Sunny Park first got her now-14-year-old daughter in protests, marches and rallies nearly 10 years ago and said her 4-year-old son would have attended a May 10 rally, had he not had a T-ball game.
“I want them to have a future. I want them to be able to thrive,” said Park, director of Cuyahoga Falls-based Kitchen Table Voters, standing outside of First Christian Church in Cuyahoga Falls on May 10 for the Mothers & Others Standing Against Fascism rally.
One of multiple May 10 rallies throughout Ohio, including in Canton, Cleveland and Solon hosted by Ohio Progressive Action Leaders, the Cuyahoga Falls event included activists and a state senator sharing their concerns about state and federal leaders’ priorities.
Kitchen Table Voters, which hosted the Cuyahoga Falls event with Crooked River Action, Cuyahoga Falls Democratic Club and Northeast Ohio Women for Change, is focused on mobilizing people around kitchen-table issues, Park said.
“My idea is that we need to connect people to the issues,” Park said. “And they need to know what’s happening and how that is impacted by what happens in D.C. and in Columbus. I don’t need you to love your the candidate. I need you to know where they stand.”
Protesters at the Mothers & Others Standing Against Fascism rally outside of First Christian Church in Cuyahoga Falls on May 10.
Barbara Kaplan, Crooked River Action lead organizer, said she taught at Akron Public Schools in her career.
“I’m concerned with the undermining of public education,” said Kaplan, who added that she’s also concerned about “the erosion of our democracy.”
Sen. Casey Weinstein, activists oppose planned Ohio program cuts
Multiple speakers, including Ohio Sen. Casey Weinstein, D-Hudson, questioned the priorities of leadership within the federal government and Ohio General Assembly.
Republican leaders in the Ohio legislature, Weinstein said, plan to cut funding for public education from the state budget.
Christina Collins, executive director of Honesty for Ohio Education and former member of Ohio’s school board, pointed to Ohio House Speaker Matt Huffman’s plan to cut state public education funding by $2.75 billion.
“So, at the same time, we saw in November, half the school levies failed,” Collins said. “And just this week, we saw half the school levies fail.”
Collins urged the rally attendees to speak out in favor of the Fair School Funding Plan. Policy Matters Ohio states on its website that the plan takes a “bipartisan approach to school funding based on how much districts must spend to educate every child, including those who need different or additional support.”
Both Weinstein and Collins pointed to state legislators’ plans to instead fund projects like the Cleveland Browns owners’ plan to create a domed stadium in Brook Park. The Ohio House Finance Committee announced plans in April to provide $600 million in bonds for the stadium.
Weinstein told the crowd, “… we have an opportunity and a moment where you’ve got a national message of people really seeing the things that Elon Musk and the billionaire class are doing, buying their way into our wallets and unraveling our government. And that is absolutely the same thing we are seeing at the state level.”
Ohio Sen. Casey Weinstein, D-Hudson, speaks at the Mothers & Others Standing Against Fascism rally outside of First Christian Church in Cuyahoga Falls on May 10, 2025.
After addressing state legislators’ other planned cuts to H2Ohio, children’s cancer research and the Public Library Fund, Weinstein said, “We’re going to carry this message forward, and we are going to win in this state in 2026.”
Weinstein, who was elected to a four-year term in November 2024, confirmed after his speech that he’s “thinking about taking a next step” in government in 2026 but declined to comment on which position he’s eyeing.
Cuyahoga Falls immigration attorney urges more action
Cuyahoga Falls-based immigration attorney Farhad Sethna said he wrote a speech for the May 10 event but ended up not reading it and instead opting to speak “straight from the heart.”
Sethna said he proposed community members set up groups. The groups could include demonstrators, attorneys to represent people who get arrested and people who are focused on bailing out those who have been arrested.
He added that detention and deportation of immigrants has increased in the Akron area since mid-April, when he spoke in an Akron Roundtable panel. In the panel, he alleged due process violations by the U.S. government around immigration enforcement.
“The NEOCC, the Northeast Ohio correctional facility in Youngstown, Ohio, is at capacity,” Sethna said on May 10. “They are trying to add new institutions to house detainees all of the time. I am sure that in the very near future, the Portage County Jail will also become a facility for detainees if it isn’t already because the Portage County sheriff signed a 287(g) agreement with ICE to deputize sheriff’s deputies to perform immigration functions.”
International Institute of Akron Executive Director Madhu Sharma, left, and immigration attorney Farhad Sethna talk about the state of U.S. immigration at the Akron Roundtable luncheon on April 17.
What was the turnout at ‘Mothers & Others’ rally?
About 200 people attended the rally, holding signs around the church and on sidewalks on both sides of the street as passing cars honked in support.
Rally attendees chanted with Park, “This is what democracy looks like!”
Patrick Williams covers growth and development for the Akron Beacon Journal. He can be reached by email at pwilliams@gannett.com or on X, formerly known as Twitter, @pwilliamsOH. Sign up for the Beacon Journal’s business and consumer newsletter, “What’s the deal?,” at bit.ly/42LtqbS
This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Sen. Casey Weinstein: Government ‘unraveling’ at state, federal levels