BLACK LIVES MATTER
Personal Anecdote
SELLING OUT By Ella Attell
G
ates Mills, Ohio, is not the kind of place where political feathers are ruffled. Multi-generational homes sprawl across green acreage with the righteousness of money that is no longer earned but inherited. It’s idyllic in aesthetic: maintained but not cookie-cutter, sophisticated yet rural. It’s not uncommon to see equestrians take their horses out for morning trots alongside BMWs and vintage convertibles. Ninety-three percent of the village is white, one percent of residents are Black, and nearly no one falls below the poverty line. When George Floyd gasped for air, he wasn’t breathing the air that residents of Gates Mills breathe. And even when Cleveland residents took up signs and chants, the tear gas stained air I encountered felt like it had never touched the shuttered stables and rose gardens only thirty minutes away. I have to think that when some protesters started throwing bricks at court house windows, they imagined raging against the iron gates that have kept so many people out of places like Gates Mills. And yet, while glass shattered downtown, not a blade of grass was askew in one of the many communities in my state that effectively voted Donald Trump into office. I thought for a moment that our efforts as protesters would be better spent marching through the tree-lined streets of a community that treats tax law like a suggestion and voter suppression as folklore.
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