These plans were implemented on May 13. Water barricades were placed on Republic, between Liberty and Green Streets, for a six month trial period. In addition to this, fencing was built around a recreation center preventing homeless people from finding shade and shelter. All of this with the supposed purpose of stopping an “open-air drug market” and stopping crime.

But who is defining what ‘crime’ is? How is a church providing for the hungry viewed as “attracting” crime? Why is a child going hungry, in itself, not viewed as a crime when it’s perpetuated by our own government? The answer is that spikes in “crime” are nothing more than code for a rise in poverty and state repression. These have been caused by the worsening economic conditions in Cincinnati and the gentrification of the neighborhood of Over-the-Rhine.

The gentrification of Over-the-Rhine has been an ongoing process catalyzed by the murder of an unarmed Black man named Timothy Thomas in 2001. This was coupled with public outrage from the community in response to yet another murder of a Black person by police. The rebellion gained momentum; boycotts and protests put pressure on the city. The Black United Front and the Over-the-Rhine People’s Movement were just a few of the organizations involved in the struggle. To stomp this rebellion and ensure profitable control of the neighborhood, the  privatization of the public planning department in the form of a nonprofit development corporation named 3CDC (Cincinnati Center City Development Corporation) was implemented in 2003.  This process was dubbed “urban revitalization.”   

Dan La Botz summarizes this history as follows in Cincinnati: A Decade Since the Rebellion of 2001 — What Have We Learned, Where Are We Now?: 

Cincinnati exploded in protest and rebellion in April and May of 2001 following the April 7 police killing of 19-year old Timothy Thomas, the fifteenth African American man under the age of 50 to be killed by the police between 1995 and 2001. While several of those killed had drawn guns and shot at or shot civilians or police, others did not have firearms or were killed while in police custody. Thomas, who had committed many misdemeanors and had several warrants for his arrest (but who had no record of violence) was nevertheless chased into an alley, shot and killed by a police officer. Thomas’s mother Angela Leisure showed up at City Hall accompanied by 200 other community members, almost all of them Black, to demand that city and police officials explain why her son had been killed, but police and politicians dealt with her contemptuously.… The Cincinnati rebellion of 2001 was the largest disturbance in the city since the ghetto rebellion of 1967 and the largest in the United States since Los Angeles riots of 1992 which began with the police beating of an African American man named Rodney King.

After the riots, a real estate consultant named John Alschuler based in Washington D.C. was brought in to advise the city of Cincinnati on how to best handle the situation: “Over-the-Rhine has to be restored as a mixed-income neighborhood where poor-, moderate-, and upper-income people all have a future… create a private entity with the capacity to deliver change at Fountain Square and Over-the-Rhine, devote capital to it, and hire the foremost talent in the country to staff it.” 

In 2003, Mayor Luken appointed P&G CEO A.G. Lafley and Federated Department Stores chairman James Zimmerman to “a new private, nonprofit group charged with sparking downtown’s struggling economic development efforts.” This would come to be the Cincinnati Center City Development Corp, otherwise known as 3CDC — a non-profit development corporation dominating what should be controlled by the people. During this time, the nascent 3CDC started sending out “ambassadors of goodwill.” The clear intention was to send out wholesome and cheerful representatives to the community, but in practice they acted as private security guards, enforcing the interests of the organization and its goals. They leveraged state power to “clean up” downtown. Instead of solving the underlying problems behind poverty and crime, they simply sought to kick it somewhere else.

         One of the ambassadors themselves admitted to the reality of their role. “We’re pretty much looked at as security guards who are setting a higher standard,” an ambassador said. They essentially acted as auxiliary police units. Ambassadors would patrol Over-the-Rhine and look in shop windows “for a signal from an employee that everything is fine or something is amiss.” If they spotted an “unruly customer” or potential robbery, they would call the police. Ambassadors dealt with “everything from drug addicts ranting and raving and threatening our customers to a fight breaking out…” said Gary Gabbard, manager of Donato’s on Main St. 10. Small business owners like Gary use what little power they have to be petty tyrants towards the impoverished and call upon auxiliary police units to police communities. Settlers collaborate with the state to act as ambassadors and subjugate marginalized groups. 

St. Francis Seraph — the church that has been frequently providing aid services to the community of Over-the-Rhine — had planned on converting a nearby portion of the church into a shelter through the nonprofit Tender Mercies. A member of the local neighborhood watch and various city officials claimed this would lead to increased crime and that the neighborhood was out of control.

“You can’t put investment dollars in a neighborhood that’s out of control,” said Chris Frutkin, owner of City Center Properties. “That behavior would never happen south of Liberty Street.” 

The lives of people are easily outweighed by numerical investments to Chris and the class of business owners. They’re more than happy to demonize victims of poverty to protect their own profit, and push narratives of crime being “out-of-control.” America’s economic and social system is maintained in part through stigmatization and individualism. It attempts to place any blame solely upon the individual. Poor people are painted with a general image of immorality; stereotyped as lazy, stupid, bad, or as violent criminals. With this falsehood, a person is able to justify walking past another human begging on the street in 100°F heat without a second thought. With this falsehood, members of a community can be lulled into inaction as repressive powers are built to crack down on them as soon as medical bills get too high or the stock market too low.

“We’re hoping that it could be a form of affordable housing with supportive services to get some of these people off the street into decent housing,” said Father Al Hirt, St. Francis Seraph pastor. “The Franciscans would love to see it used that way, more than some boutique hotel or something.”

Unfortunately, according to WCPO, this was not successful: “The nonprofit Tender Mercies had hoped to buy the St. Francis Seraph friary and applied to the Ohio Housing Finance Agency for low-income historic tax credits for the $21 million project. But the housing finance agency’s board declined to fund the project, according to a May 15 news release.”

Furthermore, the barricade has been a “success” for the settlers:

“So far, so good, let’s wait and see,” said Over-the-Rhine Community Council President Kevin Hassey. “I’m encouraged… there are more police in the area, particularly north of Liberty.”

The notion that crime is on the rise and needs to be rectified in the form of more police ultimately benefits the people in power — the landowners, the police, real estate developers. The police enforce their authority for the state, but that authority is not neutral, as their power is used to protect the interests of businesses to ensure profit and subjugation of colonized peoples. The planned barricade is a fascist attack on people who have been labeled by the state as deserving of extreme poverty and violence. Systematic inequalities perpetually enforced by the state are the root causes of homelessness.

This barricade is a manifestation of the police fulfilling their historic role as slave patrols. Increases in visible poverty and the misery it causes are due to capitalism and settler colonialism functioning to keep working and colonized people exploited — the necessary counterpart to the siphoning of wealth created by workers into the pockets of business owners. Over-the-Rhine isn’t the only target. Several neighborhoods in Cincinnati are also the target. Camp Washington is one example. The Camp Washington Urban Revitalization Corporation even got the neighborhood of Camp Washington selected by the Congress for the New Urbanism for a new renovation project that will displace the renters and houseless people in the area for a walkable neighborhood benefiting wealthier clientele. It’s part of a multi-faceted approach to continue the colonization of land in Cincinnati for increased profits. The iron fist of the state and the invisible hand of the “free market” are limbs of the same body of the illegitimate settler republic of the United States of America.

Police don’t prevent crime and don’t serve the people. They exist to protect the people in power. “Urban revitalization” does not benefit communities, but displaces renters and the houseless by increasing the property values of the neighborhood and drawing in a wealthier clientele. Urban revitalization utilizes the police to displace homeless people and victims of poverty so the land can be remade into luxury condos to make a profit and draw in wealthier white residents. This is exactly what happened with the murder of Timothy Thomas by Cincinnati police and this process is continuing before our eyes. It’s manifesting as a police barricade in the very same neighborhood.

Furthermore, 3CDC is continuing its mission of gentrification, better described as urban settler colonialism: Joe Rudemiller, vice president of marketing and communications for 3CDC said, “We’re going to try to replicate what we’ve done south of Liberty… and hopefully that takes care of some of the issues that we’ve been seeing. We are definitely seeing some challenges with safety up here, and that has been a pervasive problem.” This isn’t some past event to lament. Gentrification is a process that is happening RIGHT NOW and perpetuating white supremacy and impoverishment.

Remember that gentrification is not inevitable — stand up against business interests in your neighborhood! Don’t trust the police and real estate developers who seek to control the neighborhood on behalf of the ruling classes. Protect the homeless people in your neighborhood, and find solidarity against the ruling classes which will crush you both to put a penny in their pocket.

A person who shows up to protests is called an organizer. A person who is a member of a leftist group is called an organizer. A person who administers aid to the people is called an organizer. Even someone who works for a non-profit may take up the title of organizer without much challenge from others.

The confusion arises because the definition of organizing is obfuscated; diluted by liberal commandeering. After all, an organizer is someone who organizes, so, in order to properly apply the title of organizer, we need to figure out what actually constitutes organizing.

Is organizing building and supporting unions? Is organizing providing aid to the masses? Is organizing holding protests and marches, trying to get as many people as possible to join your group, holding book clubs, or debating theoretical differences with others? Yes, in some ways, it encompasses all of these things. But these definitions lack an essential aspect which ties all of these parts together.

Organizing is the process by which an organization is developed. It allows for the repetition and replication of an organization’s processes. It is the sorting of chaos along a defined structure. A socialist organization involves the development of unity between groups of people, a process which aims to transform our chaotic, uncoordinated efforts at change into a coherent force; a unified voice.

What do we mean by an organization? An organization is not simply a group of people who adopt a name and a logo and go to protests together. An organization is a structure with a clearly defined purpose, function, and rules. It is a vehicle through which the efforts of many can be unified and channeled towards a specific end. When we organize, we attempt to take hold of the chaos of the various levels of consciousness at work among the masses. We attempt to harness the progressive trends that naturally arise within oppressed classes, mold it, sharpen it, and thrust it like a spear into the heart of oppression. What do you need to forge a weapon from raw material? Machinery, tools, and clarity of purpose.

When we organize, we strive to craft the machinery that will forge the weapon. We strive to create the structures, the practices, the strategies and the tactics that will be utilized to free us all when the time comes. Some of this work has been done for us already, for there is a wealth of knowledge left behind from our predecessors during their own attempts at change. But there is much work to be done.

A Tempered Weapon is Strong

There are those who desire to use the weapon before it is ready. Some try to strike with a dull blade, some with the ingots, and others hurl the unrefined ore at the great walls of capital, to burst upon impact and become nothing more than dust. They may be impatient, anxious, and unwilling to put in the work to build the proper machinery.

There are also those who fail to strike at the iron while it’s hot. Wait too long and the metal cools, becomes brittle, and shatters upon impact. They are too obsessed with the machinery for the sake of the machinery itself. They lose sight of the purpose of the machinery and the purpose of the weapon. 

The socialist left is rife with these trends, each of which must be exposed, criticized, and corrected if our weapon is to be built and used effectively. Struggle is the method through which we temper our blade, sharpen its edges, and ensure that it strikes true. Disagreement is an essential part of development, and struggle is the method of utilizing disagreement in order to discern truth. No single individual has all the answers. No one person or group is correct about everything at all times. However, somewhere within the minds of all people are the seeds of truth. It is only through struggle within and between groups that as many viewpoints as possible can be accounted for and the truth be revealed.

Building the Machinery

We are all part of the machinery, whether we wish to acknowledge it or not. We all have our roles to play. The machinery represents collective effort, it represents the victory or the defeat of us all. The battle looms and our weapon must be ready. Will you choose to be a well oiled part of the machinery, or will you choose to leave yourself rusted and chipped, dulling the same edge that you aim to sharpen?

We must work together. That doesn’t simply mean showing up to each other’s events; it doesn’t mean exchanging contact info, being cordial, and liking each other’s posts on Instagram. It means collaborating and coordinating, consciously, to build the machinery that will forge our weapon; to build the organization that represents our collective efforts and collective interests. It means creating a political formation capable of withstanding repression, capable of defending itself, and capable of lifting us all up.

This is the main function of our organization, Cincinnati Community Aid and Praxis. While we are an aid organization, we are not a charity. We do not do aid for the sake of aid itself. We seek to eliminate the conditions that create aid necessary in the first place, which can only be done with the spear. Our aid programs serve a few purposes. Firstly, we aim to serve the most downtrodden of our communities and help them to survive until tomorrow. Secondly, it allows us to grow closer to the communities we serve, ensuring that our ties to the masses are never severed. And finally, our aid programs give us the opportunity to hone our theory through our practice, our practice through our theory, and to exercise the structure of our organization to expose its shortcomings and to build its strength.

This last reason is the most important. When we engage in on-the-ground work, we put stress on our organizational structure. Coordinating an aid program requires relying on management of resources, logistics, and coordination. Every time we run one of our regular programs, we take time to examine our performance, analyze our effectiveness, and assess the current conditions and the need for other efforts. Through this process, we develop. We constantly adjust our practices, our structure, and our understanding in response to our mistakes, our shortcomings, and any other information we gather from our work.

Though our aid programs are our most public-facing aspect, it is only one fifth of our actual operations. There are four other committees within our organization, each with varying purposes, but all oriented towards one goal: building the machinery. We are what we consider a primary organization; a pre-party formation. The most valuable thing we can do as a primary organization is contribute to the struggle. That means developing a robust understanding of the material conditions of our locale, formulating theories regarding the character and structure of our formation, putting them to the test with practical work, and, most importantly, sharing what we have learned with others.

Envision yourself within your organization, and your organization within your community, not as an individual body, but as individual cells within a single body, a body that is learning how to walk.

Engage with us in good faith. Unite with us over our commonalities. Struggle with us over our differences. Allow yourself to be driven forward by others as they are driven forward by you. This is a call for action, but it is also a cry for help. We cannot do this alone, nor can you. We need each other, and victory can only arise through our coordinated and collective effort.

A Proposal

CCAP is a pre-party formation and an organization. When we organize, we are in the process of developing the members of CCAP and the locale in which we operate, as well as the organization itself. It is something all leftist organizations should have in common.

But there are higher levels of organization that we aim to achieve. Every advance in the complexity and capability of our collective organization is a step that will allow us to take on bigger and better challenges and provide us the foundations to advance the next steps. It is a process of development. There is no way to be at the top except to start at the bottom. 

An individual who grasps class consciousness is at a higher stage of development than one who does not. An individual who gives themselves to the study of revolutionary theory and the study of the machinations of the world is more advanced than the conscious individual. An organization is more advanced than the educated individual. An organization of organizations is more advanced than a single organization itself…and so on and so on until the collective level of the organization of the oppressed classes is at the stage that it can wage effective struggle against the forces that be.

In Cincinnati and across the country, there are many individual, isolated organizations all doing similar or adjacent work. We have our differences, yes, but on the whole we are more alike than not. It is upon the things that we hold in common—our convictions, our goals, our beliefs—that we can unite. Once we have united, we will utilize our differences to engage in discussion and debate and advance ourselves as a collective.

Just as it is erroneous for an individual to believe that they know everything, it is equally as erroneous for us to believe that we have nothing to offer each other as organizations.

What is needed is an organization of organizations, something qualitatively different from the various coalitions, networks, and alliances that currently dot the landscape. This umbrella organization is not just a show of symbolic unity, it is a material unification of groups into a cohesive whole. Should we unify with another group in our city, our two groups would become one organization, of which CCAP is just a single part. This unifying of organizations advances the collective organizational complexity of the movement as a whole and allows us to take on bigger challenges than we can as isolated groups.

This is the meaning of organizing: engaging in the efforts to build not just a movement, but a complex structure with a defined purpose and the capability to engage in operations that advance towards our common goal. As organizers, this is the activity in which we consciously take part.

Does this involve building unions, running book clubs, and going to protests? Yes, it does, at different times and to different degrees. But it is essential for you, if you believe yourself to be an organizer, to expand your understanding of what an organizer actually does. An organizer is not just an activist, they are an architect, a builder, and a blacksmith forging the weapon.

At the current moment, we are struggling without sight in the dark, pulling this way and that with no form or direction. We have a history to learn from, yes, but the conditions of our struggle are novel. We are individual cells of a single body, and we are only just learning to walk.

If you consider yourself an organizer, understand what it means to organize. Understand that while conducting aid programs and holding town halls and staging protests is important, these are surface level actions and don’t constitute a movement. It is not enough to simply espouse radical politics and hope that will change the world. The new world must be built and you as an organizer are a builder.