AKRON, Ohio — Wednesday is Juneteenth and celebrations took place all over Northeast Ohio. Down in Akron, the city government and the Akron Urban League hosted a big event at the John S. Knight Center on Wednesday.
The event was set up amidst some controversy. The event was originally supposed to be hosted by only the Akron Urban League at their headquarters. But at the last minute, Akron Mayor Shammas Malik asked if they would collaborate with the city to host the event at the John S. Knight Center as a way of placating vendors who lost money after he had canceled this past weekend’s Juneteenth events.
On Friday, Malik called those weekend events off after getting a letter from eight Akron council members who had safety concerns in the wake of the June 2 mass shooting that left one dead and 27 injured.
His team invited disappointed vendors to Wednesday’s event to make it up to them.
At the event, 3News spoke with a few of these vendors, starting with Tiffany Becton, owner of Honey Pot Doula, a birth and postpartum doula care provider.
Becton on Friday evening told 3News that when the mayor canceled the weekend events, she didn’t find out until hours later when she was still in the thick of her preparations.
“Yeah, I was up," Becton said. "I was up until about 2 o’clock in the morning, had no idea that we’d get canceled. I didn’t even have a warning. So, I was upset because this is a community thing, and this is what we like to do every year. This is what we’ve always done.”
We then spoke with Ogarth Thompson, owner of the Jamaican food truck Ogarth’s Kitchen.
He said he lost more than $1,200 dollars worth of food after the cancellation — which he says was brutal for him as a small business owner and father of four where every penny counts.
“But as far as telling you the night before, you're just kind of like wow, that's kind of like, 'Come on man,'” he said. “As a business owner, that's like a stab in the gut. Everything that I have comes out of my own pocket.”
He said he ended up giving some of the food to a homeless shelter but had to throw the rest away.
At the event, City of Akron Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Esther Thompson said they would make things whole, and inviting the frustrated vendors to Wednesday's event was just the beginning.
“I think it's a start, and I think it's a good start, and I think there are other things that need to happen along the way, but we have a process that we need to go through to vet that because that reimbursement is important, but I also think that today is a start,” Thompson said.
The City of Akron is asking that all affected vendors save all their receipts, and to be on the lookout for the reimbursement plan, which they hope to announce in the next two weeks.