July 19, 2025
Urban Native Collective condemns the violent police response against our families, faith leaders, and community.
CINCINNATI, OH- On Thursday July 17th, Urban Native Collective members joined faith leaders, community members, and families at a peaceful vigil held for the release of our relative, former Cincinnati Children’s chaplain Imam Ayman Soliman, currently detained by ICE in Butler County.
At Urban Native Collective we call each other “relatives” because this word holds a deeper truth about our connection. Whether Native or immigrant, undocumented or displaced, Black, Palestinian, Two-Spirit, or LGBTQIA2S+, we share a common history of forced removal, and the resilience that comes from surviving it.
After the vigil concluded, community members joined together to walk across the Roebling Bridge and were met with police violence and suppression. Peaceful demonstrators, elders, and faith leaders were met with a show of force by means of 48 officers deploying pepper balls, clubs, rubber bullets, K9’s and tasers.
These experiences are ones our community knows all too well; we have been removed by broken treaties and violence, forced to flee our homelands destabilized by war, extraction, and foreign intervention. We have been punished for moving freely, for speaking our languages, for living as ourselves and refusing to disappear. The right to exist, to move on our lands, or even gather has been targeted again and again.
Following the actions by the Covington Kentucky Police on the Roebling Bridge Thursday July 17, 2025, we call for accountability and full investigation by the City of Covington, and stand with our families, elders, community and friends who endured this trauma and deserve justice.
As Indigenous people, we acknowledge the interconnectedness of our struggles for liberation, and stand firm in the fact that colonial systems of oppression, in all of their forms, are a threat to us all. Yet despite this, our communities continue to show deep strength and resilience, and through wisdom, prayer, love, and unity we honor our ancestors, care for one another, and persevere.
Link to support our relatives with bail, legal fees, and additional unprecedented expenses.