The Status Quo Must Go: Necessity for a Movement in Lincoln Heights

Lincoln Heights is the first Black city in America. We don’t need another report. We need healing, power, and follow-through—from us. The system didn’t break. It was built this way. And we’re done asking it to love us back.

We’re choosing liberation over permission. Today. Together.

The Weight of "Business as usual"

Facts don’t lie:

• $2.5M village budget.

• Nearly $1M to the Hamilton County Sheriff for basic patrols.

• Evendale pulls $15M+ a year off a 1.2% earnings tax.

That’s not a “gap.” That’s a chokehold.

Nine village managers in seven years. Four in 2023. Auditors. Scandals. Credit cards gone wild. That’s what survival mode looks like when a Black city is starved of what it’s owed.

Then Nazis marched through our streets. We paid for protection that didn’t come. We learned—again—what our elders already knew: if we don’t protect us, no one will.

Everything changed.

Wake-Up Calls Don't Ring Twice

Oppression escalates: neglect, disinvestment, hostility, violence. If we don’t draw the line, they’ll draw it for us.

Mayor Kinsey-Mumphrey said it plain: "What if we had the mindset that the police would just take care of us? The Nazis would continue to be driving up and down our neighborhood."

We can’t outsource our liberation. We can’t contract out our safety. We can’t rent a future for our children from the same systems that bill us to fail.

This is a neighborhood teaching the nation: move like you mean it.

Why Movements Matter More Than Protests

Protests react. Movements rebuild. Protests ask for cameras. Movements build infrastructure. Protests speak. Movements transform.

When Carlton Collins says “a blueprint for how other communities respond to hate movements,” he means a playbook for power—built by residents, not press releases.

We’re doing the work:

1. We build institutions, not photo ops.

2. We catalog skills—elders, parents, youth, block by block.

3. We organize teams—government intel, builders, phone banks.

4. We audit budgets—where every dollar serves people, not bureaucracy.

Greatest Unknown? Not anymore. Our story is global. Our movement is local. Our power is personal.

Daronce Daniels asked the question every taxpayer should: "For a million dollars, what is the village getting? Maybe two officers? You're not getting things like speed bumps in the road, what the village is asking for."

We question every “that’s just how it is.” We replace it with “here’s how we make it better.”

The Cost of Staying Small

Communities don’t just disappear. They get drained.

Lincoln Heights has paid the price for decades. Evendale thrives; we’re told to be patient. A Cincinnati Police gun range sits within earshot of our homes—"a daily, visceral reminder to Lincoln Heights residents of their standing in the wider community."

That fence is a metaphor. And a memory. And a warning.

We refuse to teach our kids that this is normal. We refuse to normalize scarcity. We refuse to collude with our own erasure.

Pastor Julius Cook grounded us: "No one from the outside is coming to save the day. It will be up to Lincoln Heights residents to find a new way forward."

Call it faith. Call it strategy. We call it liberation.

The Blueprint for Change

Rule one: we are the ones we’ve been waiting for.

When hate rolled through, we didn’t freeze. We moved. We organized armed neighborhood patrols. We launched a neighborhood watch. We held each other close and held the line.

When our voices were sidelined, we built lobbying teams and government info hubs. When roads cracked and services lagged, we mapped our own builders and got to work.

This is self-determination in motion. No permission slips. No crumbs. Just community.

Building our own isn’t a slogan. It’s a schedule.

Schools as launching pads, not cages. Learning as leadership. Our children won’t inherit struggle—they’ll inherit strategy.

Your Role in the Revolution

You don’t have to be from Lincoln Heights to feel this. If your people are underfunded, over-policed, and under-heard—you’re in this story too.

So choose. Keep waiting. Or get moving.

Here’s our stance:

• We believe in community wisdom over credentials.

• We believe budgets are moral documents.

• We believe safety is a community practice.

• We believe healing and power belong together.

And we refuse:

• We refuse to pass down the same fights to our kids.

• We refuse to be grateful for scraps while others feast.

• We refuse to ask for dignity we already own.

The status quo must go—because we’ve tasted organized power. And we’re not going back.

The movement is live. Are you?

Lincoln Heights—the first Black city in America—is showing the world what happens when communities stop asking for permission and start building futures.

Ready to join the revolution? Visit EDUC8theWORLD to learn how movements are changing communities across the country.