The Black residents of a town in Ohio have formed an armed watch after neo-Nazis attempted to march nearby and Ku Klux Klan flyers appeared there.
Residents in the historically Black community of Lincoln Heights, Ohio, have formed an armed watch to protect themselves after a group of neo-Nazis attempted to march nearby before being chased away, and Ku Klux Klan flyers were discovered in the area.
Members of the town mobilized after neo-Nazis held a rally on the border of Lincoln Heights and Evandale, another Cincinnati suburb, on February 7. The confrontations on the I-75 bridge, which involved residents chasing the group away, were captured on video.
“An American individual protecting his homeland with a firearm — I thought that was the most American thing that we [could] do,” Lincoln Heights Safety and Watch (SAW) Program spokesman Daronce Daniels told the Washington Post.
The group has set up checkpoints around Lincoln Heights and is armed in accordance with Ohio’s open-carry firearms law. During a press conference on Monday (Feb. 24), the group distributed flyers touting the Klan’s 160th anniversary throughout Lincoln Heights and surrounding towns.
They also released video footage of members of the watch catching a man tossing flyers from his car at a traffic stop the previous evening. The footage was shared with the Local 12 news network.
The SAW group, along with the nonprofit Heights Movement, also laid out a list of demands for Evandale leaders to find a new firm to conduct a third-party investigation into the thwarted neo-Nazi rally, after Lincoln Heights Mayor Ruby Kinsey Mumphrey stated that she was barred from participating.
The demands also include the firing of Evandale police officers who assisted members of the group (including one who drove a member to his car to retrieve his service animal) and those who failed to activate their body cameras, as well as the surrender of all unedited bodycam footage from that day.
Lincoln Heights’ residents, who have lived there since the 1920s, say their primary concern is for the town’s youth. “The way I found out that the Nazis were in my neighborhood was through children,” said DeRonda Calhoun, an area teacher.
“They were afraid.” The Heights Movement stated that they had secured funds to make mental health services available to children who requested them.
