Article published October 16, 2005
Anger, frustration drown out voice of reason
Hundreds of screaming, shrieking people gathered on the corner of Mulberry and Central, where the mayor was trying to interrupt a riot with a civics lesson.
Jack Ford waded into that crowd, bringing along his fire chief, safety director, a respected pastor, and a well-known community activist. He did this even though some of the neighbors he passed as he walked south on Mulberry toward Central strongly advised him against it.
"Don't go down there, bro! They're mad at you! You should just get in a car and GO!" said a man who was in the middle of the street with a broom, trying to sweep up what wasn't yet finished.
This wasn't all that long after a couple of dozen silly saluting Nazis, their march abruptly canceled by the cops, were whisked away under police escort. But even so, by then the day's chaos had already ceased to be about Nazis.
Mr. Ford took in the well-intended advice with a simple nod, and kept right on walking. He was headed toward a crowd, made up mostly of young people, that had been repeatedly tear-gassed by cops.
Maybe it shouldn't have been much of a surprise that when the mayor reached the crowd, the bullhorn someone handed him didn't do much good.He was quickly drowned out by the mob that circled around him, shouting and yelling and giving him their every opinion and passing thought.
"Ford, you're black! You're supposed to be one of us!" shrieked one young woman.
"Why did you allow them to be here?" one young man with a red bandanna demanded. "That's the main question, man!"
"As to why they were allowed to walk on the street, they had a right and we could not stop them legally," the mayor said.
Shouting. Screaming. Jeering.
"We got rights, too, man!"
So then Chief Bell tried.
"I have sat here for the last couple of hours," he said, bullhorn to his mouth, "and we have tore up our own neighborhoods! Our own neighborhoods!"
More shouts. More screams.
"Why were they allowed to be here? That's what I want to know!" someone from the crowd asked repeatedly.
I kept a digital recorder shoved in Jack Ford's face for most of this encounter, but it's not easy to make out much of what was said, so impassioned was this crowd, so angry. It was, perhaps, one of the few times when the mayor's hopelessly low-key demeanor didn't work against him.
I didn't know it at the time - the mob had shoved us all into one tight circle that was hard to see beyond - but as the mayor and his crew tried their level best to calm the crowd, some of the crowd was breaking into and looting a bar kitty-corner from where the mayor was trying to speak.
Just about half an hour after he set out to calm the crowd, Jack Ford recognized the futility of his efforts. He turned away from the mob to leave, even as one young woman begged, "March with us, mayor! Let US march!"
Loping back toward Wilson Park, the mayor walked down Mulberry. Chunks of bricks and rocks that had earlier flown through the air lay crumbled on the pavement.
"Some of the anger that was [directed] at the Nazis protestors," the mayor said, his voice as quiet and unruffled as ever, "is now directed at the police."
No, he insisted. This was not a riot.
"It's a group of folks who are angry," he said.
To more than a few people who live in that neighborhood, yesterday was the day their city's police protected Nazis, but used tear gas to keep residents off their own streets.
"It's frustration," said the mayor. "They didn't like their own neighborhood invaded."
After a meeting in a park field with safety officials and a few community leaders, Mayor Ford headed back down the street to try and reason once again with the crowd. But halfway down the block on Mulberry, a passing carload of men advised the mayor:
"Don't go that way. The building's on fire!"
Another man, a solemn guy alone on foot, approached the mayor.
"Please," he pleaded, "please DO NOT go back down there, man."
But as the mayor neared the corner, it was clear that the fire was more than just rumor. As gray smoke began to roll out of the second-story windows and Chief Bell leaned into his shoulder microphone to call it in, the mayor abandoned his plan to try reason one more time.
"Gang leadership is trying to get in a lot of hits on this," the mayor said, and it was true that among the crowd that had surged around him were a lot of young men dressed in the bright red associated with the Bloods.
"The officers are going to disperse them now," said Mr. Ford. "I can't think of what we would have done differently. We tried to talk to them. They didn't want to listen. And once they started the fire, it's too late."
At the outskirts of Wilson Park, the mayor stopped for a moment in the afternoon fall sunshine.
What, I wondered, had he expected from this day?
"Some protest, some complaints. I didn't anticipate this."
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