On day of protest, police induce 13 arrests as pro-Trump mob clashes with anti-fascists in California and thousands call for financial disclosure elsewhere
Hundreds of self-described anti-fascist protesters and those in favour of Donald Trump clashed in Berkeley, California, in sporadic brawl on Saturday. Protests in cities around the rest of the country, including a number of tax marchings in which demonstrators called for Trump to release his tax returns, proceeded more peacefully.
In Berkeley, police told media they had arrested 13 people by mid-afternoon, as resisting rallies spilled out of a park and into the streets.
With hundreds of people on each side, the crowds largely taunted each other with bullhorns, chants and calls. Occasionally, anti-Trump protesters threw fireworks. Small bands on both sides chased each other or brawled, sometimes with wooden timbers, homemade shields, poles and pepper spray.
One standoff at a downtown intersection ended only when a smoke grenade detonated. In confusion, anti-Trump protesters fled as supporters of the president charged after them, attacking stragglers. In one altercation, demonstrators hurled a pot of beans at each other.
In another altercation, a protester who stole a Trump flag was chased down in front of a store and punched, until friends ran to his side and started to beat the Trump supporter involved. As with the other opposes, it was eventually separated. At least a dozen people were ensure bloodied or suffering the effects of pepper spray.
The first event planned for Saturday was a pro-free speech rally by a group of Trump supporters. Opposing groups quickly coordinated their own event.
Demonstrators in both camps bemoaned how hard it was to communicate with the other side, though occasionally they came together, often helping spectators caught off guard. At one point an anti-fascist shared her marijuana with a Trump supporter. For most of the day, each side shouted slogans, like neo-fascists got to go and just plain commies off the streets.
Unlike previous conflicts in Berkeley such as a February protest that forced the far-right novelist Milo Yiannopoulos to cancel an event, and a March rally that led to 10 arrests Trump supporters numbered at the least as many if not more than their challengers. At one point an older man wailed: I claim Berkeley for the alt-right.
Lauren Southern, a Canadian activist popular in rightwing media, similarly declared: We won the battle of Berkeley!
By 4pm local hour, the various factions had largely dispersed, leaving streets by and large pacifies and the park quiet.
They picked Berkeley since they are want to feel they could do this in the most liberal place in the country, said Geoff Millard, an anti-Trump protester, Iraq war veteran and Mr San Francisco Leather 2017. Its important that we shut them down and let them know they cant pulling this crap here.
Millard said the antifascist protest was meant to stimulate Nazis afraid and said the ideology that they propose sets public citizens at risk.
Others against the president variously argued that there were limits to free speech or that their aim was to use their own voices to overwhelm and marginalize certain views that have appeared on the far right, for example antisemitism and racism.
Several Trump supporters suggest that they also felt uncomfortable about those components. One human, who would describe himself as a Trump supporter from the Bay area, held a sign that read Da Goyim Know next to an image of a cross. He said the sign means were sick of living under neocon rule.
I think there are too many Jewish supremacists in the government and in the media, he said. If people of European descent want to stand up for their rights and just want equal rights, theyre called white supremacists.
Accusations of antisemitism, he said, were used to justify anti-white racism.
Trump supporters nearby said they did not agree, and stressed the eclectic mix of notions on their side: self-described non-progressives, libertarians, populists, conservatives, reluctant converts, and a faction called the Proud Boys: a Bay area group of men, mostly in their 30 s, who call themselves western chauvinists.
One Proud Boy, who called himself Nick Money, said he was a Bernie Sanders supporter until he had an awakening last year. His group was providing security for Southern, who has previously encouraged Trump supporters take action in self-defense against disgusting antifa scum. In a video earlier this year, she said: While we should never start a fight we should always objective it.
Despite Saturdays scuffles, however, partisans on both sides mostly taunted and chided each other, telephones and cameras raised. Police broke up battles but largely stood apart. A solitary vendor appeared for the usual Saturday farmers marketplace, which was canceled, and a Berkeley stalwart who calls himself Common Terry wailed that Trump supporters dislike our farmers marketplace.
Nearby, an empathy tent stood empties of protesters, though a volunteer said she had helped several people from both sides there, just before a man in a Make America Great Again hat stopped by to pick up a jacket his wife had left behind.
What are his conflicts of interest?
A peaceful mood reigned at processions in more than 100 other cities across the US on Saturday, as protesters demanded the release of the presidents personal tax returns.
In Washington, protesters rallied on the west lawn of the Capitol before a marching to the Lincoln Memorial. Many wore pink knitted hats with pussy ears, which were first find en masse at the Womens March in the capital in January.
Audrey Wagner, a DC resident, questioned the motives behind Trumps refusal to release his tax returns.
We need to know: what are his conflicts of interest? Does he have ties to Russia? she said.
Other protesters carried signs that remarked on the presidents frequent visits to Mar-a-Lago, his private resort in Palm Beach, Florida where he is spending the Easter weekend with his family. Hundreds of activists marched there too, fulfilling a group of Trump supporters. Florida police reported no violence.
In DC, lawmakers including Ron Wyden, Maxine Waters and Jamie Raskin addressed the crowd. Wyden, the ranking Democrat on the Senate finance committee, has introduced legislation that would require sitting presidents, including Trump, to release their tax returns for the past three years. Trump has refused to release his returns, breaking with more than 40 years of precedent.
Trump said during the campaign that he would release his returns when the audit was complete. But after his inauguration, aide Kellyanne Conway said the president would not release his tax returns and that people didnt care.
Amanda Taub, a prof at Vermont Law School, told the Guardian this week Conways commentaries sparked the idea for a Tax Day march.
Trump said people dont are of interest to his tax returns, said one marcher in Washington on Saturday, Michelle Lee, from nearby Alexandria, Virginia. Thats clearly not the case. So get down the golf course and show us what youre hiding.
Pieces of Trumps tax history have dribbled out, including two pages of Trumps 2005 returns and documents from his 1995 filing, which showeda $916 m loss and that Trump could have employed a loophole to legally avoid federal income taxes for over a decade.
Read more: www.theguardian.com
