the man shot and killed by police at Mount Carmel St. Ann's medical center in Westerville — but they also were about much more.
All of those Black men were killed by law-enforcement officers in central Ohio in recent months.
Yet it takes just one look at the signs that many protesters carry — such as “Columbus is Not Safe for Black People” and “The Whole Damn System is Guilty As Hell” — to see that the protests represent pain and anger that have grown over many decades.
They are an expression, activists and experts say,
of the collective frustration that has built up in the Black community for being held down by systemic inequities in American institutions. Those institutions include housing, education, banking and government, but the results of this racism are felt most sharply and consequentially when it comes to law enforcement.