On May 22, AIPAC, the American-Israeli Political Action Committee was holding their annual bribefest for Congress at the Washington Convention Center-with well over a hundred protesters outside all morning. One person was arrested when police tried to hold the street for Obama’s motorcade, sparking a furious confrontation that could have escalated into a pitched battle.
Video with background, then the confrontation
Protests began at about 8AM, and for a good part of the morning protesters were able to close K st in front of the Convention Center. Early attempts by police to drive protesters back to the sidewalk across the street from the Convention Center were not very sucessful, simply inciting more protesters to cross each subsequent time.
Eventually, a spectacular”US Boat to Gaza” consisting of a banner around protesters in the shape of a boat with an “End the Siege” sail made it across for a short march around the first part of the Convention Center and under their overpass before everyone returned to the park area on the south side of the street.
As Obmama’s motorcade approached, cops became very aggressive in trying to keep all protesters out of the street. During this incident and for unknown reasons, cops arrested one person and took him across the street with his hands behind his back.
The arrest infuriated the crowd, which stormed across K st in pursuit after a short delay and surrounded the police car the cops had locked their “hostage” inside. This led to the fighting, with cops trying to forcibly clear an arm-locked line of protesters so they could leave with the arrestee. I saw what appeared to be cops even resort to throwing punches as well as shoves before they finally managed to escape with their prisoner. Had someone partially broken their windshield to obstruct their view, they would have been trapped with an undriveable car-and I did hear the sound of blows on metal as the car pushed through the crowd.
Although not perfect, this was a pretty good effort by a crowd consisting mostly of people not trained for battle and riot in resisting a police effort to take someone away. Although people did not succeed in unarresting the person taken, the cops were sent a loud message that further aggression would not be tolerated and there were no further arrests-even after people closed K st and marched around the Convention Center.
There was minimal if any presence of neo-Nazis as we had been warned would occur. One individual departed after a conversation about a T-shirt he claimed was bought at Target, a T-shirt bearing slogans about battle and honor that could have been worn by a Nazi but by itself is proof of nothing.
The most serious right-wing disruption came from a “Zio-Nazi” with a very, very loud sound system who was allowed by police to set up in the south side of K st-the area anti-AIPAC protesters had a permit for. He was constantly yelling about killing-killing Fatah, killing Hamas, killing this, killing that. He did this while surrounded by his enemies, yet cops made no effort to stop this obvious incitation of a riot, complete with references to killing. Stuffing his speaker with his own display T-shirts get 5 to 15 minutes relief before he would notice over his own yelling that his speaker was muffuiled, though!
DC Direct Action News 