military forces combined by a little over 13 to 1. Nobody wants to fight a war of attrition and I’m not recommending one, but the fascists would have to achieve an unrealistically ludicrous k/d ratio to succeed. There’s no way around it other than this would outright require indiscriminately blowing up large sections of their own cities and infrastructure to get us, surely killing a handful of combatants each time but also taking out at least double their number in uninvolved civilians.

            That sort of thing does not tend to go any way towards making the rest of those civilians left get less involved.

            • ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.worldEnglish
              1·
              6 hours ago

              TBH I don’t think us Americans would actually have the stomach to be on the receiving end of anti-insurgency operations in the way that, say, the Vietnamese and Afghan people were - enduring 20 or 30 deaths for every oppressor killed. Also, I don’t know that very many of us would understand the need to handle all communications and organizing without using social media or the Internet at all. Today’s fascists have tools of social control that were undreamt of in the past.

      • Sir_Kevin@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        103·
        15 hours ago

        This situation absolutely calls for rifIe usage. Tell us you know nothing about firearrns without telling us…

  • TheDemonBuer@lemmy.world
    19·
    18 hours ago

    Every group of people need to have autonomy and independence, and the right to self-govern. No people should have to fear violence and repression from another group.

  • ragingdachshund@lemm.eeEnglish
    26·
    6 hours ago

    So the white sherif is more worried about black folks wearing masks and carry assault rifles than the neo Nazis wearing masks and carrying weapons? And not identifying them?

    I understand cops don’t want to arrest their friends, but this is pretty bad, even by those standards.

  • huzzahunimpressively@lemmy.world
    21·
    6 hours ago

    All this happens because Americans are obsessed with race. The first time I was asked about my race was when I applied for my visa