CLEVELAND, Ohio — A pro-Palestine protest took over downtown Cleveland Friday afternoon.
The group started at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and went up to Public Square and City Hall. Police temporarily shut down East 9th Street, the on and off ramps to the Shoreway, and intersections all around the city as the group marched.
"I know that there has been a mass shortage of police officers," protestor Chance Emad said, "so to use their resources in this way for whatever overtime that they're trying to get, I don't understand the purpose."
The group called for a ceasefire in Gaza amid the Israel-Hamas war, and demanded Cleveland leaders pass a resolution saying that.
"No matter how much they've been ignoring us, we will continue to come out, we will continue to do demonstrations, to shut down city streets," Riley Petro told 3News. "Whatever's needed in order to make our voices heard."
Many of the same protestors were at Monday night's City Council meeting, and their chanting in the chambers cut the gathering short.
"We were so frustrated, because it was 10 weeks of us coming," Jenna Muhieddine said. "And again, they passed a resolution for Ukraine within four days."
"We've been there for 10 weeks now. Ten weeks," Emad added. "So we want our city officials to see us as human. We want Cleveland to know that Palestinians are a vital fabric of our community of our society. We are Clevelanders, too."
Emad is from Cleveland Heights, but has family in Gaza. He says he's lost more than 30 family members in the war.
"My aunt, sister-in-law, their house was bombed," he recounted. "And due to that, the whole family died — the grandchildren, the grandparents, and everything."
Earlier in the week, City Council President Blaine Griffin told WKYC that Council doesn't feel like they should issue something on record that could potentially put them at odds with the U.S. government if the conflict escalates and the U.S. gets involved. 3News reached out to Cleveland police to inquire about the number of officers and if overtime was paid, but we have not heard back.