Update from Stewart Rhodes: “Event is over. All safe, no serious injuries, complete success.”
It was supposed to be a day of peaceful protests across 150 US cities organized by anti-Trump supporters demanding to see the president’s tax return on Tax Day. Instead, in at least that bastion of tolerance and liberalism, the protest devolved into outright violence, when according to press reports hundreds of “alt-right” and “anti fa” protesters clashed.
According to Mercury news, nine people have been arrested as fighting broke out and scores of people supporting or opposing President Trump converged on a park in downtown Berkeley Saturday. Police were urging people to avoid the downtown area around Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park, citing a “large number of fights” that have occurred and numerous fireworks thrown in the crowds at the protests. Police said also that there have been numerous reports of pepper spray being used in the crowd.
Trump backers were holding a “free speech” rally at the park, while opponents of the president and his policies headed to the same spot at about 10 a.m. It didn’t take long for hundreds people to gather in and around the park. About half of them were Trump supporters who were gathered to rally in support of the president, while the other half were anti-Trump protesters. Police in riot gear made nine arrests and seized numerous prohibited items from the demonstrators by the early afternoon.
[snip]
LA Times adds that about 500 pro-Trump demonstrators and counter-protesters faced off Saturday morning at a “Patriots Day” rally in Berkeley, where the two groups have violently clashed on city streets twice in the last three months. About 10 a.m. Pacific Time, dozens of counter-protesters dressed in black and wearing masks tore down a plastic netting that separated the two groups in Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park. The Trump supporters moved forward with American flags and chants against “communists.”
Two counter-demonstrators were led away by police in handcuffs. At one point, a loud explosion could be heard in the park and fist fights broke out among members of both groups. Berkeley police, wearing riot helmets, immediately rushed in and the crowd moved back.
[snip]
Stewart Rhodes, founder of the citizen militia group known as the Oath Keepers, came from Montana with about 50 people wearing security gear to protect the Trump supporters. They were joined by bikers and others who vowed to fight members of an anti-fascist group if they crossed police barricades. “I don’t mind hitting” the counter-demonstrators, whom he called “neo-Nazis,” Rhodes said. “In fact, I would kind of enjoy it.”
But Rhodes credited Berkeley police for new tactics that kept the two sides apart and “our side chilled and relaxed.”
Read more at Zero Hedge
Photo credit:
“A group of pro-Trump supporters gather for a demonstration at Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park in Berkeley, Calif., Saturday, April 15, 2017.”
Anda Chu/Bay Area News Group
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