Protesters gather at councilwoman’s house over Ohio city’s limit on private gatherings

A small crowd of mostly white protesters gathered outside the home of a Black councilwoman in Akron, Ohio, on Saturday night to protest local health orders implemented to slow the spread of the coronavirus. 

No arrests were made during the protests, which lasted less than an hour outside the home of Tara Samples, who recorded the episode from her front porch. 

“Okay Akron here you go, here are your Trumpers in front [of] me and my mother’s house,” Samples is heard saying as she records. “I need all ya’ll to be witnesses to this ridiculousness right here.” 

Samples claimed protesters told her to call her “Black Lives Matter people” for protection. 

The city’s new order limiting public gatherings took effect late last month, and the same group protested outside the mayor’s home, the Akron Beacon Journal reported.

The group gathered outside Samples’s home also recorded the exchange from the sidewalk, and shared the video among a private group, the Beacon Journal reported. 

“It wasn’t peaceful,” Samples told the newspaper. “They can say it’s peaceful, but it wasn’t. You come to my mother’s house with bullet proof vests and guns. That’s not peaceful. That you called a police escort is troubling.”

Protesters said they plan to stage a similar demonstration outside the vice mayor’s home Monday evening. 

“When it comes to protests, protests are there to make people feel uncomfortable. Us protesting outside a building would do very much,” one of the event’s organizers told the newspaper. “We want to send that message to that person that we don’t agree with what they’re saying.”