By Brett Milam
Editor
As the chaos and national attention begins to fade from Bethel, the residents are left assembling the hard conversations about racism, absent shouting and police officers as a barrier. 
On June 27, residents and others who grew up in or near Clermont County, attended a “unity conversation” at the pavilion in Burke Park for that express purpose.
Organized by Batavia resident Rachel Lamb, who lived in Bethel for three years, the event was advertised as a way to bring people together with diverse opinions to “listen and learn from one another.”
“These events have led many of us that live in rural America to reflect on our little towns and their role in the systematic racism that still plagues our country. They have led us to dream of the conversations that could be had instead of the violent altercations,” Lamb said in an email.
A large part of what brought the chaos down upon the village June 14 was due to self-described motorcycle gangs thinking “outsiders” were coming to the village to loot and riot. Instead, hundreds of bikers armed with bats and guns encountered a dozen peaceful protesters, largely from Bethel, with signs standing on the sidewalk.
Still, the chaos continued apace germinated from a toxic fervor spurned on by social media. Scuffles occurred, signs were ripped and stolen, and racist slurs were hurled. When the chaos cleared, and the viral videos penetrated the national attention, a village trying to brand itself as, “Bethel; Small Town, Big Hart,” saw itself instead in the spotlight as the latest flare up of apparent rural uneasiness with race.
When that chaos receded, Lamb kept going back to that original concern over outsiders, and the question she heard repeated by many counter-demonstrators, “Why are you in Bethel?”
“They couldn’t figure out how their little town was connected to the Black Lives Matter movement,” she said. “They had been watching on their TVs thousands of people protesting in cities all over America. They’d been watching the riots, the fires, the looters. What does this have to do with rural America?”
Instead of doing more protesting and marching, Lamb and her co-partner on the event, Brian Garry, longtime resident and activist, decided to do introspection instead about how to better communicate the message of Black Lives Matter, racism and policing issues to a small, rural town of predominantly white people.
“We need to have empathy for other people’s experiences. Most importantly, we need to start talking about what role small town America plays in racism,” she said.
Garry also said they are starting to refer to it as “black lives matter, too,” to help make the point that, of course, all lives matter, but black lives matter, too.
An activist for 40 years with a Democratic mother and a Republican father, Garry walks around with a gun-holstered to his hip, and passionate pleas to the other side for whomever will listen.
“Because part of the problem is communication. If I’m communicating with you and you misunderstand me, it’s my fault for not communicating clearly. This is what I was taught. It’s incumbent upon me to communicate properly,” he said.
Or another slogan that’s become popular in protests throughout the country: defund the police. Garry explained that he sees it as more “reallocate.”
“It doesn’t mean we don’t have any police,” he said.
No counter-demonstrators formally showed up at the event, but about a dozen or so individuals supportive of Black Lives Matter showed up to sit at the pavilion in a roundtable discussion.
Alicia Gee, who organized the original protest on June 14, also showed up briefly to show her support for what Lamb was doing.
The roundtable started with everyone introducing themselves, telling the group why they were there and then one or two fun facts about themselves.
Clint Herron, a resident, was at the roundtable, and also at the second days of protests on June 15. He carried with him a sign then and at the roundtable that said, “Survey: How much can we agree?” with four points: 1.) Police should not be above the law; 2.) Good cops should be able to weed out bad cops without getting fired; 3.) Liberty and justice for all; and 4.) Justice for Breonna Taylor, Kenneth Walker, John Crawford III, Daniel Shaver, and every murder passed over by the legal system.
Herron said it’s easy to focus on a few bad interactions, and he didn’t want to surrender the narrative of what is representative of Bethel.
“By and large, no matter which side you’re on, the most popular answer was four out of four agreement on these four things, and these are very actionable things we can move forward on together without making it about Republican versus Democrat, or people who constantly want to drive us apart because that sells in the media or sells politically,” he said. “So that’s why I’m here, to try to help build bridges.”
Luke Gilday, who grew up in New Richmond, was there with his mother, Lana Stacy Gilday, who used to coach New Richmond High School volleyball, said what struck him the most about what happened was the number of people saying they didn’t need BLM in Bethel.
“But I grew up in New Richmond, just down the road, so I kinda know firsthand that racism is everywhere out here. It doesn’t look like it does downtown Cincinnati, it doesn’t feel like it does, but it’s definitely here and it definitely needs to be addressed,” he said. “I think the main reason why I’m here is to try to figure out how to have those conversations, and how to address the racism, and the issues we have here in ways that people who live here will respond to.”
Lana Stacy said her sons, like Luke, have been opening her eyes to the issue, and she was there to learn and listen.
Last to introduce herself, Lamb said she’s been a “keyboard warrior” on Facebook for some time now, but the June 14 protest was like seeing that anger behind the screen brought to life on the street, and “that means things have gotten pretty bad.”
“This is exactly where we need to be having conversations about racism because the unfortunate truth is that lack of diversity breeds racism,” she said.
As an example, she talked about her grandfather, who she called a racist man, and how his remarks became normalized as, “Oh, that’s just grandpa.”
“And I know when I say that story, every single person from a rural town has a story like that,” she said. “And we love them, and they’re our family, but it’s just, racism is here. And we need to stop ignoring it.”