I was born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio. I have watched it move through various stages of evolution. I saw segregation�"whites only" restaurants and parks�and the urban renewal process, which destroyed several Black neighborhoods. I have seen our city go from a population of over 500,000 to less than 370,000. I have seen Cincinnati move through national recessions with the greatest of ease and maintain unemployment rates below that of the national average. It was rated the Most Livable City in 1993.

Cincinnati now sits in the national spotlight, building an Underground Railroad "Freedom" Center and vying for the 2012 Olympics. If you did not know better, you would think Cincinnati is in great shape when it comes to relationships and economic progress. If you did not know better, you would think all is well in the Queen City.

Well, I do know better, and believe me, all is not well. There have been 15 (one list says 18) Black men killed by police officers in this town since 1995. If any city has had more of these kinds of killings over the past five years, please let me know about it. The latest statistics indicate Cincinnati is one of the safest cities�for your automobile. Too bad that�s not also true for Black men.

The latest killing took place on Saturday, April 7, 2001. A 19-year-old Black man, Timothy Thomas, was shot in the chest by a police officer. It is said that young Tim had some outstanding warrants for, of all things, traffic violations that included not wearing a seat belt and other misdemeanors. I must have been asleep when they made traffic violations punishable by death. Oh yes, they say he ran away, too. Maybe he was shot because he made the police officers tired.

This has been going on for years, and the politicians once again are saying they are going to fix it. Yeah, right. I have been wondering what the magic number for dead Black men is; well, now we know, according to some of the politicos, that number is 15. I am still trying to figure out why that number wasn�t set at "1." We count to one in most other things, e.g., the first Black CEO, the first Black police chief, etc. Why not when brothers are getting killed?

No, Cincinnati is far from being well. It is sick, very sick, and it is on the verge succumbing to its illness. Blacks comprise nearly 50 percent of the population, but that statistic makes little or no difference vis-�-vis criminal justice, economic justice, social justice, and environmental justice. (They put a landfill right in the middle of a Black neighborhood�a landfill that for years festered and spewed its poisonous gases right into the homes of poor little children. Some of the homes had to be destroyed because of the landfill�s stench and health hazards.)

I could go on, but my space is too limited to describe the entire range of the problems here. Suffice to say that Cincinnati, or Cincinn-apathy, as I call it, is not the place you want to be, despite what you will be seeing in the marketing campaigns for the 2012 Olympics and the National Underground Railroad Museum; and don�t let me forget the two stadiums built with taxpayer dollars that provided little or no economic opportunities for Black people.

This summer, thousands of Black visitors will come to Cincinnati, and they will spend a great deal of money. Considering all of the conventions scheduled to meet here this summer, there is so much irony in the fact that the Blacks in Criminal Justice Association is one of them. That�s right, Blacks in Criminal Justice meeting in a city where there is no criminal justice for Black people. Black criminal justice is indeed an oxymoron.

Finally, once again, after the 15th Black man has been killed, many of our people are saying we can vote our way out of this mess. Others say we need another commission to solve the problem. Of course, the commission needs about a quarter of a million dollars to do the job. Others say we need diversity training for the police.

Well, I say we need to do what (television news host) Bill O�Reilly said he was doing and wished every American would do to the Chinese who are holding our service people: Boycott. [They have since been released.] Also, on ABC News there was a feature on the Chinese situation as well. And the same refrain arose. The commentator said it�s the lack of American business that will make the Chinese buckle. Why are we so unwilling to commit to the same strategy in Cincinnati?

If we withhold our dollars from the businesses that depend on us as consumers, all the while pooling some of those dollars to build our own economic foundation, the CEO�s of those companies would be the ones doing the protesting at City Hall. When that happens, you had better believe things will change, the most important of which will be the killing of our Black men.

Please pass this on to everyone you know. We must let the world know what is going on here in Cincinnati, Ohio.