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Law and Order for Me, but Not for Thee. Morality Was Never the Issue.
Trangender people, Abortion, Critical Race Theory, Books, Wokeness, Immigrants, Crime
Many would think that the religious right would have issues with Donald Trump, convicted felon, serial cheater, the subject of numerous accusations of alleged sexual assault. As it turns out, his election has never been about moral issues.
Trump promises to protect women and at the same time paints immigrants as criminals when immigrants statistically commit fewer crimes than U.S. born citizens. One can only conclude that the far right cares more about assaults and rapes committed by immigrants than they do about those committed by U.S. citizens.
RFK Jr is a serial cheater who molested his babysitter and whose behavior appears to have led his first wife to suicide. Matt Gaetz, no longer a nominee for AG is alleged to have had sex with a minor and engaged in sex trafficking. There are details relating to an assault allegation against Pete Hegseth, a man who, like Trump, is known to have cheated on two of his three wives. Linda McMahon, inexplicably nominated as education secretary, is the subject of a lawsuit alleging that she overlooked the abuse of ring boys by a WWE anouncer. Prior to the election, hints about Trump’s relationship with the notorious Ephebophile /Pedophile Jeffrey Epstein began to emerge. Pam Bondi, his new nominee for AG was responsible for allowing Epstein to avoid consequences in Florida while she was AG there. It didn’t matter. While QAnon looks under rocks for pedophiles, they display selective blindness to Trump and his minions. To my knowledge, Elon Musk has not been accused of sexual assault but has been accused of running a hostile work environment and sexual harrassment. I am also reminded that Elon Musk has fathered 12 children, many of whom were born out of wedlock. Something that you would think would offend the ostensibly moral far right fundamentalists.
We could easily be led to believe that the other major reason that the religious right supported Trump was over the subject of abortion. If Hitler had been running for president on the promise of banning abortion, something that Hitler actually did, at least for the Aryans (at least one exception was made for a Jewish couple), much of the religious right would have voted for him. Nobody thinks that Hitler actually valued life and nobody can accuse the far right of caring about the well being of children that are not them and/or under their control. Similarly, the Republicans in congress are very concerned about a trans woman who has no history of committing sexual assault using the women’s bathroom. Why isn’t the right concerned about Pete Hegseth raping an unconscious woman, RFK Jr molesting his childrens babysitter, Linda McMahon overlooking a pedophile molesting children, Pam Bondi slapping the hand of Epstein and more importantly Trump, who has been found liable by a civil court jury of sexual assault, not to mention the many other victims of the kind of assaults that he has openly bragged about?
What most voters know about Elon Musk and Donald Trump is that they are successful businessmen, not the details about how they acquired their wealth. They don’t know about Trump’s many business failures or that while Musk’s genius lies in investing in innovative technologies, he is not necessarily the brain behind those technologies. Pete Hegseth, nominee for defense secretary, has allegedly stated that having sex with an unconscious woman should be legal and is accused of doing this exact thing, but none of these things matter.
While not all evangelical leaders are on the far right and many spoke out against Trump, those religious leaders who fueled his rise in the far right evangelical world belong to an elite group of pastors who advocate for dominionism.
Dominionism is fueled by the belief that man (and only man) has dominion over the earth. This is directly in conflict to the belief by more mainstream clergy that we are stewards of the earth. Religious movements like Quiverfull encourage large families, no birth control, traditional stay at home Mothers and homeschooling. The children of these Dominionist movements are considered to be part of an army, raised in insular communities to take over the Seven Mountains, seven areas of government and society, to reform them. These seven are Education, Religion, Family, Business, Government/Military, Arts/Entertainment and Media.
It would take too much time to go into the individuals who appear to have entered these arenas over the past few decades or the successes that they have had. The successes are many. We can expect more success over the next 4 years. There are a couple of notable dominionist individuals now in positions of power. Senator Ted Cruz is the son of evangelical leader Rafael Cruz who once dreamed that his son would become president. Supreme court justice Amy Coney Barrett was groomed by the Federalist Society, a powerful right wing organization that is responsible for the nomination of six of the current conservative justices on the court. Although a Catholic, Coney Barret was raised as a member of “People of Praise”, an extremely conservative charismatic Christian movement that some consider to be a cult.
Earth, the Dominionists believe, is there to be exploited and this is done in exchange for wealth. Wealth, they believe, is God’s reward for those who deserve it. It is Donald Trump’s wealth, not his morality, that is a signifier of his worthiness and God’s favor. RFK Jr has even been said by some to have “Christ consciousness”, “a type of spiritual awareness that is supposedly on the same level of spirituality as Jesus”. It is Elon Musk’s wealth that makes him worthy. Some believe that Trump is the savior. The fact that these men are singularly self absorbed and lack empathy (according to family members) is entirely unimportant. Women, unless they are being groomed for positions in the Seven Mountains, are meant for child rearing and expected to be subservient to their husbands.
There are many interpretations of the book of Revelations. In the Puritan era, individuals behaved as though they were upright, moral people likely to be among the chosen when Jesus returns. Some believe that the initial 144,000 will be Jewish people who have finally converted to Christianity which leads to a different but related discussion about Christian Zionists and Israel. Let’s say that if you believe one interpretation, that only 144,000 individuals are going to initially be raised to heaven when Jesus returns, it will not be trans people, the “woke mob” or their allies and supporters that go to heaven. It may be men like Trump, Musk and RFK Jr who lead them there and their morality does not matter.
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Peace Vigil Activists Eye Future As White House Readies For Change Of Hands
Washington DC—It is a sunny hot Saturday afternoon in mid-November at Lafayette Park as a steady line of tourists filter past the little white tent of the Peace Vigil outside the White House. The signs covering the tent reflect views contrary to everything the incoming administration stands for. The activists go about their daily rituals of preparing for a shift change. It’s 4 o’clock. Time seems to stand still.
Nearby the sounds of carpenter’s tools, hammers, drills, and saws, echo from the scaffolding while truck warning beepers sound across Pennsylvania Avenue as the temporary inauguration stands are slowly going up. The Peace Vigil tent has been moved back about 150 feet from its regular spot on the sidewalk. It temporarily resides just to the side of Andrew Jackson Statue, squeezed to a narrow part of the sidewalk where barely two can pass. Right on top of the tent’s regular resting place, a giant three-storied scaffolding is partially completed as carpenters and construction crews scamper like ants over its detail.
The temporary building will supposedly welcome a new president on January 20, 2025. But every activist at the Peace Vigil knows well—they won’t be welcoming him there on the sidewalk at the tent or during protests on the streets in the coming 4 years. As inauguration day approaches the entire park will be closed and the Peace Vigil will be forced to move further back to the edge of the park outside a 15-foot metal fence along Black Lives Matter Plaza.
No one at the Peace Vigil expected the reemergence of Trumpism in Washington. None of them saw this coming.
Phillipos, the Peace Vigil manager sits quietly pondering the future and silently wonders what is to come of the little tent. It’s symbolism in simplicity and minimalism is just as its creator, William Thomas envisioned. The 6-foot signs he created are long-gone, victims to weather, seasons and sun, but they have been replaced with exact replicas reading “Wanted: Wisdom and Honesty” and another sign exhibiting photographs of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki World War II nuclear bomb aftermaths. The signs are among the central themes to its message. They also challenge the willful lack of intent since President Reagan was elected, to end some of the most dire threats to humanity since the Peace Vigil’s inception in 1978 and approval of its first permit on June 4, 1981. Failure by the last seven presidents to tackle those issues has propelled it forward and made it the longest running continuous vigil for peace in the Americas—now 43 and a half years long.
Since then other issues have come to bear weight and are now intertwined with its main message and there are so many pressing issues that the activists have added signs that were handed to them after major protests over the years. The signs hang like rotting fruit from a tree and bear witness and truth against the combined procrastinations of all the presidencies since Reagan.
During the first Trump administration from 2017-2021, the Peace Vigil was a corner stone and both a beginning and ending point for many resistance protests. Washington DC swirled in chaos as a result of that administration, its indifference towards human rights and worker’s struggles spurred hundreds of protests, and created contentious social upheaval after trump unexpectedly stumbled into power in 2016. Under the Biden administration, some of the protesters left and the great volumes of surging humanity dwindled to a trickle, yet the Peace Vigil remained stoically toming the same drumbeat of issues the Biden administration discounted: Gaza, climate, greed, nuclear weapons, war, and many others.
On Saturday almost no-one was stopping to talk to the activists and the donation bucket was empty except for a few cents left by someone. Passersby seemed troubled and glum and in no mood to stop and talk about societal issues so soon after the election results just weeks before. Gone also were the multitudes of tourists, crack-pots, and odd-ball protesters who usually spring up on weekends and turn Pennsylvania into a strange cacophony of star seekers and personal grievances. A man with a cardboard box over his head, a woman reading scripture over a bullhorn begging people to repent, a man painted silver dancing to old tunes for donations, dancers and performers; protesters for Gaza, Indonesia, Ukraine and Iran freedoms, all were gone.
On Saturdays hundreds of visitors typically stop and talk to the weekend mainstay at the tent, Phillipos who is usually sitting straight across from the North Poritico of the White House. But today he was subdued and spoke queitly about the results of the 2024 election and it shows on his face and in his voice. He spoke with steady resolution about what he and the other vigilers are likely to face the possibility that the 43 years old vigil may be forced to permanently shutdown and leave the park.
Although no one knows for certain if the Peace Vigil will be forced to go, there are many indicators of the chaos and tumult that is to come, and it the possibility of the tent being removed or raided looms as the liberal administration subsumes to what many are saying is an extremist in charge of an ideological agenda walking the country backwards and towards the last century.
For one, North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, the nominee for Secretary of the Department of the Interior, the portion of government which oversees all the National Parks, including Lafayette Square Park, is a climate change denier and therefore an obstacle to renewable energy progress. A billionaire, he wants to lease much more public land for fossil fuels drilling and mineral extraction. Such environmental parasitism would practicably push the global climate emergency past the point of no return. And so it would not be much of a reach to sweep aside a small tent and a few activists.
He will also oversee the Park Police and this would certainly would mean some amount of pressure will be applied to remove the Peace Vigil tent even though it was authorized by a Court order to remain in the park. And even if it comes to outright removal Phillipos intends to keep coming back anyway. He pointed out that William Thomas and other activists stood on the sidewalk for years from 1978 to 1981 and fought countless court battles just for the right to be there; before the court finally agreed to issue a permanent permit so the Peace Vigil could remain.
The activists of the Peace Vigil get ready for a shift change. Photo: J. Zangas/DCMG
Phillipos tells that during the early months of the first Trump administration an unidentified person came to him with an official offer on White House stationary promising a modest payment package to the Peace Vigil if the activists would agree to permanently take leave. Phillipos refused the offer but countered in writing on the back of the letter with a demand for several million—the value of which he calculated from all the labor activists put into the Peace Vigil over the (then) previous 35 years. The person left with their offer and Phillipos’ counter-offer but never returned.
Phillipos knows Trump doesn’t want the Peace Vigil to remain there. And it is likely he’ll do whatever it takes to remove the little tent and its signs for good from the red bricked sidewalk. And even though the Peace Vigil permit is enshrined in law, so long as the activists maintain it continuously without sleeping, when has the law ever been an impediment to Trump’s willfulness to disobey it? It is conceivable that every time he or any other President looks out the West Wing windows of the top floor of the White House it is the tent that he sees along with the two 6-foot signs, one on either side of the tent. And it is conceivable that he wants it gone no matter what the law says.
If there is a will to resist the coming policies of the incoming administration then this is and has been an example of what that will look like. Examples of ordinary people with little means standing up for rights of others are found here on the red bricks, not in the offices of bankers and CEOs who have paid millions for access and certainly not from the desks of news pundits who fly down to Mar-e-lago to smooth away ruffled feathers so they can continue their their coverage like the news staff of Morning Joe did last week.
It’s 4 o’clock and without discussion the activists prepare for a shift change. Craig arrives on time like an atomic clock and slips into the tent where he changes into warmer clothes he’ll need as night falls in the Autumn chill. Steve-O helps Phillipos gather his belongings and pushes his wheeled chair out from the front of the tent and towards his car. Craig quietly takes his seat and resumes the Peace Vigil evening watch. There are no thanks or goodbyes exchanged, no instructions or notes to pass on, just a resolve to continue doing their duties as they have done for years and will continue doing for as long as they can.
If there’s any chance that what remains of human rights here will remain, then many more like Phillipos and the activists of the Peace Vigil are going to have to put away their fear for the future and their doubt about what is to come and their reservations of what needs to be done about it and refuse to accept that it has to be this way. They’re going to have to resolve to fight for what they believe in and not pack up and go home.
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How To Legally Fight Fascism In Your Community
Washington DC — Anne Frank wrote in her diary, “A single candle can define and defy darkness.” Her diary chronicled the last year of her family’s attempt to remain hidden in an attic from the Nazi persecution of Jews during the Holocaust. She wrote daily entries as the brutality of fascism was marching across the European continent. Her Diary was found on the floor in the attic after she and her family were betrayed, arrested, and taken to a concentration camp where they perished. Her diary stands as both an historic register of the chilling effect of fascism in Holland and a documentation of her family’s personal struggle like millions of other Jewish families under Nazi occupation.
As a teenage girl coming of age, she documented what her daily family life was like living under fascism. It barely mentions the oppression of Nazism and to the contrary it chronicles her daily existence and yearning to be free and flourish. But unwritten between her prose is outlined the unfortunate results communities could face by ignoring a growing influence of authoritarian oppression of minorities in their communities. It also serves as a warning to future generations that standing by and allowing a cult of personality to take over the democracy of a republic, as what happened in Germany, can have terrible consequences for generations to come. For Germany the rise of fascism under Hitler resulted in the near total destruction of cities across Germany during World War II.
Nazis unjustly imprisoned Frank simply because of her race—she was Jewish. Her journal was found and published later and became a story of resistance demonstrating how even one person could impose themself against oppression and authoritarianism. The end of World War II saw the defeat of the Nazi regime and the toppling of major authoritarian states. Yet others rose in their wake.
This is the Part III of III in a series about the state of democracy in the U.S. Link to Part I is here and Part II is here.
Fascism in the United States
Fascism in the United States seems improbable, almost impossible, for we have two political parties and everyone gets an opportunity to vote, right? How can U.S. democracy possibly become what it helped defeat during WWII? We must think again about this because fascism is right on the doorstep of this country.
The United States is moving in the direction of 1935 Berlin and there are signs of it everywhere and what is worse, many are watching it happen and expecting someone else to do something about it. There has been a sharp trend in oppressive groups since the rise of Trumpism in 2015. In recent years the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers along with the Alt-right have joined with supremacy groups in manner mirroring the rise of fascism of pre-war Germany, Italy, and Japan. Like 1935 Berlin, they recite the same types of rhetoric the Nazis did. They have changed the language slightly but their methods are the same.
The Nazi party was not in a majority in Parliamentary Germany during the depression that hobbled the world economy after World War I, but through coercive means the Nazi party gained domination by undermining democratic institutions and seizing power from all the other political groups.
The nazis scapegoated Jews, the LGBTQIA2S community, disabled persons, and other minorities to grow a following, and by falsely casting minority groups as the culprits of Germany’s foundering economy, and post WWI difficulties, the Nazi party created fake enemies by which to gain trust of others and leverage eventual control of the German government.
But what if the German citizens who had objected to their methods had collectively joined together in a communal stand against Hitler and his minority of nationalists before they built enough power to bully and overwhelm Berlin’s democratic republic? What if they had not engaged “anticipatory obedience” towards the rising wave of fascism?
How Not to Obey Fascism
A political scientist who studies nationalist groups has written a pamphlet outlining street-legal strategies to help communities organize to stop fascism. “40 Ways To Fight Fascism,” by Spencer Sunshine, is a useful guide activists and community groups can reference at a time when oppressive groups are rooting in communities across the country. Sunshine is distributing the pamphlet free to activists and to anyone who requests a copy.
The booklet is the product of many years’ of Sunshine’s field work studying the methods and habits of nationalists and how their ideology toxifies communities. Sunshine’s work has brought him toe to toe with the extremism of the far-right in both body and in pen. And his advice on useful methods to stop fascism before it roots deeply is the harvest of that experience.
The pamphlet was originally published in 2017 as a “zine,“ a free how-to-do-it booklet. Zines are often made by hand and written under pseudonyms, distributed for free, and educate with alternative and practical useful methods ordinary citizens can take on a wide range of topics. Zines also serve to get communities to mobilize for practical solutions based on specific needs within the community, independent of regulatory governance, corporate influence, and political parties, which typically extract resources from communities instead of building them from within.
For example, what if local communities planned their own free markets and held free markets periodically using their self-help and resources. This concept of collective independence binds a community to itself and gives it the autonomy to determine its own successful outcomes. The same positive outcomes can come from within communities politically and make them less dependent upon established political parties which always extract the natural synergetic energy from communities. They’re always requesting donations during elections but one scarcely hears back following election day.
What Is Fascism?
Its easy to throw this word around without understanding what it is, and how it subjugates citizens, and how its mechanics undermines communities by targeting certain minority groups in communities. In essence it is a process by which fringe-conservative ideologies are spread and then coerce power and control as an extremist group attempts to exert its influence over the entire community. Through oppressive behaviors, such as misogyny, racism, bigotry, and sexism, nationalists and far right-wing groups focus attention on latent fear which others in the mainstream harbor of minorities and outsider groups. Nationalists drum up suspicion and fear towards minorities while promoting their ideas as solutions. The Nazis scapegoated Jews and other minorities like the LGBTQIA2S community to gain more and more control over prewar Germany. Fascist parties have a cult of personality at their center around which the party binds itself to its leader. He alone can save the nation from peril. He alone can protect them. He is a god-sent savior.
The U.S. has seen how the Trump administration dog-whistled minorities by attacking immigrants, the Transgender community, Muslims, Mexicans, the Puerto Rican community, women, political opponents, and progressives by reducing their rights and accessibility or by threatening them openly. Trump often attacked the press as well to mute dissent against his narratives. One example of this was to blame immigrants for crime, economic difficulties, and reduced job opportunities. For example, he touted building a wall to keep immigrants and Mexicans out of the country and he banned Muslim immigration from several African nations during his administration.
Consequences of Fascism in the U.S.
The roots of U.S. fascism trace back to the settlers’ occupation of this land. Settlers attacked the indigenous tribes, forced them to walk onto reservations by means of lopsided treaties, destroyed their tribes and culture, and took their land outright. This oppression wasn’t described as fascism at the time but it had the same effect on indigenous people who had lived in the US for millennia before white settlers “discovered” it.
Oppression grew for a period in the 1950s during the “Red Scare” when Senator McCarthy convened hearings to out communists in the government, Hollywood, and in corporations.
But it sprouted in a full floral display in 2016 and 2017 in the wake of Trumpism as populism took root and nationalists found support for racist ideology from Trump’s speeches and immigration policies. Trump spoke the language of white nationalists in his policies by targeting muslims from “shithole countries,” as he said when he banned immigration from five predominantly Muslim countries. He targeted latinos by saying Mexico would pay for a “beautiful wall” on its border to keep immigrants out of the U.S. He termed the Corona Virus the “China Flu,” a racist dogwhistle taking attention away from his administration’s failure to effectively prepare for and fight the spread of the deadly Corona Virus during the pandemic. He said of the Charlottesville extremists there were “fine people.” Meanwhile supremacy groups such as the Proud Boys, white nationalists, and the Alt-Right began to organize in the space he created for them.
In late 2016, Richard Spencer held a conference for his group The National Policy Institute at the Ronald Regan International Trade Building, Opponents in Washington DC took to the streets of outside because the Reagan Trade Center permitted Spencer’s conference to be held there. Warnings across the country should have been loud enough by then of what was to come. Spencer’s group met later that night in Washington DC for a celebration at a restaurant but their group was challenged by local citizens who saw his hatred and rejected it. There were clashes in the streets and mainstream media largely avoided reporting about it.
On December 2016 a large contingent of nationalists held a “Deplora-Ball” to celebrate Trump’s election. The night saw violent conflict in the DC streets near the National Press Building not far from the White House, the type of conflict not seen since the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
On August 10 and 11, 2017 Richard Spencer and Jason Kessler co-organized their ‘Unite The Right’ rally over the impending removal of a statue of Civil War General, Robert E. Lee at Lee Park in Charlottesville Virginia. Spencer led an antisemetic torch rally on the University of Virginia campus on the hot night of August 11. They chanted, “ Jews will not replace us.”
The next day Spencer and Kessler joined former KKK leader David Duke in the rally which led to the Charlottesville riots. The rally included neo-nazi groups, supremacy groups, Proud Boy chapters from multiple states, white nationalists, and other far-right fringe groups from States across the East Coast. The groups confronted and turned on counter-protesters. An African-American youth was beaten by a group of extremists from the Robert E. Lee Statue rally just because he was in a parking garage car lot when they arrived. James Fields, one of the nationalists participating at the rally, later drove his car directly into a counter protest as it was just getting underway, stiking and killing Heather Heyer and striking and injuring 20 others. Virginia Governor Ralph Northam activated the Virginia National Guard as Charlottesville police declared an unlawful assembly.
After the 2020 Presidential election and near the end of Trump’s term, there was a massive mobilization of Proud Boys in Washington DC after the MAGA rallies of November and December 2020. These actiions resulted in several venerable and historic churches being vandalized, four stabbings, and many injuries.
The January 6 2020 insurrection was the culmination of 4 years’ of Trumpism and a rise of nationalism and fascism come to full bloom in Washington DC. As thousands descended on the Capital, Trump, along with his White House lawyer, John Eastman, his Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, along with many others working in the background, organized and instigated thousands to riot at the U.S. Capitol over false claims the election was “rigged” or “stolen.” The ‘stolen election’ became known as the “Big Lie.” The insurrectionists delayed the democratic process of counting the States’ electoral votes to confirm the presidential election as provided by the 12th Amendment of the Constitution. The thousands assembled at the Capitol came very close of ending the peaceful transfer of power that day.
Now comes the 2024 presidential election and the supporters of Trumpism have circled around their single leader. They support him no matter what he says or does. He has promised “retribution“ against anyone who has previously opposed him. He has threatened to use the military against his political opponents. He has promised to be a “dictator,” if only for a day (there has never been a dictatorship that lasted a day—authoritarian leaders get into power and remain there until they die or are forcefully removed).
The U.S. is as close in its history to fascism as it has ever been and it is moving more closely towards it because Trump has created a space for it from his visible platform. If it successfully roots it could well lead to a generation or longer without a Republic.Authoritarians openly telescope their beliefs, ideas, and intentions because they need to appeal and motivate their base.
Whether or not Trump wins or loses the 2024 election is an issue entirely different from the issue of whether or not fascism is gaining traction in the United States. Trump’s base is dedicated to him no matter what he says or does. Trump’s base will continue supporting him whether or not he wins the 2024 election.
How to Fight Fascism
Spencer’s pamphlet outlines how community organizers can put power back in the hands of the community because fascism can rise often with the consent of the State. But if it is recognized and challenged early in its growth stage, it can be stopped. But it is the will of the people to determine fascism’s fate. They must be educated about it, aware that it is there, and engaging it in their community. Voting by itself is an inadequate level of engagement to keep fascism at bay—we learned this very well in 2020. The solution offered by the Democratic Party to “just vote” is not only disempowerment but it is a risk not worth taking. Yes, voting is essentially important but it the minimum amount of engagement communities should be taking.
Communities have the ultimate say in whether they will allow nationalism to lead to fascism and flourish in their midst. But they must be proactive and get out in front of it and deal with it directly, according to Sunshine.
The pamphlet is a practical organizer’s tool for ordinary citizens on how to organize, mobilize, and pool their talent and resources to stop fascist agendas from taking over and strangling democratic institutions in their communities. The common threads are to be aware, be educated, get involved, and to take action in the areas where their skills are best suited.
Skills extend from fulfilling support roles to joining community groups that track and monitor nationalist groups and members in their cities and regions
DCMediaGroup interview with Spencer Sunshine Taken on November 20, 2020
DCMG: What drew you to this line of activism?
Sunshine: It was actually how I first got into political work. I grew up in a small town in Georgia that was a locus of Far Right politics; there were regular Klan rallies and our Congressional Rep was the John Birch Society’s president. I was in the punk scene when the Nazi skinhead movement exploded in the late 1980s, and even though I was not particularly political, being of Jewish descent and having a black girlfriend immediately put me at odds with them. I ended up hooking up with an anti-Far Right counter-organizing group in Atlanta, and through that I and some other teenage punks formed what we’d now call an antifascist group to counter the domination by the Nazi skins in the local punk scene.
Around 2005, some different things brought me back to this work. One was finding out that crypto-fascists (called “National Anarchists”) had created new political groups which were trying to cross-recruit anarchists and others. (In retrospect this ended up being only part of a moment where fascist politics were being reconfigured; Alt Right became the most popular example of this, but initially it was only one of many).
So between that, and my past experience, I started learning more about—and counter-organizing against—the contemporary Far Right. I found that it was a growing movement and that there was plenty of work to do. Eventually this work took over my life!
DCMG: Why is this fighting Fascism an important issue in these times?
Sunshine: Far Right groups—which include everyone from Trump to neo-Nazis—have been in a period of intense activity since 2015. If you look historically, this movement goes in boom-and-bust cycles in the United States, and—buoyed by the president—it’s had a bull market for years.
DCMG: Why is it important for ordinary (not just activists) to get involved in pushing back against fascist ideologies in their communities?
Sunshine: Over the last four years, it’s been very clear that the national progressive non-profits and others are not going to do any substantive grassroots work to contain this movement (even though some groups do important lawsuits and research). So it’s really up to grassroots activists to contain local Far Right organizing.
DCMG: There are 40 ways…why did you pick the number 40?
Sunshine: Well, originally it was 50 but after I worked through them, 40 was how many solid, different ones I came up with. Basically I just wrote down all the different strategies that I had done, witnessed, or heard about from all kinds of groups. These ranged from German antifascists, community-based groups and non-profits, anti-racist skinheads, and of course the U.S. antifascist movement of the last few decades, from Anti-Racist Action on. PopMob, the group I did the revised version with, also added in the things that had been successful for them.
DCMG: What other projects are you focused on at the present?
Sunshine: I regularly write about where the US Far Right is at and heading to for a variety of platforms, especially Truthout. I’m working on a number of books, including co-editing an anthology of essays dedicated to longtime Far Right monitor Chip Berlet, who has just retired after 40 years. I am also writing a book about the origins of James Mason’s book Siege, which has become the bible of the terrorist wing of today’s young neo-Nazis.
What can people do to push back against the rising trend towards authoritarianism and/or fascism who don’t want to be directly involved?
(I knew the guide addresses this question but I wanted to ask Sunshine anyway.)
40 Ways to Fight Fascists offers a number of options which you can do from the comfort of your own home and which pose no risk. These include helping people injured by fascists and those who are imprisoned fighting them, as well as aiding the families of those who have been murdered.
What are several of the most important of the 40 ways to fight fascism?
They are all pieces of a bigger puzzle, because you don’t want to have just one or two in play—that can be dangerous. That said, doxxing them and spreading that information is the best, most effective legal and non-violent tactic available to grassroots organizers.
Anything else you would like to add about writing the guide?
Even if Trump slinks off the national stage relatively peacefully, the Far Right isn’t going to just go “poof!” and disappear. I hope that this guide can help inspire people to take action against this toxic political movement.
DCMG: What can you tell me about yourself?
Sunshine: The less you know the better! Fash always want to find this more about me. Let me just say: no matter who you are, what your identity is, or what skills you have—you can make a concrete contribution to fighting fascism.
Link to 40 Ways to Fight Fascism here.
Tools For Fighting Racism
Popular Resistance offers a free online course which connects the dots in the relationship of racism and healthcare denial to minorities. You may access it here.
Salon article and references to what Fascism is and how it can strangle a democratic republic can be found here.
Video explaining fascism by Robert Reich, Inequality Media Civic Action here.
Grassroots organizations you may explore to educate yourself about or plug into to organize against nationalism and fascism:
Idavox.com (One People’s Project)
It’s Going Down: https://itsgoingdown.org
Centre for analysis of the Radical Right:
www.radicalrightanalysis.com
Western States Center: www.westernstatescenter.org
Montana Human Rights Network: https://mhrn.org
Rose City Antifa: www.rosecityantifa.org
Political Research Associates: www.politicalresearch.org
Institute for Research on Male Supremacism: www.malesupremacism.org
Examples of Successful Community Organizing
In 2022 to the present the Drag community became known among extremist groups for their story hour book readings for children. The extremist channels began targeting Drag Story Hour readings and by harassing and terrorizing the families who took their children to these events. The purpose of these events were to engage families and interest children in education by reading and theatrically performing children’s stories.
In response to the various community groups organized direct action umbrella lines outside the venues in advance to shield children and families attending the readings from the harassment by extremists. They actually held colorful umbrellas and danced to music outside the venues to thwart extremists’ attempts to disrupt them. Extremists including Proud Boy groups and evangelicals would show up at the reading venues to try to disrupt or stop them altogether. The community participants held the line while others activists provided lookout support nearby by walkie-talkies to keep the venues safe. Police would often show up but were completely ineffective at protecting the families.
Stories on these citizen-led actions are here and here.
Whenever extremists have tried to rally or march in Washington DC the community has organized to let them know their rhetoric and racism is not welcome here.
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January 6 Coup Plot Was Much Closer To Undoing The 2020 Election Than Many Think
Washington DC—The January 6, 2021 coup attempt was the culmination of a carefully laid plan to seize power from Joe Biden, the clear winner of the 2020 Presidential election. Its coup-plotter in chief, Donald Trump, nearly succeeded. If not for several unforeseen circumstances his plans would have made him the 46th President. But how close to overturning the election did he and his coconspirators come? And what would have happened had they prevailed? We take a detailed look at what happened on that fateful January 6, what the consequences could have been, and whether or not such a chain of events can be prevented from ever happening again.
This is part II of a III part series of reports of the state of democracy in the United States. It outlines significant events leading up to the January 6 2021 U.S. Capitol Insurrection which were not widely reported, and discusses flaws in the election system contributing to it, and the continued effects of the insurrection on the 2024 presidential election. It further discusses what can be expected in the days after general public voting has finished on November 6, 2024.
Introduction
Donald Trump’s deadly attempt to forcibly halt certification of the 2020 U.S. presidential election came closer to success than many realize. His influence on his base is still widely under appreciated. What is worse is this influence has largely remained unchanged nearly 4 years on and that he continues to call the election “rigged” and claim it was “stolen.” He still holds stunning sway over tens of millions of his ardent supporters despite an enormous number of incidents that would have ended the political careers of most others. Among the worst of those is having been indicted on multiple counts in multiple court cases in separate States:
1. He faces indictment and trial in the U.S. District Court in Washington DC on four charges in connection with his alleged attempts to overthrow the presidential election.
2. In a Georgia State court case he has been indicted along with 18 others in league with him or working inside his administration, for their combined alleged roles in Georgia State election fraud.
3. In Florida State he faces ongoing felony charges over his alleged illegal removal of dozens of boxes of classified defense national intelligence documents. This court case is presently in limbo and waiting an appeal by Jack Smith at the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals following dismissal of the case by Trump appointed judge Aileen Cannon.
4. In NY State he has been convicted on all 34 felony counts brought against him for fraudulent payments from his business, the Trump Organization, to his attorney, Michael Cohen, to buy the silence of Stormy Daniels in the months leading up the 2016 Presidential election. He awaits sentencing in this case.
Concurrent with these legal entwines, over 1240 have been charged with 100s of sentences handed down to many of those who took place in the January 6 rioting and insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, according to the Department of Justice website. It was unprecedented in American legislative history. One of the insurrectionists was shot outside the House Speaker’s Office in the U.S. Capitol, five died in total, including a police officer, and over a hundred and forty police were injured, two taking their own lives later.
Extensive reporting of the appeals and rulings in these trials have failed to significantly affect Trump’s base of support and most poling results showed nearly undiminished support just days out from the election in which Trump and Democratic Presidential nominee Kamala Harris remained in a statistical dead heat. The 2024 election is likely to come down to a thin spread of votes in the Electoral College.
Moreover, Trump continues to push a false narrative about the 2020 presidential election outcome, raising doubts about the legality of it, raising doubt among his supporters as to States’ vote accuracy and refusal to accept the final results reflecting his loss. He continues this false narrative without offering any evidence to support his claims despite over 60 court decisions handed down rejecting all suits his campaign filed to challenge the results. He was afforded every opportunity under the law to challenge States’ election results but would not accept any of the court rulings.
More recently, multiple court cases against dozens of fake electors his party slated in seven battleground States during 2020 are still playing out: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. These fake electors—people who were not vetted or approved to cast electoral ballots—allegedly attempted to deliver their own fake election certification results in support of Trump to State legislators.
In Nevada a State judge threw out the fake elector suit in June 2024 based on the venue issue that it was filed in Las Vegas County instead of the County in which the Electors worked. The Nevada State Attorney General disagreed with the Judge’s ruling based on the threat the fake electors posed to the entire State, and promised to appeal the suit to the Nevada State Supreme Court. The Nevada fake elector scheme involved the State GOP Chairman and four other members of the State GOP.
Historically, any one of these events would singularly end the political aspirations of any other candidate running for President. But these are no longer normal political times in the U.S. The traditional conservative GOP leadership has ceded its principles and power to Trump’s cult of personality which has lapped up its entire energy and rejected anyone within the traditional GOP that has not conceded to it. Several GOP State parties voted to censure Senators who voted to convict Trump for high crimes and misdemeanors during his Senate Trial after his second impeachment resulting from his J6 coup attempt. Other notable GOP leaders who stood opposed to Trump for his actions leading to J6 were Liz Cheney and Republican Party Senators who voted against him during his Senate Trial. The GOP no longer exists in its traditionally conservative sense and has morphed into wraparound subservience to one man.
January 6: Not Just A Skirmish But Part of a Grand Conspiracy
Donald Trump’s mob of insurrectionists came unexpectedly close to delaying the election certification in the Senate long enough to cast doubt as to whether or not the election result would be or could be certified, as provided in the Constitution. Delaying the House certification even one day past the J6 requirement would have opened the door to process chaos and allowed one or more States the time needed to refuse to recognize Joe Biden as the rightful winner. The aim of the conspiracy was to delay the constitutional process of tallying and certifying States’ electoral votes, or by introducing fake electors certificates during the ensuing chaos in the House of Representatives. This would delay affirmation of Biden’s win and by default allow Donald Trump to remain in the Presidency past the January 20, 2021 inauguration date as set forth by the 19th Amendment of the Constitution. We discuss the details of how the Electoral College operates in the section below.
Such a split would have caused an unprecedented Constitutional crisis with a delayed or contested result requiring a Contingency Election in the House of Representatives. This could have been delayed even further by uncooperative States’ electors, pushing a final adjudication to the Supreme Court of the U.S. (SCOTUS). The SCOTUS was itself compromised along a partisan divide at the time. Although no one knew this at the time or understood just how compromised SCOTUS was until a New York Times report published in May 2024 revealed that Justice Alito flew an upside down U.S. flag at his residence in Northern Virginia for 11 days after the insurrection. He later flew an “Appeal To Heaven” flag at his New Jersey vacation home. A compromised SCOTUS could have easily ruled on any appeal in favor of Trump. At that point a deeply divided and angry electorate bathed in waves of conflicting information, would have been pitted against itself and easily parlayed towards further violence and perhaps into massive civil unrest.
Looking at how his teams of attorneys have continually delayed pre-trial rulings by appeals of the four major cases pending against him, his main strategy has been to stifle legal proceedings until after the 2024 election. And 4-years on, he is still delaying these trials. In the only case he was tried, the NY State Election Fraud trial, during which he was convicted on all 34 felony counts for hush money payments from campaign funds through his then attorney Michael Cohen to porn star Stormy Daniels, he has successfully delayed his sentencing by successive appeals until after the 2024 election.
There is little doubt he would have been able to delay the States’ J6 vote certification of the Electoral College in the House of Representatives. It would have been easy for him to delay the election process in the House by legally stressing the loopholes in the constitutional process in the 2 weeks before the January 20 inauguration. This would have delayed the final decision to a partisan Supreme Court.
Confirming the Presidential Winner: A Convoluted Process
The Founding Fathers never intended for the people themselves to decide outright who the President would be by a majority public vote and this is the first of two keys in understanding the underlying reasons leading to the 2020 presidential election chaos. The second key is that never before had one political party collectively conspired to subvert the election process at nearly every critical decision point in that process. There were many Trump players in this effort but they all had the same goal: Get Trump 4 more years. And yes, there was the Nixon secret scheme and cover-up of 1972-3 to break into the Watergate hotel and bug the phones of the Democratic National Committee Headquarters, but that involved a limited number of operatives and it came nowhere to the level of January 6.
One of the many agreements made by the Founding Fathers during the Constitutional Convention was how a President would be selected. It was one of the major points of contention between the Delegates which threatened to derail the 1787 ratification of the Constitution. Without an agreement the collaboration of the Constitutional Convention would have ended in chaos. Delegates were divided into two schools as to how the Articles of the Constitution would guide this process. This was because there were States that had much larger populations and wealth than other States. Some States’ Delegates believed States with larger populations should have more influence in Congress and thereby more voice in government, such as selecting a president; other smaller States sough a voice equal to the larger States. As part of the Great Compromise, also known as the Connecticut Compromise, Delegates finally agreed on a system of selecting the president by an Electoral College.
Electoral College—Semantics and Role
Many Americans do not fully appreciate the detail of how a president is actually selected. It is a strange archaic system compared to other democratic processes in existence today but in 1787, there weren’t many democratic systems in existence to model and designing the government of the new U.S. Republic was necessarily by consensus. And there were strong feelings and much fear among the Delegates about how to prevent a king-like personality from rising to power. They feared the fragile fledgling government could easily devolve back into a leader state, like the Crown of England from which they had divested. Their interest was to create a balance of power between three branches and creating an agreeable process of selecting an Executive was a major concern.
The Electoral College was first outlined in Section 1 of Article Two of the Constitution. It was amended in 1804 because the process originally laid out was unviable with a major flaw. It permitted the possibility of a President and Vice President to be selected from opposing parties. This result caused great difficulty in governance in 1800 because it took 36 Electoral College votes to decide the President and Vice President and they were both from different parties and had differing opinions on legislative matters. They realized a change was needed. So in 1804 they reconfigured the Electoral College process just before the election and agreed to amend the Constitution with the 12th Amendment. It affords the creation of the ‘ticket’ concept where both President and Vice President come from the same party.
It was eventually agreed that the Electoral College would be a group of presidential and vice presidential electors appointed every four years during the presidential election for the sole purpose of voting for the president and vice president. The 12th Amendment of the Constitution provided that the number of electoral votes each State would have is the number of Senators (set at 2 per State) plus its number of Representatives in each State (based on population with 250,000 residents equal to one Representative). The number of Representatives was based on the size of the population of each State. Each state would apply their own legal procedures determined by its legislature, to determine who would be the Electors to cast votes. The State Electors could not be the actual Senators or Representatives of each State in order to prevent lame duck electors from being influenced or coerced to vote a certain way. So the congressional delegation would total 535 electors in the 50 states. The Twenty-third Amendment ratified in 1961, granted the federal District of Columbiathree electors, bringing the total number of electors to 538. Reaching a majority of these at 270 votes would determine the winner of the presidential election. Territories such as Puerto Rico, Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands have no votes in the Electoral College.
The Multi-Stage Process—The Electoral College is a Process Not a Location
Stage one: In October, the Archivist of the U.S. (located at the National Archives and Records Administration) (NARA) sends instructions to and notifies each State Governor to appoint electors. The electors form the Electoral College and are the actual electors of the President.
On the first Tuesday of November, the people vote in a national election. This event gets all the national news attention. This election the first Tuesday is November 6, 2024. But it is not the criteria for selecting the president and this is where many misunderstand the function and purpose of the Electoral College.
Stage two: After election day and all the popular votes have been tallied, the Governor of each State prepares the Certificate of Ascertainment. This is the list of electors at the State level which will vote for the candidate. After the Governor of each State submits the names to the National Archives, each Electoral College member meets in the State Legislature to cast their votes. This meeting takes place on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December. In this year’s election the respective States Electors will meet to vote on December 16, 2024. In 2020 this was the pressure point at which Trump’s co-conspirators tried to insert false Electors in seven States.
Stage three: The electors formally meet in Washington DC on January 6 to formally cast their votes. It is actually possible for a candidate to win an ‘inverted’ election by winning the vote of the electors but by losing the popular vote of the people as happened most recently in 2016 (Clinton v. Trump) where Clinton won by 2.8 million popular votes overall but lost the in the Electoral vote tally 227-304). This happened in 2000 (Gore v. Bush where Gore won by 500,000 popular votes overall but lost in the Electoral vote tally 266-271). Other inverted elections occurred in the 1824, 1876, and in the 1888 elections. In these elections the Electoral College results opposed the collective will of the population and show that an inverted result is not unique to this century. In 2020 this is the infamous day Trump exhorted his followers to raid the U.S. Capitol.
Contingency Election
The 12th Amendment provides that a Contingency Election be held for selection of a president and vice president in the unlikely event that the Electoral College fails to fulfill its role: either to reach a 270 majority for any candidate or that the Electoral College vote is tied. In such a scenario the States would then consolidate their Electors into a single voice and cast that vote, each State having one vote; the majority of such a vote would determine the winner of the election.
This happened in the 1824 presidential election during which John Quincy Adams was selected by a Contingency Election vote on the first attempt and defeated Andrew Jackson. The general population went through great pains over this outcome because it had voted in majority for Andrew Jackson, and as a result in 1828, Andrew Jackson won in a landslide based on the popular vote.
This election, such a scenario would in effect, totally throw out the voices of every citizen who voted because it would toll the popular vote just like it did in 1824. In the present day, the country finds itself in an extremely contentious political environment with two parties pitted against each other in a manner not seen since the Civil War. It does not help matters that Trump and others in his party have stated, in effect, that they will not unconditionally accept the results of the election they are fair, leaving open the question as to whether or not they would accept the election results; saying unless they are fair. Democrats have openly stated they would unconditionally accept the results of the election.
There are numerous scenarios in which conditions leading to a Contingency Election could play out. At Madison Square Garden on Sunday, October 27, Trump said during his speech that he and House Speaker Mike Johnson had a “Little Secret” and that “we will tell you what it is when the race is over.” That statement could be interpreted to mean they had an agreement to win the election no matter what the popular vote results were. In the case of a disputed Electoral vote the could force a Contingency Election if one of the States in which there was a dispute delayed the certification of Electoral votes past the December 16 deadline. There are presently 26 States which have Republican Legislatures and 27 States which have Republican Governors. Any of these States having an Electoral vote result contested could be the basis for a Contingency Election under the 12th Amendment.
The key for a democratic system to work is this: party participation must be intentional as much it is obligated. Participants must act in good faith. With Trump openly discussing a secret agreement and not acknowledging that he will unconditionally accept the results of the election in the case of a close race, which all indicators show it is, there is certain to be a difficult and contentious period following November 6 in the Legislature and in the Courts, in which the president is eventually selected.
Setting The Stage of Democratic Discontent—Misinformation and Fear
The 2 months between election day and January 6 saw Washington DC boarded up like a Gulf Coast Beach community before a category-five hurricane. Part of this was due to residual business closures after the Corona Virus Pandemic of 2019. And we covered this story previously. However, many offices and stores which had opened up in the year that followed the Coronavirus Pandemic boarded up again in the 2 months before January 6 because far right extremist group protests were planning violent actions targeting Black Lives Matter Plaza and the DC community.
There were two major extremist “Stop the Steal” protests targeting Washington DC: One was held on November 14 and another on December 12.
Trump flamed the “Stolen Election” narrative whenever he could and he affirmed among his base of support that the election was unfair and “rigged.” This undermined public trust in the election system among his base. He called for several ’Stop the Steal’ actions in Washington DC; one on November 14, 2020 and another on December 12. The J6 Stop the Steal rally was the last of these but also involved pulling in as many of the general public as could be bused into Washington DC.
These rallies were not for political sake, but were organized with intent to later march through the streets after dark and search for “Antifa” and violently confront them. They led to civil conflict in Washington DC unlike anything seen since the Vietnam War as large groups of extremists roamed through Washington DC and harassed residents, marched through neighborhoods with their Proud Boy fags, their confederate flags and issued threats to attack counter-protesters—and they did. On December 12, 2020, Enrique Tarrio and Joe Bigg, leaders of the Proud Boys, led a mob of hundreds who attacked and damaged venerable church property and attacked DC citizens. Proud Boy Groups and Oath Keepers had descended on DC in response to Trump’s urging. During a debate with Joe Biden on September 29, 2020, Tramp said of Proud Boys, “Proud Boys, stand back and stand by,” signaling them to get ready for action—and they did. In that statement he also blamed “Antifa”, saying “But I’ll tell you what, somebody’s got to do something about Antifa and the left because this is not a right-wing problem.”
We published this video of the night of December 12, 2020 during which Proud Boy groups rallied at Freedom Square and then marched in military files through Washington DC, after their “Stop the Steal” rally, chanting “F— Antifa.” Later that night they mobilized in full force and their actions resulted in many injuries and property damage at venerable historic churches.
Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, Three Percenters, and other extremist groups from surrounding states from as far North as New York and as far South as Florida took part in these actions and they were warm-ups for what was to come on January 6.
The mainstream media largely ignored these protests and with the exception of some limited coverage by independent media, protests flew underneath coverage of mainstream newscasts. But the local DC activist communities were aware of them and mounted large counter protests, resulting in clashes when groups of Proud Boys came and marched in the streets after their rally at Freedom Plaza. As night fell they broke into groups and roamed through neighborhoods in search of victims. Some of the groups actually marched in files like military units searching for a perceived enemy in a jungle, carrying extremist flags, and chanting “F— Antifa.”
Again maintain media ignored this threat. The DC Metropolitan Police mobilized but stood on streets in pseudo-bureaucratic lines allowing Proud Boys free access to maneuver through back alleys where they strategized. That was until reports in mainstream media finally circulated that hundreds of Proud Boy extremists mobbed and vandalized the property at the venerable Asbury United Methodist Church, and burned its Black Lives Matter sign in the street at 11th and K. Incidentally this lack of significant deterrence by police was the same posture that led to the breach at the U.S. Capitol—video of that day reflected police standing idly as extremists and insurrectionists walked right into the U.S. Capitol like a tour group on a Sunday visit.
The mayhem continued that night at Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church, located at 15th and M Streets NW, which was also vandalized when its Black Lives Matter sign was torn down by Proud Boys and stomped upon in the street. It was the church that held the funeral of Frederick Douglas, whose home was in Anacostia, MD. This church has been in existence since the Civil War and this also struck a particular chord in the mainstream media.
Vandalism was also reported at Luther Memorial Place Memorial Church, a church on Vermont Street that has been in existence since 1873, to “heal the wounds of the Civil War.” It was not known who damaged the sign at Luther Memorial Place Memorial Church but it was replaced and in the following days, volunteers stood watch outside the church to protect the sign which was prominently displayed on its lawn.
For their role in these December 12, 2020 church attacks Proud Boy organizer Enrique Tarrio was tried and sentenced to 6 months in jail during a criminal trial. A Civil Court adjudged $1.03 million in civil damages for the church against the Proud Boy Organization LLC, as well as Joseph R. Biggs, Enrique Tarrio, and two others for their roles in the church vandalism.
The fallout from December 12 mob attacks of venerable churches in DC did little to stop Trump’s false narrative of a rigged or stolen election, however the church vandalism incidents did hit the news cycle at its heart, but by then it was too little, too late. The slings and bows were set for the stones and arrows that would fly on January 6.
Trump continued fanning the narrative of a stollen election up to the moment several thousand breached barricades and climbed the parapet at the Western Lawn of the U.S. Capitol. The scaffolding for the inauguration was already built and largely completed but it gave insurrectionists easy access to the unprotected elevated entrances near the rotunda.
January 6–Trump’s Failed Speech—The Terrible ’What Ifs” That Almost Came To Be
On December 19, 2020, just 17 days before the count of the Electors, Trump tweeted “Big protest in D.C. on January 6th, be there, will be wild!” This tweet prompted the actions that were to come on January 6. Proud Boy groups immediately began to chatter on social media and planned to mobilize.
The insurrectionists expected Trump to jointly accompany them to the U.S. Capitol, and once inside, they would siege the Legislature and stop the Legislative counting of the States Elector votes by force. They assaulted hundreds of U.S. Capitol police and broke windows and doors to gain access. Once inside they were confused about the layout of the building and were disorganized. They confronted staff and Congress retreated in fear for their lives to the safety of a bunker built in the early 2000s. The bunker was completed in 2008 as part of the underground visitor center which is 2/3 the size of the U.S. Capitol itself. This bunker was the last line defense at the physical layer of security that kept insurrectionist from achieving their goal of getting to Mike Pence.
Insurrectionists battled police for 187 minutes from the time Trump’s speech ended on the Ellipse at 1:10 pm until he sent a video message at 4:47 pm telling his mob to stand down. Only then were police able to begin gaining the upper hand. But what if Trump had accomplished the five minute drive from the White House to the Capitol. He wouldn’t have needed to enter the building. He would have needed only to be nearby to direct his mob to go in—just knowing he was there with them would have emboldened them even more to continue occupying the U.S. Capitol and further delay the Electoral vote count. The presence of Trump could have made the storming of the Capitol a considerably more volatile environment. In such an environment a Electoral College vote certification would likely not have been completed for an indefinite period.
Trump’s driver in the SUV played a role in resisting Trump’s attempt to seize the wheel to force him to drive to the Capitol after his speech. He specifically disputed this claim, however given the atmosphere of lies around Trump, this rebuttal may or may not actually be true. No other part of Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony during the January 6 Select Committee interviews has been publicly disputed by Trump’s former driver. Hutchinson was the Aide to Trumps Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows.
During the U.S. Capitol assault Police Officer Eugene Goodman singlehandedly diverted insurrectionists from the U.S. Senate chambers. Had he not been where he was and had the presence of mind it is like the mob would have reached Senator Chambers. He later escorted Senator Mitt Romney, an oppositional figure to Trump, away from the mob and as a result Senator Romney barely escaped to the bunker. This moment was another close encounter that could have changed the outcome of January 6.
Vice President Mike Pence was presiding over the Senate for the certification of the Electoral vote count. At 2:24 pm, Trump tweeted “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our country and our constitution….” Minutes after he tweeted this statement the insurrection mob began beating down doors and breaking windows. But what if Mike Pence had not certified the results. The entire certification process would have been in limbo for an indefinite period. As it was, the certification was not completed until 3:34 am on January 7, 2020, over 12 hours after the voting count was to begin.
It is doubtful Trump could have reversed the outcome in a way that all 50 states would fail to recognize their Electoral certificates, but he really only needed one State to fail in its duty to throw the process into chaos.
The violence was deadly, shocking, and law enforcement was unprepared and did not expect violence to rise to the level to which insurrectionists assaulted them. A published report shows that guns were seized from some of the insurgents before and after the battle, and one during the battle as well. In addition, the insurgents were armed with a wide variety of weapons short of firearms, including tasers, poles, bear spray, and knives.
Multiple people used bear mace against police during the attack and this was recorded on video and reported by many sources including members of the Capitol Police who were attacked. At least one carried dozens of plastic ties which are used by police to handcuff members of Congress. He was subsequently convicted for trespassing into the U.S. Capitol.
The fighting was also unabated for hours and brutal. Some military veterans among the police who had seen war said this was worse than any battle they had ever served in. AP News quoted Capitol Police Officer Caroline Edwards as calling the attack a “war scene” and saying “There were officers on the ground. They were bleeding. I was slipping in people’s blood.”
Yet only one person was shot (Ashli Babbat) and several other shots were reported to have been discharged inside the Capitol that struck no one.
According to the AP, the person who placed the bombs at both DNC and RNC headquarters has never been found.
Another published report on the January 6 committee hearings reported that D.C. police officer Daniel Hodges was crushed in a doorway, and was lucky to survive. He recounted afterwards that the reason he and other officers held their fire was that if the situation turned into a firefight they would lose, and this was a fight they could not afford to lose. He feared that there were more bombs, didn’t know how many guns the insurgents had, and even considered the risk that the sounds of shooting were the signal to detonate any such bombs.
With this level of violence and brutality it is a wonder that the insurrection did not succeed outright. However it did demonstrate the fervor to which the thousands, some estimates place at 20,000, were dedicated to Trump.
The climax of the battle and probably the decisive point was the shooting of Ashli Babbat. Tragically it was this loss of a life, a person mesmerized by the sway of MAGA Trumpism that saved many others.
Aftermath and Way Forward
On October 18, 2024, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan released Jack Smith’s 165 presentation along with nearly 1900 pages of evidence in Trump’s election interference case, with much of the evidence redacted (blacked out). It is evident in Jack Smith’s submission of evidence that the January 6 coup conspiracy was much more organized and orchestrated than previously known. The full investigation of the events of that day has not been released but the intent was clear: overturn a democratically elected president.
Had they succeeded we would not know what we know today. Jack Smith would not have been appointed as Special Prosecutor and Trump would have been reelected, and probably the last president to serve under this Republic Rep .
He has since not ceased in attempts to undermine the 2020 election and worse, many in the present version of the GOP have joined by silence in his dispiriting methods and attempts to retake the Presidency.
Trump’s presidential campaign has been waged with bigotry, threats, vulgarity, and intimidation of those who oppose him. Each day sees a new low in his campaign and in the language he uses against others who oppose him.
As a result, the U.S. political landscape has devolved into a seeming ancient Roman gladiator fight to the finish. Several of his former conservative cabinet members, including former Chief of Staff John Kelly and former Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff General Mark Miley have described Trump’s talking points as authoritarian and General Mark Miley labeled him “fascist to the core.”
Trump has revisited talking points of Adolf Hitler in openly describing immigrants as “poisoning the blood of our country,” ridiculing and threatening political opponents with violence, and minimizing minorities such as the Trans, Latino, Haitian, and Puerto Rican communities.
The political future of the U.S. is unrecognizable under a dark cloud no matter who may win the 2024 presidential election. In a scenario of a GOP loss this election cycle, future power will eventually shift towards the newly born Trumpian GOP as elections shift and weakened parties regain power as they inevitably do at some point in the future.
Now it will be up to the people to mobilize against the rising current of fascism.
In our next and final part III of this series we discuss how ordinary citizens can legally and successfully mobilize against fascism, extremism, and a political landscape that no one seems to understand.
Part III: How to legally fight fascism in your community here.
Other references:
Discussion of Jack Smith 185 page evidence filing in DC election fraud case:
youtube
Link to “the enemy within” by Trump
Trump dissembles democratic guardrails with fascist talk.
12th Amendment explained.
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Reflections On January 6: Planned In The Open; Yet Made Invisible; What It Means For The 2024 Election
Story By: Anonymous Mouse
Washington DC—
Looking back at the January 6 coup attempt, Anonymous Mouse reflects on why almost no one saw it coming and why local DC activists did. She argues the failure to see the obvious was largely due to pre-existing mental frameworks, about the nature of both protests and American democracy, and that one of the ways 2024 will be different from 2020 is that at least some of those mental barriers have since been breached while others remain.
This is the first in a three-part series about the state of democracy in America today. Parts II and III will be published in the coming days. (Editor’s note: activists refer to the 2021 insurrection/coup as J6-January 6)
Introduction
At the beginning of January 2021, myself and others who monitored far right social media were alarmed. Numerous Trump supporters were planning to surround the Capitol on January 6 and possibly storm it.
There was no attempt to be subtle. They posted graphics of the Capitol grounds on open forums and estimated how many ‘Stop the Steal’ attendees would be needed to surround the building. The Capitol’s tunnel system was a source of endless fascination for them.
They fantasized in detail about murdering members of Congress and those they deemed to be Antifa. Hanging was the preferred method of execution, with someone on TheDonald.win helpfully suggesting that folks arrive early to build a gallows. Around January 2, these Trump supporters, formerly staunch proponents of Back the Blue, came to accept that they’d have to murder cops to achieve their goals. They didn’t seem bothered by the thought.
Trump supporters discuss building a gallows on TheDonald.win web site on December 30, 2020.
They talked freely about how they would get their guns into DC.
Me and my fellow researchers, many of us DC-area locals who monitored right-wing extremists in our spare time, immediately alerted the larger activist community.
Anonymous Mouse correctly predicting the attempted coup three days before January 6.
There are no monoliths when it comes to leftist spaces. The community is fragmented and ever changing, with activists engaging as life and burnout permits. It’s a web of individuals and affinity groups, some of whom work together and others who don’t.
Let me state this next part very carefully: This is my account of J6, shaped by the circles I operated in. Other activists had different experiences while playing crucial roles in protecting DC. I don’t speak their stories because they’re not my stories to tell and frankly, I don’t know all the details.
Myself and other researchers shared the intel we were seeing with the larger community (as defined by the circles we operated in). The debate was brief, the consensus near unanimous, which may be a first for any collection of activists. Trump supporters were coming to DC. Some of them were bringing guns. They were out for blood and spoke freely of murdering members of Congress and any cop that got in their way.
The guns were the deciding factor. There was no way in hell we were going anywhere near that.
Here’s the first thing many people outside of the DC activist community failed to understand: There wasn’t a binary choice between direct confrontation and inaction. Sometimes together and sometimes separately, DC activists developed a multi-pronged strategy to respond to the J6 threat:
1) Warn anyone who would listen that Trump supporters were going to attempt to storm the Capitol and interfere with the electoral college certification on January 6;
2) Protect vulnerable residents in Washington, DC, from Proud Boys and other violent Trump supporters streaming into the city;
3) Make DC as inhospitable to Trump supporters as possible by pressuring hotels not to do business with them; and
4) Document the lead up to J6 and once we realized it was really happening, J6 itself.
Thus, it was that left-wing activists, some of whom identified as Antifa, fought to defend a city and a flawed democracy they had little to no faith in.
Looking Back at J6
Some of these strategies worked better than others. Most hotels, for example, starved for revenue during the first year of the pandemic, had no interest in turning away would-be insurrectionists.
What unnerved us the most, though, was that no one was interested in a plot to storm the Capitol, even when evidence was mounting every day that it was actually going to happen.
We attempted to warn the press, Mayor Bowser’s office, extremism experts…and yes, even law enforcement. We posted screenshots to social media and begged people to pay attention to the threat.
Open planning of murder and insurrection on right-wing sites was met with a collective shrug.
How did so many people fail to see the plot that was right in front of them?
Usually threat analysis involves gray areas and close calls. There was no gray area here. Having been called to action by the president of the United States, his followers proceeded to plan their insurrection out in the open, believing they had his support and protection.
Key to this was that Trump’s followers weren’t just talking about murder and insurrection, they were taking observable actions to achieve these goals, actions that were oftentimes documented online.
In terms of whether or not what Trump supporters were planning should have been considered a threat, this was the most clear cut call anyone could make.
At this point, law enforcement should have taken steps to disrupt the plot and defend the Capitol, but…they didn’t.
No doubt some individuals in law enforcement, such as MPD Lt. Shane Lamond, were actively working with the Proud Boys and other rightwing extremists and took steps to shield the J6 plotters. To quote the respected philosophers Rage Against the Machine, “Some of those that work forces, are the same that burn crosses.” That doesn’t explain most of the inaction from law enforcement though.
I have had the luxury of thinking about this, off and on, for almost four years and I still don’t have a satisfactory answer as to why authorities failed to act. And it wasn’t just law enforcement, it was the establishment as a whole.
I remember speaking to an award-winning journalist about a week before J6. I repeatedly mentioned the guns, the intent to target the Capitol, the plans to murder members of Congress and cops. On a surface level, the journalist heard what I was saying. They were even visiting these right-wing sites and saw the planning for themselves.
Yet they treated it as mere rhetoric from deluded Trump supporters, and in a way, we talked past each other.
This is my attempt, with an assist from Douglas Adams, to explain how so many failed to see what should have been obvious.
The J6 insurrection worked as a giant S.E.P. (Somebody Else’s Problem) field. In science-fiction, the S.E.P. renders objects invisible by utilizing a person’s natural tendency to ignore things they can’t easily accept.
For law enforcement, most of whom are right-wing, it was not in their interest to acknowledge the threat. Once they acknowledged the problem, they would be required to deal with it, and that would mean challenging Trump, either directly or indirectly, and confronting truths that they perhaps were not willing to accept.
It was the same with the media and the larger political establishment. Acknowledging the problem would require confronting unpleasant truths, such as that our first world democracy was on shakier ground than we realized and that a small but significant part of the population was willing to murder their fellow Americans to overthrow the government.
These are terrifying realizations, painful to acknowledge. Easier to dismiss plans for murder and insurrection as just talk and to focus on something more comfortable to consider, such as violence between protesters and counter-protesters.
The Importance of Pre-existing Frames
Another reason, I suspect, that so many people missed J6 is that they were focused on something else. After the Capitol was stormed, many DMV (DC/Maryland/Virginia) locals said that they stayed away from downtown DC because they knew “something” was going to happen. When you drilled down into what that “something” was, most expected clashes between Trump supporters and Stop the Steal counter-protesters.
Washington DC’s myriad law enforcement agencies expected this as well, with their preparations being geared towards preventing this.
This is where the influence of pre-existing frames came into play.
Ahead of J6, and indeed, throughout his presidency, Trump made ludicrous claims about Antifa and other left-wing protesters. Law enforcement, an authoritarian institution comprised of mostly right-wing individuals, had no trouble buying into and amplifying those ludicrous claims.
Meanwhile, the media, with its own institutional bias towards the wealthy, the white, and the privileged, also accepted those claims, only less overtly. Anytime the police or right-wing extremists attacked unarmed protesters, it became a “clash,” with the protesters bearing the brunt of the blame, no matter the actual details of the situation. The causes of these protests (extra-judicial police killings, climate crisis, anti-genocide, etc.) were almost always obscured, the confrontation itself getting the lion’s share of the media attention without context.
With this expectation already built into both law enforcement and the media, it became easier for them to miss J6. The explicit purpose of Trump supporters gathering in DC on January 6 was ignored, because the purposes of protests almost always get short shrift. The focus on anticipated clashes became magnified, with the onus being on left-wing activists not to engage. When right-wing insurrectionists broke the pre-existing frame by attacking the police, the police didn’t know how to respond. It simply didn’t compute. They were being assaulted by their own side, by a group of people they had deemed trustworthy. If you look at video from that day, there are multiple instances of law enforcement at the Capitol appearing confused and not knowing how to react.
The combination of a pre-existing frame that law enforcement wanted to believe, paired with intelligence that law enforcement didn’t want to believe, led to a massive security failure that endangered everyone in the Capitol, including the vice-president, members of Congress, their families, their staff, and the police themselves. We only narrowly averted disaster. The country may not be so lucky next time.
N14 and D12
To understand J6, you need to understand the two Stop the Steal rallies that came before it, one on November 14 (N14) and one on December 12 (D12).
On each occasion, thousands of Trump supporters poured into DC. Amongst the crowds waving Trump 2020 flags and screaming that the election was stolen were Proud Boys and other right-wing extremists. When they weren’t at the rallies, these extremists pushed into DC neighborhoods, screaming slurs, hunting down vulnerable community members, and harassing locals for fun. Neither the police nor the mayor did anything to stop them, they just looked the other way.
The anti-fascists who countered the N14 and D12 Stop the Steal rallies did so in an attempt to defend the city, better that Trump supporters target them than the community at large, and to take a stand against the fascism that Trump represented. Fascism is a gaping maw of need. It is never satisfied. By allowing right-wing extremists to run largely unchecked throughout DC on November 14 (N14) and December 12 (D12), Mayor Bowser, the MPD, and other authorities set the stage for J6, creating the expectation that law enforcement would not stand in the insurrectionists’ way.
Once again, pre-existing frames affected the coverage of N14 and D12 and thus, the public’s understanding of these precursor rallies. Right-wing extremists terrorizing DC locals went, for the most part, unmentioned by the media. Both the reason Trump supporters traveled to DC, to lay the groundwork for the overturning of an election, and the reasons they were countered by anti-fascists, were ignored. N14 and D12 were reduced to a series of “clashes” between opposing sides, just so much noise in a news cycle.
As January 6 approached, on top of broader frames, this view of N14 and D12 as a clash between opposing sides impacted threat assessments, with J6 seen as a repeat of the previous rallies. The significance of January 6 as the day when electoral votes would be certified was obscured, as evidenced by the lack of security around the Capitol grounds.
For local DC activists, N14 and D12 had the opposite effect. We understood, on a visceral level, the violence that Trump supporters were capable of. After all, they had already committed that violence on us and our neighbors. When his supporters talked about bringing guns to DC, we took that threat seriously too. During both N14 and D12, a number of Proud Boys had walked around with handguns on their hips. They would lift up their shirts and show them off to counter-protesters while police nearby did nothing. We didn’t have to imagineTrump supporters smuggling guns into DC for J6, we knew they had done it before.
I want to focus for a moment on the guns. In the lead up to J6, a number of well-meaning Democrats and progressives urged activists not to travel to DC and engage with protesters. We tried to explain to them that we didn’t need to travel to DC, we lived here, and that oh by the way, the Trump supporters were planning to storm the Capitol and were terrorizing our neighborhoods. We explained what they could do to help us, such as pressuring hotels to turn away insurrectionists and calling out the right-wing harassment happening in the city.
No one listened to us.
One can see how the power of those pre-existing frames extended even to those on the left. The onus was on local DC activists not to engage, even as the Proud Boys were running wild through DC neighborhoods. No one told the Proud Boys to stop terrorizing people. The expectation just wasn’t there. And the focus was on anticipated clashes between Stop the Steal protesters and counter-protesters, instead of the plot, organized out in the open, to overturn the 2020 presidential election and install Trump as dictator.
I’m getting to the guns, I swear.
In the aftermath of J6, there was this idea, propagated by these same Democrats and progressives, that their warnings to DC activists had made the difference, that local anti-fascists hadn’t fallen into Trump’s trap because of their efforts.
I know they meant well, some of those warning me to stay away from the Capitol were (and are) my friends, but it wasn’t their advice that kept anti-fascists away, it was the guns.
Insurrectionists spoke of bringing guns to the J6 insurrection. A Trump supporter posts a photo of his body armor and gear a day before the January 6 insurrection, claiming that his guns were stored in his hotel room in Virginia, ready to be used..
When Trump supporters said they were going to come to DC on January 6 with guns, we believed them. That, more than anything else, determined our response. There was no way we were going to counter-protest a gunfight. That worst case scenario ending up not happening, due to both the police and the insurrectionists not wanting to be the first ones to open fire, a sort of MAD (mutually assured destruction) in miniature serving as deterrence, but the possibility was very much real.
If nothing else, we expected the police response to an attempted coup to involve rubber bullets and tear gas, and while we didn’t get the former, we did get some of the latter. We knew it would be a dangerous and volatile situation no matter what.
Though I don’t think it was ever stated out right, there was also the understanding that any anti-fascists who did show up at the Capitol to counter-protest would likely be targeted by the police and blamed for the very violence they were trying to prevent, because that’s usually how it went. During both N14 and D12, anti-fascists were the ones arrested after being attacked by the Proud Boys and other Trump supporters.
What I don’t remember hearing as me and my fellow activists discussed how to respond to J6 was that Trump wanted us to fight with fascists like the Proud Boys so that he could invoke the Insurrection Act. Reviewing J6 committee and other transcripts, it’s clear Trump hoped for this outcome and did what he could to encourage it, but between the guns, the attempted coup, and the insurrectionists’ plans to murder members of Congress, that aspect of the plot to end our republic got overlooked by us (at least in the circles I operated in).
We didn’t counter-protest at the Capitol on J6 because we didn’t want to die in a gunfight, we correctly understood the danger of what the insurrectionists were planning, and that it would likely lead to violence that we could be blamed for.
We weren’t trying to avoid a trap laid by Trump.
It’s a fine difference, but I believe, a significant one.
A Stochastic Coup?
In the days after January 6, I referred to the failed attempt to overturn the election as a “stochastic coup.”
Wikipedia defines stochastic terrorism as follows: “Stochastic terrorism is a form of political violence instigated by hostile public rhetoric directed at a group or an individual. Unlike incitement to terrorism, stochastic terrorism is accomplished with indirect, vague, or coded language, which grants the instigator plausible deniability for any associated violence. A key element of stochastic terrorism is the use of media for propagation, where the person carrying out the violence may not have direct connection to any other users of violent rhetoric.”
With Trump’s reliance on Twitter to communicate and his use of coded language that he knew many of his supporters would understand (“Be there, will be wild!”), I thought it an apt description.
The stochastic nature of Trump’s incitement explained the chaos that accompanied the storming of the Capitol. Thousands of his supporters responded to his call. These supporters understood the goal, disruption and alteration of the electoral college certification, but operating separately, they had different ways of achieving that aim.
Nor was every Stop the Steal attendee on J6 dialed into the plan, such as it was (more like concepts of a plan). These people really did exist. Some, to their credit, balked at the idea of storming the Capitol once they realized what Trump wanted them to do, while others were happy to join the insurrection. These joy riders were another wild card that only added to the lack of coherency that day.
The result was groups and individuals jumping the gun and stepping on each other’s plans. Amidst the chaos though, there were elements of order. The iconic video of the Oath Keepers’ stack, snaking its way up the steps of the Capitol, suggested even to those not intimately familiar with the inner workings of the insurrection that this was not a spontaneous riot.
While the storming of the Capitol was largely stochastic in nature, something I underestimated was the extent of coordination between Trump’s people and certain groups of insurrectionists. In the lead up to J6, Trump confidant Roger Stone was in contact with Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, Oathkeeper founder Stewart Rhodes, and Stop the Steal organizer Ali Alexander, amongst others. And he wasn’t the only Trump crony communicating with the insurrectionists before J6.
Nor did I understand the scope of the plot to unlawfully overturn the presidential election. As a DC-based activist, I was understandably focused on the part of the plot that happened in DC. The Capitol might have been the most visible flashpoint, but this was a coup attempt that played out across the country, with slates of fake electors in states such as Arizona and Michigan and Trump pressuring election officials in multiple swing states.
Appreciating the true extent of Trump and his team’s involvement in the attempted coup is critical, because a similar scenario will likely play out again in the coming weeks, and this time, more of the GOP establishment will be involved.
History Doesn’t Repeat Itself, Except When It Does?
Well, here we are again. The 2024 presidential election, due to the archaic and undemocratic electoral college, will almost certainly be close. Trump is once more the Republican candidate and he is once more spewing lies and refusing to accept the results of the election unless he should win.
It is an indictment of our leaders, our justice system (this includes the ethically bankrupt Supreme Court), and the very constitutional blueprint of our government that we are in the same place we were four years ago.
What it’s not an indictment of is the American people, who rejected Trump in 2020 and voted an authoritarian out of office. Historically, this is something extraordinarily difficult to do. Once an authoritarian gains power, they will not let it go, and they have no qualms about abusing their power to gain even more.
A Failed Insurrection: People Held Firm While Institutions Faltered
What stopped J6? It’s an important question. I don’t think you can point to any law enforcement or government agency, as a whole, and say that they stopped the storming of the Capitol. Rather, the agencies themselves failed in both the lead up to J6 and when confronted by the semi-organized insurrectionist mob. Did the Capitol Police stop J6? Some of them did, such as Eugene Goodman, Daniel Hodges, and Michael Fanone, to name a few. Other officers froze and didn’t know how to react.
What about the Office of the Vice President? Mike Pence, and this is the only kind thing I’ll probably ever say about him, helped save democracy that day. But his refusal to support the fake electors and to delay the certification of the electoral college vote was done in opposition to President Trump.
According to the timeline put out by DOD, by the way, the National Guard didn’t show up to the Capitol until 5:40pm, after the attempted insurrection had already failed and Trump was forced to tell his supporters to go home.
You’ll see a similar pattern play out in the states in regards to the larger plot to overturn the presidential election. Maybe you can give credit, for example, to the Michigan State Police when they turned away the fake electors trying to enter the Michigan state capitol, but for the most part, it was individual citizens like Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, the Detroit poll workers who calmly kept counting votes when Republicans tried to intimidate them, and Republican officials like Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who defended our democracy, withstanding tremendous pressure from Trump and his cronies.
The point being, institutions didn’t hold, people did, and oftentimes at great personal risk to themselves and their families. Enough Americans rose to the occasion at key moments to thwart Trump’s plot to make himself a dictator.
Since then, our hallowed institutions, everything from the Justice Department to the Supreme Court to the mainstream media and others, have failed us when it comes to holding Trump accountable. It seems to be a mix of timidity, a failure to understand the rapacious nature of fascism (it doesn’t go away on its own), and a co-option of key individuals in these institutions by Trump and the authoritarian Republicans who back him.
It’s as if the coup that was first attempted on January 6 never ended. Rather, it transformed into a protection racket for Trump until he could run for president again. On November 5, 2024, he’ll either win the presidency outright and quickly begin to dismantle our democracy or he’ll narrowly lose and attempt another coup.
We, the American people, did our part to oust Trump from power in 2020. Our leaders didn’t keep their end of the bargain.
Lessons Learned: Four Main Indicators For How 2024 May Play Out
The first Trump assassination attempt, Biden dropping out from the race and being replaced by Vice-President Kamala Harris, the second Trump assassination attempt, Hurricane Helene, Hurricane Milton, the genocide in Gaza and a constant drumbeat of war in the Middle East… Given the general tenor of 2024, I make no attempt to guess the outcome of the presidential election. All I can suggest is we look to J6 for lessons learned, for if history isn’t repeating itself, it’s certainly rhyming.
1) Be mindful of the pre-existing frames
In the lead up to J6, I underestimated the importance of existing frameworks. These frameworks were so powerful, I believe they were a key reason why so many didn’t see a coup attempt being organized right out in the open.
Here are the frames, and by that, I mean the rules which govern how law enforcement, the media, and the American public, by and large, interpret protests.
• If left-wing activists are present at a protest, the onus will be on them for good behavior. This same expectation is not present for right-wing protesters
• If left-wing activists are attacked at a protest (usually by law enforcement or by right-wing agitators), the attack will be described as a “clash.” The culpability of law enforcement or right-wing agitators will be, at best, obscured and more than likely, entirely erased
• If there is an altercation at a protest, even if left-wing activists are the ones being attacked, they are the ones who will likely be arrested. Protesters who are Black, LGBTQ+, First Nations, or from other marginalized communities will be targeted by law enforcement first
• The reasons for a protest will be underplayed or ignored altogether. This applies to all protests. The focus is on the disruption and the spectacle, not what’s driving people into the streets
• Spontaneous protests are privileged over organized protests. Protests deemed ‘spontaneous’ are seen as somehow more pure (see Rosa Parks)
• Property over people. Damage to property will be seen as an offense on par with, or even worse than, physical injury
These frames are not fair. These frames are, in fact, bullshit. They result in situations where Proud Boys can come to your town ahead of J6, roam your city’s neighborhoods, terrorize residents, and you get lectured not to respond.
These frames can be changed, but I don’t think we can do it before November 5. Just be aware of them, and how they’ll work against you and maybe, how they can work for you.
One note on that subject: In Philadelphia a couple days after the 2020 election, Trump supporters tried to intimidate vote counters working in the Pennsylvania Convention Center. They were met with one of the most ridiculous, chaotic, and silly counter-protests I have ever seen. There were people dressed up as Gritty, there were dancing mailboxes and a DJ. It was Philly at its finest and it completely neutered the manufactured rage of the other side.
2) 2024 Won’t Be 2020, Don’t Fight The Last Battle (But Do Learn From It)
As much as we seem to be repeating history, 2024 won’t be the same as 2020 for at least one reason: Donald Trump is currently not the president of the United States.
Pathways for installing himself as dictator that were available to him in 2020 are not available to him right now. He cannot invoke the Insurrection Act. He cannot call out the National Guard or deploy military assets.
And there are Democratic governors in five out of seven swing states, which limits Trump’s ability to interfere with vote counting should he lose the election. The exceptions are Georgia and Nevada and at least in these states, the Republican governors aren’t outright election deniers, with Georgia governor Brian Kemp having withstood pressure to overturn the Georgia election results in 2020. (not that he couldn’t cave in 2024, I have little faith in the moral fortitude of Republicans)
Mental barriers have also been broken. What once seemed impossible, the violent overturning of an election, has now become possible. The establishment in 2020 didn’t seem able to comprehend what Trump and his supporters were capable of. This time, the Secretary of Homeland Security has already designated the certification of the electoral college vote on January 6 as a “National Special Security Event.”
According to the Washington Post, members of Congress, law enforcement, and officials across the country have been gaming out and preparing for all manner of scenarios ahead of the 2024 presidential election to ensure the peaceful transfer of power.
One other consideration: Many of the insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol, individuals who would not be afraid to intimidate voters at polling stations or to attempt to disrupt vote counting, are in jail.
With Trump in key ways more limited than in 2020, what you’re seeing is a focus on purging voters in states that Republicans control, promoting third-party candidates to siphon off Democratic votes, changing election rules in Georgia to make vote counting slower and more chaotic, and rampant disinformation. That last one is huge.
Thankfully, the scheme to alter Nebraska’s electoral vote allocation failed and while many Republican governors are engaged in voter suppression and underhanded tactics that can affect Congressional and state races, their impact on the presidential election is less because these states, by and large, are not competitive.
I remain on the fence about the danger played by the Republicans’ formal “poll watching” efforts, which could lead to voter intimidation in Democratic strongholds.
3) The Very Scary Immigrant Threat
Trump’s now infamous and widely derided “they’re eating the dogs, they’re eating the cats” presidential debate moment may have seemed to viewers like it came out of nowhere, but for anyone monitoring right-wing sites, it wasn’t a surprise.
The right-wing frenzy of hate and hysteria, similar to what myself and others saw in the lead up to J6 has returned, and the right’s target this time is primarily immigrants. Immigrants are the Baba Yaga of 2024, whereas in 2020, it was Antifa.
This focus on immigrants is intentional and serves a number of purposes. Trump and the right-wing apparatus built to secure his victory will use claims of immigrants voting illegally to surveil polling sites and intimidate voters. They’ll use the claim to try and interrupt the counting of votes, if it looks like a Harris victory is likely.
Fictitious claims of immigrants voting will be used in court challenges, and if you have faith every court in the land will toss those false claims out, well… I appreciate your extreme optimism. While Trump lacks the power of the presidency this time around, after four years, the Republican party and the conservative establishment are more servile to him than ever before, with dissenters having been pushed out.
Right-wing think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation, Republican members of Congress, and the conservative media are already creating and amplifying disinformation in a way that wasn’t seen in 2020.
If all else fails, the Very Scary Immigrant Threat may even be used to justify, in part, another insurrection, along with claims that Harris’ candidacy was never legitimate to begin with due to Biden dropping out of the race. The right’s ginned up anti-immigrant hysteria may seem over the top, but recognize its danger.
4) The Power of Fear
Immigrant gangs rampaging through towns across the US, murdering and raping with impunity. Hundreds, if not thousands, of dead bodies piled up along riverbeds in Western North Carolina after Hurricane Helene, their existence being hidden by FEMA. Solar flares. Weather machines. WWIII.
This is the reality Trump supporters live in. If you’re not in these spaces, I cannot emphasize enough how hysterical and unhinged their information environment is.
The purpose is fear. Fear can motivate voters to the polls and convince them to support a thin-skinned former Reality TV star with dreams of being the next Mussolini. Fear can convince supporters to storm the Capitol, or to storm a local polling station.
We saw this in 2020, with insurrectionists insisting that they either overturn the election or that they and their families would die under Joe Biden’s communist regime. In their fevered minds, it was a matter of life or death. This sense of desperation has only grown stronger in 2024.
While immigrants will remain the north star of the Republicans’ massive disinformation campaign, these operations are opportunistic in nature. Expect conservative media to latch onto anything they feel can further fuel the hysteria.
It should be noted that in this super-charged disinformation environment that Trump and the Republicans are fueling, I’m very concerned that immigrants, FEMA, or whatever the scary villain du jour is that week, will be victims of violence.
My Predictions for the 2024 Election
I would call this election a rollercoaster but rollercoasters are fun. Between the return of Trump, the rampant disinformation, and the bloodshed in the Middle East, this is an election that I think many have found to be demoralizing. How does this all play out and what can we do to defend our democracy?
Voting’s already started. The election is here. As we get closer to November 5, we’ll see more disinformation, more hysteria from Trump and his supporters. It’s one of the few tools they have at their disposal.
Expect to see a steady drumbeat of increasingly sensational accusations against the Democrats of voting irregularities, especially as it involves immigrants, and of manufactured or entirely fictionalized altercations at polling stations and vote counting centers. The goal isn’t chaos. Rather, it’s the appearance of chaos, enough to give institutions captured by Trump and the Republicans an excuse to intervene. By this, I primarily mean the courts, but I expect the full weight of theTrump machine to be applied here in all its myriad forms.
This includes the House, with Speaker Mike Johnson playing a starring role. A new House will be sworn in on January 3, 2025, and if the new House should be Democratic, Johnson’s ability to contribute to any sabotage of the democratic process after that point will be limited. Before then though, expect he will use the full extent of his powers to attempt to overturn the election should Harris be the winner.
JD Vance telegraphed the play when he responded to a question about J6: “I would have asked the states to submit alternative slates of electors and let the country have the debate about what actually matters and what kind of election we had.”
The Republicans do not have a grand master plan when it comes to the presidential election. It’s more about improvisation, looking for opportunities to cast doubt on the validity of the election and using those manufactured doubts to turn a free and fair election into something that needs to be debated, either in the House of Representatives or in the Supreme Court.
One of the smartest moves Democrats made in 2020 was not to engage in any “debate.” The presidential election of 2020 was free and fair, no discussion needed. Assuming Harris wins in a nailbiter, and that is an assumption that may not bear out in a couple different ways, I sincerely hope the Democrats continue not to fall for the Republicans’ trap of “reasonable discussion.”
Some parting advice before I wrap up this analysis.
First, don’t let the bastards get you down. One of the purposes of this rampant disinformation campaign is to exhaust and demoralize voters, to make them want to give up on the democratic process all together. Take a break, walk outside, maybe even touch that grass and become one with nature, at least for a few minutes.
Second, once the votes are cast, the metaphorical battle will likely be one of comms. The other side is going to try and warp reality, to the point where voters start to wonder what reality even is. This then opens the door to court challenges and Republican attempts to overturn the election.
How quickly can our side debunk rumors? Can we withstand the barrage of lies and make the center hold? As has often been said, “A lie is halfway round the world before the truth has got its boots on.” The goal is not to beat the Republicans at the disinformation game, it’s to not be completely subsumed by it.
To that end, don’t spread disinformation yourself. Check who is behind that viral tweet before you boost it, and for god’s sake, Trump did not stage his own assassination attempt. Don’t buy into that nonsense, it rots your brain and leaves you susceptible to other conspiracy theories.
Third, Ivan Raiklin, look him up. Maybe check in on him every once in a while and see what he’s up to. He was the chief architect of the “Pence Card” strategy in 2020, has compiled a “Deep State Target List,” and is already coming up with schemes to short circuit the 2024 vote.
Finally, do I think we’ll see a repeat of the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2025? I’d usually say not a chance in hell, but Trump’s most diehard supporters remain stubbornly fixated on the Capitol. It’s the one that got away and they seem to want another shot at it.
Here we have a series of hypotheticals. IF Kamala Harris is the winner of the 2024 presidential election, and IF all of Trump’s court challenges fail, and IF his state level schemes fail, you could see right-wing interest return to the January 6 electoral college certification, even though Kamala Harris will be over-seeing it as vice-president and the Electoral Count Reform Act of 2022 has made it harder for the certification to be manipulated.
This scenario, by the way, becomes more likely if the Republicans hold the House and Mike Johnson remains speaker.
In this hypothetical, I think there’s a reasonable chance law enforcement would be prepared for the insurrectionists this time around, resulting in a situation where the insurrectionists stage outside the Capitol, then protest another nearby target once they realize the Capitol isn’t achievable.
If Mike Johnson is still speaker on January 6, 2025, an insurrection based on parliamentary maneuvers rather than flag poles and zip ties will probably happen inside the Capitol anyways.
But that’s all speculation. The most important steps you can take ahead of November 5 are the following:
1) As cheesy as it sounds, vote.
2) Volunteer for a candidate you believe in.
3) Don’t get overwhelmed by disinformation.
4) Don’t lose hope in our hot mess of a democracy.
Next Week:
Part II: The J6 Attempt Came Closer To Success Than Many Think: Link here.
The post Reflections On January 6: Planned In The Open; Yet Made Invisible; What It Means For The 2024 Election appeared first on DCMediaGroup.
Muralists Dazzle NoMa in Color Festival with Beauty and Life’s Messages
Washington DC—Along the Metropolitan Branch Trail wall in the shadows of new high rises adjacent to trendy Alethia Tanner Park of NoMa, Jeff Huntington, whose artist name is Jahru, was putting the finishing touches on his mural. The sun had reddened his back and his shoulders glistened with a dark red tint from the heat—tree shadows crept over his mural as it dried and he climbed from his ladder, “Oh my back aches,” he said. He’d be painting all day.
He stood back and reflected on his creation momentarily—a three dimensional aspect mural of two children peering through thick columns, a girl split by her brother, their faces a wonderment of hope, curiosity, promise, and desperation. It was one among many remarkable new murals painted this week along the trail—many admirers were stopping to photograph and compliment his work.
He spoke about the impact of art on his life as he folded up his ladder, “In my art practice I’m always trying to push the process to find new surprises in them through difficult processes. When something good happens in the work I didn’t really expect, and it’s something new and fresh in my mind, then I feel like a kid in a candy store.”
Just down from him, Eric B. Ricks, was also finishing his mural, a visual depiction of the potential in all of us, from our beginning to maturity—from egg to butterfly. He created his mural from a box of aerosol spray cans, by mixing the hues and by folding pieces of cardboard to accentuate lines and merge abstract objects into a story.
He hadn’t titled it yet, but he described its message, “My story is [about] enjoying where you are. Often we’re looking at others wishing we had what they had, without understanding their journeys too. Everyone starts with nothing. When you understand that, you become more mindful and more invested in your journey. You can create a great story out of your life and share something meaningful.”
Ricks has painted murals in states across the country and traveled to other countries to learn about other artists.
Eric B. Ricks by his mural. He showcased his skills and as an artist for many decades has worked in many mediums. Photo: J. Zangas
Still down further was artist Mike Pacheco, a muralist who has been painting for 20 years. His mural was a tribute to hip hop and music that inspires people. Hie mural painted an astronaut holding a bom box while wearing a gold chain attached to a clock—a nod to Flavor Flav who inspired him. He said that resistance was an undertone of his message and it was being passed down from the older generation to the new.
Mike Pacheco by his mural. The NoMa In Color Mural Festival is an annual end of Summer program that brings artists and the community together to build pride and positivity. Photo: J. Zangas
Huntington, Ricks, Pacheco, and 13 other muralists had spent the last few days of Summer working on their murals along the trail wall that supports the Redline metro tracks above. The NoMa in Color Annual Festival, returned September 16-23 with artistic impressions of life and messages about life. Many of the muralists have been painting for decades, like Eric Ricks who started painting and creating graffiti in high school. But some of the muralists were beginners and one of the ideas of the grant was to recognize new and upcoming artists as well as experienced artists.
The NoMa in Color Annual Festival project was created as the result of a grant to build beauty and pride through art in the NoMa and Eckington neighborhoods. Before the condominium high-rises were built the area was mostly an empty grassland with dilapidated warehouses and a narrow bikeway along the metro wall. The wall was covered with tags and graffiti and every few months the city had to pay thousands to paint the tags over.
The NoMa in Color project ended that. Sure, odd-ball tags pop up now and then, but the project has brought beauty and pride to the neighborhood and the money spent on layers of white cover-up has been saved while the grant has helped sustain artists who can show off their skills and help build the community in a positive way. The murals have changed a blank white wall into a yearly mecca for artists who have transformed it into an evolving tapestry of creativity and beauty.
Huntington has been painting for several decades but took a break after he lost two who were very close to him. He had a painter’s block during the following trauma and his creativity was dead. He traveled to Brazil and met the street artists where they have a strong influence in the communities. After being among the Brazilian street artists his passion and zeal for creativity was reborn and while painting with them it returned to a level he had not realized before. He created a website and is doing as well as ever. He doesn’t even worry about what gallery to show his art—he strives to find that moment during his work where his creativity shines through to the inner child in him and then he knows he’s created something wonderful, something good.
As he spoke about his experiences relating to art, a metro train passed above making it hard to hear him speak for a moment. “That sound is me in my element,” he said.
You may learn more about these artists here: Huntington, Ricks, Pacheco.
You may learn about the other artists involved in this project but not covered in this story, at this link: NoMaBid.org.
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Red Line Protest For Gaza At White House Draws More Support For Palestinians
Washington DC—Thousands surrounded the White House Saturday with a ‘people’s red line’ message to the Biden administration to stop funding and supporting Israel’s war on Gaza. At midday, hundreds unfurled and circled the White House with a 2 mile long red banner with names of thousands of Palestinians slain by Israeli military bombing in Gaza. Over 200 groups joined in demanding an immediate cease-fire in Gaza, withdrawal of military forces, and a pathway towards Palestinian Statehood.
The Israeli military is now in its 9th month of a sustained military assault and occupation of Gaza which began on October 7, 2023 and has leveled over 80% of its structures, killed nearly 40,000 women and children, and rendered Gaza virtually unlivable. Nearly 2 million have been displaced with signs that famine has taken hold in parts of Gaza according to a Famine Early Warning Network Analysis published last month.
According to an Al Jezeera report, a full-blown famine was occurring but it was difficult to assess how extreme it was because of the Israeli blockade of Gaza.
A famine is determined to be occurring when certain conditions are met, according to a UN technical definition. These conditions include:
- At least 20 per cent of the population in that particular area are facing extreme levels of hunger;
- 30 per cent of the children in the same place are wasted, or too thin for their height; and
- The death – or mortality – rate has doubled, from the average, surpassing two deaths per 10,000 daily for adults and four deaths per 10,000 daily for children.
Saturday’s giant action was supported by over 200 groups as of Friday, the day before the action was to start with more groups joining the ongoing organizing. An action in support of Gaza and Palestinians with this level of interest would have been inconceivable as recently as last year. This is because there was limited interest in the Palestinian cause for freedom and State autonomy, at least in the U.S.. But general support among Americans has grown this Spring with a wave of university protests in sympathy with Palestinian rights and news coverage of student activism and has spread awareness of the Gaza conflict to the mainstream. With today’s action it is apparent more voices are joining a growing chorus for an end to hostilities and the establishing an autonomous State in Gaza.
Tens of Thousands Circled White House
Buses came from States across the nation bringing 1000’s in a clear sign that political pressure is increasing against the Biden administration. While thousands circled the White House with a symbolic red line banner, others held a mock trial on the White House Ellipse of the key players responsible in the loss of life and destruction in Gaza infrastructure.
Later a group of students set up a camp on the Ellipse after the permit to protest had expired, in furtherance of the action, and as an autonomous event, to which Secret Service responded by circling the encampment and requesting that the students to take their tents down and not camp overnight.
President Biden has publicly warned Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu at various stages of his military campaign not to cross certain “red lines” with respect to Israeli military actions in Gaza, but PM Netanyahu has ignored every red line warning President Biden has issued.
Lopsided Attack On Gaza Unparalleled
A published report in Al Jezeera revealed the amount of munitions dropped on Gaza was equivalent to two nuclear bombs as of November 2023 with half of those bombs consisting of ‘dumb’ explosive munitions. The destruction of the Gaza territory is nearing a totality as over 1.5 million, more than 80% of Gazans have been forced to leave their homes and seek refuge in tent camps. Conditions are deteriorating much more quickly than previously reported as the most recent incursion by Israeli Military ground forces has limited aid to the beleaguered territory.
Speakers Told Of Human Carnage in Gaza
Mohammed (last name not given), a member of the Palestinian Youth Movement, told of his relatives in several cities in Gaza. “Each household is forced to choose between family members to save and those to leave behind. My family which resided in Has-te-Zahoon and in Red-de-Remon are reduced to mere numbers and displaced across Rafah. My homeland is soaked in the blood of our martyrs everyday and everyday it becomes increasingly difficult to move forward. We are exhausted. We are tired of this genocide on our people.”
Lanna (last name not given), a Student Representative of the District, Maryland and Virginia chapter of the Coalition of Students for Justice in Palestine said that local universities were providing funding to Israel. “These bombs and weapons that are used to destroy our land and our people are supplied by the U.S. and paid for by our universities. Campuses have become cesspools of complicity in the perpetuation of violence and genocide of the Palestinian people.”
Lubna (last name not given), a member of the Palestinian Feminist Collective, said of supporters of Gaza. “To our co-strugglers who continue to stand with us and our people in their darkest days—Palestine is neither an exception nor a litmus test. Palestine is a compass for revolutionary struggle worldwide.”
Brian Becker, National Coordinator of Answer Coalition said, “Only the people can be the red line, not the Democrats, not the Republicans, not Wall Street, and not the White House…only we the people.” The red line reference was taken from President Biden’s warning to PM Netanyahu that a ground attack on Rafah would trigger U.S. abatement of its military support for Israel. The U.S. continues to support Israel.
We will update the actions taken by students at the Ellipse as reporting becomes available. Update pertaining to the student encampment on the Ellipse: late Saturday night police swept through the encampment and removed all the tents after students left the tents behind. There were no arrests reported.
For a photo slideshow of the people’s red line action please visit DCMediaGroup Photographer Ted Majdosz portfolio here.
Video of actions is below.
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GWU Students Storm Campus With Second Encampment; Standoff Against Police
Washington DC—George Washington University Students stormed back by the hundreds onto the campus streets on Thursday afternoon. They told of their experiences during a police raid the day before, and then set up a second temporary encampment of tents near the University President Ellen Granberg’s F Street Home. The student-led action came 36 hours after 32 were arrested during a predawn Wednesday morning raid on the U-Yard. The Press coverage was quarantined during the police take down of their U-Yard encampment so there is limited video of the raid. However, students described a disturbing sequence of events during the raid. Their individual stories paralleled a similar narrative of aggression, brutality, and violence from hundreds of police at the behest of the University Administration.
The Students’ fury was plain later on Thursday night after their rally as they again squared off against hundreds of police lining Street F Street and the adjacent campus streets. Students formed a human blockade, condemned the University Administration and violent police aggression, and chanted late into the night.
Their chants, roars, songs, and drums echoed from the homes and dormitories and could be heard for blocks away as they trolled University Administrators and police alike. Live streams sent their messages across social forums such as Tic Toc and Twitter. Their images were streamed as far as the embattled Gaza territory where a million Palestinians are still under siege from an continuing Israeli military attack.
One resident of the city of Ralah in Gaza who gave his name as Mahmoud, spoke to DCMG through an intermediary channel and interpreter, saying that the students had given him new hope and injected a sense among Gazans that something new was happening in the U.S. that could lead to an end of the bombing of his city. He said he had lost many family members and had given into despair in the days before the recent wave of students actions on U.S. University campuses captured attention in Gaza. (See video below of students’ direct action).
Second Student Direct Action Triggers Massive DC Police Response
On F Street the students’ action swelled as more learned of the impromptu encampment. Students named their second encampment “Shahada Square.” Meanwhile police began closing off the George Washington campus for several blocks surrounding the student action to reduce an influx of supporters from joining it. This cascading effect frustrated other students trying to return to their dormitories as well as guests staying at a nearby hotel not involved in the civil disobedience protest.
As the night wore on and tensions began to ease, the standoff relaxed a bit and the students’ actions evolved into dance and a celebratory mood. Later in the night a person was injured in a fall and police opened East F Street access at 19th Street to the student encampment, allowing some to leave the protest and others joined in. Some began to tire from the action which had by then lasted 6 hours.
Once again community support streamed into the new encampment from 19th Street as random vehicles delivered much needed water and food. Boxes of eye protection and breathing filters were sent by someone in support of the students in anticipation of police mobilization.
Students who were arrested during the Wednesday morning spoke during the earlier rally, reiterating their demands to University Administrators to divest from Israel and identify its sources of investment there.
The students’ version of events ran parallel on a theme that the University Administration had needlessly ordered a DC police assault of their peaceful encampment, wrongly disparaged their reputations as being anti-Semitic, and had not engaged them in a meaningful or good faith dialogue at any time during their two week occupation of U-Yard. The students iterated the elements of their creation of a peaceful encampment, inclusive to a diverse range to religions of which many came to pray in harmony with one another for peace in Gaza, for the safety of the Palestinian People, the successes of their camp, and their vision of a society where all races, creeds, and orientations are respected and included. They spoke of their collective accumulation and allocation among themselves and the community of knowledge, shelter, medical assistance, educational resources, and safety which they shared generously.
The students’ version of events at the encampment they built countered the University Administration narrative that they were dangerous, destructive, and engaged in activities offensive to the community. And they condemned the University president for disparaging them. They spoke of the betrayal and deep injuries they felt both emotionally from the University Administrators and physically from the police who brutalized them when no one was allowed close enough to witness it.
In no uncertain terms, the students condemned the early morning Wednesday police raid on their camp and decried the needless disposal into the trash of their equipment, including personal tents and belongings, medical supplies, a people’s library, food and supplies, which included laptops and study materials they were using for their final exams, and dozens of prayer mats used during Muslin services.
One student said that their computer equipment was in their tent during the raid and by being woken up in the early morning hours, they were disoriented and unable to retrieve their bedding, clothes, and belongings before they were taken away. They declined to give their name because the University had previously suspended other students involved in the U-Yard encampment.
The students said they may have been evicted from the camp but they were not leaving and by that they meant they would continue their solidarity to the Palestinian people and continue resisting the University’s financial support for those involved in the Gaza destruction and oppression of Palestinians. They would continue to rally for the Palestinian people even if it meant they could not continue with an encampment.
The students were not alone at their encampment. Several professors came out in support and and spoke about their distress in the way students had been treated during the eviction. They expressed worry that the University Administrators created an unhealthy academic environment by not being earnest and resourceful with the students in a dialogue to mitigate the grievances in a meaningful way. They declined to give their name for fear of retribution for supporting the students and their second encampment action.
Yet the students acknowledged their experience was but a shadow of the experiences of the residents of Rafah, Gaza, and those forced from their homes in the West Bank.
By 11:30 pm police began issuing warnings to leave the area or face arrest. Organizers decided to end the encampment. At just before midnight hundreds began marching again and a decision was passed among them to return home. Only one student photographer was arrested after the march ended but he was released without charges.
Voices of Some Students Arrested
Some of the students speeches are transcribed below as follows (They are included at the end of the video without personal exposure for privacy reasons).
Student Speaker 1:
“Over the past 13 days of our encampment I continued to think of the Palestinian children in Gaza who held signs for GW. Their eyes that were on the encampment gave us strength but our eyes are hyper focused on Gaza, Rafah, the West Bank, and all of Palestine.
“We built this liberated zone from the ground up. We imagined a world where public safety was not reliant on incarceration, policing, and surveillance. Where our art was made for us beyond the dictates of capitalist hierarchy, liberal governance, and commodified interests. We imagined a future that was made for the people and by the people and we materialized it.
“The Administration is terrified of the world we built—a world where food, shelter, medicine, art, and knowledge were collectively distributed—a world where our existence does not line the pockets of the ruling elite. And so they took that world away from us.
“I was one of the students whose own university arrested me. Before I was arrested I watched as these fascist pigs indiscriminately destroyed our art, our collectively accumulated resources, and our community infrastructure. It drives me (expletive) mad but this madness is the most rational thing that we can feel. The violence we faced is just an echo of the brutal destruction that Palestinians face every day.
“I was reminded of the homes that are bulldozed by zionist settlers in the West Bank and the entire neighborhoods that are decimated by U.S. funded rockets in Gaza. The Palestinians who have withstood far worse destruction on their homes and neighborhoods are our compass. Their resistance breathes life into ours. Their resistance provides us voice to sing in the holding cell and we will continue to sing when the zionist entity tries to silence us when we chant ‘we are not leaving.’ We don’t mean the physical space which we refuse to abandon. We mean the solitary we hold and embody with the Palestinian people.”
Student Speaker 2: This student is a disabled person and disability activist who was arrested in their wheelchair and stated they were improperly and unsafely harnessed while being transported.
“They thought they could get me alone, that they could put me in solitary, and they could intimidate me and i’m here to tell you that they (explicative) could not. We’re out here to say all eyes on Rafah and we are not backing down. We are here for Palestine.
“As a disabled person I center a lot of my activism on the ten principles of disability justice. And the two that I’m thinking about are cross-movement organizing and collective liberation. The ableist violence of the cops showcases the ways our struggles are connected and the ways our liberation is intertwined and also shows the importance and power of our solidarity. The fact that they needed to bring out 500 riot cops shows how scared they are of our power and we are not leaving.”
Speaker 3:
“They put our stuff in a (expletive) truck and destroyed it; tents, medical supplies, and food. They brutalized our students. They arrested (and) ppepper sprayed them. They felt that pepper spray for hours. And yet we are out here again because if you look at Rafah; if you look at Gaza, you know we have to be out here to continue the fight.”
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DC Police Raid George Washington University Student Gaza Campus; 31 Arrested
Washington, DC—The student led Gaza solidarity protest at George Washington University Yard was raided in the predawn hours of Wednesday, May 8. Police arrested 31 and charged them with unlawful entry while four were additionally charged with assault of a police officer. All those arrested were released by the early afternoon of the same day. Jail supporters waited for each student’s release and provided emotional support, food, drink, and comfort to them once they were released. Nearly all those arrested were students and none of those arrested were reported as being “outside agitators” as the University Administration claimed had taken part in the camp.
According to GW Hatchet, a campus publication which has closely covered the Student led Gaza Solidarity Camp since its beginning, hundreds of police raided and cleared the camp with several police using pepper spray against protesters. A report of any injuries was not available. Live media coverage of the event was not possible because police had forced closure of H Street before the raid.
Students had renamed University Yard (U-Yard) the Liberated Zone, Gaza Solidarity Camp, and Solidarity Camp. The U-Yard was 1 day short of reaching a 14-day milestone of continuous occupation, making it among the longest running university protests in the country. The students vowed to remain encamped in University Yard in defiance of University Administrators orders to leave, or stay until the university administration met their demands.
The items left in the Gaza Solidarity Campus in the early morning hours were reportedly thrown in the trash after police arrested and removed the students refusing to leave. This included all the personal tents, the library tent and its remaining books, and the people’s garden, A box of Korans was among the books left in the library and available for the public as of late Tuesday night.
Students at other local Universities had followed GWU students’ example and staged Gaza Solidarity protests at Howard, Gallaudet, and American Universities. Many social justice movements in the community also joined with students’ efforts to message the press and the public about the need for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza; the urgency for restoration of basic necessities such as food, water, and medical care needs; and an end to the occupation of the Gaza territory.
Students Were Prepared To Stay Indefinitely
From a tactical point one could argue students could not have picked a less defensible place to stage an occupation. This is because the encampment was occluded on three sides by academic buildings with only narrow exits through sidewalks at the southern corners near Bell and Lisner Halls.
The remaining access from U-Yard to H Street was largely blocked by a 4-foot wall and bushes. The H Street access was a narrow one-way street already blocked by police cars at its two ends. Any police plan to raid and evict the GWU “Liberation Zone” and prevent support from assisting the students could do with minimal teams and few riot police—or so it would seem.
But the spirit of students and community supporters had from its outset made the GWU Gaza Solidarity encampment vibrant and wecoming to the community. The students created a safe space for those sympathetic to the Palestinian struggle and it attracted many students from other Universities as well as visitors from the community. It was self-evident that those who went to the encampment found promise and hope in the students’ messages about ending the Israeli military brutality and freeing Gaza with a path towards statehood.
One could also argue students in U-Yard had by the early Wednesday morning eviction, succeeded. Their strategy of pushing the Free Gaza narrative into the front pages of American press by engaging the DC, Maryland, and Virginia community along with and dozens of international press organizations, was evident throughout their occupation with press coverage of daily activities.
There were always students building art projects and painting banners with a focus on the Palestinian struggle in Gaza. There were rallies in U-Yard almost every day. The students wanted the focus to be on Gaza, not on them, and they went to great lengths to keep the discussion on Palestinian rights and on deteriorating conditions in Gaza. It was not their intention to be the story. But by Tuesday night, on May 7, so much attention was already being focused on the students as the result of evictions from Universities in other cities that they became intertwined in the story about Gaza.
Some could argue that they were becoming somewhat of a international sensation, both from the perspective of the international press coverage but also from the flailing narrative imposed against them from detractors saying that they were “potentially dangerous” and using “hate language” tantamount to “antisemitism.” None of those types of behaviors were ever displayed for if they had been, such instances would have been publicized in the media. And the extensive community support the students enjoyed would have quickly dried up.
The student press liaisons engaged international media every day at 2:00 pm to spread the story about Gaza in their narrative beyond and they succeeded in reaching a wide range of international press reporters with their messages. Their messages were on topic about Gaza and efforts to dialogue with the University Administration.
Aljazeera set up a mobile news station on H Street and broadcasted it’s afternoon report about the Gaza Solidarity encampment. Aljazeera reported from U-Yard every day since the students began their occupation. One of its journalists spoke to DCMG about why they think the student’s’ messages are important and how the wave of protests across the U.S. is sending out beacons of hope in Gaza and in the occupied territories. The journalist shrugged at an Israel Government decision Sunday to close the Aljazeera news station in Israel, and confiscate their equipment, saying, “It will not stop us from reporting the truth about Gaza.”
Other press organizations including local reporters, news organizations from Turkey, Jordan, South America, Asia, independent media, and among many others, a documentary team was videotaping a full-length report to be released later this year.
On Sunday night the U-Yard encampment was visited by a large contingent of about 100 from Jewish Voice for Peace. JVFP prayed from Hebrew scriptures for about a half an hour and then and sang songs. Many watched as they prayed. Earlier that evening a nightly Muslin prayer had occurred just after sundown. The U-Yard students welcomed and respected faiths and diversity throughout its occupation.
The community embraced the Liberated Zone as well. There was a steady stream of food and supplies sent from area businesses. There was so much support in supply delivery that students generously offered anyone visiting the camp to eat and take as much as they liked and needed.
Students Set Up An Inclusive and Diverse Safe Space
Then there were the students themselves; concentrating on completing their final courses, writing their course theses, and keeping the Liberation Zone clean and clear of obstacles, despite the pressures on them. The camp tasks seemed mundane, and included many such as serving catered meals from the kitchen tent, staffing the medical tent, picking up and removing trash, and hosting classes, but were are all being efficiently completed.
On Saturday afternoon several were giving instruction about social justice concerns related to the Attack on Gaza. A group of activists were giving a class about excessive consumption and resource misallocation in the center of University Yard on Sunday. About 50 sat listening intently. There are several classes given by both students and community social justice activists every day. Many different groups found affinity with students’ zeal, energy, and undying belief in themselves and their purpose.
The medical tent was always staffed with at least three medical persons. They were both welcoming and helpful, always asking how they could help anyone who walked to the tent.
This same approach was seen at the food and supply tents which were stationed outside the U-Yard on H Street. These tents were always staffed and the students running them were helpful. No one was refused a meal or an item they needed.
Political Pressure Brought Against Encampment
The House Committee on Oversight, a Committee of the House with the responsibility over local governmental affairs in Washington DC, planned a meeting on Wednesday afternoon about the student protest at George Washington University. The Committee planned to call Mayor Muriel Bowser and Police Chief Pamela Smith to testify Wednesday afternoon but following the raid and removal of the encampment, the House Oversight Committee canceled the hearing.
George Washington University Administrators met with several organizers to hear their demands last week but made no comment and left the meeting after organizers iterated their demands. Another student provided DCMG a copy of a general email that GWU President, Ellen Granberg and Christopher Bracey, Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs, sent to students telling them to immediately cease their protest and leave University Yard.
The email accused the students of engaging in “hateful language” and ordered them to “vacate University Yard immediately.” The email further offered Anniversary Park, as an alternative for daily protest use daily until 7:00 p.m. The students declined several requests to leave so it was then that University Administrators decided to call DC police to assist GW police in eviction, according to the email. The first eviction attempt failed as students overwhelmed the police and de-arresed a student. Seven students were subsequently suspended.
The GWU Student Campus Gaza Solidarity Zone Evolved Into A Community Activity
If one had visited the U-Yard over a period of days they could see the students gaining confidence and courage about their protest. The number of tents had grown from 20 on the first day to over 160 by the weekend. Several student supporters from Columbia University in Yew York City travelled to GWU and put up a Columbia University Flag which was repurposed into a banner and painted over, reading “Evicted So We Came Here.” Columbia University students were evicted on Friday night from the Hamilton Hall Administration building after negotiations towards decampment fell apart.
The Library Tent, named after famed Poet and Gaza University Professor Reefat Alareer, killed in an Israeli airstrike on December 6 last year, doubled to a second carrousel and of books covering diverse topics on community interests. A person from the company which published his book, “Gaza Writes Back,” left multiple copies of the book as well as other books at the memorial library. Three women from The Black Radical Mutual Aid Library brought more books on a cart Tuesday night, just before the raid. Their delivery of several dozens books were free to anyone who wanted one. The books were quickly picked up by students and visitors. More books were coming into the library than were going out and the library was a popular attraction.
The metal barricades were removed from University Yard center on Saturday. It freed up more space for student’s use and the area was turned into a miniature school with several open tents placed there to create an open air classroom. On Sunday afternoon many took part in a massive embroidery marathon making Palestinian flags.
A Palestinian flag continued to fly on a flag pole in front of Lisner Academic Hall. Students had raised the flag, replacing the American flag last week. The University administration replied by unfurling a giant three-storied 50 foot long by 30 foot wide American flag and draping it from the roof of Lisner Hall. Students replied to this by staging a light show on Friday night over the flag and transformed it into an illuminated photo of President Joe Biden with the caption “Genocide Joe.” On Saturday a tussle between George Washington University Police and students resulted in removal of the Palestinian flag from the flagpole. Students responded by putting flags on their tents and stringing banners from the trees. The University had boarded up entrances to the academic buildings around U-Yard with plywood and had assigned security guards in front of each building facing University Yard. But there was no evidence the Administration needed take such precautions because the students were neither destroying property nor breaking into any buildings.
The People’s Garden had grown too as more plants were added; nasturtiums poppies, oregano, aloe, parsley, and magellan have been added. Some of the tent had shoes and potted plants placed neatly outside them.
The Liberated Zone took a deep washing from mother nature over the weekend with rain falling from Friday night to Sunday night, dampening the tents and turning parts of the turf into muddy parcels. Students stayed off the grass as much as possible and collected most of the banners and signs before they were damaged. Sleeping bags and laundry were collected and washed.
The medical team put up water resistant tarps and moved most of the spare medical supplies into the main tent to prevent water damage but it still took days for everything to dry out. The staff continued helping many with medical services upon request.
May 4th was the 53rd anniversary of the Kent State University shootings of unarmed students protesting the Vietnam War as Ohio National Guardsmen moved in to remove hundreds of students protesting U.S. bombing of Hanoi and Cambodia. Michael Marceau, a Vietnam Veteran, and President of Local Chapter 016 of Veterans for Peace, visited the Liberation Zone wearing a sign reminding students and visitors that University protests were not the first time that forces of the State were sent in action against unarmed students and it wasn’t going to be the last time. He visited the students to warn the of possible outcomes when one goes up against the State and described from memory the State response. He was then a Soldier and deployed to Vietnam. He described to students how the war and the Kent State University massacre changed him.
With Four students killed and nine wounded, the National Guard Unit involved actually enflamed anger and tilted national opposition against the Vietnam War which hastened the U.S. exit from Vietnam.
The effect of the university Gaza protests is yet to be seen. The story of the fight to liberate Gaza is not ended. Over 2000 students have been arrested at universities nation wide. More protests are spreading at universities around the world. And there are signs political opposition in the U.S. is shifting against the Israeli government invasion of Gaza and against U.S. military support of Israel. This shift was evident at the White House the same day of the U-Yard raid.
On Wednesday night the White House announced it would cancel certain military aid and munitions to Israel if that government proceeded in a ground invasion of Rafah, the last city not so far virtually destroyed by Israeli bombing. According to a published report in The Guardian, President Joe Biden said that he would not supply weapons that have historically been used against cities such as Rafah. The report iterated that further weapons shipments such as guided bombs could be canceled if Israeli ground forces invaded Rafah but made it clear other types of military support of the iron dome would continue. It was the first time Biden publicly announced the possibility of canceling military aid shipments to Israel.
On the last night of the GWU Gaza Solidarity Campus students held a 2 hour rally with speakers and chanting that led into the night. Soon thereafter several hundred marched to F Street House, office building or residence of the University President. All the lights were turned off but police blocked entrance to the steps. The protesters were spirited and remained at H Street House for nearly an hour. It was the last action taken by students before their eviction from U-Yard. Video of some scenes from GWU Gaza Solidarity Encampment is below.
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George Washington University Students Create Gaza Campus Solidarity Encampment
WashingtonDC—George Washington University students along with students from other universities, supporters from the local community, and some local allied groups, have joined the rising wave of university campus protests currently sweeping the nation. Unlike many other university encampment protests, police and campus security have failed to persuade students to leave and not successfully ejected them from the University Yard, which students have renamed “Liberated Zone.”
Students are protesting the continued War and destruction of Gaza by Israel, and laid out five demands to University Administration for its role in supporting Israel. They are also demanding revocation of the suspension of seven students involved in the protest. Other demands include university divestment from Israel.
The round-the-clock occupation of University Yard began Thursday morning at 5:45 am when a small group of about 20 began occupying the center of the yard and put up a handful of tents. University security and DC Metropolitan Police quarantined the student protesters by erecting metal barricades along the edge of the University Yard facing H Street, the only side fully open to the street. Supporters gathered outside the barricades to provide moral support. A standoff ensued as campus security and police attempted to force them out of the yard, according to a student witness who declined to give their name. Security and DC Metropolitan Police, denied the students bathroom access, food and water, but supporters were able to provide limited relief over the next four days according to the witness.
Outside University Yard more supporters joined on H Street over the next few days to give the students encouragement as the standoff grew.
On Sunday night at about 10:45 PM, dozens of MPD moved in to arrest the 20 students who remained firmly planted in the yard. But supporters stormed and overwhelmed the security and police, de-arrested one student, and stopped any more arrests. The unplanned quick action empowered the supporters who then scaled the barricades to join the students in the center of the yard. The students dissembled the barricades and the University Yard turned into a full-fledged resistance as hundreds joined in the occupation.
The encampment has grown 10 fold since Sunday night and has now been ongoing a week since last Thursday. Over 153 tents in total have been erected in University Yard which includes 16 additional tents erected on H Street.
University Yard Transformed Into A Gaza Solidarity Resistance
The encampment has continued to expand and hold firm as of noon on Wednesday night. More students and supporters have volunteered and joined in the University Yard as word of the GWU occupation spread on social media and in the press. The number of tents increased slightly to about 160 on Wednesday night. The tents include a medical tent, an open library, a food tent, an elongated and continuously operating kitchen tent with a staff of about three providing free cooked meals to anyone who stops by, an art supply tent, meeting spaces, and unisex bathroom tents complete with disposable waterless sanitation systems. Most tents are personal residences where student protesters can rest, change, and repose. It is difficult to ascertain how many are involved in the occupation but at a minimum several hundred are in the park at any given time with many coming and going to classes.
The “Gaza Campus” as they have named it, is also called “Liberation Zone” and has in its center a banner draped pillar of the unevenly stacked metal barricades which were torn down and haphazardly stacked at the climax of the attempted raid late Sunday night.
Students Say Gaza Campus is About Gaza Not About Students
Students are quick to say they’re not there for themselves but standing in for the Palestinians of Gaza. During an early Tuesday afternoon teach-in, over 300 circled in the center of the University Yard to hear speakers discuss the deteriorating conditions in Gaza. They discussed their five demands to the University Administration and their intention to remain in an indefinite occupation until their demands are met: some of which include University divestment from Israel, a moratorium on giving financial support to Israel, and reinstatement of seven students suspended for their roles in the “Gaza Campus” 24-hour vigil on Sunday night.
GWU Gaza Campus: Transforming Resistance
Most protests in Washington DC over the last two decades have been a gathering of hundreds or thousands in a local park with informal speeches, followed by a march through streets with signs; everyone returns home, and everything seems to go back to the way it was. Commerce and traffic return to normal. Washington DC has grown accustomed to this routine. Even the MPD script street closures by the numbers and are as efficient as an atomic clock closing roads.
The round-the-clock University Yard occupation is different. It has become a major thorn in the GWU Administration’s side if not just because it is growing and gathering more supporters, more students, but because it is continuous and gaining more and more support and by the day. The occupation of University Yard is an eyesore for anyone who prefers neatly combed green grass edged with flowering gardens, smarly trimmed bushes, and thick trunked trees aged over 100 years old; the way any ivy league school should be. Yes the flowers have been trampled and the grass has been flattened a bit after a weeks-long occupation. But students have added a sign at the entrance in response, reading, “Don’t like the encampment, keep looking away like you did for genocide.”
The yard’s flowers will bloom again next spring and the grass will regrow once the students leave. But for now the students are standing off against those complicit and unwilling the fix the underlying forces destroying Gaza and its Palestinian communities.
A Walk Through The Gaza Campus
The first thing one sees upon entering the square is that the bronze statue of George Washington has been retransformed from a statesman to the infantry infidel he once was. In the late 1770s his fledgling Army skirmished with the well-supplied and better equipped British forces occupying the rebellious Colonies. He resisted British rule and the British saw him as an insugent. But this time around, George Washington the infidel is wearing a checkered kufiya around his neck and tagged with motifs of the Palestinian resistance. By Wednesday afternoon someone had moved his kufiya up over his head and his neck so that only his eyes are peering out towards H Street. As signs are taken away, more signs are being added to his pedestal: “American compliance nurtures Palestinian Genocide” reads one, “Ceacefire in Gaza Now” reads another and it is the sign at George’s base.
And nearly everyone visiting the University Yard stops to take a picture of the newly repurposed infidel George Washington as he once was and as he is now.
Behind him is a white board with community standards written in green ink:
–No Zionism
–Clean up after yourself and our space
–Ask questions
–Don’t talk to police
–Don’t talk to media unless trained
–hydrate
–grace and patience
–self advocate
–No substances
–No sexual relations
–Respect one another
–Be disciplined
–Have revolutionary optimism
–Do not lose sight of Gaza (written in red)
To the right of George is the Liberation Library, free pop-up library in a tent with a carousel of books about resistance and revolution. A sign requests visitors to return books on the honor system. A copy of Frank Herbert’s Dune is on the shelf as is The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Mohandas Ghandi Essential Writings, Girl Zines, Palestine Studies, and Saving Our Own Lives (A Liberatotory Practice of Harm Reduction) by Sbira Hassan; except that the last word in the title, “Lives,” has been blotted out by black paint, probably accidentally. Many others discuss principles of revolution, self empowerment, and community building. There is a row on Zines laid on the floor; among them, “De-arrest Primer,” “First We Take Columbia (Lessons From the April 1968 Movement,” “DC To Palestine (Linking Our Liberation),” and “Fuck Identity, We Need Solidarity (Pittsburgh Radical Perspective).” Zines are usually anonymously written black and white discussion booklets providing practical guidance for community challenges.
By Wednesday night, Liberation Library has been renamed Reefat Alareer Memorial Library after the Palestinian Poet and writer who was killed in Gaza along with his brother, sister, and their children during an air attack on December 6, 2023.
By the following day, “Dune” has been checked out and other books such as “White Lies” authored by Berger, and “Azerbaijan“ by Soja Bolukbasi have replaced it.
Someone has hand written a poem on parchment titled “I Brought You White Roses,” and left it on the book carousel. It reads, in part:
“In case your mom wasn’t able to pick them up from the souk
I’d like to think you can hear the drum echo from my district to the one your heart beats in
There’s so many cameras
Does it feel like the world is watching your extinction?
Across from the library is a medical tent and team of medical staff; a sign above it reads “Please do not photograph the medical tent.”
Nearby someone has set down a row of portable plant pots, named it the “People’s Garden,” and left a sign requesting someone to check on it and to please water it if the soil is dry. Spouts include Lavender, Mint, Dill, Basil, and rosemary.
The kitchen team is continually busy, its student servers efficiently provide to scores free cooked meals outside the University Yard on H Street. On the menu Wednesday night is black beans and rice, chicken wings and drums, vegan meals with noodles and vegetables, falafels, and salads. There’s coffee, doughnuts left over from the afternoon, and confections from the Middle East and they all taste pretty good. Everything is donated from local restaurants or from the community.
There is another support tent nearby with snacks, hygiene products such as toothpaste, toothbrushes, soft drinks, energy drinks and energy bars. The students staffing it urge everyone to take whatever they need since there is more than what is needed. Every few minutes someone from the community drops off more support donations for the students.
Along every pathway are chalked messages written by students of their hope for a free and peaceful Palestine. Students are constantly building signs and painting banners to display throughout the University Yard. Signs are taped on the walls of the buildings surrounding the yard on three of its sides. Nearly every sign will be moved by the next day or replaced by other signs.
Encampment Sets Beacon of Hope
Throughout the day many from the community visit the encampment. Visitors include notable personalities from past campaigns and organizations from across the region. Union organizers, founders of social justice organizations, and supporters are flocking to Gaza Campus. May Day saw a worker’s forum held in the yard center amidst the stacked barricades. Later on a march for Palestinian freedom numbering in the hundreds ended at the encampment and filled the yard with additional supporters chanting for a long time. Their chanting and drums could br hears a few blocks away. They finished chanting so evening prayers could begin. Dozens kneeled on straw mats as an imam intoned the evening prayers.
In a corner by a wall a group of five Latin-American men play resistance songs on their guitars while one sings the lyrics. In the yard center a long greyed haired octogenarian sits and speaks to students gathered around him. Press from around the world walks through the yard recording the tents and banners and captures the scene while a field news person speaks to their audience back home.
Like ripples from a stone tossed into water, the student’s’ activities spread influence through the community and to distant shores abroad. An organizer noted they received thanks from families in Gaza who learned of their solidarity protests. One can never know the full effect on others of their actions, especially since so much attention is focusing on the university protests. But based on the police response in other cities, the protests are working, even if just to focus attention from other world issues.
The effect of the encampment would be limited if not for the students’ intensions and harmonized reflections on themselves as beacons of change. Their interactions with others is peacefully calm and their resistance is in a respectful yet assertive manner. Actions are seemingly taken by individuals without words spoken. One could surmise that there are meetings over channels on a forum chat somewhere online but tasks are completed all around the yard without public discussion. There’s a lot at stake and a 4 year education could be taken from a student for their involvement. Without prompting, some paint posters, others pick up trash and serve food, banners are painted, moved and repurposed; an organizer hails the camp over a set of speakers calling out “Mike Check!” several times until everyone is listening and then reminds everyone of the demands and purposes for their occupation; they are there and not leaving; be mindful of others studying for finals; reflect carefully about intentions; everything they have in the yard—food, water, shelter, medical help, education, and companionship—has been denied to Palestinians.
Many students sit or lay on mats outside their tents and appear preoccupied on their laptop screens and seem disengaged from the Gaza Campus. This is because they are focusing on their last classes of the year and on their final exams. Being involved in a sustained resistance while preparing for college finals is as stressful a situation as any student could place themself. But theres a sign posted on a tree nearby in response to such a musing. It reads: “There are no universities in Gaza.”
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Black Women Blast Atlanta City Hall With Demand To Stop Cop City Buildout
Atlanta, GA—A collective of Black Women of the Movement for Black Lives dropped a 30-foot banner under the atrium of City Hall and demanded Mayor Andre Dickens allow Atlanta residents to vote on whether or not construction of Cop City should proceed in DeKalb County. Outside Atlanta City Hall they displayed banners sewn with samples of over one hundred thousand petitions of Atlanta area residents opposed to Cop City. Several city employees watched the demonstration inside City Hall as the women chanted “Stop Cop City!” and “Black Women Oppose Cop City!”
The Black Women collective were met with over a dozen police both inside and outside City Hall. Police responded by tearing down and destroying banners the women had assembled and painted—one banner read ‘Black Women Against Cop City,“ which they hung from the third floor bannister inside the City Hall atrium. It was torn down by police a few minutes after it was unfurled (video of action is below). Another banner which the women attached to a fence outside and across the street from Atlanta City Hall was also torn down by an angry police officer.
There were no arrests during the banner drop and sidewalk action, however police and City Hall security photographed each participant and videotaped the action inside City Hall, despite it being a peaceful action, a spirited exercise of First Amendment rights, and within the law.
Black Women staged a banner drop in Atlanta City Hall reading “Black Women Against Cop City. Police tore down the banner. Photo: J. Zangas/DCMG
Several spokeswomen told of the history of police oppression and repression of rights in the fight against Cop City and warned it was an effort to privatize police, avoid accountability, and a threat to the safety of struggling communities across the Atlanta region. If the cop city were to be completed and go into full operation, it would “be police oppression on steroids,” said one of the speakers.
A mother and resident of metro Atlanta said she was concerned that the people of Atlanta were being denied a vote by the mayor. “A $120 million cop city a few miles from where i live does not make me or my children feel safe and does not make me feel good about the prospect of the future,” said Edget Betru, an organizer with Community Movement Builders. “I want the mayor to let the people of Atlanta to decide whether we want this facility and what we want to do with $120 million.”
Cop City Built from Dark History of Oppression
Cop City Atlanta is a $120 million police training facility being built for municipal city police as well as regional police forces to access advanced military tacticics, training, and equipment. This facility will include a Black Hawk heliport, a mock urban combat training zone, firing ranges, military grade vehicles, military grade weaponry and equipment, a K-9 kennel, firefighting infrastructure, and a facility training and support staff. The details of the plans for this military grade training facility could not be obtained as of publication.
The 85 acre site being developed was acquired from an Old Atlanta Prison Farm known as South River Forest in DeKalb County which was abandoned in 1995. The land was previously taken from the Muscogee Indigenous Tribe during the 1830s when the Federal Government forcibly removed and relocated the indigenous owners living there and sending them to a reservation in Oklahoma. This was the beginning of the Trail of Tears at Stone Mountain.
The forest was acquired 2021 for the Cop City project after the Black Lives Matter protests swept the nation in the wake of the Mineapolis Police murder of George Floyd.
Black Women Have Worked To Quash Cop City Through Legal Channels
Mary Hooks, one of the spokespeople at the action said that the construction of Cop City was not the only project being planned and 47 States nationwide had planned 67 similar military grade training sites. Hooks said that Mayor Dickens was not really concerned about the well-being and improvement of struggling Black communities. Hooks pointed out the Mayor had gone against his July 2023 commitment to not intervene in a petition gathering process but has done everything to subvert the petition process which would have allowed a referendum to appear on the November ballot. Under the present policy, if communities gather a minimum 60,000 signatures for a ballot initiative, an issue could be added as a referendum to the next November election. Activists worked for many months to gather nearly double that requirement—totaling 116,000 signatures as of September 2023—in opposition to the planned sprawling military Cop City complex.
Mayor Dickens appealed the ballot referendum on Cop City on the basis that the signatures were gathered by non-Atlanta residents, however, in a lawsuit filing, U.S. District Court Judge Mark Cohen found no basis to disallow the signatures and determined they were obtained legally. Mayor Dickens appealed the Judge’s findings, and so far has blocked the referendum from appearing on the ballot. The Judge has no legal power to compel Mayor Dickens to approve the referendum and place it on the November ballot, but he stated from the bench that the Mayor’s office was the source of “confusion” and “dishonesty” in the referendum process, according to a report published by AP.
Plans Are Forming To Roll Out Cop City Projects Nationwide
Hooks warned that civil rights organizations and social justice organizations of communities in other States must study strategies that the Atlanta Movement for Black Lives has undertaken to learn from its successes and mistakes to stop plans similar to the Atlanta Cop City facility from being built in their communities.
“The public should be concerned the same way we have been rallying about the privatization of prisons and what we have seen coming out of that,” she said. “We should be just as concerned about the ways cop city is being built with private money and who is running it.
Atlanta Cop City is primarily owned by Atlanta Police Foundation, a private organization with no public oversight. Hooks said that its CEO, David Wilkerson was inaccessible and would not answer their inquiries. “They know that we know what happens when people put our power together across color, race, class, gender, and sexuality, and they want to stop it. They want to stop everyday people from engaging in community control,” said Hooks.
Hooks later said at a debriefing the women had plenty of banners for future actions.
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Palestinians March with Supporters In DC for End to Hostilities in Gaza
Washington, DC—Tens of thousands rallied in Freedom Plaza and marched through the Nation’s Capital in support of Palestinians in what may be the biggest action ever taken here on behalf of Gaza. Awashed in a sea of waving Palestinian flags—black, white, green, red—speakers with relatives in Gaza told of the carnage unfolding in the occupied territory and warned many more innocents would be lost if hostilities did not soon end. Many wore Kufiya scarves wrapped around their shoulders and partially covering their faces. More carried signs with messages such as, “Stop the Genocide,” “Stop Funding Apartheid Now,” and “Free Palestine.”
(A video of the action is at the foot of this story.)
The action was organized by American Muslim Task Force for Palestine, with many organizations such as CAIR, Muslin American Society, Young Muslims, and Answer, taking part. Speakers urged international support be given to Gaza which is suffering under the onslaught of a lopsided military campaign. Speakers demanded the Biden Administration stop all military aid to Israeli forces and put more pressure on the Israeli government to implement a permanent ceasefire. Their messages were also streamed over foreign media services and published on social media for those in Gaza, although it was unlikely very many could receive them since electronic communication inside Gaza was said to be cut off or limited.
The organizers originally planned to rally on the National Mall, however a heavy winter storm saturated the ground and necessitated a move to Freedom Plaza which was dry. Thousands squeezed into the plaza, which itself is one of the largest public spaces available for stationery protests in Washington DC. Even so it was crowded and difficult to access so thousands more occupied the surrounding streets.
Adjacent to the plaza, at the Wilson Building, home of DC Government Administration, someone taped a Palestinian flag to the arm on the statue of former DC Mayor Marion Berry and wrapped a Kufiya scarf around his neck. Across the square, a group of Palestinian youths swayed to old songs sung by an elder about their struggle and living with courage in Gaza. In other places around the square groups paused for afternoon prayers while speakers and protesters fell silent out of respect.
After speakers finished, tens of thousands lined on 14th Street and marched through Washington DC towards the White House. Along the route police stood in lines to guard Starbucks coffee shops.
Starbucks has become a focus of a targeted economic boycott for its support of the Israeli government. This boycott has extended to other retail giants such as McDonald’s fast food chain and BAE Systems, a technology and aerospace company providing support to the Israeli Defense Forces. The campaign to boycott, divest, and sanction has been an ongoing resistance tactic to bring economic pressure on the Israeli government for its blockade of Gaza.
The blockade of Gaza has cost an estimated $16.7 billion in lost economic revenue since the Israeli government began its blockade in 2007, according to a UN report published in 2020. Currently there is an 100 percent unemployment rate as the Gaza economy has collapsed. Much needed food and medical supplies have been reduced as Israeli Defense Forces have closed off the territory and allowed access at only one point.
Art Installation Outside White House Depicts Life In Gaza
Meanwhile, in Lafayette Park at the White House, activists built an art installation to depict what life was like in Gaza amidst the bombing, destruction and occupation. The display contained broken cinderblocks laid in a long pile to mimic destroyed homes, hospitals, businesses, and schools. Between and behind the blocks were dozens of teddy bears. A periodic sound recording of explosions simulated the bombing of Gaza. Nearby a tank filled with red water symbolized the blood of 11,000 children lost thusfar to the continuing bombing of Gaza. An activist added a bottle of red paint to the tank to symbolize the 270 daily average deaths in Gaza since the war began on October 7. A desk with paper and pens was set up for particpants to leave notes to families of the children killed in Gaza by the bombings.
The teddy bear motif is a local DC custom whereby families leave teddy bear memorabilia and written messages to their deceased kin in tree boxes near sidewalks where youth have been slain by gun violence. A spokesperson for the installation told DCMG they did not seek nor were they issued a permit for the installation, which was in itself an act of defiance. No officers of the Secret Service or the National Park Service attempted to force activists to remove the installation, which was a day-long event. Typically such installations are not permitted at that location.
A banner was also attached to the fence reading “Palestinian Children are not collateral damage.”
Tensions Outside White House As Marchers Arrived
Later, as marchers reached Lafayette Park many remained past dusk. A group broke off from the main march and gathered along the fence and tensions rose. They shook a 10-foot barrier metal fence put up the day before. Authorities had erected it about 20 feet outside the Iron fence lining the lawn of the North Portico of the White House. Secret Service responded to keep the protesters from breaching the fence. But protesters’ defiace was driven by a growing sense of desperation for the welfare of Gazans and disillusionment with the Biden Administration’s diplomatic and military support of the Israeli government. No matter what Israeli government actions have been with respect to the Gaza occupation, the Biden Administration has supported it both politically and militarily. Several others distributed “Abandon Biden” signs.
As night fell, and tensions continued growing in the park, Secret Service were dispatched to a portion of the fence to keep protesters from breaching the outer temporary metal barrier. There was one report of an arrest in Lafayette Park for an empty holster and nearby police reportedly pepper-sprayed a protester.
International Consensus Expands Against Israeli Government Actions in Gaza
The war between Hamas and Israel is nearing its 100th day. Based upon the October invasion of Gaza, a blockade of Gaza imposed by the Israeli government since 2007, and the ensuing degradation of livability there, South Africa has filed a petition before the International Court of Justice alleging Israel is committing Genocide in the occupied Gaza territory. In it’s application South Africa argues Israel should immediately suspend its military operations and take all measures within its power to prevent genocide.
The application was filed on December 29, 2023, and supported by all the 57 members of Organization of Islamic Countries, The Arab League, Bolivia, Columbia, Brazil, Jordan, Turkey, The Maldives, Namibia and Pakistan.
Attack On Gaza: Prelude to Regional War
Uncountable numbers of munitions have been dropped on Gaza, many of which are unguided “dumb bombs” which have a high probability of missing targets and kill or injure many innocents caught in crossfire. The structural damage to Gaza is also incalculably extensive as well—Gaza has a growing resemblance to the destroyed cities of Germany during WWII.
Unguided munitions used by Israeli Defense Forces account for nearly 50% of bombs used on Gaza, according to a published report. The report was the result of a U.S. intelligence assessment verified by three CNN sources.
Hamas has fired thousands of rockets into Israel and taken hostages, 100 of which remain unaccounted for. Lebanon has also fired rockets into Israel in sympathy with Gaza. Israel has attacked Lebanon as well. Most recently, and in the last few weeks, Yemen has become involved in the war as Houthi rebels launched drones and guided missiles towards shipping lanes in the Red Sea. In response, an Alliance of Western nations led by the U.S. and U.K., attacked radar sites and bases in Yemen over the last 2 days. Houthi military commanders promised a massive response in retaliation.
With escalating tensions and military activities spreading, the region continues to stumble towards a runaway regional conflict.
The UN has reported that 85% of Palestinians in Gaza have been displaced as a result of Israeli military operations in Gaza, with over 23,000 killed and 56,000 injured, many of them women and children. On Friday the UN met to discuss the Middle East crisis. “The UN relief chief told ambassadors that any Gazans forced to flee the enclave must be allowed to return “as international law demands.”
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Green Groups Rally On Earth Day, Warn Fossil Fuels Imperil Life As We Know It
The Earth itself has already been speaking its own language for several decades by warning us about rising global heat levels. Its message has been been in terms of increasing regional droughts, burning forests, stronger and more potent storms, a die-off of species, warming and rising oceans, melting polar ice fields, and increasing global heat.
Scientists have translated the earth’s language into mathematical terms and in the terms of physical impacts. But the environmentalists of Earth Day have translated the Earth’s messages into the collective practical action that must be taken now.
Global leadership has largely put off Earth’s environmental warnings up to this point. The President’s approval of the Willow carbon energy extraction project in Alaska and his subsequent approval of the North Slope Liquid Natural Gas export terminal with a 800 mile methane pipeline, just this month, illustrates this fact. Global leadership inaction spells out a short-term memory mentality on climate but it has long-term consequences for the Earth and all of its inhabitants.
The Earth itself has a perfect natural memory for its own environment. It remembers every pound of carbon dioxide gas released by burning coal, methane and oil. This also means that additional carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere acts for up to 3 decades as a catalyst by refracting infrared light (heat) into the natural moisture of the atmosphere around it. Carbon dioxide compounds the climate emergency by adding more heat to the atmosphere which is transferred by rain into the oceans.
The NOAA tracks the levels of carbon dioxide gas in the atmosphere and publishes quarterly reports on its levels and it is increasing and has increased to levels not seen since in 1000s of years—since before humans began a coal boom energy extraction in Europe during the 1850s
Speakers Warn Of Dystopia By Inaction
One after one speakers told of the worsening climate emergency while hundreds listened and independent media broadcasted their speeches over social media. Some carried messages on sign boards while others wore special outfits. Many discussed the climate emergency among themselves, its impacts on them, and told of what they have come to accept: the Earth as we know it is dying and collectively we have less than a decade to end fossil energy dependence. To delay further is tantamount to a climate outcome worse on humanity than all the wars ever fought.
Speakers’ main points were: (1) There can be no climate solution without acknowledging and solving the human rights issues of those mostly severely impacted in the Black and Brown communities and that the climate emergency transcends political issues; (2) there can be no solution to the climate emergency if leaders continue to greenwash the climate movement by approving more methane, oil, and coal projects that cement more greenhouse gasses from additional fossil energy infrastructure; (3) the funding of climate creating infrastructure by the five major big banks must end; (4) initiatives must begin immediately because in less than 10 years it will most likely be too late.
Inaction on Climate Is Environmental Racism
Nee Nee Taylor, an organizer with Harriet’s Wildest Dreams, a civil rights organization in Southeast Washington DC, connected the dots between the climate movement and institutional racism on Black and Brown people. Taylor said that Black and Brown people in Washington DC and across the country continue to be the most impacted by climate disasters because many Black and Brown communities are converted to sacrifice zones by fossil energy projects and local government policy. Taylor cited the health effects and the climate impacts on low lying rural and urban areas where poor communities are usually housed.
Taylor pointed out in Southeast DC “two trash transfer stations are in Black communities. There are no trash transfer stations in Dupont Circle where Mayor Bowser lives.” This scenario has also been playing out repeatedly in regions across the country, such as in St. James Parish, Louisiana, a Predominantly Black community also known as “Cancer Alley.” St. James Parish is notoriously connected to environmental racism where petrochemical companies are springing up and making Black residents sick with air and water pollution.
“Black people have always been the canary in the mine,” said Taylor. “Environmental racism is not a Democratic or Republican issue. It is an issue of human rights and equality. It is also a global issue.”
Taylor called on the White-led climate justice movement to look closely at itself when calling out the banks, oil, gas, and coal corporations, and its financing of the climate machinery—that they must consider the inherent injustice of not recognizing the impacts of climate disasters on Black and Brown communities. “Until they recognize that Black lives matter, they will never be in a position to combat the climate disaster,” she said.
Extinction Rebellion Washington DC Art Project—Methane Pipeline Cube
Extinction Rebellion Washington DC Chapter Press SpokesPerson Jade Olson, called on DC Mayor Muriel Bowser and the DC Council to nix a plan by Washington Gas to invest $4.5 billion in its “Project Pipes” methane pipeline infrastructure investment and instead invest in expanding the electric energy grid. By replacing methane pipes the DC government is locking the city into many more decades of methane use, they said.
Extinction Rebellion Washington DC has embarked on a campaign to challenge the Washington Gas investment in its methane pipeline replacement project know as “Project Pipes.” On its website, Extinction Rebellion DC wrote, “Gas leaks are also a major environmental justice problem. Black, Indigenous and people of color are more exposed to the dangers of leaking gas pipes than white people. Gas utility companies also fix these leaks faster in white neighborhoods.”
Olsen described the methane pipeline cube art installment as taking months to build. It depicts a complex series of pipes interconnected with some open to the air. It demonstrates the futility of continuing to build onto an old design concept that is destined to fail.
Global Impacts of the Climate Emergency
Basiv Sen, Climate Policy Director at Institute for Policy Studies, spoke of the global climate impacts. He said that the U.S. was propagandizing the world with stories it was trying to fix the climate emergency while it was building more fossil energy projects. The two actions could not be reconciled.
“India and the South Asia subcontinent are going through an horrific unseasonable springtime heatwave for the second year,” he said. “This is part of the international impact of the continuation of the fossil fuel economy” He pointed out that the U.S. produces 25% of the global use of fossils and is addicted to carbon based energy sources.
Elders Join Third Act to Fight The Financiers of Fossil Energy Projects
Lawrence MacDonald and Lisa Finn of Third Act Virginia, an organization of elders fighting for democratic norms and advocates for climate justice joined the youth-led action on Earth Day because they believe they can learn from youth and help them with the climate emergency.
“The generation that was in power when climate went from being a problem to being an emergency has an obligation to support young people in demanding action and end the fossil fuel era,” said Mac Donald.
Finn, said that she would not have come out to Earth Day previously because did not know anyone involved. She joined Third Act Northern Virginia and it has given her a connection to the community and a sense of achievement. She is committed to helping other groups such as the youth in the community now because she can focus and work with others in Third Act on the same objectives.
“Forming a community on environmentalism is a big thing. We learn a lot from our youth because they have a lot to teach us,” she said.
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Queer and Trans Youth Lead March for Equality in Washington DC
Washington DC—A march for Queer and Trans Youth Autonomy was joined by nearly 500 on Friday afternoon near the U.S. Capitol without incident despite a coordinated right-wing media blitz condemning it. The march was led by hundreds of Queer and Trans youth demanding the same civil access and equality under the law as is enjoyed by others in society.
The action was coordinated on Trans Day of Visibility, a global initiative to call an end to violence against the Trans and Queer community, and a moratorium to anti-Trans legislation being proposed and passed in States around the country. Marches were also held in cities across the globe.
Many youth activists spoke about their experiences and their growing anxiety of denial of access to healthcare, access to public spaces, oppression at school from legislative actions to deny their identities, and policies being enacted without their say in the policies being decided. They called on allies to join them in their quest for equality and human rights. One speaker drew on the reasoning of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., that rights denied to one segment of society threatens the rights for all.
Ryan Cassata, a Trans youth activist who has been educating the public about Trans youth rights, spoke about the bills being proposed in State legislative sessions over the past year. “This year over 435 anti-LGBTQ bills have been introduced, 21 have passed into law, and more will unfortunately pass into law. Trans youth living in states that are banning [Trans] healthcare will have to wait even longer and waiting for a life-saving surgery is impossible. These bills are violent. These bills are murderous. Healthcare is a human right,” they said.
Cassata vowed the Trans community would not stop fighting for their human rights.
On the Trans Day of Visibility there was some good news despite the spate of mounting opposition to Trans rights in States legislatures. Thomas L. Parker, A U.S. Judge of the U.S. District Court, Western District of Tennessee, granted a temporary restraining order against legislation that would criminalize performance of “adult cabaret entertainment” in places that could be viewed by a person not an adult.
The law was passed by the State Legislature and signed by Tennessee Governor Bill Lee, this month (March 2023) and would in effect prohibit Drag Queen Story Hour events. The legislation was tailored specifically to target Drag Queen participants from enjoying any public event such as family educational venues where children were present.
Judge Parker found that the State had not established any credible reason for denying the First Amendment rights of the persons affected and that it was “unconstitutional” on the basis for which it was passed.
The Tennessee District Court Ruling is here.
Another separate rally and march for Trans rights was planned for Saturday in Washington DC near the Supreme Court but was postponed due to a credible external threat of violence. Organizers determined that the public health and safety of the community was under a credible serious threat and though they had been planning the event for several months, they decided it was in the best interest of the community to postpone it to a future date.
The post Queer and Trans Youth Lead March for Equality in Washington DC appeared first on DCMediaGroup.
Elders Lead Third Act Climate Action At Major Banks In Washington DC
Washington DC—Elders picketed outside the branches of four major banks for 24 hours on Tuesday to call out their financial support of fossil fuel projects which are contributing to the worsening climate catastrophe. They sat in rocking chairs in front of the bank branches just blocks from the White House—warning them to stop funding fossil fuel energy or the planet will be unlivable within several decades.
A coalition of green groups organized by Third Act urged the banks to transition off of carbon based energy—oil, gas, and methane, and immediately and exclusively finance renewable energy sources—wind, solar, and geothermal, instead. The elders targeted Chase Bank, Wells Fargo, Citi Bank, and Bank of America, because they are the four major financiers of fossil energy, sinking a combined total of $1.2 trillion in the fossil fuel industry over the past 7 years.
Third Act is a relatively new climate organization founded by Bill McKibben in 2021 and a organization for elder citizens in their ‘third act’ of life. The four banks financial loans to fossil projects is one quarter of all fossil fuel financing, according to Third Act, consisting mainly of elders—folks 60 years and older—but many youth also took part in the rocking chair action over the 24 hour period.
As the sun came up on Tuesday morning and warmed the elders they were still lined on the sidewalk in their chairs, drinking coffee and chatting to the passers by about the worsening climate to be faced by generations to come. The planet is already beginning to suffer from the affects of carbon induced heat but in the years to come it will get much worse.
Many sat inside sleeping bags through the night as it was an uncharacteristically cold night. Some had enlarged photos of their grandchildren displayed on posters. They gave flyers to workers passing by educating them about the climate emergency and urging them to move money into green banks. Many workers asked why they had stayed out through the night—the Elders told them of their grand-children and great-grand-children to help them understand what who would be impacted most by the worsening climate conditions.
Later in the morning, those involved in the rocking chair action joined in a mile long walk from Franklin Park to the branches of the banks where the Elders were picketing to call out the banks for ignoring scientific research that demonstrated the climate emergency is rapidly worsening global climate conditions. Clergy from Churches, Synagogs, leaders from climate organizations, and union members spoke of what was to come if banks continued funding fossil energy projects. A scientist also spoke—something scientists rarely do—as they are pressured by their organizations to not speak publicly about the climate emergency. See video below.
Freeman Allen, an Elder from Charlottesville, Va, and member of Veterans Service Corps, joined Third Act because he was alarmed that enough wasn’t being done to transition off fossil fuels despite overwhelming evidence its resulting carbon output is responsible for global heat. He became involved with the climate movement on behalf of his six grandchildren, who were in their 20s. He said that they fully supported his efforts to draw attention to the climate emergency.
“The rocking chairs symbolize the fact that we are a group of older Americans deeply concerned about the climate emergency,” he said. He emphasized the climate was not a state of crisis but it was a state of emergency. “The tides are rising and the next two generations are imminently threatened. Species across the globe are going extinct and humans will be next,” he said.
Freeman Allen held a banner he made outside Chase Bank. He joined the climate action on behalf of his six grandchildren who supported his effort. Photo: J. Zangas/DCMediaGroup
Another elder sitting next to him said climate was an issue beginning to affect everyone. Susan Flashman, a retired electrician from a local union in the region, was worried that the U.S. was not doing enough. “Being a large and powerful country, we should be at the front because the countries suffering the most are the ones least able to help,” she said. “Everything is warming up and its changing the whole world.” She spoke about global regional climate impacts like last year’s floods in Pakistan, unprecedented fire storms and droughts in California, and the fact that there was almost no snow this year in the DC area.
A scientist was one of many who spoke during the rally against the banks. Rose Abramoff, who was fired from Oak Ridge National Laboratory for holding a banner during a protest, reading ’Out of the lab and into the streets,‘ said that most scientists want to speak out about the climate emergency but their organizations have warned them not to.
“What was summarized in the IPCC report yesterday is that in the next 10 years we expect to exceed 1.5 degrees celsius, at which point more tipping points become more likely than not. Widespread death of corals, abrupt melting of permafrost, collapse of Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets are things already possible and partially underway,” she said.
Abramoff also admonished that “as a society we have chosen to optimize infinite economic growth which is incompatible with sustainable resource use. Two options await us in the immediate future, climate crisis or climate revolution. Lets choose revolution.”
Later during a second march, activists used water colors on a street art project, resulting in one arrest. None of the elders were reported arrested picketing outside the four bank branches.
Third Act is helping to start a grassroots campaign for the public to transfer their money to ‘green banks’ or financial institutions that do not invest in carbon based fossil fuel projects. This will help pressure the banks to stop investing in fossil fuel energy source projects such as methane gas pipelines, methane extraction, and coal fired generation.
DC Community Protects Drag Queen Story Hour Reading For Children
Washington DC—Once again a diverse group of citizens from the Washington DC community showed up to a Drag Queen Story Hour with their rainbow parasols and rainbow flags to protect it from a hate group attempt to disrupt it. The child’s book reading venue was held in Southeast Washington DC on Saturday where similar events have been held.
Inside the children’s story venue, Drag Queen Tara Hoot read stories to the children and their parents while outside a diverse grassroots group calling itself the Rainbow Defense Coalition twirled colorful umbrellas and danced to music playing over a loudspeaker—completely shutting down the hate group nearby. The citizens lined the entire block outside. The Rainbow Defense Coalition concept has sprung into action in many other States in response to right-wing attacks on Drag Queen Story Hour venues, including Florida, Arizona, Maryland, and Virginia.
The hate groups have been spurred by conspiracy and misinformation about the purpose of the Drag Queen Story Hour venues. Right-wing groups have threatened educational community building with harmful outcomes with intimidation, threats, and violence. Several right-wing extremist groups have already assaulted and bullied citizens at previous story hour readings.
The self-described religious group outside Saturday’s Drag Queen Story Hour bull-horned pseudo-religious doctrine and rhetoric, with several in its group trying unsuccessfully to access the venue where the children and their parents were enjoying the reading venue. But those in the Parasol Brigade formed lines with their umbrellas blocking them from the reading hour. They sang and chanted, drowning out the hate language. Others from supporting groups provided security by tracking infiltrators’ movements to keep them at bay. About a dozen DC police stood listlessly around their cars nearby while the volunteer citizens coordinated the street security action.
In the end, their coordination allowed the reading venue to go on without a hiccup, interruption, or incident. After the venue ended inside, escorts saw children and their parents safely on their way behind umbrellas and flags.
Several in the hate group objected over their bullhorn to being compared to Proud Boys, a nationalist group that has bullied and harassed Drag Queen Story Hour venues across the region, but the self-described religious hate group came across in language, tone, and aggressiveness similar to Proud Boy hate groups.
“We Keep Us Safe“
The Rainbow Defense Coalition (recently renamed) has been showing up to Drag Queen Story Hours because the threats from right-wing groups have grown aggressive both online and in presence when the groups show up to harass and disrupt the reading venues. Police have provided scant protection to the venues, if any at all, so citizens organized among themselves. The citizens provide essential support with large numbers of allies and supporters. Their security and organizational tactics have been successful, keeping the venues secure and well-monitored for threats against the business hosting the events, the parents and their children attending the events, and the drag queens holding the events.
Queen Tara Hoot dispensed bubbles and danced after finishing the reading venue—to the delight of admirers. Photo: J. Zangas/DCMG
After the reading inside ended, Queen Tara Hoot joined the Rainbow Defense Coalition outside, thanking them for their support and volunteerism. Tara Hoot held toy unicorn bubble blowers in each hand and danced outside on the sidewalk to celebrate another successful educational event with the community. The volunteers turned a stressful situation into a scene of dance, laughter, levity and fun, while building community spirit in troubled times. But underneath there was growing worry among many because in many States antiTrans and Drag legislation is being introduced.
For the Trans community recent developments in several States’ legislatures threaten their access healthcare, their identity, access to public space, their human rights, and their lives. For the Drag community some States’ legislators want to take away their rights to perform at public venues, including Drag Queen Story Hours. Some of the legislation being considered is intentionally vague, making it difficult to tell directly that it targets the minorities affected, but the results will undoubtedly harm the Trans community.
Anti-Trans Bills Multiply In States’ Legislatutres
Over the past three months States’ legislatures have tripled the number of anti-Trans bills pending approval. Some bills have already passes States votes in legistures and await final signature. If all the these bills pass they will remove healthcare access rights for transgender persons, access to public spaces for drag queens, threaten their rights to exist, and hasten the end of human rights for other minority classes of the LGBTQIA2S community.
The passage of such bills also signal possible overturn of same sex marriage laws, and decreasing access to healthcare for those with unwanted pregnancies.
According to Trans Legislation, an organization tracking bills being proposed nationwide, there have been 471 bills introduced in 44 states to reduce or limit Trans rights. Of those, 16 bills have passed, 415 are still active, and 40 have been defeated.
Among the States considering anti-Trans legislation is Florida, which now has 14 bills pending. One of the bills, FL S1674 requires exclusive restroom access based on gender, and if it passes, will provide criminal penalties for anyone in violation of the law.
Another Florida bill still active, FL S1320 prevents public educators from referring to gender preferred pronouns, and restricts instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity.
Arizona has 11 anti-Trans bills pending, including SB1702 which prohibits trans hormone therapies, and SB1001 which restricts public educators from referring to a the biological gender of a student.
Access to pending anti-Trans and anti-Drag bills in States legislatures and updates to the progress of the bills can be found here.
Trans Day of Vengeance
The spate of legislation has prompted the Trans community to organize in a way not seen since the Stonewall Riots in New York City 53 years ago. The Trans community is planning a march in Washington DC on the Weekend of April 1 and plan to take their opposition straight to the seat of government at the U.S. Supreme Court. They will have their own security detail accompanying them.
A collective of activists is planning actions in response to State Legislation designed to take their rights to healthcare, limit their public access, and ban their public identities—in effect, activists say they “are fighting back against false narratives, criminalization and eradication of their existence.”
Concerned Neighbors Repulse Proud Boy Hate Group On Day of Rage
Washington DC—A grassroots citizens collective calling themselves the Parasol Patrol decisively sidelined a hate group’s attempt to disrupt another Drag Queen Story Hour held in Southeast Washington DC on Saturday morning. Citizens who were fed up with the violent hate group’s attacks in local communities showed up by the hundreds and formed a block-long array of rainbow colored umbrellas, rainbow flags, and grassroots community solidarity to shield children and their parents from the hate group’s rhetoric, taunts, and oppression. But only one supremest was seen showing up, although it is supected that hate group scouts came but left the venue early because of the massive show of concerned citizen solidarity.
Harriet’s Wildest Dreams sponsored the Drag Story Hour which was an all-seats-taken venue with parents and their children enjoying a continuing educational series of children’s book readings about self-empowerment and self-expression. Queen Tara Hoot read to the children and their parents.
After the children’s reading was over Queen Tara Hoot came out into the street to thank the many neighbors who formed a line with their umbrellas and to tell them a story from memory. The story ‘Be Brave Little One,’ was about how to be brave in unsettling times, how to remain calm, and how to remain focused and stay on task in challenging circumstances. After telling the story the Queen told the gathered neighbors of spreading legislative efforts in other States to erase Drag Queen existence, cancel Transgender healthcare, and make Drag Queen art and culture a felony. They warned the neighbors of troubling times ahead if the legislation is not stopped, urged them to become knowledgeable of its effects on civil society, and informed them about aspects of the legislation and its impingement on minority rights.
The Proud Boy hate group has latched onto certain conspiracy information being propagated over right-wing social media channels about Drag Queen Story Hour events. Proud Boy hate groups have been showning up to harass and shut down dozens of the Drag Story Hour events in States across the country.
Today’s event coincided with the hate group self professed ‘Day of Rage’ in which Proud Boys came out on social media threatening Jewish venues.
Last Saturday about 30 members of the local chapter Old Line Proud Boy hate group based in Maryland assaulted multiple citizens who had formed a human wall with rainbow umbrellas to keep the hate group out of Loyalty bookstore in Silver Spring. Store management which sponsored last week’s reading hour, thanked the citizens of the Parasol Patrol for protecting the children while condemning the extremists for attacking citizens.
Last Saturday’s incident at Loyalty Bookstore in Silver Spring may have been a tipping point, however. Over the last week civil rights and grassroots groups connected across several States to buckle down and organize against hate groups and hate legislation. No one expected the turnout of citizen supporters to be so successful as it was today.
One Hate Group Antagonist Showed Up
DC Metropolitan Police were at today’s event and only one person showed up in opposition to the story hour Saturday. Online sleuths used several close-up photos taken of the lone antagonist today to identify him as Bryan Betancur, also known as Bryan Clooney and also known as Maximo Clooney. Betancur was among the 1000s at the January 6, 2020 U.S. Capitol insurrection who tried to stop certification of States’ votes confirming President Joe Biden’s election win. Betancur was arrested on January 18, 2020 for involvement in the insurrection. At the time of his arrest he was on parole for an earlier conviction and was wearing a GPS location device as part of his parole agreement. The device tracked him to the U.S. Capitol grounds on January 6.
For his part in the insurrection he pled guilty to charges of trespassing onto a secure Federal facility and was sentenced to 4 months detention and a $500.00 fine. A U.S. Department of Justice plea agreement Betancur and his attorney signed shows he understood that additional convictions after the plea agreement could nullify the agreement.
It is not clear that his appearance at today’s Drag Story Hour was a violation of the terms of his plea agreement or a violation of his previous parole. But one of the citizens in the Parasol Patrol witnessed Betancur approaching the Parasol Patrol and making a white supremacist gestures with his hands.
The witness, who identified themselves as Bubbles, said of Betancur “We first spotted him coming from the metro. He looked over at us at [name redacted], which is very obviously a queer space with pride flags everywhere, and immediately crossed the street to come toward us. He got close to us and flashed the white power hand sign at the owners, and then crossed the street again and tried to head to story hour.”
Bubbles said also that when Betancur tried to go into the story hour intersection police eventually removed him. Police were insensitive to escort him past the parasol patrol.
DC Police were video taped by @DCHomos escorting Betancur away from the Drag Story Hour on Saturday after citizens told police he was there. Police escorted him him up 8th Strret leave to the Eastern Market metro station. Police may have blundered any goodwill they had earned by showing up to protect the community, as officer Riley, who was being videotaped escorting Betancur, closed the entrance for a short time so he could get onto a train. Police officer Riley, who escorted Betancur looked backwards towards @DCHomo a videographer, he and said, “I feel threatened!”
Incidentally this latest story hour took place just across from the U.S. Marine Barracks at 8th & I Streets Southeast. Thursday was the 78th anniversary of the raising of the flag on Iwo Jima, an epic island battle in the South Pacific during WWII—a World War fought against fascist ideology during which 50 million died worldwide. Nearly 7000 Marines died fighting that island battle alone. The Marines were not involved in today’s incident.
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Proud Boy Hate Group Assaults Citizens At Children’s Book Event
Silver Spring, Maryland—A family day story hour at a local book store for children and their parents turned violent outside when about 30 Proud Boys from the local chapter of the Old Line Proud Boys attempted to gain access to the event on Saturday. The hate group members beat, kicked, and stomped on several citizens with one sustaining open flesh injuries to the face. A medic provided first aid on the scene but no hospitalizations were reported.
The Loyalty Book Store and the Parasol Patrol had anticipated PBs would show up to the community friendly book reading—an event sponsored by Loyally Books, so Parasol Patrol formed a line on the sidewalk before PBs arrived. The Parasol Patrol effectivly blocked PBs from entering Loyalty Books with deescalation tactics. Loyalty Books had closed its doors to PBs to protect the children and parents from harassment. Maryland State Police were on the scene during the assaults but did little to protect the citizens outside. In fact as video shows, it was the Parasol Patrol that protected the families inside the venue from PBs, not police, as some news stories erroneously reported on social media.
This particular individual hate group has shown up to events in Washington DC and to other States to disrupt Drag Queen Story Hour readings and to harass families attending them. So it wasn’t a surprise that they would show up on Saturday to intimidate the families and children from attending the latest Drag Queen Story Hour, according to members of the Parasol Patrol.
The Southern Poverty Law Center has designated the PB organization as a violent domestic hate group. Its leader and members were involved in the insurrection on January 6, 2020, in which a Capitol Police officer died, over 130 Capitol Police were injured or maimed, and an insurrectionist was shot dead inside the Capitol. They were also the MAGA attack on Black Lives Matter Plaza signage in Washington DC, on November 7, 2019 during the Presidential election and in another incident involving hundreds from their group, assaulted scores on the weekend of a pro-Trump rally December 12, 2019. They were present at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in 2017. During all these events there were citizens injured and property damage. After the Presidential election they skirmished in the streets and burned Black Lives Matter signage of venerated churches in downtown Washington DC.
Book Reading Inside Was A Success
Inside Loyally Books, the family friendly event went off largely undisturbed with about 20 families enjoying the Drag Queen Story Hour, according to an inside source who spoke with DCMediaGroup on condition they not be identified. They were not affiliated with the Loyalty Bookstore and they were not one of the parents of the children attending.
They described a scene of joy and of children and parents enjoying themselves who were given friendly greetings with smiles when they arrived. The Drag Queen storyteller, Charlemagne Chateau, engaged the children by encouraging them to participate in dancing to the Hokey Pokey and to enjoy pantomimes as they read to them from books such as Karamo Brown’s ‘I Am OK To Feel.’ In this way the storyteller built children’s interest for books and of reading, and broadened their imaginations, which was the intention of the family event. Parents watched as Chateau interacted and engaged the children to participate.
The subjects of the stories promoted positive self images, allowed children to express themselves, and taught self-love and self-empowerment, according to the source. The author, Karamo Brown, is a celebrated media personality nationally known for his messages of inclusion and self-empowerment of oppressed groups such as the LGBTQIA2S community.
A rainbow flag placed over the window on the inside of Loyalty Bookstore facing the sidewalk, blocked the view outside where the PB assaults took place. The flag was in anticipation of an expected PB disturbance outside and amplified music outside made it all but impossible for children to hear the mayhem outside. The Parasol Patrol played Disney music and sang along with it over a speaker to frustrate the PBs and drown out their chants. And it worked—to a point.
PB Actions Turn Violent
As the PBs realized they would not be getting disruptive access to the bookstore to stop the reading, they began pushing, punching, and kicking a line of community citizens who call themselves the Parasol Patrol. The disturbing scenes captured on video taken by several in the Parasol Patrol depicted the violence. The PBs, who hid their faces behind black skeleton masks and wore combat grade flak jackets, attacked and shoved citizens, destroyed or shredded their umbrellas, and body-slammed one into a glass window cutting their face. Video and photos provided to DCMediaGroup show Maryland State Police on the scene but doing little to prevent injuries or protect the venue from PB mayhem. Police did eventually move between between PBs and the Parasol Patrol Police but only for about a minute and after several were already beaten and injured. Police have made no arrests as of our Sunday publication.
Kristen Mink, Council Member, 5th District of Montgomery County, was stomped and kicked by one of PBs outside Loyalty Books. “Proud Boys showed up in Silver Spring and got violent today, trying to scare away families and children attending Drag Story Hour at Loyalty Books. But the community held a wall of rainbow safety and support. The kids had a great time and were none the wiser. We will never back down,” she posted on Twitter.
She also released a video segment showing a PB assaulting her. “I looked down when I felt someone stomp on my foot. An adult. I just.” The video she released on Twitter also shows the same PB kicking her in the thigh.
One in the Parasol Patrol said the PB assault was an escalation of violence not seen before at any previous Drag Queen Story Hour.
One of the members of the hate group who menaced the Drag Queen Story Hour. Photo: DCMediaGroup
One of the citizens who showed up and joined the Parasol Patrol, said he was there because “Drag Queen Story Hour events have been consistently targeted by protesters who have harassed parents and their children.” John Stimpson was right up front in the line when PBs tried to push their way into the bookstore and he was “definitely shaken by the experience. I wasn’t sure how far they were willing to escalate, however I’m very proud that I was there and I that I was a part of keeping families safe from a violent hate group.”
Stimpson wrote by email of his feelings about the PB group, saying, “The PB claim to be there to protect kids, but that’s a ridiculous lie. The idea that any of the kids who came to this event with their loving parents would be comforted by the presence of intimidating strangers in skull masks is absurd on its face. The truth is they were their to intimidate and harass a marginalized group of people, who in their narrow minded worldview should not be allowed to exist in public spaces.”
Stimpson also wrote that the responsibility for the well-being of others in the face of hate groups is a community-wide imperative. “None of us are free until we are free. It’s vital that people who claim to support LGBT people get off the sidelines and into the fight for their rights.”
Michelle Peterson, a local resident of Silver Spring, also joined in the front of Parasol Patrol line to protect the community venue from PB hate. Peterson was also assaulted several times, being struck by several PBs and shoved as she stood next to others on the sidewalk, but she sustained no serious injuries. She wrote by message to DCMediaGroup about her experiences, saying she totally misread the tone when she first arrived—the PBs were far more confrontational than she expected. “I was holding an umbrella and a Proud Boy started leaning on it. I think it’s pretty clear in the video, you can see me trying to brace the umbrella by the handle, then I reach to support the fabric portion as he leans on it further. Then all the shoving breaks out. And one of the Proud Boys started trying to reach over the top of the umbrellas and started swinging. I wasn’t injured, but my hat was pulled from my head,” she said.
Peterson believes that people are allowed to live as they see fit and just as families of Silver Spring are allowed to live and raise their families, so are others, such as the PBs. But she drew the line on the PBs who willfully imposed violence on others. “No one is forcing anyone to go to these events. These are families that are part of or allies with the LGBT+ community, and they deserve the right to raise their children to be accepting of the community. Same as the Proud Boys are allowed to indoctrinate their children by taking them to church weekly and filling their heads with with racist nonsense. The LGBT+ community deserves our support in their fight for the right to simply exist.”
Loyalty Bookstore Heralds Actions of Parasol Patrol while Condemning Hate Group
The next day Loyalty Bookstore posted the following message on its Instagram channel:
“Yesterday afternoon Loyalty came under attack from hate groups who had tried to force their way into our store during a Drag Queen Story Hour with physical violence. The incredible Parasol Patrol and the Montgomery Country Chapter of Drag Story Hour did wonders to not only to push back and hold the safe space, but to keep cheering and singing joyfully in the face of hate speech and disgusting threats. Because of their efforts, the children inside the store got to enjoy doing the Hokey Pokey, hearing beautiful books read aloud, and basking in the presence of Charlemagne Chateau.
“We are incredibly grateful to the volunteers and our wonderful drag queen for focusing on joy and safety.
“Loyalty will continue with our Drag Queen Story Hour because it is an awesome time for kids and because there is no hate or violence stronger than our community.”
Loyalty Bookstore has put out a request for community help to support its mission of inclusivity of marginalized groups by either volunteering or donating at its website or by purchasing books from their website.
Police Were Ineffective At Protecting Community From Proud Boy Attacks
Twenty minutes after Proud Boys began shoving and striking the Parasol Patrol, police arrived and stepped in between citizens and Proud Boys, according to Sadie Kuhns, who joined the Parasol Patrol outside the story hour venue. They said police were neither helpful nor protective of those attending the story hour venue, and it was the Parasol Patrol who kept Proud Boys out of the Loyalty Bookstore. Video was shaky but it clearly shows who the aggressors were—and it was the Proud Boys. (See video at foot of story)
“Police did not break it up. Out of multiple assaults by Proud Boys, there was only one moment they stepped in to separate, and they pushed us back. They kept us separate for maybe 30 seconds and then stood in the street watching it all happen,” Kuhns said.
Kuhns also pointed out that police were not on the scene when Proud Boys first arrived and it was the Parasol Patrol that kept them out of the bookstore. “Police were not proactive. No barricades, no dispersal, no police line,” they said. They also said it was “just a community creating a barrier of flags and umbrellas and defending a bookstore full of children from neo-nazis.”
In The End Children’s Anonymity and Families Rights Were Protected
After the venue ended The Parasol Patrol formed a gateway to shield parents and children from PBs. They ushered them safely on their way home.
Some expressed concern and surprise that PBs showed up in Silver Spring, a diverse community which welcomes everyone from all walks of life.
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Noam Chomsky Joins Assange Supporters at National Press Club For Belmarsh Tribunal
Washington DC—Prolific political scientist Noam Chomsky and Whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg held court along with noted press rights advocates, constitutional lawyers, and journalists over the continuing imprisonment of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. The Belmarsh tribunal was held Friday, 20 January in the spirit of the Russell-Sartre Tribunals of the Vietnam War era. The Assange Tribunal was held at the National Press Club 13 years after Julian Assange appeared at the National Press to speak about the need for a free press. The event and it was open to the public.
Other noted speakers included Jeremy Corbin, the former Labor Party leader of Parliament in England.
Julian Assange, journalist and founder of the Wikileaks website, which released a trove of classified U.S. intelligence transfered to it by Chelsea Manning, has been credited with turning the tide against the U.S. military occupation of Iraq. The release of the documents was the catalyst that triggered a wave of Iraqi opinion against the Iraqi War and its eventual end.
Assange has been held in solitary confinement at the Belmarsh maximum security prison in London, pending extradition to the United States for trial. The U.S. State Department is seeking Assange’s extradition on the grounds that he violated the U.S. Espionage Act.
The Belmarsh Tribunal brought together a range of expert witnesses from constitutional lawyers, to acclaimed journalists and human rights defenders. Its purpose was to present the evidence of the attack on publishers such as Julian Assange, and to seek justice for the crimes he exposed.
If the U.S. is successful in extraditing Assange, he could face trial in the Northern Virginia, in the same court and with the same judge that prosecuted Chelsea Manning for his refusal to testify in a deposition against Julian Assange.
Political scientist and intellectual Noam Chomsky is one of a growing chorus who disputed any extradition justification on the grounds that the U.S. neither has the legal authority to extradite an Australian national, nor the legal basis to prosecute him. “Why should the United States have the power to control what others are doing elsewhere in the world? It’s an outlandish situation.”
The tribunal also hosted Daniel Ellsberg, an employee of Rand Corporation who in 1971 leaked classified documents known as the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times revealing the U.S. was much more extensivly involvement in the Vietnam War than the public was led to believe. Reports published in the New York Times and Washington Post about the Vietnam War helped turn the tide of public support against that war and eventually led to the U.S. exit from Vietnam in 1975.
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Starbucks Coffee Shop Workers Stike As Labor Unions Vow Support
Arlington, Virginia—One year ago it would have been unthinkable that leaders from every major U.S. labor union would show up to support a small group of baristas at the Courthouse Arlington Starbucks. But seven baristas who recently voted to form a union at the Courthouse Arlington Starbucks were swarmed with union support from across the DC-Maryland and Virginia region. Unions promised to stand with and give undivided support to Starbucks baristas in their negotiations for collective bargaining rights with Starbucks corporation.
Union leadership from the AFL-CIO, Teamsters, SEIU 512, DC Nurses, Teachers Unions, and many other unions joined hands in solidarity for Starbucks Workers United, the union working to gain collective bargaining rights for Starbucks baristas across the country. So far baristas at 270 Starbucks coffee shop locations have voted to unionize.
Over 1000 Baristas went on a “Double Down” strike in nearly 100 coffee shops on Friday, December 16. The 3 day strike was scheduled to last until Sunday, but some coffee shop employees voted to strike only for a day. The Starbucks at Arlington Courthouse, a coffee shop in Northern Virginia, close to Washington DC, voted to strike for 1 day. The collective action was unprecedented and hit Starbucks in its pockets as customers were turned away Friday morning from nearly 100 closed coffee shops.
“A year ago today, a group of working class baristas organized the first unionized Starbucks store in the United States. In the span of one year, we went from ZERO unionized Starbucks stores to 270 and almost 7,000 union workers.” Starbuck Workers United tweeted on 9 December, the anniversary of the successful vote to unionize their first store in Buffalo, New York.
“We are not anti-Starbucks. We are Starbucks! We cannot reach our full potential if we are understaffed, overextended, exhausted, and burned-out,” Starbucks Workers United wrote on its website. So far Starbucks Workers United has not called for a product boycott but has urged other union members not to give Starbucks gift cards this holiday.
Organizers of the Double Down Strike asked supporters to sign a petition on the Union website. Organizers were also seeking donations of support for striking baristas because, of course, they were not getting paid for striking. The union was compensating baristas a portion of their lost wages to minimize the economic strain it would cause them.
The wave of labor union support couldn’t be coming at a better time for Starbucks baristas as Starbucks has ramped up pressure against union organizers at stores voting to unionize. Starbucks Workers United reported bullying from managers, sudden shift changes, reduced hours, firings for small infractions, and store closures for employees and stores voting to unionize.
Starbucks Workers United has filed over 900 worker complaints on behalf of its workers with the National Labor Relations Board, a government agency set up to arbitrate issues between corporations and employees. The complaints were reported since the first Starbucks voted to unionize on December 9, 2021, and they stem from bullying, firings, and sudden store closures at locations voting to unionize.
On November 17, Starbucks Workers United membership organized a “Red Cup Rebellion” strike which closed over 200 stores for a day. It signaled Starbucks executives that the union was committed to negotiating for improved working conditions for baristas. But Starbucks corporate officials still declined to negotiate a collective bargaining agreement.
Starbucks Workers United may become known as the ‘little union that could’ if union organizers successfully negotiate livable wages, stable shifts, 40 hour work weeks, and affordable benefits, which are some of the key issues impacting baristas.
Wave Of Bullying Comes After Union Vote
Sam Dukore, a shift supervisor at the Arlington Courthouse Starbucks said Starbucks is not negotiating with the union. His efforts with other baristas at Courthouse Arlington Starbucks to get better working conditions has centered it in what may turn out to be a major battle in the labor movement for worker’s rights to collective bargaining. But voting to ‘go union’ has come with a cost.
Dukore said that after September 30 when his store employees announced their intention to vote on whether or not to join the union, management began to pressure workers with write-ups for minor infractions. The work culture shifted as management used micro-aggressive tactics to bully baristas, according to Dukore. The write-ups were issued for infractions that before then were rarely given at the Arlington Courthouse Starbucks. The write-ups became even more common place after the Arlington Courthouse Starbucks voted to unionize on November 7.
Write-ups were filed against barristas for being late to a shift clock-in by 1 minute, even though baristas had been at the store for their health check. Baristas are not allowed to clock in until their health check is completed. Other write-ups included uniform infractions for improper shoes and write-ups for jeans with small holes or tears, something management did not monitor before the union vote, according to Dukore.
The write-up system is the basis Starbucks uses to terminate employment. Write-ups spell out that a barista can be terminated at any point and it does not follow any particular escalation path. Dukore feels the Starbucks termination system is ambiguous and being used arbitrarily to retaliate. The feeling is that a flurry of write-ups are being used to punish baristas at his store for voting to unionize.
Without a union, Starbucks regards its baristas as ‘at-will’ employees and under the Virginia State labor statutes, can terminate employment without a reason. At-will employment means that an employer can terminate an employee at any time for any reason, except an illegal one, or for no reason without incurring legal liability. Likewise, an employee is free to leave a job at any time for any or no reason with no adverse legal consequences, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures website.
The work environment at the Arlington Courthouse Starbucks became more adversarial and stressful after the union vote, according to Dukore.
One of the Arlington Courthouse Baristas was fired this week but the facts of their termination were not available to DCMediaGroup. Starbucks Workers United has not yet signaled whether it will file an complaint with the NLRB in this case.
Bullying was reportedly happening at other locations such as in Memphis, Tennessee where a Federal Judge ordered Starbucks to reinstate seven baristas it had fired for organizing and voting to join the union.
We Will Stand With You And Behind You
There’s nothing like a friend that stands with you in a time of need and that was the theme spoken by Liz Shuler, President of the AFL-CIO, a labor union representing over 12 1/2 million U.S. workers.
“Workers said enough is enough. They were tired of being treated with a lack of dignity and respect,” said Shuler. “We aren’t asking for much. We are going to keep fighting until we get a contract with Starbucks Workers United right in front of the labor movement leading the way.”
Leadership from every major union joined Shuyer in a vow to support Starbucks Workers United.
Shuler said that 12 1/2 million workers were at her shoulder and her message was clear, “if you have a union thats how you’re protected.”
Starbucks Succeeds But Baristas Left Behind
Starbucks reported in its digital magazine it had 15,444 locations, of which about 9,000 shops were licensed by their corporate headquarters as of January 2022. It also claims over 33,000 locations in 80 countries globally. With a reported $116 billion in gross revenue globally, why would a large corporation like Starbucks fight workers’ efforts to join a union? Its about money and power sharing, said George Atallah, Assistant Executive Director of External Affairs, NFL Players Association.
The NFL Player’s Association has joined in collective union efforts to compel Starbucks CEO, Howard Shultz to respect Starbucks baristas and their efforts to unionize and negotiate with Starbucks Workers United for a collective bargaining agreement. Starbucks attorneys have so far walked out of every meeting within a few minutes of the start of negotiations, refusing to bargain in good faith with Starbucks Workers United representatives, according to Atallah.
“Two issues we have found in our experience with management where they are not interested in negotiations in good faith are money and control,“ said Atallah. “There is plenty of money to go around [but] it can be terrifying to corporations to cede some of that control to its work force,” said Atallah. It is because “they are effectively unable to do what they want.”
For now Starbucks’ profit is very good for CEO Howard Schultz, a billionaire worth $3.7 billion who also owns a super yacht he named “Pi” which is valued at $118 million. With a glass-bottom swimming pool, spa facilities, and a helipad, it is a crown jewel of Starbucks’ opulence. Schultz has also gone a stock buyback spree, amassing over 210,000 additional shares earlier this year which he added to the $1.75 billion in Starbucks stock he already owns.
Starbucks reported in its digital magazine it had 15,444 locations, of which about 9,000 shops were licensed by their corporate headquarters as of January 2022. It also claims over 33,000 locations in 80 countries globally.
Starbucks reported $116 billion in gross revenue globally, and satisfied stock owners. Shultz is opposed to unionization, but as a wealthy billionaire with a glass bottom swimming pool in his 254 foot yacht named “Pi”, why would a successful corporation with excellent revenue flow with everything going for it not fight workers’ efforts to join a union?
Atallah looks at it this way, “Even if their practices are unfair, unjust, and not right, those things [worker’s rights] are not in line with the win-wins we talk about with labor management. They don’t get to just keep all they money for themselves and not treat the employees fairly. There has to be a way where a happy barista means revenue for the company.”
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