The jury in the #BlackPride4 trial deliberated until 7pm on Friday, February 9. They broke for the weekend. Their deliberation will continue on Monday, February 12.

Day Five - #BlackPride4 Trial

Once again, the #BlackPride4 trial courtroom was packed. All seats were filled inside courtroom 13-A and there were another 20 or so community supporters in the hall.

In the finest tradition of mutual aid, the supporters were providing lunch for each other to the point that the judge had to admonish them after break that while it was a “public forum” she didn’t want the courtroom trashed.

The supporters immediately went to work tidying up the place.

Early in the trial, the Columbus Police Officer in charge, Hasan, said the orders of the day were for the police to use verbal commands first if someone was blocking the Parade, followed by escorting them out of the street, and finally using mace if they didn’t comply.

One of the witnesses’ testimony indicated that the police disregarded the first two stages and proceeded to macing and the forcible take-downs and arrests of the demonstrators.

The courtroom was again full of #BlackPride4 supporters.

City Prosecutor Isaac Rinsky called the Chair of the Stonewall Board of Trustees, Dr. Tom McCartney, to the witness stand. McCartney testified that he carried a banner at the front of the Pride Parade and went into detail on how it is the largest Pride Parade in the Midwest.

McCartney sated that people who want to march in the Parade must sign up for the Parade in advance. He stated that Stonewall does not accept hate groups, and groups that march must have non-discrimination policies. McCartney, who admitted that he didn’t witness the #BlackPride4 protest, said that he thought the protestors stopped the Parade.

Video shown after the event last July had revealed that the Parade continued around the protestors. 

The fact that the protestors were invited to march in the Pride Parade with  the International Socialist Organization and the Green Party has thus far been left out of the trial. The Green-Socialist alliance had been marching near the end of the Parade.

Garry Davis was a young Broadway actor in 1941, an eager understudy for Danny Kaye in a Cole Porter musical called “Let’s Face It” about US Army inductees, when America entered World War Two and he found himself heading for Europe in an actual soldier’s uniform. This war would change his life. Davis’s older brother, also now fighting in Europe, was killed in a naval attack. Garry Davis was flying bombing missions over Brandenberg, Germany, but he could not bear the realization that he was helping to kill other people just as his beloved brother had just been killed. “I felt humiliated that I was part of it,” he later said.

Thursday, February 8, 7-8:45pm
St Stephen's Episcopal Church, 30 W Woodruff