CLEVELAND – “Repent for your sins!” yelled a singular man pacing up and down Euclid Ave. He implored the crowd to turn to Jesus, amplifying his voice above the fray of revelers and delegates on the street. The further one walked down the street the more the voice dissipated barely heard until one turned the corner.
“The pope is the antichrist” was the next sign which drew the eye.
In essence the singular individuals hoisting their signs are but mere side acts to the more forceful, police worrying protests that have shut down streets in Cleveland and inspired Twitter accounts. But these individuals too believe their voices are a force for change
Freddy Christian said he was led to East 4th Street by God. Wading through the crowd he cups his wooden post in this left hand and rests on his left shoulder. Stapled to the the post are three black printed signs with white lettering, all engaging the crowd to return to the lord.
“This nation has turned against God, so here I am,” Christian said.
The printed signs suggest it may be a planned operation but Christian says he acted on his own accord because the lord asked him too. He’s from California and claims he had no idea the RNC was here. Whether or not he can believed, the point remains the same, he just wanted his cause to be heard.
But he found preaching the word isn’t always popular.
“Yesterday they did,” Christian said of if anyone had given him grief for the signs. “They broke the sign, just the bottom part of it. They cleaved onto it until they broke it.”
He doesn’t mind though, he clings to his cause no matter the opposition.
“The truth has to be said and you know a lot of people, they want to live their own life in sin,” Christian said adding the world would be better if everyone followed the teachings of the Gospel.
Susan Stephens is a black woman with two degrees, both Ivy League, Princeton and Penn. She’s small in stature and a doctor who resides in Cleveland. Dressed in her doctor’s white lab coat she balanced her sign, nearly as tall as her, in the crook of her right elbow sign reads “I Live In Fear”
How could a doctor with Ivy League degrees live in fear? The color of her skin. She came to show that her life matters and that black lives like hers matter and as she continues down the street, the back of the sign reads just that “Black Lives Matter.” She wanted to exercise her right and start a dialogue.
“There’s been a lot of safe interaction,” Stephens said. “I’ve talked to lots of people who don’t agree with me who have opposing viewpoints but we’ve had nice conversation so it’s been great.”
In a satirical effort, Michael Glazer of Bloomington, Illinois stands at the entrance to East 4th Street with a sign gripped in both hands that said “The last time the GOP cared who was in the next bathroom stall...Larry Craig was arrested.”
He came out to poke fun at the GOP and cast light on what he calls the absurdity of the bathroom bill which was passed by the North Carolina legislature earlier this year. The bill which is now law orders people to use the bathroom that corresponds to the sex listed on their birth certificate therefore transgender people must now use the bathroom that corresponds to the gender they were born with.
Larry Craig, a former Republican Senator from Idaho was arrested in 2007 in the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport for suspicion of lewd conduct in one of the airport bathrooms.
“I have friends who are trans who couldn’t be here and I feel like I’m sort of trying to give them a voice in all of this,” Glazer said. “I just think that the whole bathroom argument’s really ridiculous.”
As for the reason he wanted to be out here he said “I wanted to come out here make a funny sign and try and engage people in conversation cause I don’t really like arguing back and forth. I just want to hear what people have to say.”
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