Should protesters arm themselves? Black Lives Matter group sees need for self-defense

Leaders of Cincinnati's Black Lives Matter say the group is ready to meet force with force, up to and including the use of firearms. They want the other activist groups in the city to consider joining them in their stance.

"We are not pacifists," Black Lives Matter steering committee member Brian Taylor told The Enquirer. "We do everything to minimize violence...but we will defend ourselves if attacked to the degree necessary to free ourselves from harm.”

That could mean guns, he said.

It's a nuanced line that Taylor and BLMC walk. Taylor advocates for self-defense, but not for the wanton destruction of people or property.

This stance comes in the wake of the Charlottesville, Virginia clashes, when violence broke out between right-wing protesters, including self-identified Nazis, and counterprotesters. The Aug. 12 event culminated with the death of Heather Heyer, who was struck and killed when protester James Alex Fields, Jr., an Ohio resident, drove his car into a crowd.

The University of Cincinnati decided to allow Richard Spencer, who co-organized the Charlottesville event, to speak at the school. A date has not yet been set.

It is legal in the State of Ohio to openly carry handguns and rifles in many public spaces. In fact, a small number of people have carried rifles openly at demonstrations in Cincinnati before. Black Lives Matter: Cincinnati leaders say those weapons were not carried by its members or affiliated organizations at any demonstrations they have organized.

Those with concealed handgun licenses would also be within their rights to carry a gun. Of course, it's hard to know how many people have carried a weapon this way at marches.

Black Lives Matter: Cincinnati (BLMC) supports and collaborates with half a dozen or more activists groups in the city. In August, Taylor and others presented them with this age-old question dating back to the civil rights era: Should protesters arm themselves during demonstrations in the name of self-defense?

The response from the other groups was mixed. Taylor said about 20 percent of those in attendance at the Peaslee Center booed the idea of carrying weapons at marches. Some reportedly said they would not march alongside those who were armed.

"We’re in a cloud of violence," Taylor said. "There’s nothing peaceful about these situations. It’s very dangerous."

Why Black Lives Matter: Cincinnati refuses to call itself peaceful

From its early marches in support of protests in other cities all the way through the two trials of former University of Cincinnati police officer Ray Tensing following the July 2015 shooting of unarmed driver Sam DuBose, BLMC has made an important distinction.

The group insists it is not "peaceful."

"The opposite of peaceful doesn’t mean that we’re violent," Taylor said.

He said the protests he has helped organize are responses to violent acts, the killing of African American men and women. They are meant to oppose a police force, he said, that has an ingrained history of racist policies.

He has said that marches are meant to be disruptive, to upset business as usual.

“I believe it’s an institutional reality," Taylor said. "You don’t have to be a racist cop to profile a black person because of what you’ve learned and how you were trained and how you see us.”

There has been no significant violence between Black Lives Matter: Cincinnati and the Cincinnati Police Department.

Black Lives Matter: Cincinnati protesters have not damaged property or physically lashed out at counter-protesters.

After an early Black Lives Matter: Cincinnati rally took place in the wake of DuBose's death, a break-out group marched to Fountain Square where six people were arrested on Fountain Square. That group chanted in front of the stage during a concert.

In that case, police said one arrest was made because a person threatened a business and other protesters attempted to intervene in the arrest. The result was that those people were also arrested on a charge of obstructing justice. A window was also broken after that demonstration was called to a close.

The Cincinnati Police Department declined to comment for this story.

Police union President Dan Hils said everyone has a Second Amendment right to carry a weapon, despite what he called, BLMC's "disgraceful" message. Hils has taken aim at the movement in the past, accusing it of spreading lies that police want to hurt people.

Nationally, Black Lives Matter has not shied away from controversy. Some activists with the group stormed the stages of presidential campaign events. In other cities, highways were blocked by demonstrators. Support for the movement seems to fall along racial lines.

The National Review reported in August that 57 percent of Americans have an “unfavorable” opinion of the group according to a Havard-Harris poll. In that study, 60 percent of white respondents didn’t like the movement.

However, a Northwestern University poll released in October found that 81 percent of respondents see the Black Lives Matter movement as effective in its advocacy of voting right, improvement of race relations and combating police brutality.

The civil rights movement's historic tensions regarding violence and self-defense

“That debate is an old one,” said Rev. Damon Lynch III, a lifelong Cincinnati resident and activist who worked to change policing in the city in the wake of the 2001 riots. "Ultimately, the question has to be what movement produced the most change.”

Civil rights leaders didn't agree on using force, either. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s non-violent approach was countered in the 1970s by underground groups like the Black Liberation Army, which called for armed resistance.

But that approach is not what got long-lasting results, Lynch said. He believes it was non-violence that changed the hearts and minds of other Americans when police turned dogs and fire hoses on protesters in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963.

"King would say, 'We're not trying to defeat our enemy. We’re trying to win them,'" Lynch said.

Lynch said violence did play a role in the changes Cincinnati saw beginning in 2001. The civil unrest then following a police officer's fatal shooting of unarmed African-American man Timothy Thomas prompted police and City Hall as well as non-violent community leaders to come together and create what is known as the Collaborative Agreement governing police-citizen interactions.

"America is a pretty violent society, our love for guns and confrontation," Lynch said. "Sadly, it’s the violence that usually gets both sides to take action. That in no way means I advocate violence."

City Councilman Chris Smitherman, formerly the president of the Cincinnati NAACP, not only supports Second Amendment rights but exercises them, legally carrying a firearm at times.

His parents come from the South. His grandfather was a Baptist minister in Birmingham whose church was burned down during the civil rights battles half a century ago. But he said a lot has changed.

"I wouldn't want to take anybody else's right away," Smitherman said. "If someone wants to say they want to arm themselves to go to a peaceful protest, I just don't think that's necessarily where the greatest risk is ... The risk is on our corners where our young men are being shot and mothers are losing children."

Ohio Senator Cecil Thomas said authorities should be able to draw a line to ensure peaceful protests. The constitution only guarantees the right of people to peaceably assemble. When hate speech and talk of firearms lead up to an event, he said, authorities should be able to step in.

“Where do we draw the line when it starts to spiral out of control?” Thomas asked.