Reportback from Aug 1 day of marches and action

Video-marchers block I-395 1 min 4 sec

On the first of August, at least three different marches took to the streets of DC. The first was DemandDC's big march originating at the African-American history museum on the Mall. Then came the "Take back our streets" march from Malcolm X Park that blocked I-395, and finally the weekly "Fuck the Police" march wound through the streets, stopping at upscale sidewalk cafes to demand that rich white diners oppose police brutality.

The first march was the largest, the last of them the most militant in the usual pattern. The three marches overlapped in time, and the bicycle cavalry had to divide their time between them as a result. At a critical moment in the Fuck the Police march, bikers who had just left Malcolm X park when the second march ended showed up just in time to prevent police from gaining the upper hand. This was after a confrontation with yuppie diners segued into a right-wing and/or upscale individual filming people without consent led to a situation that started to escalate and which could have been exploited by police.

The Fuck the Police marches originate in Dupont Circle and are preceded by a "white allies" educational session. This time around, a cop attempted to enter the space being used for the educational session before being run off by activists. That whole incident was cited as an example of how cops do not keep the community safe and instead that job is taken care of inside the community itself.