Neo-Nazis targeted a majority-Black town. Locals launched an armed watch.

[RamsayBolton]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/02/27/village-armed-guards-ohio-neo-nazis/

In early February, a truck of neo-Nazis came to Lincoln Heights’s doorstep. Masked demonstrators — some carrying rifles — hurled racist slurs and waved flags with red swastikas on a highway overpass leading into town.

Two weeks later, on Sunday, another agitator struck, spreading racist pamphlets from the Ku Klux Klan across Lincoln Heights.

“You get punched,” said Alandes Powell, 62, a nonprofit director who lives near the town. “And someone comes and punches you again.”

The people of Lincoln Heights are used to fighting for themselves. The town originated as a self-governing Black community — the oldest north of the Mason-Dixon Line, it proclaims on its website — that lacked public services. For years, residents have complained of underinvestment and neglect. But the past few weeks have been different. Residents say they are distraught after being surrounded by hate and suspicious of police officers whom county officials criticized for not cracking down on the neo-Nazi march.

The Evendale Police Department did not respond to a request for comment. Hamilton County Sheriff Charmaine McGuffey called the neo-Nazis “cowards” in a news conference and pledged to boost patrols in Lincoln Heights and investigate further.

Both agencies said that, though the demonstrators engaged in legally protected free speech, officers ordered the demonstrators to leave and prioritized de-escalating a dangerous situation.
That wasn’t enough for some in Lincoln Heights.
“When we saw that the police wasn’t helping us, every able-bodied man in the neighborhood, with or without a gun, has stood guard and has been standing guard ever since,” said Dominic Brewton Jr., who runs a maintenance and repair company in the town.

This is how it needs to be for the coming years

 

[Rollie Forbes]

 

[Vandelay]

They want it, we would be wrong to at least not meet them halfway.