TOLEDO, Ohio - In the days leading up to a white supremacist march, ministers pleaded with residents to stay calm and community leaders organized peace rallies. Authorities even delayed releasing the route so protesters wouldn't know where the group planned to march.
It wasn't enough to stop an angry mob that included gang members from looting and burning a neighborhood bar, smashing the windows of a gas station and hurling rocks and bottles at police on Saturday. Twelve officers were injured, one suffering a concussion when a brick flew through her cruiser window.
In all, 114 people were arrested on charges including assault, vandalism, failure to disperse and overnight curfew violations.
"We knew during the preparation that it was going to be a tremendous challenge," Police Chief Mike Navarre said Sunday. "Anyone who would accuse us of being underprepared I would take exception with that."
Much of the anger boiled over because people were upset that city leaders were willing to allow the supremacists to walk through the neighborhood and shout insults, residents and authorities said.
"You can't allow people to come challenge a whole city and not think they weren't going to strike back," said Kenneth Allen, 47, who watched the violence begin near his home.
Except that you can allow people to challenge a whole city. Its a right afforded to them in the Constitution. The Nazis, as virulent and despicable as their world view is, did not start the rioting or the violence in Toledo. They acquired all the necessary permits and permissions and were by all accounts, up until the time they were accosted by an angry mob, exercising their right to peacefully assemble.
As much as it pains me to say this, the Nazis are in the right on this one. The black community in Toledo is very much in the wrong.
When Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders marched against racial injustice in the south and were met with angry and malicious mobs who tried to silence their voices and do them harm, that was wrong. But no more wrong than white supremacists being met with the same attempts to silence their voices. At least from constitutional perspective.
Frankly, the black community would have done well to deny the Nazis the attention they wished to garner with this march. But they didn't. Instead they chose to play into the very stereotypes the Nazis were using to characterize them. That's a shame, but now water under the bridge.
If Toledo's black community wishes to redeem themselves they'd do well to admonish those in their midst responsible for the loutish behavior and move on with a lesson learned.