May 26, 2019

9 Klan Members Showed Up to Their Ohio Rally. 600 Anti-Racists Came, Too.

A KKK event in Dayton sparked a huge backlash.

Counter protesters seen holding placards as they face a Ku Klux Klan affiliated group at a rally in Dayton, Ohio, May 25, 2019.Megan Jelinger/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

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A branch of the Ku Klux Klanā€”the Honorable Sacred Knights of Madison, Indianaā€”planned a rally in Dayton, Ohio, on Saturday. But when the time came to march, only nine supporters of the group showed up downtown, and they were met by 500 to 600 counterprotesters rallying against racism.

City leaders feared a rerun of the tragic events in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. But this time the anti-racists massively outnumbered the racists in the city of 140,000 in western Ohio. Opponents of the Klan held signs that read: ā€œYou Are Not Welcome Hereā€ and ā€œInjustice Anywhere Is a Threat to Justice Everywhere.ā€

 

According to Time, one popular sign among local businesses read, ā€œGet your hatinā€™ out of Daytonā€

ā€œThis ugly chapter is over, but it means we have to get back to the real work – making sure that no matter what you look like, where you come from, or who you love, that you can have a great life here in Dayton,ā€ Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley tweeted afterwards.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We canā€™t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

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