Can’t make it to Washington, D.C., to celebrate the inauguration of America’s next president or to join 170,000 women who will march for equality the next day?
Don’t fret. Republicans are planning a party in Cleveland, the details of which have not yet been released. And “sister marches” for liberals and women’s rights advocates are being planned in Columbus on Jan. 15 and Cincinnati on Jan. 21.
During the Columbus march, women unable to travel to the “Women’s March on Washington” on Jan. 21 can pen and pin their thoughts to the backs of proud women who are making the trip.
Afterward, Ohioans from Cincinnati to Akron can quietly lock hands, circling parks and churches and the statehouse in a silent half hour of synchronised love. In Columbus and around the country, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and congressional Democrats have inspired rallies in a day of action to counter Republican domination of state and national politics.
Whether in Ohio or Washington, D.C., the first days of the next presidential administration will be accented by broad dissent and celebration.
RNC party reboot?
Through the bitter election and jeering two-way criticism, John Greer has been a steadfast supporter of President-elect Donald J. Trump.
Elections have always been important to the 41-year-old property manager, who lives in West Akron. “This [election] especially was important to me,” Greer said. “I don’t know that I can explain it, except that we had a candidate who has not been in politics his whole life.”
The wild and unorthodox style of a reality TV star and successful businessman gives Greer the impression that the presidential inauguration could be anything but a typical display of conventional politics.
Sure, he said, the Clintons and Bushes will be there. But so will he and the Trumps.
Greer has never attended an inauguration. Around Northeast Ohio, there are sporadic reports of conservatives and Trump fans taking buses and flights or car pools eastward.
Those seeking VIP seating will arrive on Thursday, the day before the main event, to pick up tickets from their member of Congress. Those heading in for the day will be further from the staging area on the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol, but perhaps no further from the excitement.
The Ohio Diversity Coalition, a conservative group that campaigned for Trump in Ohio cities, is planning an Inauguration Celebration Reception in Cleveland. They’ve settled on a venue, but are asking donors for $20,000 to put on the party.
Some Ohio Republicans said the state party has reserved rooms at the Capitol Skyline Hotel in Washington, D.C.
Cynthia Blake, a medical data analyst from West Akron and member of the Inner City Republican Movement, will be hosting and busing 25 Trump fans to Congress to get their inauguration tickets to the event, a wreath laying ceremony and the ball afterward.
“We booked these rooms back in July because we knew he was going to win,” said Blake, who will stay at a hotel in Fort Meade, Md., between Baltimore and Washington, D.C.
On the first day of their extended stay in town, Blake and other black Republicans mindful of criminal justice reform, entrepreneurship and maintaining Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act, will meet at a sports bar on M Street, then head over to the famed Watergate Hotel.
“We gonna be jumping,” Blake said of the action-packed week they’ve planned. “We’ve got people from Youngstown, Dayton, Cleveland, California and Pennsylvania.”
Marching in
Diana Nabring won’t be with them.
The 37-year-old mother of two and special education teacher voted for Sanders in the primary and Hillary Clinton in the general election. As Greer and Trump fans leave for Washington, D.C., she and eight others from the Aurora area in Portage County will be loading air mattresses into two vans bound for the Women’s March on Washington.
Like other marchers, Nabring — disturbed by how the president-elect talked about women and how Republicans have promised to curtail their reproductive rights — has more than gender issues on her mind.
“I think it’s gotten to be a little more overreaching for all the social issues,” said Nabring, who has a son with autism spectrum disorder and teaches special needs students. She hasn’t forgot that Trump mocked a disabled reporter.
She has gay family members who have recently married but now, she said, fear for the future of their rights as workers and humans. And many of her students are refugee families from the Middle East. Trump’s plans to ban Muslims and the aggressive deportation of undocumented immigrants didn’t settle well with her.
“Many of my students’ families live in apartment complexes with Trump signs. To have these families have to drive past these signs each day, even if they don’t get deported, they know there are people in their neighborhoods who support a man who wants to remove them,” said Nabring, who has become more involved in social activism since the election.
“Yeah, he’s the president,” Nabring accepted. “But that still doesn’t make these things OK. It’s hard to separate the man from the office. I don’t think I’ve ever had that problem before. There are so many things he said. We — I personally — can’t turn a blind eye to that.”
Sister marches
For those that can’t attend, sister marches, including one in Cincinnati, have been planned across the nation to coincide with the Women’s March on Washington on Jan. 21.
“[We] decided to make it on a separate day,” said Lindsey Shriver, a Cleveland native and one of two women planning an earlier march in Columbus on Jan. 15. Shriver explained that the march is all about solidarity.
“We wanted a chance for everyone in Ohio to have a chance to come together. That’s how we will make these policy changes to advocate for women’s rights, by standing together,” said Shriver, adding that women and activists of any political persuasion are welcome.
As of Friday, more than 3,000 people indicated on the Ohio event’s Facebook page that they are interested in going — a microcosm for the 170,000 who plan to descend on Washington a week later.
Participants for the Ohio march will gather at COSI science museum east of the Scioto River and make a round trip along West Broad Street to the statehouse beginning at 1:30 p.m. Around 2:30 p.m., the group will pause outside the statehouse to rally and write their thoughts on pieces of paper then pin them to the jackets and sweaters of marchers who will travel to Washington a week later.
Circles of love
After approving the march permit for up to 5,000 attendees, Columbus officials plan to deploy 18 officers and six vehicles to keep the peace. But that may not be needed with all the love pouring into the rally.
Participants are encouraged to lock hands around the statehouse to Circle the City with Love — one of dozens of simultaneous but independent events held around the globe Jan. 15 at 3 p.m. (eastern time).
“It started with an idea that came from me,” said Sister Rita Petruziello, a 76-year-old nun and educator who began serving the Roman Catholic church when she turned 20.
Last year, Petruziello held a conversation with colleagues at Congregation of St. Joseph in Cleveland. Borrowing the title of a song written by a fellow sister, she said: “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could ‘circle the city with love’. We were talking about all the contention and divisiveness and the language being thrown around the country about the [presidential] election.”
And so, on July 17, on the eve of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Petruziello led more than 3,000 participants in a half hour of hand-holding, silent prayer on the Lorain-Carnegie Bridge. In the ensuing days of protests and parties, few injuries or altercations were reported. The city’s police force and those visiting were applauded for keeping the calm.
Petruziello credits positive energy.
“The only thing more powerful than the power of hate is the power of love,” said Petruziello, who took a monthlong sabbatical after the RNC, returning with a vision to spread the apolitical love circles across the globe. “Now this is a scientific and a spiritual concept. This is not religious. It’s spiritual, and science has proven that energy has memory.”
More than 40 Circle the City with Love events are scheduled for Jan. 15, not counting the one in Columbus. More than half these gatherings, which stretch from Guam and Australia to 10 states in America, will take place in Ohio, including a public prayer service at the Dominican Sisters of Peace at 3 p.m. in Akron and two other events in North Canton at Welcoming the Stranger and Grace United Methodist Church.
Still ‘Bern’-ing
A final event in Columbus will take place after 4 p.m. inside the Sheraton Columbus Hotel, where women’s rights advocates, liberals and egalitarians will heed a national call by Sen. Sanders and congressional Democrats for a day of action. At these coordinated “Our First Stand” rallies, activists will push for a $15 federal minimum wage, tuition- and debt-free college, the salvation of the Affordable Care Act, which Republicans have promised to gut or abolish, and other ideas championed by the Sanders, an independent who adorned the Democratic label during a presidential primary. Sanders excited young voters who showed less enthusiasm for Hillary Clinton in the general election.
Proceeds from the sale of tickets to meet rally headliners for the Our First Stand event will help pay travel expenses for protesters headed for the Women’s March on Washington the following week.
Doug Livingston can be reached at 330-996-3792 or dlivingston@thebeaconjournal.com.