“Anti-fascist” protesters clashed with Washington, D.C., police, disrupted outdoor diners and threatened to “burn” down the city during a “DC Queer and Trans Black History Month March and Rally” on Saturday, in the latest incident of far-left violence to take place during President Joe Biden’s term.
The march, organized by the “Total Liberation Collective and the Palm Collective” wound its way through central D.C., delivering “lectures” about “race, Black and Indigenous lives,” to Washington, D.C., residents dining outdoors at some of the city’s restaurants — lectures interrupted, occasionally, with chants of, “If we don’t get it, burn it down!”
The group clashed several times with the police during the hours-long march. A number of the clashes were caught on video and posted to social media by guerilla journalist Brendan Gutenschwager.
Police form a moving line between the protesters and the outdoor diners as the group continues to mobilize through DC #DC #DCProtests #WashingtonDC pic.twitter.com/sNh96wvkL6
— Brendan Gutenschwager (@BGOnTheScene) February 7, 2021
An officer swats away one of the flashlights, leading to brief clashes as police push forward into the crowd in front of outdoor diners here in DC #DC #DCProtests #WashingtonDC pic.twitter.com/UuA76fH5X4
— Brendan Gutenschwager (@BGOnTheScene) February 7, 2021
Although the protest was largely led by representatives of “Black Lives Matter,” Fox News noted that “[s]ome Antifa protesters mixed in, as a red and black ‘Antifascist Action’ flag could be seen being carried by a group of protesters clad in black.”
“At one point, things escalated after a black bloc protester shined a light into the face of a police officer, who then slapped away the flashlight. The black bloc member retaliated and smacked the police officer,” The Blaze noted. “The officer then pushed the crowd back by using his bicycle. The black bloc protester then slaps another cop. The officer thrusts his bike even more aggressively into the crowd dressed in all black. During the tense situation, a female in the crowd tells the officer to put his face mask on.”
“We are here tonight because black lives matter,” the group announced as the protest concluded following their march through a row of restaurants, according to Fox. “Despite black lives mattering, black people are still dying at the hands of the police paid for by our tax dollars.”
Saturday night’s protest was the latest in a series of “anti-fascist” demonstrations in major cities — a series that began just as President Joe Biden, a Democrat, took office in late January, and a series that has largely gone unnoticed by legacy media outlets.
Both Seattle and Portland have seen occasionally violent protests since January 20th, Biden’s Inauguration Day, and, in some cases, those protests have been aimed at Democrats. A January 20th riot in Portland targeted that city’s Democratic Party headquarters, smashing through the building’s windows and covering the building in anti-Biden graffiti.
Late last month, “anti-Fascist” protesters swarmed and attacked an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Portland, triggering a federal response. “Agents of the Federal Protective Services confronted crowds of rioters in Portland, Oregon,” on January 23rd, the Daily Wire reported at the time, directly confronting protesters who “descended on the Portland ICE facility demanding that inmates being held within be allowed to go free.”
Although former President Donald Trump took heat for deploying specialized federal agents to defend a federal courthouse in downtown Portland over the summer of 2020, the Biden Administration’s decision to allow federal authorities to defend the ICE facility appeared to go largely unnoticed.
Another Black Lives Matter rally is planned for Sunday in Washington, D.C.